The Passion of the Word
Volume 1
Sister Anne Eason O.S.B.
In grateful, loving memory of my parents Olga and Arthur,
and my brothers Barry and Noel; to my community,
Pax Cordis Jesu, and all who have formed me.
Acknowledgments.
I would like to thank Abbess Eustochium Lee O.S.B.
and Abbess Emerita Ninian Eaglesham O.S.B.
for their support and encouragement, as well as
Father Luke Bell O.S.B. of Quarr Abbey.
I thank the nuns of Pax Cordis Jesus
who have proofread and made suggestions to the text,
in particular Sister Mary Thomas Brown O.S.B.
My thanks also go to the readers of Academia.edu.
for their warm responses
and assistance with related material.
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Table of Contents
Foreword……………………………………………………… 8
A Personal Message from the Author…………………………12
As the ambience of this work is monastic lectio divina it is
hoped that anyone who takes the spiritual life seriously will find
it enriching.
Some Broad Brush Strokes…………………………………....18
A select bibliography of works referenced in the book is given at
the end of each volume.
Chapter 2……………………………………………………... 40
Chapter 1……………………………………………………….2
Chapter 3……………………………………………………....92
Chapter 4……………………………………………………..110
No copyright. Freely received, freely given. Copyright
applies, however, to those authors quoted in this work.
References……………………………………………………132
Cover design and icon by the author. Cover design and icon by
the author. The icon is in traditional egg tempera on gesso with
gold leaf of The Suffering Servant surrounded by Eucharistic
images and selected Hebrew texts from Isaiah. This is an
iconographic representation of what is exegeted in this book.
[5]
[6]
Foreword
This book is a modern example of monastic Lectio Divina
(“Spiritual Reading”), a traditional exegetical exercise used by
Catholic monks and nuns since late antiquity for the
interpretation and application of Christian scripture. This
specialized canon of literary interpretation makes an instructive
practice out of daily reading and is commonly employed for
personal reflection and meditation, the text itself being
inseparable from the creative process—a merging of craft,
maker, and product via a singular mode of artistic expression
(like performance art, or actors and musicians on a stage). The
Passion of the Word is the philological and poetic exegesis of
Sister Anne Eason, a nun of the Order of Saint Benedict
(O.S.B.) resident at Saint Cecilia’s Abbey on the Isle of Wight,
having here compiled her private notes, inscribed over the
course of a lifetime of practice, now offered for study through a
publicly readable text.
Sister Eason weaves threads of interconnected motifs from
scenes in the Greek New Testament’s passion narrative of Jesus’
final moments leading up to the crucifixion, grounding the text
in Catholic tradition while tracing its archetypal and literary
building blocks back to Biblical Hebrew typology, Rabbinic
hermeneutics, and Syrian Orthodox tradition. The Messianic
figure of Jesus, whose visage was marred beyond recognition at
the hands of Roman authorities, is shown suffering the tragic
fate of his people before their final restoration and redemption.
The work offers a deep analysis of the texts, languages, and
liturgy formative to the words of the authors of the gospels
themselves, with special focus on the Gospel of John, the Song
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of Songs, and Isaiah’s Servant Songs. The product is a work of
faith woven into a brilliant tapestry of personal insight and
devotion—including original visionary artwork—one which
interfaces seamlessly with secular academic studies and modern
critical methodology.
Philosophy 2012, and B.A. in 2007 with Minor in Anthropology
(“with high distinction”). Teaching in Philosophy, Humanities,
and World Religions (2008-2021). Philosophy, world religions,
ancient languages, and history are foundational to his research.
The exegesis stays true to the traditional Lectio Divina
hermeneutic of “finding Christ” in the text while demonstrating
a productive use of the tradition, not as telically determinative,
but as a tool or sounding board to help bring forth a diversity of
meanings. As one small example the Hebrew/Aramaic verbal
root ܢܚܡ/ נחםis shown to denote not just “grief,” but
“consolation,” “rest,” and even “resurrection” (per the Syriac of
John 11:25), completing a full cycle of meaning. The writing
style is lyrical and does not shy away from the polyvocal
semantics of Semitic languages, teasing out idioms and
wordplays wherein Hebrew and Aramaic either operate in
tandem or find an indifferentiable unity of expression. Students
of world religions and humanities will find the text especially
useful as a means for approaching Catholic spirituality and
history through a living and faithful example of the monastic
life, one which embraces a plurality of disciplines and higher
academic studies.
Joseph Gebhardt-Klein, Secular philosopher/philologist,
translator of Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic, typographer, editor
for academia.edu (2020—2024), text contributor to Hebrew
Union College’s Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL)
Project (2014), founding member of Temple Beth Ohr (Reno,
2009), founding member of UNR’s Interfaith Students Council
(2012), reviewer for Oxford University Press (2012), M.A. in
[9]
[10]
A Personal Message
from the Author
I want to give you something other than the normal preface to a
book. I have often been asked for whom I am writing. This work
has emerged from years of monastic living, and I was not
writing for anyone except the God whom I love. But now as I
come to make this work available to others, I find that I have
written it for you also because you have been in my mind as I
have edited it. When considering publication, I thought of Steve
Biko who said: “I write what I like.” I will always be a South
African at heart and Steve Biko, founder of the Black
Consciousness Movement, was tortured just ten miles away
from the university in which I was studying Hebrew. His death
affected me profoundly. He stood for honesty and the freedom to
be true to oneself. I share that conviction, and it has stopped me
from seeking traditional publication. I write what I like in the
sense that what has arisen from my love for God in Lectio could
not be submitted to a publisher’s proscriptions. It is what it is.
We do not seek money for this work; it was freely and joyfully
received as a gift in prayer. I give it to you now also, as the
reader, in the way I have received it. I hope that you will come
to it with freedom of spirit and be open in your reception of it.
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I first began to exegete the Servant Songs of Deutero Isaiah in
the Hebrew text when I was in my late teens. In Southern Africa
where I was studying Hebrew the place itself taught me how the
Semitic mind could instinctively hold opposites together and
was intuitively contemplative and poetic. For example, one of
the oldest deserts on earth, the Namib, has ancient aquifers
underground. Its dunes are said to sing when the wind blows.
The Okavango River runs away from the sea sinking into the
desert sands. The Indian Ocean taught me how to meditate and
the gulls showed me how the Ruach HaKadesh, the Holy Spirit,
upholds us on thermals, speeds us in flight. South Africa was
beautiful and brutal. It opened my soul to the Semitic language
and thought forms. I kept my early exegeses of the Servant
Songs which were on our syllabus. The pain, love and beauty of
the Figure of these Songs ‘called’ to me. His voice was
perceptible to me in the enigmatic music of the Hebrew. There
was nothing like these Songs anywhere else. Since those early
days, His Face and Being have travelled with me through the
years as I have continued to sift the original texts, and to see
them illuminated in the Church’s Liturgies and the writings of
the Fathers. Those early exegetical explorations have stood as
milestones in the landscape, but the journey has opened new
vistas in their mysteries. They cannot be ‘proved’, but, like the
poetry which the Songs are, they can be heard, contemplated,
felt, with an interior receptivity which is attuned to the ‘voice’ of
the singer.
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I come to the text with the wealth of Tradition, but with an
openness which, for instance, has been reluctant to accept that if
the Hebrew is complex and difficult, it is probably corrupt. For
example, in Isaiah 53.8 and elsewhere, I have wrestled with a
so-called corrupt text and brought forth features in character
with the Servant and the themes of the Songs.
Likewise, sometimes, when the Hebrew could have followed a
different direction within a particular translation, I have done so,
providing an alternative translation perceptibly submerged
beneath the given, which displays different colours in the same
palette as it were. This has yielded, for example, in Isaiah 49.4,
connections with Johannine and Pauline Christology.
My original intention was simply to commit to writing an indepth exegesis of the Servant Songs, their unique place in the
Faith, and their hidden nuances, such as references to, for
example, the Eucharist. But it became clear that there should be
a more extensive exploration of them and for this I have chosen
to view them at specific moments through the prism of the Song
of Songs. This brings the whole Paschal Mystery into focus. In
the opening verse of the First Song we see the relationship
between the Father and the Servant and I have shown how the
Song of Songs could be seen to describe this relationship. I
have also progressed in my grasp of the Songs as I have moved
at depth through them over the years, and it has become clear to
me how John has understood and used them in his Gospel.
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I have become familiar with the voice of Isaiah the seer in his
ecstasy, and as the Fourth Song yielded its treasures to me, I
concluded that Isaiah had seen something of the Passion of
Christ in narrative visions. I state my commitment to this in the
chapters on the Fourth Song. I am convinced that he not only
received auditory knowledge, or that knowledge infused his
stream of consciousness in some ecstatic way, but that his eyes
or the eyes of his soul beheld the events. If it is acceptable that
eternity broke into time at the Transfiguration of Our Lord and
the disciples witnessed this, it is also acceptable that Isaiah saw
far into the future and strove to communicate what he saw and
interpret it for his disciples. For several reasons this would have
been difficult to do, and it would explain something of the
occasional complexity of the language.
I have opened the exegesis by presenting Isaiah 40 as an
introduction to the Book of Consolation. The first word
illuminates much of what lies at the heart of the Servant Songs,
and by the time we reach the Fourth Song the paradoxes and
profundity of this first word are laid bare. In Chapters 2 to 4 I
work on the First Song, the Second Song is in Chapters 5 and 6,
the Third Song is covered by Chapters 7, 8 and 9, and the great
Fourth Song by Chapters 10 to 14.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. Could this Word ever have been
crucified? Could this Word have been insulted? Could this
Word have been slapped in the face? Could this Word have been
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crowned with thorns? In order to suffer all this the Word was
made flesh, and once He had suffered it, He conquered by rising
again. So He conquered for us, to whom He made known the
pledge of the resurrection.”1
I do not share this work as an academic exercise, although there
is a foundation of academic knowledge which has informed my
understanding of the prophecies. Rather I share this as my
Lectio Divina, practised over decades. However, I have come to
the lectio of the Servant Songs as an artist as much as a
monastic. As an artist I have uncovered the form of the One
hidden in the text and revealed something of His beauty so that
He might be perceived with an understanding love. So
committed have I been as an artist to working on these texts,
that I began to paint the Servant as the Bridegroom of the
Ecclesia in tempera, the traditional medium for icons. The
tempera version grew slowly, as has the verbal, and it has taken
several years for both to be completed.
1
St Augustine, Sermon 97, used in the Lectionnaire Monastique for the 33rd
Sunday per annum, Year B.
[16]
Some Broad Brush Strokes
(1) Songs of the Pearl. (2) Exegesis as Icon.
(3) The Gospel of John.
(4) Hebrew Prophecy: Fire in the Bones.
(5) The Sacred Language.
SONGS OF THE PEARL
In the darkness inscribed by the jaws of the oyster, the suffering
grain is clothed silently in the lustre of the pearl. The Servant in
His labour and destiny evidences the great price of this pearl.
Addressing the pearl, St Ephraim sings: “Your nature resembles
the silent Lamb with His gentleness: even though a man pierces
it and hangs it on his ear, as it were on Golgotha, all the more
does it throw out its bright rays on those who behold it…”2
“… happy is he who understands the songs (of the Bible) and
sings them…, but happier yet is he who sings the Song of
Songs”, and, further, “… the Song lifts to its height the great
fundamental image, going from the first chapters of Genesis to
2
Ephrem the Syrian, On Faith Poem82, in Select Poems: tr. Sebastian P.
Brock and George A. Kiraz, (Provo: Brigham Young University Press,
2006), p. 255.
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the last chapter of Revelation: mankind has become the bride of
God…”3 The Bridegroom of the Bride, the One who makes her
to be a Bride, is the Servant. This becoming is described in the
Servant Songs.
Some of the Songs of the Bible are ancient, many of them are
liturgical in feel, and in Chapter 9 I explore the role of chant in
scripture. Augustine on the Beauty of Christ in song, 4 says:
“Listen to the song with understanding… Beautiful is God, the
Word with God ... He is beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth;
beautiful in the womb, beautiful in his parents' arms, beautiful in
his miracles, beautiful in his sufferings; beautiful in inviting to
life, beautiful in not worrying about death, beautiful in giving up
his life and beautiful in taking it up again; he is beautiful on the
Cross, beautiful in the tomb, beautiful in heaven. Listen to the
song with understanding …” and “Sing with your lives…”
According to Bulgakov the Song of Songs is a completely ‘New
Testament Book’. In other words, it describes the fulfilment of
God’s gift of love to creation in the Incarnation of His Son,
singing of the spousal love between the Son and the Church. But
before Bulgakov, the great Rabbi Akiba in the second century
said that the Song of Songs was Israel’s holiest book. “If all the
scriptures are indeed holy, the Song, for its part is very holy to
3
Origen, cited by Blaise Arminjon: The Cantata of Love, A Verse-by-Verse
Reading of the Song of Songs, Translated by Nelly Marans, (Ignatius Press,
San Francisco, 1988), pp.31 41.
4
Saint Augustine: Commentary on Psalm 44
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the extent that the whole world is not worth the day when the
Song was given to Israel.”5
It is important to hear such a voice out of second century Israel,
which gives evidence of the unique love between God and
Israel, and the ‘otherness’ of the relational bond, based on love
and goodness (the Decalogue), as compared with the
surrounding contemporary religions. With that view, one can
interpret other books of the Old Testament, and the spiritual
currents which converge to give the concept of the Messiah. It is
important for us not to assume that the Song of Songs as a
scriptural phenomenon, is the preserve of Christian mystics. It
is, for Israel, a Messianic Song which had an essential place in
Jewish history. It is about Israel waiting for the Messiah,
therefore it has to be closely related to the Servant Songs.
Henri Cazelles observed: “The Song belongs in fact to the
theological thinking of the prophet Hosea, who was the first to
compare the relationships between Yahweh and his people to
those that obtain between man and wife.” Raymon Tournay
building on Cazelles noted: “… it is impossible to account for
the complete text [of the Song] if one does not see it as a lyrical
transposition… of the traditional prophetic theme of the
wedding between Yahweh and Israel.” He adds: “Only the
nuptial allegory as it appears in Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and
the second and third parts of Isaiah can give a normal and
5
Arminjon, Cantata of Love, p.35.
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homogeneous meaning to all parts of the Song.”
Deutero Isaiah in this list.
6
He includes
A second Jewish voice says more: “A son of the chosen people,
Andre Chouraqui, says that today he reads the Song like Rabbi
Aqiba and all the long line of his ancestors as well as like his
own contemporaries: ‘I was born in a Jewish family faithful to
the traditions of Israel. Since early childhood, I heard the Song
of Songs chanted on the ancient rhythms that inspired the
Gregorian … All sang lovingly this Poem of love, and it never
occurred to anybody to censure or expurgate it… Being
transparent, it was welcomed in the transparency of pure hearts.
It was understood in reference to the Bible, to the love of
Adonai for creation, for his people, for each one of his creatures.
We were too carried away by the great and powerful current of
Hebrew thought to see in the Poem anything but the song of
absolute love, on the heights of the loftiest revelations…’”7
The Song of Songs is about the beauty of God, but so are the
Servant Songs, as described by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in a
seminar on the relationship between beauty and truth, and the
place of the Passion in that dialectic. “The One who is the
Beauty itself let himself be slapped in the face, spat upon,
crowned with thorns; the Shroud of Turin can help us imagine
this in a realistic way. However, in his Face that is so disfigured,
there appears the genuine, extreme beauty: the beauty of love
that goes "to the very end"; for this reason it is revealed as
greater than falsehood and violence. Whoever has perceived this
beauty knows that truth, and not falsehood, is the real aspiration
of the world. It is not the false that is "true," but indeed, the
Truth… However it imposes a condition: that we let ourselves
be wounded by him, and that we believe in the Love who can
risk setting aside his external beauty to proclaim, in this way,
the truth of the beautiful… We must learn to see him. If we
know him, not only in words, but if we are struck by the arrow
of his paradoxical beauty, then we will truly know him.”8 This
reference to the extreme beauty of love that goes “to the very
end” points to the Gospel of John at 13.1, and the influence of
the Servant Songs upon John’s Christology becomes
increasingly evident as the exegesis progresses through the four
Songs. In his discussion of the relationship between beauty and
the Passion, Cardinal Ratzinger lifts the discussion of the
Servant’s disfigurement onto another plane. It is in this very
laying aside of beauty, that The Beauty, and its nature, is
revealed.
His beauty is in His Passion. “As many as have been astonished
at thee, so shall his visage be inglorious among men, and his
6
Arminjon, Cantata of Love, quoting Tournay and Tournay’s citation of
Cazelles, pp. 40 - 41.
7
Andre Chouraqui, “Introduction au Poeme des Poemes”, La Bible (Paris:
Desclee de Brouwer, 1975). Quoted by Arminjon, Cantata of Love, pp.36 37.
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8
A message that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) sent to a
meeting of the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation in August
2002. The group was meeting in Rimini, Italy. This is now available on the
Vatican website.
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form among the sons of men… he shall grow up as a tender
plant before him, and as a root out of a thirsty ground: there is
no beauty in him, nor comeliness: and we have seen him, and
there is no sightlines, that we should be desirous of him…”9
When I explore His setting aside of external beauty, we will see
the relationship between His Passion and His beauty.
Abbot Peter of Celle writes: “… hidden beneath the veil of His
human flesh was the power of the Godhead and He, who
outwardly appeared to be only a man, was at the same time God,
this being hidden within and not apparent. For not even at the
moment of the transfiguration did the apostles see the divine
essence, but were given, in this mysterious way, a salutary
foretaste of the everlasting glory that would shortly belong to
Our Lord's risen body.”10
Bulgakov would say that in the Transfiguration, the Shekhina
entered the created world, and in that sense divine beauty was
no longer hidden, but visible and knowable, and abiding. “… the
dogma about the light of Mount Tabor being a true
manifestation of the Deity testifies to the power of the Lord’s
Transfiguration which revealed to men ‘the ever-abiding light’
of God… which penetrated into the world and abides in it…” 11
In the Servant Songs the Passion of the Servant veils His divine
beauty. In fact, in the entire Incarnation, the kenosis veils the
Godhead in Christ. Evidence of this is the place which the
Transfiguration occupies on the journey to Jerusalem and
Calvary. This was not merely functional by enabling the nascent
Ecclesia to remain faithful during their experience of Christ’s
rejection by the ruling elite of Judaism, it was also the truth of
who He is. “Beauty does not yet reign in this world, though it
has been enthroned in it through the divine Incarnation and
Pentecost. It follows Christ on the way to the cross; in the world
beauty is crucified. It is sacrificial beauty, and the words ‘going
forth to suffer’ are said in reference to it. Yet it is beauty. And it
is the feast of this sacrificial beauty that we celebrate on the day
of our Lord’s Transfiguration.”12
The Servant Songs belong to Israel’s prophetic heritage. The
Song of Songs is not at first sight a prophetic work yet it
nevertheless serves a prophetic purpose when it is used by the
Church in her liturgies to direct the interior gaze towards the
mysteries of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection. When we
hear these songs liturgically, those of the Servant, and the Song
of Solomon, we understand their mutuality and their
illumination of each other. The Shir HaShirim takes us beyond
9
The Fourth Servant Song, Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12: Douai-Rheims Version,
translated from the Latin Vulgate
10
Homily by Abbot Peter of Celle Sermo 66: PL 202, 843-844 (used on
the 2nd Sunday of Lent in the Lectionnaire Monastique
(Solesmes/Paris: Cerf, 1993 – 1995)
[23]
11
Sergius Bulgakov, A Bulgakov Anthology: Edited by James Pain and
Nicolas Zernov, London, SPCK, 1976, p. 190.
12
Op. cit., p.191.
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the Passion, showing His beauty in the Resurrection and His
Father’s desire for Him.
EXEGESIS AS ICON
But to superimpose in exegesis the Face of the Bridegroom of
the Song of Songs, and that of the Face of the Suffering Servant,
is to have them always distinct but held in a mobile union as is
shown in the images below. This mobility travels with the
exegesis, as one aspect emerges above the other, or blends into
the other, then re-emerges, distinct, as some other aspect yields
to it.
These Songs are icons. An icon is more than metaphor,
description, image or word, it is a living door, a portrayal
containing something of the person beyond instrumentality or
materiality which opens onto eternal realities. As Pseudo
Dionysius says of the images in Scripture, “These images are
truly mysterious, appropriate to God, and filled with a great
theological light.”13 I bring two iconographic songs, the Song of
Songs and the Servant Songs in proximity to each other and
superimpose them.
The quest is peregrine as exegesis is by nature a pilgrimage, and
the Semitic mind wanders contemplatively around the themes of
scripture. The exegetical superimposition is unlike a physical
superimposition such as the Face of the Shroud of Turin on the
Manoppello Cloth, which arrives at a third image, which is both,
yet stands authentically alone as itself. It is arrived at and exists
in a form which perhaps as such is also static.
Shroud of Turin and Manoppello cloth in mobile overlay: Sr Anne Eason
The mobility of the superimposition is also dependent upon
where the light is shone, what is in focus at any one moment,
and the condition of the eye which gazes, that is, the condition
13
Pseudo Dionysius: Letter 9, in Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, Tr.
Colm Luibheid, Classic of Western Spirituality (New York/Mahwah; Paulist
Press, 1987), P.283.
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of the soul of the viewer.14 Saint Basil says of this: “If we are
illumined by divine power and fix our eyes on the beauty of the
image [Christ] of the invisible God and through the image are
led up to the indescribable beauty of the source [the Father], it is
because we have been inseparably joined to the Spirit of
knowledge. He gives those who love the vision of truth the
power which enables them to see the image…” 15
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
Once the exegesis penetrates the body of prophecy, it becomes
clear that John not only knew the Songs intimately, as did all the
Evangelists, but he developed them uniquely in his Gospel. He
would have also learned from the insights of the Mother of the
Lord. Her unique knowledge and John’s profundity have given
us the sublime passages which are able to be traced to the
Servant Songs as one intuits John’s use of them.
Thus, for example, we have the Foot Washing in the Johannine
Corpus on the eve of the Passion which describes the identity of
the Servant. I will also show in this exegesis how the Shema
Israel is embedded in Isaiah’s Songs and how John takes it to
altogether higher levels from there. Throughout the Songs the
lifting up of the Servant and our being lifted up by the Servant
14
Cf this thought above in Andre Chouraqui, quoted by Arminjon (see note 6
above).
15
St Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, tr. David Anderson (Crestwood,
N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 18.47, p.74.
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in His Passion, are woven together in such a way that the phrase
is never far from the prophetic consciousness. John takes this
aspect of the prophecy and uses it to explain, develop, and
describe its fulfilment, for example, in Chapter 8 of his Gospel
with the woman caught in adultery.
During the walk on the beach in the post Resurrection
appearance at the Sea of Galilee Our Lord told John that he
would remain until He came. I examine how this remaining after
the crucifixion enriched his understanding of what it means to
abide in Christ and how he might have intuited this from the
Third Song. This abiding included the period in the company of
Christ’s Mother and continued long after her Assumption.
My exegesis takes its source from the Servant Songs and shows
it issuing in John’s Gospel. However, if one were to work from
the Gospel towards the prophecies, it would become clear that
the Aramaic text of John contains many moments of theological
density which are lost in the Greek.16 I refer to this here because
his knowledge and use of the Servant Songs has brought these
questions into sharp focus for me. He was an Aramaic thinker
16
Yaakob Brown, working on Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts of
John’s Gospel makes the following observation. ‘The
Greek Messias transliterates the Aramaic Mashicha and or the
Hebrew Mashiach. It is found in John 4:25 and 4:29 but nowhere
else in the New Testament. This makes John’s Gospel the one most
likely to have had a Hebrew or Aramaic original manuscript.’ Cf:
https://www.bethmelekh.com/yaakovs-commentary/yochanan-thegood-news-according-to-john-introduction-chapter-1, p.14 accessed
11/22/2022
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and speaker, and his family was of the priestly cast. John’s
reference point in the scriptures was the prophet Isaiah,
specifically the Servant Songs thereof, and the Wisdom
literature. Aramaic and Hebrew are sister languages and I
believe that the fulfilment of the Old Testament in the New is
more clearly apprehended in the Semitic language. The
Targumim help us to understand our Judaic heritage but I would
suggest that John’s Semitic roots in the prophecies are of greater
significance than their influence upon him. What sets John
absolutely apart from the Targumim is the Crucifixion expressed
as the glory of the Miltha, the Word, the Logos. John was the
only Evangelist present at the Crucifixion and therefore the only
eyewitness, but it is he who, having seen the human agony,
clothes it in the language of eternity. Andrew Gabriel Roth, a
Semitic linguistics scholar, believes that Aramaic is essential to
complete our understanding. Roth teaches that the Aramaic
‘Miltha’ is a theological term among many such in Aramaic and
that it is only possible to grasp its meaning through metaphor. It
has, he points out, no direct equivalent in any other language,
including Hebrew, and I would suggest it takes the Hebrew
‘word’ ()דבָ ר
ָ ‘davar’ to an altogether new level. He shows that
Flm ‘miltha’ has meanings not even hinted at in, for example,
the Greek (ὁ Λόγος) logos. Roth has an intuitive understanding
of John arising from the Semitic language he shares with him
and believes that Flm ‘miltha’ comes the closest to expressing
that which is infinite.17 There are other aspects to this, however:
Hebrew speakers would contend that neither the Aramaic
Flm
‘miltha’ nor the Greek Logos ὁ Λόγος include the reality of
action which the Hebrew ‘word’, ‘dabar’ ָדבָ רhas at its heart
and in its nature. For the Hebrew language and thought forms,
speaking a word, and thinking itself, is a completed action, and
Hebrew speakers would point to Genesis 1 which describes the
act of creation, to illustrate this. You can appreciate that in
exegeting from the ancient languages I have to strike some
complex balances.
