Servant of Yahweh

SERVANT OF YAHWEH (Heb. 'Ēbhedh Yahweh). -
A figure described in four songs of Isaiah:
I) 42:1-7 (9); II) 49:1-7 (9); III) 50:4-9; IV) 52:13-
53:12. He is called "servant" by Yahweh; he is his
beloved one, to whom from his mother's womb he entrusts the mission
of proclaiming justice (law) to the nations, of enlightening them and saving them, of bringing back the "Remnant of Israel"
and of consoling the afflicted; he is gentle with the weak. Instructed
by Yahweh as a disciple, he is obedient to him in
teaching and in enduring blows and unheard-of humiliations
in order to fulfill his mission. Yahweh reveals
the astonishment of the nations before the enormity of his
passion and the grandeur of his consequent exaltation (cf. Is. 50:5-6; 52:14; 53:1-22). The prophet describes the straitened life, the deformities that the body
of the S. of Y. undergoes to expiate the sins of the perverse
people that condemned him and violently suppressed him,
despite his innocence and meekness, and
buried him with the wicked and with the rich. Yahweh grants
him an immense posterity and accepts his expiation and intercession for sinners.

Tradition attributes the songs to Isaiah the prophet;
not a few critics to Deutero-Isaiah. It is debated whether the songs of the
S. of Y. were originally a distinct short poem and what its
succession, extent, and dramatic form were. Innumerable are the hypotheses for the identification of the S. of Y.
Thus C. R. North classifies the various identifications of the S. of
Y. on the part of those who do not follow the messianic
interpretation: a) historical Israel, ideal Israel, the pious Israelites,
the order of the prophets. b) A historical figure; there were
proposed Isaiah, Uzziah, Hezekiah, Josiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
Job, Moses, Jehoiachin, Cyrus, Sheshbazzar, Zerubbabel,
Meshullam (Is. 42:19), Nehemiah, Eleazar, an unknown doctor of the law, an unknown contemporary of the author.
c) The author of the songs, who would have predicted his death
or would not have composed the IV song. d) A mythological
representation along the lines of the myths of Tammuz-
Adonis or a derivation from the Babylonian rite of the humiliation of the king at the new year festival. e) An ideal
and abstract figure; recent authors bring him close to the myths of Râs
Samrah (Nyberg, Engnell), or to the Teacher of Righteousness of the documents of the Dead Sea (Dupont-Sommer), or consider him an allegory like that of the prodigal son.

Others interpret the S. of Y. according to the context of the 2nd part of Is., others detach him from it, others give a certain fluidity to the meaning of the S. of Y. Someone distinguishes two servants: Israel in 41:29-42:4 and 41:1-4, 9 and 49:1-7, then the Messiah in 52:13-53 (Kissane); or Jehoiachin for the first three songs and Zedekiah as a figure of the Messiah in the fourth (Coppens). For others the S. of Y. is polyvalent, that is, he indicates Israel as servant who develops into the idea of an individual servant par excellence without abandoning the idea of an Israel still a servant (H. H. Rowley), or he is an ideal personification of the Messiah with the traits of the prophet of Deut. 18:15, of the doctor and of the savior coming from Is. 9 and 11, from Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

The messianic interpretation is still the most solid. It has in its favor the Hebrew tradition (Septuagint, Targum, Talmud), the explicit testimony of the sacred writers of the New Testament and the undisputed Christian tradition down to, at least, the time of Grotius (cf. J. Knabenbauer, Comment. in Is. prophet., p. 347 ff.). For the writers of the New Testament it is enough to compare Mt. 12:18-21 with Is. 42:1-4; Rom. 15:21 with Is. 52:15; Jn. 12:38 with Is. 52:1; Mt. 8:17 with Is. 53:4; Acts 8:32-35 with Is. 53:7-8; Lk. 22:37 with Is. 53:12. In these one observes fulfilled in Christ what is said of the S. of Y. (cf. also Lk. 2:32 - Is. 42:6; Mt. 11:5 - Is. 42:7; Rev. 19:13-15 - Is. 49:2; Mt. 26:67 - Is. 50:6). Jesus applies to himself Is. 53:12 (Mk. 15:28; Lk. 22:37). No one can doubt that the figure and the mission of the S. of Y. fit in full only Christ, indeed that they fit him so clearly as to make Isaiah be proclaimed evangelist of the passion. The objections (the S. of Y. must bring Israel back from exile to his homeland [49:5]; therefore he would have lived during the exile; his passion is projected into the past, the glorification into the future; the suffering Messiah is a concept unknown in the Old Testament; the word "servant" is used several times for Israel) are resolved with a certain ease. None of the other hypotheses withstands the rigorous scrutiny of criticism.

1939; A. Vaccari, I carmi del S. di J., in Miscellanea Biblica, II, Rome 1934, pp. 216-44; J. S. van Der Hoog, Les chants du Serv. de J., Paris 1936; H. Kruse, Carmina Servi J., in Verbum Domini, 29 (1951), pp. 93-205, 286-95, 334-40; id., De carminibus S. J. nova quadum interpretatione, ibid., 30 (1952), pp. 341-47 (it is that of J. Lindblom, The Servant Song in Deutero-Jaiah, Lund 1951) with a note by P. Nober, p. 347 ff.; R. J. Tournay, Les chants du Serviteur, in Revue biblique, 50 (1952), pp. 355-84, 481-512; b) Catholic: Chr. R. North, The suffering Servant in Deutero-Jaiah, Oxford 1948; N. H. Smith, The Servant of the Lord in Deutero-Jaiah, in Studies in Old Test. Prophecy, ed. H. H. Rowley, Edinburgh 1950, pp. 187-200; C. Lindhagen, The Servant motif in the Old. Test., Uppsala 1950; H. H. Rowley, The servant of the Lord, London 1952, pp. 1-88.

Bonaventura Mariani