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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] Isaiah 53 read within the book as a whole
  • Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 08:21:54 -0500

Dear Liz,

> HH: But I believe that the Servant passages
describe the coming Messiah.
You're right!
But the Messiah in Isaiah is Cyrus!

HH: Cyrus is anointed, not the Messiah. The Messiah is a technical term for a particular individual. A lot of people are anointed.

There are quite a
number of these passages, and some short texts
may belong to this grouping despite lacking the
word "servant" (e.g., Isa 48:16).
Cyrus.

HH: I don't think so, Liz. Cyrus did not really know the Lord, and these verses show a person who did.

Some of these
passages have the Servant speak in the first
person. In other places the Lord addresses the
Servant as present. Yet I believe he is a figure
of prophecy.
He speaks to him as if he were present because he is
present.

HH: There is prophecy elsewhere that speaks either in the first or second person of the Messiah as if he is present, even though he is not yet so:

Psa. 110:1 ¶ The LORD says to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet."
Psa. 110:2 The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion; you will rule in the midst of your enemies.
Psa. 110:3 Your troops will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy majesty, from the womb of the dawn you will receive the dew of your youth.
Psa. 110:4 The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: "You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek."
Psa. 110:5 The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath.

Psa. 2:7 ¶ I will proclaim the decree of the LORD: He said to me, "You are my Son; today I have become your Father.
Psa. 2:8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.
Psa. 2:9 You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery."

> > >> HH: A second possibility for Isaiah 55:5 might be that the second
>> person masculine singular addressee is the nation Israel.
>
>What would the point of that be? That a nation that Israel doesn't
>know comes running to it? This is royal imagery, as we see
>in the psalm.

HH: Well, if israel were the ruling nation, then
> this would seem to be a meaningful assertion:

Not unless Israel is the Servant and redeems itself.
Then you don't have a redeemer or a messiah, just
Israel.

HH: But no one is called the Servant in this passage (Isa 55:5), and there are other passages talking about the Servant. So you wouldn't lose the Servant or the Messiah. You could be right that it must be an individual (the two "beholds" could point that way), but I haven't looked at the passage closely enough to decide between the two possibilities ("you" in verse 5 as either Israel or the Servant). Herbert M. Wolf (translator of Isaiah for the NIV) in his commentary seems to take the "you" as Israel. So does Delitzsch in his commentary on Isaiah. John Oswalt gives both views but sees the "you" in verse 5 as the Davidic Messiah. Oswalt says that most recent commentators have taken the view that the "you" is Israel (e.g., Muilenburg, Whybray, Eissfeldt), but he sides with the older commentaries, most of which took the "you" as the Messiah.

Is. 55:5 Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the LORD thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee.

HH: Oswalt, Delitzsch, and Wolf all hold the Servant to be the Davidic
Messiah.

But it was Cyrus who rescued the Jews, returned them
to YHWH physically by returning them to the temple
and YHWH to the temple.
This is the task of the Messiah, of the redeemer.
We await another one to do the same as Cyrus did.

HH: It's interesting that you hold this view, since that is the position I took in my dissertation. Yesterday I quoted a couple of sentences from it comparing the Servant and Cyrus. Here is the next sentence after those:

Isaiah used Cyrus to point ahead to the Servant, whose glory comes at the final restoration of Israel from Babylonian enslavement (Isa 52:4-54:10).

HH: My dissertation assumes that God and Isaiah use the Babylonian Captivity of 587 B.C. as a type of another "Babylonian Captivity" of God's people that will occur at the end of the age. Of course, in the New Testament the Book of Revelation describes the ruling city at the end of the age as Babylon. Isaiah's prophecies clearly extend to the end of the age, to a new heavens and earth where things are different and far better.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard





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