HEBREW PROPHECY: FIRE IN THE BONES
It is easy for those of us who have always had the Gospels at
hand, to forget that the Early Church had no such resource, at
least until the first texts began to appear. Their Scriptures were
the books of the ‘Old Testament’ as we call it. It is all they had,
together with the Apostolic experiences as eyewitness accounts
and the oral tradition. I believe that it is for this reason, that we
need to treat the Old Testament prophecies with great respect,
and to make efforts to read them as the first Christians would
have. Therefore, the in-depth exegesis of the texts which the
early Church used so intensely, requires a conscious
ͳ
For further reading on this see: Ruach Qadim: Aramaic Origins of the
New Testament by Andrew Gabriel Roth (Tushiyah Press, 2005)
[29]
[30]
commitment. Saint Irenaeus recognises this: “Mark, the
interpreter and follower of Peter, began the Gospel which he
wrote with these words: The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets: Behold, I
send my messenger before your face who shall prepare your
way. A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of
the Lord, make straight the paths before our God. Thus Mark
clearly states that the words of the holy prophets are the
beginning of the Gospel…” And in particular he says “Mark,
inspired by the prophetic Spirit coming down to men from on
high, began with the words: The beginning of the Gospel, as it is
written in the prophet Isaiah, thus showing a swift and winged
view of the Gospel. This is the reason why he made a short and
rapid announcement, for such is the characteristic mark of
prophecy.”18
In his trilogy Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph Ratzinger, when looking
particularly at Chapter 53 of Deutero Isaiah in relation to the
Passion of Christ, agrees with Irenaeus: “‘No one had reckoned
with the possibility of the Messiah dying on the Cross. Or had
the relevant indications in sacred Scripture merely been
overlooked?’ [he is quoting Marius Reiser, Bibelkritik,]. It was
not the words of Scripture that prompted the narration of facts:
rather it was the facts themselves, at first unintelligible, that
paved a way toward a fresh understanding of Scripture…. The
Prophet – viewed through the lens of all the methods of modern
critical textual analysis – speaks as an evangelist….” 19
The prophet Isaiah gathered a school of disciples around him, as
many prophets did. They were called the ‘sons of the prophets’ 20
and they preserved and studied the prophecies of the master.
These prophecies, oracles and admonitions were collected and
often edited or redacted so that they formed a coherent body of
work. Thus, the first part of Isaiah was put together as chapters 1
to 39 concluding with a section of history covering the period.
The first section, Proto Isaiah, proclaims faith in a transcendent
Lord amidst the disasters of history. Then the great Book of
Consolation, or what some call ‘Deutero Isaiah’, begins with
chapter 40 and concludes with chapter 55. In Deutero Isaiah the
Songs of the Servant are enshrined like jewels set in amber.
They shine out among the oracles around them with a unique
flare. The section following Deutero Isaiah is called Trito Isaiah
and is a more diffuse collection of prophecies covering a broad
span of time. Between these two collections, what are known as
Proto Isaiah and Trito Isaiah, we find the Songs we are going to
discover at depth.
Because they are unique, some scholars hear a completely
different ‘voice’ in the Songs, and so they ascribe them to an
unknown author whose work was later embedded in that of
19
18
Saint Irenaeus Against the Heresies 3, 10. 6, 3.11.8
[31]
Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two (London: CTS / San
Francisco: Ignatius, 2011) pp.203 - 206
20
There are many references to these ‘sons’, or schools, or companies: see,
for instance 1 Samuel 19.20; 1 Kings 20.35; 2 Kings 2.3, 5, 7, 15
[32]
Isaiah. My own view is different: I think the Songs were the
experience of Isaiah in prophetic ecstasy, receiving a vision of
the Suffering Messiah who would come for Israel and be her
consolation. The nature of prophetic ecstasy is such that the
prophet finds himself opened to spiritual realities into which he
is drawn for the purposes of his vocation as one who stands
between God and the people of God. He stands there as a
mediator, a voice, as eyes, as a heart attuned acutely to the heart
of God. He is in some very real sense possessed by God. He is
drawn into the secrets of heaven and must do his best, once the
ecstasy is passed, or the vision is concluded, to communicate
and interpret this to the people. Therefore, it is to be expected
that he will at times ‘speak’ in a voice not his own or in a voice
different from his earlier voices.
He will at times be consumed by the ecstatic experience. Some
of the prophets recorded their experience of ecstasy, and of
being possessed by the God they loved. In their bones was the
fire of love. This created an irresistible need to communicate the
message, and in certain cases they were martyred for this. It was
their wound of love, and this set them apart from the religions
around them at the time, such as the prophets of Baal so
graphically described by Elijah. The moral quality of this bond
of love between God and the people of Israel was the
undergirding force of Hebrew prophecies: for example,
Jeremiah, who was martyred for the intense grasp of God’s love
upon him in his prophetic vocation. 21 Saint Ambrose says of
this: “… (one who loves) seems to seek or touch nothing else,
wanting only to be nourished by love itself. Therefore, holding
my soul with his right hand, and imparting to it something of his
own power, the Lord makes her to be something that she was
not, so that she can say: “I live now not with my own life but
with the life of Christ who lives in me.” … Yearning and as
though pouring out her whole being into her love, she melts
away, fainting and longing, in long and agonising suspense.
Jeremiah, too, teaches us how a soul faints for the salvation of
God: “There seemed,” he said, “to be a fire burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones, and I melted away utterly, unable to
bear it.” Inflamed, therefore, by love such as this, David says:
“My soul faints for your salvation, I have hoped in your word…
The Prophet reflected on what he had read and perceived that
while he was present in the body, bound as it were with the
bonds of this life, he was far from salvation.” 22
Eugenio Zolli, a modern Jewish voice, speaks of this uniqueness
of the Israelite Prophet and of Israel’s self-consciousness:
“Through all the vicissitudes of history, Israel has retained her
deep sense of election. The soul of the Israelite is always
wounded, always bleeding, and therefore sensitive to the point
of irascibility...” He speaks of the bond of love between the
Jewish person, and the soil of Palestine, the numinous quality of
21
See Jeremiah 20.9; Lamentations 1.13
Saint Ambrose Commentary of Saint Ambrose on Psalm 118, tr. Ide Ní
Riain RSCJ. (Dublin: Halcyon Press/Elo Publications), Sermon 11.5, p. 151.
22
[33]
[34]
the place Israel, the extreme love which it commands of
Israelites. It is in these sorts of terms that one should understand
Israel’s awareness of God and of herself. Thus he writes:
“Israel’s monotheism does not spring from a reasoning mind,
but from a heart on fire… A monotheistic conscience such as
that of Israel, a conscience that becomes fire – fire which
illumines, burns, consumes, draws – cannot be the result of
reflection… A religious reality such as Hebrew monotheism
[and I would add of love covenanted and moral] springs from a
spontaneous yearning after truth, and of it is born a special
religious history, rich in ideas, concepts and events… a thirst for
God, a passionate stretching towards an eternal mystery which
later will be summed up in one person – the God-Man… The
monotheism of Israel… is the result of a soul flinging itself
above nature against the door of heaven. A consciousness of
God such as characterised Israel from the beginning of its
history, consciousness that becomes a living fire, shining,
burning, consuming, strongest of the strong – is a fact of
revelation.” 23
It is not helpful, in my view, to be too analytic or rational about
the spiritual phenomena of prophecy, vision and ecstasy. The
whole point is that these are vehicles for a gift to be given to the
community of faith. They are God’s initiative, but they depend
on the integrity of the prophet and the absolute love he bears for
the God he adores. When that purity and love is present, the
23
Eugenio Zolli: Before the Dawn. (New York: Sheed and Ward,1954), pp.
76-78.
[35]
prophet becomes just a reed in the hands of God, just a voice in
the wilderness. He is burnt up, consumed, dissolved in prayer
and the reception of the communication. He is possessed, he is
in union with God. The whole self is given over, taken over, lost,
and found, in his receptivity and obedience. The ‘return’ to this
world and its realities is the further suffering he must endure in
his vocation as a bridge between two worlds.
Sometimes the intensity of the union with God under ecstasy,
combined with the gravity of the message, forces the prophet to
become the message, or to act it out in some way before the eyes
of the people: to live out what is being expressed to him from
his God, for example Ezekiel.24
Sometimes the intensity of the love between the prophet and the
Lord gives birth to a degree of sanctification which transforms
the prophet’s humanity: for example, the radiance of the face of
Moses the Meek after conversing with God25, and regarding
Elijah,26 who was assumed into heaven.
Or the prophet, transformed by the call to intimacy and union
with God, becomes ‘angelic’, for example Malachi27, who was
the last of the prophets. Around this prophet grew a tradition
that he was an angel and never died. During the period between
24
See Ezekiel 24.15 & following
See Exodus 34.29-35; for the description of Moses as ‘meek’, see Numbers
12.3
26
2 Kings 2.1-12
27
His name means literally, ‘my messenger’, or ‘my angel’.
25
[36]
the old and new testaments therefore, it was believed by some
that Malachi, the angelic messenger prophet, lived on.
Kingdom… John himself is Elijah, the burning and shining
lamp, the friend of the Bridegroom, who prepares the Bride.”30
There is a tradition which is held, particularly by the Eastern
Orthodox Church, regarding John the Baptist who did not write,
but spoke from out of the furnace of his love as prophet, that he
was and is also angelic.28 This grew out of the character of
John’s life and calling, as much as from his virtue. Saint Peter
Chrysologus writes of John’s parents and his birth: “So when all
the agitation of the body has become quiet, and when they have
become completely free from desires of the flesh, sterility is put
to flight, old age blossoms anew, faith conceives, and chastity
brings forth. Then is born he who is the greatest of men, the
equal of the angels…”29
There is a tradition about John the Evangelist which is similar:
that he never died but was assumed into light. We can compare
the prophet in ecstasy to one who leans on the breast of God as
John did with Christ at the Last Supper. From this listening to
the Heart of the Lord, the sublime Prologue to the Fourth Gospel
was born. John is not normally regarded as a prophet, but his
recorded ecstasies in the Apocalypse have the content of what
might be termed prophecies.
“Listen: John is a patriarch, indeed he is the end and summit of
the patriarchs. John is a prophet, but more than a prophet, for he
points out with his finger Him who is to come. John is an angel,
and a chosen one even among angels, as the Saviour Himself
testified when He said: ‘Behold, I send my messenger to prepare
the way before Me.’ John is an apostle, the first and the prince
of apostles, for he was a man sent by God. John is an evangelist,
and the first to reap the good news, preaching the Gospel of the
Applying these concepts of the ecstatic nature of Hebrew
prophecy to the Suffering Servant Songs, we can say that these
poems would not have been the voice of Isaiah in any case, but a
voice through Isaiah. It passed through him as the voice of the
One who desired to communicate something unique to His
people about the Son who would come in His Name bearing the
exact imprint of His nature,31 and would die in the flesh to
redeem His people.
The prophecies were like an arrow released into ‘the unknown’,
travelling towards distant horizons yet to emerge as Israel
travelled through the landscape of history with God. Or like a
flare which for a few seconds lights up the dark landscape of the
28
This tradition has its scriptural source in Malachi 3.1 ‘Behold, I send my
messenger …’ the same word also means ‘angel’. The prophecy was taken to
refer to John the Baptist, who is sometimes represented in iconography with
wings in line with this belief.
29
Peter Chrysologus; Sermon 91.5.
[37]
30
From a sermon attributed to St Peter Damian, used in the Lectionnaire
Monastique on the Second Sunday of Advent.
31
Hebrews 1.3
[38]
present, showing us the nature of our position. In terms of the
arrow, the horizon could be manifold, revealing itself gradually,
severally, with different aspects coming to fruition at various
times as Israel travelled forward. Eventually the prophecies
would take the complete form of a coherent perfection, as in the
Paschal Mystery of Christ, so poignantly alluded to in the
Servant Songs. Having reached the moment of fulfilment, the
prophecy continues to travel by being embodied in the Eucharist
and the phenomenon of the Ecclesia. In terms of the flare, the
prophecies illuminate the inscape of religious consciousness,
and cast their beams beyond, to the landscape, the expression of
Israel’s identity and morality, her love or lack of love. The
interface between that inscape and the landscape is where
Israel’s sanctity, or lack of it, is bathed by the same lumen.
Irenaeus puts it like this: “Christ is … hidden in the Scriptures,
for He was pointed out by types and parables, which, humanly
speaking, could not be understood before the prophecies were
fulfilled, … For all prophecies are but enigmas and ambiguities
to men, before they come to pass…”32
THE SACRED LANGUAGE
Eugenio Zolli, Rabbi of Rome and convert to Catholicism,
writes: “And the Hebrew language? It is the sacred language. In
it the word of Creation went forth and the process of creation is
described; the Law was written in it; it is the language of the
ministering angels. Some say that by the term ‘Holy Spirit’ is
meant the ‘sacred language’…”33 David Patterson from the
perspective of philosophy, has also written about the unique
character of Hebrew in Hebrew Language and Jewish
Thought.34 He asks questions about the continuity between
Semitic language and thought forms. In particular he draws a
distinction between the vocabulary of the sacred as found in
Hebrew, and which forms its thought and that which he believes
characterises the Western speculative tradition. But what is most
important for our purposes is the way Hebrew as a language
influences thought, and I think it goes further than its
vocabulary in doing so. This will become clear in my exegesis
of the texts. The vocabulary is the fruit of the unique
relationship which Israel has with God from which both the
language, thought and how they are expressed spring.
Hebrew and Aramaic have a close and complex relationship.
Hebrew was a liturgical language and the language of scripture,
similar to, perhaps, Estrangelo Eddessa which was the form and
33
32
The Fourth Book "Against Heresies" by St Irenaeus (Lib.4,26:SC 100,
712-716)
[39]
Zolli, Before the Dawn, p 64
David Patterson: Hebrew Language and Jewish Thought :Taylor &
Francis, 1 Sept 2004.
34
[40]
script for liturgical and other important documents in the
Aramaic, or like Ge’ez, which is the liturgical language of the
Ethiopian Coptic Church. Ge’ez, which is an ancient South
Semitic language, is still used only for liturgy.
But Hebrew is now a secular language in the modern state of
Israel, used, for example, to describe the contents of a box of
cereal or a brand of aftershave and it is a shock to encounter it as
such. One must wonder if the banal use of this sacred language
will affect receptivity to the sacred, for those who would
otherwise have encountered it only in the scriptures and the
liturgy. Is there now a subliminal reductionism at work in the
Hebrew language used in this place of encounter?
In the time of the prophets ancient Hebrew was a sacred
language with restricted vocabulary, and this played an
important role in the consciousness of Israel. If, for example, the
redactor used a particular word in the context of a prophecy, it
resonated for the listeners who knew it in other contexts. Poetry
works in a similar way and the prophecies and songs are
essentially poetry. But the prophet was in an authentic prophetic
ecstasy. His prophecies, when recorded and related, used the
methods of poetry. I am discussing a society in which the oral
tradition was still very important and cultures dependent upon
oral tradition have memories far surpassing our own. The poetic
form, the pun, assonance, onomatopoeia, repetition, alliteration
and the balance of parallelisms to name some features, were
used to perfection in the Semitic prophetic tradition to create a
[41]
response in the receptive soul. This was instinctive and inspired,
to preserve in the memory of the people their identity as a nation
belonging to God.
So as a particular word or sound fell on the ears of the listeners
it created concentric circles of meaning upon the hearers’
consciousness like a pebble falling on water. The circles of
meaning radiated outwards from the place of impact within the
receptive psyche in a mixture of unconscious and conscious
association. Perhaps the ordinary person could not have
explained this, but if prompted he would show that he knew the
connections and nuances. There was also a corresponding
‘downward’ projection of meaning as the phrase created or lit up
layers descending into the historical consciousness, which
reached backwards through the generations of the corporate
‘person’ who was Israel beloved of God.
The pun is particularly interesting as it functioned then rather
like we know it when we describe something in a dream. The
mind seeks a rational hold on the dream and if we listen
carefully to our description of the dream we often hear a pun
which reveals a layer of meaning the rational self cannot
otherwise attain.
Hebrew is understood in context and prophecy refers to several
contexts at once. As Hebrew is restricted in vocabulary, the
context gives meaning to the way the particular verbal root is
being used at that instance and Hebrew is founded upon the
[42]
verbal root. It is also concrete in its nature, the image being the
most powerful vehicle within the symbol of the word. I find this
especially poignant when I look at the Father’s gift to us of His
only Son. He is the Word, the Logos, the sublime and perfect
image of the Father. He embodies and completes the words used
of Him in the ancient scriptures and He completes them as
Logos (in the Greek), or Miltha (in the Aramaic). He, the Word,
is the Reality, the Effulgence and Radiance of the Father. He the
Word, is the Divine Image.
It is through this Logos, the Word of the Father, that creation
takes its being. The Hebrew for this word is ָדבָ רIF\GF\
and it is quite pragmatic. I have mentioned the Greek term,
Logos, which carries with it the sense of “reality”, a continuity
of the Word with the thought of the Father. The Gospel of John
in the Aramaic uses the word ‘miltha’ for Logos.
Flm
Miltha in Aramaic is feminine, whereas Logos in Greek is
masculine. There is no English equivalent for Miltha, but one
may begin to translate it as “emanation” or “manifestation”. It is
almost as if the Hebrew word, being image based, gives its
nature in some sense to the Aramaic and Greek terms chosen to
express the Second Person of the Trinity, and they carry this
towards an elegant completion. So, one is able, for example, to
see how He the Word, spoken of by the prophets, through whom
all things came into being, came as the Word: He the Light gave
birth to created light, but came as the Uncreated Light. This is
[43]
also the answer to the questions posed further on in Isaiah 40
about the likeness of God.
Rupert of Deutz explores and illustrates one aspect of this
balance between the pragmatic source, and the developed
symbol which is moving towards complete expression: “He
(John) came as a witness, to bear witness to the light, that all
might believe through him. This man, the evangelist says, so
great and so long awaited, came for this, was made and was
born for this, was set on high for this, so that, seen by all and
heard by all, he might bear witness to the light, that is, against
the darkness which was unwilling to perceive the light shining
in their midst, as they said: Is not this the carpenter's son? How
then does he say: I have come down from heaven? He came to
bear witness against these people that Christ Himself is the light
of men, that He is the Only-Begotten Son of God, through
whom all things were made. And indeed all the prophets bore
witness to this same light… Jesus, the Son of Mary and, as was
supposed, of Joseph, was from the beginning the Word of God,
God the Word, eternal Light … What the light intended by
doing this was that we might all believe, and by believing draw
near to Him and be enlightened.” 35
The Semitic mind does not develop language in linear form as
the Greek or Latin mind, but, being image based, is circular in
35
See Rupert of Deutz: Commentary on John’s Gospel, from Book 1. used in
the Lectionnaire Monastique on the Second Sunday of Advent.
[44]
character. The Semitic mind is also poetic in the sense that it
will move round an image as it were round a flower,
contemplatively tasting it and touching it, and so approaching
closely its mystery through this contemplation. In a like manner,
scriptural prophecies and poetry meander round a theme, return
to it, develop it elsewhere clothing it with different colours,
introducing a further layer of meaning, and so on. I have used
this Semitic characteristic in the exegesis by taking a point and
developing it in a seeming digression. This kind of pause to
dwell on some aspect belongs to the essence of lectio divina and
is necessary to develop something in the text which is an
essential element of the truth. So, for instance, I have discussed
at depth the relationship of the Servant with His Father, in ‘The
Upholding’ of the First Song and I have then continued this
further on in ‘The Inner Dialogue in God’ which falls under the
Second Servant Song. This theme emerges again at various
points as the work progresses.
It would be a mistake to consider the exegesis of Hebrew, the
Sacred Language in which inspired Scripture is written, as
merely or primarily concerned with the etymology of words. To
do so would be radically to misunderstand the ‘sacramental’
nature of the language, of Semitic thought and of the exercise of
exegesis. Exegesis of the Semitic language texts has, in fact,
little to do with the origin of the word, its source, as it were, but
is more about the use of the word in its context and with its
associations. It is the effort to understand the internal and
external reference points of what is held in the word, or by it,
both internal to the local text and external to it in other scriptural
texts and contexts.
Because these texts are peregrine in nature, this has created its
own delta like formation in the work where it is necessary to
expand on an aspect early in the Songs which will only come to
full maturity towards the end, in the Fourth Song. The early
work is vital to the later re-introduction of the theme, and it is
important to follow the footnotes which refer you to where the
exegesis of it began. This is much in evidence in the Fourth
Song. But this delta like formation is also natural to lectio
divina.
[45]
[46]
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
1
INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF CONSOLATION:
Isaiah 40
1. The Servant’s Kiss. 2. The Passion of the Word.
3. Heart of Jerusalem. 4. To Make Satisfaction. 5. Abyss.
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem …
The Book of Consolation, also called Deutero Isaiah, contains
the Four Servant Songs, and begins with Isaiah 40. This acts as
an introduction to the Songs. On the deepest level, the comfort
refers to the grief of the people and of God at man’s fall and that
this grief is mutual is key to the mystery of the Songs. In
scripture, God is said to grieve, as in the Douai Rheims
translation of Genesis 6.6 ‘being touched inwardly with sorrow
of heart’, or as other translations have it: ‘God was grieved to
the heart.’ Man grieved over his separation from God, that he
might hear His voice and see His Face. Both grieve.
I have juxtaposed Genesis 6.6 and Isaiah 40.1 to show an
essential truth not only about the Songs but also about the nature
of divine action and relationship with Israel, and by extension,
2
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
with the Christian Ecclesia. The verb ( ַנחֲמ֥ ּוna-ḥă-mū) is used
‘consolamini’, conveys the preferred meaning in Isaiah 40.1 of
this word as consolation.
to express the intense grief of God at man’s sinfulness in
Genesis 6.6, when God resolves to sweep humanity away in the
flood. In Isaiah 40.1 we find ( ַנחֲמ֥ ּוna-ḥă-mū) the Piel
imperative of the same verb, repeated for emphasis and
translated as the imperative ‘Comfort! Comfort…’, but it could
equally be translated, ‘Grieve! Grieve...’ In terms of its meaning
to ‘grieve’, in its Arabic equivalent, it is intense: ‘sigh deeply,
with the sense of grief’. Why has the scribe or the ecstatic
prophet, or redactor chosen to use a Hebrew verb in Isaiah 40.1
which is able to express both comfort and its opposite, grief.
What is happening in this choice of verb? What are we to
understand when we see it used in Genesis 6.6 to mean the
intense grief of the Lord?
This verb demonstrates the irony at work in the visions of
Isaiah, and by extension, in the Gospel of John when reflecting
the Servant Songs. We will again see this irony used in the verb
(ne-ḡa‘) נֶ֥֥גַעwhich means to be stricken but also to be
intimately touched and known by God. In the Fourth Song it
forms the final verb of Isaiah 53.8. It illustrates the way Hebrew
as a language, and the Semitic mind, work in the realm of the
spiritual. In the Septuagint translation of this verse,
Παρακαλεῖτε (parakaleite) is used to translate the verb ַנחֲמ֥ ּו
(na-ḥă-mū). The Septuagint therefore shows the connection
with the ‘Paraclete’, the Comforter, ‘who will bring you into all
truth’ (John 16.7, 13).
Jerome’s translation into Latin,
3
( נָחַ םa
a
is also used in Isaiah 66.13, where it appears in
emphatic trinitarian form: ‘As a mother comforts her child, so
will I comfort you; and you will be comforted in Jerusalem.’
Significantly Luke 2.25 uses the Greek Παρακλhstn for its
rendering of Simeon the Just waiting for the ‘consolation’ of
Israel as he enters the temple to receive the Child being
presented to the Lord. What is relevant to the argument is the
fact that the consolation expressed by Isaiah in trinitarian form,
when found in the Gospel of Luke at the Presentation, is
accompanied by a prophecy of grief. This grief specifically
mentions the piercing of the Child and the Mother by a sword.
The Aramaic Peshitta renders this prophecy in such a way that
one has the sense that Simeon was looking at both the Mother
and Child as he uttered it, and it means in the Aramaic ‘… the
sword which will be in/through You Child, will be in/through
your soul Mother also…’. Literally the Aramaic has it: in your
soul and in yours will pass a spear. Therefore, as in Isaiah, the
Gospel understands that comfort and grief are interwoven in the
saving action of God.
I suggest that in the visions of the Four Servant Songs grief and
consolation form two sides of the same mystery, and that this
wholeness reflects the full Paschal Mystery. I believe that the
prophets intuited the Paschal Mystery and were in some cases
given insight into it and tried to express it. For example, in
Isaiah 40.1 the ecstatic prophet has contracted this mystery into
4
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
one word, ַנחֲמ֥ ּו
Targums were being written, Israel was beginning to tease out
the spiritual meanings of light and darkness, the Uncreated Light
being the Word.3 In mystical terms the creature, known by the
Creator, is drawn into, and expected to appreciate, that paradox
forms the basis of the process of salvation.
a ḥă
ū . By doing this, he directs his
disciples towards a series of revelations which express this
paradox and reveal that the Servant in His Passion will embody
the mystery. The concept of a Suffering Messiah bringing life
out of death, incarnating grief and comfort in the same vocation,
is set from the start by the seer. As we proceed through the
Songs, Israel’s expectations of such a Messiah will be brought
into focus, particularly through the writings of the late Chief
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. The Prophet’s disciples were Semitic;
their minds formed for seeming contradictions, and this was
integral to their self-knowledge as the People of God. An
example of this in Israel’s liturgy is in Psalm 138/9 verses 1112: “to thee darkness and light are both alike…” Mitchell
Dahood makes the point that “creation implies full knowledge
of the person created” and that a “creation connotes cognition”. 1
To this creating God nothing is hidden, all is open to the
creating eye, for both darkness and light are alike… ‘for you
darkness shines…’ We know little about light and darkness, but
more than was known when the Psalm was written. Goethe, it is
said, did not see darkness as an absence of light, but rather as
opposite to light and interacting with it; colour, he thought,
resulted from this interaction of light and shadow. As an artist I
understand and appreciate this. Paul wrote in Corinthians that
God commanded light to shine out of darkness. 2 There is much
debate about the darkness and light of the Genesis creation
narrative, for darkness came first. By the time the Aramaic
Because of the phrases which follow this verb ַנחֲמ֥ ּוa ḥă
in Chapter 40.1, the context gives us the translation we have:
‘Comfort, comfort my people says your God…’, but I suggest
that far more was happening in the text. They would be
comforted by the Pierced One who returns them to their God.
