The Sacrificial Life and Death of The Servant (Isaiah 52:13-53:12)

Vetus Testamentum 66 (2016) 1-14
Vetus
Testamentum
brill.com/vt
The Sacrificial Life and Death of the Servant

(Isaiah 52:13-53:12)
Joseph Blenkinsopp
University of Notre Dame, South Bend, USA
Joseph.Blenkinsopp.1@nd.edu
Abstract
The argument presented in this article is that the term ‘asham’ in Isa 53:10 refers to the
sacrificial ritual of the guilt offering, that this reference is supported by indications
throughout Isaiah 53, and that therefore the suffering and death of this Servant of the
LORD is to be understood as sacrificial by analogy with the ritual of the guilt or repara-
tion offering in the book of Leviticus. This conclusion, much contested in contemporary
scholarship, is supported by a survey of the reception of this text in the period prior to
early Christianity.
Keywords
Isaiah – Sacrifice of the Servant
The history of the interpretation of Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (hereafter Isaiah 53),

including its most recent phase, reveals a range of opinion on the meaning,
in relation to God, to the speaker, and to those whom he represents, of the life
and death of the unnamed subject of the threnody. This person, designated
Servant of the Lord only in the discourse of Yahweh God at the beginning and
end (52:13; 53:11b), is nameless, a circumstance which inevitably gave rise to a
wide range of speculation as to his identity. While identification of this Servant
of the Lord is not in any way an essential precondition for the argument which
follows, my own view, briefly stated, is that the one spoken about in Isaiah 53
is the same person who speaks in 49:1-6 and 50:4-9—Duhm’s second and third
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2 Blenkinsopp
Ebedlieder—namely, the prophetic author of Isaiah 49-55, or at least the core

of Isaiah 40-55.1 With respect to his relation to God, it is stated explicitly that
God afflicted him, though innocent, with severe suffering and persecution
(53:4, 6, 10) ending in a violent death unjustly brought about (vv 7-8), and that
in some mysterious way, according to Yahweh God’s design or purpose (‫חפץ‬,
v 10), his death and the many afflictions suffered during his life, served to erase
the penalty for sin due to those in Israel represented by the speaker. This sub-
stitutionary or vicarious function of the Servant, resistant as it is to many of
our taken-for-granted philosophical and theological assumptions, has always
been the focal point of the numerous attempts at interpreting the passage and
the principal source of disagreement among exegetes, at no time more so than
the present.
One of the most persistent of the many obstacles to understanding this
remarkable and notoriously difficult text, the last of the four so-called “Servant
Songs,”2 is the meaning to be assigned to the term ‫ אׁשם‬in Isa 53:10, usually
translated either “guilt,” or “penalty,” either “guilt offering” (Schuldopfer) or
“reparation offering” (Reparationsopfer), depending on the context. The fol-
lowing remarks will focus on the meaning of this term in the context of
Isa 53:10 and the threnody as a whole. This will prove to be no easy task since
this key verse, 53:10, is textually obscure, and, to judge by the early versions,
was so even in antiquity.
1 In Isa 49:1-6 the self-description of the speaker draws on aspects of the Jeremiah tradition:
he is called by God from the womb (cf. Jer 1:4-5), like Jeremiah, he is one of “the servants of
Yahweh”, i.e. prophets (Jer 7:25; 25:4; 26:5; 29:19, etc.), and is certain of ultimate success in
his mission in spite of present failure (49:5-6; cf. 52:13). On the probable assumption that
49:7-12 is a comment on this Servant’s statement, this other speaker insists that, though now
despised, he will be honored by kings and princes (49:7; cf. 52:15). The speaker in 50:4-11,
whose self-description as prophet is apparent (vv 4-5), is subjected to greater insults but, like
the Servant of Isaiah 53, is assured of final vindication (‫קרוב מצדיקי‬, 50:8a).
2 “So-called” because, whatever else they may be, they are not songs. This designation goes
back to Bernhard Duhm’s commentary in which he designated Isa 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9 and
52:13-53:12 as Ebed-Jahweh-Lieder or Dichtungen von Ebed-Jahwe in Das Buch Jesaja übersetzt
und erklärt (4th ed., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1922), 14, 311. The genre of this last
of the four, about a suffering and dying Servant of the LORD, is unclear. It seems to me to
combine the characteristics of eulogy and lament, as if delivered by a devoted disciple and
mourner over the catafalque of the dead master; compare the panegyric over the body of
Julius Caesar as reported by Appian and Cassius Dio. Needless to say, there have been other
proposals: e.g. for Hermann Gunkel, it is a prophetic liturgy: “Jesaja 53: eine prophetische
Liturgie,” ZAW 42 (1924), 177-208; for Julius Morgenstern a drama complete with chorus; see
his “The Suffering Servant: A New Solution,” VT 11 (1961), 292-326.

The Sacrificial Life and Death of the Servant ( Isaiah 52:13-53:12 ) 3
We begin with a close look at this verse. The Masoretic text (MT) may be
translated as follows:
Yahweh purposed to humiliate him,3

[he brought sickness upon him;]4
if his life is laid down as a guilt offering,
he will see posterity, he will prolong his days;
through him Yahweh’s purpose will succeed.
The repetition of ‫ חפץ‬as substantive at the conclusion of the second verse—

here “purpose” fits the context better than “good pleasure”—serves as a kind
of inclusio, highlighting the point that the Servant acted as agent for the fulfill-
ing of a divine plan. This may be read as a special instance of the affirmation
with which Deutero-Isaiah concludes: “So shall my word be that proceeds from
my mouth. It will not return to me unfulfilled without accomplishing what
I purposed (‫)חפצתי‬, and it will succeed (‫ )הצליח‬in the mission on which I sent
it” (Isa 55:11). There is here, in addition, an echo of the beginning of the passage
where the success of this purpose is predicted (‫הנה יׂשכיל עבדי‬, See, my servant
will succeed,” 52:13).
The most intractable problem, however, is with the second half of v10a for
which I propose the reading “If his life is laid down as a guilt offering”, read-
ing ‫אם־תוׂשם אׁשם נפׁשו‬. This admittedly tentative adjustment assumes the verb
repointed as Qal passive, feminine, agreeing with ‫נפׁשו‬.5 The motivation for
this divergence from MT is the impression that reverting to the second per-
son singular (‫ )תׂשים‬is abrupt and unusual, even if not unprecedented (see, for
example, ‫ עליך‬at Isa 52:14a). In this context, however, it is somewhat surpris-
ing for the protasis to be in second person and the apodosis in third person,
despite the fact that this reading is supported by 1QIsaa and 1QIsab as also
3 With ‫ דכאו‬cf. ‫מדכא‬, “humilated”, “crushed” (53:5a) and the designations ‫ דכא‬and ‫ נדכא‬for
the humble and lowly respectively in Isa 57:15.
4 ‫החלי‬, 3rd person sing. perfect Hiphil of the verb ‫חלה‬, to be sick (GKC 74k). This word is often
elided metri causa or for some other reason, but it is consonant with 53:3 where the Servant is
said to be no stranger to sickness, and with 53:4 where we are told he took on himself the sick-
ness of others, both with the same verb. In place of ‫ החלי‬1QIsaa has ‫ויחללהו‬, “and he (YHWH)
pierced him”, perhaps with the “Pierced One” of Zech 12:10 in mind, though the latter has the
verb ‫“( דקר‬pierce through”) rather than ‫חלל‬.
5 See J. Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
(AB 19A; New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2002), 348, following the proposal
in BHS.

4 Blenkinsopp
by LXX.6 But if, in spite of these misgivings, we retain MT, ‫ תׂשים‬second person,
the one addressed would most probably be Yahweh God, and it would convey
the idea that Yahweh God assigns to the Servant’s life the character of a guilt
offering; a difficult though not impossible meaning for the common verb ‫ׂשים‬
(“put, place”). On the whole, one would like to think that Jerome’s Vulgate ren-
dering, in the third person, si posuerit pro peccato animam suam . . . (“If he laid
down his life to take away sin”) is the best option, but that cannot simply be
taken for granted even though it may most clearly represent the sense of the
threnody as a whole.7
The promise that the Servant will see posterity and prolong his days has con-
vinced a few interpreters, in spite of allusions earlier in the text to the Servant’s
fate, including his being cut off from the land of the living and reference to his
grave and sepulcher, that the Servant’s death is not recorded, that therefore he
survived and was alive at the time the threnody was intoned or written.8 But
the assurance given that “he will see posterity (literally, “seed”) would, in the
context of the book of Isaiah as a whole, refer to prophetic followers who con-
tinue long after his death to live by his message. The same point is made in a
later, contextually isolated prose saying with probable reference to the Servants
of the Lord who feature prominently in the later chapters of the book:9
As for me, this is my covenant with them, declares Yahweh: my spirit that
rests upon you and my words I have put in your mouth will not be absent
from your mouth or from the mouths of your descendants (‫זרע‬, “seed”),
or from those of the descendants of your descendants, declares Yahweh,
from this time forward and for ever more (Isa 59:21, my translation).
6 L XX goes in a quite different direction: και κύριος βούλεται καθαρίσαι αυτον τῇς πληγῇς (“The
Lord desires to cleanse him from the wound.” Cf. Targum on Isa 53:10 which speaks of Yahweh
God refining and cleansing the remnant of his people.
7 A different option was proposed by Mitchell Dahood, “Textual Problems in Isaiah”, CBQ 22
(1960), 406, and taken up by James R. Battenfield, “Isaiah LIII 10. Taking an ‘If’ out of the
Sacrifice of the Servant,” VT 32 (1982), 485. Dahood’s reading “Truly, he made himself an offer-
ing for sin” comes from redividing ‫ אם־תׂשים‬as ‫אמת ׂשם‬, warranted, they claim, by the rare
occurrence of adverbial ‫“( אמת‬truly”) and absence of mem sofit in 1QIsaa (‫)אם תׂשים‬. But
Dahood came up with only two examples of adverbial ‫ אמת‬i.e., Deut 13:15 and Ps 82:11, and
not all have accepted that it exists in Hebrew as well as in Ugaritic. On the second point: if the
1QIsaa scribe had suspected the reading proposed by Dahood, why did he not just go ahead
and divide the words accordingly?
8 See especially R. Norman Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet: An Interpretation of
Isaiah Chapter 53 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1978), 177.
9 Isa 65:8-9, 13-15; 66:14.

