In Isaiah, I've seen many references to the Servant being Israel. It names Israel as the Servant. But then other times like Isa 52:13 describes the Servant as Christ and in Isa. 44:21, It is obvious that Israel is the servant.
Forgive me, but if we read the songs of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, and in chapter 2 of the Wisdom of Solomon, they are clearly speaking about Christ our Lord, God and Savior, depicted here in a famous icon, Christ the Suffering Servant:
Israel is a suffering servant only insofar as the Hebrew Religion and then Second Temple Judaism were forms of the Church before Pentecost, when Judaism properly defined was reorganized into the Christian Church. And since the Church is the Body of Christ, it shares in His sufferings, for it is persecuted, reviled, spat upon, its members killed brutally, but in dying they glorify God and are glorified.
This is why St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote a letter begging the Church in Rome from intervening to prevent his martyrdom, expressing his wish to die as Christ had died, that he might live.* “Birth pangs are upon me” he wrote, “Suffer me to become human.” And thus the Bishop of Antioch was one of many Christians fed to lions in the Coliseum for the amusement of Roman pagans:
Another suffering servant was St. Anthony, a Coptic Christian who tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to get the Romans to martyr him during the Diocletian persecution when so many Copts were killed, ranging from the very old to the very young (for example, St. Abanoub, a 12 year old boy, received the crown of martyrdom, but is very much alive in Christ and the miracles involving him by themselves would be enough to disprove the doctrine of “soul sleep”. God had other plans for him, that did not involve him effectively committing suicide by Roman soldier, that being what we now call the White Martyrdom**, which is holy celibacy and the monastic life.*** Once St. Anthony the Great was established as an anchorite and had, through the grace of God the Holy Spirit, fought off the passions and the demonic attacks, which before the devil seemed to give up (but Anthony remained vigilant, warning us to “Expect temptation until your last breath), God led him to an oasis where there lived another hermit, St. Pavli the Hermit, who was fed by birds, and when he died, lions who had guarded him buried him (St. Anthony saw this, for he visited St. Pavli twice, the second time on the occasion of his death).
We know about this because the biography of St. Anthony was written by St. Athanasius the Great, the Patriarch of Alexandria and the man who gave us the 27 book New Testament canon in its definitive form, after triumphantly returning to Alexandria following years of exile in Germany, for he the same bishop who defended Christianity from Arianism successfully at the Council of Nicaea, and later, after Arius and Eusebius of Nicomedia gained the confidence of Constantius, the heir to St. Constantine, and Eusebius persuaded him to begin a persecution of Christians that began around 335-340 AD and would not entirely end until a few years before 380 AD, St. Anthony was arrested, and sent to Trier.
St. Anthony the Great:
St. Pavli the Hermit:
* That is, St. Ignatius sought through martyrdom life everlasting, because Christ promises to confess to the Father those who confess Him before men; martyrdom is paradoxically the easiest and the most difficult way of being saved, because it guarantees salvation, but naturally no one, not even Christ in his humanity, wants to be killed. However, if the price for escaping martyrdom is the guilt and shame of denying Christ, even though God will forgive this, or of escaping martyrdom while other less well connected Christians are killed, it is not worth it, which is why St. Peter had to endure until his martyrdom, just as St. Paul had to live with the guilt of persecuting Christians as a zealous Pharisee before experiencing a Christophany on the Road to Damascus.
** There is also the Green Martyrdom, which is Holy Matrimony. It is called this in Orthodox theology because in Orthodox Christianity, green symbolizes new life, which marriage between young adults can produce. Marriage is a martyrdom, in that each spouse must sacrifice for the welfare of each other, and that of any children whether from their own relationship, previous relationships or marriages, or adoption.
*** St. Anthony was the first well known anchorite, or solitary hermit, and the first of the Desert Fathers; monasticism came about as hermits began to live in close proximity to each other and assist one another as communities, and the organized cenobitic monastery or convent under an Abbot or Abbess began when several novices formed a community with the experienced desert Father St. Pachomius, who created the first monastic rule which inspired later rules of St. Benedict and St. Columba, but to this day the rule of St. Pachomius remains standard in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox monasteries, with variations to suit the need of each individual community, rather than the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist approach of a religious order like the Benedictines or Dominicans or Carthusians or Servites where every monastery, convent, charterhouse, priory or friary follows the Rule of its respective order.