Israel, Abrahams descendants according to the flesh, they are not the children of God Rom 9:8 !
Bs"d
What I asked was this:
Can the Christians here please give some proof FROM THE TANACH that Isaiah 53 speaks about the messiah?
And what do I get? An NT quote.
Let's try this again:
Can the Christians here please give some proof
FROM THE TANACH that Isaiah 53 speaks about the messiah?
I'm very curious.
In the meantime I give you already some proof from the Tanach that Isaiah 53 speaks about ISRAEL:
The proof for the servant being Israel, is overwhelming:
Let us now take a look about who the prophet Isaiah is really talking here. Isaiah 52:13; “Behold My servant shall deal prudently ….” The key question here is: Who is it that the prophet Isaiah calls the servant of God? We shall let the prophet Isaiah speak for himself, and please keep in mind that the name of Jacob was changed into Israel after the fight with the angel in the end of Genesis 32; Jacob is synonymous with Israel:
Isaiah 41: 8: “But thou , Israel art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend. Thou who I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called thou from the chief men thereof, and said unto thee: Thou art my servant, I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away.”
Isaiah 44:1-2; “Yet now hear, O Jacob my servant, and Israel who I have chosen. Thus said the Lord that made thee, and formed thee from the womb, which will help thee; fear not O Jacob my servant, and thou Jesurun whom I have chosen.”
Isaiah 44:21; “Remember these, O Jacob and Israel, for thou art my servant. I have formed thee, thou art my servant; O Israel thou shalt not be forgotten of me
Isaiah 45:4; “For Jacob, my servant’s sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name.”
Isaiah 48:20; “The lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob.”
Isaiah 49:3; “And said unto me: Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
The context also speaks about the people of Israel: Isaiah 52:4 "For thus says the Lord God:
MY PEOPLE went down at the first into Egypt to sojourn there, and the Assyrian oppressed them for nothing."
Isaiah 52:6 "Therefore
MY PEOPLE shall know my name; therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who speak; here am I."
Isaiah 52:9 "Break forth together into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem; for the LORD has comforted
HIS PEOPLE, he has redeemed Jerusalem."
Please read Isaiah 52 from the beginning, and see that it speaks about the redemption of Israel, and Israel being released from captivity and returning from exile. The very last verse right before the place from where Christianity claims it speaks about the messiah, speaks about Israel going out of exile: Isaiah 52:12 "For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the LORD will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard." And after this it goes on describing how Israel will be restored, using the metaphor "the servant" for Israel, a metaphor which can be found in many places in Isaiah.
So also the context speaks about
ISRAEL.
And then there is the conceptual proof; what do we get when we say that the servant is JC?
Then we get the concept that before God could forgive mankind, He first had to let His creatures commit an even bigger sin, killing their Creator, before He could forgive them.
That concept, that God, or His son who is also God, had to suffer and die in order to get forgiveness for men, is, apart from very weird and illogical, also NOWHERE to be found in the Hebrew Bible.
Just doesn't exist.
And when we say the servant is Israel, then what do we get?
When we fill in the Jewish people in this text,: "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed." we also have to ask: who is the 'our' and the 'we'? Here is the prophet Isaiah speaking as a part of the Jewish people. So also the 'we' points to the Jewish people. Now in stead of the metaphor, 'the servant', let's fill in the Jewish people and see what we get: But [the Jewish people] were wounded for the transgressions of [the Jewish people], [the Jewish people] were bruised for the iniquities of [the Jewish people], the chastisement of the peace of [the Jewish people] was upon [the Jewish people], and with the stripes of [the Jewish people] [the Jewish people] are healed.
Here we see that the Jewish people were punished for the sins of the Jewish people. And that is a concept that we see time and again in the Tanach. It is all over the Tanach.
The Jews sin, the Jews get punished. Nothing new.
And through the punishment the sins are erased. Through their own suffering, the Jews get healing (forgiveness) from their sins.
A very logical an very Biblical concept.
So we see that the proof for Israel being the servant is plentifull.
And we have already seen, that the proof for the servant being the messiah, is non-existant.
So the Jews with their understanding of "the servant is Israel" have all the proof, and the Christians with their understand "the servant is the messiah/JC" have nothing.
That's just the way it is.
