bfniii

and that question would be?

actually, i felt that your statement lacked support. i guess you expect us to take you at your word.



this doesn't address the point i made; that there can be more than one "servant" mentioned by isaiah.

TedM

Very true. Isaiah is very unclear on this.. Some here may find my review of Isaiah 53 here and here

to be helpful. The former looks at whether the passage is messianic. The latter looks at whether Jesus fulfilled it IF the passage IS messianic, going through point by point.

ted

RED DAVE

From bfniii:
And who would they be? The ones who couldn't tell the difference betwe "almah" and "behulah"?

RED DAVE

John Kesler

You asserted that Isaiah was inconsistent in his identity of the servant, when if he was inconsistent is what we are discussing.

There is no "messiah" in Isaiah 53. The messiah concept came later, and passages like Isaiah 53 were reinterpreted based on this new conception. There is no reason to assume that "more than one servant" is intended when the text makes clear that Israel is the servant.

martini

i agree with you, but in context, it would indicate disease, at the least, and leprosy at the most?

2Ki15:5 The LORD struck(naga`) the king, so that he was leprous to the day of his death, and lived in a separate house.

2Chr 26:20 And Azariah the chief priest, and all the priests, looked upon him, and, behold, he was leprous in his forehead, and they thrust him out from thence; yea, himself hasted also to go out, because the LORD had smitten(naga') him.

Isa 53:4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken (naga'), Smitten (nakah, can also mean by disease) of God[/B], and afflicted.

i brought this up the leprosy connection once before on iidb at this link.

from what i have read, King Uzziah as the focus seems to solve several of the problems brought up when using this verse for Jesus. many of the verses make perfect sense under this assumption (v2 because he was young when he took the kingship, 3-6 and 8 because of the leprosy, etc). given Isa 1:1, would Isaiah not have known the rise and fall of this king?

peace,


mike

Jack the Bodiless

bfniii:
No, it means "diseased". Other (rare) uses generally involve symptoms associated with disease, such as "become weak" or "become tired". Even in the KJV, it is usually translated as "diseased" (whenever this doesn't present problems for Christian interpretation, as it does in Isaiah 53).

And why are you trying to claim that it "would not be" translated as disease, when in fact it IS translated as such by non-Christians (and indeed honest Christians too)? The Septuagint has "plague" in 53:3.
Why do you imagine this "supports your point" when it's simply another mistranslation in the same book by the same translator?
Note that two of those "grief" usages are in Isaiah 53. The other two are in Jeremiah, and in both of those cases the word is associated with "wounds" in a metaphorical sense.
Nope. This is Christian context-mangling and mistranslation. Unless you'd like to argue that the PRE-Christian translators of the LXX "retroactively" changed the context?

Why do you imagine that "disease" shouldn't be used? Can you think of ANY reason, other than "because it would be inconvenient for Christians"?

mikem

The evidence is simply the fact that there is no evidence anywhere in the Old Testament that remotely suggests a suffering Messiah. I have already provided textual evidence to show that the Messiah was to be a conquering hero.

Some scholars believe that the author might be referring to himself, but there are none that refer to a suffering Messiah.

Yes, from a materialistic standpoint. The Jews did not separate spiritual from material in the way that you suggest. Material prosperity was regarded as a spiritual blessing from God and a reward for loyalty.

There we will have to agree to disagree.

.

We have no idea what JtheB thought of Jesus, as he is in there for purely apologetical purposes only.

You appear to have missed my point, which was that if Jesus was regarded as a messianic figure during his lifetime, his ignominious death shattered that dream. The passages about the suffering servant were applied to Jesus after his death and conflated with the belief that he was descended of David, to create the figure of a suffering messiah.

Steven Avery

2 Chronicles 35:23
And the archers shot at king Josiah;
and the king said to his servants,
Have me away; for I am sore wounded

Isaiah 53:10
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.

And which of those fanciful 'Christian interpreters' (distortions, we are told)
points out the Chronicles usages as analagous to Isaiah 53:10?

Don Yitzhak Abarbanel

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

CaliNORML

53:10, ""the Lord chose to crush him by disease, that if he made himself an offering for guilt, he might see offspring and have long life".

Just a straight up of this passage to me?

The "Servant" they speak of is not a person, it is Compassion.

He was crushed by our own disease, a dis ease at the loss of our own lives, this is why everyone stood silent, by our own selfishness not to give up our own lives in Compassion.

He offered himself up to let us have these feelings of guilt, look at what we could do to pure compassion on earth. Please do not let it happen again after this.

That those who witnessed this may see what happens, choose this way to act and pass it on to all "Gods" children to live this way, this way we all have a long life.

This is just my own personal view of these words I am not affiliated with any religion. I just try to put the word Compassion in for who we believe these prophets were speaking of, and I see it in a whole new light. This may not be your light, but it has helped me.

KMS

Jack the Bodiless

I have already provided an "outline of Biblical usage" from Strong's Concordance for the word used in Isaiah 53:3-4. Here it is again:
As I pointed out earlier, 2 of the 4 "grief" usages are in Isaiah 53:3-4. THIS word NEVER means "wounded".

Here's the same exercise for the word used in Isaiah 53:10:
THIS word has a somewhat broader usage, but still GENERALLY indicates "disease". Compare with the English word "sick", which GENERALLY means "diseased" but is sometimes used in other contexts: Allied soldiers who entered Auschwitz at the end of WW2 were "sickened" by what they found, but didn't become diseased (though I imagine a man shot with arrows would be pretty "sick" as a result).

The context of 2 Chronicles 35:23 determines the usage there. The context in Isaiah 53 is "disease", as indicated by the less ambiguous mention of "disease" in 53:3-4. Also, "put him to grief" requires conjuring up a "him" out of thin air (it's not in the Hebrew).

bfniii's claim that 53:10 "would not be translated as diseased" was refuted by the fact that it WAS translated thusly in the LXX (in both 53:3-4 AND 53:10), and in some Christian Bibles too. That is the CORRECT translation, as there is no CONTEXTUAL reason for translating it otherwise (except Christian distortion).

BTW, "bruise" in 53:10 is another dubious Christian translation. It is NEVER translated thus, EXCEPT in Isaiah 53.
The Servant should be crushed or broken by disease, or maybe oppressed or humbled or made contrite by it (as it's plainly used in a metaphorical sense). Not "bruised".