The Identity of the Servant in the Servant Songs: A Case for Universal Salvation

By the time of the writing of second Isaiah, the Hebrew people had been living in exile in Babylon over a generation. The promise of a Davidic kingdom that “shall be made sure forever before me” (2 Samuel 16), had been shattered. While first Isaiah blames this failure on the sins of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, second Isaiah offers a kinder perspective: you will suffer, but through suffering there will be salvation and a return to the land that was promised first in Exodus, and then reaffirmed when David ascended to the throne. Yet it is unclear who the individual that is supposed to be suffering is. Is it the people of Israel? A specific individual such as Cyrus the Great, or Isaiah himself? Is this section prophesying the eventual coming of Jesus Christ? Or is the servant a stand-in for the reader? The multiple plausible identities of the servant suggest that this fact is deliberately left unclear so as to make the message of salvation through suffering universal, rather than specific to the return of the Hebrews from Exile.

One of the more common interpretations is that the servant refers to the entirety of the Hebrew people. Before the canonical start of the servant songs in chapter 42, Isaiah states: “you, Israel my servant,\ Jacob, whom I have chosen,\ the offspring of Abraham, my friend;\ you whom I took from the ends of the earth,\ and called from its farthest corners,\ saying to you ‘You are my servant,\ I have chosen you and not cast you off’”(Isaiah 42:8–9)…