Disability and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. For the sake of convenience, throughout this book, we use ‘Isaiah 53’ as a less cumbersome title for Isa 52:13–53:12.

2. On vicarious suffering in Isaiah 53, see, with citations, Daniel P. Bailey, ‘Concepts of Stellvertretung in the Interpretation of Isaiah 53’, in William H. Bellinger and William R. Farmer (eds), Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins (Harrisburg: Trinity, 1998), 223–50; Bernd Janowski, Stellvertretung: alttestamentliche Studien zu einem theologisintroductionen Grundbegriff (Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1997); 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, trans. Daniel P. Bailey (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), 48–74; Hermann Spieckermann, ‘The Conception and Prehistory of the Idea of Vicarious Suffering in the Old Testament’, in Janowski and Stuhlmacher (eds), The Suffering Servant, 1–47.

3. For a helpful discussion of this topic, see Martha Stoddard Holmes, Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).

4. On this issue within the cultural history of disability, see Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell, Cultural Locations of Disability (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); idem, Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Shelley Tremain (ed.), Foucault and the Government of Disability (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).

5. See Colin G. Cruse, ‘The Servant Songs: Interpretative Trends since C. K. North’, Studia Biblica et Theologica 8 (1978): 3–27; Samuel R. Driver and Adolf Neubauer, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah according to the Jewish Interpreters (Oxford and London: James Parker and Company, 1877); Herbert Haag, Der Gottesknecht bei Deuterojesaja (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliintroe, 1985), 34–195; Wolfgang Hüllstrung and Gerlinde Feine, updated by Daniel P. Bailey, ‘A Classified Bibliography on Isaiah 53’, in Janowski and Stuhlmacher (eds), The Suffering Servant, 462–92; Christopher R. North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah: A Historical and Critical Study, 2nd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1956); Harold Henry Rowley, ‘The Servant of the Lord’, in Harold Henry Rowley, The Servant of the Lord and Other Essays (London: Lutterworth, 1952), 1–57; John D. W. Watts, Isaiah 34 – 66, rev. edn, WBC 25 (Nashville: Nelson Reference & Electronic, 2005), 791. For further references to surveys of the history of Isaiah 53’s interpretation, see Kristin Joachimsen, ‘Steck’s Five Stories of the Servant in Isaiah lii 13-liii 12, and Beyond’, VT 57 (2007): 209 n. 2 and 3; 217 n. 33.

6. The NRSV and our translation follow the Greek version known as the Septuagint in translating 52:15 as ‘so he shall startle many nations’. Yet other translations follow Hebrew and other Greek manuscripts by Aquila and Theodorion in translating this verse as ‘so shall he sprinkle many nations’ (KJV). Our translation fits the context of the passage well as we discover in Chapter 2.

7. The NRSV translates this phrase as ‘He was despised and rejected by others.’ While the first Hebrew verb is a passive form (‘was despised’), the second verb is active (‘rejected’). Thus, we prefer to translate the phrase as ‘He was despised and withdrew from humanity.’ See, with citations, Michael L. Barré, S.S., ‘Textual and Rhetorical-critical Observations on the Last Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13–53:12)’, CBQ 62 (2000): 13 n. 62. The emphasis on the servant’s separation from society fits the context of the passage well as we discover in Chapter 2.

8. The NRSV translates this phrase as ‘as one from whom others hide their faces’. Yet, our translation ‘like someone who hides his face from us’ is also grammatically possible and fits the context of the passage well as we discover in Chapter 2. See D. Winton Thomas, ‘A Consideration of Isaiah liii in the Light of Recent Textual and Philological Study’, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 44 (1968): 83.

9. The NRSV translates this phrase as ‘yet we accounted him stricken’. We translate the Hebrew ng‘ as ‘plagued’ instead of ‘stricken’ in both its verb and noun forms (vv. 4 and 8 respectively) in order to reflect its use as a term for disability or disease. For example, ng‘ in both its noun and verb forms appears 61 times in Leviticus 13–14, mostly as a reference to a skin anomaly. We will discuss this translation in Chapter 2.

10. The NRSV translates the Hebrew mhll as ‘he was wounded’ (meholal). Our translation follows the early Greek text by Aquila, who translates mhll as ‘made profane’ (mehullal as in Ezek 36:23; cf. Ezek 24:21). An Aramaic translation also translates the Hebrew word as ‘profaned’ rather than ‘wounded’. We will discuss this translation in Chapter 2 (cf. 53:10).

11. The NRSV translates the first part of v. 8 as ‘by a perversion of justice’. Our translation understands the two Hebrew prepositions (min) that appear respectively before the nouns ‘restraint’ and ‘justice’ as negating these nouns. Similarly, the passage uses a pair of the preposition min in a similar way when it negates the nouns ‘human semblance’ and ‘mortals’ in 52:14 (‘unlike [min] human semblance, and his form unlike [min] that of mortals’). This repeated use of the preposition min to negate nouns also appears in Isa 54:9, which the NRSV translates as, ‘I will not (min) be angry with you and will not (min) rebuke you’. Elsewhere, a verbal form of the word for ‘restrain’ appears in contexts in which a plague is stopped (Num 17:13, 15; 25:8; 2 Sam 24:25). The idea in 53:8 is that those who took the servant away showed no restraint or justice in their actions. See G. Brooke Lester, ‘Daniel Evokes Isaiah: The Rule of the Nations in Apocalyptic Allusion-Narrative’ (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 2007), 235 n. 54. On this use of the preposition min, see Bruce K. Waltke and Michael O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 214.

12. The NRSV translates the root dwr as ‘generation’ rather than ‘dwelling’. Although ‘generation’ is the most common meaning of this root, a similar form of this root means ‘dwelling’ during Hezekiah’s prayer for recovery from an illness (Isa 38:12). Furthermore, cognates of dwr in other Near Eastern languages mean ‘to dwell’. See Barré, ‘Textual and Rhetorical-critical Observations on the Last Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13–53:12)’, 17, with citations.

13. Unlike the NRSV, we have translated the various forms of hlh as ‘diseased’ or ‘diseases’ consistently (vv. 3, 4, 10). In v. 10, a text from the Dead Sea Scrolls (IQIsa^a) has a slightly different word that reflects the Hebrew root hll and means, ‘profaned him’ (cf. v. 5) instead of ‘make him diseased’. The Septuagint translates this verse as ‘the LORD desired to cleanse him of his disease’. We discuss how IQIsa^a and the Septuagint render v. 10 further in Chapter 3.

14. David J. A. Clines, I, He, We, and They: A Literary Approach to Isaiah 53, JSOTSup 1 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1976), 33.

15. For example, see Ernst Haag, ‘Die Botschaft vom Gottesknecht. Ein Weg zur Überwindung der Gewalt’, in Norbert Lohfink (ed.), Gewalt und Gewaltlosigkeit im Alten Testament (Freiburg: Herder, 1983), 166–72; Reinhard Gregor Kratz, Kyros im Deuterojesaja-Buch: Redaktionsgeschichtliintroe Untersuchungen zu Entstehung und Theologie von Jes 40 – 55, FAT 1 (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1991), 217. Odil Hannes Steck argues for five layers of redaction, beginning in 530 and continuing until 270 bce. Odil Hannes Steck, Gottesknecht und Zion: Gesammelte Aufsaätze zu Deuterojesaja, FAT 4 (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1992), 149–72. For a helpful discussion of Steck’s redactional proposal, see Kristin Joachimsen, ‘Steck’s Five Stories of the Servant in Isaiah lii 13-liii 12, and Beyond’, 208–28.

16. I would like to thank Patrick D. Miller for bringing this point to my attention in a personal communication.

17. For discussions of these issues, see Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 311–23, with citations; John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 379–400; Marvin Sweeney, ‘The Book of Isaiah in Recent Research’, Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 1 (1993): 141–62; Marvin E. Tate, ‘The Book of Isaiah in Recent Study’, in James W. Watts and Paul R. House (eds), Forming Prophetic Literature: Essays on Isaiah and the Twelve in Honor of John D. W. Watts, JSOTSup 235 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 22–56.

18. As early as 1933, Karl Elliger argued that Isaiah 53 comes from Third Isaiah rather than Second Isaiah. See Karl Elliger, Deuterojesaja in seinem verhaältnis zu Tritojeseja (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer verlag, 1933). For a critique of Elliger, see North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, 161–77. More recently, see Fredrick Haägglund, Isaiah 53 in the Light of Homecoming after Exile, FAT 31 (Tübingen: Mohr-Sie-beck, 2008), 137–9, with citations. Recently, some scholars have argued against the idea of a ‘Third Isaiah’. Benjamin D. Sommer attributes Isaiah 35, 40–66, including Isaiah 53, to Second Isaiah (A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40 – 66 [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998], 187–95); cf. Shalom M. Paul, Isaiah 40 – 66 : Introduction and Commentary, 2 vols, Mikra Leyisrael (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008 [Hebrew]).

