SERVANT OF THE LORD (YAHWEH, JEHOVAH) (עֶ֫בֶד֒, H6269; LXX παῖς, G4090, sometimes δοῦλος). A figure in the Book of Isaiah.

I. The Servant Songs. Duhm’s commentary on Isaiah (1892) distinguished four passages which modern criticism has generally agreed to treat as the “Servant Songs.” They are Isaiah 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12. The limits of the individual “Songs” are not clear; many would add 42:5-7; 49:7; 50:10, 11, others yet more, and some would see a fifth Servant Song in 61:1ff.

The principle underlying the selection of these Songs is that all portray a single distinctive figure: “the Servant of the Lord.” Some scholars have carried this line of argument to the extent of postulating a separate author and period of origin for these passages (esp. S. Mowinckel). The general tendency today, however, is to interpret them in relation to their context in Isaiah, as an integral part of the prophet’s message.

II. Interpretation of the Servant.

A. Is there a Servant-figure? Some modern scholars (e.g., M. D. Hooker) dispute that these passages are intended to portray a Servant-figure. The term “servant” is one frequently used in the OT for those who are obedient to God, and is therefore applied to Israel as she fulfills her vocation.

Certainly other figures in the OT are described as “servants of God,” esp. the prophets, the patriarchs, and other individuals such as Moses and David (each of these frequently; see e.g. Gen 26:24; Exod 14:31; Deut 34:5; 2 Sam 7:5; Isa 20:3; Amos 3:7). To refer to someone as “servant of the Lord” was no novelty.

In Isaiah the term “servant” is used as frequently outside the Servant Songs as within. Note these passages in the vicinity of the Songs: 41:8, 9; 43:10; 44:1, 2, 21; 45:4; 48:20. All of these are applied to Israel, sometimes in terms similar to the language of the Songs.

B. Who is the Servant?Interpretations may be divided into three basic classes, the collective, the individual, and the cultic. The various interpretations advanced are usefully set out by C. R. North (The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, 6-116) and H. H. Rowley (The Servant of the Lord, 4-48).

1. Collective interpretations. The Servant is explicitly addressed as “Israel” in 49:3. This fact, and the close correspondence between the language of the Songs and that applied to Israel as God’s Servant in surrounding chs., have led many to see in the Servant-figure a projection of the prophet’s ideal for the nation. It is the nation as a whole which is to undergo redemptive suffering. Others restrict the reference to a pious remnant within the nation, thus making allowance for the fact that the Servant has a mission to Israel (49:5, 6; cf. 42:6) and suffers for the people (53:4-6, 8, 11, 12). A further candidate for the title is the Davidic dynasty.

2. Individual interpretations. The Songs refer to the Servant in the singular and describe the life and experience of an individual (His birth, obedience, suffering, death, and triumph). That this is not a mere poetical personification of the nation is shown by His mission to Israel, as mentioned above. Interpreters have therefore taken the Servant as either a specific historical figure known to the author (e.g., Moses, Jeremiah, Cyrus, Zerubbabel, the prophet himself, or some unknown contemporary), or an ideal figure of the future—the Messiah. The latter was the predominant Christian interpretation until the end of the last cent.

3. Cultic interpretations. These interpretations, largely from Scandinavian scholars, see the background to the Servant-figure in a cultic ceremony, involving the symbolic death and rising again of the king, deriving from the Babylonian myth of the dying and rising god, Tammuz, and its liturgy. The Servant would, in this view, be neither a historical figure, past, present, or future, nor a collective personification of the nation, but a mythological symbol. The existence of such a mythology and ritual within Israel is highly controversial, and such interpretations have received little support outside Scandinavia.

4. Synthetic interpretations. Few scholars today hold to an exclusively collective or an exclusively individual interpretation. Some would see a progression of thought from the collective figure of the earlier Servant Songs to a more fully individualized figure in the fourth. The ideal for Israel was summed up in an ideal individual—the Messiah. “What began as a personification (has) become a person” (Rowley). Such an understanding of the Servant is best able to do justice to the apparently conflicting evidence of the text, as mentioned above. (See esp. the close juxtaposition of 49:3, where the Servant was addressed as “Israel,” and 49:5, 6, where He had a mission to Israel.) It is reinforced by the growing recognition that the Israelite distinguished less sharply between the individual and the community than does the modern Western mind. The notion of “corporate personality” (associated particularly with the name of H. W. Robinson) makes it possible for the Messiah not only to act for Israel, but also to sum up Israel in Himself. The Servant, therefore, is Israel—the ideal Israel, who is capable of fulfilling the destiny of which the empirical Israel fell short. As such He can suffer and die to redeem the people of God, as their Representative as well as their Substitute.

