Jesus said that Isaiah's first Song of the Suffering Servant referred to him.

Thursday, 1/7/16

The passage Jesus read at the synagogue of Nazareth was identified as coming from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, but what Jesus read were not the words of Isaiah. How is that so?

Well, there are 66 chapters in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, but Isaiah died in 700 B.C., and his last days and last words were concluded up to the end of Chapter 41.

What we find in Chapters 42 through Chapter 66 of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah are the words gathered by an unknown prophet who lived one hundred and fifty years later, during the captivity of the Jews in Babylon from 600 to 530 B.C.

This unknown prophet whom we refer to as Second-Isaiah implanted four songs in his text. Each of them pictures the Messiah who was to come; and we refer to the four of them as “The Songs of the Suffering Servant.”

The first of the four songs, the one Jesus read that day, has God introducing his Servant as one who does not make a big show of himself.

In the Second Song, that we find in Isaiah, 47: 1-6, God says, “It is too little for you to be my servant to raise up the tribes of Judah, I will make you a light to the nations.”  

In the Third Song, that we find in Isaiah, 50: 4-9 the Suffering Servant says, “The Lord has given me a well trained tongue.”

Then, the beautiful Fourth Song takes up all of Chapter 53 of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. There we read, “He was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins.”