Jewish / Judaism : The Suffering Servant According to Isaiah, part 7

Various Rabbis and Jewish Scholars (continued):
Jewish Scholars Claude Joseph Goldsmith Montefiore and Herbert Martin James Loewe,

“The idea of Zekut [merit] received support from the doctrine of the Suffering Servant. When that doctrine was given a Christological interpretation in the Church, the reaction in the Synagogue was strange. It made the doctrine of Zekut far stronger than before, but it transferred it to the Patriarchs and heroes. A good example is furnished by the theme of the 'Akedah (binding of Isaac).

The original lesson which the story of Gen. XXII conveyed was that human sacrifices were detested by God. When the era of human sacrifices had long passed, the story lost much of its topical interest: it became a piece of antiquarianism. The stress laid in the Church on the Agnus Dei motif, however, made Jews look for a parallel. Under the influence of the adage Mahshabah ke-Ma'aseh (the will for the deed), Abraham’s obedience and Isaac’s submission became cardinal points.

It was as though the sacrifice had actually been consummated. Therefore, the readiness of Abraham and Isaac to follow the divine command at all costs was elevated to a liturgical theme—as it still remains. The poems in the liturgy on the 'Akedah and the appeals to the merit of the Patriarchs are, in fact, regarded as prayers to God to make us worthy of our ancestors and capable of following their example.”1

Montefiore and Loewe also state,

“Because of the christological interpretation given to the chapter by Christians, it is omitted from the series of prophetical lessons (Haftarot) for the Deuteronomy Sabbaths. These seven lessons are called the ‘Seven (Chapters) of Comfort,’ and are taken from the preceding and following parts of the book: the omission is deliberate and striking. (H. L.)”

Again Montefiore and Loewe,

“Our teachers have said: His name shall be the Leprous One of the house of Rabbi [perhaps in reference to Rabbi’s sufferings for the thirteen years], as it says, ‘Surely he bore our sicknesses, and carried our pains: yet we esteemed him as one stricken with leprosy, and smitten of God’ (Isa. LIII, 4). (San. 98a.).”

Michael Fishbane,

“In the Talmud at b. Sanhedrin 98b we read as follows: ‘And the Rabbis say: His name is Hivra', ‘The Leper’ of the House of Rabbi, as it is said [in Isaiah 53:4] ‘surely he has borne our sickness [holayenu], our suffering he endured….’’ This is a puzzling sequence, since there is no connection between the name and the prooftext drawn from Isaiah 53. Something seems to have gone awry in the text; and this suspicion is confirmed by the reading of this midrash preserved in Raymundo Martini’s polemical work, Pugio Fidei.(1)

In that medieval compendium, after the first name and some explanations, comes the following teaching: ‘The School of Rabbi says: His name is Hulya',’ and goes on to give the aforementioned biblical citation. The verbal play between the name Hulya' (‘The Afflicted One’) and the word holayenu in Isaiah 53:4 is just right, and I am therefore inclined to suspect that Martini’s citation preserves an authentic Jewish teaching of a suffering Messiah, excised from the Talmudic tradition through internal or other censorship.

This deletion may not actually have occurred until sixteenth-century Christian printings of the Talmud, since the name Hulya' with the prooftext from Isaiah 53:4 is still cited by Don Yitzhak Abravanel (1437-1508) in one of his works on messianic tribulations, the Yeshu'ot Meshiho (2nd 'Iyyun). The existence of old rabbinic notions of a suffering Messiah can be further supported by an old liturgical poem by Eleazar be-Rabbi Kallir on the Messiah, entitled ‘Tinnon’ (which also connotes the sense of affliction) written for the afternoon Musaf service on Yom Kippur.(2)

The poet extensively utilizes passages from Isaiah 53:5 and 11 in his teaching that the Messiah will bear the sins of Israel and shall be wounded (meholal) because of their transgressions, so that the people will be justified before God and ‘healed through his wounds’ (nirpa' lanu ba-havurato) As a recitation for Yom Kippur, the prayer anticipates a messianic atonement for sins, though there is no mention of death or sacrifice. Kallir’s prayer indicates authentic the notion of a suffering Messiah was in classical Judaism.

Indeed, in a homily found in Pesiqta Rabbati 31, the sages even refer to the excessive suffering endures by the Messiah in every generation, according to the sins of that generation. Several chapters later, this same collection preserves a valuable cycle of homilies that shed further light on this theme of the suffering Messiah.”

Footnote: (1) Pugio Fidei, B. Capzov, ed. (1687, rpt. Farnborough, 1967), 862
(2) See Mahzor le-Yamim Nora'im, vol. 2, Yom Kippur, Daniel Goldschmidt, ed. (Jerusalem: H. Koren, 1970), 410. The word yinnon occurs twice in 1. 1, where his existence is ‘before creation’ along with the Temple; and in the final 1. 12, referring to the advent of the Messiah (following Isa. 11:11).
The term itself derives from Ps. 72:17, understood as follows: ‘May his name be eternal, before the sun [existed] Yinnon in his name.’ In context the name refers to the king. Its preexistence was already noted in the Targum.
Medieval commentators understood the overt sense of lifnei shemesh to refer to the duration of the existence of the sun (Rashi, Kimhi) and the verb yinnon to be a nifal based on the stem nyn, and having the sense of continuity (Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Kimhi).”2

1. 1. Jewish Scholars Claude Joseph Goldsmith Montefiore and Herbert Martin James Loewe, A Rabbinic Anthology (Greenwich Edition: Published by Meridian Books, Inc., nd), pp. ci, 544 & 583
2. 2. Michael Fishbane, The Exegetical Imagination, On Jewish Thought and Theology (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 75-76