19. On this possibility, see the discussions and citations in Zoltán Kustár, ‘Durch seine Wunden sind wir geheilt’: eine Untersuchung zur Metaphorik von Israels Krankheit und Heilung im Jesajabuch, BWANT 154 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2002), 160–204; Jill Middlemas, ‘Did Second Isaiah Write Lamentations III?’, VT 56 (2006): 506–25; Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture, 64–6, 93–6; Patricia Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things: The Recollection of Previous Texts in Second Isaiah, SBLDS 161 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1997), 214–21.

20. For example, see the extensive list of parallels in Ivan Engell, ‘The ‘Ebed Yahweh Songs and the Suffering Messiah in Deutero-Isaiah’, BJRL 31 (1948): 54–93; cf. Helmer Ringgren, The Messiah in the Old Testament, Studies in Biblical Theology 18 (London: SCM Press, 1956), 50–3. For critiques of these parallels, see Harry M. Orlinksky, ‘The So-Called “Servant of the Lord” and “Suffering Servant” in Second Isaiah’, in Studies on the Second Part of the Book of Isaiah, VTSup 14 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967), 65–6, with citations; Joseph Scharbert, ‘Stellvertretendes Sühneleiden in den Ebed-Jahwe-Liedern und in altorienta-lisintroductionen Ritualtexten’, BZ 2 (1958): 190–213.

21. For example, Roger N. Whybray argues that whereas 52:13–53:12 as a whole does not conform to any known genre of poetry found in the Hebrew Bible, 53:1–12 follows the pattern of the ‘individual song of thanksgiving’ genre (see our discussion in Chapter 2). Therefore, according to Whybray, 52:13–15 and 53:1–12 represent different sources. See Roger N. Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet: An Interpretation of Isaiah Chapter 53, JSOTSup 4 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1978), 109–15; 163 n. 1. Prior to Whybray, several scholars near the turn of the last century argued that either Isa 52:13–15 or 52:13–53:1 come from a different source than Isa 53:1–12 or 2–12. For example, see the discussion of Schian and Bertholet in North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, 48–9. Yet there is no definitive textual evidence to support these proposals.

22. See Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40 – 66 : A Commentary, OTL, trans. David M. G. Stalker (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 255–8; cf. Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 411.

23. Jeremy Schipper, Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible: Figuring Mephibosheth in the David Story, LHBOTS 441 (New York: T & T Clark, 2006), 27–8.

24. Welcomed exceptions include the discussions and citations in Brenda Brueggemann, ‘On (Almost) Passing’, in The Disability Studies Reader, 3rd edn, ed. Lennard J. Davis (New York: Routledge, 2010), 209–19; Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Staring: How We Look (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), esp. 18–20, 42; Ellen Samuels, ‘My Body, My Closet: Invisible Disability and the Limits of Coming-Out Discourse’, Gay Lesbian Quarterly 9 (2003): 233–55; Tobin Siebers, Disability Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 96–119.

25. See Saul M. Olyan, Disability in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); idem, ‘The Ascription of Physical Disability as a Stigmatizing Strategy in Biblical Iconic Polemics’, JHS 9, article 14 (2009): 1–15, available online: www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/Articles/article_116.pdf (accessed 11 February 2011); Rebecca Raphael, Biblical Corpora: Representations of Disability in Hebrew Biblical Literature, LHBOTS 445 (New York: T & T Clark, 2008). For a helpful study of disability in the Qumran Scrolls, see Johanna Dorman, The Blemished Body: Deformity and Disability in the Qumran Scrolls (Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit, 2007).

26. See Lennard J. Davis, Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism and Other Difficult Positions (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 79–101; Snyder and Mitintroell, Cultural Locations of Disability; idem, Narrative Prosthesis. Regarding the role of disability as an aesthetic object in modern art and visual culture, see Tobin Siebers, Disability Aesthetics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010).

CHAPTER 1

1. See Saul M. Olyan, Disability in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Rebecca Raphael, Biblical Corpora: Representations of Disability in Hebrew Biblical Literature, LHBOTS 445 (New York: T & T Clark, 2008); Jeremy Schipper, Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible: Figuring Mephibosheth in the David Story, LHBOTS 441 (New York: T & T Clark, 2006); Hector Avalos, Sarah Melcher, and Jeremy Schipper (eds), This Abled Body: Rethinking Disability and Biblical Studies, Semeia Studies 55 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007).

2. For a detailed discussion of those physical disabilities that do or do not qualify as a mum in the Hebrew Bible, see Olyan, Disability in the Hebrew Bible, 26–61.

3. Raphael, Biblical Corpora, 14–15.

4. For a detailed treatment of this issue, see Schipper, Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible, 64–73. We appreciate Olyan’s suggestion that we should label this conceptual category as ‘somatic dysfunction’ rather than ‘disability’ as we did in Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible. See Olyan, Disability in the Hebrew Bible, 147–8, n. 5. In the present book, we use the term ‘disability’ according to the cultural model definition provided later in this chapter.

5. On disability and queer studies, including the pathologization of these identities, see the discussions and citations in Eli Clare, Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation (Cambridge: South End, 1999); Robert McRuer, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York: New York University Press, 2006).

6. On the relationship between disability and illness, see Susan Wendell, The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability (New York: Routledge, 1996), 19–22.

7. See Nils Heessel, Babylonisch-assyriche Diagnostik, AOAT 43 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2000); René Labat, Traité akkadien de diagnostics et prognostics médicaux, 2 vols (Paris: Académie internationale d’histoire des sciences, 1951); Franz Köcher, Die babylonisch-assyrische Medizin in Texten und Untersuchungen, 6 vols (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1963–80). For recent attempts at medical diagnoses of Mesopotamian illnesses, diseases, and disabilities, see JoAnn Scurlock and Burton R. Anderson, Diagnoses of Assyrian and Babylonian Medicine: Ancient Sources, Translations, and Modern Medical Analyses (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005).

8. See Colin Barnes, Len Barton, and Michael Oliver (eds), Disability Studies Today (Cambridge: Polity, 2002).

9. Lennard J. Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (New York: Verso, 1995), 130.

10. Lennard J. Davis, Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism and Other Difficult Positions (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 23.

11. Jenny Morris, Pride Against Prejudice: Transforming Attitudes to Disability (London: The Women’s Press, 1991) 10.

12. In a private communication, Josh Lukin, my colleague in Temple University’s English department and affiliated faculty member of Temple’s Institute on Disabilities, noted the importance of distinguishing between an inability and a prohibition when discussing differences between experiences of disability and that of race, sexuality, and so on.

13. Davis, Bending Over Backwards, 23.

14. On the ‘cultural model’ see the discussions and citations in Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell, Cultural Locations of Disability (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 5–11; Schipper, Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible, 18–21; Raphael, Biblical Corpora, 8–11.

15. Rebecca Raphael, ‘Things Too Wonderful: A Disabled Reading of Job’, PRSt 31 (2004): 400.

16. For a further discussion of this tendency, see Jeremy Schipper, ‘Embodying Deuteronomistic Theology in 1 Kings 15:22–24’, in Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim (eds), Bodies, Embodiment and Theology of the Hebrew Bible, LHBOTS 465 (New York: T & T Clark, 2010), 77–89; idem, ‘Deuteronomy 24:5 and King Asa’s Foot Disease in 1 Kings 15:23b’, JBL 129 (2009): 643–8.

17. For example, see Gen 27: 1; 32:26, 32; 48:10; Exod 4:6, 10–11; Lev 13–14; Num 12:10–12; Deut 31:2; Judg 16:21; 1 Sam 3:2; 4:18; 11:2; 2 Sam 4:4; 5:6–8; 6:23; 9:3, 13; 19:27; 2 Kgs 7:10–11; 14:4; 5:1, 12; 9:30–37; 15:5; 25:7; Pss 6:2; 22:14–15, 17; 31:10; 102:52; Job 2:7; 7:5; 19:20; 30:30; 2 Chr 26:16–23. On this point, see Schipper, ‘Embodying Deuteronomistic Theology in 1 Kings 15:22–24’.

18. McRuer, Crip Theory, 1.

19. On this point in relation to infertility in the Hebrew Bible, see Joel S. Baden, ‘The Nature of Barrenness in the Hebrew Bible’, in Candida Moss and Jeremy Schipper (eds), Disability Studies and Biblical Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).

20. Martha C. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 101. For Nussbaum, a society’s notion of disability is contingent upon the demands of the society on its citizens’ bodies.

