Isaiah 53 with Dr. Michael L. Brown

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line, a special Dividing Line today.

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We're going to dive right into this. I just actually got off the air about 90 seconds ago.

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I was on with Janet Mefford discussing my book, The Same -Sex Controversy, and I'm going to have to admit, it is going to be a bit of a challenge for me to dive right into this because I am joined by a man who is a warrior for the faith, a dear brother in the

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Lord, Dr. Michael Brown. Michael, thank you so much. I know you are busier than the proverbial one -armed paper hanger.

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Is there a corresponding Jewish one -armed paper hanger joke type thing that I could use when talking to you?

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If it exists, I'm not aware of it, actually. But by the way,

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I just got off the air 90 seconds ago dealing with the question about black Christians and President Obama's call for redefinition of marriage, so I'm shifting gears right along with you,

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James. The clutch is going to burn out just a little bit because you had to have been watching the newsfeed at the same time.

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You've got the House defeating the gender -based abortion ban.

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You've got the first district court saying DOMA is unconstitutional.

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I mean, have you ever seen, have you ever felt so much in the middle of the eye of the storm as over the past number of weeks?

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No, and you also mentioned, left out SB 1172 in California that's made its way through the

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Senate and has to go to the Assembly, which would make it illegal for any professional counselor to tell someone under 18 that they can be helped with unwanted same -sex attraction.

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So yeah, I'll tell you though, at the same time, I absolutely feel that, just as you do, that I've been called for such a time as this, and all of the opposition, all of the craziness happening in our society just reminds us of the importance of shining like light and salt being salt in the society.

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Well, you and I, I listen to your program all the time, and we are saying so many of the same things.

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It's awful nice to know that we're not alone out there, and we do know there are many, many others. But I tell you,

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I doubt you've had the opportunity to listen to the five -hour series I did in response to Matthew Vines.

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Well, it really wasn't five hours because one hour of it was Matthew Vines, but I've just never seen, and Rich Pierce, the president of ministry, has confirmed this, we've just never seen so many people contacting us saying, this is what we need.

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I've been wanting to talk to such and such a person in my life, and I just didn't know how to deal with the

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Romans 1 issue, or just so much of this stuff. And it just, it is an amazing time to be in ministry and to be seeking to encourage people in these ways, and we often pray for you, and you're right out in the front.

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Hey, and you, you are now, you have your own outline, your own information sheet on the

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Southern Poverty Law Center website. I mean, you have arrived, sir. Oh, yeah.

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I am listed together with Malik Zulu Shabazz, the leader of the New Black Panthers, David Duke, former

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Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, neo -Nazis, Jew -bashing white supremacists.

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I have made it to the big time. I am on the list of 30 activist leaders of the new radical right, and I'm also on the list,

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GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, really, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Disagreement, they have a list of 36 commentators to avoid because of our radical views.

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I'm on their list as well. The funny thing is, aside from the SPLC getting my birth year wrong, they have me as born in 1967, which means

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I was bar mitzvahed at the age of one, graduated from high school at the age of six, was married at nine, and had our first child at ten, so aside from just quibbling over little details, when they actually quote me,

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GLAAD, SPLC, the quotes are fine. This gets me on the list with the leader of the

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New Black Panthers and the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, but to me it just exposes the folly of the other side and the truth of where we stand, but yeah, it's been a time of real honor, and I've never been more encouraged in the

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Lord. Oh, well, let me tell you, I have listened to so many of your debates, and they just echo my own experiences in these things, so it's going to be hard for me to shift,

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I must admit, because there's just so much going on right now, but we're going to try it anyways, because I don't want to be engaged in false advertising, and I let folks know, and we know that there's a lot of folks listening.

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A number of, I don't even remember when it was you told me, about the book on Isaiah 53, because it was delayed by a number of months, wasn't it?

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Oh yeah, quite a few months, I think there was some transition in the editorial department, but it was months and months delayed, and I was thrilled to finally see the volume come out of Isaiah 53.

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A bunch of different Christian scholars coming together for a conference, and then out of the papers from that conference turned into a book edited by Darrell Bock and Mitch Glazer.

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I'm so pleased to see it out. Yeah, and I've been looking for it, and I thought, you know what, what would be absolutely outside the normal realm for Christian broadcasting or webcasting would be to get

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Michael Brown on here and have the two of us walk through this text based on the original language text and address the key issues.

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Now I have listened to numerous of your debates with various rabbis who seem to very frequently be named after precious metals for some reason.

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I'm not really sure what that's all about. But this, obviously, is the premier text that you have to deal with in your activity in responding to the anti -missionaries and doing these debates.

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Would that be a fair statement? Yeah, and I would say it's the principal text that we point to in the

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Tanakh and the Hebrew Scriptures to say that the message of the Messiah's suffering, death, resurrection, in particular of his vicarious suffering, is clearly laid out in the

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Hebrew Scriptures. So this is a text that we frequently point to. Because of that, the counter -missionaries and rabbis will try to say it cannot apply to Jesus.

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So you have had to deal with this. You've had to deal with, well, there's not just one objection.

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I mean, there is an amazing number of objections that Jewish polemicists have developed over the centuries to almost every aspect of Isaiah chapter 53.

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In fact, as you've pointed out, many of the objections are self -contradictory. In other words, if you accepted all the objections, you'd be contradicting yourself.

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And yet that's still what you have to deal with when you're dealing with this particular subject.

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But interestingly enough, the main interest that I bring, the current main interest for me, is that many of my

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Muslim opponents will borrow Jewish objections to Isaiah chapter 53 because of Surah 4, verse 157 in the

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Quran, which denies the crucifixion of Jesus and his substitutionary death, and hence his burial and resurrection as well.

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And so it is fascinating to get that spin and to see how often the

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Muslims are borrowing from the Jews to get their objections to Isaiah chapter 53.

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So the thought crossed my mind. You've got a new book out that we're going to get you back on to talk about, The Real Kosher Jesus.

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And of course, it's been over a year since we talked about homosexuality and so on and so forth.

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So there's lots of things we could go for. But I just thought, you know what? We could make this available. And I think a lot of folks would like to hear just walking through this text to be able to understand, to be able to present it to other people, because it has so many applications and it's so foundational to our understanding.

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And really, it's absolutely amazing when you think about these words written so many centuries before the coming of Christ, and yet there's just no other way to explain them than there is a spirit of God, there is a supernatural realm, and there is such a thing as prophecy.

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And it truly is a tremendous, tremendous text. So I'm very thankful that you've taken the time to join with us.

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Oh, it's a joy. And I so appreciate what you do and the attention to the text. And because this has no interruptions in the broadcast, we can really dive in deeply.

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And you know, when I look at the many different objections to the text, it reminds me of maybe art critics explaining why the

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Mona Lisa is really not special. Because when you're all done with it, you just tell someone, especially if they can read in Hebrew, but just give them an

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English translation, even one from Jews, and say, just read this. When they're done reading it, it reminds me of the story of a

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Messianic Jewish leader in Florida, raised in an atheist household. He came to faith.

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He showed his father, Isaiah 53, and his father said to him, if I believed in God, I would say that was

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Jesus. Wow, there's a veil right there, unfortunately, still existing.

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But yeah, of course, that has to be supernatural. In fact, I just today added the JPS to my accordion setup so that I could have it on the screen today as we look at it.

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Now, let's dive into this, because I know you may struggle with this, because we don't have to stop every six minutes.

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You don't get to take a drink of water or anything. We just get to dive right through this stuff.

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But let's start with the necessary background, and I think I can identify from how often you have emphasized this and how you've presented this.

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The necessary background to this is to recognize the primary Jewish interpretation, at least not in the

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Talmudic sources, but from Razion onwards. Who is the servant in Isaiah, and is this simply talking about Israel when we start at Isaiah 52 .13?

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Right, what we need to do is look at the larger context where the servant starts to be mentioned in the 41st chapter, and is mentioned almost 20 times after that.

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Sometimes the servant is explicitly identified as Israel, Jacob, Israel, you are my witnesses.

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It's clearly plural, it's speaking about the nation as a whole, but often the people are described as deaf and dumb, or the people are exiled, or the people on some level are straying or under judgment.

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And then there's a figure that rises up and is presented as an individual, apparently in chapter 42, clearly in chapter 49, clearly in chapter 50, and I'd argue also clearly from the end of 52 through chapter 53.

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And this individual is righteous, this individual has as his mission restoring

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Israel back to God and also being a light to the nations. And we see from Isaiah 49 that it seems that this individual fails in his mission, and God speaks to him and says, not only will you regather

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Israel, because it seemed that the servant failed to do that, but you will also be a light to the nations.

