Suffering Servant

In this last Song, the Servant suffers silently and vicariously on behalf of others. He bears their griefs and sorrows, their transgressions and iniquities.  And, in this Song, the Servant’s death is spoken of.  But it is within this suffering and death, that the nations see and come to understand God.

After the final Suffering Servant Song, Isaiah gives us a foretaste of Easter morning with a beautiful Song of Peace and Assurance and a Song of Joy and Triumph.

The parallels between the experience of the Servant and Jesus’s Passion are unmistakable. 

It is the image that now the time has come to be delivered. Now is the time that God has chosen to intervene in history to bring salvation to his people. This is the same understanding we have when Jesus enters Jerusalem on the colt.

We see in Jesus the fulfillment of this Servant Song. But ultimately, the Servant’s mission is achieved in us, the Church.

The exile and the estrangement are caused by sin, and yet God pronounces that He blots our transgressions, and no longer remembers our sins.

For the Gospel writers, this description of the Servant proclaims Jesus. For it is Jesus who ultimately fulfills the prophet’s words.

Out of this profound sense of despondency, the prophet comes to proclaim God’s redemption of his people and to give them an understanding of the divine economy and the role that suffering plays. And so he begins with the proclamation of “Comfort, Comfort, ye my people.”