Introduction | Song 1, Part 1 | Song 1, Part 2 | Song 2, Part 1 | Song 2, Part 2 | Song 2, Part 3 | Song 3 | Song 4, Part 1 | Song 4, Part 2 | Song 4, Part 3
The fourth section of this final Servant Song (Is 53.7-9) zooms in to allow us to see more specifically how the Servant is taking our place. Verse 7 describes his trial; verse 8, his death; and verse 9, his burial.
The trial is not pleasant. We’re told that he was “oppressed” and “afflicted.” The former word is used of the way the Egyptians treated the Israelite slaves in Egypt (Ex 3.7; 5.6, 10, 13) and King Jehoiakim’s oppression of Israel to get tribute money to pay to Egypt (2K 23.35). The latter word is also used of Israel’s slavery in Egypt (Ge 15.13; Ex 1.11-12; Dt 26.6); of Sarai’s treatment of Hagar after she became pregnant with Abram’s child (Ge 16.6); and of rape (Jdg 19.24, 20.5; 2S 13.12, 14, 22, 32; Lam 5.11).
Further, “he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.” This is a show trial, a star chamber; the outcome has already been decided, and there is no justice to be had.
But the prophet’s surprise re-emerges. How would you or I respond under these circumstances? Would we protest the injustice? Call for divine judgment? Curse the unfairness of it all?
Not the Servant. He doesn’t even open his mouth—and the prophet states that fact twice, for emphasis.
He just takes it.
Now the prophet laments the life cut short by the execution (Is 53.8). After the sham trial—”apart from justice”— he is taken away.
The KJV differs from the modern translations in the next clause. The familiar phrasing is, “Who shall declare his generation?” This sounds like a lament that he will never have any children. But the Hebrew is ambiguous here (for you Hebrew nerds, the question is whether the אֶת is preceding an accusative of direct object or of reference; see BDB or HALOT), and most modern translators prefer “As for his generation, who shall consider?” That is, no one understood what was really happening here—specifically, that “he was cut off … for the transgression of my people.” They’ve all missed the point of the previous section: the vicarious nature of his death.
After the execution—being “cut off out of the land of the living”—comes the tomb (Is 53.9). “He made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich.” I observe here that no one, including Isaiah himself, could possibly have made any sense out of that statement; in Hebrew culture, the wicked and the rich are never buried together, or even under similar conditions. The wicked—executed criminals—are tossed out with the trash, as food for the vultures, as is befitting their condemnation (cf Pr 30.17); but the rich, oh, they’re treated very differently. They’re buried in rock tombs, well protected from scavenging beasts, and well marked as a memorial for their descendants.
How could the Servant experience both?
Looking back, after this prophecy’s fulfillment, we see the outcome perfectly clearly and with no confusion—two thieves, Joseph of Arimathea, and all that. But even with the prophecy in hand, no one in Isaiah’s day could have predicted the actual outcome. I’ve written on that at more length elsewhere.
But the prophet is directed by the Spirit, and despite his very likely confusion, he predicts the truth: he will be buried “with the rich … because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.”
Again, the Servant is not Isaiah, and he is not Israel.
But he is good, and he is utterly undeserving of the death he will die.
Yet …
Next time.
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