52:13-14 "Indeed, My servant shall prosper, be exalted and raised to
great heights. Just as the many were appalled at him--so marred was
his appearance, unlike that of man, his form, beyond human
semblance--just so he shall startle many nations."
Israel is the servant of the L-RD spoken of here, always the Hebrew is singular, it is corporate Israel that is being spoken of here, the people as a whole. Isaiah 41:8-9 says "But you, Israel, are my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend. You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called you from its farthest corners, and said to you, You are my servant; I have chosen you, and [will] not cast you away." Isaiah 44:1-2 says "Yet now hear, O Jacob my servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen;. Thus says the L-RD who made you, and formed you from the womb, who will help you; Fear not, O Jacob, my servant; and you, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen.". Isaiah 44:21 again tells us that Israel is G-d's servant: "Remember these, O Jacob and Israel; for you are my servant; I have formed you; you are my servant; O Israel, you shall not be forgotten by me." Is important to note that the very next verse (44:22) says that, "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions, and, as a cloud, your sins; return to me; for I have redeemed you." G-d has already redeemed the Jews from our sins, all we have to do is return to Him, to follow His ways in the Torah--as it says in Psalm 32:5 "Then I acknowledged my sin to You; I did not cover up my guilt...and You forgave the guilt of my sin." Further references to Israel as G-d's servant are found in Isaiah 45:4, 48:20 and 49:3.
Now, let's look at the context of Isaiah 52-53 to see if the servant is also Israel there. The two chapters are connected, and form a continuous message. Isaiah 52:4-6 makes it clear that the servant is again Israel: "For thus says the L-RD G-d, My people went down the first time to Egypt to sojourn there; and the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. Now therefore, what have I here, says the L-RD, that My people is taken away for nothing? Those who rule over them howl, says the L-RD; and My Name continually every day is blasphemed. Therefore My people shall know My Name; therefore they shall know in that day that I am He who speaks; behold, here I am." Notice that a group of people is being spoken about (people is a collective singular here), one that was in Egypt and Assyria. That people is Israel.
In verse 13, that same people is spoken of as "My servant". Israel is indeed the servant spoken of here. G-d is telling us here that, in the end, Israel will prosper and take its rightful place in G-d's plan. But before that happens, Israel (i.e. the Jewish people) will be perceived as marred and unlike other men in appearance. We have been seen by others as demons, devils, rats, other than human. Our life to them has been cheap. When my dad was in basic training for the Korean war, a non-Jewish man from a different part of the country kept staring at him. My dad asked him why he was staring. The man asked my dad where his horns were, because he had been told all Jews had horns. The Jewish people have certainly been perceived as demonic by many, having horns and a tail. We have also be painted with enormous hooked noses and stooped backs, and perceived as having a odd, Jewish aroma. We have been painted as sacrificing Christian children to the "Devil" that controls us, and using the blood in our matzos. We have been accused of poisoning wells and desecrating hosts. Our skin has been used to make lamps, our hair to make cloth. To those who hate us, we are beyond human semblance. Many have been startled to find out we are not demons and have no horns.
Jesus, on the other hand, looked exactly like a man. There are no stories in the New Testament of Jesus astonishing people with his looks, with Jesus having horns, tails, and the like. This is not about Jesus, it is about Israel.
Isaiah 52:15 "Just so he shall startled many nations. Kings shall be
silenced because of him, For they shall see what has not been told them,
Shall behold what they never have heard."
We startled many nations by our very survival when they thought we should disappear, but we did not. We have startled many nations by our importance, and by our major contributions to the world in many fields, beyond our small numbers. Such a reviled people, such a small people who, in their view to this very day, should not exist anymore, will come as a big surprise to many nations, many peoples. In the future, they will be surprised when they realize their mistake, that what they have been told is wrong--we are not demons, servants of the "Devil", a fossil who should disappear, rats or evil. They will be startled when they find out we are and have indeed been G-d's servant. When they see the truth, they will indeed be speechless, silent in the face of what they have believed, what they have done.
Isaiah 53:1 "Who has believed our report? and to whom is the arm
of the L-RD revealed?"
