Robyn Banks
August 8th 2003, 09:20 PM
The Servant of Isaiah 40-55
Introduction
Who or what is the referent of the "servant" figure of Isaiah 40-55, and especially of Isaiah 52.13 - 53.12?
Many Christians still read this section of Isaiah in light of the New Testament reinterpretation of the passage, which understands the text as being 'fulfilled' by Jesus. However, the majority of Christian scholars for at least the last century have recognized that the servant, when read within the context of Isa 40-55, in fact refers to Israel's exile and restoration in the sixth century BC. Moreover, scholarship has recognized that Isa 53 does not refer to some future figure, but is a story about a servant who lived in the past. It is referring to the past sufferings of Israel in exile in Babylon.
In 1948 Christopher North, commenting on the history of interpretation of the servant, could state that the collective interpretation "is the theory still most widely held in this country." 1
The collective interpretation, and specifically the interpretation of the servant as Israel, still remains the most widely held today. Professor James Ward, writing in a leading Christian introduction to the Prophets published in the 1990s, confirms that the collective interpretation is the most predominant one in both Jewish and Christian commentaries today:
"Jewish interpreters once considered him to be the messiah, but his identification with Israel, collectively, has been the dominant Jewish view since the Middle Ages. The collective interpretation is also the most popular among Christian scholars today, though a few continue to think of the servant primarily in relation to Jesus." 2
This article summarizes the reasons for identifying the servant with the ideal, theological conception of 'Israel', God's chosen people. It should, however, be noted that even those scholars who suggest that Isa 52.13 - 53.12 refers to an individual figure (such as the prophet himself, or Moses, or an unnamed exile) are in wide agreement that it refers to a figure in the past, who lived before Cyrus's decree was issued which allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Israel. As Brevard Childs notes in his commentary on Isaiah:
"During most of the history of the Christian church's interpretation of Isaiah, it was assumed that the suffering servant theme of chapter 53 was a messianic prophecy predicting the future passion of Jesus Christ… However, with the rise of the modern historical-critical approach to the Old Testament the position that gained the widest acceptance was that the description of the suffering servant, regardless of a continuing debate over details, was a figure closely tied to the historical experience of Israel in the Babylonian exile." 3
It is to the context of Isa 40-55 that we must turn first and foremost, if we are to hear the prophetic text 'speak for itself'.
Later reinterpretations of Isaiah 53
We must be able to separate out the later Christian and other Jewish Messianic reinterpretations of Isaiah 53 from the contextual meaning of Isaiah 53. Commenting on Isa 52.13 - 53.12, Walter Brueggemann explains that the Christian reinterpretation is a legitimate use of the text, but that it must be acknowledged that Isaiah 53 does not have Jesus "on its horizon" when examined in context:
"There is no doubt that the poem is to be understood in the context of the Isaiah tradition. Insofar as the servant is Israel - a common assumption of Jewish interpretation - we see that the theme of humiliation and exaltation serves the Isaiah rendering of Israel, for Israel in this literature is exactly the humiliated (exiled) people who by the powerful intervention of Yahweh is about to become the exalted (restored) people of Zion. Thus the drama is the drama of Israel and more specifically of Jerusalem, the characteristic subject of this poetry.
Second, although it is clear that this poetry does not have in any first instance have Jesus on its horizon, it is equally clear that the church, from the outset, has found the poetry a poignant and generative way to consider Jesus, wherein humiliation equals crucifixion and exaltation equals resurrection and ascension." 4
Many centuries after Isaiah 53 was written, Christians used the imagery of exile and suffering to describe the death of Jesus, and they used the imagery of restoration into the land of Israel to describe their belief in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. And they were quite entitled to do so, as creative reinterpretation. But the danger is that we forget that this is reinterpretation. This is reuse of a previous context. It is not interpretation within that original context. This is not a prediction coming true in reality. And when people ignore the explicit context of the Old Testament passage, and then forget that they are reading a reinterpretation of it, they do injury to the intended meaning of that original passage.
