The History of the Suffering Servant

In my last post I suggested that myth gave people a language with which to talk about experiences of meaning and of a religious nature. Biblical language in general functions this way. An idea doesn't just pop into existence, it develops over time. New experiences are looked at through old lenses. This helps enlighten the experience, and it can also change the way one uses the lens.

An important example for Christians is the Suffering Servant. The Suffering Servant first appears as a figure in a series of strange psalms in Isaiah (42:1-9, 49:1-7, 50:1-11, 52:13-53:12). Here God's salvation is seen tied to the suffering of some oppressed individual. Whereas to the world, this individual seems like something to be pitied or even hated outright, he actually plays a central role in God's plan for the world. In fact, the suffering of this individual is looked at from a sacrificial viewpoint: his pain and suffering is the result of the world's sins, and is the pathway by which the world will receive salvation. After his suffering and humiliation, God will reveal to the world his true semi-divine nature, and how his suffering was the key to all of their redemption. This crushed down individual will be raised up in the sight of the world, and forever vindicated as God's true chosen one.

The exact identity of the individual is never revealed. Scholars have debated this issue endlessly. For Christians, the connection to Jesus is undoubtable, and I will return to that idea in a moment. But Biblical scholars don't read these passages as real prophecy. They come off as an examination of events that are taking place contemporaneous with the author. Isaiah does not believe he is writing about the future, but about the present or the past. People haver alternatively suggested the figure to be Job, Ezekiel or the writer himself. But the general consensus is that Second Isaiah (generally held to be the writer of Isaiah 40-55) is writing about Israel herself. He is giving an alternative explanation for the exile. Whereas most prophets saw the exile as punishment for sin, Second Isaiah adds a second interpretation: that Israel's exile was vicarious suffering for the sins of the world.

For my purposes, it is less important to figure out who Second Isaiah was actually writing about and more important to examine the way this idea developed from this point onward. Over and over again, different writers began to see historical events through this framework. Second Maccabees paints the suffering of the martyrs during the Greek rule of Israel within a Suffering Servant framework. The mother of the family tortured in 2 Maccabees 7 asks God to make their suffering expiation for the sins of Israel. In Wisdom of Solomon Chapters 2 & 5 and 1 Enoch, the servant songs are painted as cosmic events, revealing the essential nature of virtue and sin in the human condition.

Jesus' death and resurrection, then, are painted in terms of the Suffering Servant. No doubt Jesus Himself saw His life through the Isaiah lens. These songs are further used by the disciples to talk about what happened to them. Christians see the original Isaiah passages as prophecies, but that is only part of the truth. The real truth is that the establishment of this idea of the Suffering Servant is an important component of the Incarnation. The idea had to enter into the world before Jesus could come and His message understood.