NOTES for Isa 52:13-53:12

We can only bow before this pearl of prophetic insight... Before our eyes (and in our ears), stricken and ruined Jerusalem takes on ever deeper and more recognizable features. Through the prophet's sorrowful song emerges the human Face of the One who suffers for the sins of His people and by His wounds heals all the tribes of the earth. Before us is no longer Zion subjected to abuse, 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, down to the smallest details, their beloved Teacher. Until that happens, Israel can only listen in amazement to the mysterious Word and place its hope in the promised Righteous One.

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."

Even if we did not know the traditional reading of these lines, it would still be impossible not to compare them with the Gospel passages that preserve the sufferings and humiliations of Christ; Isaiah is therefore quite rightly called “the Old Testament Evangelist.” Yet we know that several centuries later, many of those who knew and constantly reread the Book of Isaiah did not recognize in Jesus the One of whom the prophet spoke. The prophecy remained misunderstood.

Should we Christians exalt ourselves above the ancient Jews on the grounds that we understand the prophetic words more correctly? Are we always ready to see the image of God in someone who does not conform to our ideas of prosperity, giftedness, and success? A “theology of success” is still popular among some Christians, seeking to declare life’s good fortunes a reward from above—which is possible, but far from true in every case—and misfortunes evidence of God’s disfavor...

But every seductive attempt to adapt doctrine to earthly interests and pragmatic notions was rejected beforehand both by Isaiah’s prophecy and, all the more, by the One of whom the prophet spoke.

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.

Today's reading is devoted entirely to the coming revival of Jerusalem. Of course, the prophecy given here also had a very concrete historical meaning: after Cyrus's decree and the return of the repatriates from Babylon to Judea, the city and the Temple were indeed rebuilt. Rising again from the ruins, Jerusalem subsequently became a major economic, political, and cultural centre of the ancient Near East. Yet Isaiah is evidently speaking not only about history. At the centre of his preaching is not the return of the people, but the return of God to the place from which He had once been driven out (v. 8). Ezekiel once saw God leave the Temple, where no room remained for Him (Ezek 11:22–23); now it was revealed to Isaiah that He would return to the place where His house had once stood and would be rebuilt.

But this would not mean a return to the past. Now He returns as King (v. 7), which means that the time has come for the triumph of the Kingdom of which the pre-exilic prophets had already spoken. The new Jerusalem becomes the centre of this Kingdom. The Jerusalem of Isaiah of Babylon is the messianic Jerusalem. Yet it does not cease to be a completely real, earthly city whose walls and towers can be touched and whose streets can be walked.

Moreover, this is not only about a new city, but also about a new people (vv. 14–15). The community of exiles becomes the remnant of which Isaiah of Jerusalem had already spoken. And when God returns to His house and restores His people to the land of their fathers, the remnant, transformed, becomes the nucleus of the new, messianic Israel—whose appearance, of course, none of those who had once driven the Jews from that land expected, convinced as they were that the rebellious city had been dealt with forever. Only when all this is accomplished will the Messiah promised by God appear to the world.