Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Liz,

You wrote:

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

Thank you, but it was just a bit more than a page from my dissertation
(finished in 1992). Liz, by the way, it is good to separate you comments
from the person to whom you are responding by a line. A little blank space
sets your words off. Otherwise they may seem to be part of what you are
responding to, and someone may pass over them as part of the old material.

>>>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.

It is possible, Liz, for tradition states that Isaiah was persecuted in his
later years, perhaps sawn in two as is mentioned in Hebrews 11. But there
is reason to think that Isa 50:4-9 refers to the Servant. First, the first
person description fits other Servant songs. Second, the servant is
mentioned in verse 10.

>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.

God often refers to Himself in the third person. It would not be odd for
the Servant to do likewise. Or the prophet could speak about him.

>Cyrus is the servant refered to in 50:10.

I disagree because the issue of Israelites obeying Cyrus does not really
come up. It is conceivable but does not seem in harmony with the book as a
whole and especially the Servant songs.

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

Right. This is what I thought you meant by your interpretation of Isa
50:10. It is not unreasonable; in fact, it is attractive.

>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.

Thank you, Liz; you just caught a typo that escaped me and my dissertation
reviewers. I meant 42:3.

>Perhaps you refer to 42:1-3.

Yes. My apologies.

>Cyrus judge the nations, since he conquered them all (42:1).

This prophecy seems to go beyond Cyrus, though I can see why you might
apply it to him. The same imagery of opening blind eyes and releasing from
prison occurs in Isa 61:1-3. In the whole structure of Isaiah the words
seem to transcend Cyrus.

>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).

I was impressed during my dissertation work how many laudable things I
found about Cyrus, a fact which shows the divine wisdom in using him as a
type of the Christ.

> 49:4,
>This does not show weakness;

I said, "but the Servant is meek and bears suffering," and cited 49:4 for
that reason, not because it showed weakness. It suggests the bearing of
suffering to me.

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

The servant is mentioned in 49:6, and 49:7 continues 49:6. I do not think
that 49:7 refers to the prophet or the Jews in Babylon. Simeon applied the
words to the Messianic child (Luke 2:32). The collocation of first
suffering and then glory does not seem to fit Isaiah, who had glory first
and then suffering, according to tradition. And it does not suit the Jews
in Babyon as it speaks of an individual. I agree with Dan Wagner about the
plurality and singularity of the image of the servant. Yes, Israel is God's
servant. But in some passages plurality does not fit, and this is one of
them. I can see how you might disagree. It is not easy.

> 50:5-6;
>This is the prophet.

We talked about this passage above. I just do not see that type of
autobiographical material in Isaiah 40-66. But again, I can understand why
someone would take that view.

>52:14; 53:1-12).
>The suffering servant so-called.
>Where is the word servant used?
>The word servant is only in 52:13.

The servant appears in 53:11. Furthermore, you answered your own question.
Verse 14 describes the person in verse 13. And 53:1-12 expands on 52:14.

>I put it with 52:1-12. It describes Cyrus' exaltation when the Jews return
>to their promised land.

Then what is the antecedent for the third person pronouns in 52:14? They
describe someone who is suffering.

>The rest of the verses 52:14ff do not mention the word servant.
>They are only assigned to the servant because of Jesus.

Isaiah 53:11 mentions the servant.

>If there had been no Jesus no one would have ever thought these vs talk
>about a servant.

See the last answer.

>They refer to the prophet.
>
> Isaiah

This experience goes beyond what Isaiah could accomplish, in my view.

>> 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.

I can see how you can apply 52:13 to Cyrus, but I think that verse 13 is
connected to verse 14. So the ultimate fulfillment relates to someone who
suffered for sin.

>> There are two redeemers because there are two captivities,

>There is one redeemer and one captivity.
>What is the other?

