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Online Summer Bible Study, 2004
Week 9 (August 1-7): Isaiah 40-50

Hello all,

It was only a matter of time--I am going back to Walter Brueggemann's "An Introduction to the Old Testament" (Westminster John Knox Press, 2003, pp.167-170) for a look at this week's portion of Isaiah...

Isaiah 40-50 contains great doxologies, lyrical assaults, and pastoral assurance. The overriding message is that God is powerful and compassionate, while other "gods" are impotent and irrelevant. God will render inescapable judgment on his people, reliably followed by their generous restoration. This message is a reflection of both the lived memory and theological conviction of biblical Israel.

A large part of Isaiah 40-50 is made up of poems collectively known as the "Servant Songs." The "servant" in these poems is understood to refer to Israel. However, a handful of passages have traditionally been considered by Christians to refer to a separate individual, and these passages are often cited as prophecies about Jesus Christ. Contemporary scholarly consensus rejects this distinction, viewing all the "Servant Songs" as equally referring to God's choice of, expectations of, and promises to Israel--in other words, Israel's election, judgment, and restoration.

Moving on to my commentary (which, as always, is not so much "mine" as "synthesized from different sources that I haven't gone back to check the citations for")...

Removing this distinction can, at first glance, be considered a threat to the Christian understanding of Christ's role in the economy of salvation. If it is Israel that God refers to when saying "I have given you as a covenant to the people" (Isaiah 42:6) and "I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth" (Isaiah 49:6), then what is to be made of the idea of a new covenant in Christ?

An answer can be found in the idea of incarnation. One strand of Jewish thought claims that being "God's chosen people" not only refers to the blessings and obligations that come with that choice, but to the historical expression of God's words and actions through the Jewish people. In a fundamental sense, Israel *is* (or is meant to be) God as experienced by the world. This claim particularly relies on understandings of Judaism that fully developed after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, when Jews had to clarify ideas about "the dwelling place of God" within the believing community.

In Christianity, on the other hand, *Christ* is the incarnation of God--God as experienced by the world. Some early Christian writers explicitly saw Jesus as the ultimate distillation of the idea that only a remnant of Israel would be righteous (and so saved): Jesus as the Remnant-Man. This formulation is very near to Jesus as the God-Man: uniquely righteous, uniquely without sin. By faith in Christ, Christians are joined in his Body; that is, they become part of the remnant that shall be saved; that is, they become part of God's incarnation in the world.

In this view of the economy of salvation, Christ does not supersede the old covenant with a new one, he fulfills it. He incarnates Israel as much as he incarnates God. Jews, obviously, will look at things differently. But that doesn't mean that Jews and Christians have to look at Isaiah differently. The "servant" is not Christ predicted; Christ is Christianity's understanding of the historical expression of Israel's servanthood. It should be noted that Paul's letters can easily be read with this understanding.

Anyway. It made sense when I started to write it; hopefully its sense survived.

Peace,
Mark Kille
John P. Webster Library

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