1.07. Isaiah 53: Messianic or Not

“Behold, My Servant shall deal wisely, He shall be exalted and lifted up and shall be very high. Like as many were astonished at Thee (His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men), so shall He sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths at Him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they understand. “Who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected of men; a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and as one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. “He was oppressed, yet He humbled Himself and opened not His mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb, yea, He opened not His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away: and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living? for the transgression of My people was He stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His death; although He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth. “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when Thou shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many; and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He poured out His soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

CHAPTER VII.

Isaiah 53:1-12 : MESSIANIC OR NOT?

Modern Jews, in common with a number of rationalistic so-called Christians, are trying hard in these days to weaken the Messianic application of this remarkable prophecy, and no wonder, for the doctrine of a suffering Messiah, Who is a Saviour from sin, which is so clearly taught in this chapter, is repugnant alike to Jew and Gentile who do not possess that which alone makes this doctrine acceptable, namely, the knowledge of sin and the consciousness of the need of salvation, “because, not knowing the holiness of God and being ignorant of the import of the law, they imagine that through their own strength, by the works of the law, they can be justified before God.”¹

¹ Hengstenberg. Their objections to the Messianic interpretation, and the interpretation they would have us substitute instead we shall consider further on, but first I shall endeavour to show that the weight of Jewish authority preponderates in favour of the Messianic interpretation of this chapter; and I would point out that on this particular subject the authority of tradition is of so much the greater importance since the picture of the Messiah we have here drawn is utterly opposed to the disposition and the fancied hopes of the Jewish nation. That until recent times this prophecy has been almost universally received by Jews as referring to Messiah is evident² from Targum Yonathan, who introduces Messiah by name in chapter 52:13; from the Talmud (“Sanhedrin,” fol. 98, b); and from the Zohar, a book which the Jews as a rule do not mention without the epithet “holy,” and which contains the following passage in its comments on Exodus:—“The souls which are in the garden of Eden below go to and fro every new moon and sabbath in order to ascend to the place that is called the Walls of Jerusalem. . . . After that they journey on and contemplate all those that are possessed of pains and sicknesses and those that are martyrs for the unity of their Lord, and then return and announce it to the Messiah. And as they tell Him of the misery of Israel in their captivity, and of those wicked ones among them who are not attentive to know their Lord, He lifts up His voice and weeps for their wickedness; and so it is written, ‘He was wounded for our transgression,’ etc. Then those souls return and abide in their own place. There is in the garden of Eden a palace called the Palace of the sons of sickness: this palace the Messiah then enters, and summons every sickness, every pain, and every chastisement of Israel; they all come and rest upon Him. And were it not that He had thus lightened them off Israel and taken them upon Himself, there had been no man able to bear Israel’s chastisements for transgression of the law; and this is that which is written, ‘Surely our sicknesses He hath carried.’ ”

² See Appendix, Note 5.

It is also admitted by Abarbanel, who commences his comments by saying, “The first question is to ascertain to whom it refers; for the learned among the Nazarenes expound it of the man who was crucified at Jerusalem at the end of the second Temple, and who, according to them, was the Son of God and took flesh in the virgin’s womb, as is stated in their writings. But Yonathan ben Uzziel interprets it in the Targurn of the future Messiah, and this also the opinion of our own learned men in the majority of their Midrashim.” In fact, until Rashi, who applied it to the Jewish nation, the Messianic interpretation of this chapter was almost universally adopted by Jews, and his view, which we shall examine presently, although received by Aben Ezra,³ Kimchi,⁴ and others, was rejected as unsatisfactory by Maimonides, who is regarded by the Jews as of highest authority, by Alshech, and many others, one of whom⁵ says that the interpretation adopted by Rashi “distorts the passage from its natural meaning,” and that in truth “it was given of God as a description of the Messiah, whereby, when any should claim to be the Messiah, to judge by the resemblance or non-resemblance to it whether he were the Messiah or no.” And another⁶ says, “The meaning of ‘He was wounded for our transgression. . . . bruised for our iniquities,’ is, that since the Messiah bears our iniquities, which produce the effect of His being bruised, it follows that whoso will not admit that the Messiah thus suffers for our iniquities must endure and suffer for them himself.”

³ Aben Ezra, however, betrays some doubt, for he begins his comments with the acknowledgment “This Parashah is an extremely difficult one.”

