Isaiah 42:1–4 in Its Rhetorical Context

By Gene R. Smillie

[Gene R. Smillie is a theological education consultant with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Wheaton, Illinois.]

Both traditional historical-critical methods of exegesis and more recent rhetorical methods emphasize the importance of hearing the biblical text as closely as possible to the way it was originally heard in order to understand what the author was saying. To preserve the original rhetorical effect of the text of Isaiah, one must read forward, and not backwards, following the direction of the author’s rhetoric, at his selected pace, and not read back into the text something Isaiah had not yet identified.

This article proposes that a major factor driving Isaiah 40–55 is the author’s artistic ability to delay full explanation till later. He intentionally suspended full revelation of his external referent in the Servant songs and salvation oracles. He deliberately heightened the suspense by only gradually revealing more and more about that person (or persons), sharpening the focus by increments, so that the one on whom salvation depends comes into view little by little.

It is disconcerting, therefore, to read a commentator like Gitay, in what purportedly is a rhetorical analysis of Isaiah 41–42, referring seventeen times to “Cyrus” (whom he proposes as the referent of “the Servant” in those chapters), when Isaiah himself did not mention Cyrus by name until the end of chapter 44.[1] He ignores devices such as the interrogative מִי (“who?”), which Isaiah used sixty-three times to arouse curiosity or pose rhetorical questions. Gitay identifies with confidence referents that Isaiah himself apparently preferred to leave open. But to break Isaiah’s carefully created suspense with such “give-aways” is like sneaking into the family closet and opening all the Christmas presents two weeks before the holiday. Moreover, apart from aesthetic considerations there is the possibility that such guesses may be wrong.[2] Interpreters who do this sort of thing often blunder over nuances that the author has subtly crafted in order to prolong ambiguity for his own rhetorical purposes.

New Testament-oriented students of the Old Testament bring to the study of the Hebrew Scriptures certain theological dispositions and preunderstandings that color and perhaps ultimately determine the results of their exegesis. One may seek to understand what Isaiah 42:1–4 says and how without predetermining where interpretation of this well-known passage “must” be going, but admittedly the prospect of achieving such objectivity is daunting. Calvin, for example, began, developed, and ended his exposition of Isaiah 42:1–4 with exclusive reference to Jesus Christ.[3] That quintessential Christian exegete’s treatment of the prophetic passage is not unique, however. Matthew’s Gospel recites the entire Isaiah 42:1–4 pericope (in a peculiar version similar, but not identical, to the Septuagint) and specifically says that it was fulfilled in the ministry of Jesus (Matt. 12:18–21). This earliest of Christian interpretations of the passage is, for the canonically oriented, both definitive and authoritative. So an avowedly Christian exegete may not simply ignore or deny his own predisposition to interpret the text Christologically and proceed as if he were actually objective, when in reality his understanding of a passage like Isaiah 42:1–4 is irrevocably stamped with Matthew’s canonical interpretation of it.

But any exegete can approach the text inductively, attempting to follow the author as closely as possible, trying not to run ahead of him, and listening to the text as if one were a “first reader.” As an exercise in such hermeneutical restraint, this study first explores Isaiah 42:1–4 and then proceeds to the immediate context of the Book of Isaiah, focusing particularly on chapters 40–45, in which 42:1–4 plays a central and pivotal part.

Delimitation of the Pericope

Why isolate 42:1–4 as a literary unit? True, it is close syntactically to the immediately preceding verses, 41:28–29 (discussed later).

And 42:5–7 seems to continue the discourse begun in verse 1, treating the same subject. However, verses 1–4 describe the servant in the third person, while verses 5–7 address the servant by using the second person. Though the person described in verses 1–4 is the same as the one addressed in verses 5–7, the ambiguous use of the second person in the latter verses and those following them enabled Isaiah to make a strategic shift here.

After bringing the focus back from the servant to God Himself in verse 5, Isaiah changed to the second-person address in verse 6, while retaining the servant of verses 1–4 as the subject matter of the discourse. Similarly verse 8 brings the reader’s attention back to God. “I am YHWH…and my glory to another I will not give”[4] (a statement that succinctly articulates the rhetorical message of the entire Book of Isaiah and thus illumines smaller components like 42:1–4). This too is followed by the second-person address, which can lead the reader into the illusion that in verse 8 one is still on the same track as in verses 1–4 and 6–7. But such is not the case. Rather, the poet smoothly moved on, returning to the second-person address that had Israel as its object since 40:1, and that the writer used throughout the rest of chapter 42 and into 43. Thus the description of “My servant” in 42:1–4 and the words addressed to that person in verses 5–7 form a subtle, easily overlooked parenthesis from the rest of the passage in which these verses are found.

