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Sunday, July 26, 2026

Isaiah's Greater Servant

I've written a lot over the years about Isaiah's Messianic prophecies. See here on Isaiah 9:1-7 and here on the Servant Songs, for example.

One of the most common objections to a traditional Christian view of the latter, the Servant Songs, is that Israel or a remnant in Israel could be the Servant or is referred to as the Servant elsewhere in Isaiah. Why not interpret the Servant Songs that way? Why think they're about Jesus or have any kind of significant secondary application to him?

One answer is to highlight something in the objection that's being raised. Why refer to Israel or a remnant within Israel? Partly because different Servant passages seem to be referring to different entities. So, the idea that there's one entity the other Servant passages are consistently referring to, and we therefore should assume the passages Christians apply to Jesus are also about that one other entity, is false. A good way of illustrating that fact is to cite the reference to Isaiah as "my [God's] servant" in 20:3 (or the reference to David in that manner in 37:35, etc.). The Servant theme is prominent in Isaiah (which is more evidence for the unity of the book), and it's undeniably applied to at least a few different entities.

I've argued for Jesus' fulfillment of the passages often referred to as the Servant Songs elsewhere, like in the posts linked above. I won't repeat all of the details here, but something I want to highlight is how stark the differences are between the Servant Songs, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the Servant passages immediately surrounding the Servant Songs. Notice the plural "men" in 41:14, the plural "people" in 42:22 and "we" in 42:24, the references to the sinfulness of the Servant in 42:18-25, the same characteristics in 43:8-28, 44:21-23, 45:4-5, etc. In fact, the Servant Songs refer to some other Servant who will redeem the Servant referred to earlier (e.g., 49:5-7), as I've argued in posts like the ones linked earlier.

The title of this post is meant to allude to the concept of the Messiah as David's greater son. Isaiah has a concept of a Servant who's greater than the others.