PROPHET – Servant II – Class Fifteen

In 1892, a German scholar named Bernhard Duhm published a book titled, Das Buch Jesaiah (Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1892). Duhm is credited with being the first to identify four “songs,” or “poems” within Deutero-Isaiah (chapters 40-66) which he called Servant Songs. These four Isaiah texts (42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-7; 52:13-53:12) provide us with the basis for our ongoing study of the Servant in Isaiah. This class, the second in our series, covers the second Servant Song (Isaiah 49:1-6), but as you will see, the texts comprising these songs do not even begin to cover all that Isaiah says about the servant.