The suffering servant

One of the most impressive themes developed by Second Isaiah is that of the suffering servant. There are three poems (Isaiah 42.1-4, 49.1-6, 50.4-11) in which the prophet, who lived in the age of the Babylonian Captivity, describes this pious man, God's "chosen one" who will bring justice to all nations, who has an "instructed tongue" and a "mouth like a sharpened sword", and who has been able to suffer humiliation because he relied on God. So far, there is nothing unusual; the problem is the shocking fourth poem which, in the first and the third part, praises the servant, and in the second part describes his suffering.

It is impossible to identify the servant with a known historical person. However, it is certain that the servant's fate deeply shocked the second Isaiah, who came to the conclusion that a just man had been punished by God for the wickedness of others. This was a completely new idea, which was to become very influential.

The exact identification is irrelevant for our purposes; what matters is that the poems about the suffering servant contained material that could be used in messianic speculations, words like "chosen one", "servant", "branch", "root" and "shoot" (cf. the words of first Isaiah about the shoot of Jesse).