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)
