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The Suffering Servant in Jewish Kabbalah.
- Thread starter John D. Brey
- Start date
GoodAttention
Well-Known Member
The lot is cast into the lap -
- but its every decision is from the Lord.
Proverbs 16:33
Ebionite
Well-Known Member
And YHWH said unto me, Take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd.
For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, [which] shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces.
Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword [shall be] upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.
Zechariah 11:15-17
(the context relates to the early first century of the common era)
For the vision [is] yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.
Behold, his soul [which] is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.
Yea also, because he transgresseth by wine, [he is] a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and [is] as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people:
Habakkuk 2:3-5
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
Romans 1:17
For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.
2 Corinthians 11:5
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
Romans 6:3
Ebionite
Well-Known Member
He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
Isaiah 53:8
From prison and from judgment he was taken
https://biblehub.com/interlinear/isaiah/53-8.htm
GoodAttention
Well-Known Member
Why are the Jewish people so stubborn that they ignore their own prophets?
Why are the Christians so proud that they quote their own scriptures as proof?
GoodAttention
Well-Known Member
He is the enslaved man, freed of desperation without justice, for who need acknowledge their existence?
Excised from the land where he was birthed, but for my people's crime, was to be punished.
Isaiah 53:8 Non-Christian interpretation, prophecy of the slave's salvation.
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
Connecting the korban peshat (Passover lamb), and the lamb at Isaiah 53:7, with Abraham's claim that God will provide himself the lamb (Genesis 22:8), lends itself to the idea of seeing Hashem in the sacrifice of a particular lamb of God even before Abraham aborts Isaac's sacrifice and names the altar of that sacrifice ה׳ יראה "Hashem manifests himself there [through the symbolism of Isaac’s sacrifice]" (Genesis 22:14).
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall save and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord is our Righteous One.
Jeremiah 23:5-6.
In a passage where Jeremiah is clearly referring to Messiah, it turns out that the name he shall be called is a name of deity: Hashem is our Tsaddik. If Hashem is Isaiah's "arm of the Lord," then in Isaiah 53 we're reading of the suffering of the messianic servant who's the lamb of the Lord, the human korban offering Abraham claims to see in the faux-sacrifice of Isaac at the Akedah.Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, The Lord liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But, The Lord liveth which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country and from all countries whither I had driven them.
Jeremiah 23:7-8.
Jeremiah documents that Messiah (David's righteous branch) is Hashem, Israel's Tsaddik; and also that he's the archetype symbolized by the korban peshat at the exodus from Egypt. The redemption associated with his sacrifice will be so profound that the Passover lamb associated with the exodus from Egypt will no longer be mentioned. Once the archetype comes, the symbolic Passover lamb will be forgotten. Thereafter, Passover ceremonies will be about the revelation of Hashem to all the world, that is, when he's laid bare before all the world (Isaiah 52:10), and not the symbolic ritual of the Passover lamb at the exodus from Egypt. Ditto for the Akedah. When the archetype of Isaac's faux-sacrifice is revealed, the Akedah will be forgotten as a mere shadow cast by the Light of the World.
John
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Ebionite
Well-Known Member
Stubbornness is associated more with Ephraim than with Judah:
And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation [that] set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with El.
The children of Ephraim, [being] armed, [and] carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle.
They kept not the covenant of Elohim, and refused to walk in his law;
Psalms 78:8-10
The bows of the children of Ephraim relate to the blessing of Joseph the father of Ephraim:
Joseph [is] a fruitful bough, [even] a fruitful bough by a well; [whose] branches run over the wall:
The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot [at him], and hated him:
But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty one of Jacob; (from thence [is] the shepherd, the stone of Israel)
Genesis 49:22-24
Ephraim turning back in battle relates to driving out the Canaanites:
And it came to pass, when Israel was strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute, and did not utterly drive them out.
Neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer; but the Canaanites dwelt in Gezer among them.
Judges 1:28-29
Gezer was a Levitical city, and the curse of Canaan relates to the sin of Ham:
And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
Genesis 9:21
And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
Genesis 9:24
Putting these together (Ephraim, Levitical -> priest, sin -> uncleanness):
Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty [is] a fading flower, which [are] on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine!
Isaiah 28:1
But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble [in] judgment.
For all tables are full of vomit [and] filthiness, [so that there is] no place [clean].
Isaiah 28:7-8
If the tables are unclean then the message cannot be read, going back to Habakkuk 2:
And YHWH answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make [it] plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.
Habakkuk 2:2
In a modern context Ephraim is England, the Crown is the adminstration of the king's rule, and pride relates to LGBT pride.
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
GoodAttention
Well-Known Member
Not quite, since Kunte imo "got lucky", but allow me to refer you to what a wise man once said.
"I think our eyes will render it pretty similar. It's what we do with it from there".
- John D. Brey, comment #10.
Ebionite
Well-Known Member
There isn't an explicit lamb in that verse, a sheh is one of the flock and could be a mature animal.
Likewise, a sheh could be a mature animal in this verse.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind [him] a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.
