Thursday 09 January 2020

Psalm: Psalm 23

Background

Today's reading from the prophecy of Isaiah is an interesting one, as it moves from what has been a strong message to the Jewish people calling them back to the way God wants them to be, to a servant song, the second of four such songs in the writing of the prophet. Words that anticipate the coming of the servant who would bring the world, not just the people of the Promised Land, back to the place the Lord wanted them to be. Here in this second song it is the servant himself who is speaking to the nations of the world. He tells how he has been commissioned by his master to undertake the task when the time is right for him to come. The servant is given the name of Israel, because the servant, whose name has not yet been revealed, would bring about everything that the nation of Israel had failed to do. The prophecy is that through the work of the servant, God the Father, the Creator would be glorified. To use the words of a familiar liturgy, he will come “to be a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of my people Israel”.

From verse 8 the text spells out what will happen when all of this work is completed, still, it would seem, in terms of a song or poem spelling out the perfection of that time of completion. A time when hunger and thirst will be defeated, when people who have been living in darkness would find light, and when the world will become whole once more. Verse 13 completes the song and reminds us of joyful times to come if only we listen to the message of the servant. “Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth, break forth, O mountains into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his suffering ones."

Through tradition this, like the other servant songs in Isaiah, are seen as prophecies of the coming of Jesus as the Messiah when the time is right.

To Ponder:

• Can we make such an assumption when the words were written so many centuries before the birth of Jesus?
• Was the message Isaiah was spelling out here just for the people of the Jewish race or was it already a spreading of God’s word beyond to the Gentile world?
• How do passages like this one reflect and influence our own Christian beliefs today?