Isaiah 52-53 ~ Israel or The Messiah? - part 2
This is a second post critiquing an exposition of Isaiah 52-54 that one can find here -http://www.thehebrewcafe.com/articles/isaiah_52-54.pdf
http://www.thehebrewcafe.com/articles/isaiah_52-54.pdf
In the first post we looked at the writer's argument that the context of chapters 52 and 53 proved his assertion that “My Servant” refers only to the people of Israel. Now I want to look at the writer's linguistic justifications for this argument.
First, let's put away completely any notion that we do not understand that the third person singular is often used in Isaiah and elsewhere in The Bible to speak of the people of Israel as a collective. No serious, thinking person has any problem understanding this. The problem is with claiming that in this portion of scripture it never refers to an individual. The writer puts forward an argument based on making all uses of he, him, his, fit to refer to Israel/Jacob the people. Fair enough. To my mind this 'fitting' is linguistically/stylistically stretched and strained. The crucial point is that nowhere does he give any linguistic reason why an individual person may not be meant.
Now let's look at what the the writer says on page 18 of his thesis referring to verse 15 of Isaiah 52, ''The word translated here as “sprinkle” should be “startle. ''. I've read christian commentaries which say the same thing. I would like to know how those commentators and the writer explain the use of this verb in Isaiah 63:3 and Leviticus 16:14 where the sprinkling or splashing of blood is the clear meaning. This is important not only because the “sprinkled” translation gives a link to blood sacrifice but also because the writer uses the “startled” translation to put verses 1 to 7(8?) into the mouths of the gentile kings.
It is crucial to the writer's argument that it is the gentile kings speaking these words. But, apart from the writers desire that it should be so, there is nothing in the text to indicate that there is a change of speaker. Neither is there any any indication of a change of speaker at the end of this supposed 'prophecy of the gentile kings'. At the end of verse 8 the use of “my people” precludes the kings from being the speakers but the preceding text connects seamlessly to verse 8 and those following.
The only gentile kings prophesying in the Bible, that I can remember, are Nebuchadnezzar and Darius in the book of Daniel. Their prophecies are clearly attributable to them. 'Gentile kings' as an all embracing collective prophesying, sorry that cut no carpet with me.
The Hebrew Cafe writer's knowledge of Hebrew is obviously much greater than mine, mine is close to zero. Thankfully, these days there are available to us all many commentaries by people who have given themselves to a study of biblical Hebrew and whose understanding of the language, perhaps the writer would admit, is at least no worse than his. For this reason I will not address the writers linguistic arguments verse by verse, line by line (the universe gives a sigh of relief). Having gone through his thesis and, to the best of my ability, researched other linguistic analyses of the text I can observe that there are contrary view to all the linguistic arguments that he makes. Sometimes the different opinions are deemed to be evenly balanced, but nowhere in the text is there a linguistic 'torpedo' that can 'sink' a messianic view of it.
On page 21 the writer refers to a key verse, verse 8 of Isaiah 53 (key because his view is “In this verse, we might observe a switch in speaker. It seems that from here on that the speaker is God and the prophet.''),“The pronoun 'lamo' here is in the plural, calling attention to the fact that we’re not just talking about one person in reality.”. (On BibleHub lamo is classified as a prepositional particle ?)
On page 25 he states, “While this verse seems to match the missionaries’ story regarding Jesus, the plural pronoun lámo ... mixes the plural into the verse, which adds weight to the standard Jewish claim that this is not speaking of Jesus.''
It would be interesting to know why he thinks there is this 'mixing', why the change?
Is he happy with the JPS Tanakh translation,
“For he was cut off out of the land of the living,
For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due.”,
which works fine for a messianic understanding but but for his view the question is, why the use of plural and singular in the same phrase?
I'm sure the writer would not be happy with the OJB presentation of the verse, but here it is,
"… mipesha ami (for the transgression of my people [Yisroel]) -nega (plague cf Ps 91:10) lamo ([fell] on him [i.e., Moshiach; in light of Ps 11:7 and Job 22:2 we are warranted in saying the suffix is a singular, "him," not "them". Cf Gen 9:26-27; Deut 33:2; Isa 44:15; also compare Divrey Hayamim Alef 21:17]).”
The Isaiah 44:15 reference is particularly to the point seeing that it is the book of Isaiah we are studying.
For those who have the concentration and the stamina for it, this is all interesting stuff, as are the various commentaries, but the point is that in the end the weight is with a messianic reading of Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12.
In Barnes Notes on The Bible we read,
"There is the fullest evidence that the passage (52:13-52:12) was applied by the early Jews, both before and after the birth of Jesus, to the Messiah, until they were pressed by its application to Jesus of Nazareth, and were compelled in self-defense to adopt some other mode of interpretation; and even after that, it is evident, also, that not a few of the better and more pious portion of the Jewish nation still continued to regard it as descriptive of the Messiah.”
I will finish here and look forward to responses. Please try to keep any response focused and sulphur free.
There still remains, God willing, a need to examine the theological view of redemption, sacrifice and suffering that underpins the Hebrew Cafe writer's exposition of the text we have been looking at.
