Lecture 17: The New Exodus, the Suffering Servant, and the Weeping Prophet

The lecture, section by section

1. One book, two horizons

   To get our bearings: chapters 1 through 37 concern Assyria, with Jerusalem preserved; chapters 38 through 66 concern Babylon, and especially what lies beyond exile. Schreiner takes Isaiah as one book by one author, which means much of the second half is prophecy of what is to come, and that is the point: what separates Yahweh from the false gods is that he knows the future and announces it before it takes place.

2. The second exodus

   Israel will be exiled to Babylon, and Isaiah 40 through 66 promises a new exodus. The first exodus becomes a type and pattern of a second: a highway in the desert, a way in the wilderness, waters parted as before, the ransomed of the LORD returning to Zion, Israel gathered from the ends of the earth for the glory of his name. The herald's words are the very words John the Baptist takes up, and the new exodus is announced as good news proclaimed to Jerusalem: the new exodus is the gospel.

3. The new creation joined to it

   With the return comes new creation. The blind will see and the deaf hear, the lame and the mute will be healed, and hearing it we immediately think of Jesus. The desert blossoms like the crocus and runs with streams; there will be a new heavens and a new earth; the wolf and the lamb lie down together; and, there it is again, the serpent will be crushed. The new Jerusalem shines, anticipating Revelation 21 and 22: the wealth of the nations flows in, the sanctuary is made beautiful, the LORD himself is its light, and the city is never forsaken.

4. Yes, but

   Was the promise fulfilled? Yes: they came back in 536 BC. And no: the return was not the new creation, and the promises were not fulfilled in the fullness Isaiah paints. Yes, but not in this way. The course will come back to these stunning promises when it reaches the New Testament.

5. Israel the flawed servant

   Why was Israel exiled? Isaiah says it over and over: for their sin, their failure to keep the Lord's law. And why will they return? Because Yahweh will forgive their sins. Here the servant of the LORD enters: you, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the parallel names naming one people. Yet this servant is flawed, blind and deaf, and the blindness is a moral failing. The Lord promises to save his servant Israel, and they will be his witnesses.

6. The servant who transcends the servant

   The servant is Israel, and the servant transcends Israel. The servant is endowed with the Spirit and brings justice and light to the nations; he will not break a bruised reed or quench a flickering wick, the passage Matthew appropriates, a victory won without shouting in the streets. Schreiner pauses to commend Richard Sibbes' The Bruised Reed, a short Puritan work of great pastoral warmth, as strengthening reading for anyone bound for ministry. And here is the exegetical warrant that the servant is more than the nation: this servant brings Jacob back and restores the remnant to the Lord, and Israel cannot bring itself back.

7. Isaiah 53 and the rabbis' half-truth

   Ask the rabbis and they will say Isaiah 53 is not about Jesus but about Israel, and students who trace the earlier servant passages are sometimes startled to find them half right: yes, the servant is Israel. But the servant transcends Israel, for the servant of chapter 53 atones for Israel's sins, and a sinful Israel cannot atone for itself. Moreover this servant is innocent, suffering not for his own sin but bearing the sins of others, while Israel, Isaiah insists throughout, is in exile precisely for its own sin. Isaiah is not contradicting himself; he is drawing a distinction.

8. The long narrowing

   What Isaiah shows is what the whole Old Testament has shown. The blessing comes through the offspring of the woman; through Abraham; through Isaac and not Ishmael; through Jacob and not Esau; through Samuel and not Hophni and Phinehas; through David and not Saul; through the remnant and not the disobedient; and finally through the servant, individually, the true Israel. Paul is not inventing anything in Galatians 3:16 when he names one seed of Abraham: the only one who ever obeyed. Forgiveness comes at last through an individual servant who can atone for the nation.

