by
Damien F. Mackey
“The Suffering Servant, who has the guilt of
all laid upon him (53:6), giving up his life as a sin-offering (53:10) and
bearing the sins of many (53:12), thereby carries out the ministry of the high
priest, fulfilling the figure of the priesthood from deep within. He is both
priest and victim, and in this way he achieves reconciliation”.
Pope
Benedict XVI
“Suffering Servant”
prefigures Jesus Christ
Richard B. Hays,
writing a review of Pope Benedict XVI’s book, Jesus of
Nazareth Holy Week From the Entrance Into Jerusalem To The Resurrection (2011), acknowledges
an outstanding feature of Benedict’s book: how the Old Testament prefigures and
leads to the New Testament: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/08/001-benedict-and-the-biblical-jesus
Benedict and
the Biblical Jesus
….
From beginning to end, Benedict grounds his
interpretation of Jesus in the Old as well as the New Testament. The
significance of the gospel stories is consistently explicated in relation to
the Old Testament’s typological prefiguration of Jesus, and Jesus is shown to
be the flowering or consummation of all that God had promised Israel in many
and various ways. The resulting intercanonical conversation offers many
arresting insights into Jesus’ identity and significance. Many of the
connections that Benedict discerns are traditional in patristic exegesis, but
his explication of them is artful and effective.
[End of quote]
On p. 81, Pope Benedict
credits French priest André Feuillet with pointing out how well Isaiah’s
Suffering Servant Songs throw light upon the high-priestly prayer of Jesus
(John 17):
....
Before we
consider the individual themes contained in Jesus’ high-priestly prayer, one
further Old Testament allusion should be mentioned, one that has again been
studied by André Feuillet. He shows that the renewed and deepened spiritual
understanding of the priesthood found in John 17 is already prefigured in
Isaiah’s Suffering Servant Songs, especially in Isaiah 53. The Suffering
Servant, who has the guilt of all laid upon him (53:6), giving up his life as a
sin-offering (53:10) and bearing the sins of many (53:12), thereby carries out
the ministry of the high priest, fulfilling the figure of the priesthood from
deep within. He is both priest and victim, and in this way he achieves
reconciliation. Thus the Suffering Servant Songs continue along the whole path
of exploring the deeper meaning of the priesthood and worship, in harmony with
the prophetic tradition ....
On p. 136, Benedict
returns to this theme:
For we
have yet to consider Jesus' fundamental interpretation of his mission in Mark
10:45, which likewise features the word “many”; “For the Son of [Man] also came
not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”. Here
he is clearly speaking of the sacrifice of his life, and so it is obvious that
Jesus is taking up the Suffering Servant prophecy from Isaiah 53 and linking it
to the mission of the Son of Man, giving it a new interpretation.
And then, on pp. 173 and 199, he broadens
it:
This idea of vicarious atonement is fully
developed in the figure of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, who takes the guilt of many upon
himself and thereby makes them just (53:11). In Isaiah, this figure remains
mysterious: the Song of the Suffering Servant is like a gaze into the future in
search of the one who is to come.
…. The history of
religions knows the figure of the mock king — related to the figure of the “scapegoat”.
Whatever may be afflicting the people is offloaded onto him: in this way it is
to be driven out of the world. Without realizing it, the soldiers were actually
accomplishing what those rites and ceremonies were unable to achieve: “Upon him
was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed”
(Is 53:5). Thus caricatured, Jesus is led to Pilate, and Pilate presents him to
the crowd — to all mankind: “Ecce homo”, “Here is the man!” (Jn 19:5).
Before concluding his treatment of the subject on pp. 252-253:
A pointer
towards a deeper understanding of the fundamental relationship with the word is
given by the earlier qualification: Christ died “for our sins”. Because his
death has to do with the word of God, it has to do with us, it is a dying “for”.
In the chapter of Jesus’ death on the Cross, we saw what an enormous wealth of
tradition in the form of scriptural allusions feeds into the background here,
chief among them the fourth Song of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53). Insofar
as Jesus’ death can be located within this context of God’s word and God’s
love, it is differentiated from the kind of death resulting from Man’s original
sin as a consequence of his presumption in seeking to be like God, a presumption
that could only lead to man’s plunge into wretchedness, into the destiny of
death. ….
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