21. See Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 141, n. 14.

22. Tobin Siebers, Disability Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 71.

23. Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies, 13–14.

24. This does not mean that ancient Near Eastern societies considered infertility as an exclusively female disability. Deuteronomy 7:14 mentions male infertility alongside female infertility (cf. Gen 20:17). Additionally, for a large number of Mesopotamian male fertility incantations see Robert D. Biggs, šà.zi. ga, Ancient Mesopotamian Potency Incantations (Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1967).

25. See the discussions and citations in Neal H. Walls, ‘The Origins of the Disabled Body: Disability in Ancient Mesopotamia’, in Avalos, Melcher, and Schipper (eds), This Abled Body, 16–19; Jeremy Schipper, ‘Disabling Israelite Leadership: 2 Samuel 6:23 and Other Images of Disability in the Deuteronomistic History’, in Avalos, Melcher, and Schipper, This Abled Body, 109–12.

26. For a thoughtful treatment of female infertility in the Hebrew Bible as a social experience in cultic restrictions, see Susan Ackerman, ‘The Blind, the Lame, and the Barran shall not Come into the House’, in Moss and Schipper, Disability Studies and Biblical Literature (forthcoming).

27. According to Sefer ha-Yashar, a collection of midrashim from the Middle Ages, Lamech also lost his sight due to advanced age (cf. Gen 4:18–24).

28. Although Rebekah and Jacob take advantage of Isaac’s visual impairment, Isaac maintains his status as patriarch within the family structure. For a detailed discussion, see Kerry Wynn, ‘The Normate Hermeneutic and Interpretations of Disability in Yahwistic Narratives’, in Avalos, Melcher, and Schipper, This Abled Body, 93–6.

29. On this issue, see R. K. Harrison, ‘Blindness’, IDB 1:448–9. Rosemary Ellison suggests that Vitamin A deficiencies due to diets heavy in barley may have resulted in eye problems among some Mesopotamian workers. See Rosemary Ellison, ‘Some Thoughts on the Diet of Mesopotamia from c. 3000–600 b.c.e.’, Iraq 45 (1983): 146–50; idem, ‘Diet in Mesopotamia: The Evidence of the Barley Ration Texts (c. 3000 to 1400 b.c.e.)’, Iraq 43 (1981): 35–45. On euphemisms for blindness in Akkadian with some discussion of biblical material, see David Marcus, ‘Some Antiphrastic Euphemisms for a Blind Person in Akkadian and Other Semitic Languages’, JAOS 100 (1980): 307–10.

30. On the rhetorical significance of Moses’ eyesight in relation to other leaders throughout the Deuteronomistic History, see Schipper, ‘Disabling Israelite Leadership’, 105.

31. Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, S. 933, section 3, paragraph 2. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/42/chapters/126/toc.html (accessed 4 February 2011).

32. This is not to say that disability imagery did not intersect with legal discourses in ancient Near Eastern literature. On this issue, see F. Rachel Magdalene, ‘The ANE Legal Origins of Impairment as Theological Disability and the Book of Job’, PRSt 34 (2007): 23–60; idem, On the Scales of Righteousness: Neo-Babylonian Trial Law and the Book of Job, BJS 48 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007).

33. Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3 vols (Berkley: University of California Press, 1973), vol. 2, 160.

34. See Frances Reynolds (ed.), The Babylonian Correspondence of Esarhaddon and Letters to Assurbanipal and Sin-šarru-Iškun from Northern and Central Babylonia, SAA 18 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2003), 95–97.

35. See the references in n. 7.

36. For a detailed study of this character, see Schipper, Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible.

37. Autopsies of Egyptian mummies reveal that a number of rulers acquired impairments through injuries and various bodily traumas during their lifetimes. If this was common among the ruling class, it seems reasonable to induce that significant non-fatal injuries frequently resulted in acquired impairments among the wider population. See Walter M. Whitehouse, ‘Radiologic Findings in the Royal Mummies’, in James Harris and Edward Wente (eds), An X-Ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 286–327; cf. Calvin Wells, Bones, Bodies, and Disease: Evidence of Disease and Abnormality in Early Man (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964). For a variety of reasons, scholars have not devoted much study to ancient Israelite human remains. For an accessible discussion of diseases and disability in relation to ancient Israelite dietary practices based on paleopathology, see Nathan MacDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?: Diet in Biblical Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 80–87, with citations; cf. Hector Avalos, Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East: The Role of the Temple in Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel, HSM 54 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1995), 120–24 with citations.

38. Rashi infers Jacob’s healing from Gen 33: 18a, which reads, ‘Jacob came safely [or ‘in wholeness’ shalem] to the city of Shechem.’ Yet, in this verse, shalem most likely alludes to Jacob’s request of the LORD that he may return to his father’s house ‘in peace’ (beshalom) in Gen 28:21.

39. For a critique of scholarly opinions on this issue, see Wynn, ‘The Normate Hermeneutic and Interpretations of Disability in Yahwistic Narratives’, 99.

40. For more detailed discussions of hlh including related terms and ancient Near Eastern cognates, see Schipper, Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible, 80–84, with citations.

41. Roger N. Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet: An Interpretation of Isaiah Chapter 53, SOTSup 4 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1978), 148, n. 116.

42. For a review of the interpretative history, see Jeffery Tigay, ‘“Heavy of Mouth” and “Heavy of Tongue”: On Moses’ Speech Difficulty’, BASOR 231 (1978): 57–67; cf. Nyasha Junior and Jeremy Schipper, ‘Mosaic Disability and Identity in Exodus 4:10; 6:12, 30’, BibInt 16 (2008): 428–41.

43. Tigay, ‘“Heavy of Mouth” and “Heavy of Tongue”’, 59, 62.

44. Raphael, Biblical Corpora, 119.

45. John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40 – 66, NICOT (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), 383–4.

46. For example, see the quotations of James Muilenburg, David F. Payne, George Wöosung Wade, and Claus Westermann cited in Clines, I, He, We, and They: A Literary Approach to Isaiah 53, JSOTSup 1 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1976), 27.

47. We could argue that we know Song of Songs 4 describes the woman as beautiful because v. 1 begins the passage by stating, ‘How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful!’ We could also argue, however, that we know Isaiah 53 describes the servant as having a disability because v. 3 states that he was ‘acquainted with diseases’.

48. The ‘The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer’ uses rare and technical language for disease or disability to describe the righteous sufferer. Several of the terms appear elsewhere in Mesopotamian medical, ritual, or omen texts. Furthermore, the Mesopotamian commentary on the poem translates a number of these terms with other Akkadian words for illness, disease, or disability. See Amar Annus and Alan Lenzi, Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi, State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts 8 (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2010), xxvii. Moreover, the initial portions of the poem praise the god Marduk as a healer. See D. J. Wiseman, ‘A New Text of the Babylonian Poem of the Righteous Sufferer’, Anatolian Studies 30 (1980): 101–07.

49. William L. Holladay, Isaiah: Scroll of a Prophetic Heritage (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1978), 152 (emphasis added).

CHAPTER 2

1. On this topic, see Andrew Davies, ‘Oratorio as Exegesis: The Use of the Book of Isaiah in Handel’s Messiah’, BibInt 15 (2007): 464–84.

2. Bernhard Duhm, Die Theologie der Propheten als Grundlage für die innere Entwicklungsgeschichte der israelitisch02en Religion (Bonn: Marcus, 1875); cf. idem, Das Buch Jesaia uĴbersetzt und erklaärt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1922).

3. Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia, 396–401. See also Odil Hannes Steck, Gottesknecht und Zion: Gesammelte Aufsaätze zu Deuterojesaja, FAT 4 (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1992), 22; Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40 – 66 : A Commentary, OTL, trans. David M. G. Stalker (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 92.

4. On this issue, see the discussion and bibliography in Hector Avalos, Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East: The Role of the Temple in Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel, HSM 54 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1995), 311–16; Richard N. Jones and David P. Wright, ‘Leprosy’, ABD 4.277–82.

5. Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia, 368.

6. See, among others, Johannes Lindblom, The Servant Songs in Deutero-Isaiah: A New Attempt to Solve an Old Problem (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1951); James Muilenburg, ‘Isaiah, Chapters 40–66’, in G. A. Buttrick (ed.), The Interpreter’s Bible (NewYork and Nashville: Abingdon, 1956), 406–08; Hugh G. M. Williamson, Variations on a Theme: King, Messiah and Servant in the Book of Isaiah (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 131. For challenges to Duhm’s ‘servant songs’ theory as well as a review of scholarship that questions the theory, see Hans M. Barstad, ‘The Future of the “Servant Songs”: Some Reflections on the Relationship of Biblical Scholarship to its own Tradition’, in Samuel E. Balentine and John Barton (eds), Language, Theology, and the Bible: Essays in Honour of James Barr (Oxford: Claredon, 1994), 261–70; Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, A Farewell to the Servant Songs: A Critical Examination of an Exegetical Axiom, trans. Frederick H. Cryer (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1983).