Genesis 22:13
The ayil of verse 13 always refers to a ram and never to a lamb.
So connecting a passover lamb with a ram caught by his horns doesn't work.
The incongruity of a lamb with horns is apparent in the book of Revelation:
And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
Revelation 5:6
Edit: A "passover lamb" is also a sheh, but the lamb of Revelation 5;6 is an arnion, which is a lamb and not a sheep.
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
A ram is used for a peace offering. A peace offering is offered on the same altar after the korban offering. Isaac is supposed to be the korban offering, after which Abraham spies the ram he offers as a peace offering to celebrate the korban offering of Isaac.
But Isaac isn't really offered, even as his father isn't really emasculated. Abraham's emasculation is only ritual, brit milah (circumcision). The incision from his circumcision doesn't cut all the way through the bone to the truth the ritual reveals, i. e., that for a human to be a korban offering he must be conceived without semen, i.e., born of a virgin (from an emasculated conception). "Without mark or blemish" is a Hebraism for "without semen having contaminated the conception and birth."
He had also sanctified his body; from that time on Isaac's body resembled that of אדם הראשון, also not the product of a drop of semen.
Shenei Luchot HaBerit, Torah Shebikhtav, Vayera, Torah Ohr, 46 (bold emphasis mine).
In the same sense Abraham's incision doesn't go all the way, since it's only ritual, Isaac's sacrifice is only ritual. It doesn't go all the way. When Abraham looks at the scar from the circumcision incision, he's looking at the virgin mechanics of Isaac's birth, the mechanics that made Isaac abel, so to say, to be a korban offering. When Abraham looks at the altar after the faux-sacrifice of Isaac, he sees the lamb of God, the reality, Isaac's faux-sacrifice only represents. Ergo, Abraham names the altar, "the Lord will appear here." In effect he's looking down the corridors of time to Isaiah chapter 53.
The Hebrew doesn't say Abraham offered the peace offering (ram) "instead" of the korban offering (Isaac). It says he offered the peace offering (ram) in the same place תחת as the korban offering (Isaac). Which is par for the course so to say (Leviticus chapter 9).
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
What to our untrained eyes often looks like "incongruity," is always, where the scripture is concerned, merely something beyond our exegetical pay grade. Revelation 5:6 is a case in point since Rabbi Samson Hirsch says that Isaiah's description of Messiah ---as found in chapter 11 ---perfectly describes the seven horned lamp in the holy place of the temple. In this sense, Messiah is represented by a lamb, as well as by a lamp; the menorah in the temple. The lamb with seven horns is the lamb that's equally represented by the seven horned lamp (the menorah).
Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks.
Revelation 2:1
And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the seven horned lamp thereof.
Revelation 21:23.
John
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Ebionite
Well-Known Member
And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:
Isaiah 11:1
Joshua/Yahushua/Yeshua is not the branch.
Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they [are] men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH.
For behold the stone that I have laid before Joshua; upon one stone [shall be] seven eyes: behold, I will engrave the graving thereof, saith YHWH of armies, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.
Zechariah 3:8-9
I am the vine, ye [are] the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
John 15:5
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
Some of the Rabbis read circumcision as a necessary preparation for seeing God, the summum bonum of late-antique religious life (Boyarin 1990a). . . That is, circumcision here is not the sign of something happening in the spirit of the Jew, but it is the very event itself --- and it is, of course, in his body. Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, for the rabbinic formulation, this seeing of God was not understood as the spiritual vision of a platonic eye of the mind, but as the physical seeing of fleshly eyes at a real moment in history.
Professor Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 126 .
Professor Boyarin's statement codifies the idea that Abraham's ritual emasculation parallels the Akedah such that both are ritualized emblems of the same event that is "seeing Hashem" in the quasi-literal sense of viewing the sacrificial flesh and blood on the altar; most specifically, the flesh and blood of a human (Abraham's "flesh" בשר and blood דם ברית, to include the offspring of that flesh and that blood, Isaac) who's without spot or blemish for having been conceived without the evil smelling drop of semen that contaminates all other births. Throughout Jewish midrashim, circumcision is fancied a preparation for, if not the event itself, seeing Hashem. It's this theologically ubiquitous concept, at least so far as Judaism is concerned, that causes the seemingly unconscionable switcheroo whereby a great Jewish exegete like Rabbi Samson Hirsch makes the Hebrew text speak of God seeing the person sacrificing at the altar (which he no doubt does) rather than the person at the altar "seeing Hashem."