⁴ Kimchi admits that he wrote controversially “in answer to the heretics.”

⁵ R. Mosheh Kohen Iben Crispin, of Cordova, and afterwards of Toledo (fourteenth century). He rightly says of those who for controversial reasons applied this prophecy to Israel that by so doing “the doors of the literal interpretation of this Parashah were shut in their face, and that they wearied themselves to find the entrance, having forsaken the knowledge of our teachers, and inclined after the stubbornness of their own hearts and of their own opinions.” With what greater force and truth these remarks apply to the few Jews in this nineteenth century who still have the courage to venture on the field of Scripture interpretation, let those judge who have, for instance, read the articles now appearing in the Jewish Chronicle under the heading of “The Revised Bible” (the articles dealing with the Messianic passages are scattered between May 22nd and September 17th, 1885), which are most remarkable for the cool audacity and careless indifference on the part of the writer to the ideas and opinions of everyone else, no matter of how great authority, and whether Jew or Christian. Those articles, moreover, show the writer possessed with very, strong faith in the blissful ignorance of his Jewish brethren, of not only the letter of the Hebrew Scriptures, but also of their traditional interpretation thereof. In this, however, he may find himself mistaken, and he may, one of these days, have some Jew tell him, for instance, that bethulah (בְּתוּלׇ֥ה) does not always denote a “virgin,” since, in Joel 1:8, a bethulah is represented as weeping and girded in sackcloth for the husband of her youth, while almah (עַלְמָׄה) is never applied to a married woman; that to render Isaiah 53:1-12, “By his knowledge shall my servant justify the righteous before many,” is a perversion, and not a translation of the Hebrew text, the reading of which, according to all competent authorities, both Jewish as well as Christian, is, “By His knowledge shall My righteous Servant make many righteous.” And besides, it is absurd and self-contradictory; for what does it mean, the servant justifying (the Hebrew is “making righteous”) the righteous “before many” and bearing their iniquity? If they are righteous, why should they require being made righteous, and whence the iniquity which the servant bears? And, finally, the writer’s ingenious attempts to eliminate the doctrine of a personal Messiah from the pages of the Old Testament, though intended as a defence against Christianity, are in truth directed against the foundation of true Judaism, which is based on the belief that a personal Messiah is taught in the Hebrew Scriptures, which would be disproved if the position taken up by him were a justifiable one.

⁶ R. Eliyyah de Vidas.

Before entering into controversy, I add two more testimonies from a Jewish source in favour of the Messianic interpretation of this prophecy. The first passage is from the prayers for the Day of Atonement used by the Jews at the present time, and the second is from the very ancient Pesikta cited in the Abkath Rochel (רוכל אבקת). Here, as also in the foregoing quotations, I give the translations made by Driver and Neubauer in their most valuable collection of Jewish interpretations of Isaiah 53:1-12.⁷ The passages are as follows: “We are shrunk up in our misery even until now! Our Rock hath not come nigh to us; Messiah, our Righteousness hath turned from us; we are in terror, and there is none to justify us! Our iniquities and the yoke of our transgressions He will bear, for He was wounded for our transgressions; He will carry our sins upon His shoulder, that we may find forgiveness for our iniquities; and by His stripes we are healed. O Eternal One, the time is come to make a new creation; from the vault of heaven bring Him up, out of Seir draw Him forth, that He may make His voice heard to us in Lebanon a second time by the hand of Yinnon!” (Yinnon is one of the Rabbinical names of the Messiah, derived from Psalms 72:17) “The Holy One brought forth the soul of the Messiah, and said to Him, ‘Art Thou willing to be created and to redeem My sons after six thousand years?’ He replied, ‘I am.’ God replied, ‘If so, Thou must take upon Thyself chastisements in order to wipe away their iniquity, as it is written, ‘Surely our sicknesses He hath carried.’ The Messiah answered, ‘I will take them upon Me gladly.’ ”

⁷ “The Jewish Interpreters of Isaiah 53:1-12,” with Introduction by Pusey.

Now to apply ourselves to an examination of the prophecy itself; and first we notice that it is universally agreed that it properly commences with Isaiah 24:13—“Behold My Servant!” so that if we can ascertain who this “Servant” is, we shall, of course, discover the subject of the whole passage; for that the whole chapter speaks of the same Person (or of the same body, as our opponents would have it) cannot be denied, seeing that towards the end the same name again occurs, where it is said, “By His knowledge shall My righteous Servant make many righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities!”

