[People with disabilities passing as able-bodied] recognize that in most societies there exists no common experience or understanding of disability on which to base their identity. For where a common acceptance of disability exists, passing is unnecessary.
Tobin Siebers, Disability Theory
The analogy with the Servant is clear, but like all analogies, it walks with a limp
Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40–55: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
In his programmatic work I, He, We, and They, David J. A. Clines declares, ‘Isaiah 53 is a casualty of historical-critical scholarship.’1 Rather than approaching the poem as a source of historical information, he calls for us to approach the poem as a ‘language-event’. For Clines, the language of the poem ‘creates a world… It sets forth a vision of the world which is radically different from our prior expectations; it is a new “world” in that its scale of values differs from the conventional.’2 We can appreciate Clines’ shift from a scholarly focus on whom Isaiah 53 describes to how it describes, and thereby how it creates new worlds. Nevertheless, even allowing for the text to create multiple meanings, worlds, and even characters, it amazes us how often this passage has created a world and a character without disabilities within the history of its interpretation. As we have discovered throughout this book, the ‘scale of values’ of the brave new worlds that Isaiah 53 creates for most scholars does not include disability.
Unfortunately, the history of the servant’s interpretation remains largely an exercise in creating new worlds and characters without disabilities. The widespread dismissal of Duhm’s skin anomaly diagnosis contributed to the widespread dismissal of the servant’s disability. Yet we should not mistake misguided attempts to understand a literary representation of disability through a medical model for the absence of disability in the passage. As we discussed in Chapter 1, interpreting disability involves much more than a medical diagnosis. In Chapter 2, we discovered that these new worlds without disability do not reflect Isaiah 53’s depiction of the servant’s experience. Isaiah 53 describes the servant with imagery usually associated with disability as a social experience in the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Near Eastern literature. As we traced the interpretative history of the servant in Chapters 3 and 4, we found that the servant with disabilities in the poem helped create typological connections for early interpreters and create identifications with presumably able-bodied individuals or communal experiences of exile rather than disability for later interpreters. The identification of the servant with historical individuals or communities not only created new worlds for interpreters but a new character in the servant as an able-bodied sufferer.
We may wonder why scholars tend to create worlds and characters without disabilities when interpreting Isaiah 53. Contrary to a popular assumption, these worlds do not represent a natural or default starting point for reading our passage. Such worlds are in fact the products of repeated interpretive choices or preferences. Yet we should not speculate about the reasons why scholars repeatedly make these choices or preferences, which seem to reflect and reinforce what Robert McRuer refers to as ‘compulsory able-bodiedness’.3 Certainly, we would caution against reading a conscious ablist or eugenics conspiracy theory behind these preferences. Nevertheless, while we cannot know why scholars tend to neglect the servant’s disability, we do know that this neglect contributes to the creation of worlds and characters without disability.
By contrast, this book has chosen the reasonable starting point that disability imagery describes a figure with disabilities in Isaiah 53. Yet we have not claimed that our reading of the servant is the only legitimate way to interpret the servant. As we discussed in Chapter 1, most of the biblical language for disability is broad enough semantically to describe conditions or circumstances other than experiences of disability. We could interpret the disability imagery as an idiomatic description of experiences of prophetic or exilic suffering. Yet, while our reading of the servant as a poetic figure with disabilities is not the only way we could interpret him, it remains as viable an option as any. Since Isaiah 53 uses disability imagery, the burden of proof falls on those who would claim that such imagery does not describe a disability. We have not found any convincing reason why we should not choose to start from the position that disability imagery describes experiences of disability. Throughout this book, however, we have found a number of unconvincing reasons used to justify other presumably able-bodied starting points.
As we discussed in the Introduction, much of Isaiah 1–34 comes from a period before the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the Davidic monarchy in 587 BCE. Isaiah 40–55 comes from some time after these horrific events. In other words, our passage reflects a very different world from that of First Isaiah. We could argue that this historical context of Isaiah 40–55 encourages the creation of newly imagined worlds. Nevertheless, the later chapters of Isaiah create a literary world from several of the motifs that appear repeatedly throughout First Isaiah, including ‘Zion’ (e.g. 1:8; 12:6; 14:32) and ‘servant’ (20:3; 22:20; cf. 37:35).4 Some scholars have suggested that, in the wake of the destruction of both the Davidic monarchy and Jerusalem, Second Isaiah reapplies these motifs to the Judean people more generally rather than limiting them to a specific royal line or city. For example, in Isa 55:3, God applies ‘an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David’ to all Israel (cf. 2 Sam 7:15–16). Likewise, Isa 51:16 refers to all Israel as ‘Zion’ (cf. Zech 2:7).5
In a way, this broader reapplication of these motifs ensures the survival of the divine promises associated with such motifs in a historical situation very different from the one preceding the destruction of the Davidic line and Jerusalem. Often, scholars refer to this phenomenon as the ‘democratization’ of the Davidic promise (or ‘Zion theology’6) to Judean parties beyond the royal family. This so-called democratization of motifs found elsewhere in the Isaianic tradition allows our passage to create ‘a vision of the world which is radically different from our prior expectations’, to borrow Clines’ words quoted earlier.