“Behold!”: Connections with the Previous Context

The very nature of the word, ן, the first word of the section (“Behold!” 42:1), immediately calls for attention. Derived from the more familiar הִנֵּה, it deliberately focuses the eye and ear on the subject or message that immediately follows. It is the literary equivalent of the interjection “Now listen to this!” that a public speaker might use. But it is more than that. Isaiah often used הִנֵּה to set up a solemn pronouncement, usually about the immediate, near, or distant future (e.g., the well-known virgin birth announcement in 7:14). But in the early part of the book he used it predominantly with predictions of devastation coming from God’s hand (3:1; 10:33; 13:17; 17:1; 19:1; 22:17; 24:1; 39:6). The reader soon becomes conditioned by this usage to cringe when reading this word in Isaiah, and unconsciously expects something unpleasant to follow.[5]

However, when the suffix נִי is added to it, as in 28:16; 29:14; 38:5; and 43:19, and the implicit accusative sense of the suffix is extrapolated into the translation of הִנְנִי (“Behold me!”), the color of the expression has greatly altered: it now raises hope, as one is called to “look to YHWH.”[6]

Similarly, when הִנֵּה is shortened to ן—as in 42:1 and 41:11—the reader may note that the devastation he or she had come to associate with הִנֵּה earlier in the book is displaced. In 41:11, 15, 27, and 42:1 ן or הִנֵּה introduces a positive message, and in 41:24 and 29 ן introduces a negative message. This rhythmic alternation alerts the reader to an apparent change in mood, after the earlier usage of הִנֵּה which usually announces devastation.

In 40:15 ן occurs twice, to invite the reader to behold, on the one hand, the puniness of the nations and, on the other hand, the One who sifts islands like dust between His fingers. This double use of ן brings out the contrast in scope as the reader is invited to visualize—behold!—first one, then the other. In 41:29 and 42:1 Isaiah again employed the double use of ן to pose a similar contrast. As in 40:15, ן is used to compare the relative weakness or insignificance of one group of entities with the magnificent strength of another. The first ן in 41:29, introduces the emptiness and worthlessness of idolatrous counselors or (political?) advisers, while the second ן in 42:1 introduces a figure who, possessing power to enact justice, is precisely the opposite of those to whom attention was called by the first ן in the couplet. Though divided by a chapter and verse break in modern versions, these are sequential lines.[7]

Other rhetorical and linguistic relations bind the last verse of chapter 41 and the first verse of 42 together as well. For example רוּחַ occurs in the pair of verses with contrasted senses, involving a semantic shift of immense import. Every beginning Hebrew student is intrigued by the polysemy of רוּחַ, which means both wind (hence breath and spirit) as well as Spirit. For an artist demonstrating Isaiah’s compact verbal mastery, it cannot be merely coincidental that God said of the first parties in 41:29 that their worthless molten images are רוּחַ וָוֹתהוּ (wind and emptiness), while He said of the second party in the next line, “I have put My Spirit [רוּחִי] upon him” (42:1).[8] Such a deliberate contrasting usage of the same word within two sequential lines, with two opposite connotations, would not escape the readers of this text; it subtly reinforces the differences between the parties contrasted in these two verses.

Another rhetorical connection between 42:1 and what immediately precedes it is that 41:28 says וְרֶא, “and I looked,” while 42:1 has ן, “Look!”[9] In 41:28, there is no one—no man (ין אִישׁ), no counselor (ין ין יןחּ)—to do all that is desired. In contrast, when 42:1 says, “Look!” a striking figure is described. The idea is, “Look there. Nothing or no one is to be seen, only an emptiness of blowing wind (רוּחַ וָוֹתהוּ). Look here, on the other hand.” Then a powerful person appears, described in detail. The contrast is stark, and fully intended.

Behold Whom?

The word ן is a clear rhetorical invitation for readers to direct their attention to what follows. Behold what, then? “Behold My servant” (ן עַבְדִּי). Interpretation of 42:1–4 revolves around this עֶבֶד. Who is he?

But is this the proper question? Should readers expect to answer the question at this point in the passage if Isaiah has not done so?

If Isaiah has chosen not to be explicit about the identity of the עֶבֶד, but rather to hold that in suspense, readers must follow his rhetorical pace, recognizing this as a deliberate rhetorical device fostering a specific purpose. To avoid prematurely exploding the device by pretending to have outrun the messenger and to have arrived at a full understanding of his message before he himself has delivered it, in the enigmatic form in which Isaiah has chosen to couch it, certain restrictions must be noted. Interpreters must content themselves at this point in the unrolling of the Isaiah scroll to observe first what he said of the person in the four verses of 42:1–4, and second, how that may relate thematically to other occurrences of the same words or concepts in the near context.[10]

The Nature of the Servant Described in 42:1–4

One reason 42:1 is chosen as a starting point (though, as noted earlier, it bears close connections of vocabulary and syntax with 41:29) is that a change of persons, similar to the one at the end of the pericope, takes place at the beginning of it. In this case the change is from addressing a servant—Israel—in the second person in chapter 41, to describing what seems to be a different servant in 42:1–4 in the third person, as an object to be contemplated.

