Jesus is Israel
I just taught the second Servant Song of Isaiah last week.
The question in each of the servant songs is:
Who is the un-named servant?
49 Listen to me, O coastlands,
and give attention, you peoples from afar.
The Lord called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name.
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 right is with the Lord,
and my recompense with my God.”
5 And now the Lord says,
he who formed me from 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 eyes of the Lord,
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 bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
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What is the servant’s double task? – 1) to bring Israel back to God, and 2) to be the Lord’s salvation to the world!
The nation "Israel" therefore could not be the servant, they needed to be brought back.
The servant is best described as an Ideal Israel, one who is all that God intended Israel to be, in contrast to exiled Israel, which failed to fulfill God’s purposes. (Rydelnik p. 946)
…exiled Israel is incapable of carrying out its servant task without the new beginning accomplished through another divinely chosen individual like the patriarch, a second, or ideal, Israel
Willem VanGemeren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), 1196.
Jesus himself was the Ideal Israel, he fulfilled the role God intended for the nation of Israel.
The Apostle Matthew followed this this interpretation when he noted the prophecy in Matthew 2:15b
"This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my son.”'
The servant songs culminate in Isaiah 52-53 , unmistakably Jesus Christ.
Rob