The subtlety of the prophet’s thought defies systematic analysis. It is in some such synthetic interpretation that the Biblical data will be most fully satisfied.

To describe the Servant as a messianic figure, in the sense of an individual who is central to the eschatological fulfillment of God’s purposes for His people, is therefore a correct, though not an exhaustive, description; and a messianic application of the Servant passages, and esp. of the passage where the individual terminology is clearest (52:13-53:12), will be in accordance with the intention of the prophet.

III. The character and mission of the Servant. Working from the traditionally delimited Servant Songs (though the limitations of this approach have been indicated above), the following picture emerges:

A. Character. The Servant was chosen by the Lord (42:1; 49:1) and endued with the Spirit (42:1); He was taught by the Lord (50:4), and found His strength in Him (49:2, 5). It was the Lord’s will that He should suffer (53:10); He was weak, unimpressive, and scorned by men (52:14; 53:1-3, 7-9), meek (42:2), gentle (42:3), and uncomplaining (50:6; 53:7). Despite His innocence (53:9), He was subjected to constant suffering (50:6; 53:3, 8-10), so as to be reduced to near despair (49:4). But His trust was in the Lord (49:4; 50:7-9); He obeyed Him (50:4-5), and persevered (50:7) until He was victorious (42:4; 50:8, 9).

B. Mission. His mission to Israel was to bring the rebellious nation back to God (49:5), but His work extended further: He was a light to the nations, bringing judgment and salvation to the end of the earth (42:1, 3, 4; 49:6). This mission was to be accomplished only through His suffering, in which He took the place of the people of the Lord, and bore the penalty that should be theirs (53:4-6, 8), interceding for them (53:12); His suffering ended in death (53:8, 9; 53:12), as a sin offering on their behalf (53:10), thus accomplishing their acquittal (53:11). His mission accomplished, He was exalted to glory and world-wide influence (52:13, 15; 53:12).

IV. The Servant in later Judaism. Possible echoes of the Servant-figure have been detected in the OT itself, particularly in Zechariah 9-14; a meek and suffering figure occurs in 9:9, 10; 11:4-17; 12:10-14; 13:7-9. It is the character of the figure portrayed, rather than any verbal echo, which might suggest the influence of the Servant in Isaiah.

In later Hel. Judaism there is little evidence of a messianic understanding of these passages, except what is implicit in the LXX tr. of Isaiah 52:13-53:12. (See Zimmerli and Jeremias, The Servant of God, 42-44, 53-55.)

In Palestinian Judaism, on the other hand, a persistent messianic exegesis exists side by side with an embarrassment at the idea of a suffering Messiah. Thus the Targ. of Jonathan on 52:13-53:12 explicitly identifies the Servant as the Messiah, but systematically manipulates the text to transfer every idea of suffering from the Servant to Israel, the Gentiles, or the wicked. Several other indications of a messianic exegesis in Palestinian Judaism are listed by Jeremias (Zimmerli and Jeremias, op. ct., 59-79). While some are disputed, their overall significance far outweighs the few isolated indications of an interpretation of the Servant as either the nation or a historical individual. This is the more surprising in view of the apologetic use made of these passages by Christians. The rabbis generally preferred rather to ignore the Servant-idea than to interpret it as other than messianic. The evidence, therefore, suggests that in Palestinian Judaism of the time of Christ and afterward a messianic exegesis of the Servant was so firmly established that even the demands of the anti-Christian polemic could not unseat it.

V. The Servant in the NT. The NT writers are unanimous in stating both that the Servant is a messianic figure, and that Jesus is the Servant. What is in dispute is the extent of the influence of this figure in the NT. Some recent writers have argued that it was of minor importance, and that Jesus’ predictions of His suffering were based not on the Servant-idea, but on the “Son of Man” of Daniel 7 (esp. M. D. Hooker).

