Hindsight is 20/20, and the prophets sometimes lend us a past-tense view of the future. According to Isaiah, what will we all say when the Day of Truth arrives? Let’s take a peek into that rear-view mirror. We’ll be nosy; we’ll listen in on the kings of nations.
“There’s NO WAY Isaiah meant the Jews! We thought them ugly in appearance and deeds!” exclaimed the nations, hands over their mouths in shock. The revelation was the last answer they had expected, and yet that is what they saw before them!
“If the Jews were God’s servant all along,” said the kings, “Then why did the Holocaust happen? Why did October 7th happen? We always assumed Israel deserved it, no matter our crimes against them… Could it be…? could it POSSIBLY be, that it was OUR evil at play, and not their sins? Could it be that it was our wickedness, after all, that attempted their destruction?”
The thought was incomprehensible, the very reversal of their theology.
“Who would have believed it?!” the nations continued. “The Jews, of all people? Did anti-Semitism involve lies all along? Were the Jews righteous all these years in their stiff-necked stubbornness? Has Israel been a deserving servant all this time, whom we tarred unfairly? Whom we wounded, using as our shield beliefs that have just been disproved?”
The nations mused, “We’ve said ourselves the Jew went like sheep to the slaughter, but we never thought genocide could be so wholly undeserved. Whoever violated their rights, however awful the atrocity, we assumed the Jews must have been even more horrible to deserve it! We accused them of deicide, after all; that explained the Holocaust, however tragic. The anti-Zionists among us assumed October 7th was proof that Israeli depravation had driven Hamas to such extremes. But if the Jews are deserving… then their wounds reflect our sins, not theirs.”
There is more than one way to read Isaiah 53. But if you say to me, “There’s NO WAY the Jews are righteous enough to be the Servant!” then you are fulfilling the prophecy yourself. If you say to me, “What the Jews suffered was deserved,” then you are fulfilling the prophecy yourself. You are the kings who underestimated the servant, and will stand by, amazed, at his vindication.
1000 Verses - a project of Judaism Resources 