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And the larger context is Isaiah prophesying about the exile to come, and then the

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Jewish people coming out of exile. And this picture of the Jewish people coming out of exile was pictured as being greater than the exodus that took place.

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And as they came out in haste from Egypt, they will not have to come out in haste from Babylon and from the nations.

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And the people of Israel emerging from exile becomes a template, a picture of redemption.

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So it's against this backdrop, the Jews coming out of Babylonian exile, that we now see this greater picture of the individual, not a foreigner, but the one who fulfills

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Israel's destiny, the righteous remnant of one. Some of the rabbis say the text refers to Israel as a whole.

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Others recognize that doesn't work, and they say it's the righteous remnant. True, but it is a righteous remnant of one, and only he accomplishes this mission.

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He who was rejected by his own people and yet became a light to the world and will ultimately be accepted by his people, the one who fulfills

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Israel's destiny, Yeshua the Messiah. That's the larger context as we focus in now on this text in Isaiah 52 .13

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to 53 .12. Now, just very quickly, as I look at the text, do you see, do you think the

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New Testament writers, when they look at Avdi in 52 .13,

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My Servant, the Greek Septuagint translation of that is hapeismu, which of course we know is used of Jesus in Messianic fulfillment text in the

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New Testament. Do you see them making that connection as well, especially in light of the fact that Pais can be used in a very close relationship sense as well, my son, my child, the relationship that exists between this one and the

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Father? There's certainly a clear pride that's being spoken of in 52 .13,

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Behold, my servant will act wisely or will prosper. And Yeshua as the servant of the

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Lord, the Son of God, pointing to these texts, explaining how he was going to be poured out as a ransom, even pointing to the text in Luke 22 when he said he's about to be betrayed and he's going to be reckoned with the transgressors.

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This was clearly in the conscious mind of the disciples and certainly the identification of servant, having an intimacy to it,

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I believe is found in the text and recognized by the New Testament writers. Wouldn't you have loved to have had the opportunity, and we do in essence via the

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Spirit, but I would love to have been with the disciples in those first days after the resurrection when he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

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What would have been like to have listened to the Son of God exegeting this text? I can't imagine what that would have been like.

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Yeah, and when here they are in despair, when he dies, they couldn't figure out that he was going to die.

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When he talked about resurrection, they couldn't figure out resurrection because they couldn't figure out that he was going to die. When he dies, they're in despair, they're hopeless.

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He rises from the dead. And then those famous accounts in Luke's gospel, at the end of Luke's gospel, the two on the road to Emmaus, how foolish, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken and then his own inner circle of 11 in Luke 24, where he opens their minds so they can understand the scriptures.

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Could you imagine when he says, look, it's written here and it's written here, and they suddenly see it?

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And then another phrase, slow of heart. I mean, there's rebuke there. We're supposed to see these things.

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Yes, absolutely. And it's one of these things that I don't know if you've ever been shown a picture and you look at it and you think it's a picture of an old man and they say, no, it's a beautiful woman.

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And you go, what are you talking about? And then you look again and it kind of morphs in front of your eyes. And then once you see it, you can't imagine that you didn't see it.

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That's how clear it is. And I know that there are sincere rabbis and Jewish friends of mine, counter missionaries, and they look at this text and they don't see it.

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And I have to conclude that somehow their minds have not been opened because it is so overwhelmingly clear.

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You mentioned some objections are self contradictory. The two most contradictory to me, self contradictory, are the objections that A, the

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New Testament writers rewrote what happened to Jesus to make it fit Isaiah 53, and B, Isaiah 53 does not line up with what's written in the

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New Testament. Well, if you're finding the same person using both those arguments, then you've definitely got a problem.

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There's no question about it. All right. What particular translation should we use as our base here?

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I've got the JPS up. Would you like to go with that? What do you normally utilize there?

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That's fine. I've got the Hebrew in front of me. We're going to be looking at the Hebrew, but if we really focus upon that, we're going to be losing a lot of the audience.

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So we need to make sure to explain any of the terminology that we use. New JPS is great.

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All right. All right. Indeed, my servant shall prosper, be exalted and raised to great heights, just as the many were appalled at him, so marred was his appearance unlike that of man, his form beyond human semblance.

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Now, there does seem to be a structure from 52 .13

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to the end of 53, especially when it starts talking about his grave and the land of the living and so on and so forth.

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But this is starting off—how do you understand this marring, this first section?

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Is it diving right into the suffering of the servant, or how do you understand starting at this point?

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Yes, I do. And here's the unexpected contrast. The servant is so highly exalted that the ancient rabbis in the

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Midrash said that he will be higher than Abraham, more lofty than Moses, and even more raised up than the ministering angels.

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These terms that are used about high and lofty and lifted up are primarily used of God himself. Many Christians are familiar with Isaiah 6,

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I saw the Lord high and lifted up. Same words used here about the exaltation of the servant, and yet the shock, the shock here as it turns to second person, which can happen in Hebrew, it goes from second person to third, from you to he or they.

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Many were astonished at you that it is talking about the level of suffering that he is marred by violence to the point that you can barely recognize that he's a human being.

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You think of somebody that gets so terribly beaten, and you see a picture of them, and you can barely even tell if it's a male or a female, and say that the suffering is going to be that severe, that the shock, the astonishment will be this one that's high and exalted was that one who suffered?

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And then it goes from there into what his role will be in chapter 15. So I definitely see it. There's a debate sometimes in verse 14, the word mishchat, can that refer to he was anointed?

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But it's clearly what's in mind here is the level of suffering, and his face actually being so beaten that it's hard to even recognize him as a man.

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So it goes on to say, and this is the JPS translation, just so he shall startle many nations, but most translations actually use the term sprinkle.

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When you look at Nazah there, why is there the ability to have sprinkle or startle?

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And if it is sprinkle, how would you understand that? Sure. In verse 15, the verb yazeh, coming from the root nazah, would most commonly mean sprinkle, sprinkling blood, etc.

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Except it's almost always used with a preposition, sprinkle blood on the altar.

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So you would have expected it to say, thus will he sprinkle upon many nations. Ibn Ezra, a top medieval

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Jewish commentator, said that it's referring to sprinkling blood of the nations, meaning he will do war against the nations.

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That's a very much minority view. Others try to relate this to an Arabic verb, to jump or startle, so he will cause the nations to jump or be startled.

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That's actually reflected in the Septuagint. But a recent critical commentary of John Goldengay, he argues that without the preposition, most of the ancient versions figured out what this was about, and that it is right to translate so will he sprinkle many nations.

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And because the language through the rest of the text is so priestly, it uses so many words from the cult, from the temple, from sacrifice, from bearing sin and guilt,

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I think you have to look at that as a legitimate possibility that it's an unusual usage of the verb, but it does mean sprinkle in this context.

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Yeah, the Septuagint uses thaumazo there, which would substantiate that particular view. But so JPS says, just so he shall startle many nations, kings shall be silenced because of him, for they shall see what has not been told them shall behold what they never have heard.

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Would you identify that with the proclamation of the Gospel, or is it the shocking nature of the suffering of the servant?

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I believe that it refers to two things. On the one hand, the proclamation of the

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Gospel through the ages, where many kings and many leaders have been shocked to find out that this Jesus, Yeshua, is actually the

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Messiah. And then his exaltation at the end of the age, when the whole world will come to recognize this.

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Now, the counter -missionaries would say this refers to Israel's exaltation that will so shock the nations, but that breaks down in many other ways as we go through this text itself.

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So yes, as the Gospel has been proclaimed, many kings and leaders have put their hands on their mouths in shock that this one, this crucified one, this despised and rejected one is actually the

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King of all kings, and then the final revelation will come at his return. Now, do you see—there does seem to be at least a minor break at the beginning of 53 because you have the interrogative.

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You have this almost rhetorical question that's asked, who can believe what we have heard, upon whom has the arm of the

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Lord been revealed? So there seems to be somewhat—or do you see this as a continuation of the amazement of the message itself in regards to who the suffering

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Messiah is and what has been done to him? There's certainly a pause at the end of 52 .13

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through 53 .1. There is definitely a pause of sorts, so now it's a dramatic continuation.

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Having presented this amazing overview and just three short verses of the

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Messiah's exaltation but only after great suffering, now it's going to give the details of that headline, of that caption.

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Now the traditional Jewish view is that it is the nations who continue to speak, and they are now speaking, saying, who's believed what we've heard?

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Who's believed this report? And they would say, look, it says at the end of 15, it uses the verb shamah, to hear.

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What they had not heard, they now understand. And then it continues with the noun shmuah from the same root, who is believed what we have heard?

