Dialogues On Isaiah 53

Messianic prophecy or not?

The Christian Paul Smith and the Jew Shlomo Eliezer Yehudastein Ben David have met to discuss religion.

Paul: So, Shlomo, when are you going to convert and join the REAL Jewish Messiah יֵשׁוּעַ? The man who, in accordance with Isaiah 53, “hath borne our sufferings,” and “was pierced for our transgressions?” The man who fulfilled more messianic prophecies than any other human by far. The man who is God become flesh, the word, the logos, the one who is and was and is to come.

Shlomo: Well you see Paul, if this man were really to be the Jewish Messiah, I would join him in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, however, his messianic claims run contrary, in my view, to the clear proclamation of scripture. You and I have discussed before, at some length, the repeated Biblical proclamations of God’s absolute unity—even in Isaiah, your favorite book of the Old Testament (though I know your preference is primarily for only a certain chapter of that book). However, I do not expect that we will be able to change each other’s minds regarding whether Jesus’s claim to messianic status and divinity runs contrary to the testimony of scripture.

In light of this, let us discuss your claim that Jesus’s divinity is prophesied by the old testament in Isaiah 52-53. I’ll quote the relevant passages in full, even from your favorite translation, the New King James version, emphasizing every bit that seems particularly relevant:

¹³ Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently;
He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.
¹⁴ Just as many were astonished at you,
So His visage was marred more than any man,
And His form more than the sons of men;
¹⁵ So shall He sprinkle many nations.
Kings shall shut their mouths at Him;
For what had not been told them they shall see,
And what they had not heard they shall consider.

53 Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
³ He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
⁵ But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
⁶ All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

⁷ He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
⁸ He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
⁹ And they made His grave with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.

¹⁰ Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
¹¹ He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
¹² Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

Now, I can see how on a first reading this might appear to be impressive and Messianic. This isn’t that surprising—if you go scouring the Hebrew Bible to try to confirm that Jesus is God, you’re bound to find something. The Bible is a rather long book after all! But you’re wrong to identify the suffering servant with Jesus: after all, God says in Isaiah 49:3 “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.” Israel is identified as the suffering servant in various other passages: Isaiah 41:8-9, 44:1-2, 44:21, 45:4, and 48:20.

Paul: Certainly that is how one must explain this passage if they are to deny its Messianic import. But we Christians have a doctrine known as dual fulfillment, according to which a prophecy is often fulfilled in two distinct ways, at different times. This verse, therefore, may both be referring to Israel and to Jesus.

I hope that you and I can move beyond the exegesis of Evangelicals. A prophecy need not be a highly precise description of an event that is to come, but instead may invoke general themes that eventually come to pass, in ways so improbable that one clearly sees it is in accordance with the prophecy. The passage just being about Israel, however, poorly explains many facts about it:

1. If the passage is talking about Israel, how is it that it says in verse 8 “For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.” This point was made early on by the early writer Origen. How could the people of Israel be stricken for the transgressions of the people of Israel?

2. The passage describes a servant—singular. If this is intending to refer both to Jesus and Israel, this phrasing makes sense, just as one might coyly say “Jeshua defeated Baal,” to both mean the conquests of Joshua in the book of Joshua, and the actions of Jesus. It’s perhaps no surprise that with the exception of Jeremiah 30:10, the Hebrew Bible only calls Israel a servant in the book of Isaiah.

3. Verse 14 describes the servant’s “visage marred more than any man.” This is a perfectly normal way to describe a person being brutally mangled in a crucifixion but is an odd way to describe a nation being attacked. The double meaning interpretation makes quite a lot of sense.

4. Verses 5, 6, and 10 describe the servant being punished for others—being offered up as a ransom of sorts. Now, this is a very natural way to talk about Jesus on Christian theology but is quite an odd way to talk about a nation. Would it be normal to describe Israel as having made “His soul an offering for sin?”

5. The servant is described as having not opened his mouth in verse 7. Now, Jesus said things, but he did not call out or try to defend himself—he went to the cross willingly. It’s rather odd to say that a nation didn’t open its mouth.

