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From: Isaiah 49:1-6

Second Song of the Servant of the Lord

[1] Listen to me, O coastlands,
and hearken, you peoples from afar.
The Lord called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name.
[2] He made my mouth like a sharp sword,
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me away.
[3] And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
[4] But I said, “I have laboured in vain,
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the Lord,
and my recompense with my God.”
[5] And now the Lord says,
who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him,
and that Israel might be gathered to him,
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
[6] he says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the preserved of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

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Commentary:

49:1-55:13. Chapter 49 marks the start of the second section of the second
part of Isaiah. The first section (40:1-48:22) dealt with the release of the Jews
from exile in Babylon on the orders of the Lord, the ruler of the world and of all
nations. This second section sings of the restoration of Zion and the renewal
of the people.

Almost all the oracles here presuppose that Babylon has fallen and the exiles
have returned home (although neither event is explicitly referred to). Nor is there
mention of the universal scope of salvation: the focus is mainly on future hopes
and on Jerusalem.

Most of the oracles in this section were probably proclaimed, between the years
515 and 500 BC. If that was the case, then they were addressed to a disillusioned
people: the enthusiasm that came with the return from exile and the efforts made
to rebuild Jerusalem failed to produce the desired results: there are still class dif-
ferences, greed is plain to see, and huge sectors of society are experiencing po-
verty. The kind of Jerusalem that the exiles dreamed of had not come about: it
bore no relationship to what they were experiencing; nor did it fit the image of Je-
rusalem found in many texts of the Priestly tradition (cf. “Introduction to the Pen-
tateuch”, in “The Navarre Bible: Pentateuch” (p. 20). These oracles are designed
to dispel, discouragement and to raise people’s hopes by telling them about the
liberator that God is going to send, the servant of the Lord, and by proclaiming
that the holy city (now given the sacred name of Zion) will very soon be restored.
In fact, the section can be divided into alternating poems on the servant and on
Zion: 49:1-13, the “servant” (second oracle); 49:14-50:3, “Zion”; 50:4-11, the “ser-
vant”, (third oracle and exhortation); 51:17-52:12, Zion; 52:13-53:12, the “servant”
(fourth oracle); 54:1-17, “Zion” (Jerusalem). Verses 1-13 of chapter 55 are an ex-
hortation to commit oneself to the new Covenant.

49:1-6. In the first Song of the Servant of the Lord (42:1-9) we meet the “servant”
for the first time and we are told of his mission to liberate the exiles. In this se-
cond song, the servant himself speaks. He addresses the “coastlands”, “peo-
ples from afar”, and he is conscious of having been chosen by God from his mo-
ther’s womb to carry out God’s plans of salvation even in those distant parts (cf.
vv. 1-3). Here we are told about two aspects of his mission, which we will hear
more about in the oracles that follow. First, he is to play a leading role in the re-
covery of the tribes and the repatriation of the exiles (v. 5); second, he will ex-
tend salvation to the ends of the earth (cf. v. 6).

This poem contains things that the servant has to say about himself (vv. 1-4),
and things that God says about the servant (vv. 5-6). The servant is well aware
that he was called by God, even from his mother’s womb, (like Jeremiah; cf. Jer
1:5) and has been charged with preaching to the pagan peoples (”the coast-
lands”) or at least to his compatriots in the diaspora (cf. v. 1; cf. Jer 1:1-10; 25:
13-38); he has been endowed with qualities that enable him to speak out, with
words that find their mark like arrows, even if that creates divisions (v. 2; cf. Jer 1:
10); and also, despite the divine protection given him, he feels depressed and dis-
appointed, as happened to Jeremiah (vv. 3-4; cf. Jer 1:7; 8:18-20). Everything that
the servant does is grounded on what the Lord has told him: “You are my servant,
Israel” (v. 3). Some commentators are of the view that “Israel” here is a later inter-
pretation, put in to support the collectivist interpretation of the servant that soon
became widespread; but there is little evidence to support that: the word “Israel”
is missing only in one manuscript, and not an important one at that. The mention
of Israel does not argue against the servant’s being an individual rather than a col-
lectivity, for in poetry a person can be addressed by his own name or by his fami-
ly name. In fact, both in biblical Israel and nowadays we often find people using
their place of birth as a surname.

In vv. 5-6 the Lord spells out the servant’s mission: it is to renew the people in
such a way that even non-Israelites can see the light and attain salvation. Altho-
ugh the universal mission of the servant is not clearly defined here, for his work
is meant to be confined to the tribes of Jacob, still the achievement of this objec-
tive (the re-assembling of Israel) will be a kind of light to help the pagan nations
see and acknowledge God. The expression “light to the nations” (v. 6) already
occurred in the earlier poem (42:6); there it could be taken in a social sense — to
bring about the liberation of the exiles and captives; here, the religious meaning
is clear: salvation will spread to all the nations.

To sum up, the servant of the Lord (be he an individual or a collectivity, or more
likely both) has been chosen by God, who loves him most specially; he has all
the main qualities of a prophet; and he must influence his compatriots so as to
enlighten those from outside, and bring them salvation.

The messianic interpretation of the servant figure, based on this second song,
was widespread among the Jews of Alexandria who made the Septuagint Greek
translation; it was also held by members of the Qumran community and by some
authors of the period between the Old and New Testaments (the author of the
“Book of Enoch”, for example). All these interpreted the servant as standing for
the entire people of Israel. Christians, from the beginning, applied the songs of
the servant to Jesus, and saw them as finding fulfillment in his life. Thus, although
the image of the “sharp sword” (v. 2) refers to the effectiveness of the word of God,
in Hebrews 4:12-13 we find it used with reference to Revelation as a whole which
is fully and perfectly manifested in Jesus Christ (cf. also Rev 1:16 and 2:12). We
find the expression, “light to the nations” or “light to the peoples” being applied by
Simeon to Jesus (Lk 2:32). Indeed, in the Acts of the Apostles it is applied to
those who, in line with Jesus’ teaching and as cooperators in his work of salvation,
are setting out to preach to the Gentiles, as the words Paul and Barnabas speak
in the synagogue of Psidian Antioch testify: “It was necessary that the word of
God should be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it from you, and judge your-
selves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles. For so the Lord
has commanded us, saying, ‘I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles, that you
may bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts 13:46-47). Hence
the Church sees her mission as spreading the truth about Jesus, the light that en-
lightens everyone: “The light of God’s face shines in all its beauty on the counte-
nance of Jesus Christ, ‘the image of the invisible God’ (Col 1:15), the ‘reflection of
God’s glory’ (Heb 1:3), ‘full of grace and truth’ (Jn 1:14). Christ is ‘the way, and the
truth, and the life’ (Jn 14:6). [...] Jesus Christ, the ‘light of the nations’, shines: up-
on the face of his Church, which he sends forth to the whole world to proclaim the
Gospel to every creature (cf. Mk 16:15). Hence the Church, as the people of God
among the nations, while attentive to the new challenges of history and to man-
kind’s efforts to discover the meaning of life, offers to everyone the answer which
comes from the truth about Jesus Christ and his Gospel” (Bl. John Paul II, “Veri-
tatis Splendor”, 2).

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.