7. For example, see the discussion of Schian and Bertholet in Christopher R. North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah: A Historical and Critical Study, 2nd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), 48–9.

8. Karl Budde, ‘The So-Called “Ebed-Yahweh Songs,” and the Meaning of the Term “Servant of Yahweh” in Isaiah, Chaps. 40–55’, AJT 3 (1899): 503.

9. See Rebecca Raphael, ‘Things Too Wonderful: A Disabled Reading of Job’, PRSt 31 (2004): 400. This does not necessarily mean that theological and diagnostic frameworks represented mutually exclusive options in the ancient Near East. Mesopotamian cultures could attribute the source of an illness to a deity while still studying the illness through empirical observations and inductive experiments. See JoAnn Scurlock, Magico-Medical Means of Treating Ghost-Induced Illnesses in Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Magic and Divination 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 77–81.

10. Avalos, Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East, 332.

11. Michael L. Barré, S.S., ‘Textual and Rhetorical-critical Observations on the Last Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13–53:12)’, CBQ 62 (2000): 13 n. 66.

12. J. J. M. Roberts, ‘Hand of Yahweh’, VT 21 (1971): 244–51; cf. René Labat, Traité akkadien de diagnostics et prognostics médicaux, 2 vols (Paris: Académie internationale d’histoire des sciences, 1951).

13. See the discussion in Avalos, Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East, 178–9.

14. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40 – 55: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 19A (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 352.

15. For example, see William L. Holladay, Isaiah: Scroll of a Prophetic Heritage (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1978), 152.

16. John F. A. Sawyer, Prophecy and the Biblical Prophets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 93.

17. Barré, ‘Textual and Rhetorical-critical Observations on the Last Servant Song’, 19 n. 94, with citations; cf. J. V. Kinnier Wilson, ‘Leprosy in Ancient Mesopotamia’, RA 60 (1966): 47–58.

18. On this omen and prayer, see, with citations, Avalos, Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East, 180–1.

19. For a more detailed treatment of skin anomalies in the Pentateuch, see Joel S. Baden and Candida R. Moss, ‘The Origin and Interpretation of sara ‘at in Leviticus 13-14’, JBL (forthcoming).

20. For other possible connections between Isaiah 53 and Number 10–12, see Klaus Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 40 – 55, Hermeneia, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 408–9. We should note, however, that unlike Miriam in Numbers 12, our passage does not include the servant as a member of the guilty party in Isaiah 53. Elsewhere, an individual’s skin anomaly represents a household punishment (2 Sam 3:29).

21. See Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 7 vols, trans. Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), vol. 4, 272; vol. 6, 366 n. 72.

22. Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 174; cf. 38–9.

23. For detailed discussions of purity and impurity, see Jonathan Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 21–42; David P. Wright, ‘The Spectrum of Priestly Impurity’, in Gary A. Anderson and Saul M. Olyan (eds), Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel, JSOTSup 125 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991); idem, ‘Unclean and Clean (OT)’, ABD 6: 729–41.

24. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1 – 16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 818.

25. David J. A. Clines, I, He, We, and They: A Literary Approach to Isaiah 53, JSOTSup 1 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1976), 27.

26. See Jeremy Schipper, Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible: Figuring Mephibosheth in the David Story (New York: T & T Clark, 2006), 76.

27. Josef Scharbert, ‘Stellvertretendes Sühneleiden in den Ebed-Jahwe-Lieden und in altorientalischen Ritualtexten’, BZ 2 (1958): 190–213.

28. John H. Walton, ‘The Imagery of the Substitute King Ritual in Isaiah’s Fourth Servant Song’, JBL 122 (2003): 737–9.

29. The best evidence for a humanly inflicted injury or fatality comes from the reference to ‘bruises’ (brh) in 53:5. This word describes humanly inflicted injuries in Gen 4:23 and Exod 21:25. Yet, this word also appears in Isa 1:6 in the context of a divinely inflicted ‘striking’ (nkh) and a ‘sickness’ (hōlî) that seems consistent with the descriptions of divinely caused diseases mentioned earlier. It also appears in Ps 38:5 (Hebrew v. 6) in the context of a prayer for recovery from an illness. The context and genre of Isa 53:5 appear closer to Isaiah 1 and Psalm 38 than to Gen 4:23 or Exod 21:25.

30. Westermann, Isaiah 40 – 66, 258.

31. Barré, ‘Textual and Rhetorical-critical Observations on the Last Servant Song’, 25, 24.

32. Roger N. Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet: An Interpretation of Isaiah Chapter 53, JSOTSup 4 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1978), 135.

33. Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet, 96. On this particular interpretation, Whybray follows D. Winton Thomas, ‘A Consideration of Some Unusual Ways of Expressing the Superlative in Hebrew’, VT 18 (1953): 209–44.

34. John Goldingay and David Payne, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 40 – 55, 2 vols, ICC (New York: T & T Clark International, 2006), vol. 2, 302. For a similar argument, see Westermann, Isaiah 40 – 66, 264.

35. See our discussion of this use of metaphor in Chapter 1.

36. We will discuss the Septuagint’s translation of Isaiah 53 in greater detail in Chapter 3.

37. Gillis Gerleman, Studien zur alttestamentlichen Theologie (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1980), 41–2.

38. Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet, 101.

39. Jan Alberto Soggin, ‘Tod und Auferstehung des leidendes Gottes Knechtes: Jesaja 53, 8–10’, ZAW 85 (1975): 346–55.

40. See, among others, Clines, I, He, We, and They, 28; Harry M. Orlinksky, ‘The So-Called “Servant of the Lord” and “Suffering Servant” in Second Isaiah’, in Harry M. Orlinksky, Studies on the Second Part of the Book of Isaiah, VTSup 14 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967), 62; Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet, 103–4.

41. See Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 76–8.

42. For example, see Mettinger, A Farewell to the Servant Songs, 41. For a review and critique of scholars who hold this position, see Bernd Janowski, ‘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, trans. Daniel P. Bailey (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), 67–70.

43. See the discussion and overview of scholarly opinions in Goldingay and Payne, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 40 – 55, vol. 2, 294–5.

44. In 1 Sam 9:24, the cook (or ‘butcher/slaughterer’ [a noun form of tbh]) gives Saul the thigh portion of the meat. According to Num 18:18, the right thigh of a sacrificed animal was reserved for priests. Nonetheless, although 1 Sam 9:24 may invoke a ritual sacrifice involving priests, it does not reflect any of the sacrifices discussed in the ritual texts of the Pentateuch.

45. Isaiah 34:6 may contain the one exception that proves the rule since the word ‘slaughter’ parallels the phrase ‘sacrifice (zbh) to the LORD’, which suggests a ritual sacrifice (Exod 13:15; 1 Sam 15:15; 1 Kgs 8:63; Jon 1:16). Ritual texts throughout the Pentateuch use the word ‘sacrifice (zbh)’ repeatedly in the context of ritual sacrifices for various offerings, especially peace offerings, performed by priests (Exod 29:28; Lev 3:1; 4:10; 22:21; Num 7:17; 10:10; Deut 27:7).

46. See, Fredrick Haägglund, Isaiah 53 in the Light of Homecoming after Exile, FAT 31 (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2008), 67–73, 98–9, with citations; Bernd Janowski, ‘He Bore Our Sins’, 65–70.

47. Janowski, ‘He Bore Our Sins’, 68–9.

48. The similarities between Isaiah 53 and 1 Samuel 6 do not determine whether the use of ’šm in 53:10 reflects the use of this word in 1 Samuel 6 rather than Leviticus. As we noted earlier, the word translated as ‘plagued’ in Isa 53:4 and 8 in both its noun and verb forms appears sixty-one times in Leviticus 13–14. As in Isa 53:5, the word ‘heal’ (rp’) occurs repeatedly during discussions of the healing of ritual impurities (Lev 13:18, 37; 14:3, 48) and the ’šm required for their accompanying purification (Lev 14:12–31).

49. We will further discuss how some translations and interpretations find references to a healing of the servant in Chapter 3.

50. See Saul M. Olyan, Disability and the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 10–12, 28–9, 84–5.

51. Olyan, Disability and the Hebrew Bible, 85.

52. This promise also appears in a Greek text from a much later period. Wisdom 3:14 declares, ‘Blessed also is the eunuch whose hands have done no lawless deed, and who has not devised wicked things against the Lord; for special favor will be shown him for his faithfulness, and a place of great delight in the temple of the Lord.’

