The Fearless Bearded Teacher - Reflections on Isaiah 50:4-9a, Passion Sunday, Year A
by John C. Holbert on Wednesday, January 28, 2026
For those among you who prefer to celebrate Passion Sunday, as an alternative to Palm Sunday, the lectionary collectors give us a quite different group of texts. From the Hebrew Bible there is the familiar third servant song of Isaiah, from among the four songs written by that exilic prophet, that describes a mysterious servant of YHWH and the many actions that servant will perform on behalf of the Judean exiles in Babylon. This servant remains unknown and unnamed, save in the second song (Is.49:3) where the servant is explicitly named “Israel.” However, we should note that that word does not exist in the Greek Septuagint translation of this text, casting some doubt on the integrity of the passage. Whomever Isaiah had in mind for these famous poems when he announced a servant, the fact is that early Christian commentators seized on them as obvious prefigurings of the one they called Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. He, they said, was the servant of YHWH, and the ideas that Isaiah promulgated for him were played out in the life and ministry of Jesus. Isaiah 50, made plain by its use on this Passion Sunday, continues that Christian connection.
Before we explore those Christian ideas, however, I always want to examine, as I am able, the 6th-century BCE context of Isaiah’s composition. If the four servant songs are a constituent part of the longer book of 2-Isaiah 40-55, and not some later reflection from some other prophet—there is significant scholarly debate on the subject—then we need to attempt to see how the introduction of the servant adds to the prophet’s concerns for the Judean exiles. Let me suggest a possible theological context for the work of this servant in the midst of the 50-year Babylonian exile.
Both in 597 and 587 BCE, the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, first defeated the meager forces of Judah, and then in 587, after a lengthy siege of Jerusalem, broke into the city, razed the major buildings, and dragged off to Babylon the blinded king and his courtiers, where they would live for the next 50 years. Many of them, of course, died in Babylon, and the vast majority of the exiles were born there. They had never seen Jerusalem, but had heard many stories of the city, and especially had struggled with the various reasons why YHWH had either forgotten them or had punished them with this long captivity. The theological cauldron must have been boiling furiously as the captives argued about their continued exile from their long-lost homeland.
And in the midst of that debate, 2-Isaiah introduced the figure of the servant. In Is.45:1, he had named Cyrus of Persia as YHWH’s “messiah,” though the Persian king knew nothing of YHWH or the intricacies of Israelite belief and practice. One can imagine that this claim was not received all that well with many of the exiles, especially among those who found Cyrus’ pagan beliefs, not to mention his complete lack of Hebrew, disqualifying for any notion that he might be YHWH’s messenger in any way. Still, if YHWH had not forgotten them, but had a future for them, however difficult such a future might be to envision in this pagan land, could it be that YHWH had chosen someone or something who would lead them back to the great promises of YHWH? That hope, I suggest, may be the origin of Isaiah’s figure of the servant.
The servant in the first song of Is.42 is described as filled with YHWH’s spirit, yet will quietly, silently, meekly, seek to bring justice to the earth (Is.42:1-4). In the second song (Is.49:1-6), the servant is called by YHWH “before the servant was born,” and the servant’s role is to “bring Jacob back to God,” and further to be “a light to the nations, in order that YHWH’s salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” The servant’s role expands here to include the known world. In our third song (Is.50:4-9), the description of the servant is more intimate, and the work of the servant given increased detail. Now the servant is “teacher,” who “sustains the weary with a word.” Such work is potentially dangerous, since the servant is said to be “not rebellious,” willing to “give a back to those who strike,” to “offer cheeks to those who would pluck out a beard,” and never to “hide a face from insult and spitting.” Isaiah here paints a picture of one subject to physical violence, but in its dangers refuses to back down, but instead appears willing to suffer as needed to teach the word of YHWH especially to the weary of the world. This servant believes and trusts that YHWH “will help” in the times when “adversaries confront” the servant. The servant “has set his face like a flint,” and will never in any way “be put to shame.”
Of course, in the fourth song of Is.52-53, the violence against the servant is made all too plain, though the servant’s work has always been to teach, to support, to speak the words of YHWH to those in desperate need of that word. All of these reflections lead me to the conclusion that the servant for Isaiah is a portion of Israel, a remnant of the exiles, who will maintain a close relationship to YHWH, and will continue to speak YHWH’s truth in spite of those who would either reject YHWH’s word completely, or who would create some new way of thinking of Israel apart from YHWH altogether, or would simply meld into the Babylonian world, never to be heard from again, denying fully their Israelite identity. The servant of YHWH, as Isaiah envisions the figure, would lead Israel back to the promises of YHWH made so long ago, and would lead them into a bright future with YHWH.
Thus, even as the early Christians identified Isaiah’s servant with Jesus, they may have been doing nearly precisely what Isaiah did for his own people. Just as the servant of YHWH was thought to be that one who would act to unite the people of Israel again into YHWH’s people, so early Christians imagined that Jesus would do the same for the world. And those of us who claim Christianity as the central notion for our lives, who say that Jesus is teacher of God’s word, as well as is the suffering one for the world, can learn from Isaiah’s servant how any servant of God and Jesus may be called to act, and urged to teach in order that “the salvation of God may reach the ends of the earth.”