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And the claim is that it's the nations speaking about Israel's sufferings. The problem is, though, that God said emphatically that if Israel was righteous, he would bless the nation and make them the head and not the tail, as opposed to scatter them around the world in judgment.

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You say, well, maybe it's the righteous remnant who has been among the sinning Israelites, and that righteous remnant fulfills the text.

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The problem here is that if this is the nations speaking, they are recognizing that when the righteous remnant was suffering, it was suffering for the sins of the nations, and the suffering of the righteous remnant brought healing to the nations.

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No, to the contrary, God says to the nations that mistreat Israel, I will strike you and destroy you, and you won't even exist as a nation anymore.

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The suffering of the Jewish people scattered around the nations did not bring blessing and healing to the nations.

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When they overdid the punishment, it brought judgment on them. So the only legitimate way to read this is this is now the voice of the

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Jewish people who are proclaiming this message and saying, who has believed what we have heard?

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Who has believed our report? And has the arm of the Lord been revealed to these people?

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Do you see anything significant—well, let me take that back. I know that you have to, because in one of your debates with your good friend

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Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, you sort of—you didn't have much time to develop it, and I hear those types of things, especially because I do so many debates as well.

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But one of the objections that he raised was, did you notice in everything that Michael said, there was nothing about believing in this

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Messiah? I did that pretty well, didn't I? That was almost a good impersonation there.

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And you responded by saying, but Shmuley, don't you see? Hey, Amin is right there.

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You have belief right there in Isaiah 53 -1. And he responded, and it was in one of those situations where you didn't get a counter response to respond to him.

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But his response basically was, what are you talking about? This isn't talking about believing in a Messiah. That's irrelevant.

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Do you see the use of the term pustuo in the Greek Septuagint belief in this text as—how is that relevant in this case?

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Yeah, well, it's absolutely relevant, because that is a major charge that the Jewish community will bring against us.

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Nowhere does it say we have to believe in a Messiah. Nowhere does it say that a relationship with God is related to that.

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Nowhere does it say that we become righteous through that. So of course I point out that in the creed developed by Maimonides, which is repeated daily by religious

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Jews, one of the 13 principles of faith says, Anim Amin b'minash levah b 'viyatu

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Mashiach, I believe in perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah. And Jews are to confess that daily. But here in Isaiah 53, the question is asked, who has believed our report?

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Which indicates that if you don't believe it, you miss out on what God has done. Your eyes are blinded to it.

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If you believe it, then you can receive the benefits of it. So yes, it's an important question, and all

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I have to do—I don't have to quote John 3 .16, I can just as well quote Isaiah 53 .1, have you believed the report?

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Have you believed this message about the Messiah? Right, right. So there seems to be—and

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I'll ask you to comment on the transition here— For he has grown by his favor like a tree crown, like a tree trunk out of arid ground.

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He had no former beauty that we should look at him, no charm that we should find him pleasing.

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You've already commented on who's speaking here, but when it does say that we should look at him, that we should find him pleasing, it does seem vitally important that we sort of keep the audiences and speakers in mind to see how this is being fulfilled in the

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Messiah. Yes, and here are the subjects in the chapter. We have we, the

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Jewish people as a whole, speaking. And obviously the prophet gives voice to his people, as commonly happens in the prophetic books.

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You have the subject of the one that is being pictured here, the Messiah, who suffers, but not for his sins.

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And then you have the one who is announcing the Messiah's exaltation, and who even speaks in the first person through the chapter, which is

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God himself, when he refers, for example, to my people, or when he says, I will divide for him among the many, of the spoils.

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So it's the Jewish people who are looking at this, and it's speaking of the Messiah's humble origins.

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Can any good thing come from Nazareth, when Messiah comes? A carpenter's son from Galilee? Are you kidding me?

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Now some would say, yeah, but doesn't Luke say that he grew in wisdom and stature and so on? Yes, but what's interesting is that there's never a description in the

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New Testament about his exceptional looks. I mean, it talks about David in the

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Old Testament. It talks about certain women in the Old Testament. It talks about Saul being head and shoulders taller than others in Israel, and standing out.

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It doesn't say that about the Messiah. He's described in very humble terms. We know almost nothing about his first 30 years.

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He grows up in obscurity in a small town in Galilee as a carpenter's son.

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Nothing special about him in the natural, in terms of his illustrious origins, and then it moves on to his dramatic sufferings, and who is this?

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He's a nobody. He's suffering now for his own sins, and this is how the chapter unfolds.

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He was despised, shunned by men, a man of suffering, familiar with Koli, disease, grief, sorrows.

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We'll talk about these words and whether they're meant to be poetically talking about the same things.

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As one who hid his face from us, over against as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised.

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We held him of no account. So obviously there are, as you've mentioned numerous times, certain terms in the original language in this text that are open to interpretation, have a range of semantic meanings.

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So let's look at this text. How do you understand the JPS translation and how it differs from some of the modern

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Christian translations? If we translate it literally, it is a man of pains and intimately acquainted with disease.

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The fact is in the prophetic literature, though, pains and disease are often metaphors of human suffering.

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Some of the words could be used, for example, of Israel's suffering in Egypt. Isaiah, the first chapter, pictures

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Israel as sin sick from head to toe. It pictures Israel as a physical body, wounded and bruised and bleeding from head to toe.

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So this need not mean that the Messiah himself was sickly. What it means is that he is a man of pains and suffering and he is intimately involved with the human plight, intimately involved with sickness, with disease, with pain.

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He has entered into our suffering. So it could either be describing someone who's terribly ill or someone who is deeply enmeshed in the human plight, given himself to suffering alongside of us.

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And then at the end of the verse, where it speaks of as one from whom men hide their faces or one from whom his face is hidden, either could read in the

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Hebrew, the word mimenu could mean from him or it could mean from us. Either way, people see him and turn their head or the head has to be turned away from him one way or the other.

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He is despised and we esteem him not. The overall picture that actually emerges is very clear.

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I was talking to a counter missionary about this one time and I said, do you think that the overall interpretation of the passage hinges on individual words or overall context?

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He said, oh, definitely context. So these are just nuances within a larger picture of one who suffers terribly.

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Is it speaking primarily of his death on the cross? Is it speaking of his intercessory ministry, healing the sick, driving out demons, being with the outcasts and the despised and rejected?

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Probably both, in my view. Now there are some Jewish objections that you raised in your monumental work on that subject that did focus upon this idea of disease and sickness.

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Is that correct? Oh, yeah. That they would say that the Messiah himself had to be physically sick.

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There is a Talmudic tradition that says that the Messiah sits at the gates of Rome and he's a leper and he takes off his bandages.

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It's actually very moving. He takes off his bandages one at a time rather than the other lepers who change all their bandages at once.

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But he does it one at a time for fear that he'll be in the midst of changing his bandages when it will be time for him to be revealed.

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But as Rafael Patai points out, the Jewish anthropologist, this is a projection of Jewish suffering back on the

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Messiah. And what I would say is it's very important for the Jewish people to recognize that we have a suffering

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Messiah who relates to our pain, who relates to our suffering in exile, who relates to the horrors of the

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Holocaust, who relates to the torture and the disease that the Jewish people have been subjected to in their times of exile, that he's one with us.

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And that's the clear picture here of a suffering Messiah. He does not literally have to be physically sick according to this description, but one who is intimately involved with human suffering and pain.

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Now, in verse 3, it says, Niv -Zeh, he was despised, and one of the objections that one of your opponents has raised in the past is, look,

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Jesus was a popular guy. He had all sorts of people following him around and had large crowds, and this can't be

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Jesus because he wasn't despised. How have you responded to that? Right, and it's a fair objection to say, look, this picture is one who's rejected, whereas he was hailed by crowds and hailed as king as he came into Jerusalem.

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The prophet here is focusing on two things. He's focusing on his obscure origins, and he's focusing on his rejection and his death.

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That's the primary focus, in fact, for the rest of this chapter. And when we think of Jesus, as followers of Jesus, and what is preached and what we remember, what is emphasized, is not the fact that crowds followed him, but rather that he was crucified.

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And that has always been our message, that he was crucified, that he was treated as a common criminal, that he was abandoned, that he was misunderstood, and that he continues to be misunderstood and rejected by his very own people.

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So all we have to recognize is what the prophet is focusing on, and there's no question that it's a totally accurate description.

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Just as we'll see in a little while when it speaks about his silence, it's not saying that he never taught or preached.

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It's not even saying that on the cross he didn't cry out with Scripture. It's saying that he didn't resist death, that he went willingly to slaughter.

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And that's what's so specific here, that when people read it, several of us have had family members,

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Jewish family members, who read the text and thought that we changed it, that we switched Bibles on them or something like that.

