Bible Commentaries
Isaiah 52

“Your God Reigns” ( 51 : 17 — 52 : 12 )

Jerusalem is here pictured as one who is staggering with intoxication, having drunk the cup of the Lord’s wrath (vss. 17-23). Yet the Lord informs the people of the city that he has now taken away this cup and has given it into the hands of the tormentors of Jerusalem.

This is the setting for the new exhortation to Zion to awake and put on her “beautiful garments,” for she is going to be set free from captivity to foreign powers (52:1-2). The judgment has passed to those who have enslaved her (vss. 3-6). As Israel had been sold into slavery to these people without charge, so they are now to be redeemed without money.

At this point the prophet inserts a hymn (vss. 7-12) which describes the coming of God to Jerusalem. Verses 7-8 form the introduction and first strophe, and contain the familiar words, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace . . . who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’ ” The Exile is over, and in the people’s pilgrimage to Zion the Lord will go before them and will also be their rear guard as he was in the wandering through the wilderness in the days of Moses. The return to Zion is described in terms of a great pilgrimage to the Holy City and also as a great victory of God over all those who have opposed him. These same themes were central in certain Temple services of worship in pre-exilic Jerusalem.

The mood of the prophet in this hymn is triumphant and excited, and here he brings to a climax his proclamations of the coming of the Lord and of the release of the exiles and the rebuilding of the Holy City, Zion.

The Lord’s Suffering Servant (52:13—53:12)

This is the most familiar passage in Second Isaiah. The subject is the atoning or reconciling work of the Servant in the world. The redemption of Israel is represented as having been completed. The Servant has been commissioned (49:5-6) and has acknowledged the work of the Lord and accepted the Lord’s guidance (50:4-9). The Servant’s suffering and affliction in the world continue, but as this prophetic poem eloquently explains, they are for the sake of others. The Servant voluntarily will take upon himself the punishment merited by others. The picture is startling, dramatic, and very personal. Its features have caused much debate over the centuries concerning its meaning and the designation of the Servant. Jewish scholarship has generally interpreted the passage as referring to the sufferings of Israel in the world. Christian scholarship has interpreted the passage as referring to Christ. Indeed, in the New Testament a very original modification of the Jewish expectation of the Messiah was made in terms of this passage. As is clear from 9:2-7 and 11:1-9, the promise of God to David had become for Israel the hope that God would provide a new David on the throne in Jerusalem who would serve as God’s ruler over the whole world in the time of the Kingdom of God. The Early Church, however, saw Jesus in his life and death as fulfilling this prophecy of the Suffering Servant, and as fulfilling in his exaltation after death the prophecies about the new Davidic ruler. Thus the kingship of the Messiah is exercised from the heavenly throne; it is a spiritual lordship over the world (Acts 8:31-35; Romans 15:21; 1 Peter 2:21-25).

Modern biblical scholarship has in general followed Jewish interpretation, at least in seeing the Servant here and in the earlier passages in Second Isaiah as a collective concept and referring to the redeemed Israel. Yet this prophecy has never played a central role in Jewish theology or expectation in the same sense that it has for Christianity. In recent times there have been attempts to see in the Suffering Servant an idealized Messianic figure, or else to see in the poem a portion of a liturgy which depicted the humiliation of the current reigning king before his exaltation. For the reasons specified in the study of the earlier chapters, and in particular of the Servant references, the collective interpretation of the original poem seems preferable. Israel as God’s servant is vicariously bearing the sins of the world. This vicarious atonement is the means whereby the nations are led to the Lord. Christian faith, however, sees this vocation of Israel dramatically fulfilled in Christ.

The poem falls into three main parts. In the first (52:13-15), God announces the exaltation and success of the Servant’s mission. In the second and major part (53:1-9), the kings of the nations confess their understanding of the Servant’s sufferings. Finally, in the third section (53:10-12), the prophet announces that the sufferings are by the will of the Lord and that their purpose will be fulfilled. In verse 12 the prophet quotes God directly as speaking again of the Servant’s future exaltation.

God’s Introduction and Exaltation of the Servant ( 52 : 13 - 15 )

The first strophe begins in verse 13 with a summary statement in which God is represented as speaking in the first person. It announces that the Servant is to have great success in his mission and that as a result there will be a radical change from his present low estate to a very high one. Indeed, it is going to come about that, just as many people were surprised to see how his body was marked with wounds and stripes beyond those of normal men, in the future kings will be put to silence by their understanding of the magnitude and remarkable nature of the work and life which the Servant has carried on. Things that kings had never been told and had never heard, they will now see and understand (vss. 14-15). In the first line of verse 15, the meaning of the Hebrew word translated “startle” is not clear. What the prophet means, however, is to be understood from its parallelism with the first line of verse 14 and its context in verse 15. As people were surprised to see such a marred and ugly figure, so they are going to be surprised when they understand the meaning of his person. Thus the phrase “ kin gs shall shut their mouths” must include something of the thought that is involved in the unknown Hebrew word. Some new information about the Servant is going to come to the nations of the world, information which hitherto they have not possessed.