9. The servant is the king

   There are signs the servant is a royal figure, tied to David's line. The king of Isaiah 11 is endowed with the Spirit; so is the servant. The king of chapter 11 brings the new creation; so, in chapters 40 through 66, does the servant. The servant will fulfill the covenant, so the promise to Abraham that blessing would reach the ends of the earth runs through him. Hence Schreiner's rule for reading: every passage calling Israel the servant speaks of Jesus as well, except those that speak of the servant's sin, which belong to historical Israel alone; and the passages that promise the servant will forgive sins, restore Israel, and gather the Gentiles cannot be ethnic Israel at all, for those blessings come only through an obedient, indeed perfectly obedient, son. Not David, who was flawed; not Moses, who was a sinner; only Jesus, the perfect servant.

10. What Isaiah knew

    Did Isaiah fully understand what he was saying? Probably not, and that violates nothing. First Peter 1:10 through 12 indicates the prophets did not fully grasp all they spoke, though they searched and looked toward the fulfillment; things became clear after Christ came. This is prophecy fulfilled and mystery revealed together: nothing in the fulfillment is contrary to Isaiah's words, and had he seen it he would have said, that is what I was saying, though the fullness lay beyond his sight. The relationship is organic and integral.

11. Turn to me, all the ends of the earth

    Passage after passage opens the door to the Gentiles: the nations stream to Jerusalem, and the law going forth from Jerusalem Schreiner reads as the gospel proclaimed from Jerusalem from Pentecost onward; Egypt and Assyria themselves are included in chapter 19; kings will see and understand; David's heir is a witness to the peoples. The summons of chapter 45 gathers it all: let the fugitives of the nations, carrying idols of wood that cannot save, present their case; who announced these things from of old but the LORD, a righteous God and Savior, beside whom there is no other? Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth.

12. Jeremiah begins: the broken marriage

    Jeremiah, the longest of the prophetic books, tells of judgment and restoration: the nation exiled for covenant violations, for forsaking the Torah. Schreiner, reading it devotionally at the time, commends in passing the daily pattern he has kept since 1976, Psalms and Proverbs, Old Testament chapters, a chapter of the Greek New Testament, and Hebrew read alongside its translations. To understand Jeremiah, read chapter 2, the book's beautiful and devastating picture of alienation: the bride of Yahweh turned harlot. Apostasy is personal, a personal defection from God, and Schreiner commends Raymond Ortlund's study of the theme, God's Unfaithful Wife, first published under a blunter title. Jeremiah's images sting: Israel was made to cling to Yahweh as a waistband clings to a man, and would not. The catalogue of sins, stealing, murder, adultery, lying, idolatry, tramples the Ten Commandments; the people even sacrificed their children, and Schreiner does not let the modern reader off, naming abortion as our own version of the child who is not convenient. Sin is engraved on their hearts, fixed as a leopard's spots, and Jeremiah 4:23 through 26 shows the terrible result: a de-creation, the world running backward toward formlessness because of Israel's sin. The nations, too, are judged.

13. The weeping prophet who could not stay silent

    Jeremiah collides with every authority: kings, priests, prophets, and the wise, with the kings indicted especially for social injustice. He is beaten and imprisoned, and men lobby for his death, charging him with false prophecy and treason, for a prophet who says Babylon will win and the city should surrender sounds, to the soldiers on the wall, like a traitor. He is the weeping prophet: he wishes he had never been born, he never marries, he calls himself a gentle lamb, and at times he resolves to prophesy no more, only to find the word of God his joy, a fire that possesses him and takes over his life. Through it all the Lord protects him. His call is the covenant call: repent, break up your fallow ground, circumcise your hearts. And like all the prophets, Jeremiah also speaks of restoration.

1. Isaiah calls the return good news long before anyone saw it. Which promise of God are you living between the announcement and the fullness of right now, and how should the yes-but shape your waiting?

2. The servant will not break a bruised reed or put out a flickering wick. Who near you is the bruised reed this month, and what would tending, rather than fixing, look like?

3. Israel was made to cling to the LORD as a waistband clings. What has your daily routine actually been clinging to lately, and what one change would fasten it back where it belongs?