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Or they've said, no, no, no, I want to read the Old Testament, not the New Testament, thinking this had to be a New Testament account.

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I think it's very important, it's certainly something that I have caught a number of times in listening to your conversations with various rabbis and other representatives on this particular subject, is when these objections are raised, they force us to have a much...

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If we've just read Isaiah 53 and we have not thought through what the prophet is actually saying and what the range of possible meanings of the words are, we can get tripped up.

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For example, you just raised, we haven't gotten there yet, but he, like a sheep that is silent before his shearers, he did not utter a word, and yet Jesus, Shmuley has more than once quoted from Jesus' statements from the cross and things like that, therefore he is disqualified.

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And what that requires the Christian to understand is that when it talks about opening his mouth, it's talking about opening his mouth in protest.

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When it talks about doing violence, for example, well, you know, he used a whip to drive people out of...

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Well, there's a certain context to what doing violence is. It all forces us to think through much more clearly what the possible range of meanings are and what the context in the

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Old Testament is. And unfortunately, it just isn't really common amongst a lot of evangelicals that, especially when we're reading from the

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Tanakh, that we contextualize it to that level. Yeah, and what we have to realize is that these are not just words that were thrown together on a page to paint a general picture to get us to say ooh and ah.

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This was God describing in advance something of such momentous importance that when

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Yeshua would point back to it and the first apostles and other believers would point back to it that you'd see it and say, my

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God, you laid it out in advance. Here it is in detail. And when we're reading it just as Christians, we're edified, we're blessed.

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When we're challenged, that's when we need to dig deeper. And the deeper we dig, the more profound it becomes.

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Yeah, it really does. Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing, our suffering that he endured. We accounted him plagued, smitten, and afflicted by God.

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Again, we accounted him to be mukhe.

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We thought that he was smitten by God. Let's reestablish who's speaking and how this would have been understood and how we should see this verse.

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Yes, so again, this is the Jewish people, the prophets speaking of the nation as a whole and saying that when we saw him suffering, and that becomes explicit in verse 5 and then later in the chapter, when we saw him suffering on the cross, when we saw him dying, we thought he was suffering for his own sin.

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We thought he was suffering as one smitten by God. Now, the word naguah, it could mean smitten as a leper or simply smitten.

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And since the rest of the text just talks about his wounds and his bruises that were inflicted on him in verse 5, it's talking about violence that's done to him.

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We understand that when the Jewish people, the nation, saw him hanging on the cross and many to this day, when they look at that, they assume he's dying for his own sin.

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He's dying as a common criminal. He's dying because he tried to lead a revolt against Rome. He's dying for something he did, and that was the obvious assumption.

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And what's interesting in verse 4, the beginning where it says, surely it was our sicknesses he bore and our pains he carried.

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The bearing and carrying, these are words that were used in particular in terms of either prophetic intercession or priestly intercession or the guilt offering, carrying or bearing certain guilt.

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And sickness and disease, again, are used here both metaphorically and literally.

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That D .A. Carson and Franz Delitzsch and others, it was the same conclusion I came to. That through his earthly ministry, he's entering into human pain and sickness, and he's literally carrying sickness, carrying disease, entering into our pain, sighing and grieving with the lostness of humanity, coming down from glory into our midst.

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And now when he dies on the cross, he's striking at the root cause of all human suffering, which is sin, and thereby, literally, on the cross, bears our sickness, bears our disease, bears our sin.

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In other words, it's not an emphasis on something physical. It's an emphasis on something spiritual, which is the root cause of all of humanity's pain.

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The reason there will be no sickness, disease, pain, mental illness, hospitals in heaven is because there'll be no sin there.

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The reason we have all these problems here on the earth is because of sin, and Jesus strikes at the root of that and carries it.

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And again, prophetic language, speaking of sickness and disease, bearing that, it ties in with spiritual language.

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The two are really interchangeable. Well, and it's fascinating to note that the Septuagint actually says,

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Hutas tas hamartias haimon ferai. It uses the term sin rather than griefs or sickness there.

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So it definitely taps into that very vein of understanding that you were just talking about.

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Right, Septuagint and the Targum, which is very paraphrastic, they both read it in terms of sin, they read it spiritually only.

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I believe it's a both and, as Alfred Edersheim points out. But ultimately, it's recognized by Jewish interpreters before the time of Jesus, at the time of Jesus, that the sufferings recounted here are spiritual in their essence.

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Well, it is interesting because you have sin in 53 .4 in the Septuagint, and then you have

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Anamia is the translation that then comes out in verse 5 for our transgressions, which the

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Jewish Publication Society translation says sins. So it's definitely there. So verse 5, but he was wounded because of our sins, crushed because of our iniquities.

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He bore the chastisement that made us whole, and by his bruises we were healed. Now, with 10 and 12, this seems to be really one of the absolute central assertions, because you have here this clear concept of representational, substitutionary atonement ideas coming together here that have been so important in Jewish thought.

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Would you say this is one of the key texts? Yes, in fact, we're right in the heart of it.

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Verse 6 reemphasizes it as well. In fact, you could argue that the strongest statements for vicarious suffering and vicarious atonement are found not in the

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New Testament, but in the Hebrew Scriptures, in these very verses. And remember that when

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Paul is writing what he writes, he has teachings and traditions that have come from Yeshua, but otherwise his text, his theology text, is the

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Hebrew Scriptures. So where it says that he was pierced for our transgressions, the

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Hebrew is stronger than sin. It's the word transgressions. This is willful rebellion. And the

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Hebrew is very tight in structure. The preposition that's used is used in a causative sense, hence because of.

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He was pierced because of our transgressions. He was crushed because of our iniquities and the chastisement here, the punishment that made us whole.

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It is literally the chastisement of our shalom. It was upon him and by his wounds, by his bruising, there is healing for us.

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And that's what we have to recognize cannot apply to the righteous remnant. If there was a so -called righteous remnant, we know in Scripture there was the minority, the righteous ones that looked to God and sought to please him and lived by his law, that if they were suffering,

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Jewish people suffering around the world, let's say there was a righteous remnant in the Holocaust and a righteous remnant in different times in Jewish history, their suffering did not bring healing to those who smote them.

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So I talked to a counter -missionary rabbi in 1973, and he said to me, it was a very kindly man, gracious man, learned man.

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He said to me, if I punch him in the face that he is suffering from my sin, true, but his suffering is not bringing healing to me.

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Or to his nose, actually, either one. Right, or to his nose or his face, exactly. So there's a profound breakdown of that, and this is a clear picture of vicarious suffering, and there is even

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Jewish tradition that teaches on the atoning power of the death of the righteous. And there's even a

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Jewish tradition, a mystical tradition in the Zohar, that likens Isaiah 53, in the picture there, to the letting of blood.

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It's a custom still practiced in some parts of the world, better known in the ancient world, where there was the concept that you have bad blood, and this blood is causing you to suffer.

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So let's say your left arm is healthy, your left arm will be cut so that the bad blood can get out of the healthy arm, and now your whole body will be healed, and this is taken to explain why sometimes the innocent suffer, why

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Ecclesiastes speaks of a righteous person who suffers, and the Zohar says, the answer is found in Isaiah 53, that sometimes a righteous person suffers for the healing of the world, just like with the letting of blood.

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Where do we find it? We find it in this very text, that he was wounded for our transgressions, and at the cost of his wounds, there's healing for us.

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So we have, obviously, 5 and 6 then go together, as you were just saying, we all went astray like sheep, each going his own way, and the

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Lord visited upon him the guilt of all of us. Visited upon him.

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Is that, does that really capture the placing, the transference of guilt here with Clarity?

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Yeah, visited upon him, laid upon him, the guilt of all of us. It's strong, it's that the guilt literally was caused to meet on him, and one of my favorite things about the verse is that it begins and ends, verse 6 begins and ends with Kulanu, which in Hebrew is all of us.

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All of us like sheep went astray, each one turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid upon him the guilt of all of us.

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So all of us. So that does cause a problem with some of the Jewish interpretations of who the speaker is.

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That would, of necessity, somehow, I'm just trying to follow, because I've heard so many different interpretations of this from the

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Jewish perspective. How do they, do they admit that there's differences in who's speaking?

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They would claim that this is all the nations saying, all the kings of the nations in particular, who are the representative speakers, saying that the

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Lord laid on him, on Israel or the righteous remnant within Israel, the guilt of all of us, that we all strayed.

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When have they ever said that? Sorry for the simplistic question, but it just seems sort of obvious.

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Apparently at the end, when Israel is exalted, then there will be this reflection, there will be this eye -opening revelation to the

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Gentile nations, and they'll say, oh, now we got it. The fact is, to make one of the loftiest theological statements in the entire

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Bible, the entire Old Testament, and to put that on the lips of pagan kings is stretching things a bit far as well.