The contrasts between these two figures are articulated by the poet by phonetic phenomena as well as by imagery and vocabulary. The repeated soft guttural א and ע sounds of the personal address of 41:8–10, for example, and all its suffixes on the verbs there, are not in 42:1–4. Nor are the contrasting hard consonantal ז, צ, and כ in verbs in chapter 41 that describe the process of strengthening, hardening, steeling, and forming Israel as the servant for vengeance on her enemies. In chapter 41 the speech is condescending: do not fear, my poor little worm, I will transform you, harden you, make you into a threshing sledge, annihilate those who threaten you, and so forth. But the person presented in 42:1–4 does not need all that; the figure readers are invited to behold in 42:1–4 needs no strengthening, no forming: he is a finished product (thus the ן).

The subject of transformation from one form into another appears frequently throughout Isaiah, whether it be craftsmen making wood into idols, the redeemed beating swords into plowshares, the desert turned into a garden (or vice versa), rough places made smooth, hills made valleys, dry land turned into fountains, and others. This subject is used for the Jacob servant each time he appears, because, as readers are led to understand, he must be transformed in order to be useful. But the figure in 42:1–4 stands in stark contrast to the cringing, fearful “worm” in 41:14 who had to be first comforted, then strengthened, and finally transformed by God into a hardened, useful tool (vv. 15–16) before he could be utilized. The servant in 42:1–4 is so strong that some have translated אֶתְמָךְ־בּוֹ in verse 1 as “on whom I lean” (rather than “whom I uphold,” the more common understanding). Though this is unlikely, it would be poetically and syntactically symmetrical with the next clause, “in whom my soul delights.” In either case both clauses portray the servant here as a source of joy for God, whereas the other servant is portrayed as the object of God’s condescension, and His mercies, affections, and ministrations.

The servant of chapter 42 is first described in verses 1–3 according to his manner of treating others. Then his own stalwart character is described in verse 4. His clearly prescribed task—to bring forth and then establish justice (מִשְׁפָּט)—is stated three times in the short span of four verses (vv. 1d, 3c, 4b).

The strength of the servant in 42:1–4 is tempered by his unusual gentleness and restraint. To show what he would not do, Isaiah paraded a series of seven occurrences of וֹּא (“no,” or “not”) in three verses (vv. 2–4), each time with imperfect verbs. He will not comport himself in the manner of a harsh tyrant or bully. He is exactly not what one would expect, given the hardening process in 41:9–16, a toughening that the Israelite would naturally see as preparation for vengeful forcefulness. He does not raise his voice or cry out or make his voice heard in the streets (three different verbs piled one on the other in verse 2 for emphasis). And his policy toward the weak and vulnerable is extraordinarily merciful, tender, and evenhanded: “A bruised reed he will not crush, and a dimly burning wick he will not snuff out” (v. 3).

This becomes even more poignant when one compares the two agricultural motifs associated with the two servant figures. The servant in 41:15–16 was made into a new iron threshing sledge with sharp double edges—a fearsome plowing and earth-ripping instrument designed for tearing up the sod, threshing mountains, pulverizing earthen hills, and reducing them to powdery rubble. But readers are astonished to find that in stark contrast the servant in 42:3 will not break off even a single reed, and not even one that is already bruised! Two more opposite applications of the agricultural motif can hardly be imagined.

This particular contrast—the strong and the gentle together—has been prefigured in 40:10–11 by the twofold contrasting depiction of the arm of God Himself as first mighty and powerful (v. 10) and then as the tender, gentle bearer of His lambs (v. 11). The reappearance here in 42:3 of this strong but gentle one aligns the servant depicted here closely with God’s own character. The earlier impression of incongruity, when considered alongside the vengeful destructive servant motif of 41:15–25, is reinforced.

