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The Suffering Servant Isaiah 52.1-53.12 In
the GNB version this passage is headed ‘The Suffering Servant'. Parts of it are probably familiar to you (especially
if you look at an older version such as AV and if you know Handel's use of much of it in his ‘Messiah'), but
we seldom look at it as a whole, because it is rather long for use as part of a church service. The book of Isaiah is usually regarded as composed of three sections; chapters 1-39, 40-55 and 56-66. The reason
why they are collected in a single book is probably that the author of chapters 1-39 (sometimes called Isaiah of Jerusalem)
attracted many followers, and the other two sections were written by members of his "school". You can read more
about the three sections in the introduction to the book given in GNB. This explains that chapters 40-55 date from the time
of the exile in Babylon. The passage we are looking at is mysterious. Does it refer
to someone whom the writer and his audience all knew? Or is it a prophecy about Jesus? - but if so, why is most of it written
in the past tense? Might it be that the "servant" was the whole people of Israel, who were suffering in exile for
the sake of the whole world? Different scholars reach different conclusions.
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