The 53rd chapter of Isaiah is a beautiful, poetic song, one of the four“Servant Songs”in which the prophet describes the climactic period of world history when the Messiah will arrive and the Jewish people assume the role as the spiritual leaders of humanity. Isaiah 53 is a prophecy foretelling how the world will react when they witness Israels salvation in the Messianic era. The verses are presented from the perspective of world leaders, who contrast their former scornful attitude toward the Jews with their new realization of Israels grandeur. After realizing how unfairly they treated the Jewish people, they will be shocked and speechless. While the original Hebrew text clearly refers to the Jewish people as the“Suffering Servant,”over the centuries Isaiah 53 has become a cornerstone of the Christian claim that Jesus is the Messiah. Unfortunately, this claim is based on widespread mistranslations and distortion of context. In order to properly understand these verses, one must read the original Hebrew text. When the Bible is translated into other languages, it loses much of its essence. The familiar King James translation uses language which is archaic and difficult for the modern reader. Furthermore, it is not rooted in Jewish sources and often goes against traditional Jewish teachings. Modern translations, while more readable, are often even more divorced from the true meaning of the text. For an accurate Jewish translation of the Bible, read the“ArtScroll English Tanach. The Context of Isaiah 53 The key to deciphering any biblical text is to view it in context. Isaiah 53 is the fourth of the four“Servant Songs.”(The others are found in Isaiah chapters 42, 49 and 50.) Though the“servant”in Isaiah 53 is not openly identified-these verses merely refer to“My servant”(52:13, 53:11)-the“servant”in each of the previous Servant Songs is plainly and repeatedly identified as the Jewish nation. Beginning with chapter 41, the equating of God’s Servant with the nation of Israel is made nine times by the prophet Isaiah, and no one other than Israel is identified as the“servant”: “You are My servant, O Israel”(41:8) “You are My servant, Israel”(49:3) see also Isaiah 44:1, 44:2, 44:21, 45:4, 48:20 The Bible is filled with other references to the Jewish people as God’s“servant”; see Jeremiah 30:10, 46:27-28; Psalms 136:22. There is no reason that the“servant”in Isaiah 53 would suddenly switch and refer to someone other than the Jewish people. One obvious question that needs to be addressed: How can the“Suffering Servant,”which the verses refer to grammatically in the singular, be equated with the entire Jewish nation? The Jewish people are consistently referred to with the singular pronoun. This question evaporates when we discover that throughout the Bible, the Jewish people are consistently referred to as a singular entity, using the singular pronoun. For example, when God speaks to the entire Jewish nation at Mount Sinai, all of the Ten Commandments are written as if speaking to an individual (Exodus 20:1-14). This is because the Jewish people are one unit, bound together with a shared national destiny (see Exodus 4:22, Deuteronomy chapter 32). This singular reference is even more common in biblical verses referring to the Messianic era, when the Jewish people will be fully united under the banner of God (see Hosea 14:6-7, Jeremiah 50:19). As we will see, for numerous reasons this chapter cannot be referring to Jesus. Even in the Christian scriptures, the disciples did not consider the Suffering Servant as referring to Jesus (see Matthew 16:21-22, Mark 9:31-32, Luke 9:44-45). So how did the Suffering Servant come to be associated with Jesus? After his death, the promoters of Christianity retroactively looked into the Bible and“applied”-through mistranslation and distortion o
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 13:20:52 +0000
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