The Confession of the Kings of the Nations ( 53 : 1 - 9 )

This descriptive and confessional section is introduced abmptly and speaks of the Servant of the Lord in the third person. It is composed of three strophes, verses 1-3, 4-6, and 7-9. It begins with the question, “Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” To interpret the passage we need to know the identity of the speaker and of the message that has been heard. This is an age-old problem, as we see in the questions asked the evangelist Philip by the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:34). A common assumption has been that it is indeed the prophet who is speaking, as the Ethiopian eunuch suggested. Another comparatively recent suggestion sees the servant poems as taken from an Israelite version of a Babylonian New Year’s liturgy concerned with the humiliation and the exaltation of the reigning king. As a quotation from royal liturgy, the poem then in a derived sense could be spoken of as Messianic. The simplest and most direct explanation, however, and the one given by what is probably a majority of interpreters today, is that 53:1-3 is very closely related to the preceding strophe (52:13-15) and that the speakers are the kings of the nations mentioned in verse 15. The information which they had not known or heard they now see and understand. It is the revelation from God himself about the meaning of what has been going on. The answer to the question in 53:1 is that no one could have believed what we have heard, and to no one hitherto had its meaning been revealed. Verse 2 is closely paralleled by 52:14. The outward appearance of the Servant is so unattractive as to make him repulsive; he is one at whom nobody desires to look. Those who find a clear Messianic allusion in the first part of verse 2 think the phrases “a young plant” and “a root out of dry ground” refer to the “shoot from the stump” of the household of David’s father, Jesse (11:1). That this is meant, however, seems rather problematical. Verse 3 specifies in more detail the situation of the Servant of the Lord. He was an outcast from society, despised, and without friends. He was a man of “sorrows” and “grief” (literally, “pains” and “sickness”). The Servant was such an unattractive and diseased creature that men could not bear to look at him: “we esteemed him not.” There comes to mind at this point an eloquent passage in Job 12:5, “In the thought of one who is at ease there is contempt for misfortune.” Those who are well and healthy find it easy to look down on and to despise those who are unhealthy, ugly, diseased. While we may fight the tendency to do this, it seems to be an attitude against which indeed we must struggle. The Servant is pictured as ugly, diseased, lonely, and unwanted.

In the second strophe the kings of the world now confess the understanding that has been revealed to them about the real meaning of the sufferings of the Servant. While they thought him to be simply stricken and afflicted and for some reason “smitten by God,” they confess that of a truth he is indeed bearing “our griefs” and “our sorrows.” Verse 5 now changes the metaphor. “He was wounded for our transgressions” means that it was “because of” or “on account of’ the evil of the world that he was wounded. It would be a common and widespread notion in ancient Israel, as in the ancient world generally, that such a one as the Servant who is here depicted was indeed a man afflicted because of sin. Yet it is not his sin which is in question, but the sins of the peoples of the world. His body bears the marks of that sin, yet at the same time his bearing of these wounds was for purposes of atonement, that is, for reconciliation with God: “with his stripes we are healed.” The Servant is bearing the evil of the world vicariously. It should not be forgotten that every human being bears his share of the world’s evil. A very special and unusual weight of it was heaped upon this Servant; but he accepted the burden and bore it as his mission in the world. It is for this reason that Christians have always associated Christ with this passage; the New Testament interpretation of his crucifixion, in fact, is made in similar terms. His was not a martyrdom but a vicarious suffering for the healing of the nations.

In verse 6 the world rulers continue their confession: every one of us has strayed like lost sheep, and the Lord has laid on him the burden of our alienation. Note the emphasis on “All we” at the beginning of verse 6, and also on “the Lord,” who has laid on the Servant this burden of the world’s evil (see vs. 10).

The third strophe of the confession of the kings interprets the life of the Servant (vss. 7-9). As in 42:2-3 he is quietly and without complaint obedient; like a lamb or a sheep led to its slaughter or its shearers, the Servant does not make a sound. In verses 8-9 the picture is of a death and a burial along with the evil people of the world, although the Servant has done nothing whatsoever to deserve the death. The picture can be looked at in a double way. On the one hand, it may be seen as a mirror of the destruction of the Israelite nation in the Promised Land. On the other, it may be looked at as the fate of God’s Servant in the world, who vicariously bears in his body the world’s evil. Here again it is easy to see how and why Christians have found in these words an understanding of the sufferings of Christ.

God’s Description of the Servant’s Atoning Work ( 53 : 10 - 12 )

In verses 10-11 the prophet in his own words explains the life of the Servant in terms of the purposive action of God, a purpose which the Servant has of his own will carried out. It was according to God’s active will that he was wounded and made sick. Yet in the future he will see a family, a prolongation of days, and a prospering that were denied him in the past. The meaning of verse 11 has been somewhat debated because of the ambiguity of the Hebrew. Yet the general intention of the words is clear. By the work of the Servant many shall “be accounted righteous” (a technical phrase for an acquittal in a lawsuit). Finally we are told that because the Servant “poured out his soul to death” (vs. 12 ) and was willing to be numbered with sinners, while bearing their sins and making intercession for them, therefore God, now speaking in the first person, will divide for him a portion with the greatest ones of the earth. The figure in the first part of the verse is that of the general of a great army after a victory, parceling out the booty to the strongest and best of the warriors. The despised and lonely Servant will obtain a portion reserved for the greatest and strongest of all warriors.

In this picture of the Suffering Servant we find a portrayal of Israel’s meaning and destiny in the world that rises far above its own horizon and points to a larger reference in later times and situations. Thus it was with Israel in the original picture; thus it was also with Christians who saw Christ exactly prefigured in this figure of the Servant; and thus it has been with the New Israel in Christ and with its mission in the world in all times and places.