NOTES for Isa 42:1-25

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.

The image of the Messiah as servant was a unique revelation to Isaiah of Babylon. Before the Messiah revealed himself to the prophets under the image of the righteous ruler or of a high Priest, Who, coming, will change completely the situation in the political and social or religious life of the Jewish people. Of course, there was truth in both of these two images; their meaning was certainly connected to this Kingdom, which the Messiah had to bring into the world.

And the renovation of God's relationship with His people, and the qualitative change of the relationships between people were an integral part of this process of transformation of the world, which supposed the arrival of the kingdom of God. And yet, in the images of the prophets before captivity, there were many earthly, such that perceiving literally, it engendered this political, often militant messianism, triumphs which brought the Judea and the Jewish people to the disaster of 70 after J.C.

And the image of the Messiah - Servant revealed to Isaiah of Babylon balanced the images of the Messiah - ruler and of the Messiah - high priest, obliging to look at them, as symbols, and not as historic reality. Of course, in this case, it is not about the servitude under its classic form, known well in the Greco-Roman world, but of the patriarchal servitude, when the servants were in a way as the younger members of the family. But, be that as it may, the servants could not become at all either the ruler, or the high priest.

It became clear that even if in the Messiah, one can see a ruler or a high priest, it is not in the literal sense of these words, in which wanted to understand them several contemporaries of the prophet (as, indeed, also the contemporaries of the earthly life of Jesus). And so became as well more clearly that the Kingdom will not be also completely ordinary, but maybe, quite extraordinary. Such as it was brought to the world by the Savior. The Kingdom which "is not of this world", transforming the world.

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.

Near the end of the era of the Babylonian captivity, when was written the second part of the Book of Isaiah, the ideas on the people of God in the Jewish people under the influence of the prophetic sermon changed a little in comparison with what they were before the captivity. Before the captivity, in the Judea, which was, generally, a relatively quiet and provincial country, the Jews themselves thought little about their role in the world history, and all around, nobody asked them such questions.

In Babylon everything was different: here in order to keep the faith of the fathers (and otherwise in front of the Jewish community was outlined a completely real threat of assimilation), it was necessary to answer to oneself, and to others (and in the conditions of the metropolis, in which was then Babylon, these others were many around) to the question what is the people of God, why is it necessary for the humanity and what means belonging to these people. Well then through the prophet, who bore as his great predecessor of Jerusalem the name of Isaiah, was revealed to the people that he exist not for his own sake.

His task is to reveal to the pagan world his God, the God, Who first revealed to him, and to sanctify the world, which needs so much this sanctification, although not realizing their need. Of course, from the words of the prophet, one could draw various conclusions about how the world should be sanctified and what should be done for that. By the way it seemed to many, for example that one can be sanctified only by joining the Jewish people and becoming a part of it. Others thought that it was not compulsory to join people looking for the God of Israel, that they just have to observe some of the commandments given by God and to support the Synagogue.

All this already engendered after the captivity some waves of the Jewish mission which brought their fruits. But it came to the mind of nobody before the coming of Christ what Paul spoke and wrote about so much: to enter the Kingdom and to be sanctified is possible without any religion; the religion has no direct link with the life of the Kingdom, quite as it has no direct link with salvation. In order to understand this, a new revelation was needed, of which it is not always easy to perceive. Not only by the synagogue, but also by the Church.