The mystery runs something like this: If you would be
comforted you must grieve. And as the beatitudes express it:
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. To
put it literally in plain terms: in order that I the Lord may
console you in your grieving, and that I may also be consoled in
My grief, we must both grieve even more, for I must allow you
to crucify My Son. You will mourn for Him whom you have
pierced and grieve for your own transgressions, but by His
wounds you will healed.
Mystics understand these spiritual paradoxes. The most
accessible is perhaps St John of the Cross: “To reach satisfaction
in all, desire its possession in nothing, To come to the
knowledge of all, desire the knowledge of nothing…” and “To
come to enjoy what you have not, you must go by a way in
which you enjoy not. To come to the knowledge you have not,
you must go by a way in which you know not…” and, of course
1
Mitchell Dahood, Psalms Vol. III, Anchor Bible vol. 17A (New York:
Doubleday, 1970), p. 292 (on Psalm 139.13).
2
2 Corinthians 4.6
5
ū
3
The Genesis Neofiti Targum has the Hymn of the Four Nights which is
thought to be in praise of the Word.
6
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
“In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God.” 4
This last quotation could describe Israel’s exodus from Egypt, in
that the Lord brought her into the desert to speak to her soul, and
when she was dying of thirst there, He, the Rock was struck in
order to release waters for her to drink. Here we are taking the
Ecclesia’s recognition of the Rock that was struck as being the
Lord Himself and reading it back into the mystery of the
Exodus. But this paradox can be found in numerous scriptures.
The Exodus is but one. St Bernard expresses paradox similarly:
“…that the brightness of the eternal should be dimmed in the
flesh…eclipsed by the darkness of the Passion for the
enlightening of mankind…”5 or St Ambrose: “...what is
invisible in Him is made known to us through what is
visible…”6
taking but urges Adam not to despair. ‘Adam do not be
distressed,’ he says, ‘do not be distressed, that you must on
account of the sentence, depart from paradise. I will bring you
back to your inheritance! See how I have loved you! ... since
you have transgressed, leave, but do not be distressed. For when
the time has been fulfilled, I will send my Son, and by my Son
your salvation will be wrought.’ A later Arabic version adds: ‘I
have clothed you with my mercy’. The God-given garments of
skin, then, are a mercy cover, a sacrament of kindness… God is
for him a refuge. Adam is a stranger in the earth, yes, but a
shielded, sheltered stranger.”7
It is this kind of paradox essential to Divine Action, which
suffuses sacred scripture, and we should therefore expect the
language itself to reflect that in its construction and vocabulary.
This is the key to the mystery of the Songs.
The mutual grief after the Fall which forms the context of the
prophecy has been illustrated by Abbot Erik Varden OCSO
using an extant Syriac Midrash from the Fourth Century in a
paper entitled: Adam, where are you? “… Adam is led to
Eden’s gate with words of consolation. God grieves at leave4
Extracts from The Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross
St Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs II, tr. Kilian Walsh OCSO,
Cistercian Fathers 7 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1976), Sermon
28.3, p.89.
6
St Ambrose, Commentary on St Luke’s Gospel, Book 4 ch.46, used in the
Lectionnaire Monastique for the 4th Sunday per annum.
5
7
Returning to the introduction of the Paraclete into the prophecy
we see that the very next verse of Isaiah speaks of the ‘voice
crying in the wilderness’, and so points to John the Baptist’s
witness to the Baptism of the Spirit. Eusebius says of this: “…
John the Baptist proclaimed the saving manifestation of God in
the wilderness of the Jordan, where God's salvation was made
visible. This happened when Christ in His glory was made
known to all at His baptism: the heavens opened, and the Holy
Spirit came down in the form of a dove and rested upon Him;
7
Erik Varden OCSO, Adam, where are you? Paper given at the Westminster
Clergy Day, June 2015. His quotations from The Cave of Treasures are his
own translations from the Syriac text as published (with French translation)
in: La Caverne des tresors: Les deux recensions syriaques, ed. Su-MinRi,
Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 486-7, Scriptores syri, 207-8
(Louvain: Peeters, 1987).
8
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
then the voice of the Father was heard bearing witness to His
Son: This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”8
Gregory of Antioch draws together the role of the Holy Spirit
and the Son in the consolation of God’s people. His homily is
also relevant to the First Servant Song, which describes the love
of the Father for the Servant. “This is my beloved son. This is He
who, with Me, sent the Holy Spirit upon Himself; and in return,
the Spirit whom He sent, He also received in Himself. This is
He who was begotten before all ages; begotten, I say, not
created; begotten, not adopted; my Son, begotten from Me
alone, the Only-Begotten from a unique generation, as I alone
know Him and He alone knows Me. He is the perfect expression
of My perfection. This is He who bears the seal of My divinity
in Himself; He it is who represents clearly My substance; this is
My Son, not a stranger; My Son, consubstantial with Me, not
subsisting in an alien substance, consubstantial with Me as Light
from Light, Life from Life, Spring from Spring, Truth from
Truth, Power from Power, God from God. This is He who did
not leave My side when He took up His dwelling in Mary's
womb; He was neither separated from Me nor confined within
her; whole and undivided in heaven…”11
St Peter Damian likewise asks: “What has taken place, John? To
you was given what was denied to all: to baptize Him who
baptizes in the Holy Spirit and fire, and with your virginal hands
to sprinkle water upon the Son of a Virgin, Himself a Virgin. …
I admire and honour such a dignity and see a man who takes the
Kingdom of heaven by force. … For here is begun and
established the definitive purification of the new creation, and
the figures of the old law pass away in this single rite of
baptism.”9
And St John Chrysostom: “Thus John immediately declared that
he was not worthy to untie the thong of His sandal, and then he
went on to state other things, saying that the Lord was the Judge
who would render to each one in accordance with his merits,
and that He would give the Spirit in abundance to everyone.
Hence, when you see the Lord coming to be baptized, do not
despise Him. That was the reason why John restrained Him
when He presented Himself, and said: I need to be baptized by
You, and do You come to me?” 10
8
From the commentary of Eusebius of Caesaria on Isaiah, Ch. 40, translated
in A Word in Season, vol. 1 (Advent-Christmastide), ed. Henry Ashworth
OSB (Dublin: The Talbot Press, 1973), p.18.
9
From a sermon attributed to St Peter Damian, used in the Lectionnaire
Monastique for the second Sunday of Advent (Latin text taken from PL
144.634).
10
St John Chrysostom, Homily 12.1 on Matthew, used in the Lectionnaire
Monastique for the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
9
The concept of a Suffering Messiah for Israel is much debated.
Some voices from the Orthodox Jewish community would view
Isaiah as expecting a suffering Messiah when the Songs were
given to him in vision. He who brings us comfort passes through
the doorway of His Passion without comfort, save that of His
Father, and of His Blessed Mother. The Liturgies of Holy Week
have it: “I looked for someone to comfort me but found none,
11
St Gregory of Antioch: Sermo 2.2, 5, 7, used in the Lectionnaire
Monastique for the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
10
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
for someone to have pity on me but there was no one, neither
found I any to comfort me.”12 Jesus also says: “You will all flee
and leave me alone, but I am not alone, my Father is with
me.....”. 13 In our inconsolability and waiting, we are the Bride
of the Song of Songs, He the Bridegroom. He both comes to
comfort us and to take our inconsolability upon Himself.
will be like. The Servant shows us what the Messiah is like. The
Song of Songs gives us the Servant, the Lord, Resurrected,
beautiful, leaping on the mountains risen from the tomb, the
myrrh still dripping from His fingers. This is the unseen
backdrop in the Servant Songs.
THE SERVANT’S KISS
ֵ֙ ( יִ שָ ק ֵ֙נִ ֙יyiš-šā-qê-nî ) ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his
mouth’. “A kiss is a mark of love… The synagogue has no kiss,
but the church has, for she waited and loved and said, ‘Let him
kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.’ She wished with his kiss to
quench gradually the burning of the long desire that had grown
with longing for the Lord’s coming; she wished to satisfy her
thirst for this boon…”14 The theme and purpose of Isaiah 40 in
relation to the Servant and the people of God, can be heard, like
the music in the music, in the first verse of the Song of Songs.
“The Bride… makes supplication to God, whom she knows to
be her bridegroom’s father...” 15 Israel, the Bride, is waiting for
the Messiah and she knows not how to expect Him, or what He
12
Psalm 69.21
Compare John 16.32: ‘You will be scattered’: Greek σκορπίζω to dissipate,
put to flight; disperse abroad, scatter. Mark 14.27 has ‘You will all fall
away’: Greek σκανδαλίζω - to “scandalize”; to entrap, that is, trip up
(figuratively stumble).
14
Ambrose: Letter 62 to his sister
15
Origen: Homilies on the Song of Songs. Lectionnaire Monastique
13
11
Saint Anselm goes further, and in doing so, he makes the
spiritual and iconic connection between the Suffering Servant
and the Bridegroom of the Song of Songs: “Jesus was meek
when He bowed His head and breathed His last; meek when He
stretched out His arms, meek when His side was opened by the
lance, meek when both His feet were pierced by one single nail.
He was meek when he bowed down His head, Bowing His head,
it was as if He said to His beloved: " O My beloved, how often
you desired a kiss from My mouth, when you used to say to me
by the voice of My companions: Let him kiss me with the kiss of
his mouth. I am now ready, I bow My head, I offer My mouth,
kiss Me as much as you like. Do not say in your heart: 'This is
not the kind of kiss I desire, one without splendour and without
beauty, but I desire rather that glorious kiss which the angelic
citizens desire to enjoy eternally'. Do no t allow yourself to be
led astray in this manner, for if you do not first kiss the
disfigured lips, you will never be able to kiss the glorified
mouth. …” 16 Anselm’s meditation is on the Passion and
evidences the union between the Song of Songs and the Servant
Songs.
16
Anselm: Meditation 10 on the Passion of Christ. Lectionnaire Monastique
(PL 158, 761-762)
12
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
R. W Southern17 offers a discussion on how the kiss became
politically and ecclesiastically important in Western Europe. He
is viewing the kiss in a more external way which does not deny
the depth and reality of the spiritual aspects. “… as with all
(Anselm’s) symbols, there is a physical reality which was also
part of the eternal order… what is symbol in this life is reality in
Heaven… Then, at the most exalted level of all, the kiss
expressed the union of the three Persons of the Trinity, the union
of the saints, the union between God and man. At this level, the
Song of Songs was the main authority for the symbolism of the
kiss, and the first medieval Commentary on the Song of Songs
in the West, written by a Norman monk, Robert of Tombelaine,
who was one of Anselm's correspondents, explained the first
verse, ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth’, in words
which tell the whole story, so far as it concerns us here: The
mouth of the spouse is the inspiration of Christ; the kiss of the
mouth is the love of that inspiration. So the meaning is: may He
who is above all things touch me with the sweetness of His
inspiration.”
We will see when looking at the betrayal of Judas, that the
Greek in the Gospels also uses this word for kiss, and there it
points to its sad irony. But when נָשַ קa
a is used in the
In Hebrew the verb to kiss, or to touch, is also to join, to make
both one, and is used in the sense of touching, for example in
Ezekiel 3.13, in the vision of the Cherubim. נָשַ קa
a is
the root and it is indeed ‘to kiss, to join by mouth’ when used in
the future, and Arabic uses it as such. The Septuagint translates
the Hebrew word for kiss as from the verb, to love.
17
Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape by R.W. Southern. (Cambridge
University Press, 1990.) The Symbolism of the Kiss in Section VI of
Chapter 7, pp 153-154.
13
Hiph., it means to kindle, or to set fire to. I wonder if that
influenced the exegesis of the Fathers of the first centuries when
they described the ‘kiss’ of the Song as being the Holy Spirit,
(the One who kindles and baptises, or touches, with fire) and the
‘mouth’ of this verse of the Song as being the Word of the
Father. This is the kiss between the Father and the Son into
which we are now being drawn, comforted, made one, where we
belong and are at home, and the Passion of the Servant is the
narrow gate through which He passes in order to give us this
comfort, this homecoming in His Father.
The kiss of the Song of Songs is also seen by the Fathers of the
Church as a Eucharistic image. The Servant Songs, as we will
see, have Eucharistic nuances. Both Cyril of Jerusalem and
Ambrose, in the fourth century, express this. In his letter to
Catechumens, Cyril says: “when the Body of Christ will touch
your lips, then the wish of the Bride will be fulfilled for you: let
him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. The unity of love in
the Spirit is then consummated.”
The kiss of peace is mentioned in the Rule of Our Holy Father
Saint Benedict in Chapters 53 and 63. “As homage rendered to
Christ, hospitality is described with great fervour: prayer first,
then the kiss of peace… “greet one another with a holy kiss”
(Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20). This kiss of peace is mentioned in
chapter 63 as well. It is not a kiss with which friends greet one
14
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
another but a holy kiss which unites souls and forgives offences.
St Augustine calls it a great sacrament, and St Gregory the Great
tells of monks who facing shipwreck “gave one another the kiss
of peace and received the holy Eucharist.” Tertullian calls it the
‘seal of prayer’”.18
points us to the Song of Songs where the kiss of the Bridegroom
describes the fullness of truth. In the account which Saint
Matthew gives of this kiss in the Garden,21 the Aramaic takes
the same word as the Hebrew of the Song of Songs for kiss, that
Gethsemane shows the dark reflection of this divine kiss acted
out there, for by bringing the kiss of the Father to human beings,
the Son had to go by the way of the opposite: betrayal by a
kiss.19 The cry to comfort God’s people, brought for the One
who came to comfort, the discomfit of the kiss of Judas. When
Our Lord, on the brink of His Passion, stood before Judas, did
the meaning of the kiss in the soulscape of desire I have
described above, reverberate in His thought? He asked Judas,
calling him by his name: “Judas, do you betray the Son of Man
with a kiss?”20 The kiss of the betraying disciple was destined to
be a dark attempt to contradict the truth of the reality between
Father and Son, and between Son and Ecclesia.
Aramaic of Genesis 27. 26, which is the moment when Isaac
finally tests his son, trying to identify him, also uses this word
for kiss. Isaac asks Jacob, who is stealing the blessing of Esau,
to draw near to him and kiss him. This is a moment of betrayal
also, a moment when truth is being sought, and a death is
immanent. Isaac seeks the truth of identity in the closeness of a
kiss. Judas lost the truth of the identity of the Son of Man in his
kiss, and Jesus questioned Judas about his kiss, to expose his
identity to Judas himself.
The divine kiss is luminous. Its light shone in the darkness of
Gethsemane, and the darkness could neither comprehend,
quench nor overwhelm it at the moment of betrayal. In Judas’
action the darkness kissed the Light. We associate the meeting
of darkness and light with dawn and sunset. It was a sunset, and
but a brief night, before the Son’s rise on the third day. Judas
18
Sister Mary David Totah OSB: Commentary on the Rule of Saint Benedict,
Series 2.
19
Note in this the discussion about paradox in the use of the verb
ַנחֲמ֥ ּוa ḥă ū as above
20
Luke 22.48
15
is
Fq4wnb
(
) from (
)
Q4n.
The
The secondary use of this word in the Aramaic, is, as in the
Hebrew, to touch, or to have contact, but the Aramaic Lexicon
ascribes this to contact with water and cites the flood which
touched ‘the lower parts of Paradise’. This is Genesis language,
creation still in darkness and without man who would bring
another kind of darkness. And the Spirit is hovering, brooding
over the abyss opened up in Gethsemane, an abyss of chaos but
also an abyss of divine love, endless, eternal, ready to save. On
the third day the One in the Genesis account, through whom it
was once said ‘Let there be light’, who is the Light, will bring to
creation the spiritual, eternal Light.
21
Matthew 26.45ff
16
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Judas sought the Christ, and in seeking, found, and so, touched
in some way, the Paradise offered in this companionship. This
‘touch’ was later to become, in Judas’ case, the touch of death,
his Saviour’s and his own, through his dark choices. In
Matthew’s account, Christ asks Judas ‘My friend, is it for this
reason you have come?’22 What a question. If Judas had asked
Christ the question, the response would be that He has come to
bring the divine kiss, to comfort the People of God. Therefore
this question put to Judas by Our Lord, is densely weighted with
meaning in the fatal encounter in the Garden. Judas is not, as
John the Baptist was, the friend of the Bridegroom, and the way
prepared by Judas is the Via Dolorosa. But to call Judas ‘friend’
is not irony on Christ’s part. It is truth from the mouth of Truth.
In the Aramaic of Matthew the word for ‘friend’ from the root
poised to betray what he desires most. He has chosen not to be
(
)
mXr
which expresses the deep loving bond, is not
the chosen word, but rather friend as companion and neighbour,
from the root (
)
rBX..
The Gospel account of
the beloved friend, of the verb to love (
17
This
I have explored the divine kiss in the first verse of the Song of
Songs, as longed for by Israel, as given by Christ to the Church,
as at the heart of the Passion of the Servant Songs. The betrayed
Bridegroom about to leave Gethsemane to enter upon the Way
of the Cross, perhaps remembers another’s kisses still felt on
His feet: the kisses of the woman who recently anointed Him,
kissing His feet and wiping them with her hair. Those kisses
contained within them the quality of the kiss of Ruth: for she
who anointed Him, like so many others, would cling to Him and
go wherever He went. His people would be her people, and His
God her God.
23
Matthew 26.50
mXr.
kind of love, this noun which Christ used for His friends, for
example of both Peter and John in the meeting on the beach of
the Lake after the Resurrection,23 was not to be used of Judas.
The poignancy is thus captured in the language.
Matthew in the Greek picks up this nuance in the choice of
εταῖρε for friend as companion or associate. In Saint Matthew’s
account in the Greek, it is written that Judas ardently kissed
Christ. The Greek being κατεϕιλησεν. Is it normal for a
companion to kiss ardently? There is here a persistent pretence,
a symptom of the inner chaos in Judas. Christ acknowledges the
choice of Judas in this use of the word as companion, which has
an almost secular flavour to it. Judas is everyman at this point,
who longs for the Bridegroom, the delight of his soul, yet who is
22
)
John 21.1ff.
18
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
THE PASSION OF THE WORD
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
The Passion of the Servant arises in the Godhead and He returns
to His Father through His Passion. I will explore this when we
consider what Pope Benedict XVI calls the Inner Dialogue in
God. The Aramaic of the Prologue to John’s Gospel liberates
the terms he uses for the Pre Existent One from the Greek
philosophical connections to which they have often been linked,
and places them firmly in their natural Semitic context. It is now
accepted that the context, the vocabulary and style of the Fourth
Gospel is Semitic and that John was versed in Rabbinic thought
and method. Aramaic speakers would contest that this Greek
term (ὁ Λόγος) logos does not and cannot do justice to what
John really meant to convey of the Pre-existent One, the Word.
Aramaic has the unique word
The Passion of the Word: Paschal moon over St Cecilia’s Abbey in 2015 and
the Crucifixion featuring the Mother of the Lord and John, in transparent
overlay. Sister Anne Eason O.S.B.
The Passion expresses His primeval beauty, radiance and love,
and is the full expression of the glory of the Word, the Miltha.
The Light which enlightens every man and which shines in the
darkness of creation, shines in the Passion because it is the new
creation, the ‘Behold I make all things new’ moment when the
Bridegroom takes the Bride, the Ecclesia, to Himself. John was
the only Evangelist to witness the Crucifixion, but it is he who,
having seen the human agony, describes the Logos, the Miltha,
as the Eternal Pre Existent One.24
24
Flm ‘Miltha’ which, according
to those who claim Aramaic primacy of the Gospels, preceded
the Greek which is an inadequate translation of it. Aramaic
speakers would advise that one does not attempt to translate the
word ‘Miltha’ Flm at all. Andrew Gabriel Roth says: “…Over
the centuries,
Flm
miltha has been rendered as "force",
"manifestation", "emanation", "substance" as well as "word",
and even all these put together still don't come close to
approaching its totality, which is why it’s there in the first verse.
Surely though it was also this very diversity that Yochanan
[John] wanted, since only a nearly infinite-meaning word can
attempt to do justice to that which is infinite in the first place.”
25
I would add that the Aramaic of the first line of John’s
The Mystery of Miltha, used by permission of Andrew Gabriel Roth, from
Ruach Qadim, Aramaic Origins of the New Testament.
John 17.4-5
19
20
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Gospel reads literally: In beginning is was the Miltha, and the
Miltha is was with God and the Miltha is was God. The ‘is was’
is an idiomatic Aramaic usage which conveys to our ear the
it is and shall be without end. And for his love he said very
sweetly this: If I could suffer more, I should suffer more...” 27.
“For just as he was most tender and most pure, so he was most
strong and powerful to suffer. And he suffered... in his
compassion and love.”28 In our meditations on the First Servant
Song we will see that it was the purity and innocence of the
Servant which enabled that strength to suffer.
eternal sense of the Flm miltha.
There are scholars who argue for John’s dependence on the
Aramaic Targumim and his thematic harmony with the writings
of the Qumran sect.26 John would of course have known them,
as he would have known the Qumran community, but he was
independent, even of the Synoptic Gospels. What sets John apart
from the Targumim is not only the Crucifixion as an expression
of the glory of the Miltha, the Word, the Logos, but more, his
emphasis on the Incarnation of the Word, which is diagonally
opposed to the Targumim concern that God never enters into
creation Himself but is represented by the Memra.
The spirituality of the Western Church focuses on the extreme
physical and spiritual suffering of Christ, but there are Western
mystics like Julian of Norwich who emphasise the love of Christ
in His Passion: “And contemplating all this through his grace, I
saw that the love in him which he has for our souls was so
strong that he willingly chose suffering with a great desire, and
suffered it meekly with a great joy.” Further on in Chapter 22
she says: “The love which made him suffer surpasses all his
sufferings, as much as heaven is above earth; for the suffering
was a noble, precious and honourable deed, performed once in
time by the operation of love. And love was without beginning,
26
Cf for example THE TARGUM OF ISAIAH AND THE JOHANNINE
LITERATURE, JOHN L. RONNING, and M. McNamara, ‘“To Prepare a RestingPlace for You”: A Targumic Expression and John 14,2–3
21
Some Fathers of the Church, for example Baldwin of Ford, hold
the same position: “For in that outpouring of blood it was not
only the injustice of the persecutors which was at work, but also
the love of the Saviour. But injustice accomplished a work of
injustice; love accomplished a work of love. It was not injustice
but love that wrought our salvation. However, injustice poured
out Christ's blood, and poured itself out, so that the thoughts of
many hearts might be revealed; but love also poured out Christ's
blood, and poured itself out, so that man might know how much
he is loved by God, who did not spare His own Son. For God so
loved the world that He gave His only Son. The Only-Begotten
Son was offered, not because the Jews prevailed, but because
He Himself willed it, He who having loved His own, loved them
to the end. That end was death accepted for those whom He
loved. That is the end of all perfection, the end of perfect love.
Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends. The love that was in Christ was more powerful in
His death than the injustice of the Jews. Indeed, injustice could
only do what love allowed it to do… The Father delivered up
Julian of Norwich, ca. 8 November 1342 – ca. 1416. See her Revelations of
Divine Love, available in several versions of the original Middle English
28
Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 20.
27
22
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
His Son, and the Son delivered up Himself, out of love. Love,
however, is not culpable of this handing over; it is innocent
although Christ did die. Love alone may freely do what it
wishes. Love alone is able to constrain God as if it were all
powerful. It was love which displaced Him from heaven; and it
was love which placed Him on the cross ...”29
He has a heart, and he seeks our heart …” 32 Was the Italian
Romance poet, Dante, a mystic? I do not know. But he describes
the “love that moves the sun and the other stars”33 as an
immense Light, and at the heart of that Light was a human Face,
the Face of Christ. The Ancient Judaic tradition states that man
cannot see the Face of God and live.34 From the Incarnation of
the Son we know the Name and the Face of God, and both
reflect divine love.
The Eastern Churches are oriented towards the Transcendent
Divinity which preceded and subsisted in Christ’s suffering
humanity throughout the Passion. This can be seen in their
icons of the Passion. These iconographers were spiritually and
intellectually formed by the Mandylion.30 It conveys patient,
tender love, not a traumatised visage. I think here of the Rouault
Face of Christ which blazes out of the canvas with fierce,
unfocussed eyes and tension in every line. The Mandylion
conveys serenity, beauty, majesty, and innocence, as well as
intense suffering. In this age of the importance of image, the
sindone invite us to contemplate the essential secret of the
geography of Christ’s Passion.31 Cardinal Ratzinger has said
that Christianity gives humanity a sense of personhood, and this
is visible in the Face and posture of the Crucified One: “But
God has a name, and God calls us by our name. He is a Person,
and he seeks the person. He has a face, and he seeks our face.