We shall not dwell on critical examination of words, as next to nothing turns upon renderings of the Hebrew, and almost any Jewish literal translation would serve our purpose. The three or four words the meaning of which Jews who write controversially dispute, and which they render in such a manner as to make them inapplicable to Jesus, we shall consider further on, when we reply to Jewish objections.

Rashi, who certainly has the largest following among Jews and rationalists at the present day, says, that by the “Servant” is meant “Israel,” or “the righteous among them;” and this theory we think the only one worthwhile to refute, for all the other interpretations, whether of Jeremiah, Isaiah himself, Hezekiah, or Job, which have been variously attempted, have been exploded by Jewish commentators and critics themselves.⁸

⁸ Another theory has been started, and for the most part advocated by Gentile opposers of Christianity, viz., that, under the designation of “Servant,” in the singular, the body of the prophets is here personified, but to this Dr. Alexander McCaul has rightly replied, first, that the subject is spoken of throughout in the singular, and that not only in the third, but in the first person (Isaiah 49:1-6; Isaiah 50:4-9); secondly, the whole body of the prophets were not sufferers, and least of all vicarious sufferers for the sins of others; thirdly, the prophets did not restore Israel, or convert the Gentiles; fourthly, neither did the prophets attain to the exaltation and glory described of the Servant of Jehovah, Who was to be “exalted and extolled and to be very high” (Isaiah 49:7; Isaiah 52:13-15). Not so, however, with this one, and for the simple reason, perhaps, that it is too flattering to the national feeling and rather plausible on a mere artificial acquaintance with the passage and context.

But, first, while we admit that Israel is addressed in the preceding chapters of this prophecy in the singular as “servant,” he is always done so by name except in Isaiah 43:10, where, however, the subject is addressed in the same verse in the plural to prevent mistake. Thus in Isaiah 41:8, “Thou, Israel, art My servant;” Isaiah 44:1-2, “My servant Jacob;” and in Isaiah 49:3, “Thou art My servant, O Israel” (see also Isaiah 44:21; Isaiah 45:4), so that the mere fact that the subject of our prophecy is styled “Servant” no more identifies Him with Israel, because he too is styled so, than it does with the prophet Isaiah himself, who is called “servant” (Isaiah 20:3; Isaiah 44:26), or with Eliakim, who also is addressed by the same name by the same prophet (Isaiah 22:20). Nay; the fact that the prophet speaks of the subject of this prophecy in the singular, and without specially distinguishing Him by name, proves that he could not have meant Israel any more than Isaiah or Eliakim, else he would have acted on his principle and added the name of Israel or Jacob, as he invariably does.

Now if this Servant is to raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore Israel, how can He be Israel or Jacob itself? In Isaiah 42:1-25 we read, “Behold My Servant, Whom I uphold; My chosen, in Whom My soul delighteth; I have put My Spirit upon Him: He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles . . . I the Lord have called Thee in righteousness, and will hold Thine hand, and will keep Thee, and will give Thee for a Covenant to the people, and for a Light to the Gentiles.” (Isaiah 42:1; Isaiah 42:6) עָ֖ם, “people,” standing here in opposition to נּוֹיִֽם, “Gentiles,” must mean Israel. This Servant, then, is to be the “new Covenant” to Israel which God promised to make with them (Jeremiah 31:31; Ezekiel 34:24-25; Ezekiel 37:26), and cannot therefore be Israel. Again, in the passage itself we have it stated in Isaiah 53:8 לָֽמוֹ נֶ֥גַע עַמִּ֖י מִפֶּ֥שַׁע (“for the sin of My people was He stricken”). Now who is the “עַמִּ֖י” (“My people”)? And the answer comes from everyone, including the Jews, who are rightly too proud of this epithet (which in the singular is always applied to them) to deny it, that it means Israel. Then if the subject of this prophecy is “stricken” on account of the transgression of Israel, it follows, surely, that it cannot be Israel who is the innocent sufferer. To this may be added the fact that the subject of this prophecy is the same Who is represented as Zion’s Intercessor (Isaiah 62:1) and Israel’s Comforter (Isaiah 61:3).

