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1. A controversy regarding Isaiah 53 is the identity of the speakers in the chapter: who is the “we” who talk about the Suffering Servant who was wounded for “our” sins?
Because Isaiah 52:15 says that the Servant will sprinkle many nations, and that kings will shut their mouths in amazement at him, many have contended that the speakers in Isaiah 53 are the kings of the Gentiles: they are amazed that the Servant has been exalted, and so they reflect on the Servant’s sufferings, concluding that they were for their sins. This sort of argument appears among Jewish interpreters of the text who believe that the Suffering Servant is Israel. They envision the Gentile persecutors of the Jews being amazed at Israel’s exaltation, after they had considered her of no account, and they reflect that she suffered for their iniquities. But this sort of scenario can also work for Christians who interpret the Servant as Jesus: Gentiles reflect on Jesus as the atonement for sin.
Others maintain, however, that the “we” in Isaiah 53 is the nation of Israel: the sinful Israelites conclude that the Servant—a righteous individual or community in their midst—suffered for their transgressions, that they might be healed.
On pages 176-177 of Messianism Within the Scriptural Scrolls of Isaiah, Randall Heskett goes with the view that the speakers of Isaiah 53 are the nation of Israel. His arguments are that (1.) “we” in the Hebrew Bible pertains to Israel, but never to the nations, (2.) culanu (“all of us”), which appears in Isaiah 53:6, always refers to Israel in Isaiah 40-66, and (3.) the speakers in Isaiah 53 liken themselves to sheep, which is often used for Israel in the Hebrew Bible, but never for the Gentiles.
I disagree with (1.), for the nations in Psalm 2:2-3 use the first-person plural when they conspire to throw off the cords of David from them. But Randall’s other arguments strike me as sensible.
2. On page 220 of Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah, Jacob Neusner states: “And so the polemic of Sifra and the Talmuds is against the positions that, first, what the Mishnah says (in the Mishnah’s own words) is merely logical; and that, second, the position taken by the Mishnah can have been reached by any way other than through grammatical-syntactical exegesis of Scripture.”