Moreover, the statement that the Servant will (literally) “lengthen his days” may
also refer to descendants, but in the metaphorical rather than biological sense,
as disciples active after the death of the master over several generations.10 So
understood, this statement in Isa 53:10 serves as a link connecting the Servant
of the Lord of Deutero-Isaiah (or at least Isaiah 49-55) with the “Servants of
the Lord” of Trito-Isaiah, perhaps also with the disciples (‫ למדים‬Isa 8:16) of the
original Isaiah.
We now come to the key word in this verse. The basic concept of ‫אׁשם‬, with its
associated verbal forms and the closely related ‫אׁשמה‬, refers in the first place to
a sinful and guilty condition of a person, social group, or the nation in general
(e.g., Jer 51:5; Ps 68:22). Stated more specifically: it connotes guilt resulting from
an offence against God by an infraction of the ritual order, or against another
person or persons, constituting a violation of the social order. Contrary to our
modern way of thinking, little attention was paid to the subjective and psycho-
logical aspects of guilt, or even to the intention of the agent. The emphasis was
on objective violations which disturb the ritual and social order, even when
done inadvertently. These called for rectification and restoration of the dis-
turbed order, whether by restitution made to the injured party (Lev 5:20-26)
or by satisfaction offered to God by giving God, in effect the temple and its
personnel, something of value, generally an animal (Lev 5:14-19). In all cases,
the erasure of the offense, and therefore the guilt, called for a ritual process in
which the essential elements were the sacrifice of an animal, also known as the
‫אׁשם‬,11 provided by the guilty party. This was followed by an atonement rite per-
formed by a priest with the sacrificial animal’s blood. Since the temple priests
were responsible for maintaining the ritual order on which the social order,
and indeed the cosmic order, depended, the role of the priest was essential
for the efficacy of the rite. The ‫ אׁשם‬ritual (Lev 7:1-6), identical with the ‫חטאת‬
(sin-offering ritual, 7:7), expiates the offence and erases the guilt once (1) the
guilty party has handed over as settlement a ram without blemish for sacrifi-
cial slaughter, (2) the priest has made atonement by dashing the ram’s blood
10 The expression occurs frequently in Deuteronomy, where Moses addresses the people
about to enter the land, but also their descendants (Deut 4:40; 5:16, 33; 6:2; 11:9; 17:20).
11 Usually translated “guilt offering” (Schuldopfer); others, however, prefer “reparation offer-
ing” including Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16. A New Translation with Introduction and
Commentary (AB 13; New York and London: Doubleday, 1991), 319-78.

