I would ask everyones forgiveness for beginning this post so late. Pauls last contribution appeared on June 16, and this one is now being only begun on June 22 which is nearly the extent of the one-week limitation governing this debate. In the past week, I spent three days in New York City running around with some great friends of mine, eating in fine restaurants, watching musicals and visiting Chelsea. It had been a while since I used a layover in NYC for sightseeing and enjoyment, and since the convergence of so many good friends took place this week, I had to put the computer aside and give some attention to living. It was a wonderful trip, and I got to spend this weekend back in the Tel Aviv sun. The only downfall of the weekend is that I came down with both a toothache (going to the dentist tomorrow [slash this morning]) and a sinus infection that kept me in bed until around 3:30pm on Saturday. Needless to say, I havent felt much like writing and Im now starting this rebuttal at 4:17am hoping to get it finished in time.
As per my regular course, I will first confront some of the things that Paul stated in his last post, things that I think need correcting. This is especially with regard to the use of Hebrew lexicons (and dictionaries in general) and to my view of the suffering servant as a sacrificial lamb something that has clearly been added to my view in my opponents reading of my argument.
Regarding the use of
yadua (ידוע
in Isaiah 53.3 in the phrase
yedua choli (ידוע חולי
, Paul has referred to the Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) lexicon and Geseniuss lexicon to define the root
yod-dalet-ayin (י.ד.ע
as to know, be familiar with, be acquainted with. I would not disagree with this assessment, of course, since it is the basic meaning of the term. However, I would make the following addition:
lexical terms in any language, not just in Hebrew, have their basic meaning that can be changed when they appear in other situations. For example, the verb taste in English simply means to try or test the flavor or quality of something by taking some into the mouth (taken from dictionary.com). No one would disagree that this is the meaning of the word taste. It is clear in the following sentences.
(1) We tasted the apples to see if they were as delicious as we had heard.
(2) I hope some day to taste your mothers pecan pie!
(3) This ice cream is so delicious! You have to taste it!
No speaker of English would disagree with the meaning of this term. However, does this meaning hold up in the following sentences?
(4) Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. (Matt. 16.28 NIV)
(5) It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. (Heb. 6.4-6a NIV)
Would anyone argue that (4) and (5) are using the same meaning of the word taste as (1), (2) and (3)? I dont think so. Yet, this is what Paul is saying that we should do here. We should simply apply the meaning of know to this word, although it is passive in form, appears in the construct and is the only instance of this specific form in the Bible. It certainly does not fit the normal paradigm for the use of this root. In modern Hebrew, this form is used only passively, as in the following.
(6) האדם הזה ידוע כגנב This man is known as a thief.
(7) ידוע לי שחברה זו לא משלמת משכורות כראוי It is known to me that this company does not pay salaries properly.
It is actually odd that
yedua choli would mean someone who
knows sickness rather than someone who
is known (in the passive) to be sickly. Yet, this is how everyone apparently translates the term here in Isa. 53.3.
However, if we are going to consult lexicons, then we must be careful to look and see if there are special remarks regarding the specific form that we are interested in. In this case,
yedua choli appears specifically in the lexicons and should be treated as a special term, much like the use of taste when it means experience. Paul quoted Gesenius in his post, yet Gesenius also has this to say in the same entry:
Isaiah 53:3, יְדוּעַ חֹלִי known to sickness, i.e. bekannt, vertraut mit Krankheit, for the prose expression יָדוּעַ לָחֳלִי [yadua lo-choli], according to others, known by sickness, as being remarkable for suffering and calamities; an especial example of a man afflicted with calamities.
In fact, all of the lexicons, when you go beyond the basic meaning of the root י.ד.ע, display the same meaning that
yedua choli refers to a person who was himself sick and often afflicted with disease. The Even-Shoshan Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary (I have the abridged one-volume edition) reads in the following way for the phrase
yedua choli. My translation follows in italics:
חולני, חלוש, חולה כרוני sickly, frail, chronically ill
Indeed, there can be absolutely no doubt that when Isaiah describes the servant as
yedua choli, he means that the servant is himself plagued with disease. This, again, is not a description that anyone would agree fits Yeshua, and I am unconvinced that a simple reference with regard to the meaning of the root of the word know in Hebrew will change this fact. I am well acquainted with the use of the Hebrew root and have also read further in the definitions provided in the lexicons than just the first line. My opponent would do well to do the same before responding in this way.
[As a less important point, Gesenius also mentions with regard to להפגיע that it means to assail any one with prayers. My opponent surely did not read that far into the lexicon to realize that theres a difference between פגע and הפגיע and that the latter certainly does refer to intercessory prayer, as I stated before. In fact, even the qal form of this root can be used for prayer, as we see in Jer. 7.16.]
This concludes the first point of my response regarding the use of lexicons and how it applies to the phrase
yedua choli in Isa. 53.3. There can be no doubt that the servant described here is both disfigured and diseased. And the second point is to follow straight away.
