Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Deutero-Jesaia: Aufgabe des Gottesknechtes; 1. Lied vom Gottesknecht

Kurzinhalt: the news of Redemption must be spread over the whole earth

Textausschnitt: The task of the Servant is clear: From the center of its reception in Israel, the news of Redemption must be spread over the whole earth. The execution of the task, however, will encounter difficulties. For Israel as a society had been smashed into the leaderless population around Jerusalem, the exiles in Babylon, and the refugees scattered in all directions. Who will listen to these pitiable remnants of a people to which nobody listened even when it was a power of moderate size? A century later, when Herodotus traveled through the Syrian and Palestinian area, apparently he never even heard of such peoples as Israel or Judah, or of a city named Jerusalem. Moreover, while Babylon had fallen, her empire was replaced by the Persians, to be followed by Macedonians and Romans. The power of empire had not disappeared with a prophet's experience of its withering like grass under the breath of Yahweh. (506f; Fs)
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139/13 And, finally, even if some sort of Israel should be reorganized in its old homestead, how many members of this people had indeed experienced the liberation from Babylon as the redemption from empire for all mankind? Hence, the task will be a laborious one; it will bring ridicule, humiliation, persecution, and suffering to the men who undertake it under such unauspicious circumstances. The empirical Israel will hardly embark on the missionary enterprise, for the people itself has not yet accepted the message of salvation. The prophet, at best surrounded by a group of like-minded disciples, will therefore move into the position of a Jeremiah, who enacts the destiny of the Servant as Israel's representative. And such a task, finally, will not be executed by the prophet within his lifetime; it will require the labors of generations of successors. The Servant will thus be a new type in the history of order, a type created by the prophet in Israel and for Israel, to be figurated by others until the task is accomplished. This situation of the prophet must be realized if one wishes to understand the movement of the Servant symbol in his work from Israel the Servant of Yahweh, to the prophet himself as Israel's representative, and further on to the indeterminate successor who will complete the task that has to be left unfinished by the prophet. (507; Fs)
140/13 When the Prologue announcing the work of Redemption has come to its end, the Servant is presented by God to the heavenly audience (42:1-4): (507; Fs)
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141/13 The royal symbolism of the First Song encloses the figure so completely in its armor that nobody can tell whether Israel is meant or the prophet as its representative. The immediately following oracle (42:5-9) gives the Servant his place in the theology of history. The God who has created the world and mankind now sets the Servant as "a covenant to the people, and a light to the nations," to open blind eyes and bring the prisoners out of the dungeon. That a blindness and prison of the spirit is meant is shown by 42:16-17, where the darkness will be made light, and the rugged places plain, and only those will be turned back who still trust in idols. Before this can be accomplished through the Servant's gentle action, however, the Servant himself must cease to be deaf and blind. For at the present (42:19),