It is clear that some later Jewish reinterpretations, which includes Christian reinterpretation, interpreted Isa 53 as referring to a future messiah. However, the following points should be noted:
1. Christian and Messianic Jewish interpretations exercised a broad and loose hermeneutic in reinterpreting Isaiah 53.
Interpretation in first century Judaism did not have the regard to context that modern interpretation does. Instead, it was marked by broad and loose reinterpretations, which allowed as much for reinterpretation of the text as it did for its interpretation.
The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel is a dramatic example of this broad and loose hermeneutic at work. Jonathan lived in the first century BC, although the words we have from him come from the fourth century AD, and were probably edited in the process. He identifies the servant in 52.13, 53.1 & 10 with the Messiah. But in a perverse hermeneutical twist, the sufferings of the servant are transferred elsewhere: to the nations and the wicked. This interpretation, which is a complete misuse of the original Hebrew, was followed by later messianic interpreters. As Christian scholar Sydney HT Page states: "There is no doubt that the Targumist viewed the fourth servant song as a description of the messiah, but he radically transformed the meaning of the original Hebrew." 5
For example, Jephet ibn 'Ali (10th century) notes that some of the Qaraites applied all expressions of contempt to the seed of David in exile, and all the glorious things to the Messiah. Likewise, Moses el-Shaikh (16th century) interpreted Isa 53 messianically, but interpreted the sufferings ambiguously as the sufferings of the righteous and of the Messiah, and interpreted 53.9-12 as applying to Moses! And Haphtali ben Asher Altschuler interpreted nearly all of Isa 53 as the sufferings of Israel: "the Messiah is termed 'despised' as representing Israel."
What this demonstrates is that rabbinical interpretation took little notice of the original context of Isa 53, taking fantastic liberties with the text. As an aid to interpretation of Isa 53, rabbinical interpretations should be read with extreme caution.
2. The sense of 'fulfillment' in the New Testament did not necessarily have regard to the original context of the Old Testament passage which was 'fulfilled'.
The New Testament notion of 'fulfillment" was much broader than that of linear predictions coming true in reality. The New Testament writers allowed for a much more liberal approach to interpretation of the Old Testament scriptures, by our standards - using the New Testament event to reinterpret the Old Testament text, instead of interpreting the Old Testament text. For an Old Testament prophecy to be 'fulfilled', there did not have to be any matching of the contextual meaning of the prophecy with its New Testament 'fulfillment' at all. A 'fulfillment' included a completely new rereading of the original text against its original context.
D Senior provides a summary of this loose sense of 'fulfillment':
"For Matthew - as was true of virtually all New Testament interaction with the Old Testament - the relationship to the Hebrew Scriptures is dialogic rather than linear. "Fulfillment" does not mean simply a matter of applying Old Testament quotations to events in the light of Jesus. The events of Jesus' life are illuminated and their authority revealed in the light of the Old Testament and, at the same time, new understandings of the voice of God in the Scriptures and the history of Israel are revealed in the light of Jesus' person and mission." 6
New Testament use of the Old Testament makes little attempt to examine the context of the Old Testament. As Richard Hays comments concerning Paul, the apostle "adheres neither to any single exegetical procedure, nor even to a readily specifiable inventory of procedures… the modern concern for methodological control in interpretation is foreign to him." 7 Paul reinterprets the Old Testament in light of his beliefs about Jesus, as he sees fit, using a loose and tendentious hermeneutic.
By the time of the New Testament, the citation of 'fulfillment' becomes so flexible that it is impossible to detect any shared context between a prophecy and its so-called 'fulfillment,' except by positing a doctrine of some spiritual or 'deeper' meaning being thereby fulfilled. So, Jesus' return from Egypt is somehow a 'fulfillment' of Hos 11:1, although Hosea was making a past reference to the Exodus. Jesus is called a Nazarene in the same chapter, probably due to some esoteric misunderstanding of the Nazarite 'prophecy'. Matthew's account of Judas' blood money is based on a text in Jeremiah which speaks of money approved by God.
Richard Coggins concludes that "[t]he use of prophetic material to illustrate and shape a particular story has now [in the New Testament] become so flexible that questions of true and false prophecy barely arise; it has become impossible to envisage criteria that could be laid down to establish whether or not a particular prophecy has or has not been 'fulfilled'." 8
3. There is no reference to an end-times (eschatological) Messiah in the whole Old Testament.
The term "the Messiah," denoting a future eschatological king, does not appear in the Old Testament. There is no prophecy in the Old Testament concerning a Messiah who will come to establish God's eternal rule. In the words of a very conservative biblical scholar, GE Ladd:
"the simple term 'the Messiah' does not occur in the OT at all."
Before you leap to your concordance, let me explain what is meant here. Not one of the 39 occurrences of "messiah" in the Hebrew canon refers to an expected figure of the future whose coming will coincide with the inauguration of an era of salvation. All of the references to 'messiah' (meaning 'anointed one') apply to a king, priest or prophet who is either alive at the time of the biblical writer, or in his immediate future. The conception of an 'end-times Messiah' simply does not come up in the Old Testament, anywhere.
I summarise below the basic scholarly understanding of the term "messiah":
1. The assumption that the Jews were waiting for a commonly-understood Messiah is wrong. There was no single discernible role-description for a Messiah. The Jews did not have a coherent idea of what the Messiah would be like. One cannot therefore claim that 'most Jews were looking for the coming of the Messiah' with any precision.
2. The term "messiah" was applied in the OT to a present political and religious leader appointed by God. The 'anointed one', in the OT, denotes usually a King, also a priest (Lev, Num, Exo), and sometimes a prophet (Ps 105:15, 1 Chr 16:22). These are real people. Most occurrences concern the Jewish King. Many references concern the enthronement of actual kings. As YHWH had promised that David's line would continue, the prophetic references often refer to specific expected kings who would restore the Davidic dynasty. Zechariah identifies Zerrubbabel as such as an expected "anointed" / "messiah." The expectations were not of a final Davidic ruler, ruling for all time to come - but of a continuing Davidic line.
3. The OT contains messianic passages. But these are never apocalyptic or eschatological.
4. The earliest explicit use of the technical term "Messiah/Christ" is in the first century BC - in the Psalms of Solomon and the Parables of Enoch. Jewish Messianology developed out of the crisis of the Maccabean wars of the second century BC, and from the later concerns over Roman rule. The scriptures were only interpreted with Messianic connotations by Jews for about 2 centuries before the New Testament.
This is the consensus of Old Testament scholarship, which now includes even the most conservative voices. The idea of a future Messiah who would bring judgment is developed much later, and even then, not by all Jewish groups.
Mainstream Christian bible scholar, Brevard Childs summarizes:
"It has long been recognized that the term 'Messiah' in its technical New Testament sense as the eschatological redeemer of Israel does not occur in the Old Testament itself, but only in the post-Old Testament period. Indeed, one of the important tasks of Old Testament theology is closely to describe the profile of the Old Testament witness without fusing it to that of the New Testament." 9
And when we read Isaiah 53 in context, without 'fusing it to the New Testament reinterpretation', we will come to the conclusion that the servant is Israel. This is difficult for those who have only ever considered Isaiah 53 through the lens of later New Testament reinterpretation. But in order to appreciate the Old Testament text for its own sake, it must be done. Isaiah 53 never was a messianic text. In fact, the common reference terms used in the Old Testament for the promised messiah, such as David, son of David, or king, are completely absent from Isaiah 53.
4. The Jewish interpretation of the servant as Israel is older than its reinterpretation by some Jewish interpreters as the Messiah
Although Jewish reinterpretations of the servant as the Messiah probably began in the first century BC, there is already evidence of its interpretation as Israel.
The very earliest Jewish interpretation of Isa 40-55 - that of the LXX - considered the servant to be collective Israel. LXX Isa 42.1 adds an interpretive gloss to Isa 42.1, to explicitly link the servant with the nation of Israel.
"As is well known the LXX sanctions a collective interpretation of the servant in the first servant song by inserting 'Jacob' in apposition to 'my servant', and 'Israel' in apposition to 'my chosen' in Isa 42.1. This is unambiguous testimony to the presence of a collective interpretation of the servant in Hellenistic Judaism." 10
Origen's Contra Celsum records the opinion of Jews who knew that Isa 53 referred to "the whole people, regarded as one individual, and as being in a state of dispersion and suffering, in order that many proselytes might be gained, on account of the dispersion of the Jews among numerous heathen nations." (1.55)
Here Origen records a Jewish interpretation of Isa 53 that is very consistent with the contextual interpretation of Isa 53 I presented below.
