In the last article on Isaiah’s Servant Songs, we examined Isaiah 42 and the Servant of YHWH who is chosen and called to bring light to the nations. In this installment, we will examine Isaiah 49:1-7 which further develops this prophecy of the LORD’s Servant.
Listen to me, O coastlands,
Isaiah 49:1, ESV
and give attention, you peoples from afar.
The Lord called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name.
The speaker in verse 1 is the Servant of YHWH as we know from verse 3. He addresses the “coastlands” and the “peoples from afar”. In the prophecy of Isaiah, the word “coastlands” (sometimes translated “islands”) is used to refer to Gentile nations bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Specifically, some examples include Tyre (cf. Jer. 25:22), Cyprus (cf. Jer. 2:10), Sidon (Isa. 23:2), and Tarshish (Isa. 23:6). They are said to “wait expectantly” for the law of the Servant according to Isaiah 42:4.
Furthermore, the parallelism in verse 1 points to the coastlands and the “peoples from afar” as synonymous. The Servant is calling to all the earth, to all the far-flung Gentile nations. He calls them to listen attentively to Him. He backs up this call by revealing His own personal calling from God: He has been called by God from the womb.
God has “named” the Servant from His mother’s womb. This idea of naming is not just in reference to the actual name of a person. It speaks of God creating the Servant’s being and character. Names in the Bible are not just convenient ways of referring to people. They communicate something about the person or being.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword;
Isaiah 49:2, ESV
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow;
in his quiver he hid me away.
The Servant goes on to talk about God’s appointment of Him and the characteristics that God has bestowed on Him. His mouth is like a sharp sword. This is imagery that we find throughout Scripture. It is directly attributed to Jesus Christ in Revelation 1:16, 2:12, 2:16, and 19:15. In Revelation 19:15, the sword in Christ’s mouth is said to be used to “rule the nations”. This passage in Revelation also alludes to Psalm 2, where YHWH’s Anointed King is set on Mount Zion and receives the obedience of the nations, conquering them in their rebellion. Revelation seems to connect the idea of Christ ruling the nations from Psalm 2 and the Servant’s mouth being as a sword in Isaiah 49. Thus, in Revelation, the Servant and the King are equated in the person of Christ Jesus.
That Jesus is both Servant and King may be obvious to us with the luxury of redemptive-historical hindsight, the ability to look back at the Old Testament with the light and illumination of Christ’s first advent. But this exaltation of the Servant is present in Isaiah’s prophecy itself as we will see.
Furthermore, in verse 2, we see that God has appointed His Servant for a task and is waiting until the right time to send Him. The imagery of the Servant concealed in the shadow and as an arrow hidden in the quiver alludes to the commissioning of the Servant and His keeping until the appointed time. He is not being hid from danger, for arrows are meant to be shot. But He is hidden as an arrow in the quiver, waiting for the day when He will be sent out on His divine mission.
In the same way, Jesus was sent by God at exactly the right time. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (Galatians 4:4-5)
True Israel
And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Isaiah 49:3, ESV
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
Here we are told plainly that the speaker in the previous two verses is YHWH’s Servant. We are also told that this Servant is Israel. How are to understand this if we understand the Servant to be Christ Jesus?
First, the Servant of YHWH is Israel in one sense certainly. Israel was indeed chosen from among the nations, in its ethnic and spiritual father Abram. God promised to mediate blessings to the nations through Israel and thereby glorify Himself (Gen. 12:1-3). This is picked up in Isaiah. God will be glorified in His Servant Israel (Isa. 49:3). The Servant will be a light to the Gentiles (42:6). Just as Abram was chosen from among the nations and Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel, was chosen from his mother’s womb (Rom. 9:11-13, cf. Mal. 1:2), so also the Servant Israel has been chosen and called from the womb (49:1, 42:1).
Furthermore, Christ is the True Israel. Here we must back up to understand the flow of the Biblical narrative. God created Man (Adam) and placed him in the garden of Eden to “keep it and guard it”. These were priestly activities. Not only was Adam a priest in God’s holy presence but he was also a king, given dominion over the earth and all it contained. G.K. Beale argues this thesis convincingly in The Temple and the Church’s Mission. Beale further proposes that the Bible teaches that Adam was expected to expand Eden to the ends of the earth but that this project was disrupted by the Fall.
Israel, nationally, is then commissioned as a sort of “corporate” or national Adam. God reveals His special dwelling presence in the form of the Tabernacle and commissions Israel as a “kingdom of priests” (Exod. 19:6). This spiritual kingdom essence of national Israel is set forth in Psalm 114:1-2: “When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah became his sanctuary, Israel his dominion.” In Psalm 114:2, the word translated “dominion” refers to a “domain” or a geographic area under a certain ruler’s authority. The word translated “sanctuary” is the same used to refer to the Holy of Holies throughout the Old Testament. Therefore, we can discern from Psalm 114 that, upon the exodus and the creation of Israel as a nation, they became YHWH’s domain in a special and spiritual way. They indeed were a priestly kingdom. Of course, the kings were to come from the tribe of Judah and the priests from the tribe of Levi but the entire nation was to take on this priestly-kingdom identity.
