Isaiah 50:9

This is the third of the four passages in Isaiah called the Servant Songs. The first is Isaiah 42:1–4, the second is Isaiah 49:1–6, and the fourth and fullest is Isaiah 52:13–53:12. Together they tell of one whom God chose to carry out his saving purpose. The earlier songs speak of him as a light to the Gentiles and a restorer of Israel. In this third song the Servant speaks in the first person about how God taught him, what he suffered and why he is sure of God’s help, and the fourth song then tells what his suffering was for.

These songs belong to the part of Isaiah that opens with “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people” (Isaiah 40:1–2), words of hope for a people humbled by the Babylonian exile and asking whether God had been faithful to them. Just before this song the LORD answers that question. Israel was sold for its own iniquities, and his hand is still strong enough to redeem (Isaiah 50:1–3).

Then the Servant speaks, and he is everything the nation had failed to be. Isaiah gives the nation the name of servant (Isaiah 41:8), yet he calls that servant blind and deaf (Isaiah 42:18–20) and the people rebellious children who have forsaken the LORD (Isaiah 1:2–4). At Isaiah’s own call God spoke of a people who would hear without understanding (Isaiah 6:9–10). Moses told Israel they had been rebellious against the LORD from the day they left Egypt (Deuteronomy 9:7), and Jeremiah says of them, “they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear” (Jeremiah 7:24–26). Against that long history stands a Servant whose ear is open and who holds to the way God gives him.

In Isaiah the word servant can mean the nation, the faithful within it, or one person such as a prophet, and some hear Isaiah himself in these lines. The obedience and suffering in this song, and the vindication that follows, find their fulfilment in Jesus Christ, and the New Testament shows him living out each verse. So this study reads the song as the voice of Christ, spoken through the prophet long before the night of his trial.

“The Lord GOD” translates ʼĂdônây Yᵉhôvih, the title Lord or Master joined to God’s covenant name, and the Servant names God this way four times in these six verses. Everything he has comes from this Lord, the everlasting God who “fainteth not, neither is weary” (Isaiah 40:28).

He has been given “the tongue of the learned”. The word behind “learned”, limmûwd, comes from the verb for learning and teaching and means one who is taught, a disciple. The Servant speaks as a pupil whom God himself has instructed, so what he says carries God’s own wisdom.

The purpose follows at once: “that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.” A word in season is the right word at the right time, fitted to the need of the one who hears it, and some translations render the line “to sustain the weary with a word”. The weary, yâʻêph, are the tired, the exhausted and the faint. In Isaiah’s day that meant people worn down by hardship, by oppression and by the long sorrow of judgment and exile, the sorrow Jerusalem voices in Lamentations: “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” (Lamentations 1:12). God’s tender heart for such people is the heart of the Servant’s work.

Jesus spoke with this tongue. The crowds were astonished, “For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Matthew 7:29). He said, “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me” (John 7:16), and “as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things” (John 8:28). His word to the weary was, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28), the rest that Hebrews says still remains for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9–10).

“The Lord GOD hath opened mine ear.” The verb pâthach means to open, literally or figuratively, and ʼôzen is the ear. To open someone’s ear is a Hebrew way of speaking of God giving the hearing that takes in his word and is ready to obey it. The morning wakening of verse 4 is the daily form of this one gift.

A psalm speaks in the same terms: “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened... I delight to do thy will, O my God” (Psalm 40:6–8). Hebrews puts the words of that psalm in the mouth of Christ as he comes into the world: “Lo, I come... to do thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:5–7).

The Servant answers the opened ear with obedience. “I was not rebellious” uses mârâh, to rebel or disobey. Strong’s gives “to be bitter” as the word’s root sense and “to rebel” as its figurative use, and rebellion is the sense here, the very thing Israel had done so often. “Neither turned away back” adds that he held his course and kept to the road God set before him, though verse 6 shows where that road led.

God’s gift came first, and the Servant’s whole will answered it. Jesus said, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do” (John 5:19). In Gethsemane he prayed, “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42), and he “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). Hebrews says that “though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered”, and so he became “the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him” (Hebrews 5:8–9).

Verse 6 tells what obedience cost. “I gave my back to the smiters” uses nâthan, the common verb to give, which covers giving in the widest sense: to put, set, make or yield. The Servant’s willingness shows in the whole verse read with the one before it. He kept to his course, he gave his back, and he kept his face toward those who shamed him. The NIV renders the first line “I offered my back”. The smiters are those who strike, from nâkâh, the ordinary verb to strike, whether lightly or hard, used of beating, wounding and killing. The back was the usual place for a beating with rods or whips.

“And my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair” speaks of tearing out the beard. A man’s beard stood for his maturity, honour and dignity, so pulling it out brought pain and public contempt together and was meant to strip him of his standing. “I hid not my face from shame and spitting” completes the picture. Shame, kᵉlimmâh, is disgrace and dishonour, and spitting, rôq, was the plainest sign of scorn and defilement. Anyone so disgraced would want to cover his face. The Servant held his face up to it and took the full weight of the insult.

Verse 7 gives the reason the Servant could face all this: “For the Lord GOD will help me.” The capitals in “GOD” mark Yᵉhôvih, a form of God’s covenant name written with the vowels of the word for God, so that after ʼĂdônây (“Lord”) it is read as “God” and the reader avoids saying the same word twice. The help is promised for the future and is certain, and everything else in the verse rests on it.

“Therefore shall I not be confounded.” To be confounded, kâlam, is to be ashamed or disgraced, and in its causative form to be put to shame. “Therefore have I set my face like a flint.” Flint, challâmîysh, is a very hard stone, used for tools and weapons and for striking fire, and a face set like flint belongs to someone whose mind is made up and who will hold to it whatever comes. “And I know that I shall not be ashamed.” The verb for knowing is yâdaʻ, and the verb for being ashamed is bûwsh, which Strong’s says properly means to turn pale, and so to be ashamed or disappointed.

The Servant accepted shame from men in verse 6, and he knows that God, who will help him, will keep him from disgrace at the last. His resolve and his confidence both come from the same source, the help of the Lord GOD.

Luke uses this picture of Jesus: “when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), knowing what waited for him there. His resolve rested on his Father, as he said: “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me” (John 5:30). God answered that trust when he raised him and “highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9–11).

The promise of verse 7 reaches all who trust him. A psalmist prays, “O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed” (Psalm 25:2). Paul writes that “hope maketh not ashamed” (Romans 5:5) and that “Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (Romans 10:11), and Peter, speaking of Christ the chief corner stone, says, “he that believeth on him shall not be confounded” (1 Peter 2:6).

Verse 8 moves into a court of law. In Israel disputes were settled in public, often at the city gate, where an accuser came forward to make his case before the judges and the accused stood to answer it. Each phrase of this verse belongs to that setting, and God is the judge who gives the verdict.

“He is near that justifieth me.” To justify, tsâdaq, is to be right or to make right, in a moral or a legal sense, and here it is God declaring the Servant in the right and clearing him of every charge. The one who will give that verdict is qârôwb, near, close at hand. “Who will contend with me?” The verb rîyb means to quarrel, contend or accuse, and in another use to plead someone’s cause. Here it is the accuser’s word.

“Let us stand together.” The verb ʻâmad is to stand and yachad means together, and the phrase brings two parties face to face as opponents in a dispute, as God summons the nations elsewhere in Isaiah: “let us come near together to judgment” (Isaiah 41:1). “Who is mine adversary?” The Hebrew is baʻal mishpâṭ, literally “master of judgment” or “owner of a case”, from baʻal, master or owner, and mishpâṭ, a judgment or verdict. It names the one who has a legal case against someone. “Let him come near to me” uses nâgash, to come or draw near, the step an accuser takes to bring his case.

These questions are a challenge. The Servant has just been beaten and spat upon, and he invites any accuser to come forward and make his charge, because the Judge is on his side. A psalmist prays with the same confidence: “Judge me, O LORD my God, according to thy righteousness” (Psalm 35:24).

Jesus was brought before a council that sought false witness against him and judged him worthy of death (Matthew 26:59–66). God reversed that verdict when he raised him, for he “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Romans 4:25).

Verse 9 closes the song with the words that opened verse 7: “Behold, the Lord GOD will help me.” “Behold” here and “lo” later in the verse both translate hen, a word that calls for attention. Strong’s gives the verb for help, ʻâzar, the sense to surround, and so to protect or aid.

“Who is he that shall condemn me?” The verb râshaʻ means to be guilty, to declare guilty or to act wickedly, and here it is the court’s verdict of guilty. Since God is the Servant’s helper, a charge against him has nowhere to stand. Paul asks it this way: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31), and a psalm asks, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1).

“Lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up.” To wax old, bâlâh, is to wear out, fail and decay. The moth, ʻâsh, was a common threat to clothing, which was costly and worth guarding, and a small moth could ruin a whole garment slowly and quietly. So the Servant’s accusers will wear away until nothing is left of them, by slow decay, as cloth rots. The psalmist says of evildoers, “they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb” (Psalm 37:1–2). Another psalm uses the same picture for the heavens and the earth: “all of them shall wax old like a garment... But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end” (Psalm 102:26–27). Everything set against God’s Servant wears out, and God remains.

Jesus told his disciples to “fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28). At the cross he “spoiled principalities and powers” and “made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15).

This song lets us hear the Servant tell, in his own words, how God taught him, what his obedience cost and why he was sure of the end. In each line we learn who God is. The Lord GOD speaks and teaches, waking his Servant morning by morning. He cares for the weary enough to send them a Servant who knows the word they need. He stands near the one who trusts him, and his verdict outlasts every accuser.

All of this came true in Jesus, who heard his Father, set his face toward Jerusalem, gave his back to the scourge and his face to the spitting, and was raised and exalted by the God who helped him. Through faith in him the Servant’s confidence becomes ours. The question “who is he that shall condemn me?” is one Paul puts in the mouth of every believer, and his answer rests on Christ who died and rose. The shame the Servant bore was real, and so is the promise that “he that believeth on him shall not be confounded”. The word in season he was taught to speak still comes to the weary in his invitation to come to him and find rest.