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This is a second post critiquing an exposition of Isaiah 52-54 that one can find here -http://www.thehebrewcafe.com/articles/isaiah_52-54.pdf
http://www.thehebrewcafe.com/articles/isaiah_52-54.pdf
In the first post we looked at the writer's argument that the context of chapters 52 and 53 proved his assertion that “My Servant” refers only to the people of Israel. Now I want to look at the writer's linguistic justifications for this argument.
First, let's put away completely any notion that we do not understand that the third person singular is often used in Isaiah and elsewhere in The Bible to speak of the people of Israel as a collective. No serious, thinking person has any problem understanding this. The problem is with claiming that in this portion of scripture it never refers to an individual. The writer puts forward an argument based on making all uses of he, him, his, fit to refer to Israel/Jacob the people. Fair enough. To my mind this 'fitting' is linguistically/stylistically stretched and strained. The crucial point is that nowhere does he give any linguistic reason why an individual person may not be meant.
Now let's look at what the the writer says on page 18 of his thesis referring to verse 15 of Isaiah 52, ''The word translated here as “sprinkle” should be “startle. ''. I've read christian commentaries which say the same thing. I would like to know how those commentators and the writer explain the use of this verb in Isaiah 63:3 and Leviticus 16:14 where the sprinkling or splashing of blood is the clear meaning. This is important not only because the “sprinkled” translation gives a link to blood sacrifice but also because the writer uses the “startled” translation to put verses 1 to 7(8?) into the mouths of the gentile kings.
It is crucial to the writer's argument that it is the gentile kings speaking these words. But, apart from the writers desire that it should be so, there is nothing in the text to indicate that there is a change of speaker. Neither is there any any indication of a change of speaker at the end of this supposed 'prophecy of the gentile kings'. At the end of verse 8 the use of “my people” precludes the kings from being the speakers but the preceding text connects seamlessly to verse 8 and those following.
The only gentile kings prophesying in the Bible, that I can remember, are Nebuchadnezzar and Darius in the book of Daniel. Their prophecies are clearly attributable to them. 'Gentile kings' as an all embracing collective prophesying, sorry that cut no carpet with me.
The Hebrew Cafe writer's knowledge of Hebrew is obviously much greater than mine, mine is close to zero. Thankfully, these days there are available to us all many commentaries by people who have given themselves to a study of biblical Hebrew and whose understanding of the language, perhaps the writer would admit, is at least no worse than his. For this reason I will not address the writers linguistic arguments verse by verse, line by line (the universe gives a sigh of relief). Having gone through his thesis and, to the best of my ability, researched other linguistic analyses of the text I can observe that there are contrary view to all the linguistic arguments that he makes. Sometimes the different opinions are deemed to be evenly balanced, but nowhere in the text is there a linguistic 'torpedo' that can 'sink' a messianic view of it.
On page 21 the writer refers to a key verse, verse 8 of Isaiah 53 (key because his view is “In this verse, we might observe a switch in speaker. It seems that from here on that the speaker is God and the prophet.''),“The pronoun 'lamo' here is in the plural, calling attention to the fact that we’re not just talking about one person in reality.”. (On BibleHub lamo is classified as a prepositional particle ?)
On page 25 he states, “While this verse seems to match the missionaries’ story regarding Jesus, the plural pronoun lámo ... mixes the plural into the verse, which adds weight to the standard Jewish claim that this is not speaking of Jesus.''
It would be interesting to know why he thinks there is this 'mixing', why the change?
Is he happy with the JPS Tanakh translation,
“For he was cut off out of the land of the living,
For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due.”,
which works fine for a messianic understanding but but for his view the question is, why the use of plural and singular in the same phrase?
I'm sure the writer would not be happy with the OJB presentation of the verse, but here it is,
"… mipesha ami (for the transgression of my people [Yisroel]) -nega (plague cf Ps 91:10) lamo ([fell] on him [i.e., Moshiach; in light of Ps 11:7 and Job 22:2 we are warranted in saying the suffix is a singular, "him," not "them". Cf Gen 9:26-27; Deut 33:2; Isa 44:15; also compare Divrey Hayamim Alef 21:17]).”
The Isaiah 44:15 reference is particularly to the point seeing that it is the book of Isaiah we are studying.
For those who have the concentration and the stamina for it, this is all interesting stuff, as are the various commentaries, but the point is that in the end the weight is with a messianic reading of Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12.
In Barnes Notes on The Bible we read,
"There is the fullest evidence that the passage (52:13-52:12) was applied by the early Jews, both before and after the birth of Jesus, to the Messiah, until they were pressed by its application to Jesus of Nazareth, and were compelled in self-defense to adopt some other mode of interpretation; and even after that, it is evident, also, that not a few of the better and more pious portion of the Jewish nation still continued to regard it as descriptive of the Messiah.”
I will finish here and look forward to responses. Please try to keep any response focused and sulphur free.
There still remains, God willing, a need to examine the theological view of redemption, sacrifice and suffering that underpins the Hebrew Cafe writer's exposition of the text we have been looking at.
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