Songs of the Servant

"He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." As part of the last of four great poems known as the "Servant Songs," these familiar words were first uttered by a lonely prophet to Jewish exiles in mighty Babylon: to folk who were convinced that their tiny, storm-tossed nation had been forgotten by its God. To them Isaiah brings a message of hope, telling of a mysterious "Servant of the Lord" who suffers beyond human endurance for sins which he did not commit, yet who lives again to witness the deliverance of those for whom he died.
What were these people to make of this strange figure? Who was Isaiah speaking about? And, centuries later, who gave the New Testament writers the idea that these prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus Christ?
Henri Blocher is Knoedler Professor of Systematic Theology at Wheaton College, Illinois, and Professor of Systematic Theology at the Faculte Libre de Theologie Evangelique in Vaux-sur-Seine, France. His other books include In the Beginning, Songs of the Servant and Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle.