Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Liz Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>]

Thank you Harold, I appreciate the work and effort you
put into this. I respond below.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Harold R. Holmyard III [mailto:hholmyard AT ont.com]
>
>
> Dear Liz,
>
> I said:
>
> >> The text of Isaiah distinguishes the Servant of the Lord from
> Cyrus, who
> >> also is a servant of the Lord. It takes work to distinguish
> the two, but
> >> the material devoted to each of them differs in style and substance.
>
> You replied:
>
> >Ok, would you care to elaborate?
>
> Isaiah blends the Babylonian and eschatological eras in his prophecies.
>
> Interpreters are familiar with the interplay between Cyrus and the Servant
> in Isaiah 40-66. Both are God's servants, His anointed, sent to redeem and
> restore Israel. God causes both to prosper, to divide spoil, to subdue
> kings. Discussion can move quickly from one to the other (cf. Isa 41:25
> with 42:1; 48:14-15 with 48:16 and 49:1). Yet the two figures are
> distinguishable, for Cyrus is from a far country (41:1-3; 45:1-3, 13;
> 46:11) while the Servant is identified with Israel (49:1-5).
The identification disappears when the word "Israel" is removed from 49:3.

Cyrus is
> ignorant of God (45:4-5), but the Servant is exceptionally close to God
> (50:4).
50:4-9 refer to the prophet himself.
These verses are in the first person, they then go on to refer to the
servant in the third person (vs. 10,11). Two different people are
talked about here, one 1st person, one 3rd.
Cyrus is the servant refered to in 50:10.

The others are those who will not listen, and will not return.


Cyrus appears as a warrior (41:2-3, 25; 45:1-2), but the
> Servant is
> meek and bears suffering (43:2;
Where is the servant? the I is God.
Perhaps you refer to 42:1-3.
Cyrus judge the nations, since he conquered them all (42:1).
He also had a reputation for being meek. I quote Herodotus.

…The Persians have a saying that Darius was a shopkeeper, Cambyses a master
of slaves, and Cyrus a father.  What they mean is that Darius kept petty
accounts for everything, that Cambyses was hard and contemptuous, and that
Cyrus was gentle and contrived everything for their good. (III: 89).

 49:4,
This does not show weakness;

 7;
The word servant is not mentioned here.
This may be the prophet or the Jews held captive in Babylon.

 50:5-6;
This is the prophet.

52:14; 53:1-12).
The suffering servant so-called.
Where is the word servant used?
The word servant is only in 52:13.
I put it with 52:1-12. It describes Cyrus' exaltation when the Jews return
to their promised land.
The rest of the verses 52:14ff do not mention the word servant.
They are only asigned to the servant because of Jesus.
If there had been no Jesus no one would have ever thought these vs talk
about a servant.
They refer to the prophet.

 Isaiah
> used Cyrus to point ahead to the Servant, whose glory comes at the final
> restoration of Israel from Babylonian enslavement (52:4-54:10).
Yes, this is described in 52:1-13.

>
> There are two redeemers because there are two captivities,
There is one redeemer and one captivity.
What is the other?

and the latter
> redemption Isaiah associates with the new heavens and earth.
This appears only in Trito-Isaiah (65:17ff), who doesn't have an individual
servant,
but servants, plural.

Yet Isaiah
> never speaks explicitly of two Babylonian exiles, but only of two key
> persons, and even these he almost fuses on occasion.
There are two people Cyrus and the prophet himself.

 Isaiah does not
> sharply distinguish the time of Cyrus from the time of the Servant. The
> times of miracles and re-creation did not take place with Cyrus's
> redemption and so must point to another exile and redemption.
There is no time of miracle in Deutero-Isaiah, you find it in various places
but these are all Trito-Isaiah, it seems to me, and have nothing to do
with the servant (11:6-8). Chapter 11 is put to the restoration period
by recent scholars (e.g., Blenkinsopp) and that is my thinking as well.

The Book of
> Revelation has employed Isaiah's structure in vivid portrayal of the age's
> end in terms of a new Babylon, another redemption of Israel, and a new
> heavens and earth.
OK.
>
> Conservatives have called Isaiah's viewpoint a "mountain-peak
> perspective";
> one peak seems just behind the next, when in fact a large valley
> intervenes. Walter Kaiser prefers the term "generic prophecy" to cover a
> complex of events that occur in more than one time. But actually
> Isaiah had
> blended together two events which he realized were distinct. He
> names Cyrus
> in connection with a return from exile (44:27-45:7), but it is the Servant
> that he links with Israel's worldwide glory (e.g., 42:1-7; 49:6-7;

42:1-8; 49:1-6 refer to Cyrus, the redemption of the Jews to their homeland.
49:6 is the Jewish people or the prophet; first dispised, then exalted by
the
marvelous thing God has done by redeeming them in a new Exodus.

> 52:13-15).

52:1-13 -Cyrus,
52:14-53ff the prophet.

Because of the distinction that he makes between Cyrus and the
> Servant, he evidently did not confuse the nearer and farther scenes,
> although he often wrote as though they were one set of events. For
> simplicity's sake he pictures one mountain peak but gives
> sufficient detail
> so that recognition of two similar peaks is possible.
No, only for those who write from the vantage point of Christianity.

Events of 538 B.C.
> were significant in themselves but also outlined more distant and dramatic
> ones. Isaiah amalgamated the two similar times at points, just as the
> destructions of A.D. 70 and the great Tribulation coalesce in the Olivet
> discourse.
Yes, that's what I mean.
But if you give up for a moment a Christo-centric view, and read Isaiah from
the vantage point of the sitz im leben of Deutero-Isaiah himself in 539-8,
you will read it
the way I do.

Liz

>
>                               Yours,
>                               Harold Holmyard
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Harold R. Holmyard III [mailto:hholmyard AT ont.com]
> >> Sent: Friday, January 19, 2001 7:43 PM
> >> To: Biblical Hebrew
> >> Subject: RE: singular and plural for Isaiah's servant
> >>
> >>
> >> The text of Isaiah distinguishes the Servant of the Lord from
> Cyrus, who
> >> also is a servant of the Lord. It takes work to distinguish
> the two, but
> >> the material devoted to each of them differs in style and substance.
> >>
> >>                            Yours,
> >>                            Harold Holmyard
> >>
> >>
> >>
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