Regarding the servant figure in Isaiah 53, Mettinger argues that a similar process occurs in our passage. Mettinger writes, ‘This was the development during the Exile by means of which the Davidic theology became “nationalized”. Ideas which were previously attached to the king were now transferred to the people… In Isaiah 40–55 this tendency is most clearly observable in 55:3–5.’7 As with other motifs associated with the Davidic monarchy, Mettinger claims that the servant figure becomes a collective reference for the exilic community in Second Isaiah. As with many other creative reapplications of the servant discussed throughout this book, the servant’s democratization helps to ensure his continued survival within our scholarly and popular imaginations.
Nevertheless, there is an important difference between the democratization of Zion or kingship and that of the servant figure in Isaiah 40–55. We may acknowledge the expansion of kingship or Zion motifs to new and broader circles without denying that the terms ‘David’ or ‘Zion’ also describe a specific person and geographic location respectively. Regarding the servant with disabilities, however, scholars tend to read Isaiah 53 as an expansion of a servant motif that does not also describe a figure with disabilities. The imagery of disability in Isaiah 53 is not democratized. Rather, it is appropriated. In fact, the appropriation of the servant has left little room for people with disabilities to claim the servant as one of their own.
We do not raise the issue of the appropriation of Isaiah 53’s disability imagery in order to make an exclusive claim of ownership over this passage for one group or another. As Benjamin Sommer correctly remarks, ‘In this chapter, Deutero-Isaiah’s allusive art reaches a high point.’8 In other words, Isaiah 53 fleshes out the servant through a wide variety of imagery, including but not limited to royal, national, prophetic, and disability imagery.
Unfortunately, interpretative interest in the servant would probably have faded long ago if the disability imagery were not reapplied to persons or situations other than those of disability. People rarely bother with stories of persons with disabilities if they do not somehow inform the experience of the able-bodied, be it for their medical, entertainment, or even theological value. In many ways, the servant’s ability to ‘pass’ as an otherwise able-bodied prophet, king, or exiled persona has ensured his literary survival among the dominant figures within the history of biblical interpretation. We suspect that if he had not passed as able-bodied he would not have had much of an interpretative afterlife at all. Rather, he would remain buried deep within a prophetic corpus whose imagery often overshadows its humanity.
In this sense, the servant’s interpretative afterlife most closely approximates an unfortunately frequent experience of persons with disabilities. Passing as able-bodied represents the dominant strategy for ensuring the servant’s survival in literature beyond Isaiah 53. Likewise, passing as able-bodied represents a dominant strategy for acceptance, if not survival, for many persons with disabilities in real-life situations. Earlier, we quoted Clines’ claim that Isaiah 53 presents ‘a new “world” in that its scale of values differs from the conventional’. Yet the scale of values reflected in the new worlds created throughout the history of the servant’s interpretation still require the servant to pass as able-bodied. The values of these new worlds seem to reflect the all too conventional values of an able-bodied world.
While we may appreciate the creative reapplication of the servant’s experience to wider circles throughout the history of interpretation, it remains important to contextualize this process within the cultural history of disability. Traditionally, as with other minority groups, this history has had an uneasy relationship with how dominant groups have exploited persons with disabilities as sources of medical, moral, scientific, and even theological enquiry. This does not mean that Isaiah 53 cannot inform interpretations, theological or otherwise, that do not focus on the servant as a figure with disabilities. Rather, it means that we should recognize how and state why we choose to interpret the servant as either able-bodied or as having a disability just as scholars routinely state why they interpret the servant as an individual or a collective reference.
Even if we do not focus on the servant as a figure with disabilities, we do not have to repeat the tendency to make him pass as able-bodied. We can make a different interpretative choice. Some scholars writing from a self-identified Christian standpoint have creatively reapplied the servant’s experience to that of the Church while recognizing that Isaiah 53 does not describe the servant as a Christian or the Church collectively.9 Such scholars can reapply the servant’s experience to that of Jesus or the Church without trying to make the servant pass as Jesus or a Christian. Those that interpret the servant outside the context of disability should make a similar distinction between creatively reapplying the servant’s experience of disability and imagining him as an able-bodied passer.
In the epigraph, we quoted Tobin Siebers’ statement that ‘where a common acceptance of disability exists, passing is unnecessary’. Unfortunately, that the history of the servant’s interpretation reviewed in this book has produced worlds upon worlds that are free of disabilities reminds us how necessary passing, in a multiplicity of forms, still is within biblical scholarship. Studying Isaiah 53 in the context of disability studies does more than ask who the servant is for each one of us. It asks us to state clearly how we have imagined and organized the biblical world and whom we have allowed to occupy it.