6 Blenkinsopp
against the sides of the altar, (3) the fat has been burned on the fire causing
the smoke to go up like incense, and (4) the sacrificing priest and his priest-
colleagues have shared the meat of the sacrificed ram in a common meal.
The assessment of the animal’s value in species (“the temple shekel”), and the
imposition of an additional fee of 20% (for example in Lev 5:15-16), reminds us
that the sacrificial system also provided a major source of income for temple
personnel.12
Looking beyond the different meanings attaching to ‫אׁשם‬, we must now raise
the question whether a reading of the entire text supports the sacrificial ana-
logue to the Servant’s function. In the first place, one would think that the
simple juxtaposition of ‫ אׁשם‬and ‫ נפׁשו‬in 53:10a (“a reparation offering”, “his
life”) would, in spite of the surrounding textual obscurity, suggest the sacri-
fice of a human life. LXX 53:10a goes in a direction quite different from MT,
but it renders ‫ אׁשם‬with the paraphrastic expression περὶ ἁμαρτίας “(an offering
presented) on account of sin”. This expression has strong sacrificial resonance
which deserves notice in spite of the second person plural address. More often
than not, the LXX translator of Leviticus uses the term πλημμέλεια for the guilt
or reparation offering, and occasionally, for the sin offering, by means of which
the offended party is indemnified and satisfied.13 In several of the texts deal-
ing with the guilt or reparation offering in Leviticus (7:7, 37; 14:13; 19:20-22),
however, the phrase περὶ (τῆς) ἁμαρτίας (Isa 53:10 BGT) ( “on account of sin”)
appears with the same meaning as in LXX Isa 53:10a, closely followed by the
Vulgate si posuerit pro peccatis animam suam (“If he should lay down his life to
12 Examples of the quasi-judicial sense in Gen 26:10; 42:21; Num 5:5-10; 1 Sam 6:1-9. Examples
of the guilt offerings for involuntary ritual and moral infractions in Lev 5:14-26 (Eng. Tr.
5:14-6:7). The special case of an ‫ אׁשם‬for “leprosy” (psoriasis, leucodermia, ringworm?) is
laid out in detail in Lev 14:1-32. On the term in general see Koehler-Baumgartner 95-96;
D. Kellermann in TDOT 1:429-37; R. Knierim in TLOT 1:191-95; Rolf Rendtorff, Studien
zur Geschichte des Opfers im Alten Israel (WMANT 24; Neukirchen-Vluhn: Neukirchener
Verlag, 1967), 207-11, 227-28; Jacob Milgrom, “The cultic ‫אׁשם‬: a philological analysis” in
Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies 1977, 299-308; David Volgger
O.F.M., “Das ‘Schuldopfer’ Ascham in Jes 53:10 und die Interpretation des sogenannten
vierten Gottesknechtlieder,” Bib 79 (1998), 473-98.
13 Often in Leviticus chapters 5, 7 and 14. Together with the corresponding verb πλημμελεω,
it may have referred originally to a false note in a musical performance.

take away sins”).14 If this, or something similar, is the original text and the origi-
nal sense of v 10a, the sacrificial nature of the Servant’s sufferings and death
would be clearly implied.
Another clue to the sacrificial analogy can be found in v 7b:
He was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

like a ewe that is dumb before its shearers.
The lamb is one of the animals most acceptable for sacrifice, including the
Passover sacrifice. The lamb is explicitly identified with the ‫ אׁשם‬in the Levitical
laws about sacrifice, including the complicated proceedings for treating a per-
son with a serious skin disease, which may have been the lot of the Servant.15
The bringing of the victim to the place of slaughter, with the verb ‫( יבל‬Hophal
‫)יובל‬, is, moreover, commonly used in accounts of bringing sacrifices and offer-
ings of different kinds to a deity or potentate.16 Jeremiah’s complaint—or self-
justification—that he was “like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter”—may have
influenced the language of Isaiah 53:7.
In the final statement where we hear, once again, the voice heard at the
beginning (53:11b-12), we are told that the ultimate triumph of the Servant
comes about “since he poured out his life-blood to death” (v 12b). The com-
bination of ‫“( נפׁש‬life”) with the verb ‫“( ערה‬pour out”) obliges us to adopt a
translation which associates death with bloodshed and, in this instance, sacri-
ficial bloodshed.17 There is an intimate association between ‫נפׁש‬, the animating
principle, and blood, and between blood and expiatory ritual: “The life of the
flesh is in the blood, and I have assigned it to you for making expiation for your
14 The same phrase does service for the sin offering and for the treatment of “leprosy” in
Lev 14:1-32.
15 The term πληγὴ (cf. Latin plāga) in LXX 54:10a is not specific about the affliction of the
Servant, unlike the Vulgate translation of 53:4, nos putavimus eum quasi leprosum (“We
considered him to be as it were a leper”). Leprosy, as understood here not necessarily
Hansen’s Disease, is suggested at several points in the chapter: “So marred was his appear-
ance beyond human likeness” (52:14b), “he was shunned; one from whom people turn
away their gaze” (53:3), “smitten by God and afflicted” (53:4). The suggestion was taken
up by Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia, 398, and by one or other exegete since Duhm. The rite
for sanitizing the “leprous” person in Leviticus xiv includes the sacrifice of a lamb as a
guilt offering, the manipulation and sprinkling of blood, and atonement carried out by
the priest.
16 For example, Isa 18:7; Hos 10:6; 12:2.
17 Cf. Ps 141:8 where the psalmist uses the same expression in praying to be saved from death
at the hands of enemies: ‫( אל־תער נפׁשי‬literally, “Do not pour out my life blood”).