The arm of the L-RD is a metaphor used though out the Tanach to indicate G-d is taking direct action and for vindication. This same metaphor is used in Deuteronomy 5:15, "And remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt, and that the L-RD your G-d brought you out from there with a mighty hand and with a stretched out arm;...". They will find the truth even if spoken by non-Jews hard to believe, hard to accept, but HaShem will vindicate us, the Jewish people.
Isaiah 52:2 "For he grew up before Him as a tender plant,
and as a root out of a dry ground; he had no form nor comeliness that
we should look at him, there was no countenance that we should desire him."
They did not think us pleasing to look upon, but HaShem will favor us, our suffering will not endure forever. Indeed, Israel is like a trunk in arid ground, growing with the favor of HaShem. Isaiah uses the trunk metaphor (see Isaiah 6:12) to refer to the surviving remnant of Jews that will come out of Babylon purified, free from the dross of idolaters. Again, no one desired to look at us, seeing us as less than human, as ugly. Yet, before G-d, we are as a tender plant coming out of the dry bitter ground of the world. We are a light in the darkness. Corporate Israel, a singular entity, is the shoot and no one else. Jesus, for example, was not seen as ugly to look upon and gathered large crowds.
Isaiah 53:3 "He is despised, shunned by men, a man of suffering, familiar
with disease. As one who hid his face from us, he was despised, we held
him of no account."
According to the NT, Jesus had large crowds of follower and was not shunned. Israel, on the other hand, certainly has been shunned. We have been kicked out of many countries, some more than once. The Romans kicked us out of our own land, renaming it, trying to make us disappear. Spain, England, Germany, France, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, etc. have all kicked us out. We have been shunned by men. We have been despised for many thing we have not done, and just because we are G-d's servant. The Syrian-Greeks despised us, and tried to destroy our religion, to make us worship their "gods". We have known much suffering: the rule of the Syrian-Greeks; the Roman with their forced labor, crucifixions of hundreds of thousands of Jews, and law forbidding us to learn or teach Torah; the Crusades; Inquisition; HaShoah (Holocaust); Dhimi status in Muslim countries; ghettos; expulsions; pogroms; job restrictions; slavery; etc... The ghettos were so packed that disease was a problem. In the concentration camps disease was rampant. Jesus was never shown as diseased. We have been held to be worthless, of no account by the non-Jewish world, we still are viewed in this way by many peoples and individuals. They cannot, did not, see our true face through their hate. This applies so much more to the suffering on the Jewish people at the hands of intolerant, ignorant, and bigoted people, than it ever could to Jesus. Again, I remind you that Isaiah is talking about Israel here when he is talking about My servant.
Isaiah 53:4 "Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing,
Our suffering that he endured. We accounted him plagued,
smitten and afflicted by God;"
The sickness was in them, not us. We have bore the result of their sickness, we have suffered and continue to suffer because of them. They believed us cursed by G-d, their own books said so as did their leaders. The took it upon themselves to make sure that we suffered the curse they thought us to be under. It was they themselves who made us suffer, through their own free will. Many Jews continue to suffer at the hands of those who view us as cursed by G-d.
Isaiah 53:5-6 says "But he was wounded because of our sins, crushed
because of our iniquities. He bore the chastisement that made us
whole, and by his bruises we were healed. We went astray like sheep,
each going his own way; and the L-RD visited upon him the guilt of all
of us."
Keep in mind that Israel is still the servant. Because of the sins of the non-Jews who persecuted us, we were crushed. We bore the chastisement that made many antisemites feel whole. The non-Jew did not treat others as they should have, straying from the Noachide law against murder. It appeared to many who arrayed themselves against the Jewish people that G-d was punishing the Jews, but it was really their own guilty actions that caused the suffering of G-d's servant Israel.
Isaiah 53:7 "He was maltreated, yet he was submissive, he did
not open his mouth; like sheep being led to slaughter, like a ewe, dumb before
those who shear her, he did not open his mouth."