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
It should be acknowledged that in Genesis 22:12, the angel of the Lord does in fact imply ---at least in the English translation ---that God sees, or takes not of, Abraham's willingness to place Isaac on the altar. Although this lends itself to Rabbi Hirsch's interpretation, unfortunately this nuance leads into a complex distinction between Hashem, versus his angelic messenger who addresses Abraham's actions (Hashem already knows Abraham's heart whereas the angel of the Lord must learn from seeing Abraham's actions.) This distinction between Hashem and the angel of Hashem is found throughout the Tanakh; most notably in the first chapter of Genesis where Rashi, et.al., notes that strictly speaking, the Hebrew implies not that Gevurah, that is a lesser element of the divine Godhead (below Hashem), creates the light, the darkness, and all the other things listed in the chapter, but that he merely names them ("let there be `light,' and he saw that there already was," etc.) therein acknowledging their prior existence. Although his "seeing" them might, in a quantum physics sort of collapsing of reality, bring them into their reality, they are nevertheless created not by the angel of Hashem (i.e., Gevurah, aka "Elohim"), but by Hashem himself. Similarly, although Hashem knows Abraham's heart, the angel of Hashem must "see" the actions (and we think of a James vs. Paul sort of dichotomy between invisible faith versus the visible works that result) before he can "know" the nature of the heart from whence they come. Hashem knows the heart. The angel of the Lord must see the actions that result in order to judge the heart.
In the end, everything rests on the binary distinction between Hashem vs. the angel of Hashem ala Exodus 23:21. Indeed, salvation itself rests on the inability of the angel of Hashem to plumb the depths of the inner nature of the Akedah which we're given reason to believe Abraham intuits more accurately than does the angel of Hashem. The angel of Hashem sees the actions come from Abraham's heart, but he doesn't see what Abraham sees that motivates those actions. A latter-day son of Abraham, aka the son of man, will free himself from the shackles of death (lorded over by Gevurah, the angel of Hashem armed with death), by, like tsaddikim throughout the Tanakh (with Abraham as the crux of the tsaddik in the crosshairs of this examination) seeing more deeply into Hashem's plan than Hashem's own angel can. Everything in the narrative centers around "seeing" what's otherwise invisible.
John
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IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
I agree with you. It is not a messianic passage.
The servant theme runs throughout Isaiah. In more than one verse, the servant is identified as the People of Israel.
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
The nation of Israel is without a doubt a servant of God. And as you note, the theme of Israel as the servant nation is found throughout Isaiah. Nevertheless, there might also be a singular servant, Messiah, who's the archetype of the nation, or for whom the nation is the archetype.
It may or may not be. That's subject to interpretation. But it's not only Christians who interpret it as messianic.
The Rabbis said: His [Messiah's] name is 'the leper scholar,' as it is written, Surely, he hath borne our grief, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God, and afflicted.
BT Sanhedrin 98b.
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
The physical aspects of the human body, like all the rest of the physical, visible world of Creation are symbolized by the number six. The emanation of God, unseen and originating from the invisible One, is symbolized by the number seven. The vocation of Israel, rooted in the historic selection of Israel, is symbolized by the number eight.
Rabbi Samson Hirsch, Collected Writings III, p. 130.
Keeping in mind that in Hebrew, numbers are associated with letters, it becomes apparent how important the three numbers Rabbi Hirsch speaks of are so far as the subject of seeing Hashem. The numbers six, seven, and eight, are represented respectively by the letters vav ו, zayin ז, and chet ח. Which makes it ironic that according to Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, the letter chet ח (the number 8), is constructed of the previous two letters, vav ו (the number 6), and zayin ז (the number 7). In this sense, the chet ח, which corresponds to the number 8, is a unity, or mixture, of the letter vav ו (corresponding to the number 6), and the letter zayin ז (corresponding to the number 7).
As it relates to the statement by Rabbi Hirsch quoted above, this means that the letter eight (the chet ח) represents a unity of the visible, physical world of creation, i.e., the letter six (the vav ו), and the invisible, unseen, God, the letter seven (the zayin ז), resulting in what Rabbi Hirsch relates as the "vocation of Israel," which is to act as a visible representation of the unity, dare we say incarnation, of the invisible essence of God, with the visible, physical, world of man. In Rabbi Hirsch's opinion, it's the vocation of Israel to act as the manifestation related to the number eight, which is a unity of the sixth (physical/visible) and the seventh (invisible/deity).
In a Hebrew gematria sort of way, we could say that if the letter unifying the other two, i.e., the chet, is followed by the letter that comes before it (zayin), and then the letter that precedes the zayin, i.e., the vav, we get the word chet-zayin-vav חזו, which, as fate, or exegetical felicity, would have it, spells the word hazo or hezo, which speaks of a "vision," or "what is seen"; that is, "the look, appearance, aspect [of something]," according to Gesenius Hebrew lexicon. And since Jewish circumcision takes place on the eighth day, and is related to a theophany, i.e., to seeing Hashem, the idea that seeing Hashem is a case of uniting the physical, visible, nature of man, with the invisible deity/essence of God, makes all the foregoing revelatory in the extreme. Add to the gematria, the idea that Abraham's circumcision is a direct parallel or precursor, of the Akedah, and we begin to see the logic behind Abraham naming the altar of the Akedah the place Hashem is seen.
John
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IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
As you know, the Talmud is a text where many ideas are considered and debated, including those that were ultimately rejected. IOW, there are passages in the Talmud that are a bit like reading the minority view of a Supreme Court decision. We cannot know the Jewish position simply by reading the Talmud, just as we cannot know the position of the Supreme Court by reading the minority position.