The journalist Paul Badde believes that the sindone known as
the Manoppella Cloth is the original veil of Veronica. The
following is from an article he wrote for Inside the Vatican: “It
shows the bearded face of a man with Jewish side curls at the
temples... a man whose nose has been smashed like one of the
hostages of today’s ‘jihadists’... or one of the detainees in the
Abu Ghreib prison. The right cheek is swollen, the beard partly
ripped off. The forehead and lips have on them hints of pink,
suggesting freshly healed wounds. Inexplicable peace fills the
gaze out of the wide-open eyes. Amazement, astonishment,
surprise. Gentle compassion. No despair, no pain, no wrath. It
is like the face of a man who has just awakened to a new
morning...” Chiara Vigo, described as one of the world’s few
remaining byssus weavers, made this comment: “It has the eyes
of a lamb... and a lion...” The Manoppello Cloth is a complex
29
From the Treatises of Baldwin of Ford. Lectionnaire Monastique
This sacred cloth contains the image of the face of Christ. Some traditions
refer to the Mandylion in connection with the healing of King Abgar of
Edessa by Jesus by means of this cloth, and others to a cloth used by Jesus
during the Passion.
31
This term refers to the Shroud itself as well as to the veil of Veronica and
other sacred burial cloths used for the body of Jesus.
30
23
32
E.g., see Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict The God of Jesus Christ
– meditations on the Triune God (published by Ignatius Press 2008.)
33
Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321, Divine Comedy, Part III, Canto XXXIII
34
Exodus 33.20
24
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
sindone made of byssus, which admits light, affecting what can
be seen, but the expression of the Face is constant. 35
Jordan and the Dead Sea. Both river and desert border upon the
region near to Qumran, so that John would not have been able to
avoid contact with the Essene monks. It is said that they made
the book of the Prophet Isaiah the object of their special study
and devotion. The verse which most characterises John’s
ministry is quoted in the Rule of Qumran: “The voice of one that
crieth, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord, make
straight in the desert a highway for our God”. John’s manner of
baptising recalls the Essene baptism, his food, locusts and
honey, the Essene diet. However, he is not ultimately a member
of a group, but a spirit filled prophet with a new message…”.36
HEART OF JERUSALEM
In Isaiah 40.2-3 the prophet is instructed to “Speak to the heart
of Jerusalem and cry to her that she has completed her hard
service, that her sin is paid for, that she has received the double
at the hand of the Lord for all her sins. A voice of one calling in
the desert “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight! in the
wilderness a highway for our God” This is my literal translation
of the original Hebrew. These verses are attributed to John the
Baptist, the Forerunner by the Early Church and the Fathers.
Today, scholars are acknowledging that there was a relationship
of some kind between the Baptist and the Essenes. He does not
appear to have been a member of the sect, but certainly had
contact with them. From the Dead Sea Scrolls we know how
important the Prophecy of Isaiah was to Essene communities,
the most influential of which had established themselves in the
wilderness area into which John withdrew. “Tradition has him
instructed by angels, yet he, too, must have had an education
and formation. There is a current belief that he was formed by
the Essenes, supported by Christian sources, which understand
the wilderness mentioned by Luke to be the Judean desert, the
mountainous area to the south and east of Jerusalem along the
35
Inside the Vatican: The Holy Face, October 2004. Pp.25 ff.
25
When the Baptist is asked who he is in the Prologue to John’s
Gospel, something very beautiful can be discerned in the
Aramaic of this dialogue. It is complex to explain to non Semitic
speakers, but it is worth persevering through this analysis. A
native Semitic speaker analysed John 1.22 and I quote him
directly. In his method [G] stands for Greek, and [H] for
Hebrew. “Joh 1:22 Then they said to him (John the Baptist),
“Who are you? That we may give an answer to them that sent
us. What do you say about yourself?” Joh 1:23 He (John the
Baptist) said, “I am the voice (Phone[G], Kol[H]) of one crying
(Boao[G], Korei[H])
in
the
wilderness
(Eremos[G], Bamidbar[H] Ba-in and mi-from davar-the Word),
Make straight the way (Hodos[G], Derech[H]) of the Lord
(Kurios[G], YHVH[H]),” speaks Yishayahu[H] (Isaiah, YHVH
He has saved) the prophet (Ho-Prophetes[G], Ha-Navi[H])
36
Abbess Ninian Eaglesham: Conference for the Feast of the Nativity of John
the Baptist 2016. Source: Jean Steinmann, Saint John the Baptist and the
Desert Tradition, (London, Longmans, first published 1958.) Pp. 58 ff.
26
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
[Isaiah 40:3]. Yochanan the Immerser was certain of his role
and calling and answered without fear using the words of the
prophet Isaiah 40:3: “A voice of one calling: ‘In the wilderness
prepare the way for the YHVH; make straight in the desert a
way for our Elohim.’”37
was a prophet, and the fate of the prophets was well known.
They were martyred for the truth, as John himself would be.
‘Speak to the heart of Jerusalem…’ The scribe chooses the word
a
a ָדבַ רfor this command ‘to speak’.39 It is a choice
which is meant to convey action and practicality. And as we
Yaakov Brown has taken the word for wilderness, which is the
same in both Hebrew and Aramaic, though with different
scripts, and uncovered the hidden pun in the way the phrase is
constructed. This is a typically Semitic thing to do. It is the
both-and, rather than the either-or way of seeing reality. It
belongs with the oral tradition, the spoken word, and Rabbinic
method. The Hebrew and Aramaic noun for ‘wilderness’ is from
the root
rbd
(
in the Aramaic, and ָדבַ ר
a
a in
the Hebrew: the same root, and the same meaning; ‘word’.
Yaakov Brown has capitalised Word, thus making it understood
as the Miltha, the Logos, the Incarnate Lord. Therefore the
traditional translation is: ‘I am a voice crying in the wilderness’,
and the alternative interpretation of
0rbdmb / בַ ִמ ְדבָ רis: ‘I
have seen in the analysis of John’s Prologue, the root
(
in the Aramaic, and ָדבַ ר
a
rbd
a in the Hebrew form
the basis of a profound relationship with the Baptist and the
Word. I have always imagined the Baptist’s mental strength to
be matched by his physical strength. He would have been
untroubled by his solitude, and the Apocryphal writings talk of
him as being at peace with nature in its wild state.40 This angelic
figure was commanded to speak to the heart of Jerusalem and
this is similar to Jeremiah’s Lamentations in which Jerusalem is
a mirror of Christ.
The visionary, Anne Catherine Emmerich presents John at the
end of his time as the Forerunner, in his last imprisonment just
before his death, in the following description. It shows
am a voice crying in and from the Word’.
39
The angelic figure of the Baptist points to the Servant as the “the
Lamb of God”.38 The Forerunner obviously had no problems
with a suffering Messiah. He knew it had to be so. After all John
37
https://www.bethmelekh.com/yaakovs-commentary/yochanan-the-goodnews-according-to-john-introduction-chapter-1 Accessed November 2022
38
John 1.29,36
27
Isaiah 40.2
For example, the Life of John the Baptist by Serapion, writing about
390AD: ‘And John dwelt in the desert, and God and His angels were with
him. He lived in great asceticism and devotion. His only food was grass and
wild honey. He prayed constantly, fasted much and was in expectation of the
salvation of Israel’. The visionary Anne Catherine Emmerich writes that she
saw the young John by a ‘little lake with a low shore covered with white
sand. I saw him there wading far out into the water. The fish swam up and
gathered around him. He lived in this region a long time, and I saw that he
wove for himself out of branches a sleeping hut among the bushes.’ The Life
of Jesus Christ, Tan Books, Vol I, page 319
40
28
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
something of his humanity. “John stood in his prison crying in a
voice loud enough to be heard without… His countenance
always wore an expression of thoughtfulness and sadness. He
looked like one who loved and heralded the Lamb of God, but
who knew the bitter death in store for Him.”41
Astonishingly perhaps, the Hebrew word for the payment of
Jerusalem for her sin is the same as that used for the Lord’s
delight in His Servant in the First Song: Isaiah 42.1: “Behold,
[here is] my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my
soul delights…” When this happens in the sacred texts it is
never accidental. It conveys an aspect of the mystery of the
Father’s love for the Son as portrayed in Deutero Isaiah. This is
not a play on the Hebrew, or a pun, which is itself an important
dimension of prophetic method. It illustrates why it is important
to move through the Songs hand in hand with chapter 40. The
word we refer to is ( נִ ְר ָצָ֖הnir-ṣāh) which is the niphal passive
TO MAKE SATISFACTION
The Servant is to take upon Himself ‘hard servitude’42 for
Jerusalem and will complete it eternally. This ‘completion’ is in
Hebrew מָ לאa a which can be associated with the heart,
with priesthood and with sacrifice. Its resonances support the
task of the sacrificial Lamb. John understood this. Servitude in
the original Hebrew is from the root עָ בַ דa a and includes
servitude ‘in the Temple’. Both as priest and Lamb the Servant
will serve in the temple and will cleanse Israel’s heart in the
Holy of Holies, for He Himself is that sanctuary. There “He
becomes sin who knew no sin”43 and expiates that sin. If we
push the spiritual meaning inherent in this even further, Christ is
the Temple, and we become that Temple, His Body, the Church.
We are directly implicated in this prophetic moment in Isaiah
for like John the Forerunner we have our task.
41
Anne Catherine Emmerich: The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical
Revelations. Volume 2, chapter 9, page 168.
42
Lamentations 1.3: Hebrew עבדהservitude
43
2 Corinthians 5.21
29
of ( ָרצָ הrā-Tzāh).
This root means primarily ‘to delight in’,
‘to be satisfied’ and we will explore it in the First Song. Here it
is clearly used in the context of penance for sin. What does the
scribe expect us to understand? What does the prophet himself
understand by this? It reflects the nature of the Father’s love for
His Son: His delight is an expression of His respect and
reverence for the Son who lays aside His beauty in order to
reveal His love that goes to the very end. We will exegete this
fully later but here is an example of how the Fathers wrote of it:
“If, however, you see My Son suffering hunger, thirst, in need
of sleep, trudging the roads, or tired, or beaten with scourges, or
crucified by His own will, pierced with nails by His own full
consent, dead because He so willed it, or confined in the
sepulchre as one dead, impute all that to His human flesh. On
the other hand, if you see my Son purifying lepers with a word,
healing with clay the eyes of one born blind, altering the natural
30
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
elements by a gesture, feeding five thousand men with five
loaves of bread, attribute all that to His divinity…”44
This word ֙( ָרצָ הrā-Tzāh) is a daring choice. The prophet’s eye
is piercing the distant future, to focus on a mysterious figure
who will one day take this penance on Himself. He will be the
Servant of the Lord, the Delight of His Father’s soul, the One of
whom scripture sings ‘My Beloved is mine and I am His’.45 But
in this case I am suggesting it is the mutual love between Father
and Son which is in the frame.
Jerusalem is paying for her iniquity עוֺנָ ָּ֑ה
ֲ (‘ă-wō-nāh) which is
in the singular and whose root means: to crook, literally or
figuratively; to make crooked, commit iniquity, do wrong. The
perversity is a ‘turning upside down’ of what is good and right.
And in this sense the prophet is making a pun on the
crookedness which the Forerunner must ‘make straight’ as is
referred to in the prophecy.
Jerusalem received double from the hand of the Lord which is a
manifold measure for her sin. The word ‘sin’, now, is the usual
word חַ טָ אָ ה
a a a
which describes an offence,
sometimes habitual sinfulness, and its penalty, also an offender,
punishment. It is both the small sense of ‘missing one’s footing’,
and the ultimate sense of grievous fault. The Servant will take
the full spectrum into His soul and transform it.
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
ABYSS
In Isaiah 40 the scribe uses two descriptions of the desert to be
fructified and civilized. One is what is called ‘arabah’ and is
used even today as a proper noun for vast desert landscapes. The
other is ‘midbar’. Both are places which God chooses for His
betrothal relationship with Israel and John the Baptist is the
Friend of the Bridegroom. Eusebius of Caesaria writes of the
location and its meaning: “The voice of one crying in the
wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths
of our God. This text clearly states that it is not in Jerusalem that
the prophecy is to be fulfilled, but in the wilderness; it is there
that the glory of the Lord shall appear and the salvation of God
be made known to all flesh… all the nations, in their ignorance
of God, were like deserts which God's holy men and prophets
had been prevented from entering. It is for this reason that the
voice commands the preparation of a highway for the Word…”
46
Origen uses allegory to illuminate the task of the Baptist, the
‘raising of the valleys’, or what I have exegeted as the ‘abyss’
in the self. “… what is written of John: The voice of one crying
in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight. What follows points more directly to our Lord and
Saviour, for it is through Him rather than John that every valley
shall be lifted up. If each one of us considers what kind of
person he was before he believed in Christ, he will discover in
his former self a deep and precipitous valley, plunging into the
44
Sermons of St Gregory of Antioch: Lectionnaire Monastique Sermo
2,2.5.7 : PG 88, 1871.1875.1878
45
Song of Songs 6.3
31
46
From the commentaries of Eusibius of Caesaria : On Isaiah Lectionnaire
Monastique (Cap.40: PG 24, 366-367)
32
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
lowest depths. But when the Lord Jesus came and sent the Holy
Spirit as His abiding representative, then every valley shall be
lifted up with good works and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The
love of God no longer allows any such valley to remain in you,
and if you have peace, patience and goodness, not only do you
cease to be a valley, but you begin to be a mountain of God.”47
( ְתהָ֑ ֹוםṯə-hō-wm) is also a wasteland, a desert, figuratively a
The Church’s liturgy ascribes aspects of Chapter 40 of Isaiah to
the Forerunner. In Isaiah 40.3, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’
the Hebrew word ( פַ ָ֖נ ּוpan-nū from פָ נָה
a
a
means ‘to
turn, to prepare’. It is in the imperative pi’el form and we would
expect that. In the Hebrew it carries strong associations with
what it means to have a face, to be a person with a presence, for
‘face’ comes from the same verbal root. In the creation
narratives of Genesis the void, the abyss, the desert are all
understood by the mind of the Ancient, to have a face.48 Thus
the Baptist is called to restore humanity to its dignity by turning
it from its perversity and he is identified with the Genesis act of
creation and redemption. In the opening verses of Genesis the
‘abyss’ in creation is a metaphor for the existential abyss. The
primeval surging mass of water, the ( ְתהָ֑ ֹוםṯə-hō-wm) is
formless void. From it God created life, form and substance, so
the theological meaning is that the divine will brings coherence
into creation and without that will there is chaos, emptiness,
random, untameable matter. This is not a literal concept. The
worthless thing; confusion, an empty place, nothing, vain,
vanity, and is the wilderness where John is located. To consider
this in Chapter 40 is important as it will feature in Isaiah 49.4
where its interpretation governs the Christological direction the
translation takes. In the Aramaic it means when used of earth,
that the earth rages and roars. It is the energy of earth’s disorder.
Immediately this word ‘vanity’ suggests the Wisdom Literature
of Israel.49 Genesis, like the Wisdom books, is a late book. But
the poetry of this Priestly passage points to its antiquity, where it
lived in the oral tradition of the people of Israel. The very phrase
( תֺֹ֙ הּ֙ו ֵ֙ ָו ֺֹ֔בהּוṯō-hū wā-ḇō-hū rests on the ear like an ancient
piece of liturgy. It sounds like the poetry of a chant. Both words
mean emptiness and void and they have been strung together in
repetition like a primitive rhyme. It is the sound of primaeval
earth. This evokes the image of Wisdom drawing a circle on the
face of the deep.50 It is also Pauline. In the Epistle to the
Romans he describes the Holy Spirit as magister and consoler of
the groaning human spirit.51
In the mystical tradition, a Beguine contemplative writes of the
soul: “If it maintains its worthy state, the soul is a bottomless
abyss in which God suffices to himself; and his own selfsufficiency ever finds fruition in this soul to the full, as the soul
for its part ever does in him. Soul is a way for the passage of
49
From the homilies of Origen on Luke Lectionnaire Monastique (Hom. 22,
1-3: SC 87, 300-302)
48
Meditation on Genesis Chapter 1.2: The Spirit Brooded upon the Face of
the Deep, 2012: Sister Anne Eason O.S.B.
Compare particularly Job 26.7; and in the prophetic literature see Isaiah
24.10, 34.11, 44.9, 45.18,19, 59.4 and Jeremiah 4.23. The word is also found
at 1 Samuel 12.21
50
Proverbs 8.27; compare also Job 26.10
51
Romans 8.26
33
34
47
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
God from his depths into his liberty; and God is a way for the
passage of the soul into its liberty, that is, into his inmost depths,
which cannot be touched except by the soul’s abyss...”52 This
language has echoes in the Psalms53 but very clearly in such
places elsewhere as “the Spirit searches everything, even the
depths of God...”54 Hadewijch continues: “... I was taken up in
the spirit. There I saw a very deep whirlpool, wide and
exceedingly dark; in this abyss all beings were included... The
darkness illuminated and penetrated everything... It was the
entire omnipotence of our Beloved. In it I saw the Lamb... I
perceived an Infant being born in the souls who love in secret,
the souls hidden from their own eyes in the deep abyss of which
I speak, and to whom nothing is lacking but that they lose
themselves in it...”55 She writes in mystic and apocalyptic
imagery. Her perception of the Lamb in the abyss illustrates that
Christ entered into the darkness and blindness of our human
nature and ‘became sin though He knew no sin.’56 It is from the
Incarnation and the Passion, that the abyss is definitively
recreated, with the sacrificial Lamb at its heart. In Genesis the
Priestly scribe says: ‘darkness is upon the face of the deep’, and
Hadewijch writes that it is the darkness which illuminates. Other
mystics write of the ‘dazzling darkness’.57 The Psalmist says of
God that for Him, darkness and light are both alike as we
examined above.58 In other words He who created darkness is
not blinded by it and illuminates it from within its own nature.
52
I find it telling that the ancient mind describes this void as
having a face. The Hebrew has the phrase ‘ עַ ל־ ְפנ ֵ֣יupon the
face’ and I believe it is neither accidental nor pragmatic and is
more than a metaphor. Suffering has a face, love has a face, and
the abyss has a face. Upon the face of the abyss was darkness
(wə-ḥō-šeḵ וְ ָֺ֖חשְך. Every mystic who knows the void, ְתהָ֑ ֹום
(ṯə-hō-wm) within the self, has an interior ‘face’ or identity. I
will look more deeply at the significance of this inner face as we
examine the question of suffering and recognition in the Servant
Songs. If that inner face is blind, insight must be suffered into
being through the darkness which is endured. St Bernard says of
this: “I have ascended to the highest in me, and look! The word
is towering above that... I have descended to explore my lowest
depths, yet I found him even deeper... If I looked within, he was
yet further within... Then I knew the truth of what I had read, ‘In
him we live and move and have our being.’59 Blessed is the
man in whom he has his being, who lives for him and is moved
by him…”60 Significantly St Bernard describes the supremacy
Hadewijch of Brabant (13th century), Letter 18, paragraph 63; in
Hadewijch: The Complete Works, The Classics of Western Spirituality,
Paulist Press, 1980, page 86.
53
Psalm 42.7 uses תהוםtehom for ‘deep calls to deep’
54
1 Corinthians 2.10
55
Hadewijch of Brabant, op. cit. Vision 11, page 289
56
2 Corinthians 5.21
57
Henry Vaughan (1621-1695) in his poem The Night has a stanza which
reads:
There is in God (some say)
A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear;
O for that night! where I in him
Might live invisible and dim.
58
Psalm 139.12
59
Acts 17.28
60
S Bernard, Sermon 74 on the Song of Songs, II.5. Lectionnaire Monastique
35
36
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Book of Consolation
of the Word over the abyss, for ( תֺֹ֙ הּו֙ ֵ֙ ֺֹ֔בהּוṯō-hū wā-ḇō-hū is
It is used in Habbakuk 3.10 of the abyss of the deep, the ְתהָ֑ ֹום
a concept of the unreal, of unreality, and the Miltha, the Logos,
the Word of God, the emanation of God, is reality and truth. Just
as the abyss is the dwelling place of God, and the context for
Divine creativity, it is also the place of action and truth for the
Son who is the Wisdom of God.61 Through the analysis of this
aspect of Genesis the task of the Bridegroom to level, to lift up
the valley or the abyss, is given its context.
(ṯə-hō-wm) which lifts up its waves, its self. The Habbakuk
In the Fourth Song it is said that the Servant is to be exalted and
lifted high,( yā-rūm wə-niś-śā י ָ֧רּום וְ נִ ָשָּׂ֛א.62 Christ Himself
says in John’s Gospel, that when ‘you’ have lifted up the Son of
Man you will know…63 This verb נָשָ אa a ‘to lift up’
in the Hebrew of Isaiah 52 is dense in meaning, with many
poignant nuances for this task of the Servant. It means one who
lifts up his countenance in innocence. This is how Adam once
was before God, and it is restored to humanity by our inclusion
in the Son of the Father who alone is able to lift up His
countenance to the Father in innocence.
It also means to carry and to bear. This relates directly to the
following Chapter of Isaiah within the same Song where it is
said that the Servant will carry our wounds and afflictions.64 The
same verb is used to describe this. It is used also in the act of
carrying an infant, and as a description of the burden as a gift.
echo brings with it an image of the abyss recognising in some
mysterious way its need and the answer to that need as being the
One who will come. By lifting up its waves it seeks in image, to
draw the One who is exalted into its depths, there to heal it. W.
Gesenius, in his Hebrew Lexicon describes this reference in
Habbakuk to the ( ְתהָ֑ ֹוםṯə-hō-wm) as ‘remarkable’. We will
explore the role of the ( ְתהָ֑ ֹוםṯə-hō-wm) motif as it appears in
John’s Gospel in chapter 8, regarding the woman caught in
adultery.
The Septuagint uses the Greek ύ in Isaiah for this
Hebrew word ‘to lift up, exalt’ and in St John’s Gospel,
ύ, both from the verb ύο, which conveys a sense
of honour.
The Hebrew rendering of the task to ‘make straight’ equally
conveys the necessity that the human being should be righteous,
to be authentically human. The word which in English we
always have as ‘highway’ in the Arabic means to make
connections. And it is the Baptist who does make these
connections. He not only links the Bride to the Bridegroom, but
he connects the Old and New Testaments. He embodies the role
of the link, the bond, the unifier.
61
1 Corinthians 1.24
Isaiah 52.13
63
Saint John 8.28ff
64
Isaiah 53.4
62
37
38
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
2
THE FIRST SERVANT SONG: Isaiah 42.1-9
1.The Voice, the Music. 2. The Upholding.
3. Chosen and Beloved. 4. Delight.
5. Shir HaShirim: The Song of Songs.
The First Song falls into two parts: Chapter 42.1-4 and 42.5-9,
respectively. The first verses carry us from Chapter 40, where
we have been reflecting on the Forerunner, to the Baptism of the
Lord. Its ambience includes the Incarnation which is reflected in
a commentary attributed to St Peter Damian: “O incomparable
humility: The Word became flesh, and having reached perfect
manhood, He leaves the rest of men, and He seeks out John,
desires John, goes toward John. God terrible in His deeds
among men, sustaining all things by His word of power and
purifying sins, comes from Galilee to the Jordan, to be baptized
by John. John is amazed and trembles with fear; an immense
awe completely seizes the patriarch: I need to be baptized by
you, he says, and do you come to me? The Saviour tells him: Let
it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.
Each of them acquiesces in the prophecies of salvation, and
John girds himself to baptize and to admire the Lord of angels.