The poet continued his depiction of the merciful nature of the servant in 42:3 by a second parallel image: “and a dimly burning wick he will not snuff out.” Isaiah assured the smooth flow of the twin clauses of verse 3 by the use of assonance: the two complementary sounding words קָנֶה (“reed”) in the first clause and הָה (“dim”) in the second clause are linked with the intermediary words יִשְׁבּוֹר וּפִשְׁתָּה that come along in sequence one after the other, oral affinities readily heard in the Hebrew. The two uses of וֹּא, one in each clause, naturally balance the sounds of the two halves of the line. A textual problem is in the final word of the line. If the Qumran text’s יכבה is original, then the verbs in the two half lines are quite similar in syllabic rhythm, and the ב in each final (accented) syllable resounds: יִשְׁבּוֹר and יְכַה. On the other hand the Masoretic reading יְכַבֶּנָּה, with the feminine suffix, contains the threefold repeated aah sound in the second half of the line, which quietly “sighs” in poetic meter: וּפִשְׁתָּה הָה וֹּא יְכַבֶּנָּה. In either case the soft undulating rhythm and assonance in verse 3 conveys the tone of the content nearly as effectively as do the images evoked by the same words.

Isaiah pressed into service a slight semantic shift in his use of the root כהה (“dim, faint, weak”). In verse 3 it is the dimly flickering (הָה) wick (someone else) that the servant will not quench. But in the very next line verse 4 says that he himself will not dimly flicker (יִכְהֶה), that is, he will not become disheartened or discouraged. The two are also wed by the similar sounds of רָצוּחּ (v. 3a) and יָרוּחּ (v. 4a), and of הָה (v. 3b) and יִכְהֶה (v. 4a), both associated with לאֹ.11

Beside these features stands a more obvious and striking rhetorical one—the use of repetition within the four-verse unit. Isaiah clearly chose this device for emphasis here. As already noted, these verses include the sevenfold לאֹ (“he will not”) in verses 2–4, the three variations of “will-not-yell-loudly” in verse 2, and the repetition, using two different but perfectly parallel images, of the idea of not utterly crushing or quenching a wounded spirit in verse 3. But the most significant of all the repetitions in verses 1–4 is probably מִשְׁפָּט (“justice”), a word that appears throughout the entire Isaiah scroll but now comes into focus three times in verses 1–4. The servant of the Lord will establish מִשְׁפָּט.

In analyzing these details it is easy to overlook the powerful rhetorical effect on the readers from reading not merely the word מִשְׁפָּט, but also the entire affirmative phrase “He will bring forth (or establish) justice” repeated three times in four verses. As Isaiah developed this portrait of the servant in verses 1–4, he culminated each successive descriptive stage with this ringing theme, like a chorus, before going on to describe the next aspect of the servant, which, in turn, he also climaxes with the same outward-looking mission statement each time, “He will bring forth justice … he will bring forth justice … he will establish justice.”

In most of the forty occurrences of מִשְׁפָּט in Isaiah 1–66 it has a positive quality.[12] The very last use of the word in Isaiah (61:8) brings the prophet’s usage elsewhere into perspective. In the context of the joyous and full celebration of the culmination of God’s plan for His people, Isaiah wrote, “I, the Lord, love justice.” It would be difficult to read a negative nuance into this word in that context; it also seems out of place to see a negative connotation in 42:1, 3–4. This would especially be the case in verse 4 where it is followed directly, and paired syntactically, with eager expectancy for the servant’s law.[13]

The content of 42:1–4 is calculated to surprise the Israelite hearer and to introduce cognitive dissonance by challenging assumptions raised earlier (in 41:8–16, e.g., as already noted). The scope of the servant’s ministry of מִשְׁפָּט introduced here is another example. When the word was first read in verse 1 it would undoubtedly trigger certain expectations in the reader. But then the very next word, לַגּוֹיִם, reverses those assumptions. That the servant would bring forth justice for the [pagan] nations is not what the reader would have expected.[14]

Isaiah did the same thing again in verse 4c. While the Law (תּוֹרָה) was not a particular concern of Isaiah’s, occurring only twelve times in the whole work (three of which are in this chapter—verses 4, 21, 24), when תּוֹרָה does occur, the reader would naturally expect it to have reference to Israel. However, here in verse 4 it is followed by אִיִּים יֲיַילוּ, an astonishing reversal of the reader’s expectation: “for his Torah the coastlands wait expectantly.”[15]

There are more surprises. The concept of “waiting patiently [and longingly] for divine action” (v. 4) recalls the promise in 40:31 (“But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength”). Though the verbs for waiting differ (קָוָה in 40:31, and יָחַל in 42:4), both statements allude to the promise of renewal. In 40:31 it is for those who wait on God, and 42:4 refers to those who wait for the servant’s Torah. What catches readers off guard is the implication that the promise, or at least the description of those who hope to realize it, has those outside Israel as its referent.