A. In the teaching of Jesus. The only explicit quotation is Luke 22:37. The Servant is also clearly alluded to in Mark 10:45; 14:24, and possibly 9:12. In each of these cases the reference is to the suffering and death of Jesus, as the fulfillment of that predicted for the Servant. In Mark 10:45 and 14:24 stress is laid on the redemptive purpose of that suffering, and its vicarious nature. There are also numerous predictions by Jesus that He must suffer, several of which base this necessity on Scripture (Matt 26:54; Mark 9:12; 14:21, 49; Luke 18:31). The most probable source of these predictions is the Servant-idea in Isaiah, the clearest indication of a suffering Messiah in the OT, and an idea which Jesus elsewhere applied explicitly to His own suffering, rather than Daniel 7, a passage where the idea of suffering is not clearly applied to the central figure, and which Jesus applied only to His exaltation and power.

It is relevant, too, that the heavenly voice at the baptism of Jesus (Mark 1:11), which is generally agreed to allude to Isaiah 42:1, must have influenced His subsequent view of His mission.

Thus the Servant-idea appears as a major factor in Jesus’ understanding of His own mission as one of redemption through a vicarious suffering and death.

B. In the rest of the NT. The Servant-idea, though not as prominent as one might expect, is attested in most of the major strata of the NT. That Jesus was at an early stage given the title of παῖς Θεοῦ is seen by its use in Acts 3:13, 26 (Peter’s speech) and 4:27, 30 (the prayer of the church). The title does not occur again, but explicit quotations from the Servant passages, with reference to Jesus and His Gospel, occur in Matthew 8:17; 12:18-21; John 12:38; Acts 8:32, 33; and Romans 10:16; 15:21. The emphasis in these quotations is not, however, as in Jesus’ use of the passages, on the necessity of His redemptive suffering. This use of the Servant-idea is seen in some allusions in the theological writing esp. of Peter and Paul. Its influence has been traced esp. in 1 Peter 2:21-25; 3:18; 1 Corinthians 15:3; and Philippians 2:6-11. Further probable echoes are in Romans 4:25; 5:19; 2 Corinthians 5:21, and in John’s use of the term “Lamb of God” (John 1:29, 36; cf. Isa 53:7).

This material is, however, not impressive in its bulk. It would appear that the view of Jesus as the Servant of the Lord, while prominent in Jesus’ own teaching, and preserved in the earlier parts of the NT, esp. in connection with the teaching of Peter, was later superseded by the titles “Lord” and “Son of God,” though the fact of Christ’s vicarious and atoning death, which the Servant passages explicitly teach, was firmly established as the basis of His redemptive work.

Bibliography A. For the whole article: W. Zimmerli and J. Jeremias, The Servant of God (revised ed. 1965) (= TWNT, V [1954], 653-713).

B. For sections I-III: H. W. Robinson, The Cross of the Servant (1926; reprinted in The Cross in the Old Testament [1955], 55-114); J. S. Van der Ploeg, Les Chants du Serviteur de Jahvé (1936); I. Engnell, “The ‘Ebed Yahweh Songs and the Suffering Messiah in ‘Deutero-Isaiah,’” BJRL, XXXI (1948), 54-93; C. R. North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah (1948); J. Lindblom, The Servant Songs in Deutero-Isaiah (1951); H. H. Rowley, The Servant of the Lord (1952), 1-88; S. Mowinckel, He That Cometh (1956), 187-257; H. Ringgren, The Messiah in the Old Testament (1956), 39-53.

C. For section V: H. W. Wolff, Jesaja 53 in Urchristentum (1942); J. L. Price, “The Servant Motif in the Synoptic Gospels,” INT, XII (1958), 28-38; C. K. Barrett, “The Background of Mark 10:45,” in New Testament Essays in memory of T. W. Manson (ed. A. J. B. Higgins, 1959), 1-18; O. Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament (1959), 51-82; M. D. Hooker, Jesus and the Servant (1959); B. Lindars, New Testament Apologetic (1961), 77-88; R. T. France, “The Servant of the Lord in the Teaching of Jesus,” Tyndale Bulletin, XIX (1968).