Humanizing Isaiah
July 31, 2022
I think we have a tendency to read Jesus into Isaiah, especially chapters 50-53. It is really difficult not to read the suffering servant as Jesus, and I don’t think that impulse is worth fighting too strongly against.
That said, it is a mistake to make a 1-to-1 association of Isaiah 50-53 with Jesus, as if the suffering servant was always and only meant to be a foretelling of the experience of Jesus. That is to make the experience of Isaiah 50-53 a once-in-human-history experience, of little to no relevance to anyone before or after Jesus.
Rather, we need to humanize Isaiah. The suffering servant is just another human. They live and walk and breathe, have family, share meals, and hang out with friends. But then they receive a word from the Lord, and things start to change. They are convinced they have a word from the Lord for their neighbors, and so they begin to proclaim it, only their neighbors don’t like the message.
The isolation and pushback that follows traumatizes the servant. I don’t know the servant, so I don’t know exactly what happened, but the servant described it as getting beaten on the back, having his beard pulled out, and being insulted and spat upon. Since it’s poetry, there’s a range of possible explanations. Perhaps the isolation and rejection was so traumatizing, the servant felt as if he had been beaten. Perhaps he experienced actual beatings, and no exaggeration was necessary. Perhaps the only way he could describe the deep, inner trauma was through aggressive physical language.
Whatever the explanation, this humanization invites each of us to embrace the role of the suffering servant. Sometimes faithfulness to God results in blessing upon blessing. Other times it results in rejection and abuse. Sometimes the voice of the community calls us to faithfulness to God. Other times the voice of the community calls us away from God.
The suffering servant opens his ear to the Lord (or has his ear opened by the Lord), but sets his face like flint to the community. He is unsure what his next step will be or where it will take him, but he trusts that the Lord will guide him and direct his path.
We can be this suffering servant. Jesus, a human like us, embraced this path. I imagine him sitting in Synagogue, listening to Isaiah 50 being read, and saying, “Okay, God, make me into this.” He had the wisdom to set his face like flint toward the Pharisees, but to learn obedience to his mother who pushes him into his public ministry in John 2.
We can be this suffering servant, this one who unflinchingly seeks after and follows God, allowing a vision of who God is and what God is doing to fill our sight. We may not know what our next step is, but we’ll be on the right path.
—John Coffey
