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Isaiah 52:11-13
New Catholic Bible
Isaiah 52:11-13
New Catholic Bible
11 Depart, depart! Leave that place behind!
Touch nothing that is unclean.
Go forth from its midst and purify yourselves,
you who carry the vessels of the Lord.[a]
12 But you need not rush forth in haste,
nor should you take flight like fugitives.
For the Lord will go before you,
and your rear guard will be the God of Israel.
Humiliation and Triumph of the Lord’s Servant[b]
13 Behold, my servant will prosper;
he will be exalted and raised to great heights.
Footnotes
- Isaiah 52:11 Cyrus restored the sacred vessels of the temple, “the vessels of the house of the Lord” (Ezr 1:7-11).
- Isaiah 52:13 The song turns into a kind of dialogue in which two divine oracles frame the reflections of people astounded by what happens to the Servant.
But who is this suffering Servant? We have already seen his mysterious face in three other poetic compositions (Isa 42:1-7; 49:19a; 50:4-11). We think spontaneously of a wise man or a prophet, a man of God who disagrees with his compatriots on their very ideas of God’s plan. For the Servant, the success of God’s plan means something quite different from political success. But the people could not tolerate this criticism of their all too human hopes. The prophet was mistreated and condemned to death (Isa 53:7-8).
But the Servant is also Israel, whose destiny the prophet embodies. The chosen people, contaminated by pagan forms of worship, was almost eradicated by the Exile. But it carries out its mission as a people that bears witness to God who chose it and is bringing it back to life; in the radiance of its resurrection, pagans will be able to recognize that the Lord of Israel is the living God who loves his people without ever changing his mind, the Savior of the human race.
The experience of the suffering Just One, whether prophet or people of God, highlights the fundamental law governing the history of salvation and every spiritual life: the power of God is manifested in human weakness. What a paradox: the Servant succeeds where Cyrus failed, because salvation comes not from battles but from martyrdom!
