Chizuk Emunah Under the Microscope: Chapter 22

Behold, my servant shall act wisely;

he shall be high and lifted up,

and shall be exalted. (Isaiah 52:13)

This chapter deals with Isaiah 53, which is the battleground passage between Christians and unbelieving Jews. I have already given a longer analysis of this issue in The Isaiah 53 Controversy. it is now time to deal with more specific objections here.

Troki gives two kinds of objections:

1. Objections that argue against Jesus being the Servant.
2. Objections that argue for Israel being the Servant.

I believe that I have thoroughly answered and refuted Israel's candidacy as the Servant in The Isaiah 53 Controversy, so I will focus on objections to Jesus being the Servant.

First, Jesus is a better candidate for the Servant than any other figure in history. For any set of objections you could have to reject Jesus, I could create a better set of objections to reject any other given figure. Given that this prophecy has to point to someone, I propose Jesus is the best option.

Troki objects that God cannot be God's servant, that Jesus was not exalted and lifted up, that Jesus did not see offspring, that Jesus did not make intercession, that Jesus did not have his days prolonged, and that Jesus did not have a portion with the strong.

As I have mentioned before, this is the kind of nit-picking that would be dismissed in a court of law as being argumentative. An example is saying that Jesus was given immortality and therefore, his days were not prolonged? How petty can this get?

If a doctor gave you a pill and said that it would make you live longer, and you later realized that the pill gave you immortality, would you honestly say that the pill did not do what the doctor said it would do? One would have to say that to live forever is not to live longer. This would mean that eternal life is not longer than a 30 year life, which is absurd. Immortality is the ultimate form of a longer life.

The statement that he shall see seed is a parallel to "I will prolong his days" and has synonymous meaning. Seeing seed, in this context, means seeing future generations. One who is given immortality certainly would see future generations. The verse does not say that the seed will be his own biological offspring, so that objection does not apply to this passage.

Troki himself provides the answer to who "the Great" are. He says that they are the prophets. Since Jesus called Israel to obedience and even foretold the fall of the temple, he more than fulfills this role. The ascension of Jesus into heaven would fulfill him being "lifted up." To say that Jesus did not make intercession is simply to argue against the truth of the New Testament by assuming the falsehood of the New Testament. And that is simply circular reasoning.

Also, the Targum states that the servant of Isaiah 53 is the Messiah, and not national Israel, nor any Old Testament prophet. Maimonedes, although he rejected Jesus, also rejected the idea that Isaiah 53 was about Israel or about any of the other prophets that came before him.