8 Blenkinsopp
lives upon the altar; it is the blood, as life, that effects expiation” (Lev 17:11 JPS
translation)—or, more succinctly with the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews:
“Without the shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb 9:22). The guilt
offering is effected by dashing the blood of the slaughtered lamb against the
sacrificial altar (Lev 7:1-6). Blood also has an essential part to play in the ritual
for the Day of Atonement inclusive of the scapegoat rite (Leviticus 16). As the
sins of the people are carried off into the wilderness, literally, “a cut-off land”
(‫)ארץ גזרה‬, so the Servant is “cut off from the land of the living” (‫מארץ חיים נגזה‬,
Isa 53:8b). All the iniquities of Israel are placed on the scapegoat’s head and it
bears them away. It is entirely probable that this rite, with atonement by means
of sacrificial blood (Lev 16:21-22), was in the mind of the author of Isaiah 53.
Atonement, the restoration of a relationship with God severed by sin, is essen-
tial for the validity of both the sin offering and the guilt offering.18
In recent years we have seen significant resistance, especially in German-

language scholarship, to understanding the Servant’s mission, fulfilled by suf-
fering and death, by analogy with the sacrificial ritual and the ritual for the
guilt offering in particular. The preference for these commentators is for inter-
preting the function of the Servant in terms of prophetic intercession or some
non-cultic form of identification with suffering and sinful Israel, or according
to a theory of substitution or “place taking” (Stellvertretung), a concept which
has proved difficult to articulate and convincingly exemplify. In addition, some
of the same persuasion do not find supporting evidence for the ritual ana-
logue elsewhere in the poem.19 We therefore have the task of deciding whether
18 Lev 5:6, 10, 13, 16; 14:29, etc.

19 Among those skeptical about the sacrificial analogue are the following: Adrian
Schenker, “Die Anlässe zum Schuldopfer Ascham” in idem, Studien zu Opfer und Kult
im Alten Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 45-66; Bernd Janowski, “Sühne als
Heilsgeschehen. Studien zur Sühnetheologie der Priesterschrift und zur Wurzel KPR
im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament,” TLZ 106 (1981), 779-80; idem, “He Bore Our
Sins: Isaiah 53 and the Drama of Taking Another’s Place” in Bernd Janowski and Peter
Stuhlmacher (eds.), The Suffering Servant. Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 48-74, a revised edition of Der leidende Gottesknecht Jesaja 53
und seine Wirkungsgeschichte (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996); Hermann Spieckermann,
“Konzeption und Vorgeschichte des Stellvertretungsdankens im Alten Testament”
Congress Volume (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 281-95 = “The Conception
and Prehistory of the Idea of Vicarious Suffering in the Old Testament” in Janowski

the term ‫אׁשם‬, in its immediate literary context, namely Isa 53:10, and in the
broader context of the threnody as a whole, has a ritual-sacrificial connota-
tion or is to be explained in some other way. I am arguing that the term itself,
supported by indications throughout the threnody, provides sufficient reason
to accept the former proposal. The originality of Isaiah 53, surely unique in the
Hebrew Bible, resides in the author, a convert to discipleship of the prophetic
Servant of the Lord, seeking to render intelligible, by analogy with the death of
the sacrificial animal, the idea that by the dispensation of the sovereign God
this one innocent person can, through his sufferings and death, take the place,
coram Deo, of the many in Israel who are guilty and whose spokesman is the
speaker in 53:1-11a.
It may be helpful first of all to take account of objections and alternatives
to this interpretation of the threnody. With respect to alternatives, the view
that the Servant’s salvific effect on the speaker and those he represented
came through intercession has always been an attractive option, especially for
those who view the Servant as a prophetic figure. Intercession may well have
been part of the Servant’s function, a conclusion on which Jerome’s Vulgate
is quite explicit.20 But the verbal form ‫( הפגיע‬vv 6 and 12), by some translated
“intercede,” has a broader range than intercession. The more common verb
for interceding, a characteristic prophetic activity, is ‫ התפלל‬always involving
verbalization, prayer on behalf of others, which is absent from Isaiah 53. As
generally understood, intercession falls far short of adequately describing the
Servant’s role in the threnody.
One objection which may be fairly quickly set aside is the contention that
the cultic laws catalogued in Leviticus and Numbers are later than Isaiah 53.21
As summarized and codified in Lev 7:37-38, the rituals may well be later, pace
Milgrom,22 but everything we know about such practices suggests that, in their
essential features, they go back long before any date that could be reasonably
assigned to their final redaction. In any case, the date of Isaiah 53 itself is dis-
puted by those who argue that it was added to the book of Isaiah at a later time.
and Stuhlmacher, The Suffering Servant, 1-15; Heike Henning-Hess, “Bemerkungen zum
ASCHAM-Begriff in Jes 53,10”, ZAW 109 (1997), 618-26; Hans-Jürgen Hermisson, “The Fourth
Servant Song in the Context of Second Isaiah” in Janowski and Stuhlmacher, The Suffering
Servant, 16-47 = Das vierte Gottesknechtslied im deuterojesajanischen Kontext”, Der
leidende Gottesknecht, 1-25.
20 In the Vulgate the final sentence of Isaiah 53 reads ipse peccatum multorum tulit et pro
transgressoribus rogavit (“He bore the sins of many and pleaded for transgressors”).
21 Spieckermann, “The Conception and Prehistory of the Idea of Vicarious Suffering in the
Old Testament” in Janowski and Stuhlmacher, The Suffering Servant, 3.
22 Leviticus 1-16, 3-35.