The King of glory, resplendent with light and the very image of
the Father's being, is stripped of His clothing and allows
Himself to be touched by John's hands. That flesh taken from
the Virgin, made from the most pure and radiant matter, is laid
40
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
bare at the river so that the blessed hands of John may pour
water over it.”1
called Messianic Secret. All the Songs are Christologically
dense, and God speaks of His Servant intimately. The
relationship we see in the Gospels between Father and Son is
visible but veiled in the Songs and we, in the very first verse, are
included and given knowledge of this relationship: “Behold,
(here is) my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my
soul delights…”
The Servant comes in the Incarnation, comes to find John,
comes to His Passion, comes back after the Resurrection. This
echoes the Song of Songs: “… The voice of my beloved, behold
he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the
hills…”2 Isaiah 42.1 begins with the Hebrew ‘Behold’, הֵ֤ן
(hên) ‘Behold, here is my Servant…’, and the Song of Songs
has ‘Behold he cometh…’. One can hear even in translation, the
antiphonal quality of these verses. The Church uses these words
of the Song of Songs towards the end of Advent and during the
season of the Nativity of Christ, and tradition connects the
Servant of Isaiah with the beloved of the Song of Songs. He is
the delight of both the Father and the Church, for the delight of
the Father creates that of the Spouse.3
St Matthew quotes the opening verses of this First Song in his
Gospel at Chapter 12.18ff., and the Fathers agree that Matthew
understood this to refer to Christ and not to Jacob and Israel as
the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew has it. St Jerome in
particular notes that Matthew ‘as a Hebrew among Hebrews’
takes the position that the Servant Songs refer to Christ. Here
Matthew is drawing on them to describe the nature of the so1
On St John the Baptist, A sermon attributed to St Peter Damian. Used in
Lectionnaire Monastique
2
Song of Songs 2.8
3
Saint Bernard: Sermon 57 on the Song of Songs. “It is his (the Lord’s)
desire which creates yours”. Lectionnaire Monastique
41
THE VOICE, THE MUSIC
Isaiah 42.2: “He shall not cry…” In Isaiah 40 the cry and the
voice are one of the central motifs “…the voice of one saying:
‘Cry. And I said: What shall I cry?’” which echoes the Song of
Songs, ירים
ִ֖ ִּׁ הַ ִּׁש
שיר
ִׁ֥ ִּׁ (haš-šî-rîm šîr) ‘The voice of my
Beloved…’ The Servant Himself need not cry ‘in the streets’ 4,
the Forerunner will do that for Him. This is not to detract from
the task of the Servant as Logos and Wisdom Incarnate,
teaching in the market squares and streets, as described in the
opening verses of Proverbs.5 That is a different kind of crying
which belongs to the years of His public ministry. But the cry of
the Son will, as we see in John’s Gospel, be heard in the Temple
and its precincts by those who hunger and thirst and ultimately,
and especially, on the cross at the moment He commits Himself
into His Father’s hands. These juxtapositions parallel the
inseparability of the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection; for
4
5
Isaiah 42.2
Proverbs 1:20,21
42
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
the Song of Songs has the ‘cry’ to ‘arise’,6 and the voice in
Chapter 40 of Isaiah which cries that ‘all flesh is grass,’ is to be
finally answered by the Resurrection of the Son in the flesh, the
cry to arise thus being fulfilled. The whole Paschal Mystery is
echoed in these allusions. It is typical of the densely interwoven
poetry of Hebrew prophecy, and the Church has understood this
from the start in her tradition.
me witness, that I said, I am not the Messiah, but I am the one
who has been sent before him. He who has the bride is the
bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and
hears him, rejoices with joy because of the voice of the
bridegroom. Therefore this joy of mine is now fulfilled. He must
increase but I must decrease.”8 Brant Pitre, writing of the
Bridegroom says: “… this is not just an eloquent metaphor…
(but)… an allusion to a famous biblical prophecy of the
Messiah… Jeremiah 33. 10 – 11, and 14 – 17… which says that
‘the voice of the bridegroom’ will be heard in the days when the
Davidic king will come… and John says that you can know who
the Messiah is because he has ‘the bride’.9
The Son is the voice of the Father, His Word, His thought
enfleshed. John was a voice clothed in flesh also, but a different
voice, with its particular purpose as so beautifully described by
the Fathers: “I see while yet in the womb: for I see the Sun of
justice carried in the womb. I am able to hear, for I am coming
into the world to be the voice of the great Word. I cry out, for I
contemplate, clothed in flesh, the only Son of the Father. I exult,
for I see the Creator of the universe assume a human form. I
leap, for I know that the Redeemer of the world has taken a
body. I run before His coming, and, in this way, I guide you by
my testimony.”7 And from John’s Gospel: “You yourselves bear
6
In this first of the Four Servant Songs we are on a bridge from
Isaiah 40 and Brant Pitre develops the role of John the Baptist as
the ‘friend’, the Best Man of the Bridegroom: “…ancient Jewish
rabbis whose traditions are recorded in the Mishnah … refer to
the custom of a Jewish bridegroom selecting a close ‘friend’ of
his to act as his ‘best man’ (Hebrew shoshbin) (see Mishnah,
Sanhedrin 3.5)… Indeed the role of ‘best man’ was so essential
to an ancient Jewish wedding that according to Jewish tradition,
God himself acted as best man at the wedding of Adam and Eve,
since there was no one else to fill the role! “And he brought her
Song of Songs 2.13 ff.
St John Chrysostom Apud Simeon Metaphrastem: cf A. Lipomani, de Vitis
Sanctorum, 1, ed. Louanii, 1565, 95.92. Used in Lectionnaire Monastique.
For the full quotation: “When the Redeemer of our race came amongst us, He
went at once to His friend John, who was as yet unborn… I will go forth
from this dark tabernacle, and I will preach the saving knowledge of
wonderful realities. I am a sign, and I will signify the coming of Christ. I am
a trumpet, and I will make known a new dispensation, the coming of the Son
of God in the flesh…I will go forth; I will run before Him and I will proclaim
to all: Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” But
tell us, John, as you are still within the darkness of your mother's womb, how
can you see and hear? How are you able to contemplate divine things? How
are you able to leap and to exult? And he replies: "Great is the mystery which
is being enacted here; it is an act beyond all human comprehension. Rightly
do I do something which is new in the natural order, on account of Him who
is to renew in the supernatural order."
8
John 3.28 - 30
9
Brant Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom, The Voice of the Bridegroom Messiah,
(Paperback – February 13, 2018)
pp 30 - 33
43
44
7
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
to the man.” (Genesis 2.22). Rabbi Jeremiah ben Elezar said:
‘this teaches that [God] acted as best man (Hebrew shoshbin) to
Adam.” (Babylonian Talmud, Berakoth 61a)10 Jean Danielo
remarks that John was a man who gave all other joys for the joy
of hearing his Lord’s voice.11
The waves wait for the holy weight of Your Body lovingly
upheld, so different from the sorrowing tree in the later
upholding.
At His Death the quivering shook your shores to new shapes
forever altered,
And altared the massed waves.
Remember the first Mass on the beach, the footfall on the sand
announcing early one morning
the Resurrected returned.” 13
The Son as the Voice is the Word speaking and singing. There
is, I believe, an instinctual desire in us to hear the voice of the
Beloved. It is there in nature in a primitive form when the young
listens for the voice of the parent and vice versa. But we are
always ‘young’, always connected and in continuity with Christ
through Baptism, for without Him we can do or be nothing.12
We listen for His music. Like the voices of Bride and
Bridegroom in the ירים
ִ֖ ִּׁ שיר הַ ִּׁש
ִׁ֥ ִּׁ (haš-šî-rîm šîr), we desire to
sing with Him His song, in harmony of being.
“Genessaret your shores sob, lake of Galilee lapping lowly your
long longing.
Did your soughing waves hear the swing of the scourge all the
way from Jerusalem?
Memories of night on the still tide, lantern lit rolling swell in
Peter’s bark
and the rocking of Your sleep.
The water waits for the One who sang there the divine melody of
divine yearning.
What is His music and His song? The prophet Isaiah, or his
school, composes a song for God and sings it for Him. ‘I will
sing for my Beloved a song’14 and goes on ‘My Beloved had a
vineyard on a very fertile hill…’ The Hebrew word for servant
in its verbal root, עָ בַ דa a is used specifically of one who
labours in a vineyard.
Arminjon commenting on the ‘song’ of the Beloved and the
Bride in the Song of Songs, ירים
ִ֖ ִּׁ שיר הַ ִּׁש
ִׁ֥ ִּׁ (haš-šî-rîm šîr), His
voice, and our voice, says: “Two lutes, two flutes! Is it not quite
striking that in this love song of our text not a single musical
instrument is heard? None of those instruments that have such
an important role in the Psalms for instance … Here, in fact, all
the music is in the voices, in the two united voices of the
beloved and his love. As if all the music in the world were
called in a beautiful concerto for two voices: the voice of the
10
Op. cit. p. 33
Jean Danielo: Advent, (Sheed and Ward, 1950), passim, II, 1, John the
Baptist, p68.
12
John 15:1-8 the parable of the Vine
11
45
13
14
Genessaret: Sister Anne Eason O.S.B.
Isaiah 5.1 ff
46
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Word calling and man’s voice responding to him through
creation.”15 He continues, commenting on the mutuality of Bride
and Bridegroom, not only in terms of the song of love they sing
for each other, but also in terms of their beauty. The Incarnate
Son is beautiful, and as Gregory of Nyssa says, we also are
beautiful, for we have drawn near to God, and in doing so
acquired beauty from Him.16 This mutuality is grace filled, and I
will examine its source in the mutual love between Father and
Son. From the perspective of the Gospel, commenting on
Matthew 11.25-27, Erasmo Leivi-Merikakis picks up this
theme: “… we become the privileged witnesses of the diving
dialogue of love that is continually developing between Father
and Son and that constitutes the very substance of the interior
life of God… an unceasing of intentions, of thoughts and of
being itself between Father and Son…[it is] the basso continuo
supporting every line of the melody that the Saviour sings in
order to enchant the heart of man.”17
is the verbal root,18 meaning to cry out, call, speak. I mention
this because Adam, in answer to God’s question ‘Where are
you’, after the Fall, is sometimes translated into English as ‘I
heard the sound of you…’ I believe that the correct translation
should be ‘I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid
because I was naked, and so I hid myself.’ Late, or New
Hebrew, sometimes translates קוֹל
as sound, thunder,
When our first parents were still ‘young’ they knew His voice in
the Garden, before their fateful fall. In Hebrew, the word for
voice is קוֹל
, but it has no verbal root, unusually.
Likewise,
lQ (
is used in the Aramaic. In Assyrian, Kalu
noise etc. Although Genesis is a relatively late book, it contains
source material which clearly belongs to ancient oral traditions.
I believe that the first chapters of Genesis which cover creation
before and after the fall of mankind, belong to such ancient oral
traditions which were probably used in early liturgical contexts.
For this and other reasons I would argue that in Chapter 3.8 of
Genesis, the correct translation of קוֹל
is ‘voice’. The
Hebrew in the sentence is clear and simple, literally: ‘your
voice’. My argument rests on an examination of the whole of
Genesis Chapter 3 which shows that the noun קוֹל
is
being used to weave a delicate web of dramatic choices. When
this happens in the oral tradition the sound of the noun קוֹל
in the rhythm of the liturgical poem plays a role one finds
in monastic chant. To rob it of its role is to profoundly miss the
point which the mind of the ancient is making in the poetic
15
Arminjon op. cit. The Winter of Exile, p. 125
St Gregory of Nyssa In Canticum Canticorum, Homily 4, 834B
Lectionnaire Monastique
17
Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According
to St. Matthew Volume 4, by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (Paperback – 23 Mar.
2021) Pp. 684 ff.
Gesenius: A HEBREW AND ENGLISH LEXICON OF THE OLD
TESTAMENT with an appendix containing the Biblical Aramaic based on the
lexicon of William Gesenius, gives the Assyrian root in the comment on the
Hebrew noun.
47
48
16
18
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
couplets, the repetition of קוֹל
voice of God. I think the phrasing of the question is critical. God
is not asking of Adam at this point: ‘What have you done?’ But
‘Where are you?’ Is this the voice of love which has lost a child,
the anguish of the loss, and the search implicit in the question?
Or is this the voice of One who knows all, the omniscient Lover
of mankind, who, even at this painful moment of betrayal asks
the question which would assist Adam to understand what has
happened to him in the active choice he has made. In other
words, the question helps Adam to realise that he is now lost,
and has to be found, remade, but with his knowledge, his pride
and concupiscence, forever present within his nature. It is
possible that the question holds both these aspects within it; they
are not mutually exclusive. God is searching for His child,
knowing he is lost but also knowing where he is, and the gravity
of recovering him, and He is placing something of this before
Adam in the question. Adam in his turn, from the depths of his
loss, will from that point on, both silently and vocally, forever
express the question of the Bride in the Song of Songs: ‘Let me
see your Face, Let me hear your voice’.20 See also the Lament of
Adam for the expression of this loss. 21 That is why the Son
becomes Incarnate as the Suffering Servant: in Him we have
been given the Face of God, and heard His Voice; as Cardinal
Ratzinger has said: Christianity has given the world the Face of
God.22 Therefore in the Passion of the Servant we will see that
there is a crisis of recognition.
, the alliteration and
rhythms.19
The woman, Eve, has been given קוֹל
a voice, by the
tradition; God punishes Adam for having listened to ‘the voice
of the woman’. The serpent does not have a voice. Of the
serpent the verb אָ מַ רa
ar is used: the serpent ‘says’ and
suggests things but is not described as having a voice, and קוֹל
is not used at all of the tempter in this interchange. This
gives evidence of the role of the voice of both God and man in
the poetry of the ancient tradition to which Chapter 3 belongs.
The ability of Adam to hear this voice belongs to the time of his
innocence. His spiritual sense, the ear of his heart, was attuned
to the love which created him. He knew and loved the voice. We
carry within us a longing to hear this voice which was heard in
Paradise and which earth did once hear for thirty-three years
from Christ. We have heard it through the prophets, but like the
Kiss of the Beloved, we need to hear it from Him, with His
timbre, His Being within it.
In Chapter 3 of Genesis the poet priest puts into God’s mouth
the question to Adam: “Where are you…”. We will see in the
Songs that this question and its consequences are vital in the
Passion of the Servant. Adam acknowledges the voice which he
has known in the bond of love with his Creator: that this is the
19
Genesis 3 and in particular vv 8-17 for this whole discussion.
49
20
Song of Songs 2.14
St Silouan the Athonite wrote a modern version of this old Russian
Orthodox chant which was used in Lent. Wikipedia (accessed 20/04/2020)
22
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: "The Hidden and Transfigured Face of Christ",
organized by the International Institute of Research on the Face of Christ.
21
50
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Another small point about the charged phrases of this chapter, is
It might also be said that as God sought Adam on the fateful
evening,26 He was knocking on Adam’s heart, on the door of his
sleeping conscience. In the Song of Songs, ירים
ִ֖ ִּׁ שיר הַ ִּׁש
ִׁ֥ ִּׁ (haš-
the use of the word ח
ַ ֣רּוrū·aḥ) meaning ‘spirit, wind, breeze’
in Genesis 3.8. The poet scribe need not have used it to describe
the time of the evening breeze but did. It was indeed the setting
of the sun on the day of Adam’s life as he had known it when he
was fully awake, innocent, transparent, alight, and alive in
communion with God. The Spirit which had brooded over the
chaos of the deep, before light was created, would have once
more to overshadow the entry into a new chaos which the Fall
would unleash in the depths of the human soul. From that abyss
He would have to recreate a new mankind through and in the
New Adam, who is the Servant of the Songs. Then the voice of
the Spirit would be heard not only in the Son but in His Spouse,
in the Ecclesia. This voice, too, does not lift up its strength in
the streets, does not cry aloud. It is, like the sound after the
thunder and earthquake, ‘a still, small voice’ that which Elijah
heard.23 This still small voice, this voice in silence, is sought and
found in the contemplative monastic life, and is heard in the
rhythms of Plainchant. “Christ forms the Cantus Firmus on
which the Church is grounded.”24 “The lyrics of this [new] song
are Christ the Word put to music… This is the New Song, the
manifestation of the Word that was in the beginning…” 25 and it
is the Holy Spirit who sings it in us.
šî-rîm šîr), the Bride sleeps, but she hears the Beloved
knocking.27 “I sleep, but my heart is awake…”28 and the literal
Hebrew which follows reads: “the voice [קוֹל
] of my
Beloved knocking.” The verb “I hear” is not even present. It is
as if there is nothing between the knock and the person being
roused, for the knock is upon the very being. The voice itself is
beating upon the soul.
Godfrey of Admont writes of this from another perspective:
“…in this book (The Song of Songs) (there is) a phrase written
twice, “The voice of my beloved” (Song 2.8). The second time,
however, there is an addition, “The voice of my beloved,
knocking.” (Song 5.2). This is a fact which is not without
mystery, for, by that first instance, where there is nothing added,
we can understand the desire of the holy fathers and prophets,
because everything which they spoke in prophecy or acted out in
figure, was in a way, the voice of their desire by which they
cried out and proclaimed that the Lord would come to the earth.
But when our Lord Jesus Christ himself arranged to satisfy their
desires, there was fulfilled the second phrase, “The voice of my
26
23
1Kings 19.11 ff.
Jerome: Homilies on the Psalms. Lectionnaire Monastique
25
Clement of Alexandria: Exhortation to the Greeks 1. Lectionnaire
Monastique
24
51
The Cave of Treasures notes that Adam’s fall occurred in the evening, and
in Abbot Erik Varden’s paper: Adam Where are you? (cf Chapter One) he
notes that the dove returned to the ark in the evening.
27
Song of Songs 5.2 ff.
28
This phrase: ‘I sleep, but my heart is awake’ is also, traditionally associated
with the contemplative vocation.
52
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
beloved, knocking.” For one who knocks, obviously knocks
with the hand and in a certain way the Lord knocked with his
hand when he fulfilled that for which they had long desired, by
his work of taking our flesh.”29
come in...”30 The Beloved says: “Open to me, my sister, my
bride, my dove, my flawless one…”
In the poetry and prophecy of the sacred texts the voice and the
door frequently recur in discussing the relationship between God
and man. Ambrose on this theme writes: “Your door must be
open to Him when He comes; open your soul, open the bosom
of your mind... Open wide your heart, run to meet that Sun of
eternal light which enlightens every man … Happy the man on
whose door Christ knocks. The door is our faith which, provided
it is strong, makes the whole house secure, and Christ enters
through this door. Therefore, in the Song of Songs, the Church
says: My brother is knocking at the door. I hear His voice. Hear
Him who knocks, hear Him who yearns to enter: Open to Me,
my sister, my love, my perfect one, for My head is wet with dew,
and My locks with the drops of the night. Ask yourself when it is
that God the Word mostly knocks on your door. It is when His
head is covered with the dews of night … His head is drenched
with dew, or with drops of water, because His body labours.
Keep awake, for fear that the Beloved when He comes would
find Himself shut out and go away again. If you were to sleep,
and your heart were not awake, He would go away without
knocking; but if your heart is awake, He knocks and asks you to
open the door to Him. We have a door to our soul; we have
gates, too, and of them it is said: Lift up your heads, O gates!
And be lifted up, O eternal gates! That the King of glory may
Professor Bagatti who has worked as an archaeologist in the
Holy Land writes of the tradition that Adam was woken from
his sleep of death as the blood of the Redeemer descended upon
his skull beneath Calvary: “Grotto of Adam: The roof of the
Calvary-knoll is fissured. The fissure penetrates into the socalled 'Grotto of Adam', a cave under Calvary. It is not excluded
29
30
Godfrey of Admont (Hom. 4: PL 174, 36-37) Lectionnaire Monastique
53
Adam beneath Calvary: Icon in egg tempera on gesso ground. Sister Anne
Eason O.S.B.
St Ambrose’s Commentary on Psalm 118. Lectionnaire Monastique
54
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
that this fissure existed before the death of Christ and that the
fissure is related by Matthew 27, 51-53 with the death of Christ.
The name 'Grotto of Adam' reflects the legend that the skull of
Adam was buried in Jerusalem, under Calvary, in the 'Grotto of
Adam'. An Armenian mosaic in the wall, west of the court that
leads to the Rotunde of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre,
portrays the blood of Christ which drips from the feet of the
Crucified, and descends through the fissure and rests on the
skull of Adam. Saint Paul seems to know the legend. He
represents Christ as a second Adam, who died for Jews and
Romans (Rom 5, 123).” 31
She also saw in vision that “… from [Adam’s] right side, from
the same place in which the side of Jesus was opened by the
lance, God drew Eve…”33 For the close identification between
Adam and Christ see St Anselm: Cur Deus homo.34
John puts into the mouth of Christ in the Book of Revelation
these words: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock, if anyone
hears my voice and opens the door I will come into him, and
will sup with him, and he with me.’32 The image of the ‘door’
has been understood by mystics to be symbolically manifold :
The visionary Anne Catherine Emmerich saw “… that by the
wounds of Jesus there were opened anew in the human body
portals [doors] closed by Adam’s sin... that Longinus opened in
Jesus’ side the gate [door] of regeneration to eternal life … that
no one entered into heaven while that gate [door] was closed…”
THE UPHOLDING
There is another aspect to the opening words of the First Song
which needs close analysis: “Here is my servant whom I uphold
[ך
ְ ָ’( אֶ ְתמeṯ-māḵ-)] ” The Gospels echo them especially the
High Priestly Prayer in John 17. Elsewhere in John we have: “...
the Father loves the Son and has put all things into His hands.”35
“...No one knows the Son except the Father”36 and “....no one
has ever seen the Father. The only Son who is in the bosom of
the Father, He has made Him known...”37 It is the language of
mutual knowledge, and of communion, the mystery of love in
the Blessed Trinity. The Father intervened in the Incarnate Life
of His Son to speak to those around Him at specific moments:
“This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to Him…”38and “This is
31
Bagatti, PONTIFICIA UNIVERSITAS ANTONIANUM Facultas
Scientiarum Biblicarum et Archaeologiae
STUDIUM BIBLICUM FRANCISCANUM: Franciscan Custody of the Holy
Land: Cf also the discussion of this in Notes on the Iconography of Adam
under Calvary by Fr. B. Bagatti OFM, First published in Liber Annuus 27
(1977) 5-32; Pls. 1-12 Translated from the Italian into English by Jacob
Zreineh, Dragoman Emeritus of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (Edited by:
S. Traynor-Moravska and E. Alliata).
32
Revelation 3.20
Anne Catherine Emmerich: The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical
Revelations, Vol. 1, (Tan Books 1986), The Creation, Adam and Eve, p. 7
34
St Anselm: Cur Deus homo. Lib. 2,c.8: SC 91, 368-370 Lectionnaire
Monastique
35
John 3.35, 5.20
36
Matthew 11.27; Luke 10.22
37
John 1.18
38
See the discussion on this below in the text
55
56
33
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
my Son in whom I am well pleased.”39 When the Spirit hovered
over the Beloved in the waters of the Jordan; when the Shekhina
descended upon Tabor, and when thunderous words of approval
of the Son rolled across the crowds, it was the voice of the
Father.40
source for the Church, His Body. The Father as the vine dresser
upholds the Servant, and He rests on the structure of His love.
The Hebrew verbal root for ‘to uphold’ is תָ מַ ְךa
a . This
The Servant is the Son. This word for servant, ( עֶ בֶ ד
the Hebrew text, is from the verbal root עָ בַ דa
a
in
which
means to work, to labour, to worship. It is also used specifically
of working on the vine in a vineyard, and this immediately
recalls the passages in John’s Gospel, where Christ uses the vine
as symbol and sign of the Son and of the Ecclesia, of the
relationship between the Father and the Son, and between the
Son and the ecclesial community.41 Christ is both Servant and
See Matthew 3.17, 12.8, 17.5 Greek εὐδοκεìω to think well of, approve;
think good, be well pleased, have or take pleasure, be willing. Regarding the
wording in Matthew 12.8, Jerome (382 CE) wrote: "Matthew, who is also
Levi, and from a tax collector came to be an emissary first of all evangelists
composed a Gospel of Messiah in Judea in the Hebrew language and letters,
for the benefit of those of the circumcision who had believed, who translated
it into Greek is not sufficiently ascertained. Furthermore, the Hebrew itself is
preserved to this day in the library at Caesarea, which the martyr Pamphilus
so diligently collected. I also was allowed by the Nazarenes who use this
volume in the Syrian city of Borea to copy it. In which it is to be remarked
that, wherever the evangelist…makes use of the testimonies of the Old
Scripture, he does not follow the authority of the seventy translators [the
Septuagint] but that of the Hebrew.” De Viris Illustribus (On Illustrious Men),
3
40
John 12.27-29
41
See John 15.1-11. Related passages are Isaiah 5.1-7, Ezekiel 19.10-14, and
Mark 12.1-9.
39
57
word means not only to uphold but to ‘hold together’. It conveys
mutual support and mutuality and it means, literally, to ‘follow
each other’. This last gives an insight into the love between the
Servant and the Father. I am describing an intense divine mutual
upholding, a close following one of the other. “The Son does
nothing on His Own... He does only what He sees the Father is
doing…”42 “The Father has entrusted all things to the Son…”43
and the Son’s food is to do the will of the Father.44
This image of the Father and Son following each other, resting
upon each other, fully knowing each other, is critical for our
grasp of the task of the Suffering Servant. The Persons of the
Trinity are intent upon each other, mutually indwelling and of
one will. “I and the Father are one.”45 These words in John’s
Gospel are in the present tense. The Father is in the Son and
during the Passion the Father silently weeps. His silence is
mirrored by the silence of His Son before His accusers and we
will explore this silence more deeply further on in the Songs.
The Son, in His acceptance of His Passion, from the moment of
His conception in the womb suffered for the consolation of the
Father and of estranged humanity, and the Father’s acceptance
of the Passion was as real in Gethsemane as the Son’s
42
John 5.19
John 3.35 New Jerusalem Bible translation
44
Compare John 4.34
45
John 10.30
43
58
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
acceptance of it. The Father’s will was that the Son should
accept the cup of suffering, but the Son accepted the cup
because it was the Father’s expression of divine love. The Son
did only what He saw the Father doing.46 He took the cup of
suffering in accordance with the will of the Father who
delighted in Him, and He took it with free will.47 Several
mystics write in various ways of the absence of anger in the
Passion. This must also be true of the Father. Before His
Passion, Christ said “The Father judges no one. He has left all
judgement to the Son…”48 and in His agony the Son asked His
Father to forgive those who knew not what they did.49 Mystics
also attest across the board that the Son on the cross was “all
Love”.
With the final cry of the Son of Man at about 3 o’clock on the
Friday of His Crucifixion, the Son committed His Spirit into the
hands of the Father and the Father received Him.51 In the Son all
the pain of sin in creation had been absorbed into the Godhead
and redeemed and through this agony, that of the Fall was
healed. The Son slept in the flesh upon the cross but in the
words of Pope S Leo: “He [Christ] took the form of a servant...
The emptying by which the invisible one made himself visible...
was a bending down in pity, not a failure of power…”52 It was a
complete conformity of His human will to the Divine will in
freedom. In the same freedom He would take up His life again,53
also at the hands of the Father who would raise Him from the
dead. The Paschal Mystery shows on the pages of the Gospel
how the Father follows the Son in His Incarnate pilgrimage
through time, and the Son follows the Father in His fulfilment of
His Divine will. The manner in which they are intent upon each
other is manifested also in the prophecy of the Servant Songs.
