Week 22 - Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Just who the “suffering servant” of Isaiah is has been a point of tension over the years. Most Christians were raised to understand the passage as referring to Jesus, even though it was written many years before his birth. Yet, Jewish people read the verses quite differently, characteristically identifying the servant as the community of Israel.
When you see the two perspectives, there’s a lot of parallels and ways they overlap, and yet they seem diametrically opposed in other ways. So there’s both continuity and discontinuity. In his commentary on this passage, Brueggemann notes that only one thing is certain — the figure is enigmatic almost beyond resolution.
When Watershed arrived at this seminal passage, we felt it important to look at it from both vantage points, so this week (part 1) we looked to the work of Marshall Roth, a Rabbi from the Fire of Israel website to get a more Torah based teaching of the text itself. Whether or not you agree with his interpretation, it was important to acknowledge and even celebrate both the differences and the commonalities between our two faith positions. We read the text itself from a Jewish version of the TANAK (Bible), then Roth’s notes, followed by a discussion.
Join us next week for part two from the Christian viewpoint.
- Lydia
Reading: Isaiah 53: The Suffering Servant
Etching by Marc Chagall