In fact, it is an enlargement of the promise made to Abraham and the prophecy delivered by Jacob; and if the Deliverer is not Messiah, but Israel, then there is no Messiah at all, for it is the “Servant”—the subject of Isaiah 53:1-12.—that “sprinkles” many nations (Isaiah 52:15); Whom “kings shall see and arise, and princes worship;” Who is “the Covenant to Israel, and the Light of the Gentiles, and the salvation of God unto the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:5-6). But I have already shown the falsity of the assertion that Israel, apart from the Messiah, is to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. This glory belongs only to One Individual out of one particular family and tribe in Israel. This fact is proclaimed by Isaiah himself, who says that only one “Root” of the stem of Jesse “shall be an ensign to the people; unto Him shall the nations seek; and His rest shall be glorious” (Isaiah 11:10). Now mark, the name the prophet applies to Him Who is thus to be the centre round Whom the nations will gather is שֹׁ֣רֶשׁ, “root,” and this is exactly how he speaks of the subject of the fifty-third chapter—“He shall grow up,” he says, as a “root” (כַשֹּׁ֨רֶשׁ֙) “out of a dry ground!” Yes, it is the “Root,” which sprang up in humility, in Whom men could at first discover no form or comeliness, that is exalted and extolled and made very high, and Who is yet to develop into a tree the fruit of which shall be for the healing of all the nations on the face of the earth.

Now this cannot be true of any nation or of any individual if mere man; for the Bible and our experience tell us that there is “no man that sinneth not;” and that there is not even a “righteous man upon the earth, who doeth good, and sinneth not.” And beside of Israel the same prophet says, “Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that deal corruptly. . . . From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness” in them. And as for making others righteous, Isaiah (Isaiah 64:6) represents even the God-fearing portion in Israel—those who wait for the salvation of God—“as unclean, and all their righteousnesses as a polluted garment,” not sufficient to make themselves fit to appear in the presence of God.

Indeed, the only righteous in Israel that the prophet Isaiah knows are those “whose righteousnesses are of Jehovah” (Isaiah 54:17), themselves constituted righteous in the sovereign grace and mercy of God, and hence far from having righteousness enough to impart to others.

Then as to the Jews suffering for the sins of others, as some of the Jewish commentators on this chapter would have us believe, it is not true. They have been suffering, and are suffering, but entirely for their own sin.

Read Leviticus 26:1-46, where all the dispersions, the sufferings, and afflictions which the Jews have experienced, and will yet experience until “they turn and seek the Lord their God and David their King,” are minutely described by their great lawgiver and prophet many hundreds of years before their accomplishment; and what cause does he assign for it all? Does Moses say that these sufferings will be vicarious for the sin of the other nations on the earth? No, he says that if they suffer, it will be entirely on account of their own sin. “And if ye will not for all this hearken unto Me, but walk contrary unto Me; then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I also will chastise you seven times for your sins. And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat. . . . And I will make your cities waste, and will bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours. And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And you will I scatter among the nations, and I will draw out the sword after you. . . . And as for them that are left of you, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a driven leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee . . . when no one pursueth. . . . And ye shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. And they that are left of you” (shall by their sufferings atone for the sins of the other nations? No, they) “shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away.” And this is to continue till “they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers,” when, as a sign of their acceptance, they will be brought back from all the lands of their dispersion to their own land, and there enjoy the favour of God. But to this state of mind, alas! the Jews, as a nation, have not yet been brought, and one proof of this is that they can dare coolly to arrogate to themselves a state of perfection and stainless innocence, which belongs to none but to the Messiah—the Holy One of Israel. But in truth the Jews themselves contradict in principle the theory on which their interpretation is based; for while, for controversial reasons, they interpret Isaiah 53:1-12. of themselves, and thus make themselves out as perfectly innocent and righteous, they at other times, when other prophecies are pressed home to them—those predicting the time of Messiah’s advent, which they acknowledge to be past—make themselves out as most guilty, for they turn round on the Christians and say, “You are not right in your conclusions; the time when Messiah was to come according to the prophets is indeed past, but it does not prove that Jesus was the Messiah because He came at the right time; for the fulfilment of the prophecies is postponed, and the reason of the delay is our sin and great wickedness.” An example of this inconsistency we have in Rashi himself, who was the first one who interpreted Isaiah 53:1-12. of the Jewish nation; for while he here makes Israel out so righteous, in his commentary on the Talmud (“Sanhedrin Chelek,” fol. 97, col. 1), he says, on a passage which tries to account for the fact that Messiah came not at the right time—i.e., at the end of four thousand years after creation—“For our iniquities the Messiah came not at the end of one thousand years.”⁹