The Church acknowledges the Mother of Christ as Mirror of
Justice. The Church uses the word ‘justice’ here, to mean
‘holiness’. In art she is shown supporting Him on her knees50 in
the deposition and the Father, in art supporting Him beneath His
arms. The expressions on the faces of the Divine Father and the
earthly Mother are often similar, yet the artists are different. The
artists intuit the spiritual likeness between them, one in time and
one in eternity. Her surrender and interior quiet mirrors that of
the Father. The postures of both are eloquent of an interior gaze
which looks far beyond. Both appear to have the divine source
and goal of the Passion in their faces.
But the Son in His servanthood, goes further. He becomes the
servant of His own disciples. His humility in becoming man,
“taking the form of a servant 54....” meant a laying aside of His
claim to equality with God for a while in order to seek the lost 55
and to serve them.56 The Son not only removes His outer
51
46
John 5.19
47
John 18.11
48
John 5.22
49
Luke 23.34
50
For example, Michelangelo: The Pieta
59
Luke 23.44-46
Pope S Leo op. cit.
53
John 10.17-18
54
Philippians 5.7
55
Compare Luke 19.10
56
Compare Matthew 20.28, Mark 10.45
52
60
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
garment at the Last Supper to wash the feet of His disciples,57
He also removes the outer garment of His body upon the cross.
He divests Himself in order to wash the disciples’ feet, but the
Servant continues to divest Himself through the Sacraments,
where His clothing is bread, wine, and water. He said on earth.
“I am among you as One who serves58......” “I your Lord and
Master have washed your feet59....” and in the Sacraments of the
Church He continues to do this. He washes clean all that has
become soiled through contact with sin. He carries the sin of
many60: רבּיםrabbim, in the Hebrew, the multitudes.
appears to suggest that the Son is elected from within the Sacred
Trinity to bear humanity by becoming Incarnate. The icon
expresses this in image and symbol. Eusebius of Caesarea
speaks of this mystery descriptively, “He [the Servant] is chosen
not in the same way as the Apostles, since it is to him alone that
it is said ‘whom my soul esteems’ but also... ‘For in him the
fullness of the deity dwelt bodily’61... the unique Word of
God...”.62 According to the Dictionary of Biblical Theology
“Jesus is perfectly aware of His origin and His destination (Jn
8,14). He goes where others cannot follow and His destiny is
absolutely unique. This is not because of a calling but rather
proceeds from His being itself.”63 However, scripture is clear
that He is chosen and that for a purpose, and in that sense His
calling is continuous with His Being. Gregory of Nazianzus
develops this motif: “For in truth [the Son] was in servitude to
flesh and to birth and to the conditions of our life with a view to
our liberation...What greater destiny can befall humanity’s
humble state than that it should be intermingled with God and
by this intermingling should be deified…”64
CHOSEN AND BELOVED
ירי
ִ֖ ִּׁ ( ְב ִּׁחbə-ḥî-rî). ‘My chosen one…’
What does the term
“chosen” mean when used of the Second Person of the Trinity?
Could it be that within the Godhead the Second Person was in
some mysterious sense ‘chosen’ or ‘elected’ to become human
and be sacrificed on the cross? This is a mystery which may be
felt in the numinous balances of the Three Persons of the
Godhead as portrayed in the Rublev icon of the Hospitality of
Abraham. The Greek of the Septuagint translated the Hebrew
‘bachir’ as ἐκλεκτός and this supports, from the nuances of the
Hebrew also, the Servant as one who is elected. It affirms the
iconographic tradition in which the Rublev icon of the Trinity
The Hebrew word ירי
ִ֖ ִּׁ ( ְב ִּׁחbə-ḥî-rî), My chosen one, is from
the verbal root בָ חר
a
ar which means ‘to prove, to
examine’. The Syriac and Aramaic share this Hebrew idiom.
The word is used to describe a young boy or scholar, and carries
61
Colossians 2:9
Eusebius of Caesarea, Commentary on Isaiah 2.22. Lectionnaire
Monastique
63
Jacques Guillet, S.J. in the Dictionary of Biblical Theology
64
S Gregory Nazianzus, On the Son Fourth Theological Oration (Oration 30)
para 3. Lectionnaire Monastique
62
57
John 13.4
Luke 22.27
59
John 13.14
60
Isaiah 53.12, Hebrews 9.28
58
61
62
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
connotations of ‘election’, being in some way ‘chosen’. Is the
Father saying of His Son that He is to become the ‘bachur’, the
‘scholar’ in His earthly life, that in His self-emptying He is to
learn obedience through what He suffers?65 The phrase ‘chosen
of David’ or ‘son of David’66 is derived from the same verbal
root. There was a village or town just outside Jerusalem called
Bahurim67 which the German maps give as ‘Chosen’. Some
believe it to be where young Jewish boys gathered en route to
Jerusalem for their bar mitzvah. Did Our Lord stop there when
He was twelve? There was a German mystic68 who had a vision
of the Saviour, and heard Him talk of Himself as a ‘bachir’, a
young boy going to the Temple to argue with the doctors of the
Law and ask them questions.69 She said she heard this when He
was an adult on His evangelical journeys, discussing with His
disciples in Bethany the incident when He was left behind in
Jerusalem, and thought to be lost. He was reminding them of the
signs of the fulfilment of the time, the promise. In a rare
instance, the mystic tells her scribe the actual word she heard
Jesus use of Himself at that moment in boyhood. It is
transliterated in the visions as “bachir” and she adds “perhaps he
meant by that word ‘student or scholar’”.
Bahurim the place (whose name derived from the word ‘bachir’)
is mentioned in 2 Samuel when David goes up the Mount of
Olives, weeping as he ascends, after fleeing the threat of his son
Absalom. David then continues to Bahurim where he is
insulted.70 The betrayal of God’s anointed (David) by his son
Absalom71 echoes the betrayal of Jesus by Judas.72 The
Messianic allusions relate to the Davidic Kingship and the
genealogy of Jesus, who, like David, wept on the Mount of
Olives, but for the sin of others, not His own, for He knew no
sin.73 David wept for his sin but the tears of Jesus, I believe,
expressed the grief of the Trinity.
In the New Testament, at those moments when the Father
speaks in support of His Son, it is recorded that Jesus is called
“My Beloved.”74 Only one Gospel, Luke 9.35, preserves the
term “chosen” from Isaiah.75 Luke uses the term ‘My Chosen’ in
9.35, while the word ‘Beloved’ is given in the text as present in
some ancient manuscripts. The Evangelist Matthew in fact
quotes this verse76 from Isaiah: “Here is my servant whom I
have chosen, my beloved, the favourite of my soul…”77 The
70
Hebrews 5.8
1 Chronicles 3.6 gives ‘Ibhar’ as one of the sons of David. In Hebrew this
is יבחרfrom the root בּחר
Jesus Himself is both ‘Son of David’ and ‘Chosen One’.
67
2 Samuel 3.16, 16.5, 17.18, 23.31
68
Anne Catherine Emmerich, The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Tan Books,
Vol II page 109
69
Luke 2.46
2 Samuel 15.30 (David’s ascent of the Mount of Olives) and 16.15 (arrival
at Bahurim)
71
The treachery of Absalom is recounted in 2 Samuel 15 and following.
72
Matthew 26.49, Mark 14.45, Luke 22.47, John 18.3
73
Compare the whole of the Third Servant Song; also 2 Corinthians 5.21;
Hebrews 4.15; 1 Peter 2.22
74
Compare Matthew 3.17, 12.18, 17.5; Mark 1.11, 9.7, 12.6; Luke 3.22,
20.13; 2 Peter 1.17. see also Ephesians 1.6
75
Luke 9.35
76
Matthew 12.18
77
Matthew 12.18, Jerusalem Bible, Reader’s Edition
63
64
65
66
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Evangelist has altered the Isaiah verse by leaving out ‘whom I
uphold’ and by replacing ‘chosen’ with ‘beloved’.
“This is my beloved Son”, while the other two put them in this
form, “You are my beloved Son”, these different methods of
speech serve but to convey the same sense, according to the
principle which has been discussed above. For the heavenly
voice gave utterance only to one of these sentences; but by the
form of words thus adopted, namely, This is my beloved Son, it
was the evangelist's intention to show that the saying was meant
to intimate specially to the hearers there [and not to Jesus] the
fact that He was the Son of God. With this view, he chose to
give the sentence, You are my beloved Son, this turn, This is my
beloved Son, as if it were addressed directly to the people. For it
was not meant to intimate to Christ a fact which He knew
already; but the object was to let the people who were present
hear it, for whose sakes indeed the voice itself was given’.79
Jerome’s Vulgate has ‘electus’ i.e. ‘chosen’. Perhaps Luke
chose this word specifically to remind his readers of the
connection with Isaiah 42.1. According to one commentator:
“The phrase here is ho eklelegmenos …; this is the only place in
the New Testament where it is used. Related to it is ho eklektos,
‘the chosen’ … of Luke 23.35 …. It represents a Palestinian
Jewish title found in a Qumran Aramaic text, bĕhîr ĕlāhā’ ‘the
Elect of God’. … It is associated in this text with the title, ‘my
Son’ and seems to be an allusion to Isaiah 42.1 LXX, where
Israel is called ‘my Chosen One’, and Jacob, ‘my
Servant/Child’.”78 Note here the reference is to the Septuagint,
and Jerome has, above, already commented on this verse’s
application to Israel in the LXX, arguing that its correct
application in the Hebrew is to the Messiah.
Regarding these phrases used in the Gospels to describe the
Baptism, St Augustine says: ‘Thereafter Matthew proceeds thus:
And Jesus, when He was baptized … and, lo, a voice from
heaven saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased. This incident is also recorded in a similar manner by
two of the others, namely Mark and Luke. But at the same time,
while preserving the sense intact, they use different modes of
expression in reproducing the terms of the voice which came
from heaven. For although Matthew tells us that the words were,
I believe that the Early Church was deeply influenced by what
they had heard from the lips of Jesus about His relationship with
His Father when they approached Isaiah 42.1. The New
Testament writers had also the words of the Father from the
Transfiguration and the Baptism of Jesus engraved in their
minds, that this was His Son, the Beloved.80 Where the
documents refer to this Servant Song, therefore, they affirm that
the Chosen One is the Beloved of the Father and that this phrase
‘my Beloved’, which is ‘agapetos’ in the Greek, and
(
in the Aramaic, contains within itself a universe
79
Harmony of the Gospels: Book II, Chapter 14.31
References for the Baptism of Jesus are: Matthew 3.17; Mark 1.11; Luke
3.22. References for the Transfiguration are: Matthew 17.5; Mark 9.7; Luke
9.35.
80
78
Joseph A. Fitzmyer in Luke I-IX, The Anchor Bible, Vol 28, Second
Edition, (Doubleday 1983)
65
0bybx
66
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
of meaning. The understanding of this love between the Father
and the Son blossomed in the apostolic era, and I have no doubt
that the Mother of Christ, from years of intimacy with her Son,
was fundamental in helping the Apostles to develop this. In this
respect I point to the Apostle Peter’s reference to this phrase
‘the Beloved’ in his Epistle.81 In some sense Peter’s use of this
is especially important because of his personal growth in the
understanding of ‘agape’. Peter as the chosen Apostle upon
whom Christ would build His Church, embodies the bond
between “chosen” and “beloved” in the painful experience of his
denial of the Lord followed by the walk on the beach with Jesus
after the Resurrection.82 From the perspective of his human
frailty he experiences what it is to be both chosen and beloved.
Sister Penelope of CSMV, Wantage, in her book “The Wood”83
has written of the loneliness of Our Lord84 in Caesarea Philippi
when He asks the Apostles “who do you say I am…”85 Peter
makes his historic confession “You are the Christ...” and Christ
makes His choice of Peter as the Rock immediately after this.
She also writes of Peter’s “retrospective penitence” which
“throbs like a held pedal on the organ”86 in Mark’s Gospel. Saint
Mark wrote his Gospel at the feet of Peter, and one hears in it
something Peter’s burden following his denial of his Lord. It
created a unique loneliness for him which the Mother of Christ
would have understood. Realising the implications for the Early
Church, she would have heroically transcended her own anguish
over Peter’s denial of her Son, in order to help him to find the
humility to live with what he had done and move beyond it. She
must have reflected that her Son had placed great confidence in
Peter’s humility, for before these events when “Satan would sift
him like wheat”, He instructed him that “when he had come to
himself, [he was to] lend strength to his brothers.”87 He went out
to meet Peter like the Father of the prodigal,88 when He saw him
a long way off, and did not take from him his election or the
task He had laid upon him. Sister Penelope writes “[Mark]
himself had experienced Easter Day and knew the fact, and
perhaps the details – if Peter ever brought himself to tell them –
of the risen Lord’s first meeting with the apostle who had denied
him.”89 But the Gospels themselves are silent about what passed
between the Lord and Peter in that first meeting. They only tell
us that it happened. Peter was to become a lesson for all
disciples to continue in the evangelisation task despite
persecution and their own weaknesses. The simple honesty in
the Gospels regarding Peter’s failures paradoxically restored
him in the eyes of the first disciples as the Rock upon which
Christ would build His Church.90
Church Fathers have plumbed the depths of this conversation at
dawn on the beach of the Lake, its nuances and implications for
81
2 Peter 1.17
The denial: John 18.15-27; the walk on the beach: John 21:15-19
83
Sr Penelope CSMV, The Wood, (A R Mowbray & Co Ltd 1971)
84
Sr Penelope, op. cit., pp 118-9
85
Mark 8.27-33
86
Sr Penelope CSMV, op. cit., page 104
82
67
87
Luke 22.31-32
Luke 15.20
89
Sr Penelope CSMV, op. cit., page 130
90
Matthew 16.18
88
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Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
the Church. Augustine,91 John Chrysostom, and Gregory the
Great are three who come to mind. Looking at the vocabulary in
Greek: Love described as agape is love given unconditionally
and completely. Love described as filia is human love subject to
human weakness. In His first two questions to Peter, Jesus asks
him “do you love me ‘agapo-se’”, totally and unconditionally.
Peter responds on both counts that his love is “filo-se” human
love subject to human weakness. The third time Jesus takes the
term and says: do you love me “Fileis-me?” with human love.
Peter’s response the third time is with his same choice of word
“filo-se”. “Lord you know everything you know that I love you”
“filo-se” with human love subject to weakness. In his catechesis
on Peter in a general audience, Pope Benedict XVI took the
interpretation of this conversation a step further. He says “Prior
to the experience of betrayal the Apostle certainly would have
said: ‘I love you (agape-se) unconditionally.’ Now that he has
known the bitter sadness of infidelity... he says with humility:
‘Lord you know that I love you (filo-se)... with my poor human
love’.” Pope Benedict makes the point that the third time Our
Lord asks Peter, He also uses the word “Fileis-me?” and by so
doing He is showing to Peter that “his poor love is enough”. He
“has put himself on the level of Peter, rather than Peter on (his)
level!” This, in Pope Benedict’s words, gives hope to Peter in his
humiliation and distress. It becomes the basis of his trust, a trust
which he would be able to sustain to the end. Peter knows that
his human love is acceptable to the Lord, and that Our Lord is
able work with it. 92
91
For example, see S Augustine Sermon 97 on the New Testament
Lectionnaire Monastique
69
This conversation in the Aramaic reveals several more layers in
the drama, and Our Lord would of course have been speaking to
Peter in Aramaic. Christ referred to Peter three times as
rb Jw9m4
0nwy
‘Simon, Son of Jonah’. Why should He have
done that at that moment? שָ מַ ע
a
hear, to discern, announce, take heed’.
Aramaic is ‘to hear’.
Jw9m4
a
(m4
(
in Hebrew is ‘to
in the
derived from the
verb, in the Aramaic is ‘Simon’ or ‘Shimon’ which means ‘one
who listens, takes heed, discerns’.
0nwy rb
) in
the Aramaic means ‘son of the dove’ and in the New Testament
‘dove’ is the image of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, Our Lord is
saying something like: ‘listen, take heed to the Holy Spirit’, or
‘You the listener, born of the Spirit… do you love Me’. This
reference echoes the conversation with Nicodemus by night
when he is told to be reborn of the Spirit. Peter has passed his
metaphorical night of betrayal and remorse and is standing in a
new dawn on the beach. At that charged moment these meanings
were being conveyed to Peter and he would have completely
understood them. Three times he was addressed in these terms
92
Pope Benedict XVI: The Apostles, (Our Sunday Visitor Publishing
Division, Indiana 2007), page 47, and Christ and His Church (CTS 2007).
70
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
with the threefold question and injunction following it. John in
the Aramaic record of this conversation begins it by saying
love Christ ‘to the end’. This is a reference to the tradition that
Our Lord met Peter on the road out of Rome as he was fleeing
martyrdom, and Peter, as a result of that encounter, returned to
Rome to die for Our Lord with a love which was truly a love ‘to
the end’. Pope Benedict writes: “The ‘hour’ of Jesus is the hour
of the great stepping beyond, the hour of transformation, and
this metamorphosis of being is brought about through agape. It
is agape ‘to the end’ - and here John anticipates the final word
of the dying Jesus: “Tetélestai” “it is finished” (19.30): This end
(telos), this totality of self-giving, of remolding the whole of
being – this is what it means to give oneself even unto death…
(This) love is the very process of passing over, of
transformation, of stepping outside the limitations of fallen
humanity – in which we are all separated from one another and
ultimately impenetrable to one another – into an infinite
otherness. ‘Love to the end’ is what brings about the seemingly
impossible metabasis: stepping outside the limits of one’s
closed individuality, which is what agape is - breaking through
into the divine…” 94 In these explorations we see how Peter,
chosen by Christ, comes to existentially know the bond this
election holds with being loved.
‘Now after they had dined, Jeshuah said to Jw9m4 (
0p0k
)
Simon Rock…’ John accords him all three
titles in this narrative. His name, given by Christ to be
0p0k
also refers to Christ Himself, the Rock who
accompanies Israel and New Israel, through the desert. So, Peter
is one who hears the Rock, and who is to be Rock himself upon
which the Church will be built, born of the Holy Spirit, and must
pay attention to the questions being put to him after his betrayal.
It is noteworthy that before the Passion, Our Lord says
warningly to Peter ‘Simon, Simon, take heed (in Hebrew, Greek
and Aramaic, this is normally translated as ‘behold’ but in the
context is much stronger), Satan has been given leave to sift you
like wheat’.93 Christ, using
Jw9m4
)
(
is saying in
effect, and Peter would have known this, ‘Take heed, take heed,
take heed…’ Three times as a warning, and three times in the
walk on the beach,
Jw9m4
(
)
is used to convey its
Aramaic message.
The conversation with Peter on the beach we have just looked at
is not only about healing the betrayal of the past, but about
strengthening Peter for the task of the future, and that future is
not only about caring for the sheep, but about being willing to
93
Luke 22.31
71
This conversation on the beach unfolds in the light of the
Passion as the focus shifts to the roasted fish on the charcoal fire
which Jesus had prepared and to which He had invited His
“children” to come and eat.95 The image has been in the
background of the conversation illuminating it. There is a 2nd
94
Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Holy Week: from the Entrance into
Jerusalem to the Resurrection, p55
95
John 21.4-14
72
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Century fresco in which these roasted fish on the charcoal fire
are depicted as Eucharistic symbols which evoke the Paschal
Mystery in the developing future of the Church and so the image
opens onto the future. It shows the unfolding of the “Tetélestai”
the “It is accomplished!” which was spoken on the cross, but
this completion, this tetélestai, is not final and past. “It is the
Greek perfect which is used only of past action the results of
which are still going on.... When a smith says of a sword-blade
‘It is finished’, he means that it is now ready for use.”96 The
most explicit locus for this developing completion is the
Eucharist where sacred time is opened to us and we participate
in the eschatological banquet, where we are nourished and
vivified in the Mystical Body. Peter was invited to union with
the Lord in the Eucharist and it is in this abiding of the Lord in
Peter and Peter in the Lord that he can do all things. For without
Him Peter can do nothing. Saint Augustine writes of this symbol
as a representation of Christ the Crucified One. That is: ‘Piscis
assus Christus est Passus’: Christ in His Passion.97 By inviting
the Apostles to partake of the Eucharist He is also inviting them
to partake of the Passion. Through His Passion and through the
Eucharist each will be enabled to fulfil the command given to
them: “Follow me.” As Augustine says, Our Lord who foretold
Peter’s denial foretold Peter’s passion also.98
Gethsemane, I would like to allude to it here. In her description
of the Passion of Christ, Anne Catherine Emmerich says that
after Peter’s denial, when he fled from the courtyard of the High
Priest in tears at the enormity of what he had done, he did not go
to the cave in the Kidron Valley where the other Apostles were
concealed. Peter returned, instead, to the cave in Gethsemane
where Christ is believed to have concealed Himself in the
deepest moments of His Agony. I find this significant. “…And
when John drew near to speak to him, Peter, like one crazed
with grief, hurried out from the court and fled from the city. He
paused not until he reached that cave on Mount Olivet upon
whose stones were impressed the marks of Jesus’ hands while
He prayed. In that same cave our first father Adam did penance,
for it was here that he first reached the curse-laden earth…”99
Here Peter is Adam, and every man. What would have drawn
Peter to Gethsemane at that moment? In Gethsemane Our Lord
prayed to His Father from within His identity as the Chosen and
Beloved of the Father, and entered upon the Passion. Would
Peter have felt at that moment of return to it, an instinctive
necessity to be where He had done that, even to turn the clock
back? Might he have pleaded there for the denial to be undone
and own before the Father his election as the Rock? He, the
Rock, came instinctively to the rock upon which Christ had
thrown Himself. He concealed himself where Christ had shown
intense fear but embraced the cup. I believe that Peter intuited in
this the bond between being chosen and loved which was
stronger than the betrayal. He was not forsaken by Christ.
Peter in his denial is everyman. Although the comment that
follows belongs in the exegesis of the Second Song in
discussion of Adam and the significance of the cave in
96
Sr Penelope CSMV, op. cit., page 126
S Augustine, Tractate 123 on John Lectionnaire Monastique
98
S Augustine, op. cit.
97
73
99
Anne Catherine Emmerich: op. cit, Vol. 4, Chapter 18, p.165.
74
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
DELIGHT
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me…”100 Pope
Benedict XVI has said that Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 are the two
Old Testament passages most significant regarding the
Crucifixion of the Lord. From Psalm 22 he illustrates this with
the cry of anguish from the cross: “My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me…”. Moving to Verses 6-8 of the Psalm which
deal with the mockery directed at the Psalmist, he quotes the
verse: “Let (the Lord) rescue him, for he delights in him…”
Other translations include “Let (the Lord) rescue him, if he
delights in him…”101 Certain texts of scripture link ‘delight’ and
the Passion, either as irony, or as a challenge, or as a pure
transcendence of love. The Hebrew of this word ‘delight’ in
Isaiah 42.1 is ( ָר ְצ ָת֣הrā-ṣə-ṯāh) from the root ָרצָ ה
ra
a
, here meaning ‘to delight in, to be well pleased’. But in
Psalm 22 the Hebrew word for this delight is ִׁ֥פץ
ֵֽ ( ָחḥā-p̄êṣ
from the root חָ פַ ץ
a
a
meaning ‘to incline, to bend
down, to be well pleased, to delight in and to be willing to
delight in’. This last might explain why it was chosen by the
scribe for its use in the context of Psalm 22, whereas in Isaiah
42.1 the redactor is concerned to plumb to the profoundest
depths the delight of the Lord for His Servant. Pope Benedict
makes the point that the Servant was rescued, as testified by His
Resurrection: “The early Church recognized herself in that great
100
Psalm 22
Pope Benedict XVI Jesus of Nazareth Vol. II, pp 204 ff. and p. 205 where
the author draws forth the Eucharistic meaning which the Early Church
would have read into the same Psalm.
101
75
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
assembly which celebrates the granting of the suppliant’s
prayer, his rescue – the Resurrection! Two further surprising
elements now follow. Not only does salvation come to the
psalmist, but it leads to the ‘afflicted (eating) and (being)
satisfied’ Psalm 22 Verse 26 … In these last two verses could
the early Church fail to recognize, in the first place, the
‘afflicted (eating) and (being) satisfied’ as a sign of the
mysterious new meal that the Lord had given them in the
Eucharist?”102
In Isaiah 42.1: ( ָר ְצ ָת֣הrā-ṣə-ṯāh) “(in whom) My Soul
delights”, the Hebrew root ָרצָ ה
ra
a
, is primitive, here
meaning ‘delight, to be well pleased’. It is in the third person
singular feminine, as it refers to the ‘soul’ of the Father, and in
Hebrew the word for my ‘soul’ ( נ ְַפ ִּׁשִׁ֑יnap̄-šî) is feminine. But
the term ‘delight’ in the Hebrew also, importantly, means to be
pleased in terms of compensation, where a debt is discharged,
and to be satisfied in this respect. Thus in the context of the task
given to the Son to redeem and suffer, to discharge the debt of
our sin, the Father expresses Himself to be well pleased. This
same word is used in Isaiah 40.2 where the debt which is
referred to, is repaid. In this sense it is an example of how the
scriptures stress something and draw out its meaning by using
the same word in different but related contexts. In chapter 40
which sets the tone for our understanding of the Servant,
consolation is placed at the heart of the task. The sin and debt of
Jerusalem, of the people of God, is to be expunged. The
102
Pope Benedict XVI op. cit. p.205
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Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
sacrificial Passion of His Son is therefore deeply acceptable to
the Father.
upon Calvary. In that self-sacrifice He is supported by the
Father and His soul is received into the Father’s hands. In art
there is an example of this by an anonymous painter of the style
of Nardo di Cione in the Gallery of the Academy in Florence.