6. The servant is described as having done no violence in verse 9. This fits rather poorly with Isaiah 6:5, “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” Similarly, Isaiah 64:6 states “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” The entire point of most of the prophetic writings is that Israel has turned away from God and screwed up massively, not that they are without violence.

7. The verse describes his grave being with the wicked and at his death being with the rich. This quite perfectly describes Jesus’s death on the cross, with the wicked, and then his burial in the tomb of the rich member of the Sanhedrin Joseph of Arimathea. In contrast, what the hell is this supposed to mean if the servant is a nation?

8. The verse says in verse 11 that the suffering servant shall justify many through his suffering and in verse 5 that people will be healed by his stripes. This makes sense if the verse is talking about atonement but it makes very little sense if the verse is talking about Israel. The enemies of the Israelites aren’t justified through their suffering, but instead get the crap kicked out of them by God repeatedly for making the Jews suffer.

9. The verse describes the servant’s soul having poured out into death, but also him living a long life. Israel, the nation, did not die. However, this otherwise paradoxical passage makes a good deal of sense in light of a resurrection.

10. Isaiah 11:1 describes the Messiah as being “A shoot” who “will come up from the stump of Jesse.” Thus, the passage in Isaiah 53:2 that the servant “shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground,” makes quite a lot of sense on the assumption that this prophecy is messianic.

In light of this, therefore, it seems that the passage must be about Jesus!

Shlomo: There was quite a lot there! But I find your method puzzling. You conclude that it’s talking about Jesus because it says things that sort of sound like they might be talking about Jesus. But the far more conclusive verses are those that explicitly declare Israel the suffering servant! It is true, of course, that the Christians have their various doctrines about double fulfillment (which they had to adopt because each of the prophecies they pointed to as messianic could be easily explained non-Mesianically). But one who is not a Christian has no reason to accept such a doctrine.

Your first point about it saying “he was pierced for our inequities,” is based on a mistranslation of the word מִפְּשָׁעֵ֔נוּ. The prefix is מ which can mean for but more often means from. Thus, it is saying he was pierced FROM the wrongdoing of the gentiles.

Regarding the prophecy in verse 8, you ask how it is that it says that the servant was stricken “for the transgression of my people?” It’s quite simple! The speakers in this section are the gentile nations, exclaiming to themselves their foolishness in rejecting the true testimony of the Jewish people (I’ll include the relevant verses below to show that this is so). It can’t be God speaking, for the speakers speak in the plural and describe rejecting the servant—yet God did not reject the servant.

Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
³ He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Regarding the next point, it’s true that describing the suffering one as a servant is a bit odd. However, it’s not at all unprecedented. As you yourself noted Jeremiah 30:10 also describes Israel as a servant, and so does your very own Gospel of Luke. It’s not any surprising personification to describe Israel as the servant of God when Jacob’s name was changed to Israel and is widely used as a stand-in for Israel. Again, we must bear in mind that the Bible is a very long book and that Hebrew poetry is rather odd.

Once we get clear that the Bible is comparing Israel to a single servant, just as it had Jacob be the stand-in for Israel (being literally named Israel after wrestling with the angel), the other verses fall into place. It is thus no surprise that the servant is described as having been marred beyond human recognition—a description representing Israel’s constant vicious attacks from the other nations. Israel had to suffer so as to lead the gentile nations onto the right path, and as a result, the suffering of the servant Israel is like that of a man given up in a sin offering.

The verses about the servant being with the wicked and the rich also make quite a lot of sense on this reading—it is describing that though Israel had to suffer and languish alongside the wicked, it will eventually be greatly rewarded, akin to dwelling with the rich. Finally, regarding it being odd for Isaiah to describe the Jewish people as having “done no violence,” given his chastisement of Israel in the rest of the book, this isn’t odd at all. When he chastises Israel, it is when he sees God, and describes Israel being impure next to God. But describing something as unworthy next to God doesn’t mean that they’ve done no violence. In addition, as most scholars recognize, the modern book of Isaiah had multiple authors, so such mixed messages are not very surprising.