⁹ In fact, the contradiction is still more striking and direct, for in his commentary on the Talmud Rashi actually interprets Isaiah 53:1-12 of the Messiah (“Sanhedrin,” fol. 93, c. 1). A similar case of Rashi contradicting himself is to be seen in the double manner in which he deals with Zechariah 12:10, “They shall look upon Me Whom they have pierced and mourn.” for, while in his commentary on the Bible he says on this passage, “They shall look back to mourn, because the Gentiles had pierced some amongst them,” he says in his commentary on the Talmud (“Succah,” fol. 52, col. 1), “The words ‘The land shall mourn’ are found in the prophecy of Zechariah, and he prophesies of the future, that they shall mourn on account of Messiah, the son of Joseph, who shall be slain in the war of Gog and Magog.” (On the doctrine of two Messiahs see footnote 27, Chapter 1.) The reason of this double-dealing will be seen in his comments on Psalms 21:1-13, where he says, “Our Rabbis have expounded it of the King Messiah, but it is better to expound it further of David himself in order to answer heretics.”

There is yet one more point to which we must refer, which also proves beyond doubt that the prophecy is not applicable to Israel and can only be referred to the Messiah. The subject in Isaiah 53:1-12. is not only Himself innocent and suffering for the guilt of others but He is also a voluntary and unresisting Sufferer and His sufferings end in death. “He was oppressed,” it says, “yet He humbled Himself and opened not His mouth: as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, yea, He opened not His mouth. . . . Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He poured out His soul unto death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bare the sin of many, and maketh intercession for the transgressors.”

Many and bitter have been the sufferings and afflictions Israel has experienced at the hands of the Gentiles; and these persecutions, for which the perpetrators will yet have to settle their account with the righteous God, are not quite at an end yet; but who shall say that these sufferings have been borne voluntarily on the part of the Jews? And as to their sufferings ending in death, let the miraculous preservation of Israel on the part of the Almighty, in spite of the confederacy on the part of almost all the nations on the earth, who were leagued in hatred against them, reply to that.

Israel still lives, and can say, as of yore, “Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me.” “The Lord hath chastened me sore, but He hath not given me over unto death.”

Then as to the Jewish nation suffering without any resistance, we need only point to history, which speaks for itself in this matter. How brave!—some would say how desperate!—was their resistance to the Roman power at the final great struggle for their national independence. Then after their temple was burned and their land laid waste the lion did not entirely change into a lamb; for we read of them at one time rebelling and massacring 220,000 Libyans (A.D. 115); at another time as engaged in a sanguinary war under the leadership of the great impostor Bar Cochab (A.D. 132); then, in the time of Constantine, as inciting, out of revenge, a furious persecution against the Christians in Persia, in consequence of which many, including Ustasades, one of the chief eunuchs of Lapor the Second, suffered horrible martyrdoms, and which ended in the destruction of the Churches throughout Persia; and then, also out of revenge, as putting thousands to death in Jerusalem, when (A.D. 613), by their assistance, Chosros made himself master of that city. It is not my object to incite prejudice or ill-feeling against the Jews by mentioning these facts, which can be multiplied, for too often the Jews have been driven to madness and desperation by the enormous wrongs they had to bear, but they show that the Jew is but human, and that when he only had the power, he could become quite as cruel a persecutor, as the Gentile, and hence the Jewish nation cannot be the Righteous Servant of Jehovah—the subject of Isaiah 53, Who is represented as being perfectly innocent, but voluntarily and without resistance suffering for the guilt of others.

