The Servant Protects a Bruised Reed, but Israel Will Not See

“Behold my servant” answers the last word of chapter 41, “Behold, they are all vanity.” The same particle points first at the idols and then at the servant. “I have put my spirit upon him” recalls the shoot of Jesse in 11:2, on whom “the spirit of the LORD shall rest”. His first task is mishpat, justice, and for the nations.

“Cry” is tsa’aq, the outcry of someone demanding redress; “lift up” has no object in the Hebrew, and the voice is supplied from the next clause. The contrast in this book is close at hand: the Rabshakeh “stood, and cried with a loud voice” at Jerusalem’s wall (36:13).

“Bruised reed” is qaneh ratsuts, the very phrase the Rabshakeh used of Egypt, “the staff of this broken reed” (36:6). Reeds that cracked were useless and thrown away. “Smoking flax” is a linen wick in a clay lamp, smouldering because the oil is nearly gone. “Unto truth” means faithfully, reliably.

“Till he have set judgment in the earth” gives the work an end point and says he will not stop short of it. Matthew 12:21 quotes the last line in the form of the Greek translation, “in his name shall the Gentiles trust”, where the Hebrew speaks of the isles waiting for his torah, his instruction.

“God the LORD” pairs ha’el with the divine name, an unusual and emphatic combination. “Spread forth” is raqa, to beat out thin, the verb behind the raqia, the firmament. “Breath” is neshamah, the breath God blew into the first man in Genesis 2:7, given here to everyone walking on the earth.

“A covenant of the people” occurs only here and in 49:8, and nobody is quite sure what it means: the servant as the embodiment of a covenant, or its mediator. “A light of the Gentiles” returns in 49:6, and Simeon takes it up with the infant Jesus in his arms (Luke 2:32).

Babylon kept royal prisoners: Jehoiachin, king of Judah, sat in its prison for thirty seven years until he was released and given a seat at the king’s table (2 Kings 25:27-29). The prison house, beit kele, is literally the house of restraint. 61:1 repeats the commission, “the opening of the prison to them that are bound”.

“That is my name” echoes the words at the burning bush, “this is my name for ever” (Exodus 3:15). “My glory will I not give to another” is repeated word for word in 48:11. The name and the glory are paired: the LORD will not share credit for what he is about to do.

“Spring forth” is tsamach, to sprout, the verb behind the Branch, tsemach, of Jeremiah 23:5 and Zechariah 3:8. New events are announced while still under the soil, before any shoot shows. The former things came true as spoken; that record is the ground for believing the new ones.

“Sing unto the LORD a new song” is the opening line of Psalms 96 and 98 word for word, and the phrase is found in Psalms 33:3 and 149:1. “Ye that go down to the sea” matches Psalm 107:23, the sailors who see the LORD’s works in the deep. The praise begins at the ends of the earth and travels inward.

Kedar was a tribe of Arabia descended from Ishmael (Genesis 25:13), known for its black goat-hair tents (Song of Solomon 1:5). “Villages” are unwalled encampments. “The rock” is Sela, which may mean rocky heights in general or Edom’s stronghold, later Petra. Desert nomads are asked to sing.

The verb “declare” is higgid, the very thing the idols were challenged to do and could not in 41:22-23: “let them shew... declare us things for to come.” Now the islands are to declare, and their declaration is praise. The isles close the song as they opened it in verse 10.

“Jealousy” is qin’ah, zeal, the word of 9:7 and 37:32, “the zeal of the LORD of hosts”. “Roar” is a rare verb, found elsewhere only in Zephaniah 1:14, for the war cry a warrior raises as he charges. The LORD goes out to war like a gibbor, a champion.

The King James reads “I will destroy and devour at once”, but the Hebrew verbs are ’eshshom and ’esh’af: “I will gasp and pant together”, the breathing of a woman in labour. The long silence and restraint break out not in a battle shout but in the sounds of giving birth.

The verbs run backward through 41:18. There the LORD made the wilderness a pool; here he dries up the pools. There he opened rivers in high places; here the rivers become iyyim, which here probably means dry land. The same power that waters the desert can drain the rivers, depending on who stands in the way.

Deuteronomy 27:18 curses the man who “maketh the blind to wander out of the way”. The LORD does the opposite: he leads the blind by a road they do not know, lighting it and levelling it as they go. The verse ends with a pledge in the past tense of certainty, “These things will I do unto them.”

“Greatly ashamed” doubles the word, shamed with shame. “Ye are our gods” said to molten images repeats the scene at Sinai, where the calf was a massekhah, a molten thing, and the people cried “These be thy gods, O Israel” (Exodus 32:4). The idol worshippers are turned back, retreating like a beaten army.

The commands are impossible on purpose: the deaf cannot hear an order to hear, nor the blind look when told to. The next verse reveals who is being addressed, and it is not the idol makers of verse 17 but the LORD’s own servant.

“Perfect” is meshullam, from the root of shalom, perhaps “the one in covenant peace” or “the one repaid”. It was also a common name; Shaphan’s grandfather was called Meshullam (2 Kings 22:3). The messenger is sent with a word he himself cannot hear.

The Hebrew slips from “thou” to “he” within one line, as though the speaker turns from addressing Israel to talking about Israel. “Observest” is tishmor, to keep or guard, the verb used for keeping commandments: Israel saw many things and kept none of them.

“Is well pleased” is chaphets, delights. What delighted the LORD was to make his torah great and glorious, and the same torah is what Israel refused in verse 24. The noun chephets returns in 53:10: “the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.”

“Snared in holes” pictures captives trapped in pits, as Jeremiah was lowered into a muddy cistern (Jeremiah 38:6). “None saith, Restore” uses hashav, give back, the legal demand for the return of stolen property (Leviticus 6:4-5). The captives have no one to file the claim.

“For the time to come” is le’achor, for afterward. Isaiah had been told in 30:8 to write his words in a book so that they would stand “for the time to come for ever and ever”. The question is whether anyone later will listen to what the present generation would not.

The prophet speaks as one of the guilty, “he against whom we have sinned”, and then in the same breath “they would not walk”. The shift from we to they is in the Hebrew. Isaiah had done the same in his call: “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (6:5).

“Laid it not to heart” is the phrase of 41:20, where the nations were to lay it to heart when the desert bloomed. Israel, set on fire, still does not. Babylon will be charged with the same failure in 47:7, “thou didst not lay these things to thy heart”. The fire is real and the lesson unread.