7.—.
(a) The Suffering and Exaltation of the Messiah.—The mythic-symbolic interpretation of the gospels sees in Isaiah liii the germ-cell of the story of Jesus, the starting-point of all that is related of him, the solid nucleus round which all the rest has crystallised.
The prophet deals with the “servant of Jahveh,” who voluntarily submits to suffering in order to expiate the sin and guilt of the people:—
He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgment; and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich [evildoers] in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief; when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied; by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death; and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
The general belief is that there is here question of the sufferings of Israel in the interest of the whole of mankind. According to Gunkel and Gressmann, however, the idea of the suffering just man is joined to an allusion to the god who expiates the sins of men by his voluntary death. Certainly we detect in it all the essential features of the suffering Christ, sacrificing himself for mankind and expiating their sins. That the early Christians felt this we see in Mark ix, 12, and xv, 28; Matt. viii, 17 and xxvi, 23; 1 Peter ii, 21; and Acts viii, 28-35, where the words of the prophet are expressly applied to Jesus.
Isaiah liii speaks of the “griefs” of the just one. But Plato, who also has described, in his Republic, the persecutions and sufferings that befall the just man, makes him be scourged, tortured, cast in prison, and finally pilloried (“crucified”); and in Wisdom the godless deliberate about condemning the just to a “shameful death.” According to Deuteronomy (xxi, 23), there was no more shameful death than “to hang on a tree” (in Greek xylon and stauros, in Latin crux); so that this naturally occurred as the true manner of the just one's death. Then the particular motive of the death was furnished by the passage in Wisdom and the idea of Plato. He died as a victim of the unjust, the godless, who say:—
Let us overpower the poor just man…….Let us set snares for the just, because he is a burden to us, and opposes our deeds, and represents to us the commands of the law. He boasts that he has a true knowledge of God, and calls himself the servant of God. He has become unto us a living reproach, on account of our desires. He is a burden unto us, when we do but look on him, because his ways and his conduct are different from those of all others. Us he regards as insincere, and he holds himself from intercourse with us, as from impurities. But he praises the eternity of the just, and boasts that God is his father. Let us see if his words be true, and wait for the manner of his going forth. For if the just is a son of God, God will take care of him, and save him from the hands of his enemies. Let us put him to the proof with insults and evil treatment, so that we may know his meekness and prove his steadfastness. Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for, according to his words, he will have protection. Such things said they in their madness, for their wickedness dazed them, and they recognised not the mysteries of God.