53. Haägglund, Isaiah 53 in the Light of Homecoming after Exile, 100–1.

54. See Jeremy Schipper, ‘Healing and Silence in the Epilogue of Job’, Word and World 30 (2010): 16–22.

55. See the comment in Olyan, Disability and the Hebrew Bible, 9–10, 134 n. 28.

56. For a survey of scholarly proposals regarding the genre of Isaiah 53, see Jan Leunis Koole, Isaiah, Part III, Historical Commentary on the Old Testament (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1997), 260–2.

57. See Hermann Gunkel, Introduction to the Psalms: The Genres of the Religious Lyric of Israel, completed by Joachim Begrich, trans. James D. Nogalski (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1998), 199–221.

58. Gunkel, Introduction to the Psalms, 199 n. 2.

59. Gunkel, Introduction to the Psalms, 202.

60. Gunkel, Introduction to the Psalms, 203.

61. Hermann Gunkel, The Psalms: A Form-Critical Introduction, trans. Thomas M. Horner (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967), 17 (italics added).

62. See the references provided in Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet, 169 n. 106.

63. Joachim Begrich, Studien zu Deuterojesaja (Münch02en: C. Kaiser, 1963), 62–5.

64. Begrich, Studien zu Deuterojesaja, 64.

65. Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 417.

66. Begrich, Studien zu Deuterojesaja, 145–51.

67. Otto Kaiser, Der königliche Knecht; eine traditionsgeschichtlich-exegetische Studie über die Ebed-Jahwe-Lieder bei Deuterojesaja (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959), 88.

68. Recently, several scholars have studied how Second Isaiah, including Isaiah 53, responds to the material in the book of Lamentations. See Tod Linafelt, Surviving Lamentations: Catastrophe, Lament, and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 62–79, with citations; Jill Middlemas, ‘Did Second Isaiah Write Lamentations III’?, VT 56 (2006): 506–25; Benjamin Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40 – 66 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 127–30; Patricia Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things: The Recollection of Previous Texts in Second Isaiah, SBLDS 161 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1997), 209–28.

69. G. R. Driver, ‘Isaiah 52:13–53:12: The Servant of the Lord’, in Matthew Black and Georg Fohrer (eds), In memoriam Paul Kahle, BZAW 103 (Berlin: A. Töpelmann, 1968), 95; Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet, 134–9.

70. Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet, 10–12.

71. Whybray, Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet, 134–9.

72. For example, see the scholars cited by Barré, ‘Textual and Rhetorical-critical Observations on the Last Servant Song’, 17 n. 82.

73. See Westermann, Isaiah 40 – 66, 254, 257.

74. Roy F. Melugin, The Formation of Isaiah 40 – 55, BZAW 141 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1976), 74.

75. Paul D. Hanson, Isaiah 40 – 66, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1995), 153–4.

76. See our discussion of the Hodayot in relation to Isaiah 53 in Chapter 3. In fairness to Gunkel, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered years after his death. Furthermore, we may explain how the use of the Hodayot in the Qumran community differs from Gunkel’s proposal by noting that the Hodayot imitate the genre seen in the biblical texts rather than reflect an example of this genre from ancient Israel.

77. For example, see Muilenburg, ‘Isaiah, Chapters 40–66’, 622; Westermann, Isaiah 40 – 66, 262.

78. For a helpful discussion of this topic with a focus on Victorian literature, see Martha Stoddard Holmes, Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).

CHAPTER 3

1. For example, while the Hebrew in the Masoretic version of v. 11 reads ‘he will see’, the NRSV follows the Greek manuscripts and the Hebrew manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls that both read ‘he will see light’.

2. For example, see Michael L. Barré, S.S., ‘Textual and Rhetorical-critical Observations on the Last Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13–53:12)’, CBQ 62 (2000): 1–27. For a detailed discussion and bibliography, see also John Goldingay and David Payne, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 40 – 55, 2 vols, ICC (New York: T & T Clark International, 2006), vol. 2, 288–336.

3. For the Hebrew text of IQIsa^a as well as a bibliography of scholarship on IQIsa^a, see Donald W. Parry and Elisha Qimron (eds), The Great Isaiah Scroll (1 QIsa^a): A New Edition, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 32 (Leiden: Brill, 1999).

4. Martin Hengel with Daniel P. Bailey, ‘The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in the Pre-Christian Period’, in Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher (eds), The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources, trans. Daniel P. Bailey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 105.

5. In addition to a priestly or prophetic figure, Hengel also observes that Ps 45:7 uses very similar vocabulary and syntax to that of Isa 52:14 when the Psalm describes a king: ‘Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness unlike your companions’. See Hengel, ‘The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in the Pre-Christian Period’, 104–5. Unlike Isa 52:14, this Psalm describes the king’s appearance as exceedingly handsome. Ps 45:2 states, ‘You are the most handsome of mortals (Hebrew: mbny’dm).’ Ps 45:2 and Isa 52:14 are the only verses in the Hebrew Bible that compare a person’s appearance to the rest of humanity with the Hebrew phrase mbny’dm. Yet, Psalm 45 describes a king as having a handsome rather than marred appearance. If the use of ‘anointed’ in IQIsa^a connects the servant with a royal figure like the one in Psalm 45, it further distances the imagery in Isa 52:14 from a description of disability.

6. Dominique Barthélemy, Critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament, 4 vols (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982–2005), vol. 2, 387–90. For critiques of Barthélemy’s argument, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, Opening the Sealed Book: Interpretations of the Book of Isaiah in Late Antiquity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2006), 268.

7. For a more detailed discussion of the influence of Leviticus 21 on non-biblical texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls, see Johanna Dorman, The Blemished Body: Deformity and Disability in the Qumran Scrolls (Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit, 2007), 15–47, 243–5; cf. Saul M. Olyan, Disability in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 101–18.

8. Hengel observes that a priestly anointing would help make sense of the Hebrew rendering of the first line of 52:15 as ‘so shall he sprinkle many nations’ (cf. the Greek translations by Aquila and Theodorion), rather than ‘he will startle many nations’ as we discussed in Chapter 2. See Hengel, ‘The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in the Pre-Christian Period’, 104.

9. For connections between Isa 53:11 and 57:1–2, see Blenkinsopp, Opening the Sealed Book, 258–9.

10. We do not mean to suggest that Zechariah 12 alludes to Isaiah 53 specifically as some scholars have. For example, see Hengel, ‘The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in the Pre-Christian Period’, 85–90. The vocabulary does not overlap much and the violent imagery remains too vague to support a clear connection between the two texts. Instead, we are suggesting that IQIsa^a may interpret the servant according to a general profile for a fatally wounded figure reflected in texts and traditions available by the Second Temple period.

11. For a review of scholarly opinions of this issue, see Blenkinsopp, Opening the Sealed Book, 271 n. 46; John J. Collins, ‘Teacher and Servant’, RHPR 80 (2000): 37–50.

12. The referencing system and translations, with some modifications, for the non-biblical texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls come from Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar (eds), The Dead Sea Scrolls: Study Edition, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1997–8).

13. Blenkinsopp, Opening the Sealed Book, 271. Collins cites allusions to Jer 20:9 in IQH^a XVI 30 to argue that the narrator does not identify himself as the servant in Isaiah any more than he identifies himself as the prophet Jeremiah. Rather, both of these prophetic figures inform the narrator’s self presentation. See Collins, ‘Teacher and Servant’, 47.

14. For a detailed discussion of this hymn, see Esther Eshel, ‘4Q471b: A Self-Glorification Hymn’, RevQ 17 (1996): 175–203.

15. Blenkinsopp, Opening the Sealed Book, 279; Israel Knohl, The Messiah before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls, trans David Maisel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 15–18; cf. 44–5; idem, ‘The Suffering Servant: from Isaiah to the Dead Sea Scrolls’, in Deborah A. Green and Laura S. Lieber (eds), Scriptural Exegesis: The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination: Essays in Honour of Michael Fishbane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 89–104.

16. Blenkinsopp, Opening the Sealed Book, 279.

17. Knohl argues that the line ‘who bears all sorrows like me?’ is a claim that the narrator has ‘the capacity to bear physical suffering’ (The Messiah before Jesus, 17–18; cf. idem, ‘The Suffering Servant’, 97). Yet the Hebrew word translated as ‘sorrows’, which Knohl translates as ‘afflictions’, has too wide a semantic range to argue that it refers specifically to a physical condition.

18. For a detailed discussion of the LXX’s rendering of Isaiah 53, see Karen H. Jobes and Moisés Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2000), 215–27, with citations.

19. Hengel, ‘The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in the Pre-Christian Period’, 125.

20. Jobes and Moisés Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint, 221; cf. their discussion of vv. 8, 10 on pp. 224, 226; cf. David A. Sapp, ‘The LXX. IQIsa, 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: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins (Harrisburg: Trinity, 1998), 180–2.

