NOTES for Isa 42:1

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.