In the painting the support of the Father is during His
crucifixion. German sacred art in particular has expressed in
image, the Father holding the Son in His dying, supporting the
Son’s arms on the cross. The Father is depicted behind the cross,
His hands underneath the cross beam as He also stretches out
His arms in a reflection of His dying Son who is in front of and
beneath Him. In some depictions of this, the cross horizontal
beam is resting on the Father’s knees as He sits enthroned. It is a
concept we have been able to express in art, just as we have held
it over centuries in our religious consciousness. This is referring
to support in the actual manner of sacrifice, not only in the
reception of His Soul on the other side of death.
The Septuagint translation of this phrase “(in whom) my soul
delights” is more complex. Those scribes and translators
gathered in Alexandria to render the Hebrew Old Testament into
Greek were interpreting the literal Hebrew at some points. This
is true for all translators. And what they chose to express by the
Hebrew ( ָר ְצ ָת֣הrā-ṣə-ṯāh) was not what we mean by delight.
They used the Greek phrase προσεδέξατο αὐτὸν ἡ ψυχή μου.
The Greek expresses that the soul of the Father ‘favourably
receives’ the Son. It is a clumsy rendering of the Hebrew, but
what does it tell us about the Servant and His Father? It
expresses the sense of the Father upholding and supporting the
Son, of receiving Him in His own hands. I ask what did the
Hebrew translators try to express? Did they understand this
prophecy at all? They would not have had the Crucifixion of the
Servant in their thoughts, of course. This receiving of the Son by
the Father is expressed in the Greek Middle Voice which
conveys intensity. The presence of the ‘pros’ before the word
shows that this is a receiving for which the recipient is
profoundly waiting. The Father’s soul waits intensely to receive
the Son favourably, to bear Him up and sustain Him.
Therefore, with hindsight this translation might be expressing
how the Son will return to the Father in eternity103 to be
enthroned. His return is through the gate of death as it happened
See, for instance, John 13. 3: ‘that he had come from God and was going
to God’
103
77
Do not be disturbed that there are different translations of these
profound and mysterious utterances from Isaiah. We are
reflecting upon a prophecy given in ecstasy and the recipients
themselves revered such utterances, committed them to writing
and were willing to await the time of their fulfilment. Only then
would they have expected to understand them. In the translation
of the Septuagint the original Hebrew was written as consonants
without their vowels. Much of the work had to be undertaken
with reference to context and what was handed down among the
Hebrew scribes as correct interpretation.
The Septuagint rendering of ( ָר ְצ ָת֣הrā-ṣə-ṯāh) as προσεδέξατο
αὐτὸν ἡ ψυχή μου is a tautology, because in drawing out the
78
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Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
concept of support and upholding, it is evoking and intensifying
this same mystery contained in the Hebrew verbal root for
unfolded in its full glory, the One who is the delight of the
Father will blossom on the cross where His nature is most
clearly set forth. There the flower and fruit of truth is most
graphically portrayed. His suffering is a necessity not only as a
sacrifice for sin, but also because it reveals the Truth. This is
illustrated clearly in Luke’s Gospel and it reaches its
profoundest exposition in the mysticism of the Evangelist Saint
John.
“[Here is my servant whom] I uphold [ ך
ְ ָ’( אֶ ְתמeṯ-māḵ)]”.
When this kind of thing happens in the Hebrew it is a form of
parallelism, and there are many examples in both the Old and
New Testaments of this manner of emphasis. It is also a method
of teaching. So, the translators of the Septuagint were following
a Rabbinic method and instinct. For me, it invites a question:
what were they really trying to express? What was their
understanding of this figure in the First Song, and to whom did
they believe He was the Servant? Was this, for these ancient
scribes, Israel in relation to her God? Or was there some
instinctive, veiled, unconscious notion of a Suffering Servant
who would be the Messiah? (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argues for
the concept of the Suffering Messiah in Hebrew consciousness
and writing which goes back to the 2nd Century.) How would the
Qumran community have understood this translation into Greek,
and its Hebrew version? We know that the Early Church was at
variance with the Septuagint renderings at key points. But, once
again, this illustrates that something of the truth was being given
through frail human beings, though it was complex and oblique.
The Servant Songs are in the Book of Consolation. Both the Son
and the Father are saying of each other in the return to the Father
through the Passion: “My Beloved is mine and I am His.”105 “I
will seek Him whom my soul loves.”106 The Father follows the
footsteps of His Son in the dark night of His Incarnation all the
way to Calvary. The Song of Songs expresses it for the Father:
“How beautiful you are, my Beloved, and how delightful.”107 As
the Son said on the eve of His Passion, “You will all flee and
leave me alone. But I am not alone. My Father is with me.”108 It
is written in the Song of Songs “I awakened you under the apple
tree.”109 I see this also in terms of the Son being resurrected by
the Father.
the understanding of fragrance, of perfume.104 Like a bud
How redolent with meaning is the symbol of the tree in relation
to the mysteries we are exploring. S Ephrem says of this tree:
“Penetrating in the branch which is the Virgin Mary, God hung
104
105
ָרצָ הra
a
‘delight’, in the Hebrew, contains within itself
"That is the evening sacrifice, the passion of the Lord, the cross of the
Lord...When a prayer is sincerely uttered by a faithful heart, it rises as
incense rises from a sacred altar. There is no scent more fragrant than that of
the Lord. All who believe must possess this perfume." S Augustine On the
Psalms 140.4-6. Lectionnaire Monastique
79
Song of Solomon 2.16
Song of Solomon 3.2
107
Song of Solomon 1.16
108
John 16.32
109
Song of Solomon 8.5
106
80
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
thereon the fruit which Adam and Eve had not tasted in Eden;
they plucked and gathered it from Mary, because the fruit which
gives strength to those who eat it fell upon them, weighed down
with love. The tree, which was left behind in Eden by those who
should have eaten from it, was burning with love. To confound
the serpent who had ruined them, this tree in its zeal, had
followed those who should have eaten from it, so that they
might eat its fruit where now they dwelt. Greed and pride were
hidden in the tree of knowledge; the Virgin conceived her fruit
without coveting, so that the deadly greed of the human race
might be destroyed for ever through love. God's Eden is Mary;
in her can be found neither the tree of knowledge nor the
harmful serpent, nor Eve who engenders death; but from her
comes forth the tree of life which brings the exiles back to
Paradise. Lo, the tree of life which is watched over by the
cherub and the flaming sword, dwells within the most pure
Virgin whom Joseph guards. The guardian of Paradise has
resheathed his sword, because the fruit which he was protecting
has been sent from heaven down to those on earth who had
fallen. Mortal men have eaten of it and have obtained life
thereby. Blessed be the fruit which the Virgin Mary bore.”110
writes of Isaiah 42.1: “... the so-called soul of God was
delighting in him. In a manner similar to referring to the feet,
hands, fingers and eyes of God, Scriptures make use of the term
‘soul’ in relation to God...”112 Eusebius is saying that sometimes
we have to use anthropomorphic language. The word for soul in
What may we understand about the word ‘soul’ when it is used
of the uncreated God and the soul is a human feature which is
part of our created nature? 111 The created soul has its identity,
its life and its potentials. In the Early Church, the Fathers
approached the problem in this way: Eusebius of Caesarea
the Hebrew is (nap̄-šî) נ ְַפ ִּׁשִׁ֑יfrom ( נֶפֶ ש
Hymn of S Ephrem the Syrian on the Annunciation, 5. Lectionnaire
Monastique
111
Athanasian Creed
81
04Pn
(
in Aramaic, or in the Greek of the Septuagint,
psyche. In the Semitic languages it is a term which is extremely
broad and is used throughout the Scriptures to cover both human
and animal life. It conveys the breath, living being, self, soul. In
the Gospels Jesus Himself refers to His Soul with this word
y4Pn
(
‘My Soul’ from the Aramaic root
(
$pn
).113 He is God Incarnate, both fully human and fully
divine, but He speaks of His Soul as the Son of Man. So it is
good, I think to simply allow this reference to the Soul of the
Father in the Servant Songs to be poetic, something we can
understand as human beings to be the Father desiring union with
the Son. Each Person of the Trinity is in this complete,
mysterious union of being in Trinity. The Incarnation did not
separate the Persons of the Trinity. Indeed as Saint John records
of Jesus’ Priestly discourse: “May they be one, Father, as you
are in me, and I am in you, may they be perfectly one.”114 Jesus
112
110
or
Eusebius of Caesarea: Commentary on Isaiah 2.22. Lectionnaire
Monastique
113
Cf Mt 26.38, Mk14.34, John 12.27
114
John 17.11, 21-23 and the whole High Priestly prayer of John 17
82
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
uses the present tense. But Jesus also speaks of His “Ascension
to the Father” as if it is a return.115 This is a profound mystery.
Cenacle in the middle of the night, alone.119 Her purpose, as she
retraced the steps of her Son on the Via Dolorosa, was to wipe
up His Blood and gather the fragments of His Flesh scattered
there. This ancient Jewish custom is performed to this day by
Orthodox Jews in the wake of attacks or accident. Between the
Crucifixion and the Resurrection the Spirit of the Lord has
entered the underworld for what the Church calls the
“Harrowing of Hell”. There He reaches into the darkness of
death and awakens Adam and Eve, the first human beings. He
brings them forth to Life. But He Himself waits for the Father to
bring Him to life and bestow on Him a glorified Body.
SHIR HASHIRIM: THE SONG OF SONGS
We can dimly perceive what His Passion, Death and
Resurrection might have meant for both Father and Son in their
mutual love. The Song of Songs, the Gospels, the Servant
Songs, form a symphony of love, the movements ebbing and
flowing between the Divinity and humanity and within the
Godhead. The Beloved slept upon the cross.116 John the
Evangelist, Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus gathered the
Fruit from the Tree. The women disciples attended. The Mother
supported this Blossom, this Fruit, upon her knees, anointing
Him with her tears. Upon the Stone of Unction the sacred
wounds have been filled with ointment and myrrh.117 The
fragrant Body sleeps on the earth and the tomb is sealed.118 The
Delight of the Father waits for the awakening. The mystic
visionary, Anne Catherine Emmerich writes that on the eve of
the Resurrection, the Mother of the Lord slipped out of the
Ignatius of Antioch (d.117 AD) was a disciple of the apostle
John. In his epistle to the Smyrnaeans Ignatius wrote, "For I
know and believe that He [Jesus] was in the flesh even after the
resurrection". In his epistle to the Romans, Ignatius proclaims
Jesus, "... was truly crucified and died ... was truly raised from
the dead, His Father having raised Him...". 120 In this glorified
Body He will return to His disciples in encounters which will
change them forever.
Is there any more appropriate place from which to view the
Resurrection therefore, than the song of spiritual love, the Shir
HaShirim121 where it is written: “I awakened you under the
apple tree.”122 It was beneath the tree in the garden that Adam
115
John 13.3, 20.17; see also Philippians 2.8-9 and Ephesians 4.9-10
Compare ‘An ancient homily for Holy Saturday’: ‘I slept on the cross and
a sword pierced my side …’ The Divine Office, The Liturgy of the Hours
according to the Roman Rite, (Collins 1974, Vol II p 322)
117
John 19.40
118
Matthew 27.66
116
83
119
Anne Catherine Emmerich op. cit.. Vol IV, pp357 ff
Compare also Philippians 3.21
121
Song of Songs
122
Song of Songs 8.5b
120
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Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
and Eve fell into the sleep of sin. It was upon a tree on the Rock
of Calvary that the Son of Man slept to expiate that sin. It was
from within the tomb in the garden beneath the Tree of Calvary
that the Father called forth His Son from death.
His Flesh was the Holy of Holies. This was mirrored in the
actual rending of the Temple veil.129
I am applying the phrases of the Song of Songs which are often
used of the Mother of Christ, or of the soul which seeks Him, to
Our Lord Himself in His love for His Father. The Incarnate Son
sought the Father by night, if we understand that to be the night
of His earthly sojourn, beseeching Him on our behalf. Listen to
the Song: “On my bed at night I sought him whom my heart
loves.”123 The Son went out beyond the walls of the city,124 in
the Song’s words “I will rise and go through the City; in the
streets and in the squares I will seek him whom my heart
loves...”125 The Beloved is Wisdom,126 crying out in the
streets,127 seeking the Father through His expiatory death on
behalf of humanity and going out beyond the City walls. In the
words of the Song “The watchmen came upon me as they made
their rounds in the City. They beat me, they wounded me, they
took away my veil…”128 The watchmen of the City who were
the High Priests and the Sanhedrin, found Him and took away
His veil, the veil of His Flesh. But the Flesh only veiled His
Godhead, and what was revealed by the rending of the veil of
In that journey beyond the City walls, He was consoled by the
Women of Jerusalem among whom were surely many of the
Holy Women who had become His disciples. He spoke to them
in prophecy from the depths of His suffering.130 But here in the
Shir HaShirim is what He did not say to them then, “I charge
you daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my Beloved, tell Him
that I am sick with love…”131 The love of the Servant had
constrained Him to the point of death. It was love which brought
Him to Calvary. It was love of the Father, and of the Father’s
will, and love of estranged humanity. It was also a divine desire
to return to His Father bearing His trophy. He may say to the
women also as He sleeps in death “I charge you daughters of
Jerusalem... not to stir my love, or rouse it, until it please to
awake.”132 That is, the Ecclesia, His disciples must also wait in
faith until the moment when the Father awakens Him from
death. This His Mother did most radically, being the One who
bore the heroic faith that He would rise again.
In the poetry of the Shir HaShirim the Father breathes upon the
myrrh-anointed Body of the Son of Man: “... blow upon my
123
Song of Songs 3.1
The place of the Crucifixion was outside the city walls in the Jerusalem of
Jesus’ day. See Hebrews 13.12
125
Song of Songs 3.2
126
Christ the power and the wisdom of God: 1 Corinthians 1.24
127
Proverbs 8.1-3
128
Song of Songs 3.3, 5.7
Matthew 27.51, Hebrews 9.8, 10.19-20. For a description of the original
veil, see Exodus 26.31-35
130
Luke 23.27-30. for the reference to the Mother of the Lord and those who
stood by the cross with her, see John 19.25
131
Song of Songs 5.8
132
Song of Songs 8.4
85
86
124
129
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
garden that the spices thereof may flow out…”133 The Spirit, the
Breath of the Father hovers above the new creation,134 and this
new creation is in the Son whom the Father is raising from
death. The רּוח
ַ
r
a
Ruach, the Breath, the Spirit, enters
clinging to the Father into whose hands He had committed His
Spirit138 upon the cross. “I hear my Beloved knocking...” Upon
the door of death the Father knocks. He calls to the Son perhaps
in the words of the Song “...open to me... my Perfect One”139
The Son may say like the Bride of the Song “I trembled to the
core of my being. Then I rose to open to my Beloved, myrrh ran
off my hands, pure myrrh off my fingers...”140 His myrrhcovered Body rose in response to the Father, rising to His
embrace, in the union of the Godhead. The myrrh bearing
women came to anoint Him further.141 But He had risen to open
to the Father, the myrrh dripping from His wounded hands.
the Body of the Son of Man who sleeps in death. The Risen
Christ contains redeemed humanity and all creation will ascend
with Him to the Father’s side.
This image from the Shir HaShirim is similar to that of the
Prophet Elisha stretched upon the body of the widow’s child in
Shunem.135 Eyes to his eyes, mouth to his mouth, hands and feet
to his, the prophet stretched himself upon the child seven times.
Seven is the perfect number, the number Christ enjoins for
forgiveness to be perfect: “seventy times seven.”136 Humanity is
forgiven its crime, with perfect forgiveness. The perfect
Sacrifice which was accomplished in the death of the Son of
Man is taken to the next level. The Father breathes forth upon
the Son His perfect Life.
Upon the cold stone the Son’s Body rested awaiting the Father’s
kiss of life. Perhaps as He waited in the flesh as the Son of Man
He could say like the Bride in the Shir HaShirim “I sleep but my
heart is awake... I hear my Beloved knocking...” 137 He slept in
the Flesh, but in His divine nature His Heart remained awake,
133
Song of Songs 4.16
Compare Genesis 1.2
135
2 Kings 4.32-37
136
Matthew 18.22
137
Song of Songs 5.2
134
87
The Song says: “blow upon my garden that the spices thereof
may flow out…”142 The Son enters the garden of Paradise which
is once again opened. Its fragrances, its herbs, its fruits are once
more opened to humanity. “Let my Beloved come into his
garden; let him taste its rarest fruits…”143 The Apostles would
run to the empty tomb in the garden. The myrrh bearing women
would come “Before the dawn wind rises, before the shadows
flee... to the mountain of myrrh, to the hill of frankincense…”144
But one, the Magdalen, would linger in the garden, weeping. In
138
Luke 23.46 and Psalm 31.5
Song of Songs 5.2
140
Song of Songs 5.4-5
141
The myrrh-bearing women: Luke 23.56 – 24.1. See also Matthew 26.12
and Mark 14.8 for the anointings ‘for His burial’, and for the gift of myrrh to
the young Child Jesus see Matthew 2.11
142
Song of Songs 4.16
143
Song of Songs 4.16
144
Song of Songs 4.6
139
88
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 2 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
her search for her Beloved Master she would see, as if through a
mist, One whom she mistook for the gardener. He would
enquire of her kindly. She would begin to speak, to ask where
her Beloved might be, and He Himself would say very simply:
“Mary...” and she, all else forgotten, would recognise Him and
say equally simply, “Rabboni”145
the wilderness... perfumed with myrrh…”150 “How beautiful you
are, my love…”151
The theme of the Divine Shepherd milking His sheep in the
Garden of Paradise was frequently portrayed on the tombs of the
catacombs of Rome. In the words of the Song: “My Beloved
went down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to pasture his
It was embedded in the
flock in the gardens…”146
consciousness of the earliest Christians in the persecuted Church
as a motif that He is the Shepherd in the eternal garden, He is
the Fountain of Life that makes the garden fruitful, He is the
Gate to the garden.147 His Ecclesia is in the words of the Shir
HaShirim “The garden enclosed, a sealed fountain…”148 For this
garden He died and has been raised.
In the Glorified Body the Son was once more present among His
Ecclesia. The Son continues to abide on earth in the Sacrament
of His Presence.152 We are drawn into a great attraction and
unity of love which exists in the Trinity. We, the Ecclesia are
invited into this divine love, to say with the Father, “How
beautiful you are, my Beloved...”.
I have spent this chapter on only the first line of the First
Servant Song but the opening lines are those of a mysterious and
profound drama. The first Song and its first verse bring us into
the presence of the relationship between the Father and the Son.
When it is said that the Song of Songs is Israel’s most sacred
book, I can attest to the statement if we use it to understand
more deeply this relationship. The High Priestly Prayer of
John’s gospel allows us to approach the mystery of this divine
mutual love and the two are a complementary gift.
“Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice
vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the
blood of grapes.”149 These words from Genesis have been used
of the Beloved as He went to His Passion. But now we turn to
the Shir HaShirim and we hear “Who is this that cometh out of
145
John 20.11-18
Song of Songs 6.2
147
Compare John 10.1-18
148
Song of Songs 4.12
149
Genesis 49.11
146
150
Song of Songs 3.6
Song of Songs 4.1
152
That is, the Holy Eucharist.
151
89
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Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
3
THE FIRST SERVANT SONG: Isaiah 42.1-9
1.The Servant’s Justice. 2.Night.
These opening verses of the First Song are what Our Lord read
at the synagogue in Nazareth.1 “I will put my Spirit upon him...”
This bestowal is for the sake of justice and is expressed in the
Baptism of Christ in the Jordan.2 The nature of this justice is of
the essence of the Gospel. It is the release of captives, sight
given to the blind, and the place where “mercy and truth have
met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each
other…”3
THE SERVANT’S JUSTICE
ִמ ְׁשפָּ֖ט ִמ ְׁשפָּ֖ט ִמ ְׁשפָּ֖טjustice, justice, justice. (miš-pāṭ)… the
word rings out three times in rapid succession in the first verses
of the First Song.4 This justice is to be a divine, sacrificial selfgift through the path of Death and Resurrection but there would
1
Luke 4.16-21 especially verse 18. The whole passage also refers to Isaiah
61.1-2
2
See Matthew 3.16, Mark 1.10, Luke 3.22, John 1.32-33
3
Psalm 8.10
4
Isaiah 42.1, 3, 4
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Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
be in the encounter between the Servant and humanity no peace
without truth, no righteousness without mercy to enable it.
into Himself, and He does not cry out for help, manifestly does
not do it.
After the first utterances of this Messianic justice, there follows
a triple emphasis upon the restraint of the Servant in His task.5
Is this the Messianic secret? Is it the prophetic reference to the
hidden life of Christ for 30 years prior to the three in which He
was among humanity uttering His healing Evangelium? “He will
not shout or cry out or raise his voice in the streets...” Yet it is
also said prophetically that Wisdom stands at the street corners,6
and justice is administered in the gates. When the moment is
right, when the kairos7 is upon Him, He would stand at the
festival in Jerusalem, on the last and greatest day, and cry out “If
anyone thirsts let him come to me and drink…” 8
The second is ( יִ שָּׂ֑אyiś-śā) from נשאSF\XF\ translated as
Inherent in this triple stress on restraint, is the underlying fact
that the Son of God was to take this situation upon Himself and
into Himself to suffer it. Therefore the word in Isaiah for ‘he
shall not cry out’, is ( יִ ְׁצעָּ֖קyiṣ-‘aq) from ( צעקYXFFV which
‘he will not shout’ but as can be seen it shares the noun ‘his
voice’ of the following phrase, for the verb means ‘to raise, to
lift up’. This verb is very important in the Servant Songs and in
the Aramaic Gospel of John. It evokes the Crucifixion and much
else. It has been used significantly in Isaiah 52 and earlier in the
prophecy, and we have already looked carefully at it and it in
Chapter 1 of this exegesis.
The third is from שמעXMF\RFM which is most commonly
used to mean ‘to hear’ but in this context it is in the hiphil
(causative) ( י ְׁש ִ ִ֥מיעyaš-mî-a) future and it is translated as ‘he
will (not) raise the sound’, that is ‘he will not cause his voice to
be heard in the street’. It is used further on in this chapter, in
verse 18 to mean ‘to hear’ in that enigmatic section.
means, especially, ‘to cry out for help’. In the writings of the
prophet Jeremiah, God says to His people that He has struck
them ‘the blow of an enemy…’ and that their wound is
incurable. He then asks them ‘Why do you cry out because of
your wound?’9 Exactly the same Hebrew for this kind of cry is
used: ( צעקYXFFV. The Servant receives this wound, takes it
The prophet means us to connect these three stresses on restraint
with the images which follow. ‘He will not break a bruised reed
or snuff out a smouldering wick’.10 They contain secrets which
would have been diffusely intuited by the school of Isaiah about
the nature of the Messianic Servanthood. This intuition would
obviously have been limited by the distance between the
prophecy and its fulfilment. This reed, or stalk of wheat, קנ ֶ֤ה
5
(qā-neh) was bruised, that is, in the Hebrew, ‘broken into
Isaiah 42.2
Proverbs 1.20-21
7
Greek καιρός – a time of opportunity, a season, a while.
8
John 7.37
9
Jeremiah 30.15
6
93
10
Isaiah 42.3
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Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
fragments’. It is a typically Hebraic structure because the root
( רצּוץrā-ṣūṣ) also means to be broken. So the bruised/broken
words that stalk of wheat will be Christ Himself in the bread
which will be offered.14
reed He will not break. It is already broken. He will not
completely destroy it. St Bernard likens Adam to the bruised
reed: “For the free gift was not like the trespass: the magnitude
of the grace won for us by Christ exceeds beyond all proportion
the ruin wrought by Adam. Instead of breaking that which was
bruised, the wisest of Craftsmen restored His handiwork to be
better in every way, forming a new Adam from the old and
giving us in Mary a second Eve…”11 In the Fourth Song the
prophet describes the Servant Himself as ‘bruised for our
iniquities.’12 The Hebrew for this in Chapter 53.5 and 10, is
( ְׁמ ֻדכָּ֖אmə-ḏuk-kā) from the root דכאIF\PF\, which
This bruised reed He will not break or ‘afflict to the heart’,
( יִ ְׁש ּ֔בֹורyiš-bō-wr) for that is what the Hebrew here means.
means ‘to break, crush and bruise’. Here in this initial mention
in Chapter 42, the stalk of wheat is understood as bruised, from
the root ( רצץWFYXFYX and I understand this to be a tenuous
mention of future Eucharistic imagery: that Christ took upon
Himself the fractured human condition. The Father did not
destroy humanity as one might have the fig tree which after
three years had borne no fruit.13 Rather this bruised and
fractured human nature was entered upon by One who would
not break it but who Himself was broken to make it whole and
continues to be broken and given in the Eucharist. In other
Instead, His own Heart He will allow to be afflicted, to be
pierced, through the gift of the divine love He offered. The root
for this verb ‘to afflict to the heart’ is שברXMF\GFW and it
means not simply to break but ‘to break in pieces’. In this way it
is doubly emphasised that the Servant’s task included fracture,
was addressing fracture, and suffering fracture. But the root also
conveys thirst, and this is a reference to the Crucifixion.15 This
was in essence, in the spiritual aspect, a thirst of divine love
which had come to find lost humanity and bring it home. In the
original Hebrew there is a triple internal rhyme in these verses
and here I provide my own transliteration of the Hebrew. That
is, the word for ‘in the street’ (ba-chutz) ( בחָּ֖ ּוץthe ‘ch’ is a
guttural) as above, for ‘bruised’ ( רצּוץrā-tzūtz) as above, and
for ‘discourage/bruised’ (yā-rūtz) י ּ֔רּוץin verse 4,16 which we
will come to: ba-chutz, rā-tzūtz, yā-rūtz,. This and other word
play and rhymes suggest to me that these Songs were used
publicly as canticles and were preserved in oral as well as
written traditions.