21. This phrase, which does not appear in the Hebrew versions of Job, may suggest an attempt to make a physical restoration more explicit than in the Hebrew versions. The LXX uses the same term (plege) to translate the Hebrew word for ‘suffering’ in Job 2:13, although we could translate the Greek word plege as ‘affliction’ or ‘ordeal’ as well as ‘plague’ or ‘wound’.

22. For example, see Jobes and Moisés Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint, 226; Ronald L. Troxel, LXX-Isaiah as Translation and Interpretation: The Strategies of the Translator of the Septuagint of Isaiah, JSJSup 124 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 206; cf. Karl Friedrich Euler, who suggests that the Septuagint translates the verb as if it was a form of the Hebrew root zkh meaning ‘clean’ (Die verkündigung vom leidenden Gottesknecht aud Jes 53 in der griechisch03en Bibel [Berlin: W. Kohlhammer, 1934], 79).

23. For a review of scholarly opinions, see Jostein Ådna, ‘The Servant of Isaiah 53 as Triumphant and Interceding Messiah: The Reception of Isaiah 52:13–53:12 in the Targum of Isaiah with Special Attention to the Concept of Messiah’, in Janowski and Stuhlmacher (eds), The Suffering Servant, 190–4.

24. Ådna, ‘The Servant of Isaiah 53 as Triumphant and Interceding Messiah’, 190–1; cf. Bruce D. Chilton, The Isaiah Targum: Introduction, Translation, Apparatus and Notes, ArBib 11 (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1987), 105.

25. All translations of the Targum of Isaiah come from Chilton, The Isaiah Targum, 103–5 (italics removed).

26. Blenkinsopp, Opening the Sealed Book, 267.

27. See Harold L. Ginsberg, ‘The Oldest Interpretation of the Suffering Servant’, VT 3 (1953): 400–4.

28. See the discussion of several of these passages in Walther Zimmerli and Joachim Jeremias, The Servant of God, SBT 20, trans. Harold Knight (London: SCM Press, 1957), 50–60, 79–104; Hans Walter Wolff, Jesaja 53 im Urchristentum, with an introduction by Peter Stuhlmacher (Giessen: Brunnen Verlag, 1984). Wolff argues that the early church understood Jesus’ death as fulfilling Isaiah 53 (pp. 86–103). By contrast, Morna D. Hooker argues that Isaiah 53 does not play a significant role in how the gospels understood the meaning of Jesus’ death. See Morna D. Hooker, Jesus and the Servant: The Influence of the Servant Concept of Deutero-Isaiah in the New Testament (London: SPCK, 1959); idem, ‘Did the Use of Isaiah 53 to Interpret His Mission Begin with Jesus?’, in Bellinger and Farmer (eds), Jesus and the Suffering Servant, 88–103; idem, ‘Response to Mikeal Parsons’, in Bellinger and Farmer (eds), Jesus and the Suffering Servant, 120–4.

29. Some scholars distinguish between ‘allusion’ and ‘intertextuality’. Allusion refers to an intentional reference to an earlier text, person, or event by the author(s) or editor(s) of a later text. Intertextuality refers to a connection between two or more texts, persons, or events that an interpreter makes regardless of authorial or editorial intention. For more detailed discussions, see G. Brooke Lester, ‘Daniel Evokes Isaiah: The Rule of the Nations in Apocalyptic Allusion-Narrative’ (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 2007), 5–27; Benjamin Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40 – 66 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 6–31. For example, following the model of the Protestant reformer John Calvin, John D. W. Watts cites numerous New Testament passages that may connect with Isaiah 53 even though many of these texts do not allude to our passage as clearly as others. See John D. W. Watts, Isaiah 34 – 66, rev. edn, WBC 25 (Nashville: Nelson Reference & Electronic, 2005), 792–4. Other scholars make connections between the servant in Isaiah 53 and other biblical characters but state clearly that the biblical authors or editors may not have intended such connections. For example, see David M. Gunn, ‘Samson of Sorrows: An Isaianic Gloss on Judges 13–16’, in Danna Nolan Fewell (ed.), Reading between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 225–53.

30. For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Maarten J. J. Menten, ‘The Source of the Quotation of Isaiah 53:4 in Matthew 8:17’, NovT 39 (1997): 313–27, with citations.

31. Menten observes, ‘while the servant of Isaiah 53 is himself plagued by illness, the Matthean Jesus is not, but he removes the diseases others are suffering from’. He goes on to critique unconvincing attempts by scholars to resolve this difference between Matthew and Isaiah. See Menten, ‘The Source of the Quotation of Isaiah 53:4 in Matthew 8:17’, 324.

32. Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8 – 20 : A Commentary, 3 vols, Hermeneia, trans. James E. Crouch (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), vol. 2, 14.

33. Although John attributes this quotation to the prophet Isaiah, it is unclear whether the quotation comes from the book of Isaiah or another early Christian source since variations of this quotation also appear in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

34. Mark 15:28 seems to have been added to Mark under the influence of Luke 22:37. Mark 15:28 follows the Greek wording of Luke 22:37’s citation of Isa 53:12 rather than the LXX’s translation of Isa 53:12. The absence of 15:28 in Sinaiticus and its agreement with Luke over the LXX suggests that it is a secondary addition to Mark. For further discussion of the manuscript evidence for Mark 15:28, see Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 730, n. c.

35. The New Testament describes Jesus’ post resurrection body as physically scarred. Citing Luke 24:36–9 (cf. John 20:19–28), Nancy L. Eiesland writes, ‘In changing the symbol of Christ, from that of suffering servant, model of virtuous suffering, or conquering lord, toward a formulation of Jesus Christ as disabled God, I draw implications for the ritual and doctrine of the Eucharist based on this new symbol…. In presenting his impaired hands and feet to his startled friends, the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God.’ See Nancy L. Eiesland, The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 94, 100. Eiesland focuses on Jesus’ body as a sacramental symbol. Correctly, she does not claim that, through his crucifixion wounds, he acquires a disability in terms of a social experience.

36. For a discussion of several of these texts, see Blenkinsopp, Opening the Sealed Book, 46–55, with citations.

37. Mikeal C. Parsons argues that the eunuch may have identified with the servant in Isa 53:7–8 because they shared similar social experiences of oppression related to their physical impairments. Both characters would have been considered polluted. See Mikael C. Parsons, ‘Isaiah 53 in Acts 8: A Reply to Morna Hooker’, in Bellinger and Farmer (eds), Jesus and the Suffering Servant, 111–15; idem, Body and Character in Luke and Acts: The Subversion of Physiognomy in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 138–40.

38. For a detailed treatment of 1 Clem 16:3–14 in relationship to the LXX’s translation of Isa 53:1–12, see Daniel P. Bailey, ‘Appendix: Isaiah 53 in Codex A Text of 1 Clement 16:3–14’, in Janowski and Stuhlmacher (eds), The Suffering Servant, 321–3.

39. Wolff argues that 1 Clement does not quote the servant’s exaltation in Isa 52:13–15 in order to keep the focus on humility (Wolff, Jesaja 53 im Urchristentum, 108).

40. J. Ross Wagner, Heralds of the Good News: Isaiah and Paul in Concert, NovTSup 101 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 333–4. Wagner’s book provides detailed studies of the quotations of Isaiah 53 in Romans.

41. Jorge Pixley, ‘Isaiah 52:13–53:12: A Latin American Perspective’, in John R. Levison and Priscilla Pope-Levison (eds), Return to Babel: Global Perspectives on the Bible (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999), 93–100.

42. François Kabasele Lumbala, ‘Isaiah 52:13–53:12: An African Perspective’, in Return to Babel, 101–6; Cyris Heesuk Moon, ‘Isaiah 52:13–53:12:AnAsian Perspective’, in Levinson and Pope-Levison, Return to Babel, 107–13.

43. Lumbala, ‘Isaiah 52:13–53:12: An African Perspective’, 101.

CHAPTER 4

1. Christopher R. North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah: A Historical and Critical Study, 2nd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1956).

2. Kristin Joachimsen, ‘Steck’s Five Stories of the Servant in Isaiah 111 13-1111 12, and Beyond’, VT 57 (2007): 220.

3. See Walther Zimmerli and Joachim Jeremias, The Servant of God, SBT 20, trans. Harold Knight (London: SCM Press, 1957), 62–4, with citations.