And as we have already seen above, the nation of Israel was to mediate God’s blessing and glory to the nations, a distinctly priestly act. And so we see the Biblical narrative presenting us with Israel as the “next Adam”, the next entity used by God to mediate His blessing and rule to the ends of the earth.
So when we say that Christ is the “True Israel”, we are saying that He is the true fulfillment of which Israel was only a type and shadow. The nation of Israel, like Adam, failed in its divine commission. Christ, the king-priest of Psalm 110, fulfills His commission perfectly.
We should be clear that typology is not the same as allegory. Allegory uses symbols and fiction to present deeper truths. For example, the Chronicles of Narnia is an allegory where fictional characters like Aslan and the White Witch represent people or ideas or religious truths. This is not what we mean by saying that Israel was a “type” of Christ. Typology is what Jim Hamilton calls a “promise-shaped pattern”. A type is a real “literal” person, place, event, or thing in the Biblical text that points ahead to a greater reality. Therefore, the nation of Israel in the Old Testament was not “allegorical” but it was “typical”. It was a type of Christ. It was a lesser reality pointing to the greater reality of Jesus.
Jesus Christ is presented in the New Testament as the substance of what the shadow of Israel pointed to in the Old Testament. As we have already seen, the language of the Servant in Isaiah, which is designated as Israel in 49:3, is applied to Christ in Matthew 12:18-21. The description of the Servant in 49:2 is applied to Christ in the book of Revelation in numerous places. Another text referring imminently to Israel and applied to Christ is Hosea 11:1 which is applied to Christ in Matthew 2:15:
And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Matthew 2:14-15, ESV
Commenting on this passage, G.K. Beale writes, “Matthew portrays Jesus in Matthew 2:15 and its context to be typologically recapitulating the history of Israel because he sums up Israel in himself.”¹
The Suffering Servant’s Trust
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
Isaiah 49:4, ESV
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the Lord,
and my recompense with my God.”
Here the Servant faces discouragement while maintaining trust that His reward is with YHWH. Another Biblical example of this can be found in Psalm 22. The psalm starts out with a cry of abandonment, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus Christ cried out these words on the cross in the darkest moment of human history, when God forsook His own Son and Christ Jesus bore the wrath that our sins deserved.
But as Isaiah 49:4 reminds us, as does Psalm 22, the Servant of YHWH has a reward and His mission will be completed in victory. The Servant declares that His “right is with the Lord” and that His “recompense with my God”. Similarly, in Psalm 22:22 there is a transition that takes place from lament and petition to praise. The psalm concludes with the promise of all the nations of the earth praising the Lord (Ps. 22:27). The author of Hebrews writes that Jesus, “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2). Even in Christ’s affliction He entrusted Himself to His Father who would glorify Him for His obedience.
The Servant’s Task
And now the Lord says,
Isaiah 49:5-6, ESV
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
he says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
The Servant is speaking, proclaiming the word of God. He reinforces His calling from the womb and restates the purpose of His calling: the return of Israel to YHWH (v. 5). This calling is a sign of honor and will be accomplished by the strength of YHWH. The regathering of Israel to God will be the task of the Servant, accomplished in the power of God’s Spirit, and for the glory of God.
And yet, the Servant continues. Like in Isaiah 42, the call of the Servant now expands globally to all nations. He will not just regather Israel’s tribes to YHWH, He will be a light to the nations, bringing salvation to all peoples, even to the ends of the earth. This statement recalls Isaiah 42:6 and anticipates Isaiah 51:4, which both promise that God’s light will reach all peoples and nations. We see this gloriously fulfilled in the New Testament in several places.
In Acts 26, Paul is before King Agrippa and he declares the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy in the resurrection of Christ:
To this day I have had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass: that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.”
Acts 26:22-23, ESV
What is striking is that this prophecy is not just fulfilled in Christ, but in His Church! Jesus tells His disciples that they are the “light of the world” (Matt. 5:14). Furthermore, Paul and Barnabas bring the gospel to the Gentiles in Pisidian Antioch and view their ministry to the Gentiles as a fulfillment of Isaiah 49:6!
And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,
“‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’”And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.
Acts 13:46-48, ESV
In union with Christ, we have been called to spread the light of the gospel among the nations!
The Servant’s Triumph
Thus says the Lord,
Isaiah 49:7, ESV
the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation,
the servant of rulers:
“Kings shall see and arise;
princes, and they shall prostrate themselves;
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
The conclusion of this Servant Song in Isaiah 49 is one of victory. Now God addresses the Servant and promises justice, vindication, and exaltation. The Servant is also promised to experience abhorrence by the nation (singular). Despite the rejection the Servant will receive from Israel, God’s faithfulness to His elect Servant will culminate in the Servant being given homage and submission from kings and rulers. This is exactly what we see happening in Psalm 2:7-9, Psalm 45:5, and Psalm 110:1.
Jesus Christ, the ultimate fulfillment of these prophecies from Isaiah, did indeed complete His task. He cried, “it is finished” on the cross and declared His authority over all creation (Matt. 28:18). Furthermore, the book of Revelation presents the glorious fulfillment of Christ’s task to be a light to the nations:
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Revelation 7:9-10, ESV
Christ is the exalted Servant who has brought light to those walking in darkness and receives the undying glory of eternity!
Footnotes
¹ G.K. Beale, Union with the Resurrected Christ, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023), p. 108.