NOTES for Isa 42:1-25

Speaking of the Messiah, Isaiah calls Him by a Hebrew word that can be translated as “servant” or “youth.” Such ambiguity may seem strange, but it has a meaning of its own. Ancient Israel did not know the mass slaveholding that was widespread, for example, in ancient Egypt or in the Greco-Roman world. It knew only patriarchal slavery, in which a slave differed little from a member of the household. In some cases he could even inherit from the master of the house.

The chief distinction of a slave was his complete lack of rights in matters concerning the life of the household to which he belonged. Household slaves took no part in family councils, and when decisions were made, including those that concerned them, their voices were not heard. In this respect they resembled youths, adolescents who were already old enough to take part in household life and work but were not yet considered adults and therefore did not participate in decision-making.

Why, then, does the prophet call the Messiah a servant? It is known that Jesus was never a slave. The language is evidently a kind of allegory. What lies behind it? In the days of Isaiah of Babylon, to whom the prophecy of the Messiah-Servant belongs, another image of the Messiah was popular, one that went back to the preaching of another Isaiah—Isaiah of Jerusalem, who had lived almost two hundred years earlier. It was the image of the Messiah-King, the righteous Ruler who would reign in Jerusalem and turn Judah into the Kingdom of God. The image of the Messiah-Servant is directly opposed to it.

This does not mean, of course, that Isaiah of Babylon rejects the Kingdom of God, a concept so central to the messianic tradition. He merely wants to shift the emphasis somewhat, helping his hearers understand that the Messiah is not a king in the earthly sense in which most believers understood that word both in his own day and much later. From the viewpoint of this world the Messiah is nobody: He is a servant, not a king. Yet this does not make Him any less the Messiah. He does not depend on earthly kingdoms or earthly power, and His messiahship is not defined by the position He holds in this world. His Kingdom, too, is unlike the kingdoms of this world: in our world a slave cannot be a king! Thus Isaiah of Babylon leads his hearers toward an understanding of who the Messiah truly is and what His ministry is. Of course, far from everyone understood what the prophet was saying; the events of the Gospel make that perfectly clear. But the word was spoken, and those who wished to hear did hear.

Today's reading offers us one of the messianic hymns of Isaiah of Babylon (vv. 1–4), whose preaching makes up the second part of the Book of Isaiah. The first thing that strikes us on encountering this text is the sharp contrast between the image of the Messiah found here and the one presented by Ezekiel and the pre-exilic prophets. Their Messiah is above all a king and judge, invested with authority from above and therefore ruling and judging righteously, in accordance with the Torah (Law) given by God. In essence, His authority differs in no way from that of any earthly ruler, except for the character of His rule, which is based entirely on the Torah, and for the help He receives from God so that His rule and judgment may be truly just.

Isaiah of Babylon, however, calls the Messiah not a king but a servant or a youth (an adolescent): both concepts are expressed by the same word in the Hebrew text of the Bible (v. 1). In ancient Israel slavery was patriarchal in character, and a slave's position in the household was indeed not very different from that of underage children who had not yet received any rights. Of course, neither a slave nor an adolescent could claim any authority whatsoever. To Isaiah of Babylon, the Messiah was evidently revealed as One who possesses no earthly authority and makes no claim to it (v. 2). Yet his Messiah establishes judgment and the Torah (Law) (v. 4). But how can this be done without earthly authority?

If the Torah were only legislation, this would of course be impossible. But already during the Babylonian exile, for believing Jews it had become not only a law based on the commandments given by God, but also a way of life corresponding to that law and the spiritual condition required to live in such a way. In the latter case, people generally spoke of the inner Torah, no less important than the external Torah, whose observance was of course also regarded as absolutely necessary. One did not need to be either a ruler or a judge in order to plant and establish the inner Torah. As for the external Torah, by the time of Isaiah of Babylon—who preached at the end of the exile and shortly after the Jews returned from Babylon to the land of their fathers—no one any longer doubted the need to observe it.

The first step on the way to the Kingdom had been taken: the people had rejected paganism forever and established the external Torah as the unshakable law of their life. Everything seemed ready for meeting the Messiah; all that remained was to enter the Kingdom. Yet it turns out that the path has not been travelled to the end, and through His prophet God reveals its next stage: the Messiah expects His faithful to follow not only the external Torah, but also the inner Torah in all its fullness, for when He Himself comes into the world, His actions rest above all upon it. Only such fulfilment of the Torah opens the way into the Kingdom for a person.

The Servant will not raise his voice, though many speakers too often try to cover the falseness and emptiness of their speeches with loudness and force. But the one who comes from the Lord will not go unnoticed because of a quiet voice: spiritually sensitive people remember both that the Lord appeared to Elijah in the quiet breath of the wind, and that what is genuine most often does not impose itself by force or advertise itself by shouting. The victory of truth will prove all the more secure.

But why, then, does the Lord warn a few lines later that He will cry out? Is there not a contradiction here? It still seems that this paradoxical way of speaking expresses the thought that the moment must inevitably come when the Lord's voice will be heard by all, and it will be like the cry not of a person insisting on his own way, but of a summons that cannot remain unheard, just like the quiet voice of the Servant.

The Lord compares His cry to the cry of a woman giving birth, and here we remember Jesus' prophetic words about the coming upheavals, "this is the beginning of sorrows" (Matt. 24:8), which according to the Kassian translation sound like "the beginning of birth pangs." We are used to calling the coming crisis "the end of the world," but it will become the beginning of a new life.