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But as you go down, when we get to verse 8, when it speaks of the transgression of my people, now you have to say that they're each speaking individually here, so it becomes very convoluted.

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Yeah, except my people, we know who that is in context. Okay, so there is a laying upon him the iniquity of us all.

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Now let's, just for a moment, because we're making good progress here, and you forgot to tell me when you needed to go.

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I forgot to ask you how long this show is. As long as you want to go to finish this up, especially because we'll probably make this available as a download, so you could direct people to it as well, as a resource that you could make available.

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So it's no problem with us, I just figure you're probably getting close to dinner time too, but being that it's still only afternoon here.

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We're good. Okay, good. So, stepping aside just for a moment from where normally you would be dealing with this text, let's back up a moment and recognize that this is a text that uses the divine name in verse 6, and there might be some in the audience, as Christians, as Trinitarians, who would go, well, doesn't that support a denial of the identification of Jesus, the very identification you and I argued rather strenuously in a certain debate not quite two years ago,

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I guess two years are coming up fairly soon, against some Unitarians, that the

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New Testament writers have identified Jesus with that divine name, and yet here it is

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Yahweh who lays on Him the iniquity of us all.

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I know how I respond to that, but is that something that you've needed to respond to? Maybe have you ever had a

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Jewish opponent, for example, raise that as an objection to the Trinity or something like that? Yeah, in the context of the larger objections that would be raised, and if Jesus is

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God, how does He pray to Himself, or who is He talking to on the cross? So really, this is simply the

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Incarnation, this is the message that we find throughout the New Testament, and it's a primary proclamation of the

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New Testament Apostles that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah, that He was a man accredited by God, that there's one mediator between God and man, the man,

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Messiah Jesus. We understand that in terms of the Incarnation, and we understand that in terms of God's triunity, so that would be the larger attack, and this would just be one small example of it.

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But in point of fact, Yahweh is primarily identified as the Father, but Jesus being the

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Son also carries that name and reveals the Father. But Yahweh is primarily identified as the Father, primarily identified as the

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God of Israel, Jesus Yeshua primarily identified as the Son and the Messiah of Israel, so it fits with the overall revelation just fine.

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Yeah, it is interesting to note that in the Greek Septuagint, once again, it is kurios, which becomes the standard terminology used of Jesus in the

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New Testament, and I, especially in dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses, have pointed out that that name,

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Yahweh, is used of God the Father, it's used of the Son, the

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Spirit is the Spirit of Yahweh, and so given the fact that New Testament writers are willing to utilize that one divine name and yet describe these persons in that way, that's really pointing us to the unity that is theirs, and the fact there is one being of God that is shared fully and completely by three divine persons, the

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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So just so I'd mention that, since it's in the context, sometimes people do raise that particular issue.

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So verse 7 then, He was maltreated, yet He was submissive. He did not open His mouth, like a sheep being led to slaughter, like a ewe dumb before those who shear her.

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He did not open His mouth. Now we've already addressed one of the uses of this text in an objection way, and that is that Jesus did speak, and we just basically mentioned that what is really being referred to here is in the sense of giving objection, arguing for His own innocence, etc.,

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etc., and hence that's not an objection to what Jesus does from the cross, or in His response to Pilate, or even when the high priest demands an answer from Him, Are you the

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Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One? And He then goes to Daniel 7 and makes application to Himself and things like that.

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But what is really, I think, somewhat of a stumbling block is the attitude of the

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Messiah that is presented here is one of, well, we would see it as power under control, the humility, the it is necessary that I go do this, don't you know that the

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Father could give me legions of angels and all the rest of that. That still seems to be a real great problem for many people today in light of what they expect the

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Messiah to be, the messianic expectations of a person who is going to overthrow the Roman Empire. And you had to emphasize in The Real Kosher Jesus, because evidently

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Rabbi Shmuley has this idea that Jesus was somewhat of a failed revolutionary with swords and so on and so forth.

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Talk to us a little bit about how this verse causes some people to stumble, but what it's really saying. Yeah, it is an extraordinary testimony to the

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Messiah's power and His ultimate faith and vindication that He would go to the very lowest place, crucifixion for our sins, utter rejection in the eyes of man and others would think in the eyes of God, knowing that He would be raised up by His Father.

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He had to tell Peter, put the sword down, enough, don't try to kill people or hurt people.

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He had to say, look, I could call for thousands of angels. He had to tell Pilate, if my kingdom was based in this world, then my servants would be fighting for it.

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And people just didn't get it. To this day, many think that the cause of God can only be advanced through force and intimidation.

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And this picture here, it's not saying that He doesn't cry out on the cross. I had rabbis say, well, look, you can't say one minute

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He cries out, one minute. It's not one minute versus another minute. It's that this is saying, He goes willingly to slaughter.

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Jeremiah spoke of his own innocence in Jeremiah, the 11th chapter, used similar words. And in fact, one famous medieval interpreter and philosopher,

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Rabbi Saja Gaon, interpreted Isaiah 53 regarding Jeremiah and found that common language that Jeremiah said,

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I'm just like asleep going to slaughter. In other words, I'm going innocently to my death.

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And here, the Messiah doesn't defend himself. That's the striking thing. The high priest, don't you defend yourself,

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Pilate? You're not going to defend yourself? No, He goes willingly to slaughter.

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He could have called for an armed uprising. He could have called for His disciples to start a revolt. He could have said, this is the time when we break the back of Rome, and now

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God will fight for me. But if He did that, even if He succeeded, we wouldn't be talking about Him today with praise and adoration, because He would have been just another freedom fighter.

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He would have been like the Maccabees or someone else. The fact is, He transforms the world through suffering love.

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He overcomes the forces of Rome and the forces of every other power, not by fighting it physically, but by dying, and now has an authority.

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Uh -oh. Have we reestablished connection?

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Did it disappear there? Just for a split second. Okay, there you go. There you're back. Okay. It happens once in a while.

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It must have been a sunspot. But the verse starts off with negas.

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This is one of the dangers of doing these things live on the fly.

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But you have a PhD in Semitic languages, and I am trying to—in

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Arabic, there is a similar root that refers to that which is,

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I don't know, defiled. Would you happen to know if they're related at all in the roots of these terms?

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I mean, this idea of being oppressed in verse 7, are you familiar with what

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I'm referring to? Yeah, well, don't—yeah, so the Hebrew negas, which comes from the verse negas, it means here to be treated harshly.

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You have parallels, for example, 1 Samuel 14, 24, that the men of Israel were hard -pressed, suffered, treated harshly that day.

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But the correspondence, Hebrew sin, would correspond to Arabic shin.

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So as I'm looking here with Arabic parallels to rouse and drive game, to drive vehemently, doesn't seem to be connected.

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It would have been connected to Arabic negasha, if that would have a related meaning. All right, well, that's what you get for writing a book on the

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Qur 'an while talking about Isaiah 53. So anyway— But I'll double -check that, because I do not carry the

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Arabic lexicon in my brain. I wish I did. Yeah, well, that would be really weird, because you're doing some of the other things, and I don't think anybody can do that.

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All right, so it continues—same thought continues into verse 8, but here there's a very important transition taking place.

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By oppressive judgment he was taken away. Who could describe his abode? For he was cut off from the land of the living through the sin of my people,

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Ami, who deserved the punishment. So here we've had the suffering, we've had the oppression.

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Now something else is happening that is in light of the beginning of verse 9, and his grave was set among the wicked.

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Doesn't seem to be any way of arguing that there is not a death going on here. Yeah, the cumulative evidence absolutely speaks of death.

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When it speaks of him being pierced, when it speaks of him being wounded, when it speaks of him later in the chapter pouring out his soul to death, when it speaks of him becoming an asham, a guilt offering, and here where it speaks of him being cut off from the land of the living, you really have to argue for metaphorical usage heaped upon metaphorical usage far more than you'd find anywhere else.

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It's obviously speaking of his death. When it speaks of his grave, it has to be. The beginning of the verse is the most controversial in terms of translation.

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By oppressive judgment, he's taken away. It means something like that. Clearly there's a forceful seizing of him.

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When it asks the question who can declare his generation, some argue it means who can, who gives a thought to his fate.

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There are debates on that, but as we move on, he's cut off from the land of the living for the transgression of my people, and now here's where we have a battleground in the

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Hebrew. It's nega lamo. Counter -missionaries would say, here's what it means, for the transgression of my people.

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Now the kings, plural, are speaking individually. It's been we, we, us, us. Now it's

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I, for some strange reason, even though Ami, my people, throughout Isaiah is always

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God's people, Israel, either the prophet speaking or God himself speaking, and many Jewish translators and interpreters recognize

01:00:04

Ami, my people, God's people, Israel. Nega lamo, literally a stroke for them.