From earliest times the servant has been identified with 'the righteous' generally. For example, Rab Huna (d297), and in the Jerusalem Talmud (Sheqalim, v1) where Rabbi Jonah applies Isa 53.12 to Rabbi Akiba - as a righteous servant. Even after Messianic interpretation became general, some interpreted the Servant as the righteous: Jacob ben Reuben (Qaraite, 12c), Elieer of Beaujenci, Aaron be Joseph and the Qaraites.
In the later Middle Ages, when interpretation became more 'scientific', the messianic interpretation began to dwindle amongst Jewish interpreters. As Christopher R North comments: "Since the twelfth century the collective interpretation has been usual… it should be recognized that with Rashi we enter upon a period of more literal and scientific, as opposed to 'allegorical and adventitious' expositions, together with a fuller recognition of the principle of the unity of the paragraph and its relation to its context." 11 The "context" was of course the suffering of Israel and its promised exaltation amongst the nations. North cites the following Jewish interpreters who recognized that Isaiah 53 referred to Israel, not a messiah: Rashi (d1105), Ibn Ezra, Joseph and David Kimchi, Jacob ben Reuben the Rabbinite (12c), Joseph ben Nathan (Sens, 13c), Isaiah ben Mali (13c), Shem Tob ben Shaprut (Toledo, 14c), Abarbanel (d1508), Abraham Farissol (Avignon, 1503), Isaac Troki (Qaraite, 1593), Abraham of Cordova (Proselyte, c1600), Isaac Orobio de Castro (17c).
Contextual interpretation of Isaiah 53
The passages dealing with the figure of the servant in Deutero-Isaiah are Isa 41.8-13; 42.1-9; 42.18-25; 43.8-13; 44.1-5; 44.21-22; 49.1-12; 50.4-11 and 52.13-53.12. In addition, the term appears in Isa 48.20 and 54.17.
Explicit references to Israel
In these passages, the servant is explicitly identified as Israel some seven times! Moreover, in the passages where there is no explicit identification, the immediate context is always about the exile and restoration of Israel.
Isa 41.8-13
"(8) But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; (9) you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, "You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off"; (10) do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. (11) Yes, all who are incensed against you shall be ashamed and disgraced; those who strive against you shall be as nothing and shall perish. (12) You shall seek those who contend with you, but you shall not find them; those who war against you shall be as nothing at all. (13) For I, YHWH your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, "Do not fear, I will help you."
Isa 43.8-13
"(8) Bring forth the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears! (9) Let all the nations gather together, and let the peoples assemble. Who among them declared this, and foretold to us the former things? Let them bring their witnesses to justify them, and let them hear and say, "It is true." (10) You are my witnesses, says YHWH, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. (11) I, I am YHWH, and besides me there is no savior. (12) I declared and saved and proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you; and you are my witnesses, says YHWH. (13) I am God, and also henceforth I am He; there is no one who can deliver from my hand; I work and who can hinder it?"
Isa 44.1-5
"(1) But now hear, O Jacob my servant, Israel whom I have chosen! (2) Thus says YHWH who made you, who formed you in the womb and will help you: Do not fear, O Jacob my servant, Jeshurun* whom I have chosen. (3) For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing on your offspring. (4) They shall spring up like a green tamarisk, like willows by flowing streams. (5) This one will say, "I am the Lord's," another will be called by the name of Jacob, yet another will write on the hand, "The Lord's," and adopt the name of Israel."
* Jeshurun, a symbolic name for Israel
Isa 44.21-22
"(21) Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you, you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me. (22) I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you."
Isa 49.1-12
"(1) Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away! YHWH called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me. (2) He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. (3) And he said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified." (4) But I said, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with YHWH, and my reward with my God." (5) And now YHWH says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of YHWH, and my God has become my strength - (6) he says, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." (7) Thus says YHWH, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the servant of rulers, "Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of YHWH, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you." (8) Thus says YHWH: In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; (9) saying to the prisoners, "Come out," to those who are in darkness, "Show yourselves." They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; (10) they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them. (11) And I will turn all my mountains into a road, and my highways shall be raised up. (12) Lo, these shall come from far away, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene."