It is the captivity that ends in a worldwide deliverance along with a new
heavens and earth. It is the redeemer that goes with this more glorious and
final deliverance. Much of Isaiah has yet to be fulfilled. It describes
conditions that have never existed, a glory for Israel that has never
occurred. I understand how someone could relate all of Isaiah 40-66's
prophecies to the time of the Babylonian captivity as hyperbolic language,
but the wording seems too specific to be mere poetic extravagance.

>>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.

I do not accept the division of Isaiah into parts separated in authorship
by one or more centuries. I spent a portion of my doctoral research
verifying for myself that the grounds for this division are linguistically
weak. Rather, they depend on the supposition that Isaiah could not predict
the future, a view that is contrary to Scripture.

>> 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.

The view that the suffering servant is the prophet Isaiah is well known. I
can see why it would be adopted, but both the vicarious suffering and the
glory of the servant seem to surpass what Isaiah accomplished or received.

>> 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).

The book is all of a piece. It is invalid to separate, for example, Isa
35:7 from 41:17-18. They both point to the same ultimate fulfillment in the
same terms. The miraculous transformation of the desert seen in 35:1-2 also
appears in 41:18-19. The same image of the eyes of the blind being opened
that occurs in 35:5 stands in 42:7.

The Servant par excellence is the Davidic king, not the foreign king, who
is only a type. And you are right that Isa 11:6-8 associates the miraculous
transformation of nature with the Davidic king Messiah, who is the Servant
of Isaiah 40-66.

>Chapter 11 is put to the restoration period
>by recent scholars (e.g., Blenkinsopp) and that is my thinking as well.

Jesus has more authority than Blenkinsopp, and He attributed the book to
the prophet Isaiah.

>42:1-8; 49:1-6 refer to Cyrus, the redemption of the Jews to their homeland.

I can see how you would apply the verses to Cyrus The purpose of God for
the ages, the canon of Scripture, the larger structure of Isaiah, and some
of the textual details suggest they have their ultimate fulfillment in the
Lord Jesus. In 49:3 the word "Israel" does not suit Cyrus. There are other
points.

>49:6 is the Jewish people or the prophet; first despised, then exalted by
>the
>marvelous thing God has done by redeeming them in a new Exodus.

I do not understand you here, for if 49:1-6 refers to Cyrus as you say,
then should not the servant in 49:6 be Cyrus? Also, verse 6 simply
continues verse 5. If it is Cyrus who brings back Israel to God, then he is
the servant in verse 6, it seems.

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

Again, I do not think that you can separate the figure in 52:13 from the
one in 52:14-53:12. The term "servant" in 53:11 binds the figure in this
section with the "servant" in 52:12. It is "My servant" in both places.

>>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.

Let us say, for argument's sake, that Christianity is true. If so, it gives
those who accept it a favorable vantage point for looking at Isaiah. That
vantage point may facilitate interpretation.

>> 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.

I do not understand why you say that what I write above is what you mean.
How so?

>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.

One of the purposes of my dissertation work was to understand how Isaiah
looked at things. I am convinced that he did not write only about his own
times. Look at this word of Peter:

1Pet. 1:10-12 Concerning which salvation the prophets sought and searched
diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:
searching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was
in them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of
Christ, and the glories that should follow them. To whom it was revealed,
that not unto themselves, but unto you, did they minister these things,
which now have been announced unto you through them that preached the
gospel unto you by the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven; which things
angel desire to look into.

Isaiah wrote about his own times, times in the coming centuries, and the
time when the age ends. His own setting was important, but there is no need
to limit him to that setting. God is the God of Israel, and eschatological
prophecy still concerns Israel. So it was of interest to Isaiah for that
reason among others. His prophecies speak of interests pertinent to all
mankind of all eras, such as resurrection. So they were relevant for
Isaiah, even if they transcended his own time.

You admirably see the way that the passages can relate to Cyrus. But you
would find reward, I think, in attempting to see how they can look beyond
Cyrus to someone greater.

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard