Does the argument from prophecy support Jesus' resurrection?

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Hi @vjtorley,

Thanks for sharing this video! I still don’t think the Servant can be Israel, though.

It certainly is the prophet speaking on behalf of a group of people (unless you think the kings are actually writing this portion of the oracle?), the question is whether that group of people is the kings of the gentiles or the people of Israel. The speakers could be the kings of the gentiles, but why are they then referred to as wandering sheep without a shepherd, which as far as I’m aware is a metaphor only used to describe the people of Israel?

Deutero-Isaiah also refers to Israel as “servant,” indeed, but he draws important contrasts between the Israel-servant and the servant of the songs. I don’t see how the servant who opens the eyes of the blind could be the Israel-servant who is blind; the servant who refuses to even break a bruised reed could be the Israel-servant who will make the nations “like chaff”; the servant who is a “covenant to the people” could be the Israel-servant who is “the people”; the servant who “was not rebellious” could be the Israel-servant who was “a rebel from birth”; and so on.

“Did Isaiah believe in the Trinity?” (9:47) — No he certainly didn’t. The doctrine of the Trinity wasn’t fully developed until the fourth century AD, so how could an 8th-century BC Israelite prophet (or the 6th-century BC author of Deutero-Isaiah) possibly believe in it? I doubt you could even find a single trinitarian scholar who argues, on exegetical grounds, that Isaiah believed in the Trinity.

Rabbi Tovia Singer makes a very interesting point about the plural pronoun in Isaiah 53:8. I really don’t know how to respond to this, but I also note that the same verse says that the servant died “for the transgression of my people.” Now the possessive pronoun here (“my”) is in the first-person singular, I checked an interlinear to confirm this, so it’s Yahweh speaking here. If the servant is the people of Israel, how is it that he died (unjustly) for the sins of the people of Israel?

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Hi @vjtorley

The discussion below is from the Messianic Jewish organisation in Israel “One for Israel”. They are a group that Tovia is particularly concerned with because of their success in converting Jews to Messianic Judaism. They make a similar argument about the 4 servant songs as @misterme987 does and also argued how Isaiah 53 points to a new Exodus and a new redemption of Israel. This new redemption is also similar to Daniel 9 where Messiah being cut off is also mentioned.

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Somewhere on the Internet is a forum dedicated to heated arguments on the topic. Moderators there charge a nickel per comment and make a tidy sum. They refer to these profits as the “Tense tense-sense cents.” :wink:

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It’s sounds like a bunch of non-tense to me.

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I’ve looked through the JPS version of Isaiah 49 to Isaiah 53, and nowhere can I find a reference to sheep without a shepherd. What I can find is Isaiah 53:6, which begins:

All we like sheep did go astray,
We turned every one to his own way;

That’s not so surprising an utterance, even if it is said by the kings of the Gentiles. Sheep are notorious for going astray.

I will acknowledge that they argue their case well. In the end, however, I don’t personally find their interpretation persuasive. They acknowledge that in Isaiah 52 and Isaiah 54, the Servant is Israel, but then they argue that in Isaiah 53, the Servant refers to a particular individual: the new Moses, the Redeemer of Israel. I find that a rather artificial reading. They also contend that Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12 refers to Israel’s sins, which are redeemed by a lamb that is led to the slaughter. I’d question that. From Isaiah 52:15, it seems that the speakers are the kings of the nations. Thus when Isaiah 53 refers to “the iniquity of us all,” it’s logical to assume that it means the iniquity of the kings. So, who are the kings speaking about in Isaiah 53:1-12? Rabbi Tovia Singer himself acknowledges that the verses don’t say. He thinks the references to the servant bearing the sins of many mean Israel’s suffering as a result of the cruelty of the nations that persecuted Israel. Israel’s being cut off from the land of the living means its exile in Babylon. The group One for Israel, on the other hand, thinks the passage refers to an individual who suffers and dies for the sins of Israel, and who redeems Israel.

I’m not a Hebrew scholar, but I’ll just make a few quick observations.

  1. As Dan McClellan points out in the video in my OP, the interpretation of the servant in Isaiah 53 as Israel remains the standard view of Biblical scholars.

  2. In any case, the passage refers to the suffering and death of the servant as past events, but to the exaltation of the servant as a future event - which makes sense if it refers to the future redemption of Israel, but which is puzzling if the reference is to the passion and resurrection of Christ, which all lay in the future at the time when Deutero-Isaiah wrote.

  3. I think what’s ultimately at stake is the propriety of an individual dying for the sins of others. For Rabbi Singer and for Jews today, this is a theological abomination: you can die for your own sins, but never for another individual’s sins, because God abhors human sacrifice. To Jews, the notion of a sinless individual dying on the Cross for the sins of all mankind is fundamentally no different from what the Aztecs did with their human sacrifices. One for Israel, on the other hand, finds theologically objectionable the notion that Israel’s suffering in Isaiah 53 was ordained by God to bring atonement for the nations. But let’s not forget that in Isaiah 45:7, God declares:

I form the light, and create darkness;
I make peace, and create evil;
I am the LORD, that doeth all these things.

In other words, Deutero-Isaiah saw God as ordaining the events of history, good and bad alike, for His own hidden purposes.

To sum up: I think there are problems with both the Jewish and Christian interpretations of Isaiah 53, but I don’t think it’s at all evident that it refers to Jesus. You could argue for that view if you like, and you might even make a plausible case, but it’s definitely not a passage that can be used to establish the truth or even the probability of Christianity.

I shall leave it there. Cheers.

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I’ll add that trying to link Isaiah 53 to Daniel 9 is not helpful to the argument. The “messiah who is cut off” in Daniel 9 doesn’t seem to be Jesus at all.

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Hi @vjtorley
Thanks for your response. I hope the One for Israel organisation will be a good resource in your future quest to understand OT prophecy as a persuasive element in believing in the Divinity of Jesus.

If you go on their website you will see several testimonies that Isaiah 53 was persuasive for Jews coming to faith in Yeshua (Jesus).

Here is an argument from the US Messianic Jewish organisation Jews for Jesus. There are early Rabbinic interpretations that this passage is Messianic.

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I’ve watched the entire video and observed that Tovia Singer, like Bart Ehrman, missed the fact that the title “my servant” isn’t limited to Israel. Additionally, his interpretation of Isaiah 53 especially verses 4 - 7 doesn’t seem logical to me.

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