3. Isaiah’s Servant of the LORD

Asecond significant motif employed throughout the NT to interpret Christ’s death is Isaiah’s Servant of the LORD. NT authors saw Jesus as the suffering Servant described in Isaiah 52:13–53.12:

14 Just as there were many who were astonished at him

15 so he shall startle many nations;

for that which had not been told them they shall see,

And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,

3 He was despised and rejected by others;

and as one from whom others hide their faces

yet we accounted him stricken,

5 But he was wounded for our transgressions,

upon him was the punishment that made us whole,

6 All we like sheep have gone astray;

and the LORD has laid on him

7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

8 By a perversion of justice he was taken away.

For he was cut off from the land of the living,

9 They made his grave with the wicked

although he had done no violence,

When you make his life an offering for sin,

through him the will of the LORD shall prosper.

11 Out of his anguish he shall see light;

he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.

12 Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,

because he poured out himself to death,

yet he bore the sin of many,

Ten of the twelve verses of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah are quoted in the NT, which also abounds in allusions to and echoes of this passage. I have already mentioned the Synoptic Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, whereby he identified himself as the Servant of Isaiah 53. In Acts 8:30-35, Philip, in response to an Ethiopian official’s question concerning Isaiah 53, “About whom does the prophet speak?” shares “the good news about Jesus.” First Peter 2:22-25 is a reflection on Christ as the Servant of Isaiah 53, who “bore our sins in his body on the tree.” Hebrews 9:28 alludes to Isaiah 53:12 in describing Christ as “having been offered once to bear the sins of many.” The influence of Isaiah 53 is also evident in Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Timothy, and Titus. William Farmer concludes, “This evidence indicates that there is an Isaianic soteriology deeply embedded in the New Testament which finds its normative form and substance in Isaiah 53.”

R. N. Whybray demurs, claiming that the Servant merely shares in the punitive suffering of the Jewish exiles. But Whybray’s interpretation does not make as good sense of the shock expressed at what Yahweh has done in afflicting His righteous Servant (Isa 52:14–53:1, 10) and is less plausible in light of the strong contrasts, reinforced by the Hebrew pronouns, drawn between the Servant and the persons speaking in the first person plural (Isa 53:4-6). H.-J. Hermisson translates verse 4 as

and our diseases—he carried them.

and Hofius renders verse 11:

for their iniquities—he bears them.

Moreover, the people’s suffering in the exile was entirely just, in contrast to the suffering of God’s Servant, which is a perversion of justice (v. 8). The Servant is doing something more than participating in the exiles’ suffering, for he endures a suffering far beyond that of the exiles in order to restore them.

Notice that the Servant is said to bear the sins (nāśā’ ḥēṭ’), or equivalently, carry the iniquities (sābal ‘awōn) of many. In the OT the expression “to bear sin,” when used of sinners, typically means “to be held liable to punishment” or “to endure punishment” (e.g., Lev 5:1; 7:18; 19:8; 24:15; Num 5:31; 9:13; 14:34). The Servant, however, does not bear his own sins but the sins of others (vv. 4, 11-12). Intriguingly, the Levitical priests can be said to bear others’ sins by making atonement for them (e.g., Lev 10:17: “that you may bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the LORD”). But the priests, unlike the Servant, do not do so by vicarious suffering. The punitive nature of the Servant’s suffering is clearly expressed in phrases like “wounded for our transgressions,” “crushed for our iniquities,” “upon him was the punishment that made us whole,” “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all,” and “stricken for the transgression of my people” (Isa 53:5, 6, 8). This fact also serves to distinguish the Servant’s sin-bearing from that of the Levitical scapegoat, which was merely the symbolic vehicle for the removal of sin on Yom Kippur. The scapegoat carried away Israel’s sins into the desert, but it was not held to be liable for their sins or to endure the punishment due them for their sins.

We may profitably compare the LORD’s punishment of His Servant in Isaiah 53 with the LORD’s symbolically laying the punishment of Israel and Judah upon the prophet Ezekiel, such that he could be said to “bear their punishment”:

Ezekiel bore the people’s punishment symbolically, but in Isaiah 53 the Servant’s bearing the punishment for Israel’s sins is not symbolic but real. Hofius observes, “Here in Isaiah 53 . . .—and only here—there is talk of one person ‘bearing’ substitutionarily the guilt of other persons; he thus suffers the penal consequences of alien guilt.”

Some scholars have rejected the translation of ’āšām as “guilt offering” in favor of “the means of wiping out guilt (or the obligation arising from guilt).” The claim is that the term stems originally not from the cultic context but from a legal context (e.g., Gen 26:10; 1 Sam 6:3-4, 8, 17). One cannot suppose that Isaiah 53 borrowed the term after its integration into the priestly sacrificial context because ’āšām in verse 10 has no cultic connotations whatsoever. There is no mention of the shed blood of the Servant, nor does the Servant take on the role of a sacrificial animal ritually slaughtered by a priestly official. The verb “crush” is not a sacrificial term, and cultic vocabulary is lacking. Moreover, the uniqueness of the wiping out of guilt in Isaiah 53 is said to stand in contradiction to the thought of sacrifice, which requires repetition. Rather, “verse 10aβ therefore says that the Servant made his life the means of ‘discharging’ or ‘wiping out guilt.’ . . . Through substituting his existence for that of others, the Servant clears the guilty of guilt. He secures them the acquittal that makes possible their continued life (53:11b) and therefore the ‘healing’ of their broken relationship with God, the restoration of their (53:5b).”