01:00:12

There are Jewish interpreters that say, you see, for them, that means for the Jewish people, plural, even though the servant is singular, there's a hint and it speaks of the suffering they have endured.

01:00:24

Others would point out that lamo, even within Isaiah, can mean to it or to him, so it could be speaking of one, but it's much better to understand this, as most translations do, that a stroke for them, on their behalf, in other words, what my people should have suffered, he took the stroke for them, and in fact, in the

01:00:45

Dead Sea Scrolls, the form there is most likely a passive form, which would be nega lamo, smitten for them, so what's being spoken is here, the prophet saying, for the transgression of my people,

01:01:00

Israel, or God saying, for the transgression of my people, Israel, he was smitten for them.

01:01:08

It absolutely does not speak of a plural servant here, but rather suffering for the people.

01:01:14

He takes their place, how? By death. And yet, the JPS also renders it in that way, who deserved the punishment?

01:01:21

I mean, clearly they're seeing it in the way that you described it as well. Exactly. It's really only a counter -missionary argument.

01:01:29

Some of the major medieval Jewish interpreters go in that direction as well, but you really have to completely swim against the tide to read it that way, and then to argue that there's a secret plural reference to a singular servant is ungrammatical and illogical and contrary to the best reading of the text.

01:01:49

So he's cut off from the land of the living, this being cut off is through, in the

01:01:55

JPS, due to the sin or transgression of my people who deserve the punishment, so you have almost an exhaustion of all the possible terms that could be used for substitution and for atonement in the way we've always understood it, and then immediately you have reference to his grave, set among the wicked and with the rich in his death, though he had done no injustice and had spoken no falsehood.

01:02:26

And so I have heard people saying, well, there's really nothing about the death of anyone here, and it just seems overwhelmingly clear that the natural progression of language is you are talking about death and now burial.

01:02:43

If you read it in as unprejudiced a way as possible, and I've tried to read it through so many different eyes and get into the hearts and minds of my rabbi friends and my own

01:02:52

Jewish people that do not read this as we do, it's unavoidable. It's unavoidable to me that the text explicitly speaks of the servant's death, and what's fascinating is that many of the counter -missionaries will say it's not talking about the

01:03:05

Messiah and Jesus, it's not saying Jesus is going to die, but then they'll go on to say it's talking about the suffering of the righteous remnant and the death of the righteous remnant and all the different deaths that they suffered.

01:03:16

So when it applies to the righteous remnant, to Israel and Jewish people, they say it absolutely speaks of death. When we apply it to the

01:03:21

Messiah, they'll say, no, no, no, it doesn't speak of death. I find that fundamentally contradictory. But the very term death, moth, is used there, do they understand that in some metaphorical way?

01:03:33

No, when they refer to Israel, they say, yes, it refers to his death. When they refer to the Messiah, they'll try to say it can't refer to him.

01:03:40

It's really, it breaks down there, honestly. And here's what's fascinating. It's a passive statement, or it's a third -person statement, which is meant to be a generalization.

01:03:52

When it says his grave was appointed, it's literally he appointed, meaning they people appointed his grave with wicked people.

01:04:01

He dies a criminal's death on the cross, he's going to be buried with wicked people. And then what's fascinating, because it seems like such a contradiction, and with the rich in his death.

01:04:11

Now, some would point out that the Hebrew there is bimotav, in his death's plural.

01:04:19

And that would argue, again, that it's referring to Jews dying many different ways through the ages, Rabbi David Kempthi Radach argues in that very way.

01:04:28

In point of fact, as we see in Ezekiel 28 and in other Semitic languages, plural deaths can sometimes be used for a violent death.

01:04:36

So it prophesies about a wicked king in Ezekiel 28, you will die, you singularly will die the death's plural of the wicked.

01:04:44

But let's take this a little further still. The Dead Sea Scrolls read it differently, and some ancient translations read it differently, so that it would read bimotav, namely his burial mound, or his burial place is with the rich.

01:05:04

So either it says he'll be with the rich in his death, which works perfectly well, of course, from our perspective of what happens in the

01:05:12

New Testament, or that his burial place will be with the rich, and Isaiah is prophesying it that explicitly.

01:05:22

Either way, it does not prove that the servant is plural, no way, no how.

01:05:28

And at the end it says he did no violence, there was no deceit found in his lips, so it does speak again of his righteousness as either explicit or implicit in the rest of the text.

01:05:38

Some would say, but he drove out the money changers with a whip, he did violence, well first the word

01:05:44

Hamas, which is unrelated to the Arabic group Hamas, which is an acronym there, but the

01:05:50

Hebrew word Hamas, violence, is speaking of murder, it's speaking of rape, it's speaking of violent acts like that, and when

01:05:58

Jesus drives out the money changers, he drives out the animals with a whip, he does not go around whipping people, that's not what the

01:06:06

New Testament is saying. In point of fact, he advocated non -violent resistance, which is why people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King sought to pattern themselves after his non -violent pattern.

01:06:17

It is interesting to note that the Septuagint uses the singular to thanatu for his death, so they interpret the plural as an intensive in that way, and then likewise make the connection because he had done no anomia, he had done no lawlessness, makes the same connection that, and there was no deceit found in his mouth, so there is a, the same contrast is found there, the

01:06:39

Septuagint once again backs up the interpretation which you had provided there. So we press forward, we're going to get there eventually here, but the

01:06:49

Lord, using Kurios, again the Tetragrammaton, the Lord chose to crush him by disease, again the

01:06:57

JPS translation, that if he made himself an offering for guilt, an asham, he might see offspring and have long life, and that through him the

01:07:07

Lord's purpose might prosper. Now two things especially here, the concept of the asham, the guilt offering, has been raised by at least one

01:07:21

Muslim that I know of as an objection to the

01:07:26

Christian understanding of this text, because he limits the range of the asham to specifically the

01:07:35

Mosaic parameters contrasting a guilt offering from any type of other substitutionary offering, so we'd like to comment on that.

01:07:46

And then secondly, how can the Messiah see his offspring? If we're right in having looked at the death of this one, this suffering servant, and his grave and so on and so forth, what in the world does it mean to see his

01:08:05

Zahra, his seed? How can that fit in? Right, so, and let me add one other objection, which is was he literally crushed with physical disease.

01:08:15

And again, the Hebrew hechli, to make sick, to crush with suffering, need not speak of physical disease, but the honest question to ask when you have a man who has been flogged mercilessly and beaten, so disfigured he barely even looks like a man anymore, then hanging on a cross, are you going to say that is not smiting that person with severe physical suffering?

01:08:40

So, and it could well be meant in a metaphorical sense in terms of literal sickness, literal suffering more generally.

01:08:49

So that certainly works. Hasham, though, is actually a very important word. It's the only offering that was explicit for intentional sins as well as unintentional sins, that it had that explicit usage in the book of Leviticus.

01:09:05

And not only so, it was used more broadly in other texts simply to mean a reparation offering.

01:09:13

For example, when the Philistines realized they had blown it when they took in the Ark of the Covenant and all their people were dying, they realized that they needed to send a reparation offering, not for a specific sin or two, but for gross violation of sinning against the

01:09:31

God of Israel. There it is called an Hasham as well. So the guilt offering is the perfect one to use.

01:09:38

It's even better than referring to a sin offering because it was explicitly used for some intentional sins as well as unintentional sins, as well as in general for a reparation offering.

01:09:50

So that breaks down. The question about seeing seed prolonging days is a better question and it's one that's raised many times by the rabbis.

01:10:00

Seeing offspring with banim, sons or grandsons, that you have a number of times in Scripture.

01:10:08

It'll say that this person like Job or another righteous person saw, same year, saw sons, grandsons.

01:10:16

Here it doesn't say that, it says yir ez -zerah, which is he will see seed. It's the only time in the entire

01:10:22

Bible that the term occurs to the point that the New Jewish Version suggests that it should be re -vocalized to say yir ez -zerah -oh, namely he will see his hand, meaning, or zro -oh, excuse me, he will see his hand, namely

01:10:36

God's hand or God's arm of vindication. But reading the text as we have it here, to see seed need not mean physical offspring.

01:10:45

Zerah is sometimes used metaphorically in the book of Isaiah in terms of spiritual offspring.

01:10:52

Zerah can be used simply of a future generation. And when it speaks of one who will die and who will be buried, who will now prolong days and see seed, it must be speaking of resurrection.

01:11:05

And it's either speaking of the spiritual offspring, that we are now brothers and sisters of Yeshua and part of his spiritual progeny, or of future generations of Jews who come to faith and ultimately a national turning, as I believe, of Israel in the coming days or at the end of the age.