Who are “the coastlands” (אִיִּים)? This word occurs four times in this chapter alone, seven times in chapters 40–42, seventeen times in Isaiah (which accounts for nearly half of the thirty-nine occurrences in the Old Testament). So it is evidently of no small importance in this context. From a Jerusalem writer’s point of view they would be Philistia, Phoenicia (Tyre/Sidon), Lebanon, Syria—those nations who were still intact at the time of this eighth-century document, and who, along with Judah were parts of the western alliance against the Assyrian threat. If, as some commentators hold, this part of Isaiah was written in the late sixth century, there would be no more coastlands, in the sense of sovereign nations who had existed there before. Sargon II sacked Tyre in the late eighth century, carried off Syrians, and demolished the western alliance, and then Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in the early sixth century finished off the annihilation of coastal entities, including Philistia and Sidon. The expression used here would be meaningless by the time of a hypothetical “second Isaiah” living in exile in Babylon or Persia. But at the time of the prophet Isaiah, from around 730 to about 680 b.c., the referent of “coastlands” would have been the peripheral nations around Judah who looked to her—and to her God, perhaps—to preserve them from the genocidal madness of Assyrian plunderers like Tiglath-Pileser and his son Shalmaneser, and his son Sargon II, and finally, Sennacherib.

The poetic sense of אִיִּים would be as a synecdoche for people on the fringes outside of but near to the community of God’s people: those who surrounded the people of God but did not consider themselves—and were not considered by the nation of Israel to be—part of the covenant circle, yet who hoped to gain some benefit from their association with Israel. The poet’s rhetorically loaded use of אִיִּים in 42:4 alludes to the wide scope of the mission of God’s servant portrayed in verses 1–4. Even these “marginal peoples” expectantly waited to see God’s chosen one establish justice, and set in place the structures to maintain that righteous equilibrium. Thus 42:1–4 ends with reference to a much wider panoply of people who are waiting for God, who are hoping that the “comfort-my-people” discourse begun at 40:1 may yet include them.

Such hope is bolstered by the deliberate omission of any mention of Jacob or of Israel in this whole section. Nowhere in this context is Jacob or Israel named until in verse 24, whereas on most other occasions in this section of Isaiah where עַבְדִּי (“My servant”) is used, Jacob and/or Israel is mentioned (41:8–9; 44:1–2, 21; 45:4; 49:3). The editors of the Septuagint, evidently noticing this “omission,” added both “Jacob” and “Israel” to 42:1. But this pericope is different from those other “My servant” passages in another special way: elsewhere “My servant” is usually addressed in the second person. “Jacob, My servant” is vocative where it appears in Isaiah, but this is not the case with the servant in 42:1–4.

These and other differences that emerge between this servant and what readers had been prepared to expect, on the basis of 41:8–16 just preceding this section, send the interpreter outside the pericope in order to see the place of 42:1–4 in light of the overall context.

An Overview of the Servant(s) in Isaiah 40–53

The focus of literary attention in these chapters appears to be like a motion picture sequence that begins with the camera’s aperture open as wide as possible for the opening scene, a very wide-angled panoramic view. Then the camera narrows its focus closer, until eventually only one figure is present at the center of the image. Thus the camera, panning widely at chapter 40, captures the cosmic magnitude of the divine point of view: nations appear like microscopic dust (40:15) in the hand of God who sits above the vault of the earth (v. 22). Then the picture gradually narrows in focus, first to the neighbor nations of “the coastlands” (41:1–7), the western allies of Israel, and then to one nation among them, Jacob, who thereafter is portrayed as an individual, the servant of God, in 41:8–16 and elsewhere.

Starting with 42:1–7 and reappearing intermittently thereafter, another servant image begins to distinguish itself from the initial servant image of 41:8–16. This second image is of a more noble nature than the first servant described. He is strong, self-reliant, service-oriented, one in whom God delights. As such, he forms a contrast to the weak, dependent, vengeful, and self-gratifying first servant, who is also frequently described as a recalcitrant sinner.

Isaiah alternated the appearances of these two similarly designated but clearly different servants in chapters 41–53, something like a flashing strobe light, and he repeatedly used the same pair of terms for each of them (“My servant,” and “My chosen one”). So it is not immediately obvious that they are to be distinguished from each another. In fact a vast majority of interpreters of Isaiah assume only one servant. But while the descriptions of the original servant remain the same—dependent, weak, sinful, an object of condescending mercy by God, and therefore easy for the reader to identify with (as depicted in 41:8–16; 42:18–44:25; 45:4; 46:3–13; 48:1–12, 18–21; 49:13–26; 51:17–52:12)—the portrayal of the second figure becomes more precise, more noble, and rather more difficult to see one’s self in, as his profile comes gradually into focus, though not always with the term “servant” attached (42:1–7; 44:26; 48:14–16; 49:1–12; 50:4–51:16; 52:13–53:12).