10 Blenkinsopp
Skepticism has also been warranted by what is claimed to be the absence of

knowledge of the vicariously suffering and dying Servant of the Lord between
the composition of Isaiah 53 and the Christian period.23 One factor which
complicates this claim, referred to a moment ago, is uncertainty as to whether
this chapter is part of the original core of Deutero-Isaiah or a later insertion.
One must also take account of interpretations implied in the Septuagint ver-
sion of Isaiah 53. The Old Greek version, in fact, places the emphasis more on
the Servant’s eschatological elevation and glorification and, as the text now
stands, it is the people not the Servant who offer up their lives on account of
sin (v 10b).24 All of this notwithstanding, LXX reproduces and confirms much
of the sacrificial language of MT. The complete Qumran Isaiah scroll (1QIsaa)
is also at several points different from MT, and some of its textual variants sug-
gest a royal, messianic reading, in some respects like the Targum on Isaiah 53.25
1QIsaa 52:14b, for example, reads as follows: “As many were astonished at you,
so I anointed (‫ )מׁשחתי‬his appearance beyond that of (other) men”; radically
different from MT: “Just as many were astonished at him, so marred (‫)מׁשחת‬
was his appearance beyond human semblance.” The anointing, together with
the sprinkling (‫ )יזה‬of many nations in the following verse, explains why the
copyist understood the Isaian Servant to be a royal, messianic figure.26 But
23 Relevant texts from the late Hellenistic and Greco-Roman period are listed with a brief
commentary in Martin Hengel, “The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in the Pre-Christian
Period,” in Janowski and Stuhlmacher, The Suffering Servant, 75-146. Earlier surveys by
G. Bachl, Zur Auslegung der Ebedweissagung (Is. 52.13-53.12) in der Literatur des späten
Judentums und im Neuen Testament (Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University, 1982); S. Page,
“The Suffering Servant between the Testaments,” NTS 31 (1985), 481-97.
24 “If you [plural] give your life on account of sin, he will see long-lived progeny.” On LXX
52:13-53:12 see Hengel in Janowski and Stuhlmacher, The Suffering Servant 119-129. Also
L. Seeligman, The Septuagint Version of Isaiah (Leiden: Brill, 1948); David A. Sapp, “The
LXX, 1QIsa, and MT Versions of Isaiah 53 and the Christian Doctrine of Atonement”
in William H. Bellinger and William R. Farmer (eds.), Jesus and the Suffering Servant
(Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1998), 170-92; E. R. Ekblad, Isaiah’s
Servant Poems According to the Septuagint (Leuven: Peeters, 1999).
25 On the Targum see Klaus Koch, “Messias und Sündenvergebung in Jesaja 53—Targum,”
JSJ 3 (1972), 117-48; Bruce Chilton, The Theology and Provenance of the Isaiah Targum
(JSOTSup 23; Sheffield: JSOT, 1983); idem, The Isaiah Targums. Introduction, Translation,
Apparatus and Notes (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1990), 103-5; R. Syrén,
“Targum Isaiah 52:13-53:12 and Christian Interpretation,” JTS 40 (1989), 201-12.
26 These variants were discussed in the early days of Qumran scholarship by William Hugh
Brownlee, The Meaning of the Qumran Scrolls for the Bible with Special Attention to the
Book of Isaiah (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 204-15.