01:11:24

So either it's speaking of future generations of Israel that he would see that would believe, or speaking of his spiritual offspring, all believers, either of those work perfectly well and do no violence to the text.

01:11:36

And let's remember again, it's an unusual expression found only here. Yeah, it is found only here, and it's interesting, the

01:11:42

Septuagint reads it as opstatai sperma, so it certainly doesn't see any re -vocalization or anything like that.

01:11:52

There seems to be a completely united textual history behind reading it in that way. What does it, how do you understand when his soul, when he makes himself, or if he made himself an offering for guilt, isn't there,

01:12:12

I mean up till now you've had a real emphasis on the Lord choosing to crush him, the

01:12:19

Lord laying upon him. Now there's something reflexive and purposeful on the part of the suffering servant that in my mind connects so intimately with the reflexive pronouns that are used in the

01:12:32

Carmen Christi. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the boy of death, even the cross death. And do you see that as coming out as well?

01:12:43

Yeah, in other words, will he succeed in his mission? Will he do it? And Mark 10, he came to give his life as a ransom for many, and when he prays in the

01:12:55

Garden of Gethsemane, and there's no way that God's purpose for humanity can be accomplished without him suffering, which is part of the reason the prayer is prayed, to give us insight into that reality.

01:13:07

John 10, no one takes my life from me, I lay it down freely. And then even the concept in Hebrews 2 and Hebrews 5, that he tastes our humanity, and he becomes perfect through suffering, so he had to do this.

01:13:22

There were choices that the son made to the pride and joy of the father, and yes, will he do it?

01:13:30

Will he succeed? If he does this, then this will happen. He did it, he rose, he sees this spiritual offspring, he sees future generations of Israel, he succeeded in his mission.

01:13:41

And of course, isn't it beautiful to see, likewise, the connection this has to—and by the way, I'm so thankful that I heard you, in one of your debates, say this.

01:13:51

I've had a number of people that have looked at me rather oddly when I have said this, and I included this in my book on the

01:13:58

Trinity, when I talked about Jesus' use of the beginning of Psalm 22, and I have pointed to the fact that his hearers would have understood what

01:14:09

Eloi Elalamma Sabachthani meant, and what it was the beginning of, and how the rest of that psalm is so deeply messianic, and yet, what is it finished with, but really the vindication of the suffering servant, and you have that beautiful picture that is presented there.

01:14:30

You made the same comments—I forget which debate it was in, I've listened to so many of them, it's hard for me to remember exactly which one it was—but you made the same comments.

01:14:38

It seems that in these messianic passages, we have them touching upon one another, echoing one another in their prophetic content.

01:14:46

Yeah, absolutely. In Psalm 22, the picture of an ideal righteous sufferer who seems abandoned, and who is now delivered from the jaws of death, and whose deliverance is so profound that it brings praises of God to the ends of the earth, and it even says there at the end of Psalm 22,

01:15:08

I mean, the nations will serve him, why? Because of this great deliverance from the jaws of death, and a zerah, a seed, meaning a future generation, will serve him.

01:15:17

It does tie together, and by crying out from Psalm 22, verse 1, Yeshua does draw attention to the rest of that glorious psalm, which again, plays itself out in such a striking way at the cross.

01:15:29

Okay, only two verses left to go, and yet, you know,

01:15:38

I'm sure you're familiar with—there's a section in Kyle and Delitzsch when they are dealing with Isaiah 9, where these great

01:15:49

Hebrew scholars—and steeped, obviously, in their training in some level of, what would

01:15:58

I call it, almost a naturalistic skepticism in reading some texts, where they just had to admit, what the prophet tells us here about this coming one is just so far beyond what anyone could ever imagine, that someone could understand outside of just the great prophetic voice.

01:16:23

Verses 11 and 12, they read—and you've done this in your debates, you've actually said, you know, who said this?

01:16:32

And it's hard to identify where it's coming from, because this sounds like the New Testament.

01:16:37

The categories and the fulfillments, it's so incredible to think that this came so far before the

01:16:47

New Testament, but out of his anguish, he shall see it, he shall enjoy it to the full through his devotion, my righteous servant makes the many righteous, it is their punishment that he bears, assuredly

01:17:00

I will give him the many as his portion, he shall receive the multitude as his spoil, for he exposed himself to death and was numbered among the sinners, whereas he bore the guilt of the many and made intercession for sinners.

01:17:15

If this isn't the very seedbed, the ground out of which Romans 8 and the entire book of Hebrews just comes flowing forth,

01:17:26

I don't know what else could be. You know, I want to say this with all candor.

01:17:31

When I was a new believer, meeting with the rabbis, interacting with as many

01:17:36

Jewish people as I could, I had a few experiences within the first five years of being a believer, meeting with ultra -Orthodox rabbis where they challenged me deeply, especially when

01:17:45

I didn't know Hebrew yet, and it was harder for me to answer some of the arguments.

01:17:51

I knew the reality of my experience in God, how my sins had been forgiven, how I'd been transformed and born again.

01:17:56

I knew that God had come into my life. I knew that Jesus was real, and yet a couple of times I was deeply challenged.

01:18:02

And the second time it happened, I got on my face. I was going through anguish of soul, and I said,

01:18:09

God, I just want to please you. And if that means rejecting what

01:18:15

I believe now about Jesus and being rejected by all my friends and everyone I know, I just want to follow you.

01:18:22

I don't care. I have to be a loyal Jew and follow you. And if everything I believe is true and it means being rejected by my own

01:18:29

Jewish people, then I will continue on the path where I am. It doesn't matter. I've just got to please you.

01:18:35

And as I really sought God and just opened the scriptures, just on my face praying, just opened the Bible, it opened to Isaiah 53, and it wasn't marked there or anything.

01:18:44

And as I read the words, they were so overwhelming. And just, well, I was reminded as I heard you reading this again, these last two verses, so overwhelmingly clear to me that I would have to deny truth and reality itself to deny that this was speaking of Jesus, Yeshua.

01:19:01

The picture, the description, and the reality of what he did and how it has changed so many millions of lives, including yours and mine, was absolutely undeniable.

01:19:11

And if you read Romans 5, that while we were yet sinners, Messiah died for us, and the theology of Paul that you mentioned, here it is.

01:19:19

And Dead Sea Scrolls, some ancient versions point to verse 11, saying that he will see light, which is also speaking of the light of salvation.

01:19:28

But that's just a minor footnote here. By his suffering or by his knowledge, he will make the many righteous.

01:19:35

God calls him my righteous servant. So he makes us righteous. The righteous one declares us righteous by his suffering, and he bears our guilt, our iniquity, because of which

01:19:48

God highly exalts him, either sharing the spoils with the many or the many are the spoils themselves, that we are the ones, the redeemed ones, who become the spoils.

01:19:59

And why does God do it? It's causal, because he poured out his soul, his life, to death.

01:20:07

He's numbered with the transgressors. And by the way, even Israel, the Jewish people in their time of suffering, they were rejected and hated.

01:20:16

We have been hated and rejected by the nations. But numbered with the transgressors, that's specifically what happened to Yeshua when he dies a criminal's death, when he hangs on the cross between two malfactors and dies in a way that was the lowest way that you could put someone to death, when he's considered to be an outcast and hanging out with the publicans and the sinners.

01:20:38

He's numbered with the transgressors, and yet he bears the sin of many and makes intercession

01:20:45

That word makes intercession is the same verb that was used earlier about causing the iniquity of all of us to meet on him in verse 6.

01:20:53

Now it's used again in a different sense. He makes intercession. He stands in the gap. Here he stands between death and life, between heaven and earth, and stretches out his hands and takes the guilt of the world upon him.

01:21:05

And by his wounds, we're healed. It's the gospel. Oh, it is. It's so amazingly clear laid out.

01:21:11

I'm one who bears our guilt and yet makes intercession.

01:21:19

I can understand why the rabbis—I mean, I debated well -known scholar once by the name of John Dominick Crossan, and you're undoubtedly familiar with Dr.

01:21:31

Crossan. You bet. Nicest heretic you'll ever meet, and he knows that I say it that way, so he really is.

01:21:39

He basically, because he has such a deep naturalistic materialism in his scholarship, he has to come to the conclusion that the

01:21:51

Gospels had to have been written to fulfill these things.

01:21:57

There wasn't any history to it. They just wrote these. They ransacked the Old Testament, and they wrote the

01:22:02

Gospels to fulfill these things because there's such a close correspondence. Now, of course, historically, it doesn't make a lick of sense because if it was all made up at the time, there couldn't have been a beginning, a genesis of the

01:22:12

Christian faith and the idea that a crucified Messiah would then take over the entire Roman Empire eventually.