Whom is today's prophecy of Isaiah speaking about? From the most ancient times these mysterious words were applied to God's Anointed One, with whose coming peace and justice would be established on earth. But here the prophet also says that the Chosen One will not act by force, "will not lift up His voice," and will be "blind and deaf." Christians have always seen in this Chosen One Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came not with power and glory but in a humbled form, voluntarily renouncing omnipotence and omniscience for our sake.

But besides this, the prophecy also applies to each of us, since now Christ acts through those who believe in Him, through His Body. All these words about meekness and justice must be a guide for us as well, if we want to be one body with Jesus. The Lord says the same thing in the Gospel: learn from Me meekness and humility of heart; be light for the world sitting in darkness.

The image of the Messiah was revealed to different prophets in different ways. This happened not because one of them was right and another mistaken, but simply because the person of the Messiah was too immense to be grasped in one glance centuries before His coming into the world. This greatness of Christ's person was the reason that He was often revealed to the preexilic prophets as a ruler or high priest: someone like Him could not possibly be an ordinary man.

Yet in these prophecies there was also a revelation of the Kingdom: after all, the Messiah truly is King, only He brought His Kingdom with Him, and it is not arranged according to the laws of the old world. But this is exactly what is hardest for us to imagine, because we know no kingdoms other than those we see on earth. The prophets did not know them either, and therefore the messianic Kingdom often appeared to them in the form of an earthly state (although almost always there was, in this seemingly quite earthly state, something not entirely earthly, something that could not exist without God's direct participation).

And it was to the Babylonian Isaiah that it was first revealed that the Messiah's greatness is not at all like the greatness of an earthly king. By earthly standards there is no greatness in Him. It is no accident that Isaiah calls the Messiah by a Hebrew word that can be translated both as "boy" or "adolescent" and as "slave": in Hebrew society slavery was always patriarchal; slaves lived in the household practically as younger family members, possessing no rights but not being deprived of shelter or food.

Christ, of course, was not a slave, but the point of the prophecy was not to indicate His social position, but to let everyone understand that the Messiah's ministry is not determined by His social position. His Kingdom is not of this world, and to be King He needs neither an army nor a state apparatus. He remains the Messiah while being, from the point of view of this world, no one, and the success of His messianic ministry is in no way connected with victory or defeat in this world. Against the background of messianic expectations that assumed the appearance of the Messiah as an earthly king, the prophecy of the Babylonian Isaiah proved highly relevant. Unfortunately, by the time of Christ's coming it had, if not been forgotten, then not been taken seriously or understood literally. But that is another story.

In this verse of the prophet Isaiah, is given to us an almost physically visible image: here is the servant that God upholds, - does not retain, but supports, because He is the elected, the beloved. And the immediate association: a Father upholding His Son - hearty and fondly. The words about the benevolence of the Father towards the Son reecho with this testimony that John the Baptist heard during the Lord’s baptism, when God put His Spirit on Jesus standing in the water of Jordan. And after that the Christ begins His service as Servant of God, doing good and driving away evil, - "For judgment I am come into this world" (John 9:39). Thus, all this verse augurs about the earth way of the Son of Man: the exceptional, the benevolence and support of the Father, growth, fulfillment with Spirit, service, judgment.

In this verse of the prophet Isaiah, is given to us an almost physically visible image: here is the servant that God upholds, - does not retain, but supports, because He is the elected, the beloved. And the immediate association: a Father upholding His Son - hearty and fondly. The words about the benevolence of the Father towards the Son reecho with this testimony that John the Baptist heard during the Lord’s baptism, when God put His Spirit on Jesus standing in the water of Jordan. And after that the Christ begins His service as Servant of God, doing good and driving away evil, - "For judgment I am come into this world" (John 9:39). Thus, all this verse augurs about the earth way of the Son of Man: the exceptional, the benevolence and support of the Father, growth, fulfillment with Spirit, service, judgment.

Today, when the prophecy about the Servant of the Lord has long since been fulfilled, it is worth entering into what exactly God was revealing to His people as the essential aspects of salvation in Christ. "My Servant, whom I hold by the hand," says the Lord, will be meek and humble: "He will not break a bruised reed"... Christians, at least in theory, should know this prophecy by heart. In verses 1-4 of chapter 42, the prophet almost sees the face of Christ. And then God says: "I have given You as a covenant for the people, as a light for the nations." When the prophet wrote these words, Israel's relations with the nations, especially the Palestinian nations, were very difficult. This proclamation of Christian universalism, so far exceeding its historical context, sounds all the more magnificent.

And then the Lord, through the mouth of the prophet, calls us to sing Him a new song. Let the wilderness and the cities, the sea and the mountain peaks "give glory to the Lord and declare His praise," for the Lord has revealed His power. The covenant that Christ made with us involves not only faith that He has accomplished our salvation, but precisely universal praise, gratitude to God for it. This is exactly how the early Fathers of the Church understood the Eucharist. They called it "firstfruits," the firstfruits of the praise and thanksgiving of all creation.

And the Lord says: "I will lead the blind by a road they do not know." Of course, first of all this applies to the Jews, to whom the light of Christ seemed so unacceptably new. But that belongs to the past, and we are not Jews. What matters for us is that this prophecy also applies to us. The Lord says that He will lead all of us by new paths, will turn darkness into light, and crooked ways into straight ones. "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it" - for us, that is what these words correspond to.