The Suffering Servant: Honesty in Bible Translation

 

Biblia Hebraica Kittel, 12th ed., 1961

The verses of Isaiah that pertain to the Suffering Servant (52:13 - 53:12, but especially 53:7-12) have been interpreted by Christians as referring to Jesus for nearly 2000 years. What do we know about them?

First of all, they were not written by Isaiah; they are part of "Deutero-Isaiah," which begins with Chapter 40. They were written by an anonymous prophet, 150 years later.

The "Lamb of God" imagery of Catholic liturgy comes, ultimately, for Isaiah 53, by way of the "Gloria in excelsis" prayer, which was originally part of Matins.

Some Christians will say, "Well, of course it refers to Jesus! There is the reference to his "tomb being with the rich" in Isaiah 53:9. Surely that is a reference to Joseph of Arimathea, and that PROVES it!"

Not so fast, my friend. The reference to "the rich" was, it is true, present before the Gospels were written (in the Dead Sea Scrolls, first century BCE, and even in the Septuagint, ca. 200 BCE). The reference to "the rich" is a corruption of Isaiah 53:9; it is not original, and in its original state the verse had nothing to do with the rich.

Dead Sea Scrolls: Isaiah 53:9

How do we know this? First of all, the two halves of verse 9 form a parallelism. This is a literary device by which a statement is repeated, using slightly different terms, the second line saying almost exactly the same thing as the first, and reinforcing it.

Here is the verse in question in my JPS Tanakh (Hebrew Bible):

"And his grave was set among the wicked,

d-And with the rich, in his death-d--

At the bottom of the page, under d-d, we read "Emendation yields 'And his tomb with evildoers.'" 

It's easy to see how the line became corrupted. Remember, first of all that in those days Hebrew texts did not have vowel points.

rich = עשיר

evil-doers = עשירע

The restored verse:

And his GRAVE was set among the WICKED,

And his TOMB with EVIL-DOERS.

We have, thus, a perfect parallelism. 

We don't know whether the story of Joseph of Arimathea was invented to fulfill the mistaken words of the "Deutero Isaiah," or whether there was a wealthy follower of Jesus who, familiar with those words, felt that it was incumbent upon him to offer his own fresh-cut tomb. What we do know, for sure, is that Isaiah did not foretell anything about a tomb among the rich.

Other echoes of the Suffering Servant verses of Isaiah 53 may be found in Acts 8:32-35; John 1:29; and more than thirty references in the book of Revelation,

What about Arimathea? Was there such a place? If there was, no record of it has survived. The name sounds more Latin or Greek than Hebrew. Luke said (23:50) that it was a "Jewish town." No more is known.

What about the proposed emendation of Isaiah 53:9? Is it something new? No, it isn't I've traced it back in the Biblia Hebraica Kittel as far as the edition of 1906, and it may have been known earlier. I have examined many modern, Christian versions, and the only one that has translated Isaiah 53.9 correctly, or even taken note of the emendation of "rich" to "evil-doers" is the New American Bible, a Catholic Bible published in 1970, and its precursor, the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine version of 1961.. They deserve high credit for their honesty.

Text Copyright © 2023 by Donald C. Traxler.