Isa 54.4
"For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me."
Introduction
Who or what is the referent of the "servant" figure of Isaiah 40-55, and especially of Isaiah 52.13 - 53.12?
Many Christians still read this section of Isaiah in light of the New Testament reinterpretation of the passage, which understands the text as being 'fulfilled' by Jesus. However, the majority of Christian scholars for at least the last century have recognized that the servant, when read within the context of Isa 40-55, in fact refers to Israel's exile and restoration in the sixth century BC. Moreover, scholarship has recognized that Isa 53 does not refer to some future figure, but is a story about a servant who lived in the past. It is referring to the past sufferings of Israel in exile in Babylon.
In 1948 Christopher North, commenting on the history of interpretation of the servant, could state that the collective interpretation "is the theory still most widely held in this country." 1
The collective interpretation, and specifically the interpretation of the servant as Israel, still remains the most widely held today. Professor James Ward, writing in a leading Christian introduction to the Prophets published in the 1990s, confirms that the collective interpretation is the most predominant one in both Jewish and Christian commentaries today:
"Jewish interpreters once considered him to be the messiah, but his identification with Israel, collectively, has been the dominant Jewish view since the Middle Ages. The collective interpretation is also the most popular among Christian scholars today, though a few continue to think of the servant primarily in relation to Jesus." 2
This article summarizes the reasons for identifying the servant with the ideal, theological conception of 'Israel', God's chosen people. It should, however, be noted that even those scholars who suggest that Isa 52.13 - 53.12 refers to an individual figure (such as the prophet himself, or Moses, or an unnamed exile) are in wide agreement that it refers to a figure in the past, who lived before Cyrus's decree was issued which allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Israel. As Brevard Childs notes in his commentary on Isaiah:
"During most of the history of the Christian church's interpretation of Isaiah, it was assumed that the suffering servant theme of chapter 53 was a messianic prophecy predicting the future passion of Jesus Christ… However, with the rise of the modern historical-critical approach to the Old Testament the position that gained the widest acceptance was that the description of the suffering servant, regardless of a continuing debate over details, was a figure closely tied to the historical experience of Israel in the Babylonian exile." 3
It is to the context of Isa 40-55 that we must turn first and foremost, if we are to hear the prophetic text 'speak for itself'.
Later reinterpretations of Isaiah 53
We must be able to separate out the later Christian and other Jewish Messianic reinterpretations of Isaiah 53 from the contextual meaning of Isaiah 53. Commenting on Isa 52.13 - 53.12, Walter Brueggemann explains that the Christian reinterpretation is a legitimate use of the text, but that it must be acknowledged that Isaiah 53 does not have Jesus "on its horizon" when examined in context:
"There is no doubt that the poem is to be understood in the context of the Isaiah tradition. Insofar as the servant is Israel - a common assumption of Jewish interpretation - we see that the theme of humiliation and exaltation serves the Isaiah rendering of Israel, for Israel in this literature is exactly the humiliated (exiled) people who by the powerful intervention of Yahweh is about to become the exalted (restored) people of Zion. Thus the drama is the drama of Israel and more specifically of Jerusalem, the characteristic subject of this poetry.
Second, although it is clear that this poetry does not have in any first instance have Jesus on its horizon, it is equally clear that the church, from the outset, has found the poetry a poignant and generative way to consider Jesus, wherein humiliation equals crucifixion and exaltation equals resurrection and ascension." 4
Many centuries after Isaiah 53 was written, Christians used the imagery of exile and suffering to describe the death of Jesus, and they used the imagery of restoration into the land of Israel to describe their belief in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. And they were quite entitled to do so, as creative reinterpretation. But the danger is that we forget that this is reinterpretation. This is reuse of a previous context. It is not interpretation within that original context. This is not a prediction coming true in reality. And when people ignore the explicit context of the Old Testament passage, and then forget that they are reading a reinterpretation of it, they do injury to the intended meaning of that original passage.
It is clear that some later Jewish reinterpretations, which includes Christian reinterpretation, interpreted Isa 53 as referring to a future messiah. However, the following points should be noted:
1. Christian and Messianic Jewish interpretations exercised a broad and loose hermeneutic in reinterpreting Isaiah 53.
Interpretation in first century Judaism did not have the regard to context that modern interpretation does. Instead, it was marked by broad and loose reinterpretations, which allowed as much for reinterpretation of the text as it did for its interpretation.
