The Servant Who Hears God's Voice (Isaiah 50:4-11) Series

Our passage today is commonly called the third of the four servant songs in Isaiah 40-55. The other three, famously, are in Isaiah 42, 49, and 53.

I've said before that over a century ago, a scholar named Bernard Duhm split off these four songs from the rest of Isaiah 40-55, and treated them as though they are independent oracles, unrelated to anything else. And for over a hundred years, OT scholarship has by and large chased Duhm's bad idea, only starting to crawl out from this hole in the last few decades (see Mettinger, The End of the Servant Songs).

Basically, the idea that there are four independent servant songs doesn't really work. This word "servant," or some form of it (used as a verb), is found many times in these chapters. And there's no reason to pick out these four prophetic oracles/words, and treat them as distinct, or separate:

Isaiah 41:8, 9; 42:1; 42:19; 43:10; 44:1, 2, 21, 26; 45:4; 48:20; 49:3, 5, 6, 7; 50:10; 52:13; 53:11; 54:17; 56:6; 63:17; 65:8, 9, 13, 14, 15; 66:14;

I don't want to spend a lot of time on it. But I felt like I needed to say something about that, to start.

The other thing I need to touch on again briefly today, before we dive in, is how Isaiah 40-49 has used servant language so far.

So very quickly, what we've seen is that God originally called the nation of Israel to be his servant, especially in Isaiah 42. The servant, is the nation of Israel. And the nation wasn't up to the task. It was blind, and deaf, and rebellious. And so God gives his exilic prophet the title of Israel in Isaiah 49. The prophet is God's servant, and he is given a two-fold commission: (1) he is called to turn Israel to God, and (2) he is called to be a light to the nations. The servant prophet is called Israel, and he is sent to servant Israel.

Today, what I think is the most straightforward reading of the passage, that doesn't have any problems, and that builds seamlessly off of everything we've read so far, is the servant of Isaiah 50:4-11 is the exilic prophet.

Now, some of you have probably been taught, somewhere along the way, that these words are Jesus' words. That this is a speech Jesus gives, somewhat mysteriously, completely out of the blue. That it's a messianic prophecy of sorts, foretelling what Jesus will one day say to first century Jews. This approach is a struggle of sorts, because there's not really a good historical setting anywhere in Jesus' life, where he could've spoken these words in their entirety. Bits and pieces work great, and we can go on a scavenger hunt, comparing each specific line to verses in the NT. But again, as a whole, it's awkward. If that's you, I'd be happy to talk about that at more length with you. If there's a bunch of you, we could have like a special nerd event, where we wrestle with this thorny academic issue. But for this morning, I'm just going to assume that the servant who is speaking, is God's exilic prophet, speaking to God's people in Babylonian exile.

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Special nerd notes... my take on why Jesus isn't directly, exclusively, exhaustively, the servant of Isaiah 50:4-9:

(1) I'll admit that the passage is open, by itself, apart from its context, to being understood as Jesus' words (as long as the speaker shifts in verses 10-11, which I agree with). Verse 11 doesn't resemble anything Jesus said at any point in his ministry.

(2) The secret to making a messianic reading of these verses work, is to pull them out of their context. And if people want to do that, there's no way to really argue with it. Probably the best critique of this approach, which I'll admit I haven't read (because I'm already persuaded), is T.D. Mettinger, A Farewell to the Servant Songs. Lund: Gleerup, 1983.

(3) The words we are about to read, describe something that's already happened. The servant of Isaiah 50 is standing up in front of people, and he's telling them about how his life works. Every day, he says, God wakes up my ear, and gives me a new word to speak. Every day, then, I stand up, and give you that word. That word has been resulting in physical assault, and attempts at humiliation. But I know that God is with me. I know that He is my helper. I know that I will in the end be vindicated. And God concurs with this, and announces in verses 10-11 that "all of you" (Babylonians, probably, and not members of God's people) who are opposing his servant will have your weapons turned back on yourself, and lie down in torment.