My opponent has misrepresented me in stating that I would suggest that the servant in Isa. 53.3 is himself a sacrificial lamb. I have never made that statement. I know perfectly well that animals offered in sacrifice in the Temple had to be free of blemish or defect. If I thought that the servant here were to be thought of as a sacrifice, I would have to agree that my presentation of the servant has been one of imperfection and blemish. I am simply representing what the text says that when the people looked at this servant, they were turned away from him. It was like an ugly homeless person who approaches you in the street. Your first reaction is to be shocked (Oh my goodness!) and then you turn away and try to get along as quickly as you can. This is what we are seeing here, a sickly, weak, abused man left for dead in the street people turning their heads when they look at him. And this diseased wretch suddenly becomes glorious and strong! That is the marvel of the onlookers in this song. They are shocked at this change in station.
The servant was not to be a sacrificial lamb. No, indeed. And I am not one who ever made that argument. You can start from my introduction and read until now and never find this concept in anything that I said. What I did say is that the people of Israel were abused, despised and afflicted among the nations; they were thought of as less than human; they were mistreated and ignored; and the nations of the world will be shocked when these people rise from the ashes of despair as has happened even in the last couple of generations of world history.
I do not think this is the time or place to take up the question of the authorship of the gospels, though I will just say that a casual read of Bart Ehrman will be enough to dispel the myths that my opponent is proposing here. Ehrman essentially presents the position of normative scholarship on these questions, even where I would disagree with him. I wont go into the various debates regarding these things, since it would be only a rabbit trail and have nothing to do with the meaning of Isaiah 53. That said, I would like to go further into my interpretation of this chapter.
Chapter 2 of Isaiah gives us an indication about why Israel was punished:
You, LORD, have abandoned your people, the descendants of Jacob. They are full of superstitions from the East; they practice divination like the Philistines and embrace pagan customs. Their land is full of silver and gold; there is no end to their treasures. Their land is full of horses; there is no end to their chariots. Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made. So people will be brought low and everyone humbled do not forgive them. (Isa. 2.6-9 NIV)
Whose sins were Israel copying? They were copying the sins of the East (superstitions), the Philistines (divination), etc. Everything that they were doing was only a reflection of what the rest of the nations were doing. This is the warning we find in the Torah:
Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the foreigners residing among you must not do any of these detestable things, for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you. (Lev. 18.24-29 NIV)
They were warned that if they did any of the detestable things that the nations had done who lived in the land, they would be vomited out just like the peoples who were there before them. Isaiah is simply saying that the promise in the Torah was to be fulfilled that the people had imitated the ways of the nations all around them and would themselves be removed from the land. The land itself would be defiled by their sins and emptied of its inhabitants for the sake of its renewal. But, it was ever and always the sins of Israels neighbors that they were not being punished for, after all that would be the downfall of Israel and bring about its suffering.
The servant is pictured as suffering as a result of the sins of the peoples. Why? Because the nation of Israel adopted the practices of the nations that lived around them. They took up their behaviors and abhorrent practices, and God brought punishment upon them. However, the nations realized that they had committed the same sins, that they were guilty of the very same things. In fact, the righteous among Israel had
never done these things, and yet they underwent the same punishments and did not deserve it. When we look at the servant, we are looking at a people who suffered as the result of the nations sins even if it was ultimately because they themselves copied them and the innocent among them suffered the same fate. Once the wicked were destroyed from Israel, however, the righteous could shine forth.
This destruction of what is unholy from within Israel is mentioned in Isaiah 4.2-6, which speaks of the glory of the return of Israel. Notice that it specifically says that [t]hose who are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called holy (verse 3 NIV). These holy ones did not deserve exile, yet they suffered and were able to make it through without becoming defiled. These are those who are ultimately Gods servants. His servants are not those who sinned but those who are called holy.
The raising up of the servant in the end is the very same thing prophesied in chapter 2 of Isaiah:
In the last days the mountain of the LORDs temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths. The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. (Isa. 2.2-4 NIV)
Just as Isaiah 2 describes the exaltation of Israel, so chapter 53 describes the exaltation of the servant. The picture of the servants exaltation because he does the will of God and does not commit the sins of the nations round about is completed in chapter 54, where we hear the following call:
Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities. (Isa. 54.2-3 NIV)
The LORD will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit a wife who married young, only to be rejected, says your God. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you, says the LORD your Redeemer. (Isa. 54.6-8 NIV)
Afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted, I will rebuild you with stones of turquoise, your foundations with lapis lazuli. I will make your battlements of rubies, your gates of sparkling jewels, and all your walls of precious stones. All your children will be taught by the LORD, and great will be their peace. In righteousness you will be established: Tyranny will be far from you; you will have nothing to fear. Terror will be far removed; it will not come near you. If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing; whoever attacks you will surrender to you. (Isa. 54.11-15 NIV)
