Isaiah 50:4-11

Isaiah 50:4-11. The Lord's Servant made perfect through Sufferings

In Isaiah 50:4 the Servant is again introduced, speaking of himself and his work, as in Isaiah 49:1-6. He describes in the first place the close and intimate and continuous communion with God through which he has learned the ministry of comfort by the Divine word, and his own complete self-surrender to the voice that guides him (Isaiah 50:4); next, his acceptance of the persecution and obloquy which he had to encounter in the discharge of his commission (6); and lastly he expresses his unwavering confidence in the help of Jehovah and the victory of his righteous cause and the discomfiture of all his enemies (7 9).

Isaiah 50:10 are an appendix to the preceding description, drawing lessons for the encouragement of believers (Isaiah 50:10) and the warning of unbelievers (Isaiah 50:11). They contain expressions and even thoughts which are unlike those of the second Isaiah; and are possibly (with Duhm and Cheyne) to be regarded as a later insertion in the prophecy.

Although the word "Servant" never occurs in this passage, its resemblance to the three other "servant-passages" makes it certain that the speaker is none other than the ideal character who comes before us in Isaiah 42:1-4; Isaiah 49:1-6, and Isa 52:13 53:15. The passage, indeed, forms an almost indispensable link of connexion between the first two and the last of these. Whilst it takes up and developes certain ideas thrown out in the earlier sections, and in its dramatic form most resembles the second of them, its closest affinities are with Isaiah 52:13 ff. Common to both is the new conception of the Servant as a sufferer, here at the hands of men, there at the hands of men and God alike. In the present passage we have the Servant's own consciousness with regard to his sufferings, these being regarded from an ethical point of view as brought on him by fidelity to his Divine mission. In ch. Isaiah 52:13 ff. it is the religious aspect of them that is mainly dwelt upon: their value in the sight of God, and their efficacy for the salvation of men. The view, therefore, that the prophet here speaks in his own name cannot be maintained, although it is no doubt the one that would be most readily suggested if the verses stood alone. So also the further question whether the Servant be the ideal Israel must be considered with due regard to the other places where the same idea is presented (see Appendix, Note I). Here it is only necessary to observe that the conception cannot in any case be applied to Israel as a whole and its sufferings from other nations. We have seen from ch. Isaiah 49:6-7 that the Servant has two spheres of activity, one within Israel, and the other directed to the world at large; and there can be no reasonable doubt that the persecutions referred to belong to the narrower sphere, representing the experience of the godly minority in whom the true ideal of Israel was partly realised, in conflict with their unregenerate fellow-countrymen.