Post by cgpb on Feb 6, 2015 2:25:59 GMT -8
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"And they made His grave קִבְרוֹ with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death בְּמֹתָיו,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth. (Isaiah 53:9)
2 other objections forwarded by Jews to Isaiah 53 include:
i. It doesn’t actually say that the servant would die and be raised from the dead.
ii. The Hebrew Bible has a plural ending on the word ‘death’ in verse 9,- so it reads ‘his deaths’ rather than ‘his death.’ Therefore this indicates that it is speaking of more than one person.”
In resolving these we need to look at:
1. The language used and
2. What earlier manuscripts say.
Firstly, the Isaiah 53 passage is poetic in terms of its form making use of synonymous parallelism.
For example:
Borne/carried
Griefs/sorrows
Wounded/bruised
Transgressions/iniquities
Oppressed/afflicted
Opened not His mouth /silent
As a lamb / as a sheep
Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
And they made His grave with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
So the synonymns ‘grave’ and ‘death’ refer to the same thing and the synonymous parallelism of these 2 words is used throughout the Hebrew Bible.
Here are some examples:
Psalm 6:5
"For in death there is no remembrance of You; In the grave who will give You thanks?"
Psalm 49:14
"Like sheep they are laid in the grave; Death shall feed on them; The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; And their beauty shall be consumed in the grave, far from their dwelling."
Psalm 89:48
"What man can live and not see death? Can he deliver his life from the power of the grave?"
Hosea 13:14
"I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. O Death, I will be your plagues! O Grave, I will be your destruction! Pity is hidden from My eyes.”"
So in the Hebrew Bible, the words “grave” and “death” can be used interchangeably.
What’s interesting is that the verses leading to verse 9 contain synonymous parallelism,
but when we get to verse 9,The synonymous parallelism of burial/death of the suffering servant is with the rich/wicked. With the rich and the wicked being contrasted.
A riddle is embedded in the passage.
Verse 9 tells us that the suffering servant was innocent because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. The Key word is “because or although” which translates the Hebrew word עַל (upon the fact). So, upon the fact that Jesus was innocent, where would the servant’s final place of burial be “because” of His innocence?
The answer is clear. God gave Him all the rewards that He deserved. A rich man Joseph of Arimathea came to bury His body in his tomb. This is fulfilled in Matthew 27:57-60)
"As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. 58 Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body, and Pilate ordered that it be given to him. 59 Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, 60 and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away."
Isaiah 53:12 says that He poured out Himself and died when He was numbered with the transgressors.
We see the fulfilment of this in Luke 23:32 where Two criminals were crucified with Jesus.
“Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed.”
So The death and burial of Jesus was fulfilled precisely according to this poetic prophecy.
i. We shall now also look at reasons as to why this passage cannot refer to Israel or the righteous remnant of Israel .
The use of various and intense words like Smitten (v. 4, מֻכֵּ֥ה) , pierced (v.5, מְחֹלָ֣ל), crushed (v.5, מְדֻכָּ֖א), like a lamb to slaughter (v.7, כַּשֶּׂה֙ לַטֶּ֣בַח), cut off from the land of the living (v.8, נִגְזַר֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ חַיִּ֔ים), his grave (v.9, קִבְרֹ֔ו), his death (v.9, בְּמֹתָ֑יו), crush him (v.10, דַּכְּאֹו֙), guilt offering (v.10, אָשָׁם֙), to death his soul (v.12, לַמָּ֨וֶת֙ נַפְשֹׁ֔ו), clearly show that the entire servant dies. There is no language here that allows for some of the servant to die, but another portion to live.
If “Israel” is the servant, then that would mean that “every Jew” would be required to die during persecution if it is going to be consistent with the text.
Likewise the servant cannot refer to the righteous remnant of Israel because again that would mean that the entire remnant dies and Israel would then be left without a righteous remnant, and the only Jews left behind would be covenant-breaking.
The first problem is that this has never happened. There has never been persecution where every Jew has been destroyed and there has never been persecution where every righteous Jew has been destroyed.
But if the servant is an individual within the nation of Israel, then only that individual would need to die!
The second problem is that this would be contrary to God’s Covenant with Israel with Jeremiah 31:35 -36 in mind where just as God’s creation order is secure, so also Israel will always have descendants.
In other words, if Israel has died even once as required by Isaiah 53:9, then the Lord didn't keep His promises concerning the everlasting covenant.
“Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,” declares the Lord, “will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me.” (Jeremiah 33:36)
Others claim that the language in Isaiah is not literal, the same language being applied to Israel since Jesus was not crushed with disease or acquainted with sickness.
And To justify their position they refer to Psalm 44:22 which says" for your sake we are killed all day long, we are counted as sheep for the slaughter."
However, Psalm 44 is the prayer of the righteous remnant on behalf of the nation and in light with the rest of Isaiah 53 this same metaphor cannot work because that would have to mean that “by the sufferings of Israel or by the sufferings of the righteous remnant of Israel we are healed. “(Isaiah 53:5). The problem is that this has never happened.
Another problem is that Isaiah 53:10 says “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause Him to suffer”. Now When was it ever God’s will to crush Israel and cause the nation to suffer? The Covenant clearly stated that if Israel obeyed she would prosper but if she disobeyed she would come under the Covenant curses. In fact we continuously see God trying to reach out to His people through His prophets calling them to repentance so that they could come back to a state of blessing.
and yet after this "suffering of his soul" the servant is vindicated by God. From verse 10 on, prosperity comes: He shall prolong His days, He shall see seed and get all His rewards. The description of His being despised does not continue after that.
How are such things possible for a dead person? This is the Resurrection.
We now come to the second objection to Isaiah 53:9.
Since it says “his deaths in the plural” בְּמֹתָ֑יו this indicates that it cannot refer to Jesus and is therefore speaking of more than one person. Some Jews claim “deaths” in the plural refers to the many different and various deaths that the Jewish people have died over the centuries.
In Semitic languages, the plural can be used to speak of intensity For e.g “and thou shalt die (singular) the deaths (plural) of them that are slain, in the heart of the seas” as found in Ezekial 28:8
ח לַשַּׁחַת, יוֹרִדוּךָ; וָמַתָּה מְמוֹתֵי חָלָל, בְּלֵב יַמִּים.
If this is the case here, then deaths in the plural would be speaking of the violent and brutal death of the servant.
On the other hand, If we leave the 10th-century AD Masoretic or Hebrew text aside and look at other earlier textual witnesses, the problem disappears.
The older a text is, then it is closer and more accurate to the original than a much later text.
• The Septuagint translation of the Hebrew in the 3rd century BCE) says τοῦ θανάτου – “his death.” Singular, not plural.
• The Great Isaiah Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls (about 2,000 years old) has a level of ambiguity in the text. It says בומתו – “his high places” – a scribal error with an extra vav, which if removed, becomes “his death.”
• Targum Jonathan (as early as the middle of the first century CE) has בְמֹותָא – “in the death.” Singular, not plural.
• The Latin Vulgate, witness to the Hebrew text,of the 4th century AD agrees with the Septuagint with pro morte sua – “for his death.” Singular, not plural.
• Based on these multiple sources of 4 much earlier versions versus 1 much later version, then the original text which Isaiah wrote is most probably “his death” – a singular death for a singular and not compound servant.
Also any text compiled by Jews living hundreds of years before Jesus was even born would be more trustworthy than a text compiled by Jews living 900 years after Christianity spread as a religion as any incentive or motivation to dilute scripture wouldn’t be there.
Reading Isaiah 53 objectively, one cannot deny that it prophesying about Jesus the Messiah.
- there are 70 faces to 