01:22:18

It just doesn't make any sense either. But the correspondence is so clear that the naturalist says, eh, there's got to be an explanation for this.

01:22:25

The gospel writers had to be making this stuff up because otherwise there's just no other possible fulfillment.

01:22:32

There's no other way to see it. Yeah, the fact is to try to claim it doesn't fit, it just doesn't work.

01:22:40

And again, it's as I said, it's like someone pointing at the Mona Lisa and different art critics saying that there's nothing special about this.

01:22:48

And then you look away and you look back and think, wow, what a stunning picture. And there is a reason why people have been stunned by the picture through the centuries.

01:22:58

What you have to ask is, since these things did happen, since Isaiah prophesied them, is that an explanation for the worldwide

01:23:06

Jesus movement? Is that an explanation for someone who seemed to have failed in his mission? Does that indicate that he did, in fact, rise from the dead?

01:23:14

Does it indicate, in fact, that he has been radically changing lives through the centuries? The fact is, you and I know a good story in itself is just not going to sell.

01:23:24

A powerful emotional story is not going to carry around the world and go to the point that people will willingly die for their faith because of a nice story, nor are you going to get all the people in the first generation who knew it didn't happen to go along with the myth.

01:23:41

So as you argued with Professor Cross, and I'm so thrilled that you get to have these debates with people like him and Bishop Spong and others, the fact of the matter is, the text in the

01:23:55

New Testament tells us these things happened not because it was recorded in Isaiah, because the disciples didn't understand it as it was happening.

01:24:04

These are embarrassing negative things to say that they got it wrong and that they tried to use a sword to fight for the kingdom.

01:24:11

These are embarrassing things about your leaders. They're recorded because it's accurate and it's only afterwards they looked and saw it was written in advance.

01:24:19

And for Jewish listeners, doesn't it make sense that God would lay it out so plainly?

01:24:25

It's not the only text, but to me it's the central and most powerful one. Doesn't it make sense that God would lay it out so powerfully so that when we look back we'd find it?

01:24:34

And the single text that more Jews have come to faith through, or once in the faith have had their faith confirmed through, is this text,

01:24:43

Isaiah 53, which is why it's always our goal to just get people to read the text, because we believe if they do, their eyes will be open to the truth.

01:24:58

And he shall bear their iniquities. I mean, that's the gospel. That's Romans.

01:25:05

That's for any person who is looking for true shalom with God, that is the only way it's going to happen.

01:25:14

And there is this servant, but he's called himself righteous, and yet he makes others righteous because he bears sins.

01:25:24

There's been no one in the history of the Jewish people that could even come close to fulfilling those kinds of parameters.

01:25:32

And as you've argued so many times, there's really no way that anyone else could ever come.

01:25:39

The time frames are all wrong. If you want the Old Testament scriptures to stand as a revelation from God, here is the one who did these things.

01:25:49

And he has done that. He's accomplished that. And yet here, without any question,

01:25:54

I don't care how liberal you want to put the dating of Isaiah, if you want to do

01:25:59

Deutero -Isaiah and all the rest of that stuff, it doesn't matter. This comes long before the fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ, no matter where you put it.

01:26:10

700 years or 500 years, it's still a long time before Christ comes.

01:26:16

There you have the fulfillment. If that does not indicate the supernatural nature of Scripture, I don't know what evidence you could possibly present to someone that could.

01:26:25

And on top of that, the other thought is, where did they get these ideas from?

01:26:34

Where did they get these insights from? Where did they come up with these concepts so powerfully?

01:26:40

Obviously, God had been laying it out in the Scriptures, the principles of the atonement system and sacrifice and intercession and priestly ministry had been laying things out.

01:26:51

But then even in the midst of it, this is a soaring star of revelation of vicarious atonement and such majesty that scholars through the years, if they don't agree that it's

01:27:02

Jesus Yeshua, they've got a thousand books with a thousand different interpretations because no one else fits it.

01:27:09

No one else fits it. So I'm with you in awe of the passage, in awe of the God who inspired it.

01:27:14

And yeah, whether it's 500 years in advance or 700 years in advance or 200 years in advance, I mean, there's still, it's inexplicable.

01:27:22

And the fact that it comes to pass so gloriously with death and resurrection and transformation of lives encourages me that we'll see everything that the text still speaks of coming to pass of even a greater astonishment and even a greater recognition where Jewish people read this and say, there it is.

01:27:44

Now we get it. Now we understand it. I expect to see that more and more in the days to come.

01:27:49

Well, and if you want evidence that God has continued to use that message, I mean, look at the two of us.

01:27:56

I'm just a silly looking Scotsman living far away from the events of Israel.

01:28:03

You were a heroine shooting teenage rebel Jewish guy that the

01:28:11

Lord had to get hold of in a miraculous way. And yet here we are both looking at the same text and we're seeing the exact same thing, not because someone's standing over us and forcing us to do so, but because both of us have read the text in its original languages, in translations, and yet 2 ,000 years later, the message is just as clear and we both bow to the same

01:28:34

God and we both have the same hope and the same gospel. And that's a pretty amazing thing to consider.

01:28:41

Absolutely. Amen. I couldn't have said it better. Well, Dr. Michael Brown, I tell you, you are such an encouragement to me.

01:28:50

I hope you know that I listen very regularly and even in the midst of my busyness, especially over the past couple of weeks, as I'm crunching through the ever increasingly hot desert in the early mornings on my bicycle, very frequently it is your debates and sometimes your books being read by that wonderful electronic voice that is accompanying me on those many, many miles as I ride along.

01:29:21

It is very encouraging. Know that we pray for you. And I don't know, when are we going to get together to do another debate together?

01:29:28

I sort of enjoyed the last one we did. Oh, yeah, we've got to. Side by side was a joy and it was also a joy to go at each other.

01:29:36

And you should know, whenever anybody ever calls my radio show and is ready to bash

01:29:41

Calvinism, I always have you listening in my ear that I'll respectfully share differences and do whatever

01:29:48

I can to speak well of my brothers in the faith. Well, I've often described you as my favorite

01:29:54

Arminian. So, you know, I use you as an illustration many times of how people can disagree on particular issues, but be brothers and love each other and stand side by side on the core issues of the gospel.

01:30:06

Hey, you've probably got people on your side. I got people on my side that think I'm just a little bit crazy for thinking you're the best thing since sliced bread.

01:30:15

But look, we've stood in the gap together and look, we better be praying for each other because if things keep going the way they're going in our society, we may be visiting each other in prison.

01:30:27

So, yeah, and I applaud you for your frontline labors.

01:30:32

In fact, I'm looking in the coming years to really strengthen my Islamic apologetics because I've kind of let that go over the years and blessed to see you taking on issue after issue.

01:30:44

And look, the things we're facing, societal attack, the rise of Islam, apostasy and heresy from so many fundamentals of the gospel.

01:30:52

We need to stand back to back in that way. And by the way, for your listeners, it's volume three of answering

01:30:59

Jewish objections to Jesus that I go through Isaiah 53 and the principal objections to that.

01:31:04

So my five -volume series, it's volume three. But it's a joy to be with you. And a colleague of mine just gave me back a bunch of your

01:31:11

DVD debates that I lent him. So I've got them sitting on a stack right in front. I'll be ready to get into those.

01:31:17

Well, I hope to be able to send you a book fairly soon called What Every Christian Needs to Know About the

01:31:22

Quran for your reading enjoyment and hopefully recommendation as well. I'm working hard on that.

01:31:27

And so as you look toward that Islamic area, hopefully we can, maybe someday we can get some

01:31:34

Muslims to debate us on whether Isaiah 53 is about Jesus and whether Muhammad is prophesied in Deuteronomy 18 and John 14 and stuff like that.

01:31:47

That I'll do tomorrow, man. Oh, you bet. You bet. We'll do it. So thank you so much, brother. And I'll be back in touch with you about when we can have you back on to talk about the real kosher

01:31:57

Jesus. All right. Thanks, God bless. Thanks. God bless. Thank you, folks, for listening to The Dividing Line today.

01:32:03

I really hope—I know that was, at times, a little bit in -depth. But I really hope that you found that to be extremely useful and will find it to be extremely useful when we post that up and allow people to listen to that.

01:32:19

A tremendous passage, a tremendously encouraging passage. Our faith and our recognition of the

01:32:25

Bible as the Word of God and the Messiahship of Jesus and his being sent by the Father to accomplish exactly what he did accomplish.

01:32:32

Thanks for listening today. We'll see you next time on The Dividing Line. Tomorrow, in fact, a special Dividing Line, a radio -free