The reader begins to differentiate between the image with which he or she can easily identify, with its pathetic weaknesses, and the other strong, noble, truly servant image, a comparison the reader instinctively knows himself not to be worthy of. By chapter 52 the first servant image no longer vies for the center of Isaiah’s focus but quietly recedes from view, leaving the spotlight to the principal, the true Servant. That one emerges into clear relief in chapters 49, 52, and 53, and accomplishes vicariously what the earlier servant could not.

Adjustments in the Reader’s Self-View Leading to Adjustments in the View of the Servant

Reading this particular pericope in its canonical sequence, first readers of the text would have felt a series of “shocks” from the jolting cognitive dissonance deliberately introduced by Isaiah, resulting in certain adjustments in their view of both themselves and the servant(s) described in Isaiah 40–55. Readers of the text of Isaiah would have experienced a number of things.

First, they would have comfort in the midst of affliction by being designated עַמִּי (“My people,” 40:1), as they were singled out from among the anonymous mass of nations in chapter 40, for special attention.

Second, they would experience swelling pride and great satisfaction at being designated “Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, offspring of Abraham My friend” (41:8), and hearing of the vengeance that Israel will wreak on the other nations, as Israel threshes them like a sharp iron sledge (vv. 11–16).

Third, they would have been startled on reading in 42:1–7 that “My servant” is a meek and evenhanded Ruler who will establish justice and have a salvific ministry not only for Israel but also for the nations.

Fourth, they would have reevaluated their self-image as God described them in 42:18–25 as the very epitome of the willful, stubborn, deaf, and blind sinner. They could no longer perpetuate the illusion, perhaps fostered by chapters 40 and 41, that there was some intrinsic merit in them that attracted God’s favor. They must adjust their view of what it means to be chosen and what it means for God to consider them “My servant.”

Fifth, they would have rejoiced in Isaiah’s return in chapter 43 to the theme of God’s graciousness to Jacob, singling him out again from among the masses (43:9) as God’s own “witnesses” (v. 10), followed by the more familiar, in fact nearly formulaic phrase, “and My servant whom I have chosen.”

Sixth, they would begin to realize that God’s choice of Israel as His servant and witnesses of His righteous character and acts, was not based on their merit. In fact 43:22–28 clearly reminded the initial hearers that they had failed to fulfill their part of the relationship. Rather than call on God, they had wearied of Him (v. 22) and burdened Him with their sins to the point of wearying Him with their iniquities (v. 24). He finally pronounced judgment: “I have handed over Jacob to destruction, and Israel to reviling” (v. 28).

Seventh, they would see again that in the very next verse (44:1), they were referred to as “Jacob My servant, and Israel My chosen one.” This would again call for an adjustment, following as it does hard on the heels of the harsh pronouncement in 43:28. Yet after the repeated reminders of their sinful nature, the readers of Isaiah would no longer be surprised by the juxtaposition of sinfulness and servanthood. The patent incongruity between the nature of the object of God’s affection (the sinful servant) and the persistence of His love and devotion is difficult to comprehend. But the theme is repeated so often in Isaiah that it eventually becomes the backbone of the rhetoric.

Eighth, they would read again of this anomaly in 44:21. There “you are My servant, Israel” is expressed, not once, but twice in poetic parallel form—just before God pronounced that He has “rolled away their transgressions like a cloud.” This simile is also repeated, in poetic parallel form, “and your sins like a heavy mist.”

These two pairs of affirmations in 44:21–22 underline the incongruity of the oxymoronic concept “sinful servant”; yet at the same time they assert the reality of it. If there be any doubt as to the waywardness of the would-be servant, the final clause of verse 22 invites that one to “return to Me, for I have redeemed you.”

Ninth, they would read in chapter 45 of God’s saving action on behalf of His people, specifically naming the agent Cyrus to whom He would give power and authority, and ultimately would use to bring liberation to Israel. Interestingly, though many have attempted to interpolate כוֹרֶשׁ (“Cyrus”) from 44:28 and 45:1 back into earlier servant passages as their referent, Cyrus was never called a servant when his name was mentioned.[16] In fact the only place where the term עֶבֶד is associated with the name of Cyrus is where he was told that it was “for the sake of Jacob My servant and for the sake of Israel My chosen one” that he was called (45:4).

Once again Jacob is humbled; he is a mere recipient of grace. But Cyrus is humbled too. In view of the entirely instrumental role attributed to כוֹרֶשׁ in 44:28–45:5, a role of which he was apparently not even aware (45:4–5), it is difficult to comprehend why so many recent commentators find that personage to be the key that explains everything from chapter 40 on, as if the rhetorical purpose of Isaiah 40–48 were to persuade Israel to rejoice in and rally around Cyrus the Persian! If anything, the condescending language of 45:2–7 has as its purpose to strip כוֹרֶשׁ, and along with him Jacob, of any delusions of aggrandizement and to let readers know that the only real actor here is God.