The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel is a dramatic example of this broad and loose hermeneutic at work. Jonathan lived in the first century BC, although the words we have from him come from the fourth century AD, and were probably edited in the process. He identifies the servant in 52.13, 53.1 & 10 with the Messiah. But in a perverse hermeneutical twist, the sufferings of the servant are transferred elsewhere: to the nations and the wicked. This interpretation, which is a complete misuse of the original Hebrew, was followed by later messianic interpreters. As Christian scholar Sydney HT Page states: "There is no doubt that the Targumist viewed the fourth servant song as a description of the messiah, but he radically transformed the meaning of the original Hebrew." 5
For example, Jephet ibn 'Ali (10th century) notes that some of the Qaraites applied all expressions of contempt to the seed of David in exile, and all the glorious things to the Messiah. Likewise, Moses el-Shaikh (16th century) interpreted Isa 53 messianically, but interpreted the sufferings ambiguously as the sufferings of the righteous and of the Messiah, and interpreted 53.9-12 as applying to Moses! And Haphtali ben Asher Altschuler interpreted nearly all of Isa 53 as the sufferings of Israel: "the Messiah is termed 'despised' as representing Israel."
What this demonstrates is that rabbinical interpretation took little notice of the original context of Isa 53, taking fantastic liberties with the text. As an aid to interpretation of Isa 53, rabbinical interpretations should be read with extreme caution.
2. The sense of 'fulfillment' in the New Testament did not necessarily have regard to the original context of the Old Testament passage which was 'fulfilled'.
The New Testament notion of 'fulfillment" was much broader than that of linear predictions coming true in reality. The New Testament writers allowed for a much more liberal approach to interpretation of the Old Testament scriptures, by our standards - using the New Testament event to reinterpret the Old Testament text, instead of interpreting the Old Testament text. For an Old Testament prophecy to be 'fulfilled', there did not have to be any matching of the contextual meaning of the prophecy with its New Testament 'fulfillment' at all. A 'fulfillment' included a completely new rereading of the original text against its original context.
D Senior provides a summary of this loose sense of 'fulfillment':
"For Matthew - as was true of virtually all New Testament interaction with the Old Testament - the relationship to the Hebrew Scriptures is dialogic rather than linear. "Fulfillment" does not mean simply a matter of applying Old Testament quotations to events in the light of Jesus. The events of Jesus' life are illuminated and their authority revealed in the light of the Old Testament and, at the same time, new understandings of the voice of God in the Scriptures and the history of Israel are revealed in the light of Jesus' person and mission." 6
New Testament use of the Old Testament makes little attempt to examine the context of the Old Testament. As Richard Hays comments concerning Paul, the apostle "adheres neither to any single exegetical procedure, nor even to a readily specifiable inventory of procedures… the modern concern for methodological control in interpretation is foreign to him." 7 Paul reinterprets the Old Testament in light of his beliefs about Jesus, as he sees fit, using a loose and tendentious hermeneutic.
By the time of the New Testament, the citation of 'fulfillment' becomes so flexible that it is impossible to detect any shared context between a prophecy and its so-called 'fulfillment,' except by positing a doctrine of some spiritual or 'deeper' meaning being thereby fulfilled. So, Jesus' return from Egypt is somehow a 'fulfillment' of Hos 11:1, although Hosea was making a past reference to the Exodus. Jesus is called a Nazarene in the same chapter, probably due to some esoteric misunderstanding of the Nazarite 'prophecy'. Matthew's account of Judas' blood money is based on a text in Jeremiah which speaks of money approved by God.
Richard Coggins concludes that "[t]he use of prophetic material to illustrate and shape a particular story has now [in the New Testament] become so flexible that questions of true and false prophecy barely arise; it has become impossible to envisage criteria that could be laid down to establish whether or not a particular prophecy has or has not been 'fulfilled'." 8
3. There is no reference to an end-times (eschatological) Messiah in the whole Old Testament.
The term "the Messiah," denoting a future eschatological king, does not appear in the Old Testament. There is no prophecy in the Old Testament concerning a Messiah who will come to establish God's eternal rule. In the words of a very conservative biblical scholar, GE Ladd:
"the simple term 'the Messiah' does not occur in the OT at all."
