Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Matthew Harmon on Isaiah 53:10 and the Servant "seeing his seed"

 

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. (Isa 53:10)

 

And now I say unto you, who shall declare his generation? Behold, I say unto you, that when his soul has been made an offering for sin he shall see his seed. And now what say ye? And who shall be his seed? Behold I say unto you, that whosoever has heard the words of the prophets, yea, all the holy prophets who have prophesied concerning the coming of the Lord-- I say unto you, that all those who have hearkened unto their words, and believed that the Lord would redeem his people, and have looked forward to that day for a remission of their sins, I say unto you, that these are his seed, or they are the heirs of the kingdom of God. For these are they whose sins he has borne; these are they for whom he has died, to redeem them from their transgressions. And now, are they not his seed? Yea, and are not the prophets, every one that has opened his mouth to prophesy, that has not fallen into transgression, I mean all the holy prophets ever since the world began? I say unto you that they are his seed. (Mosiah 15:10-13 [the prophet Abinadi’s exposition of Isa 53:10])

 

Commenting on Isa 53:10 and it being said that the Servant “will see his seed,” Matthew Harmon noted:

 

So the first result of the servant’s self-sacrificial offering is that he ‘will see his seed’. Although the exact expression is unusual, the concept itself is not. In Isaiah 6:13 God concludes his commissioning of the prophet by promising that out of the devastating judgment ‘the holy seed is its stump’. Although widely disputed, this expression seems to be a reference to the remnant (‘holy seed’) that will be ruled over by the promised king from David’s line, who in 11:1 is called a ‘shoot from the stump of Jesse’. As a nation Israel is the ‘offspring of Abraham’ (Isa. 41:8) and the seed of Jacob (Isa. 45:19) whom God called to be his servant who because of their idolatry (Isa. 48:19) must now be gathered from east and west (Isa. 43:5). It is in Yahweh that all the seed of Israel will be justified (Isa. 45:25), and Yahweh will even pour out his Spirit on Israel’s seed (Isa. 44:3) . . . the seed of the servant are the ones who inherit what was promised to Abraham (Isa. 54:3), experience the covenant blessing sworn to David (Isa. 55:4-5) and live in a renewed creation where every last consequence of Adam’s rebellion will be banished once and for all (Isa. 65:23; 66:22). (Matthew S. Harmon, The Servant of the Lord and His Servant People: Tracing a biblical theme through the canon [New Studies in Biblical Theology; London: Apollos, 2020], 133-34)

 

In a footnote to the above we read:

 

Nowhere else in the OT is the noun ‘seed’ (zera’) the direct object of the verb ‘see (rā’ā(h)]. There are two other places where a pronoun whose antecedent is zera’ is the diect object of rā’ā(h). In Ps. 37:25 the psalmist asserts: ‘I have not seen [rā’ā(h)] the righteous forsaken / or his children [zera’] begging for bread’. Closer to our context in Isa. 61:9, where Yahweh says to his restored people that ‘Their offspring [zera’] shall be known among the nations / and their descendants in the midst of the peoples; / all who see [rā’ā(h)] them shall acknowledge them / that they are an offspring [zera’] the LORD has blessed.’ Although not an exact parallel, it is worth noting that in Hannah’s prayer (1 Sam. 1:11) she identifies herself as the Lord’s servant and prays for God to look upon her affliction and give her seed (i.e. a son). (Ibid., 133 n. 37)