The real function of כוֹרֶשׁ here was to do vicarious work; he was called to do something on behalf of someone else. This is developed in chapters 49–53 into a major (perhaps the major) theme of the entire book. But there were intimations of this back in 42:1–4, the principal focus of this article. The purpose of Isaiah’s introducing this idea already at that point was to create cognitive dissonance in hearers disposed, after hearing 41:8–16, to think rather too highly of themselves. By prefiguring in 42:1–7 a theme he was to pursue several chapters later, Isaiah has prepared the readers well in advance for what would follow.

Tenth, the readers would note that chapter 46 elaborates the promise of God’s salvation, a promise all the more astonishing when coupled with the unworthiness of its sinner-beneficiaries. Chapter 47 is an excursus on Babylon. When the prophet’s attention moved back to Israel in chapter 48, he elaborated on and summed up the moral bankruptcy of Israel. What the prophet had alluded to in earlier passages he now spelled out unmistakably: the people of God, even if they are designated “His servant, His chosen one,” are not called this because they are worthy of it. The exact opposite is the case. God will act on their behalf only because of His own worth, for His own name’s sake (48:11).

The stark contrast between Israel the servant and God the beneficent Redeemer comes to its culmination in chapter 48. God commanded the word to go out, to proclaim throughout the earth that He has redeemed “His servant Jacob” (48:20). By this time, no further self-deluding pride is possible. Hearing “the Lord has redeemed His servant Jacob,” that servant receives the message with quiet humility. It has now become clear that the design of the author in chapters 40–48 had a double-edged purpose: to give his readers hope, and to recast the source of this hope.

It has taken eight chapters, but Isaiah has been able to alter the readers’ understanding of “My servant, My chosen one.” He did so by first presenting that chosen servant with characteristics different from those Israel was disposed to expect (42:1–4). He then challenged the readers’ self-understanding in the subsequent passages, pushing them even further, to the point of self-doubt, by starkly portraying the blindness, stubbornness, and incorrigible sinfulness of Jacob the servant, bringing the reader to the conviction that “we are not worthy of the term ‘My servant, My chosen one.’ Someone else will have to be that person; the true referent of ‘My servant, My chosen one’ must be someone else.”

And this is precisely what Isaiah had been working toward, this voluntary recognition on the part of the readers that, while God calls Israel His servant, they were not ultimately those who would bear that title with deserved dignity. Someone else must bear the weight both of this responsibility and of its glory. The intended effect of the rhetoric of Isaiah 40–48 is to disabuse Israel (and any subsequent readers of this text) of the delusion that God’s choice of Jacob is because of superior value inherent in that servant.[17]

Now the reader may hear chapters 49 and following with humility and true understanding. When the Servant speaks in the first person for the first time in 49:1–6, it is clear that this one is not the same as the servant in earlier references. If God deigned to call Jacob His servant, it was a status of which Israel was not worthy. As readers overhear in 49:1–7 the conversation between the true Servant and the One who chose Him, they recall the ambiguity they experienced when they first heard 42:1–7, right after 41:8–16, and wondered for a brief moment whether the referent might be someone different from Israel.

Now that initial self-doubt has blossomed into certainty; there must be at least two referents for עַבְדִּי. The referent in 42:1–7 and 49:1–7, and in chapters 52 and 53, must be someone exceedingly different in character, purpose, and nature, from the willfully blind, stubborn servant so vividly portrayed in 42:18–25. The latter is described as so laden with sin that all he can do is receive the finished work of God—or of this other Servant—on his behalf. This other One is described three times in 42:1–4 as bringing forth and establishing universal divine justice. He obviously is someone like Yahweh in character.