4. John F. A. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 91.

5. We also find the Talmudic image of a ‘leper messiah’ in popular music, although without any obvious reference to Isaiah 53 or a figure with disabilities. In David Bowie’s classic song, ‘Ziggy Stardust’ the ‘leper messiah’ reference describes the hollowness of celebrity rock stardom rather than a person with disability (David Bowie. ‘Ziggy Stardust’, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, RCA Records, 1972). The band Metallica’s song titled ‘Leper Messiah’ describes a corrupt but presumably able-bodied televangelist (Metallica, ‘Leper Messiah’, Master of Puppets, Elektra Records, 1986).

6. Martha Himmelfarb, ‘Sefer Zerubbabel’, in David Stern and Mark J. Mirsky (eds), Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 72. Himmelfarb provides an introduction and translation of Sefer Zerubbabel.

7. For a detailed discussion of Ashkenazi as well as modern scholars who connect the servant with Job, see Alan Cooper, ‘The Suffering Servant and Job: A View from the Sixteenth Century’, in Clairia Mathews McGillis and Patricia K. Tull (eds), ‘As Those Who are Taught’: The Reception of Isaiah from the LXX to the SBL, SBLSymS 27 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 189–200.

8. On Bahrdt’s, Konyenburg’s, and Augusti’s interpretations, see North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, 39–41.

9. Samuel R. Driver and Adolf Neubauer, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah according to the Jewish Interpreters (Oxford and London: James Parker and Company, 1877), 409.

10. For example, in addition to Ya’qob Yoseph Mord’khai Hayyim Passani, see also the interpretation of the servant in relation to Hezekiah by Sa’adyah Ibn Danân (fifteenth century CE) in Driver and Neubauer, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah, 202–16.

11. Karl Budde, ‘The So-Called “Ebed-Yahweh Songs”, and the Meaning of the Term “Servant of Yahweh” in Isaiah, Chaps. 40–55’, AJT 3 (1899): 503.

12. See Richard Kraetzschmar, Das Buch Ezechiel übersetzt und erklaärt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1900), 46.

13. Walther Zimmerli, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte von Jes 53’, in Studien zur alttestamentlich04en Theologie und Prophetie (München: Kaiser, 1974), 213–21; cf. Fredrick Haägglund, Isaiah 53 in the Light of Homecoming after Exile, FAT 31 (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2008), 89–90; Henning Graf Reventlow, ‘Basic Issues in the Interpretation of Isaiah 53’, in William H. Bellinger and William R. Farmer (eds), Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins (Harrisburg: Trinity, 1998), 36–7.

14. Lauri Itkonen, Deuterojesaja (Jes. 40 – 55) metrisch untersucht (Helsinki: Finnisch04en Literatur-Gesellschaft, 1916), 81–2.

15. John Skinner, The Book of the Prophet Isaiah: Chapters XL–LXVI, CBC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 139–41.

16. John F. A. Sawyer, Prophecy and the Biblical Prophets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 92–5.

17. Michael L. Barré, S.S., ‘Textual and Rhetorical-critical Observations on the Last Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13–53:12)’, CBQ 62 (2000): 19.

18. Ernst Sellin, Mose und seine Bedeutung für die israelitisch-jüdische Religionsgeschichte (Leipzig: Deichert, 1922), 134–5.

19. Klaus Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah: A Commentary on Isaiah 40 – 55, Hermeneia, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 407.

20. On these sources, see Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 29–44, with citations.

21. Beverly J. Stratton, ‘Engaging Metaphors: Suffering with Zion and the Servant in Isaiah 52–53’, in Stephen E. Fowl (ed.), The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997), 228–9.

22. Stratton, ‘Engaging Metaphors’, 228.

23. Stratton, ‘Engaging Metaphors’, 228. Nevertheless, Isa 53:10 presents problems for identifying the servant as a eunuch since it states ‘he shall see his offspring’. The reference to the servant’s children seems odd unless we imagine him having children before becoming a eunuch. Such speculation, however, creates a back story for the servant that goes far beyond what Isaiah 53 states.

24. For detailed discussions of Justin’s use of Isaiah 53, see D. Jeffrey Bingham, ‘Justin and Isaiah 53’, VC 53 (2000): 248–61. Daniel P. Bailey, ‘“Our Suffering and Crucified Messiah” (Dial. 111.2): Justin Martyr’s Allusions to Isaiah 53 in His Dialogue with Trypho with Special Reference to the New Edition of M. Marcovich’, in Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher (eds), The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish And Christian Sources, trans. Daniel P. Bailey (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), 324–417. The following discussion of Justin, Origen, and Aphrahat relies heavily on Christoph Markschies, ‘Jesus Christ as a Man before God: Two Interpretative Models for Isaiah 53 in the Patristic Literature and Their Development’, in Janowski and Stuhlmacher (eds), The Suffering Servant, 225–323.

25. See Markschies, ‘Jesus Christ as a Man before God’, 265–6.

26. Modern biblical scholars use this type of argument to support the identification of the servant as an individual rather than a collective reference. For example, see the discussion of Isa 40:2b; 43:23b; 53:9b in Hans Walter Wolff, ‘Wer ist der Gottesknecht in Jesaja 53?’ EvT 22 (1962): 340–1.

27. See Markschies, ‘Jesus Christ as a Man before God’, 288–9.

28. See Markschies, ‘Jesus Christ as a Man before God’, 269–70.

29. For a concise review of this period, see North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, 26–7.

30. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel, 83.

31. For a helpful overview of these and other Christian interpreters’ use of Isaiah, including chapter 53, see Brevard S. Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2004); Mark W. Elliot (ed.), Isaiah 40 – 66, ACCS 11 (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2007), 154–73; Robert Louis Wilken (ed.), Isaiah: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators, The Church’s Bible (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2007), 416–30.

32. See James H. Marrow, Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: A Study of the Transformation of Sacred Metaphor into Descriptive Narrative (Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert, 1979), 54–7; cf. Martin O’Kane, ‘Picturing “The Man of Sorrows”: The Passion-Filled Afterlives of a Biblical Icon’, RelArts 9 (2005): 62–100.

33. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel, 83. Sawyer provides an overview of artistic uses of Isaiah 53 from the twelfth century onward (pp. 83–99).

34. Cooper, ‘The Suffering Servant and Job’, 198.

35. For several of these Jewish messianic interpretations, see Driver and Neubauer, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah. For a more concise summary, see North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, 11–17.

36. For a detailed discussion, see Jeremy Schipper, Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible: Figuring Mephibosheth in the David Story LHBOTS 441 (New York: T & T Clark, 2006), 79–87.

37. Ernst Sellin, Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der juĴdischen Gemeinde nach dem babylonisch04en Exil. I. Der Knecht Gottes bei Deuterojesaja (Leipzig: Deichert, 1901).

38. Michael D. Goulder, ‘Behold my servant Jehoiachin’, VT 52 (2002): 178–9, 181.

39. For example, see Johannes Lindblom, The Servant Songs in Deutero-Isaiah: A New Attempt to Solve an Old Problem (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1951), 75–93; cf. Antti Laato, The Servant of YHWH and Cyrus: A Reinterpretation of the Exilic Messianic Programme of Isaiah 40 – 55, Con-BOT 35 (Stockholm: Almqyist & Wiksell, 1992). For earlier scholars who identify the servant as Cyrus, see North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, 57.

40. See North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, 42, 49–50, 89–90. More recently, see John D. W. Watts, Isaiah 34 – 66, rev. edn, WBC 25 (Nashville: Nelson Reference & Electronic, 2005), 757–61 with citations.

41. See Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 7 vols, trans. Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), vol. 4, 160; vol. 6, 297 n. 71; cf. Lynn Holden, Forms of Deformity, JSOTSup 131 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 279.

42. Driver and Neubauer, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah, 192 (italics removed).

43. Wolfgang M. W. Roth, ‘The Anonymity of the Suffering Servant’, JBL 83 (1964): 179 (emphasis original).

44. See Driver and Neubauer, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah, 153, 287–8.

45. For example, see Ronald E. Clements, ‘Isaiah 53 and the Restoration of Israel’, in Bellinger and Farmer, Jesus and the Suffering Servant, 47–54.

46. Although Sellin abandoned this theory, it influenced Sigmund Freud’s work. See Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, trans. Katherine Jones (New York: Vintage, 1939), 42–4.

47. Baltzer, Deutero-Isaiah, 20–21;; cf. idem, ‘The Book of Isaiah’, HTR 103 (2010): 267-8.

48. C. Chavesse, ‘The Suffering Servant and Moses’, CQR 165 (1964): 152–63.

49. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, vol. 2: The Theology of Israel’s Prophetic Traditions, trans. D. M. G. Stalker (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1965), 257.

50. See this chapter’s epigram, which comes from von Rad, Old Testament Theology, vol. 2, 258.

51. von Rad, Old Testament Theology, vol. 2, 259.