Before you leap to your concordance, let me explain what is meant here. Not one of the 39 occurrences of "messiah" in the Hebrew canon refers to an expected figure of the future whose coming will coincide with the inauguration of an era of salvation. All of the references to 'messiah' (meaning 'anointed one') apply to a king, priest or prophet who is either alive at the time of the biblical writer, or in his immediate future. The conception of an 'end-times Messiah' simply does not come up in the Old Testament, anywhere.
I summarise below the basic scholarly understanding of the term "messiah":
1. The assumption that the Jews were waiting for a commonly-understood Messiah is wrong. There was no single discernible role-description for a Messiah. The Jews did not have a coherent idea of what the Messiah would be like. One cannot therefore claim that 'most Jews were looking for the coming of the Messiah' with any precision.
2. The term "messiah" was applied in the OT to a present political and religious leader appointed by God. The 'anointed one', in the OT, denotes usually a King, also a priest (Lev, Num, Exo), and sometimes a prophet (Ps 105:15, 1 Chr 16:22). These are real people. Most occurrences concern the Jewish King. Many references concern the enthronement of actual kings. As YHWH had promised that David's line would continue, the prophetic references often refer to specific expected kings who would restore the Davidic dynasty. Zechariah identifies Zerrubbabel as such as an expected "anointed" / "messiah." The expectations were not of a final Davidic ruler, ruling for all time to come - but of a continuing Davidic line.
3. The OT contains messianic passages. But these are never apocalyptic or eschatological.
4. The earliest explicit use of the technical term "Messiah/Christ" is in the first century BC - in the Psalms of Solomon and the Parables of Enoch. Jewish Messianology developed out of the crisis of the Maccabean wars of the second century BC, and from the later concerns over Roman rule. The scriptures were only interpreted with Messianic connotations by Jews for about 2 centuries before the New Testament.
This is the consensus of Old Testament scholarship, which now includes even the most conservative voices. The idea of a future Messiah who would bring judgment is developed much later, and even then, not by all Jewish groups.
Mainstream Christian bible scholar, Brevard Childs summarizes:
"It has long been recognized that the term 'Messiah' in its technical New Testament sense as the eschatological redeemer of Israel does not occur in the Old Testament itself, but only in the post-Old Testament period. Indeed, one of the important tasks of Old Testament theology is closely to describe the profile of the Old Testament witness without fusing it to that of the New Testament." 9
And when we read Isaiah 53 in context, without 'fusing it to the New Testament reinterpretation', we will come to the conclusion that the servant is Israel. This is difficult for those who have only ever considered Isaiah 53 through the lens of later New Testament reinterpretation. But in order to appreciate the Old Testament text for its own sake, it must be done. Isaiah 53 never was a messianic text. In fact, the common reference terms used in the Old Testament for the promised messiah, such as David, son of David, or king, are completely absent from Isaiah 53.
4. The Jewish interpretation of the servant as Israel is older than its reinterpretation by some Jewish interpreters as the Messiah
Although Jewish reinterpretations of the servant as the Messiah probably began in the first century BC, there is already evidence of its interpretation as Israel.
The very earliest Jewish interpretation of Isa 40-55 - that of the LXX - considered the servant to be collective Israel. LXX Isa 42.1 adds an interpretive gloss to Isa 42.1, to explicitly link the servant with the nation of Israel.
"As is well known the LXX sanctions a collective interpretation of the servant in the first servant song by inserting 'Jacob' in apposition to 'my servant', and 'Israel' in apposition to 'my chosen' in Isa 42.1. This is unambiguous testimony to the presence of a collective interpretation of the servant in Hellenistic Judaism." 10
Origen's Contra Celsum records the opinion of Jews who knew that Isa 53 referred to "the whole people, regarded as one individual, and as being in a state of dispersion and suffering, in order that many proselytes might be gained, on account of the dispersion of the Jews among numerous heathen nations." (1.55)
Here Origen records a Jewish interpretation of Isa 53 that is very consistent with the contextual interpretation of Isa 53 I presented below.