Notes

1. Jehoshua Gitay, “Prophecy and Persuasion: A Study of Isaiah 40–48, ” Forum Theologiae Linguisticae 14 (1981): 10-45, 91–132.
2. Along with Gitay other writers interpret “the Servant” in Isaiah 41–48 as Cyrus the Persian. That view has been predominant in Isaiah scholarship in recent years. See the ample bibliography on this matter in John D. W. Watts, Isaiah 34–66, Word Biblical Commentary 25 (Waco, TX: Word, 1987), 115–18.
3. John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, trans. William Pringle (reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), 3:281–92.
4. All Scripture quotations are the author’s translations, unless noted otherwise.
5. Eugene Peterson typically translates this as “Watch it!” in his contemporary language translation, The Message (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2000).
6. E. Kautzch, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, 2nd Eng. ed.; rev. and trans. A. E. Cowley (Oxford: Clarendon, 1910), 469–70. Kautzch recognizes, however, that the normal usage of the suffix with הִנֵּה is to project it into the nominative for the verb that follows.
7. Verse 41:29 could easily be written on one line of the Hebrew text in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, and thus 42:1 would be the second line of this single couplet, putting the two in a more visible sequence, as they are in 40:15. Isaiah’s rhetorical effect would be better preserved, perhaps, if 41:29 were printed in one line directly above 42:1 and aligned with it. In this way the repetition and parallelism at the beginning of the two verses would be visible to the eye, “ behold one … and behold the other.”
8. The New American Standard Bible, New King James Version, and the Segond (French), among others, capitalize “Spirit.” While the Revised Standard Version does not, the first person singular possessive suffix makes the implication clear. In 61:1 Isaiah’s usage of רוּחַ for the Spirit of God is unambiguous.
9. The Vulgate has “et vidi.”
10. From here in chapter 42 Isaiah moved eventually toward the majestic Servant songs in chapters 52–53, and the resultant opening out of the realm of servanthood to include those outside Israel (56:6). And Isaiah culminated with a glorious description of the eschatological destiny of the one he called “My servant” (עַבְדִּי) in chapters 65–66.
11. The Qumran reading of verse 3b also contains assonance in the words לא יכבה and לא יכהה (vv. 3b, 4a).
12. Watts, however, says מִשְׁפָּט has a negative emotional meaning of judgment, often translated “verdict” (Isaiah 34–66, 119). Cf. Peter Enns, “מִשְׁפָּט,” in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. Willem VanGemeren (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 2:1142–44.
13. Such enthusiastic expectancy does not correspond with Watts’s fearful verdict terminology.
14. Wolfgang Iser shows how a writer may deliberately increase the effectiveness of his or her own communication process by anticipating the reader’s probable response and either using that to further the author’s own argument, or reversing the raised expectation by saying exactly the opposite of what the reader had come to anticipate, and thus magnifying (through shock) the impact of what the writer is affirming (“Narrative Strategies as a Means of Communication,” in Interpretation of Narrative, ed. Mario Valdés and Owen Miller [Toronto: University Press, 1978], 100–117). It seems that Isaiah employed the second of these literary strategies in 42:1–4.
15. In both the other references close by, verses 21 and 24, Isaiah clearly spelled out the fact that that though God had made the Law great and glorious, Israel had not kept the Law. So there is coherence between the surprising message at the beginning of the chapter and later elaboration of the theme of the Law toward the end of the chapter.
16. The terms qualifying כוֹרֶשׁ are וֹרעִי (“My shepherd”) in 44:28 and מְשִׁיחוֹ (“His annointed one”) in 45:1.
17. Isaiah’s intention, as seen in this rhetorical structure, was to reveal God’s incomparable faithfulness and reliability as Savior of Israel and also to “break the bubble” of illusory inherent self-worth and self-congratulatory election in a readership all too ready to see itself as the specially favored servant of Yahweh. From this reading of the suasive forms and content of chapters 40–55 it is possible to extrapolate to the kind of audience addressed. Would the people who needed such a message be the chastened, humbled remnant of straggling pilgrims returning to Judah in 537 b.c. after seventy years of punitive exile? Or perhaps a later generation, dressed in moth-eaten rags, admonished by Haggai to buck up and take courage, or perhaps those Judeans whom Malachi upbraided several generations after that for offering crippled animals in minimalist sacrificial duty? None of those later generations of dwellers in the land would have suffered from delusions of grandeur, nor would they have needed the corrections in Isaiah 40–48, nor would exiled Jews living in Babylon or Persia. Most of them in either geographic location would not in fact have been able to appreciate or even understand—let alone compose!—the exalted literary Hebrew of Isaiah. It seems that the further away one gets from the traditional Sitz im Leben of Isaiah the less satisfactorily the rhetorical matters explored in this article are explained. On the other hand the view that the book was written to address opulent Israel of the Golden Age of the eighth century just before the chaotic decade of its fall and Judah in the relative affluence of Hezekiah’s time provides a backdrop that corresponds directly to the internal coherence of the text. In this light the rhetorical structure of chapters 40–48 interprets quite naturally the Sennacherib incident related in chapters 38–39 that precedes it. As a victory song celebrating (on a primary level) deliverance from the Assyrian threat, Isaiah 40–55 ascribes salvation to Yahweh Himself, through His Servant, and takes care to differentiate that Servant from the other one, so that the servant who is redeemed might not arrogate to himself the power and the glory that rightfully belong only to the other figure, who is first glimpsed in 42:1–4.