52. Christopher R. Seitz, ‘The Book of Isaiah 40–66: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections’, NIB 6: 464.

53. Gordon P. Hugenberger, ‘The Servant of the Lord in the “Servant Songs” of Isaiah: A Second Moses Figure’, in Richard Hess, Philip E. Satterthwaite, and Gordon Wenham (eds), The Lord’s Anointed: Interpretation of Old Testament Messianic Texts (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 129–38.

54. On allusions to Jeremiah in Isaiah 53, see Benjamin Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40 – 66 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 64–6, 93–6.

55. Bernhard Duhm, Die Theologie der Propheten als Grundlage für die innere Entwicklungsgeschichte der israelitisch04en Religion (Bonn: Marcus, 1875), 287–92.

56. See the references provided in Patricia Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things: The Recollection of Previous Texts in Second Isaiah, SBLDS 161 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1997), 193 n. 16.

57. Driver and Neubauer, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah, 153–4.

58. On Grotius, Collins, and Bunsen, see North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, 26–7, 41.

59. Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 414.

60. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, 417.

61. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, 414, 417. Beyond Childs, we find many other scholars who apply this imagery to subjects far beyond people with disabilities. For example, rather than an individual or group, James M. Ward writes that the servant ‘is an office that anyone can fill’. See James M. Ward, ‘The Servant Songs in Isaiah’, RevExp 65 (1968): 141.

62. The phrase ‘under the weight of your hand’ (or ‘from before your hand’) in Jer 15:17 may imply a divinely induced physical condition as the phrase ‘hand of the LORD’ sometimes does (Exod 9:3; 1 Sam 5:6, 9). See J. J. M. Roberts, ‘Hand of Yahweh’, VT 21 (1971), 2 vols; Paris: Académie internationale d’histoire des sciences, 1951,(1971): 244–51. Yet this interpretation of Jer 15:17 appears unlikely because of the surrounding context of the verse.

63. Childs, Isaiah, 414.

64. There may have been female prophets within the Isaianic tradition (cf. Isa 8:3).

65. See North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, 75.

66. Sigmund Mowinckel, Der Knecht Jahwaäs (Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1921).

67. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40 – 55 : A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 19A (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 356.

68. Budde, ‘The So-Called “Ebed-Yahweh Songs,” and the Meaning of the Term “Servant of Yahweh” in Isaiah, Chaps. 40–55’.

69. For a concise review, see North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, 17–20, 28–31, 57–62, 103–19.

70. Driver and Neubauer, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah, 49.

71. Harry M. Orlinksky, ‘The So-Called “Servant of the Lord” and “Suffering Servant” in Second Isaiah’, in Studies on the Second Part of the Book of Isaiah, VTSup 14 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967), 18.

72. See Jill Middlemas, ‘Did Second Isaiah Write Lamentations III?’, VT 56 (2006): 523, with citations.

73. Fredrick Haägglund, Isaiah 53 in the Light of Homecoming after Exile, 53–4.

74. I would like to thank Hector Avalos for bringing Amos 9:5 to my attention.

75. Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, A Farewell to the Servant Songs: A Critical Examination of an Exegetical Axiom, trans. Frederick H. Cryer (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1983), 40.

76. Mettinger, A Farewell to the Servant Songs, 41.

77. Mettinger, A Farewell to the Servant Songs, 40.

78. Mettinger’s primary example of suffering in this passage is 51:7, which reads, ‘Listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people who have my teaching in your hearts; do not fear the reproach of others, and do not be dismayed when they revile you.’ See Mettinger, A Farewell to the Servant Songs, 40. While a related form of the Hebrew word ‘righteous’ appears in Isa 53:11, the language of suffering in this verse (‘reproach’ and ‘revile’) describes cities and peoples elsewhere in Second Isaiah (cf. Isa 43:28; 47:3; 54:4), but has nothing to do with any vocabulary or disability imagery in Isaiah 53.

79. Barré, ‘Textual and Rhetorical-critical Observations on the Last Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13–53:12)’, 13.

80. Haägglund, Isaiah 53 in the Light of Homecoming after Exile, 27; Mettinger, A Farewell to the Servant Songs, 41–2; cf. Zoltán Kustár, ‘Durch seine Wunden sind wir geheilt’: eine Untersuchung zur Metaphorik von Israels Krankheit und Heilung im Jesajabuch, BWANT 154 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2002), 180.

81. For a helpful discussion of the use of disability imagery in these prophetic texts, see Saul M. Olyan, Disability in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 78–92.

82. Rebecca Raphael, Biblical Corpora: Representations of Disability in Hebrew Biblical Literature, LHBOTS 445 (New York: T & T Clark, 2008), 129, 130.

83. I would like to thank Hector Avalos for bringing the ‘Uncle Sam’ example to my attention.

84. Leland Edward Wilshire, ‘The Servant-City: A New Interpretation of the “Servant of the Lord” in the Servant Songs of Deutero-Isaiah’, JBL 94 (1975): 358.

85. Christopher R. Seitz, Zion’s Final Destiny: The Development of the Book of Isaiah (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 203–4.

86. Wilshire, ‘The Servant-City’, 359. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp argues that Isaiah 54 reflects an Israelite ‘city-lament’. He compares this Israelite lament genre to examples of Mesopotamian ‘city-laments’, including the ‘Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur’. For his specific comparison between Isaiah 54 and the Mesopotamian ‘Nipper Lament’, see F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Weep, O daughter of Zion: A Study of the City-Lament Genre in the Hebrew Bible (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1993), 150–1.

87. Wilshire, ‘The Servant-City’, 365.

88. Wilshire, ‘The Servant-City’, 366.

89. Seitz, Zion’s Final Destiny, 204.

CONCLUSION

1. David J. A. Clines, I, He, We, and They: A Literary Approach to Isaiah 53, JSOTSup 1 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1976), 25.

2. Clines, I, He, We, and They, 60, 62.

3. See Robert McRuer, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 2–3, 6–10, 28–32.

4. For a detailed study of the literary relationship of First and Second Isaiah as well as an argument that Second Isaiah edited an edition of First Isaiah for inclusion with Isaiah 40–55, see Hugh G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

5. See Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1985), 137; William M. Schniedewind, Society and the Promise to David: The Reception History of 2 Samuel 7:1 – 17 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 115–16. For a detailed study of the ‘democratization’ of the Zion or Davidic theology, see Timo Veijola, Verheissung in der Krise: Studien zur Literatur und Theologie der Exilszeit anhand des 89 . Psalms (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1982), 133–75.

6. On Zion theology, see the discussions and citations in Levenson, Sinai and Zion, 89–176; Benjamin Ollenburger, Zion: The City of the Great King, JSOTSup 41 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987); Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Dethronement of Sabaoth: Studies in the Shem and Kabod Theologies (Uppsala: Gleerup, 1982); J. J. M. Roberts, ‘The Davidic Origin of the Zion Tradition’, JBL 92 (1973): 329–44; idem, ‘Zion in the Theology of the Davidic-Solomonic Empire’, in Tomoo Ishida (ed.), Studies in the Period of David and Solomon (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1982), 93–108; idem, ‘The Enthronement of Yhwh and David: The Abiding Theological Significance of Kingship Language of the Psalms’, CBQ 64 (2002): 675–86. The LORD’s protection of the Davidic dynasty and Jerusalem has parallels in the imperial ideologies of the god Marduk, the king Hammurabi, and the city Babylon as well as the deity Inanna, the king Sargon and the city Akkad. See J. J. M. Roberts, ‘Solomon’s Jerusalem and the Zion Tradition’, in Andrew Vaughn and Ann Killebrew (eds), Jerusalem in Bible and Archeology: The First Temple Period, SBLSynS 18 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 163–70. Some scholars date this Zion theology as late as the fifth or fourth century bce. For example, see Gunter Wanke, Die Ziontheologie der Korachiten in ihrem Zusammenhang, BZAW 97 (Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1966). Yet the parallels with Babylonian and Assyrian material as well as the evidence and critiques provided in the literature above call this dating into question. It seems reasonable to date the origins of Zion theology to the pre-exilic period.

7. Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, A Farewell to the Servant Songs: A Critical Examination of an Exegetical Axiom, trans. Frederick H. Cryer (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1983), 44. Cf. Hugh G. M. Williamson, Variations on a Theme: King, Messiah and Servant in the Book of Isaiah (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 166.

8. Benjamin Sommer, A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40 – 66

9. For example, see Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: ACommentary, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 200i), 422-3; Stephen L. Cook, Conversations with Scripture: 2 Isaiah (Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 2008), 69-71, 93-101; Christopher R. Seitz, ‘The Book of Isaiah 40-66: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections’, NIB 6.468-70; Williamson, Variations on a Theme, 113-66.