NOTES for Isa 52:13-53:12

Today's reading is a messianic hymn of Isaiah of Babylon, well known to every reader of the Bible. It is here that the Old Testament image of the Messiah comes closest of all to the Gospel image. As in another hymn of Isaiah of Babylon, the Messiah here least of all resembles a lawgiving king or a judge. He is barely noticeable (v. 2), and not because He is short in stature, but because Isaiah's Messiah holds no prominent position in society. He is not going to be the leader of a great messianic war. His task is different: He takes upon Himself the sin of the people, being Himself sinless, and thereby delivers the people from sin (vv. 3-5).

Such an image of the Messiah looked somewhat paradoxical against the background of the triumphalism that had seized the people in the first years after their return to the land of their fathers: that return itself seemed an indisputable testimony that all sins had been forgiven and all the people's transgressions forgotten. And now Isaiah spoke of the Messiah as the One who alone can deliver the people from sin. Of course, the full depth of the meanings connected with the person of the Messiah-Christ had only begun to open slightly to the prophet. But even this, one may think, was hard for his contemporaries to take in.

The death of the Messiah, as Isaiah of Babylon describes it, became still less understandable. It should be noted that he alone in the Old Testament has the image of a suffering Messiah. But if the image of the suffering and persecuted Messiah (vv. 6-7) over time nevertheless became part of rabbinic tradition, the image of the Messiah executed and dying (vv. 8-10) remained misunderstood. Apparently this prophecy of Isaiah was viewed more as a kind of prophetic hyperbole, with death understood to mean certain persecutions that would place the Messiah on the verge of death, which He would ultimately still successfully avoid. That is apparently how the closing verses of the hymn (vv. 11-12) were understood: having miraculously escaped death, the Messiah would finally still triumph and then enjoy the fruits of His victory.

Only the first generation of Christians understood that, in speaking of the Messiah's death, Isaiah was by no means exaggerating, although even the apostles understood only after the Resurrection the words about His coming death on the cross that they had heard many times from Jesus Himself. As for the resurrection of the Messiah, the prophet says nothing about it. And no wonder: if even the apostles believed in the resurrection of their Teacher with great difficulty, what could be expected from Isaiah's contemporaries, who lived several centuries before the coming of Christ? And still, it is precisely in Isaiah of Babylon that the image of the Messiah proved closest to the Gospel image. It is no accident that later Christians began to call him the "Old Testament evangelist."

We can only bow before this pearl of prophetic insight... Before our very eyes—and in our hearing—the stricken and ruined Jerusalem takes on ever deeper and more recognizable features. Through the prophet's mournful song emerges the human Face of the One who suffers for the sins of His people and by whose wounds all the nations of the earth are healed. Before us is no longer the humiliated Zion, but the mysterious Man of Sorrows who suffers voluntarily. Several centuries will pass, and the disciples of the crucified Rabbi from Galilee will recognize in Him their beloved Teacher, down to the smallest detail. Until that happens, Israel can only listen in wonder to the mysterious Word and trust in the promised Righteous One.

Of all the prophets, the image of the suffering Messiah appears only in Babylonian Isaiah. To his contemporaries these words sounded strange: for them the image of the Messiah was least of all associated with any kind of suffering. For them the Messiah was a righteous King, who would live like a king. What suffering could there be?

Meanwhile, in the prophet's words there sounds a revelation concerning the fundamental laws of spiritual life. After all, he does not say by accident that the Messiah suffers not for His own sins, but for the sins of other people, for the sins of the whole people of God. And He suffers voluntarily. This means that the Messiah takes upon Himself responsibility for the people's sins, somewhat as even today one person can repay another person's debts by paying his creditors for him. True, when a crime is involved, the transfer of responsibility to another person is impossible in our day. Today each person answers for himself before the law. But in ancient times it was possible to stand surety even for a criminal, taking upon oneself responsibility for the crime he had committed and bearing the corresponding punishment. In such a case it was presumed that the surety knew well the one for whom he was vouching and was so confident in him that he was ready to free him from the consequences of what had been done. The surety's motives did not matter here. He was required only to take upon himself the consequences of the crime committed by the offender.

This is exactly what the Messiah does before God in Isaiah: He takes upon Himself responsibility for the sins committed by the people and bears all the consequences of those sins. After this, the people are freed from responsibility and receive a chance to begin a new life from a clean slate. This was the only chance, because one cannot enter the Kingdom together with the burden of the consequences produced by sin committed consciously and voluntarily, and there were many such sins in the history of the people. Someone had to take them upon himself, giving the rest the possibility of entering the Kingdom unburdened by a load too heavy for new life. And the Messiah does this just as voluntarily and consciously as the people once sinned quite consciously and voluntarily, thereby opening the road to the Kingdom for the people and becoming the Redeemer.

The lines of the prophet Isaiah make it terrifyingly clear that Jesus was tormented though innocent, voluntarily going to His death. In those rare moments when we draw near this mystery, the heart is pierced by pain at the injustice done to the Innocent One and at His meekness in willingly giving Himself. He went to the most terrible death known to humanity for our sake—for all people—those who have lived on earth and those yet to be born. And the most terrible—and the most beautiful—thing is that I am among these people... For my sake He endured these sufferings, to redeem my sin by His sacrifice, and through this He grants life, because He “became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him” (Hebrews 5:9).

This prediction about Christ and salvation that He brought into the world does not lose its actuality even today, two thousand years after it was fulfilled. The problem is that man is not capable of imagining what is salvation about and what the Christ fulfills for him exactly. Death on the cross of the Rescuer was inconceivable and impossible for the antique world; the Hellenic and the Jews, the believers and the heathen were seduced and found as madness the assumption that the Son of God can die for us. Today it is as well for us inconceivable that it is exactly in this Christ's death that is concluded His victory on sin and death. People in all time wait for something else. Mostly we wait for a king, who will lead us into eternal life with iron hand, without thinking that such an eternal life would be an eternal concentration camp. Sometimes we wait for a Teacher, who will teach us life, forgetting that eternal life lies in God Himself, and not in the fulfillment of certain norms and rules. But we do not wait for the One, Who will take our humiliation, our suffering and our painful punishment. It is too horrible, that people could invent such thing. And that’s why the prophet speaks of sprinkle, with which people contemplate on the foot of the Cross.

This prediction about Christ and salvation that He brought into the world does not lose its actuality even today, two thousand years after it was fulfilled. The problem is that man is not capable of imagining what is salvation about and what the Christ fulfills for him exactly. Death on the cross of the Rescuer was inconceivable and impossible for the antique world; the Hellenic and the Jews, the believers and the heathen were seduced and found as madness the assumption that the Son of God can die for us. Today it is as well for us inconceivable that it is exactly in this Christ's death that is concluded His victory on sin and death. People in all time wait for something else. Mostly we wait for a king, who will lead us into eternal life with iron hand, without thinking that such an eternal life would be an eternal concentration camp. Sometimes we wait for a Teacher, who will teach us life, forgetting that eternal life lies in God Himself, and not in the fulfillment of certain norms and rules. But we do not wait for the One, Who will take our humiliation, our suffering and our painful punishment. It is too horrible, that people could invent such thing. And that’s why the prophet speaks of sprinkle, with which people contemplate on the foot of the Cross.