These points are sufficient, I believe, to convince any candid reader that Israel cannot be the subject of this prophecy, and that the only satisfactory interpretation is the Messianic one, which is not only adopted in the New Testament, but also, on the testimony of the famous Jewish Alshech, “received by tradition and confirmed by the Rabbis with one mouth.” And to this may be added that it is the only interpretation that agrees not only with the context, but with the description given of the Messiah in other parts of Scripture, for this is not the only prophecy of Messiah’s death and vicarious sufferings. Daniel says distinctly, “Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself” (Daniel 9:26); and David and Zechariah not only foretell that Messiah shall be brought up in humility, and die for no sin of His own, but they describe even the very manner of His death, as I have elsewhere shown.¹⁰ Then as to the glory with which the prophecy commences and ends, it, too, answereth to the glory of Messiah, and belongeth to none other. It is He Who is exalted and extolled to the right hand of Jehovah of hosts (Psalms 110:1-7); it is He Who is a Priest upon His throne (Zechariah 6:13), which answers to the priestly character of the subject of this prophecy, Who bears the sins of others, not only in a sacrificial sense, but in a priestly sense (compare Isaiah 53:12 with Numbers 18:1, Heb.), and of Whom it is said, “He maketh intercession for the transgressors;” and it is only the Messiah “Who was to sprinkle many nations,” at Whom kings were to shut their mouths, and Who was to be the Light of the Gentiles and the salvation of God to the end of the earth.

¹⁰ See Appendix Note 3 But now we come to another and distinct question, namely, “Has this prophecy received its fulfilment in Jesus of Nazareth?” for it is not sufficient merely to prove that the “image and superscription” this prophecy bears is that of the Messiah, but we must also prove that the image or likeness answers to Jesus. That there is a marked resemblance between the subject of this prophecy and the Christ of the Gospels and Epistles is admitted even by a Jewish polemical commentator, who says, “In this Parasha” (chapter) “there seem to be considerable resemblances and allusions to the work of the Christian Messiah and to the events which are asserted to have happened to Him, so that no other prophecy is to be found the gist and subject of which can be so immediately applied to Him!”¹¹

¹¹ Abraham Farissol, born at Avignon, in Italy, about 1451. Of course after this admission he goes on to argue against its fulfilment in Jesus and in favour of its application to Israel, but he only repeats the arguments of others. This also is for the most part admitted by intelligent Jews who are acquainted with the facts of Christ’s history, and many of the seed of Abraham have had their eyes opened by this portion of the Word of God to see in Jesus their long-expected Messiah and Saviour. But many raise the following objections against its application to Jesus, which we shall consider one by one.

1. The subject of the prophecy, they say, is “to prolong His days” (by which they understand that He is to live long on the earth), but Jesus was put to death at the age of thirty-three.¹²

¹² All these objections, which are often brought forward by Jews, are originally taken from the Chizzuk Amunah by Rabbi Isaac ben Abraham, of the sixteenth century, which is the most bitter and formidable attack on Christianity ever made by Jews. I have in my possession the new edition of this work in Hebrew and German, published in Leipsic in 1873.

ANSWER. The passage reads thus, “When” (or if) “Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin (or trespass offering), “He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in His hands.” To become an אָשָׁם֙, “sin offering,” plainly implies death (see Leviticus 6:2-7), and since, as is plainly indicated, He was to prolong His days after and to some extent on condition of becoming a sin offering, it surely refers to life after death, and implies that Messiah must rise from the dead and then live. The passage in fact is parallel to the fifth verse (English, fourth) of the twenty-first Psalm, (Psalms 21:4) which is admittedly Messianic: “He asked of Thee life: Thou gavest Him length of days” (יָ֜מִׄים אֹ֥רֶךְ) “for ever and ever,” with regard to which even Kimchi admits, “Length of days means the life of the world to come,” and in fact it must be so, since it is “for ever and ever.”

It is true that Jesus died a violent death at the age of thirty-three, but it is just as true that on the third day He rose again, to which every true Christian is a witness, and is “seated at the right hand of God” (Psalms 110:1.), from whence His voice comes to us saying, “I am the First and the Last, and the Living One; and I was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore; and I have the keys of death and of Hades” (Revelation 1:18).

2. Of the subject of Isaiah 53:1-12 it is written, “He shall see His seed,” but Jesus had no children; therefore He cannot be the one spoken of.