From earliest times the servant has been identified with 'the righteous' generally. For example, Rab Huna (d297), and in the Jerusalem Talmud (Sheqalim, v1) where Rabbi Jonah applies Isa 53.12 to Rabbi Akiba - as a righteous servant. Even after Messianic interpretation became general, some interpreted the Servant as the righteous: Jacob ben Reuben (Qaraite, 12c), Elieer of Beaujenci, Aaron be Joseph and the Qaraites.
In the later Middle Ages, when interpretation became more 'scientific', the messianic interpretation began to dwindle amongst Jewish interpreters. As Christopher R North comments: "Since the twelfth century the collective interpretation has been usual… it should be recognized that with Rashi we enter upon a period of more literal and scientific, as opposed to 'allegorical and adventitious' expositions, together with a fuller recognition of the principle of the unity of the paragraph and its relation to its context." 11 The "context" was of course the suffering of Israel and its promised exaltation amongst the nations. North cites the following Jewish interpreters who recognized that Isaiah 53 referred to Israel, not a messiah: Rashi (d1105), Ibn Ezra, Joseph and David Kimchi, Jacob ben Reuben the Rabbinite (12c), Joseph ben Nathan (Sens, 13c), Isaiah ben Mali (13c), Shem Tob ben Shaprut (Toledo, 14c), Abarbanel (d1508), Abraham Farissol (Avignon, 1503), Isaac Troki (Qaraite, 1593), Abraham of Cordova (Proselyte, c1600), Isaac Orobio de Castro (17c).
Contextual interpretation of Isaiah 53
The passages dealing with the figure of the servant in Deutero-Isaiah are Isa 41.8-13; 42.1-9; 42.18-25; 43.8-13; 44.1-5; 44.21-22; 49.1-12; 50.4-11 and 52.13-53.12. In addition, the term appears in Isa 48.20 and 54.17.
Explicit references to Israel
In these passages, the servant is explicitly identified as Israel some seven times! Moreover, in the passages where there is no explicit identification, the immediate context is always about the exile and restoration of Israel.
Isa 41.8-13
"(8) But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; (9) you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, "You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off"; (10) do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. (11) Yes, all who are incensed against you shall be ashamed and disgraced; those who strive against you shall be as nothing and shall perish. (12) You shall seek those who contend with you, but you shall not find them; those who war against you shall be as nothing at all. (13) For I, YHWH your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, "Do not fear, I will help you."
Isa 43.8-13
"(8) Bring forth the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears! (9) Let all the nations gather together, and let the peoples assemble. Who among them declared this, and foretold to us the former things? Let them bring their witnesses to justify them, and let them hear and say, "It is true." (10) You are my witnesses, says YHWH, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. (11) I, I am YHWH, and besides me there is no savior. (12) I declared and saved and proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you; and you are my witnesses, says YHWH. (13) I am God, and also henceforth I am He; there is no one who can deliver from my hand; I work and who can hinder it?"
Isa 44.1-5
"(1) But now hear, O Jacob my servant, Israel whom I have chosen! (2) Thus says YHWH who made you, who formed you in the womb and will help you: Do not fear, O Jacob my servant, Jeshurun* whom I have chosen. (3) For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing on your offspring. (4) They shall spring up like a green tamarisk, like willows by flowing streams. (5) This one will say, "I am the Lord's," another will be called by the name of Jacob, yet another will write on the hand, "The Lord's," and adopt the name of Israel."
* Jeshurun, a symbolic name for Israel
Isa 44.21-22
"(21) Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you, you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me. (22) I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you."
Isa 49.1-12
"(1) Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away! YHWH called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me. (2) He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. (3) And he said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified." (4) But I said, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with YHWH, and my reward with my God." (5) And now YHWH says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of YHWH, and my God has become my strength - (6) he says, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." (7) Thus says YHWH, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the servant of rulers, "Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of YHWH, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you." (8) Thus says YHWH: In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; (9) saying to the prisoners, "Come out," to those who are in darkness, "Show yourselves." They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; (10) they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them. (11) And I will turn all my mountains into a road, and my highways shall be raised up. (12) Lo, these shall come from far away, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene."
Isa 54.4
"For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me."