kings are not the only anointed ones, and in any case one anoints the head, not
the face or, much less, the appearance of a person.
Something should be said at this point about the book of Daniel, much
discussed as constituting an important phase in the history of the interpreta-
tion of Isaiah 53. What is probably the earliest appropriation of Isaiah 53 is
to be found in the book of Daniel. The attention of exegetes of Isaiah 53 was
attracted to this book in the first place by the description of the suffering and
death of the leaders of the movement in which the book of Daniel originated
during or shortly after the proscription of the Jewish religion by Antiochus IV
(175-164 BCE):
The wise leaders of the people (‫ )מׂשכילי עם‬shall instruct the many (‫)רבים‬
who, for a time, shall fall victim by sword and flame, captivity and pil-
lage . . . Some of the wise leaders (‫ )מׂשכילים‬shall themselves fall victim, so
that they may be refined, purified, and cleansed until the end which is yet
to come at the appointed time (Dan 11:33, 35).
Purification and cleansing may have a sacrificial connotation, but none of the
terms which describe the effects of the death reserved for the wise leaders—
refining, purifying, cleansing—necessarily have such reference. Like the youths
at the Babylonian court, they are versed in every branch of divinely endowed
wisdom (Dan 1:4, 17), and this wisdom is passed on to “the many”—either the
people in general or, more probably, their disciples.27 A stronger link between
the ‫ מׂשכילים‬and the Servant of Isaiah 53 is the promise of ultimate vindication
and glorification. Like the Servant who will be exalted, lifted up, and see light
(Isa 52:13; 53:11), the leaders of the group will shine like the brightness of the
firmament and enjoy astral immortality (Dan 12:3). There is also a close parallel
between these wise teachers who are said to bring about righteousness, that
is, acceptance by God, for the many (Dan 12:3b), and the Servant of Isaiah 53
who fulfils the same function, expressed practically in the same words (v 11b).28
27 The ‫ רבים‬are taught and given spiritual guidance by the wise teachers in Daniel (11:33;
12:3b), which suggests that the term refers to discipleship. It was taken over with this
meaning by the sectarian Qumran movements, as applying to the members, especially
in plenary session; see the Community Rule (1Q VI-VIII) and the Damascus Document
(CD XIII 7 and XIV 7, 12). Some exegetes have understood the saying of Jesus at the Last
Supper to have a similar meaning: “This is my blood of the new covenant which is poured
out for many” (or “the Many”?, Matt 26:28 and parallels).
28 The assurance given at the beginning of the Isaian poem that the Servant’s mission will
succeed (Isa 52:13) is another link, indirect to be sure, with the wise teachers of Dan 11:33,
35; 12:3, 10.

12 Blenkinsopp
The ultimate vindication of the wise teachers in Daniel reproduces in general

terms the vindication of the Servant at the beginning of the poem (52:13) and
towards its end, in the textually problematic 53:11. Since the phrase ‫יׂשבע בדעתו‬
“he will be satisfied with his knowledge” does not make good sense in the
context, 53:11 may be set out and parsed as follows:
‫מעמל נפׁשו יראה אור ויׂשע‬29

‫צדיק] עבדי לרבים‬30[ ‫ יצדיק‬31 ‫בדעתו‬
‫ועונתם הוא יסבל‬
After his painful life he will see light and be satisfied.

By his knowledge my [righteous] servant will render the many righteous;
he bears the burden of their iniquities.
Dependence of Dan 12:3 on the Servant poem is clear, though it is not equally
clear that the sufferings and death of the ‫ מׂשכילים‬have a sacrificial and vicari-
ous character.32 It seems rather that what they do for their disciples is instruc-
tion in knowledge about the end time, the spiritual and angelic world, and
other heavenly mysteries, thus rendering them righteous. In this limited sense,
Daniel 11-12 may be said to contain the earliest interpretation of the Servant
of the Lord in Isaiah 53. The interpretation is collective, but in the broader
context it is also individual since the one “like a Son of Man coming with the
clouds of heaven” (Dan 7:13), to whom supreme rule is given, represents “the
Saints of the Most High” to whom the kingdom belongs, and they in their
turn cannot be dissociated from the wise teachers and their post-mortem
29 ‫ר‬
‫או‬, “light”, supplied from 1QIsaa, 1QIsab, 4QIsad and LXX. 1QIsaa has the copula with ‫יׂשבע‬
which supports this scansion by making for a smoother reading.
30 The adjective ‫ צדיק‬should probably be omitted. It should follow the noun, it overburdens
the verse; and was probably added on account of the similar ‫יצדיק‬.
31 The scanning of the verse presented here renders unnecessary attempts to find a different
meaning for the common substantive daʿat, Recent examples: “Hugh G. M. Williamson,
“Daʿat in Isaiah LIII 11,” VT 28 (1978), 118-22 (“rest”); John Day, “ ‘Humiliation’ in Isaiah LIII
11 in the Light of Isaiah LIII 3 and Daniel XII 4 and the Oldest Known Interpretation of
the Suffering Servant,” VT 30 (1980), 97-103; Anthony Gelston, “Knowledge, Humiliation or
Suffering: A Lexical, Textual and Exegetical Problem in Isaiah 53” in Heather A. McKay and
David J. A. Clines (eds.), Of Prophets’ Visions and the Wisdom of Sages: Essays in Honour of
R. Norman Whybray on his Seventieth Birthday (JSOTSup 163; Sheffield: JSOT, 1993), 126-41,
reads běrāʿětô, “in his suffering.”
32 As claimed by H. L. Ginsberg, “The Oldest Interpretation of the Suffering Servant,” VT 3
(1953), 400-4.