ANSWER. His seeing His seed was also, as well as His prolonging His days, to follow, and to some extent be conditioned on, His becoming a sin offering (dying) first; therefore it cannot refer to natural seed, which are begotten of man during his lifetime on earth. And besides, the assertion on which this objection is founded, namely, that זֶ֖רַע, “seed,” cannot be applied to any except “natural offspring,” is false. זֶ֖רַע, “seed,” is used figuratively in Isaiah 57:4, where it is said, “Are ye not children of transgression, a seed” (זֶ֖רַע) “of falsehood?” In the same sense also it is used in Malachi 2:15. In Psalms 22:30-31, also referring to the Messiah, and parallel to the verse in Isaiah 53:1-12 on which the objection is founded, the word זֶ֖רַע “seed,” again occurs; but there it is admitted even by Aben Ezra, that it is used in the sense, not of natural issue, but of disciples or followers. The passage referred to in Psalms 22:30 reads thus, “A seed shall serve Him” (יַֽעַבְדֶ֑נּוּ זֶ֥רַע); “it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation,” and there also “the seed serving Him” is to follow His being “despised” and brought to the “dust of death” by having His hands and feet pierced. Jesus of Nazareth was indeed childless as far as natural issue is concerned, but of this the passage in question does not speak. And as to a spiritual seed which was to be the reward and outcome of His being made a “sin offering,” there are at the present day millions; and in every age since the era commenced with Calvary’s cross, there have been innumerable multitudes of those who have been begotten of God through the Spirit by Jesus Christ; and in every place truly “a seed doth serve Him,” every one of whom can testify that from Him they have received the power or right to become the sons of God (John 1:12).

3. Many Jews, led by Kinichi and Aben Ezra, say that לָֽמוֹ נֶ֥גַע עַמִּ֖י מִפֶּ֥שַׁע ought to be translated, not “For the sin of My people was He stricken,” but “For the sin of My people were they stricken,” לָֽמוֹ, as they assert, being equivalent to להם and plural. This of course would lend colour to the suggestion that the subject is a collective one, and might be applied to Israel.¹³

¹³ The fact that the word בְּמֹתָ֑יו, rendered in the ninth verse “in His death,” is in the plural, has also been made to serve as an argument that the subject is a collective and not an individual one. But this plural is used in the same way to denote the singular in Ezekiel 28:10, “Thou shalt die the deaths” (מוֹתֵ֧י) “of the uncircumcised by the hands of strangers,” The singular pronoun his should, however, decide the question that the subject is an individual, especially when we remember that the whole context speaks of this subject in the singular.

ANSWER. In the first instance let Kimchi answer to himself, for, although in his “challenge to the Nazarenes” he uses this as an argument against the application of this prophecy to Jesus, he says in his grammar “מוֹ occurs as the affix of the third person singular, as in Job 20:23, Job 22:2. . . . and is therefore used both of many and of one.”¹⁴ לָֽמוֹ is used as a singular pronoun in Genesis 9:26, “And he said, Blessed be the God of Shem; and Canaan shall be a servant to him” (לָֽמוֹ); and again, in Genesis 9:27, “God shall enlarge Japhet, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be a servant to him” (לׇֽמוֹ). So also it is used in Isaiah 44:15, “Yea, he maketh a god, and worshippeth; he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down to it” (לָֽמוֹ).

¹⁴ Pusey quotes this passage from Kimchi’s Grammar. See his introduction to Jewish Interpreters on Isaiah 53.”

These objections are really the only ones worthy of serious consideration; others are brought forward in the work referred to (“Chizzuk Amunah”) and by modern Jews, such, for instance, as, “How can Jesus be called a Servant, since He is asserted by Christians to be Divine?” overlooking that Messiah is called Servant in Zechariah 3:8, as admitted by almost all Jewish commentators; and again it says, “He made intercession for the transgressors;” but if Jesus be God, to whom did He pray? ignoring the humanity of Jesus altogether and the fact that as Son, Jesus was subject to the Father (see Php 2:5-11); but we have neither the required time or space to waste in refuting them.

All that I can say is that people must be very hard up for a reason why they should reject Christ if they are driven to such trifles as these. Oh! that men would cease from trifling away their soul’s salvation and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, Who for them was “led as a lamb to the slaughter,” and on Calvary’s cross was numbered with transgressors, and poured out His soul unto death in order that they might by the knowledge of Him be reckoned with the righteous and have eternal life! Oh! that they may, while there is yet time, seek Him, Who, after He was offered up as a trespass offering, rose again on the third day and is now exalted and extolled to the right hand of the Majesty on high, where He ever liveth to make intercession for us! for ere long He Who has ascended will also descend again, but no more in humility as the world’s Sacrifice, but as the Judge in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those that know not God and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord bath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).

“Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him” (Psalms 2:12).