Finally, there are lots of bits of the verse that make it clear that it isn’t about Jesus. It describes the servant having children (זֶ֖רַע) and living a long life. Neither of these are true of Jesus.

Let me finally ask you: if God really were prophesying about the coming of one member of the Godhead, the word become flesh, God become man and dwelling among his people, why would he do it merely by means of ambiguous tucked into an obscure and hard-to-parse passage in the book of Isaiah. There are ways of making his message much clearer; why the heck did he not do this?

Paul: But of course, I do not think this is the only place Jesus is prophecied in the Old Testament. I believe other Messianic prophecies can be found in Wisdom chapter 2, Psalm 22, Daniel 9, and various other places. Now, sure, Jesus’s messianic status could be clearer in the Old Testament, but so could God’s existence! God could make a sign in the sky declaring that he is lord over all. I believe that God entrusted us with the responsibility to guide each other out of spiritual darkness—he didn’t want to make it too easy for us.

Regarding the servant having many children, this strikes me as a rather odd argument for you to make. Did Israel have many children? To the best of my knowledge, nations do not typically have offspring. I agree it’s a bit weird that the person in Isaiah 53 is described as having passed on his seed, but this is weird on any interpretation. In fact, in my view Christians have a better interpretation of it given:

1. The seed in question could be Christian followers. Seed could, therefore, be used non-literally.

2. If we want to talk about literal creation, well, The Son begot The Spirit! So perhaps that is what’s being referred to.

3. It may very well be something we don’t know about. Prophecies are hard to figure out. Or, perhaps Isaiah made a small error. Those open to non-inerrancy ought to be open to this option.

I think you and I are in agreement that the passage is talking about a hypothetical servant who is likened to Israel. Our disagreement is, therefore, about whether the servant is a real human (Jesus) who lived and died or is a weird metaphor about a hypothetical servant representing Israel.

Now, while you did manage to find ways to explain away each of the passages I provided, none seemed very plausible. You suggest that it is the gentile nations speaking, but one cannot help but notice that the gentile nations always, in the rest of the chapter, speak in plural, while God speaks in singular. Thus, when the verse says in verse 8 says, “For the transgressions of My people He was stricken,” it is now God speaking. The phrase “my people,” (עַמִּ֛י) comes up a lot in the Bible, and it refers to the Jewish people on every occasion but one.

Now, I am well aware that Hebrew poetry is weird. The argument isn’t that there’s a lot that doesn’t make sense about Isaiah so it must be about Jesus. Rather, the argument is there’s a lot of stuff that makes absolutely no sense unless it is talking about Jesus but makes perfect sense if it is talking about Jesus. Weirdness is no surprise. What is a surprise is that there would be a huge number of otherwise bizarre aspects of the text that seem to be talking about Jesus. If I said, “he founded America, was the first president, and chopped down a cherry tree,” you’d know I’m talking about Washington, not because I’m saying weird stuff, but because I’m saying stuff that’s weird only on the supposition I’m not talking about Washington but that makes perfect sense if I am talking about Washington.

For example, the odds are extraordinarily low that if God were simply making a random allusion to a suffering servant as a stand-in for Israel, that the servant would be described as having been buried both with criminals and the rich. It’s similarly odd that the servant would be described as having died, having not opened his mouth as he suffered, and so on.

Shlomo: It’s true that God usually describes the Jewish people as his people. But if it is the gentile nations speaking, it’s no surprise that they’d describe their own people using the phrase “my people.” This also makes better sense of the earlier passages where Israel is declared the suffering servant.

I suppose it will come down to how surprised we are that if you comb through the Hebrew Bible desperately searching for Jesus, you can find some verses that sound like they might be talking about Jesus in surprising ways. If the Hebrew Bible was really prophecying the coming of Jesus, why would there be, for every passage claimed to be about Jesus, multiple other plausible interpretations? The Bible is a pretty long book! I don’t find the kind of evidence that you’ve adduced very surprising.

I suppose we’ll learn, in the eschaton, which of us is right.

Paul: I suppose we will!