Congenial as this interpretation might be to the Christian atonement theorist, it seems that these objections to a (penultimate) cultic provenance of ’āšām are quite weak. While atonement vocabulary (kpr) is not used in Isaiah 53, the concept is clearly present. The Servant “pours out himself to death” and gives “his life” as a sacrificial offering (cf. Lev 17:11). It is hard to see how the comparison of the Servant to “a lamb that is led to the slaughter” (v. 7) could be plausibly interpreted in any other way than in terms of the sacrificial cult. As for the thought that the sacrifices require repetition, the reason that repetition is necessary is obviously because sinning and uncleanness are ongoing, thus requiring new sacrifices. It is not as though the sacrifices needed to be offered for old failings once atoned for! Those have been forgiven or cleansed. Therefore, the benefits of expiation of guilt, continued life, and the restoration of relationship with God are precisely what is thought to be achieved through sacrificial offering.

Yahweh’s response to Moses shows that Moses is not merely asking Yahweh to put him out of his misery, so to speak, if He will not forgive Israel’s sin but rather is offering to bear the punishment due to the Israelites for their apostasy. Although Yahweh rejects Moses’ offer of a substitutionary atonement, saying that “when the day comes for punishment, I will punish them for their sin” (v. 34), the offer is nonetheless clear, and Yahweh simply declines the offer but does not dismiss it as absurd or impossible. Similarly, while in the OT Yahweh consistently rejects human sacrifice, in contrast to the practice of pagan nations, the story of God’s commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac (whom the NT treats as a type of Christ) shows that such a thing is not unthinkable (Gen 22:1-19). In Isaiah 53, moreover, the idea of the Servant’s substitutionary punishment is treated as extraordinary and surprising. The LORD has inflicted on His righteous Servant the suffering that He refused to inflict on Isaac and Moses.

Returning to the NT, we find Christian authors interpreting Jesus to be the sin-bearing Servant of Isaiah 53. Citing LXX Isaiah 53:9b, 1 Peter 2:21-24 states:

and no deceit was found in his mouth.”

These verses constitute a brief meditation on Isaiah 53 in application to Christ. Isaiah 53:7 is reflected in the sentence, “When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten.” Isaiah 53:8a is echoed in Christ’s trusting in a just God despite the injustice of what he suffered. Echoing Isaiah’s words concerning the Servant’s bearing sin in 53:4a, 11d, 12b, the author affirms Christ’s substitutionary punishment on our behalf, with the result that we are now liberated from sin and able to live righteously (cf. 53:11c). We have been healed by his suffering (cf. 53:5).

Sin-bearing derived from Isaiah 53 is also evident in Hebrews 9:26b-28:

Here Christ is described as a voluntary, expiatory sacrifice, offered, in the language of Isaiah 53, to bear the sins of many (53:12c). Again, Christ’s substitutionary punishment for humanity’s sins is in view.

Other NT texts echo Isaiah 53 more subtly. In light of Isaiah 53, texts like “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3), ambiguous when taken in isolation, become pregnant with meaning. For there is no other passage in the Jewish Scriptures that could be construed as even remotely about Messiah’s dying for people’s sins. The formulaic expression “died for our sins,” so prominent in the Pauline corpus, thus refers to substitutionary, punitive suffering. This meaning of “for” (hyper) is made clear by expressions like “delivered up for our trespasses” (Rom 4:25), where “for” translates dia + the accusative, meaning “on account of,” and along with “delivered up” and “trespasses” recalls LXX Isaiah 53:12; similarly, Mark 10:45, where “for” translates anti, “instead of,” “in exchange of.”

Paul’s summary statement in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” is seen to echo in all its parts Isaiah 53. “Who knew no sin” recalls “the righteous one, my servant,” in whose mouth was no deceit (vv. 9, 11); “for our sake he made him to be sin” recalls “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (v. 6); “in him we might become the righteousness of God” recalls “the righteous one, my servant, [shall] make many to be accounted righteous” (v. 11). Again, no other OT passage remotely approaches the content of this sentence. However we more closely interpret Paul’s sentence, the affirmation that Christ is the sin-bearing Servant of Isaiah 53 is clear.

The NT authors, then, following Jesus in his own self-understanding, saw Christ as the righteous Servant of Isaiah 53, who suffered in the place of sinners, bearing the punishment they deserved, that they might be reconciled to God. As we saw in chapter 2, Jesus understood his death, like that of the Servant (Isa 42:6; 49:6), to be on behalf of Gentiles as well as Jews. Christ’s death was thus understood to be nothing less than a vicarious punishment for humanity’s sins.