The four Servant Songs

Within Deutero-Isaiah, the second part of the book of Isaiah, four passages stand out where a figure appears whom God calls his Servant. The Hebrew word rendered as “servant”, ebed (עֶבֶד), designates the one who belongs to a master and accomplishes his work. These four songs, Isaiah 42:1-4, 49:1-6, 50:4-9 and 52:13 to 53:12, form a sequence in which the figure of the Servant is unveiled little by little, from one song to the next.

The first song: the chosen one who brings justice to the nations

God opens the sequence by himself presenting his Servant, whom he has chosen and on whom he has set his Spirit. “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one, in whom I delight: I have put my Spirit upon him, he will bring justice to the nations.” Isaiah 42:1 His mission is to establish justice, the right order willed by God, and to extend it beyond Israel to the peoples. He accomplishes it with a gentleness that spares the most fragile. “He will not break the bruised reed, he will not quench the wick that still smolders; faithfully he will proclaim justice.” Isaiah 42:3 Nothing will stop him before his work stands over all the earth. “He will not falter, he will not let himself be crushed, until he has established justice on the earth; and the coastlands await his teaching.” Isaiah 42:4 At the baptism of Jesus, the Spirit descends upon him and the voice of the Father declares him his beloved Son, the one in whom he sets his joy (Matthew 3:16-17). These words, and the Spirit resting upon him, are those of the first song: Jesus is there designated as the Servant whom God presents.

The second song: the light of the nations

In the second song, the Servant speaks in his turn. He knows himself called before his very birth, set apart for a mission. “The Lord called me from my mother’s womb, from her body he pronounced my name.” Isaiah 49:1 God then gives him the name of his people. “You are my servant, Israel, in you I will display my glory.” Isaiah 49:3 His labour seems, however, to remain without result, and he commits himself to God. “And I had said, ‘I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing, for emptiness.’ Yet my right is with the Lord, my reward is with my God.” Isaiah 49:4 To this weariness God answers by widening the mission far beyond Israel. “It is too small a thing that you should be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and bring back the survivors of Israel: I make you the light of the nations, that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth.” Isaiah 49:6 Presenting the child Jesus in the Temple, Simeon will recognise him as this light of the nations (Luke 2:32).

The third song: the disciple who holds firm

The third song shows the Servant as a disciple, attentive to God day after day. “The Lord God has given me the tongue of the disciples, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Each morning he awakens, he awakens my ear that I may listen, like a disciple.” Isaiah 50:4 This listening leads him to the trial, which he accepts without fleeing. “I gave my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore out my beard; I did not hide my face from insults and spittle.” Isaiah 50:6 He holds firm because God comes to his aid, and turns towards the trial a face that nothing makes waver. “The Lord God comes to my help: that is why the outrages do not reach me, why I have set my face hard as flint, knowing that I will not be disappointed.” Isaiah 50:7 This face hardened towards the trial, the Gospel finds again in Jesus, who resolutely takes the road to Jerusalem where the blows and the cross await him (Luke 9:51).

The fourth song: the suffering Servant

The fourth song brings the figure to its summit and unveils its meaning. It opens on the announcement of the Servant’s success and exaltation. “See, my servant will succeed; he will rise, he will be lifted up, he will be raised to the highest heights.” Isaiah 52:13 This exaltation passes first through a disfigurement that appalls, whose effect will reach even the nations. “Just as many were appalled to see him, so disfigured was his appearance, so little human, his face no longer anything of a man’s, so he will astonish many nations; before him kings will stand speechless, for they will see what they had never been told, they will understand what they had never heard.” Isaiah 52:14-15 “Who has believed what we have heard? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Isaiah 53:1 The arm of the Lord, his saving power, is Christ. It is he who, at the Exodus, parted the sea to deliver Israel, “who made his glorious arm march at the right hand of Moses, who split the waters before them” Isaiah 63:12 This same power is revealed here in a man without splendour, whose appearance does not hold the gaze. “He grew up before him like a frail shoot, like a root out of dry ground; he had neither form nor beauty to draw our gaze, nor splendor to attract us.” Isaiah 53:2 Men turn away from him. “Despised, forsaken by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with suffering, like one from whom people hide their faces, despised, and we held him of no account.” Isaiah 53:3

Then comes the heart of the song: this suffering is not his own, it is ours, and he bears it in our place. “Yet it was our sufferings that he bore, our sorrows that he carried; and we, we thought of him as one punished, struck down by God, and humbled. But he was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our faults; the punishment that brings us peace fell upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:4-5 The song then names the exchange that saves us. “We were all straying like sheep, each one following his own way; and the Lord laid on him the guilt of us all.” Isaiah 53:6 He endures all in silence, given over without resistance. “Mistreated, he humbles himself, he does not open his mouth, like the lamb led to the slaughter, like the sheep silent before its shearers: he does not open his mouth.” Isaiah 53:7 Innocent, he is cut off from the land of the living and buried among the guilty. Christ himself claimed this place among the guilty. The night of his arrest, he applies to his own destiny the word of the song: “this word of Scripture must be fulfilled in me: He was counted among the criminals.” Luke 22:37 The suffering Servant is he, and he says so before entering his Passion. “He was given his grave among the wicked, his tomb among the rich, though he had committed no violence and there was no lie in his mouth.” Isaiah 53:9

His death is not an end, but an offering that repairs. The song uses the term of the sacrifice by which Israel made amends for sin, the Hebrew word rendered “sin offering,” asham (אָשָׁם): the Servant’s life becomes that sacrifice. “If he offers his life as an offering for sin, in reparation, he will see offspring, he will prolong his days, and through him the will of the Lord will be accomplished.” Isaiah 53:10 Beyond death, God raises him and gives him a multitude for fruit. “After the torments of his soul, he will see the light and be satisfied. By his knowledge, the just one, my servant, will make a multitude righteous, bearing their faults himself.” Isaiah 53:11 The song thus speaks its last word on the Servant. “Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, he will share the spoil with the mighty, because he gave himself up to death and was counted among the criminals, while he bore the sin of the multitudes and interceded for the guilty.” Isaiah 53:12 The Church reads in these pages the Passion of Christ, the Lamb handed over for sinners, who saves by taking upon himself what condemned them. The “multitude” that the Servant makes righteous and whose faults he bears returns on the lips of Christ at the Supper, over the cup: “this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, poured out for the many for the forgiveness of sins.” Matthew 26:28 The fourth song receives there its fulfilment, the offering for sin become the blood of the new covenant. It is this song that the Ethiopian was reading, to whom Philip announced Jesus (Acts 8).

Who is the Servant?

The songs let two faces of the Servant appear. At times God names “Israel” his servant, by the very name of his people, whom he had chosen to know him, to adore him and to carry his light to the nations. At times the Servant is distinct from the people: he receives the mission to raise up Israel itself, and he endures a trial that is his own. Called to serve God, Israel failed in its vocation and lost itself in unfaithfulness and exile. A distinct Servant then rises, faithful where the people fell short, who accomplishes for all what Israel was meant to be. From one song to the next, his figure grows clearer: the chosen one bearing justice, the light of the nations, the tested disciple, and at last the victim who saves by dying. The Church recognises in him Christ, the true Israel and the suffering Servant, who saves the multitude by his obedience unto death. This reading is already that of the Apostles: Peter takes up the song to speak of the Cross, “he bore our sins in his body on the wood... By his wounds you have been healed.” 1 Peter 2:24 Isaiah’s word on healing by the wounds becomes the confession of the redeemed community.