Jesus cried out, he opened his mouth during his trial. We were maltreated, but following the principle that if we were submissive it would all blow over and we would survive, the people would survive, we remained submissive throughout the millennia. In Nazi controlled Europe, to give a modern example, we again remained submissive, not knowing that relocation, another exile from another country like so many others before, was not all Germany had in mind. We were transported in cattle cars, like sheep to the slaughter. Like ewes who do not know they are going to be sheared, we did not know the fate that awaited us in the "relocation trains". We did not open our mouths.
Isaiah 53:8 "By oppressive judgment he was taken away,
who could describe his abode? For he was cut off from the land of the living
through the sin of my [i.e. the non Jewish speakers] people, who deserved
punishment."
They oppressed us, judged us guilty, and took us away. We, the Jewish people (Israel) were taken away by oppressive judgment (blood libel trials, pogroms, crusades, inquisition, anti-Jewish laws, the Shoah). We were murdered, cut off from the land of the living, because of their sins (ie the sin of murder, etc.) by non-Jews. It is they who murder who deserved the punishment they gave us unjustly. It was those who sinned and continue to sin against us, not us, the servant of G-d, who deserves to be punished.
Isaiah 53:9 "And his grave was set among the wicked, and with the
rich, in his death -- though he has done no injustice and spoken no
falsehood."
The rich are often portrayed as wicked, so we are saying the same thing twice for emphasis. Israel (the Jewish people) have done nothing to merit the ill treatment we have received by the rest of the world, nonetheless, Jews were still buried in pits and mass graves. Jews were still given the disrespectful burial of a wicked man. Our grave stones still removed to pave streets, still desecrated even here in America. From what I read in the NT, Jesus was given a decent burial in a nice tomb, not the disrespectful burial of a wicked person.
Isaiah 53:10-12 says "But the L-RD chose to crush him by disease,
that, if he made himself an offering for guilt, he might see offspring and have
long life, and that through him the L-RD's purpose might prosper. Out
of anguish he shall see it; he shall enjoy it to the full through his
devotion. [G-d says:] 'My righteous servant makes the many righteous, it is their
punishment that he bears; assuredly, I will give him the many as his
portion, he shall receive the multitude as his spoil. For he exposed
himself to death and was numbered among the sinners, whereas he bore
the guilt of many and made intercession for sinners.'"
First of all, note that the servant (Israel) will have offspring and long life. Israel as a group has had many children and a long life. Jesus had no children and was put to death by the Romans when he was fairly young. This passage cannot be referring to Jesus.
They believe that G-d was punishing us, that the L-RD "chose to crush" us "by disease". But it was their sins that made us suffer. We are G-d's servants, a light unto the nations, our role to bring the universal laws, morality to the world. Hitler's Germany rejected G-d's seven laws for all men, murdering the messenger, thinking that the message made Germany weak. For their guilt we suffered. The Jewish people has offered little resistance to the actions of our persecutors. We have born the brunt of their guilty actions. Yet, we are still devoted to HaShem and are fulfilling our role to be a light unto the nations, so that the nations may one day follow the Noachide laws ordained by G-d. Through our example, we are to make many people righteous, but we bear the punishment of the guilty in the meantime. We have been killed by many, dying with the Shema on our lips. We have been buried in pits as sinners, whereas the killers were the real sinners.
G-d will one day reward us, the nations will one day recognize our role. The nations have numbered us as sinner and murdered us because of their misguided beliefs. It is they that were guilty. We have ever prayed for the world, for the people of the nations in which we dwelt. In the end, all will stream to Mount Zion to worship, all will follow the seven laws of Noah, and "... In those days, ten men from nations of every tongue will take hold--they will take hold of every Jew by a corner of his cloak and say, 'Let us go with you, for we have heard that G-d is with you.'" (Zech. 8:23)
Proverb 21:21 "He who strives to do good and kind deeds attains life, success, and honor"
All quotes from Isaiah 52 and 53 are taken from: Tanakh, The Holy Scriptures. Philadelphia, Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1985.
Other quotes from the Tanakh come from either Tanakh, The Holy Scriptures. Philadelphia, Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1985. or The Davka Tanakh on CD-ROM
