1.12. Appendix Note 5

NOTE 5 IN DEFENCE; OR, MORE ON Isaiah 53:1-12.

Since writing these pages, my attention has been drawn to a volume of “Lectures and Sermons,” recently published (1884), by Professor Marks, Rabbi of the West London Synagogue of British Jews, in which several of the said lectures are devoted to refute the Christian, or Messianic, interpretation of certain prophecies, and among them Isaiah 53:1-122. I mention it here, not with a view to pass criticism upon it; indeed, the only criticism necessary is to state that not only the conclusions, but also the premises from which are drawn the conclusions at which the author arrives, are those which have been advanced by Jews scores of times, and have as often been refuted; thus the stale arguments of Abarbanel and the author of the “Chizzuk Ammunah” are again made to serve the purpose of establishing the theory that Israel is the subject of this prophecy, though Professor Marks, like all the rest of those who seek to avoid Him Who is the Door by which alone we can enter into the true meaning of this prophecy, seems rather uncertain after all, or else why does he, in the first instance, recount all the reasons for its applicability to the prophet Jeremiah—an interpretation concerning which even Abarbanel says, “What may be the goodness or excellence that they see in it, I do not understand”? Professor Marks, however, makes one rather serious statement—a statement as cruel as it is false—to this effect, “Whatever be the errors into which conversionists in general fall by reason of ignorance, they are completely outstripped by Jewish converts who deliberately and designedly falsify facts, and put words into the mouths of Hebrew authors which they never uttered, and attribute to them motives of conduct of which they never dreamed.” For an exemplification “of this patent fact,” he “takes leave” to refer to a work of the late Rev. Moses Margoliouth and to strictures passed upon it in several numbers of the Jewish Chronicle in 1847 by Professor Theodores. In that work, which I have not the pleasure of knowing, the position that I have taken up in these pages is asserted, viz., that the oldest, and, till Rashi, the commonest received interpretation of this prophecy, was that which made it apply to the Messiah. This is denied by Professor Marks and his patron saint, Professor Theodores, under whose banner he is fighting. Of course, they are quite welcome to deny anything they please, but they have no right to accuse Hebrew Christians of “falsifying facts,” and misrepresenting Jewish authors, because they declare that the originally received interpretation of Isaiah 53:1-12 among the Jews was the Messianic one; for it is not merely converted Jews who assert this, but unconverted Jewish rabbis of great reputation. Thus Alsech (Alsheich), who was chief rabbi in Safet, Upper Galilee, in the sixteenth century, in his “Commentaries on the Earlier Prophets” (מראות הצובאות) says of this chapter: “Our Rabbis with one voice accept and affirm the opinion that the prophet is speaking of the King Messiah, and we shall ourselves also adhere to the same view.” And Abarbanel, who wrote so bitterly against Christianity, is also obliged to admit this fact, for he says, “This” (that it refers to Messiah) “is also the opinion of our own learned men in the majority of their Midrashim” (Abarbanel in loc.). Why, I may ask here, if Jewish opinion did not preponderate in favour of the Messianic interpretation, has it been made to apply to the Messiah in the Jewish liturgy which is used by Jews in the present day on the most solemn day of the year? Why also is the reading of this prophecy omitted at the synagogue but because of a tacit acknowledgment that it favours the claims of the crucified Nazarene? I have purposely, in the selection of passages from Jewish sources which favour the Messianic interpretation, given the translations made by Dr. Driver and Professor Neubauer, the latter of whom, being an unconverted Jew, could certainly not be accused of “falsifying facts,” or “putting words into the mouth of Hebrew authors which they never uttered.”¹ Christian Jews might with more reason reply that such an accusation applies to modern Jewish prophets, who not only wrest the Scriptures of God to their own destruction, but who have also departed from the one grain of truth which was left in Rabbinism, and are trying to set up for themselves another system, even more at variance with Moses and the prophets. But they have learned of One, Who, when He was reviled reviled not again, and Who said, “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

¹ To whom the charge of falsifying facts and putting words into the mouths of authors which they never uttered more justly applies may be judged from the following passage in Professor Marks’ Lectures (p. 167), and a comparison of it with Dr. McCaul’s work to which he refers. He says: “Every Hebrew scholar knows well that in the whole volume of the Scriptures זֶרַע has but one meaning, and that it is never used to denote anything other but bodily offspring. The late Dr. McCaul admitted the correctness of this assertion, but he argued that this was no reason why the word might not be used in a figurative sense. ‘Can any substantial reason,’ he asks, ‘be assigned why it should not be used figuratively?’ The mightiest and most substantial of all reasons is that it is nowhere so used.”

Now, this is what Dr. McCaul does say, “Let us for a moment suppose that Rabbi Isaac’s assertion is correct—that in no passage the word זֶרַע (seed) occurs in a figurative sense; will it therefore follow that it cannot occur in a figurative sense? Can any substantial reason be assigned why it should not be used figuratively as well as בֵן יֶ֣לֶד בְּכוֹר? The expression, ‘children of the prophets’ (הַנְּבִיאִ֑ים בְּנֵ֣י) confessedly means the disciples of the prophets. The Israelites are called ‘children of the living God’ (אֵֽל־חָֽי בְּנֵ֥י, Hosea 2:1, in the English Hosea 1:10). To Ephraim the word בֵן (son), and יֶ֣לֶד (child), is applied in Jeremiah 31:20, ‘Is Ephraim My dear son?’ (בֵן); ‘is he a pleasant child?’ (יֶ֣לֶד). Israel is also called God’s firstborn. ‘Israel is My son, My firstborn’ (יִשְׂרָאֵֽל בְכֹרִ֖י בְּנִ֥י, Exodus 4:22). If all these words be used figuratively, what reason is there for denying that זֶרַע may be used in the same way?

“But, secondly, the assertion that זֶרַע (seed) must mean the natural offspring is not true. It is used of the firstborn of the husband’s brother, when the husband had died without issue (see Genesis 38:8 and Deuteronomy 25:6). Here it cannot be contended that the child is the natural offspring of the deceased. In Isaiah 57:4, it is used figuratively—‘Are ye not children of transgressors, a seed of falsehood?’ (שׇֽׁקֶר זֶ֥רַע). And again, Malachi 2:15, ‘a godly seed’ (אֱלֹהִ֑ים זֶ֣רַע). In the thirty-first verse of the twenty-second psalm (Psalms 22:30 English), which verse is not controversial, Aben Ezra himself takes זֶ֖רַע (seed) figuratively, ‘A seed shall serve him; it shall be counted to the Lord,’ etc. Aben Ezra renders these words, ‘A seed which shall serve Him,’ etc., and adds, ‘as if that was a seed which serveth Him’ (הוא כאלו יעבדנו אשּר ורע). Again, in that famous verse Genesis 3:15, ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed,’ we cannot understand the natural offspring of the tempter, but those who do his works, and are actuated by his spirit” (“Doctrine and Interpretation of the Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah,” by Dr McCaul, pp. 29 and 30).

If the learned Professor as accurately represents the views and statements of Oxlee, Gesenius, and Schleiermacher, whom he quotes so profusely, he has but little reason for sheltering himself behind their opinions.