destiny.33 It is no doubt this composite image, Servant of the Lord and Son of
Man, individual and collective, which dominates the self-presentation of the
Jesus of the Gospels, most clearly in his predictions of his future sufferings,
death, and resurrection. In all these predictive announcements in which we
hear clear echoes of Isaiah 53, Jesus identifies himself as the Son of Man, never
as the Servant of the Lord.34
What is only implicit and hinted at in Daniel is stated explicitly in The
Prayer of Azariah, inserted between Dan 3:23 and 3:24, serving therefore as an
expansion of the account of the three youths in the fiery furnace (Dan 3:1-30).
The fictitious persecution of Nebuchadnezzar is code for the real persecution
of his Jewish subjects by Antiochus IV whose proscription of the practice of
Judaism became the occasion for a new genre, that of the martyrology. In the
prayer, written for this occasion and this place in the book of Daniel, the sacri-
ficial language is explicit:
With a contrite heart and a humble spirit may we be accepted,

as though with burnt offerings of rams and bulls . . .
And may our sacrifice be in your sight today (1:17)
We cannot be sure that the composer of the prayer had the Servant of the Lord
in mind, but the language is consonant with that of Isaiah 53, especially since
the Servant also appears to have undergone the death of a martyr:
By oppressive acts of judgments he was led away,

and who gives a thought to his fate? (Isa 53:8a)
At a later point, the author of The Prayer of Azariah speaks even more clearly
of sacrificial self-offering in death when those about to die pray that God may
accept them
as though it were with burnt offerings of rams and bulls,

or with tens of thousands of fat lambs,
so may our sacrifice be in your sight today! (1:17)
33 On “the One like a Son of Man” see John J. Collins, Daniel. A Commentary on the Book of
Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 304-10, and on the “Saints of the Most High” the same
work pp. 313-19. The “Son of Man” also features in The Book of Parables in First (Ethiopic)
Enoch, certainly dependent on Daniel 7 (1 En 37-71), but not as a suffering and dying fig-
ure. See Hengel in Janowski, The Suffering Servant, 99-101.
34 Matt 16:21, 17:22-23, 20:17-19 and parallels.

14 Blenkinsopp
In sum: we can detect an interpretative chain—unfortunately with many miss-

ing links—from Isaiah 53 to Daniel expanded with several dependent and asso-
ciated writings. Coming to terms with persecution raised questions, not for the
first time, about God’s concern for his people. We see, with different degrees
of clarity, how the new phenomenon of martyrdom presented one solution to
this problem the ultimate model for which was found in the idea of death as a
willingly accepted sacrifice to God. Looking back, the author of 4 Maccabees
makes the point forcibly about those who had died during the persecution. As
a result of their sufferings and death, he tells us,
the tyrant was punished, their native land was purified for they (the
martyrs) had become, as it were, a ransom (ἀντίψυχον) for the sin of our
people. . . . By means of the blood (διὰ τοῦ αἵματος) of these devout ones
and their death as an atoning sacrifice (ἱλαστηρίου) divine providence
preserved Israel (4 Macc 17:21-22).35
While acquaintance with Isaiah 53 is limited in texts extant from the Greco-
Roman period and more often than not tacit rather than explicit, it was always
likely, if not inevitable, that the Servant of the Lord, whose life and death are
the subject of both lament and eulogy in that chapter, would come to serve
as the exemplar of sacrificial and atoning suffering and death after the per-
secution and martyrdom recounted in the book of Daniel and its insertions,
material which probably originated in synagogue preaching and worship,
and which is reflected in narrative form in the four Maccabee books. The sac-
rificial analogy, exemplified by the suffering and dying Servant of the Lord in
Isaiah 53, was, however, only fully and unambiguously articulated in the lan-
guage in which early Christian writings expressed the meaning of the life and
death of Jesus.
35 For other texts from the pre-Christian period examined by Hengel for traces of influence
from Isaiah 53 see Hengel, “The Effective History of Isaiah 53” in Janowski, 75-146. Hengel
does not deal with The Song of Azariah or statements about the victims of the Antiochean
persecution in the books of Maccabees. The texts which he surveys and which are omit-
ted here as probably not directly relevant are: Zech 12:9-13:1 and 13:7-9; 1 Enoch 37-71; the
Aramaic Apocryphon of Levi; Wisdom chapters 2 and 5; Testament of Benjamin 3:8; and the
Self-Glorification Hymn from Qumran (4Q491c).

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Vetus Testamentum 66 (2016) 1-14