14
11
From the Sermons of St Bernard for Sunday in the Octave of the
Assumption. Used in Lectionnaire Monastique
12
Isaiah 53.5
13
Luke 13.6-9
95
Compare the saying of Jesus in John 12.24: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you,
unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it
dies, it bears much fruit.’
15
John 19.28
16
That is, transliterated, bachutz, ratzutz, yarutz
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Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
The image of the Servant refusing to extinguish the smouldering
wick is expressive of the compassion of the Father for humanity
which struggles with darkness. In the Prologue to his Gospel
John picks up this metaphor: the Light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.17 This Light enlightens
every man who comes into the world.18 There is another internal
half rhyme in this verse between ‘reed/ stalk of wheat’ ( קנ ֶ֤הqāneh), and ‘extinguish’ ( יְׁ כבָּׂ֑נהyə-ḵab-ben-nāh) which might
suggest a link between these two metaphors on a subliminal
level within the prophecy. Eugenio Zolli, former Chief Rabbi of
Rome, writes in relation to these two images: the bruised reed
and the smouldering wick. He sees in them both the darkness
and light, and also the justice and mercy of God. Zolli’s
consciousness was formed in the Rabbinate and His writing is
numinous, in fact it is awesome, coming as it does from this
context. Its lingering detail and exploratory depths belong in an
exegesis. How often these verses are read in liturgies, but do we
pause to enter the depths as Zolli has done? “More beautiful
(than Job) is the silence of the Servant of God. It is a
persevering silence that speaks with sublime accents. It is the
silence of the earth wounded by the farmer’s plough. It is a
fertile silence; it speaks to the heart as God does, without the
sound of voice. It leaves a void in the soul, enlarges the wounds
and deepens them and causes them to bleed. We must listen to
the silence of God and of His Servant. Does God suffer? This is
17
18
Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
a terrible question. I do not know if God suffers, but I do know
that His Servant suffered, and perhaps in him God suffers. Then
I began to wonder, Who is the Servant of God? He says he does
not break the bruised reed, he does not extinguish the smoking
flax; therefore he feels the tears, even of things – of the crushed
reed, of the languishing flame, the flame that sinks and rises
again as if by a painful effort. Poor smoking wick, its strength
failing and its heart filled with darkness; turning to ashes even
as it struggles to give its last light. Poor smoking flax, the life is
exhausted in it before it dies; it fights desperately trying to give
light to others – to men. How pitiful! And the pity of it the
Servant of God feels fully. The flame of the dying flax sinks and
rises. It is a struggle between life and death, between being and
not being, between light and darkness. But the bruised reed
lying on the ground no longer gives any sign of life. The dying
flame is spending itself; it dies and the dead are poorer than the
dying. Who is poorer than one who is dead? The languishing
flame looks somewhat like one dead but fitfully restored by a
fresh impulse of life. But the wounded reed is a dead reed, dead
forever. The Servant of God feels the anguish of the smoking
flax, and the unspeakable tragedy of the yellowed reed lying in
the mud, deprived of all life. But he, the Servant of God, passes
in silence, with his heart open, and he receives them with love.
Both are silent: true sorrow and true love. Who was this Servant
of God? … The sins committed by men offend God. It seems
to me that God is wounded, God suffers in His justice or in His
mercy. He suffers because of the man who sins, He suffers with
the man who sins because the man’s condition is more pitiful
John 1.5
Cf Psalm 36.9
97
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Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
than the smoking flax and the bruised reed which moved the
Servant of God to pity…”19
out of your flesh a heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh
and you will keep my law…’21 ‘...To love one another as I have
loved you’22 entailed the piercing of the Heart of the Son.23 In
the Fourth Song I will look closely at this piercing which is so
important in the prophecies of the Servant, not only in Isaiah.24
At the beginning of verse 4 there is a further play on the
metaphor of fragmentation which is of the essence of the
Hebrew of the bruised reed. The word for ‘shall not falter’,
( יִ ְׁכההyiḵ-heh) means that he shall not be broken or
fragmented, weak, timid or faint. It is in contrast to the bruised
reed above. Poetically the point is that the Servant is strong, that
there is a brokenness which is ours and assumed for us, but He
is also the Unbroken, Divine, Absolute One. Christ was strong,
until He suffered the Crucifixion in His human nature at the
appointed moment. The second image immediately following
endorses this, for the Servant is not to be bruised until He has
brought forth justice. This bruising of the Servant is ( י ּ֔רּוץyārūṣ), and as I showed above is used in rhyme. This glances, as it
were, in the direction of what will one day be the fragmentation
of the Host in the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
The Servant will not falter until He constitutes justice on the
earth,20 and this is the final of the justice triad of the First
Servant Song. The way divine justice is constituted, שים
ִ֥ ִ ( יyāśîm), is a matter of the heart, for the Hebrew שים
ִ֥ ִ ( יyā-śîmis)
means ‘to lay to heart’. ‘A new heart I will give you. I will take
19
20
Before the Dawn: Eugenio Zolli, Part 1, The Suffering Servant of God.
Isaiah 42.4
99
The final phrase of this verse is to the effect that in his torah, his
law, the islands25 will put their hope. The reference to the
islands may seem surprising but basically the scribe is indicating
that all land which is able to support human life will long for
this law and wait for it with hope. This torah was given on
another mountain, not Sinai but Calvary, and it was of the Spirit.
It would not be a law inscribed on stone tablets but written in
the Blood of the Son on the tablet of human consciousness.
I have come to a natural threshold in the text of the First Song
which completes the opening hymn of it. There are various
opinions on which verses of Isaiah 42 constitute the First Song.
They are: 42.1-4, 42.1-6, 42.1-7, 42.1-9. I have taken the final
delineation for this study. The next section of the First Song is
in Chapter 4, but, as exegesis is peregrine, I am going to explore
this justice more deeply before moving on.
21
Ezekiel 11.19; 36.26
John 13.34; 15.12
23
John 19, 34,37; Zechariah 12.10
24
Isaiah 53.5
25
Isaiah 42.4: from איa habitable or desirable spot; a coast, an island.
22
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Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
NIGHT
This discursion is to uncover hidden layers in the nature of the
justice of these opening verses of the First Song. To do this, the
intense but delicate threads which connect scriptural texts must
be laid bare. This is a complex task akin to the in-depth analysis
of poetry. These references are both internal to texts and
external, involving other texts in the canon. It is important to
stay with the movement of this exercise.
What kind of night is this? It is that of the absence of justice.
Chapter 26 of Isaiah is one such and its phrases describe this
justice in terms of the Servant. Lest we assume that the justice
of the First Song is something human or horizontal, it is not.
Isaiah Chapter 26 is about the raw urgency of bringing justice to
birth. Unexpectedly while reading Isaiah, at any point in the
book, from Proto to Trito Isaiah, it echoes the Song of Songs. In
Isaiah Chapter 26 we read: “… my spirit sought you by
night…”26 Immediately the Ancient would recall “Upon my
bed at night I sought Him whom my heart loves…”27 which is
the profound longing of the Bride for the Bridegroom of the
Song of Songs, this ‘holiest of Israel’s Books’.
The longing in the night is an antiphon expressing the yearning
of Israel for her God, the heartbeat of this Messianic Song of
Songs. And His response when He comes is: “Open to me …
My head is drenched with dew…”28 Further on in Chapter 26 is
Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
the phrase, an extraordinary phrase, ‘Thy dew is the dew of the
light…’29 Then from the Song of Songs the phrase so beloved
by contemplatives: “I slept, but my heart was awake…”,30 and
the knocking on the door of our being as our Beloved comes to
us, His voice full of promise asking us to open to Him. I have
moved us backward and forward between Isaiah and the Song of
Songs in these quotations. Blaise Arminjon31 interprets these as
words of humble imploring and he quotes St Therese of Lisieux:
that He comes to the bride “with the face of a humiliated
servant, which should also be hers!... He is begging… for
compassion…He is the greatest, the highest, but also the
smallest because ‘the characteristic of love is always to lower
oneself’…”32 It is true that for His head to be drenched with
dew He must have been out in the night, wandering, searching, a
vagabond or a servant. But the dew is also an image of
fecundity, refreshment, beauty as is so clearly visible in the way
it is used in Isaiah 26.19.
When Judas leaves the Cenacle to betray Our Lord, John in his
Gospel uses the brief sentence: ‘and it was night’. 33 Yet the
absence of human justice for the Servant in His Passion was the
very door through which divine justice was given to humanity: a
justice which was pure love, divine Self gift.
29
Isaiah 26.19
Song of Songs op cit
31
Op cit The Storm of Summer p 244
32
St Therese: Story of a Soul (in French) Paris, 1972, p 21
33
John 13.30
30
26
Isaiah 26.9
Song of Songs 3.1
28
Song of Songs 5.2ff
27
101
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It is the same night in both Isaiah and the Song of Songs, the
same Hebrew phrase. But what of the dew? I think for a moment
of the equally enigmatic phrase in the Psalms “the dew of thy
birth is of the womb of the morning…” I am quoting from the
Priestly Psalm 110 as it is used in the Sarum Tonale at Sunday
Vespers.34 It is a difficult translation of the difficult Hebrew! In
both Isaiah and the Song of Songs the word for this dew is the
same, טֶ֤לYFQ. It is striking that in the Song of Songs the word
Hebrew and Aramaic means primarily ‘to rain fine rain’ (night
mist), ‘to cover’. There is a hidden pun with the Aramaic and
the Hebrew ( טלהYF\QJM for ‘lamb’, This is used in Isaiah
in the niphal passive for ‘drenched’ ( נִ ְׁמלא־nim-lā-) is the
same as in that formative introductory chapter to the Book of
Consolation, Isaiah 40.2. That is, ‘complete’, ‘to be satisfied,
full’. This ‘completion’ is in Hebrew מלֵ אRF\QF^ and it
can be associated with the heart, with the priesthood, with
sacrifice. It is the task of the Lamb, the Beloved, pointed to by
John, to complete the hard servitude of Jerusalem in His
Passion. The scribe of the Song of Songs chose this word for the
One who comes to the Bride who cries in the night. We translate
it as ‘drenched’ in that context. Imagine the word ‘dew’ as a
diamond, with several aspects, which reflect on their cut
surfaces images which say the same thing or point in the same
direction. But also imagine the words ‘dew’ and ‘drenched’ as
two diamonds each doing this on its surface but also reflecting
in the other diamond the same images. ‘Thy dew is the dew of
the light’ may be said to describe a carpet of such diamonds.
The Messianic nuances around this ‘dew’, טֶ֤ל
important. It comes from the verb
34
טללYFQFQ which in both
Psalm 110 in the Coverdale Translation of the Psalms.
103
YFQ are
65.25 which is the Messianic promise: “The wolf and the lamb
shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and
dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt nor destroy
in all My holy mountain, Says the LORD.” Although ( טלהYF\
QJM is not the chosen word for ‘lamb’ in Chapter 26 it is present
in the Fourth Song as the image of the lamb which is described
as dumb before its shearers. 35 In the Fourth Song in this
particular place, which is describing the silence of the Servant
before His ‘shearers’ the choice is specifically for the ‘ewe’
which is the literal Hebrew, although it is often translated as
‘lamb’, specifically because of its Messianic associations. In
Hebrew there are several different words for ‘sheep’, ‘lamb’,
‘ewe’ which are central to parables and are used as metaphors
throughout both Testaments, therefore which word is chosen is
important for the context. But ( טלהYF\QJM is used of the
young lamb confined and it would have been present in the
minds of the hearers as soon as they heard טללYFQFQ. There
is only one difference, in the final consonant, and in the case of
( טלהYF\QJM that final consonant is not pronounced. So the
pun is ( טֶ֤לṭal) and ( טלהYF\QJM.
At other places in the Fourth Song, different words for sheep are
used for different reasons. The Silent Servant before His
35
Isaiah 53.7
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shearers is at this point both the Master and the Mother, fearing
for His children, knowing them to be in a crisis of faith and in
danger, as He Himself stands on the point of death, captive and
tortured. Further to this, and why this point must be developed,
the word for ‘ewe’, here, is (ū-ḵə-rā-ḥêl) ּוכר ֵ֕ ֵחל
ְׁ and without
luminous figure of Ruth at the feet of Boaz 37 is in its frame. That
is to say, the ‘dew’ in its verbal root טללYFQFQ means ‘to
the conjunction and preposition it is ( רחֵ לrā-ḥêl), Rachel.
Christ here is Rachel weeping for her children. 36 But the silence
of Christ as Rachel, as the ‘lamb’, the ‘ewe’, is a particularly
powerful and deep identification, for Rachel is noted for her
voiced lament, but Our Lord’s lament was interior and silent.
We cannot know the depth of His silent cries, their nature or
object. His Father alone heard them. The name Rachel evokes
Ramah and I refer to the concluding paragraphs and to the
footnotes of Chapter 1 of this exegesis which deals with Isaiah
40 as the introduction to the Book of Consolation.
There are several things happening interior to the phrase ‘my
head is drenched with dew’. It is difficult to lift them to the light
without being overly ‘diffuse’. The phrase evokes both
Messianic and Eucharistic colours, which reflect each other and
point to texts external to the Servant Songs but evocative of the
Servant of Deutero Isaiah. In The Writings of the Hebrew Old
Testament, under the heading of The Scrolls, the book of Ruth is
just above the Song of Songs. The two books belong together.
The motif is divine justice brought to birth through the suffering
of the Servant. This justice has the colour of wheat, and the
36
Jeremiah 31.15 and Matthew 2.18
105
cover’, also. Ruth asks Boaz, after spending the night on the
threshing floor at his feet, that he should cover her, spread his
mantle over her, because he is her nearest kinsman. Note that
Ruth’s night has been spent in waiting. The Bride of the Song of
Songs in Messianic terms also spends the night in waiting. Boaz
is the ‘Christ Figure’, for the Son in His Incarnation is our
nearest kinsman. As Ruth’s nearest kinsman, Boaz’s duty is to
make up for the death of the husband for his widow. Boaz is in
Hebrew terms, the ‘go’el’,38 the one whose salvific duty is to
ransom. But this request by the faithful widow is made ‘on the
threshing floor’. That is the place of the grain’s passion, where it
is threshed, suffers its stripping and is crushed. The Bride is the
faithful widow, Ruth, who gleaned in the wheat fields39 of Boaz.
Do not be tempted to dismiss the resonances I have pointed to.
The young Church in the Didache40 used the image of grain,
among other instances,41 elsewhere, of this usage in the First
Centuries. Our Lord Himself in John 12.23 ff. has the exquisite
discourse on the death of the grain, but this belongs in the
exegesis of the Fourth Song. Saint Augustine, in Sermon 305, 1-
37
Ruth 3.8ff
Ruth 4
39
Ruth 2.23 ‘…so Ruth stayed close to the servant girls of Boaz to glean
until the barley and wheat harvests were finished...’
40
‘As grain scattered over the hillsides…’The Didache: thought to date
somewhere around the second century and attributed to the Apostles.
41
For example: St Ignatius of Antioch: Letter to the Romans as he journeyed
towards his martyrdom. Used in Lectionnaire Monastique
38
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Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
242 meditates in inimical style on the grain in its various aspects.
To briefly quote: “Your faith recognizes this Grain of wheat
which has fallen into the ground and has become multiplied in
death. Your faith, I say, acknowledges this Grain because it
dwells in your hearts… It is the Grain Himself who speaks, the
Grain which fell into the earth and died so that it might be
multiplied. Listen to Him, for He cannot lie…” This has its
completion and fulfilment in the Eucharist.
people of God, after ‘night’, at the first light of dawn, they
would find the earth ‘covered’ with manna45 (the Food of
Heaven), as one would normally expect to find the dew of the
dawn upon the ground. From the Aramaic Peshitta: “And
whenever the dew descended on the camp in the night, Manna
came down upon it…”46 This is a concise phrase of prose poetry
which expresses the essence of this work with its resonant
Messianic symbols of dew, night and manna, that the Messiah,
in the night of His Incarnation, is thenceforth the Bread from
heaven which the Father gives. Cf John 6:48-58. The Hebrew
word מלֵ אRF\QF^ which I explored used as ‘drenched’ in
Internal to the Servant Songs, in the phrase I am examining, the
word for the silence43 ( נאֱל ָּׂ֑מהne-’ĕ-lā-māh), (literally she, the
ewe, is silent) of the Servant in His Passion contains in its
meanings the silence of ripe grain standing on a windless field,
or when bound in a sheaf. This is expressed by a modern Jewish
poet in the footnote. 44 That is, when the stalks with their full
heads of grain stand on the hillsides and there is no wind to sing
through them, it has something of the Servant in His Passion
about it. Or when one sees the bound stalks, it is like the
Servant, bound before His executioners, in silence. In this I
recall the binding of Isaac. In the Exodus experience of the
42
St Augustine PL 38, 1397-1398. Used in Lectionnaire Monastique
Isaiah 53.7
44
‘… the song of the grass.
Each blade of grass sings out to God
without any ulterior motive and without expecting any reward.
It is most wonderful to hear its song
and worship God in its midst.’
Extract from Nachman of Bratzlav, Trans. Aryeh Kaplan,
43
https://www.poetseers.org/spiritual-and-devotional-poets/jewish/
accessed 1/02/2023
107
the above context, is used frequently to describe the fullness of
the head of grain47 or the fullness of the winepress. All these
associations affirm the interpretation.
I would like to draw out some unusual nuances in this verse:
‘faithfully/in faithfulness/in truth he will bring forth justice’.48
The nuances devolve on the use of faith here which is the word
Judaism uses for faithfulness and truth. It is the ‘Amen’, the true
and the faithful.49 This is the second of the triple mention of
justice. It is ‘in faith’ ( לאֱמָּ֖תle-’ĕ-meṯ) which is contracted
from אֱמנתand whose primitive root is אמֵ ן, literally ‘Amen’.
This is to support as a nurse would support a child and in fact in
its variant it is used of a father who carries his child. This
45
Exodus 16 etc
Numbers 11.9
47
For example Gen 41.7,22 etc
48
Isaiah 42.3
49
See Revelation 3.14
46
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Chapter 3 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
4
returns us to the love of the Father for His Son. I have always
found this intensely moving. But it is an association with the
fatherhood of God, who carries Israel50 who bends down to feed
him,51 and who lifts him to His cheek with tenderness. Jesus the
Son also nurses His disciples in His bosom,52 and calls them
‘children’53 and the Didache refers to Our Lord as the Child of
the Father.54 This is the context for the divine justice and
judgement, for mercy and truth. It is the divine mystery.
THE FIRST SERVANT SONG: Isaiah 42.1-9
1. Descent of the Dove. 2. The Call. 3. Shekhina.
‘Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and
stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes
from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to
those who walk in it…’ Isaiah 42.5 begins the second section of
the First Servant Song and finds the prophet taking a step back.
The prophecy is transposed into a new key and is more diffuse.
The prophet has momentarily emerged from his ecstatic
identification with the Lord by which he spoke in the first
person with the divine voice. Standing aside, he points to divine
creativity which is followed by God’s invitation to humanity to
live within creation with justice, humility, and holiness.
DESCENT OF THE DOVE
50
Isaiah 63.9
Hosea 11.4
52
The Beloved Disciple rested in this way upon Jesus at the Last Supper cf
John 13.23
53
Cf John 13.33, 21.5
54
The Didache: thought to date somewhere around the second century and
attributed to the Apostles.
51
109
Origen points to the Holy Spirit in creation: “... undoubtedly
everyone who walks on the earth, that is, every earthly and
corporeal being, is a partaker of the Holy Spirit that he receives
110
Chapter 4 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Chapter 4 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
from God.”1 The Suffering Servant, born into His creation,
stilled the storm, and wind and waves obeyed His voice as their
Lord.2 In the promise of a New Covenant the Servant walked
hand in hand with the Father and was the bearer of light to the
Gentiles who wait with hope. In this union He established a
New Covenant in His Blood.3 Jesus is identified with the
Servant of Isaiah. This identification took place publicly in the
synagogue in Nazareth when the Son of Mary took up the scroll
and opened it at the place where the Servant’s task is
announced, read it and then sat down.4 But His fellow citizens
rose up, and drove Him out of His city to hurl Him off the cliff
which is called today, the Hill of the Fright.5 Christ allowed
them to take Him out beyond the city walls (as would one future
day happen to Him), then hid Himself and escaped their hands.
This was not to be the moment or manner of His death.6
day she would take her Son to the Temple7 and there it would
happen in Jerusalem as it had been acted out prematurely in
Nazareth and He would not walk away through the crowds. The
Early Church was clear that Jesus of Nazareth was the Suffering
Servant of Deutero Isaiah. In Nazareth Our Lord opened the
scroll at Isaiah 61.1, which is not one of the Four Servant Songs.
Yet in every aspect the section of the scroll chosen by Christ
belongs with the Person of the Servant.
How can we contemplate the Servant without His Mother? For
His Mother the incident on the Hill of the Fright was the kind of
thing she feared as her Son grew to maturity. She knew that one
1
Origen, On First Principles Book 1, Chapter 3, paragraph 4. Used in
Lectionnaire Monastique
2
Mark 4.41 and Luke 8.25; cf also Matthew 8.27
3
Isaiah 42.6; cf also Jeremiah 31.31-34; 1 Corinthians 11.25, Mark 14.24;
Luke 22.20; Hebrews 9.15, 12.24
4
Luke 4.16-30 referring back to Isaiah 61.1-2
5
This site is also known as Mt Precipice. The reference to ‘the Fright’ refers
to a tradition that the Mother of the Lord was standing by the cliff when her
Son was led to the edge, and was severely frightened.
6
Jesus’ words ‘My hour has not yet come’ may be found at John 2.4, 7.6 (my
time), 7.30, 8.24. For ‘The hour has come’ see John 12.23, 16.32, and,
supremely, John 17.1
111
In the writings of Peter of Blois the Dove is fire given in
diverse aspects to the Ecclesia: “Christ, who has received the
Spirit, does not measure His gifts to men, nor yet does He
cease to bestow them: Of his fullness have we all received, nor
can anyone hide himself from his heat. His fire burns in Sion
and his furnace in Jerusalem. This is the fire Christ came to
cast upon the earth. And this is why tongues of fire appeared
over His disciples, so that, with fiery tongues, they might
preach a fiery law.” Jeremiah had once said of this Fire: “He
has sent a fire from on high into my very bones and has
instructed me.” Peter of Blois continues: “He is called a fire
because He is ever kindling us to love, and once our love has
been kindled by Him we do not stop burning, that is, loving
ardently. I came, said the Lord, to cast fire upon the earth and
what do I desire but that it should burn ardently? There are
various symbolic reasons why the Holy Spirit is likened to oil.
It is the nature of oil, when added to other liquids, always to
7
Compare also that other time when His Mother took Our Lord to the
Temple at the age of twelve (Luke 2.41-50) and ‘lost’ Him for three days.
This is also a metaphor for the Triduum of the Third Pasch/ the Passion.
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take the highest place. So it is with the grace of the Holy Spirit
… Oil has medicinal properties, soothing pain, but the Holy
Spirit is the true oil, the Comforter, who comforts us in all our
afflictions. … Oil floats on water, and the Holy Spirit moved
over the waters.” 8
associated with sacrifice and the Lamb. I am interested that in
the Orthodox Church one of the titles of the Mother of Christ is
‘Lamb of God’. She assumes, at the Annunciation, the mantle of
Mother of the Church-to-be. As the Figure of the Church, the
Bride, the Spouse, She is, like the Bridegroom whose Head is
drenched with the Holy Spirit, drenched with grace.
And from the waters of creation to the dew: the head of the
Bridegroom is saturated with dew. This dew is a symbol of the
Holy Spirit, and in the previous chapter I have shown how the
Hebrew מָ לֵ אRF\QF^ is used in Messianic terms. The Dove
descends, and in His anointing by the Holy Spirit, He is as it
were, saturated, drenched, complete. From this fullness we have
all received grace upon grace.9
As I have introduced the Mother of the Lord into the exegesis, I
would like to mention that in the Aramaic Gospel of Luke 1.28,
the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin
uses the word מָ לֵ אRF\QF^ ‘complete’, ‘to be satisfied,
full’.10 In the Aramaic it is: ‘full of grace’
(
(
Fwby+ tyLm
). ‘Full’ in the Aramaic root is
fm
) and is the same as the Hebrew root מָ לֵ אRF\QF^, but
slightly differently pronounced The meaning conveyed is that
the Blessed Virgin is drenched, covered and complete in grace.
As we saw with its use in relation to the Bridegroom, it is
The Spirit is upon the Son, and in the words of Ambrose “The
Son is both sent and given, and the Spirit also is both sent and
given; they have assuredly a oneness of Godhead who have a
oneness of action.”11 It is this action which I now consider, for
Jesus knew Himself to be the Son and Servant, in this action.
THE CALL
The essence of this action is the call as described in Isaiah 42.6.
The Lord has called ( ְב ֶצ ֶֶ֖דקḇə-ṣe-ḏeq) in righteousness, this
Servant, His Beloved Son. Why does the prophet use this word
at this moment? How does this call happen? To what is it
referring? It is a reference to that ‘election’ I examined in
Chapter 2. The Son has been chosen, elected, called. This
righteousness is the innocence of the Second Adam who is able
to lift His Face to the Father in absolute purity and without guilt.
It is the divinely Just who brings in divine justice.
8
Peter of Blois. Sermon 25: PL 207,635-636. Used in Lectionnaire
Monastique
9
The Gospel of John: Prologue
10
Cf Chapter 3 for the full Hebrew exegesis of this term.
113
11
S Ambrose on the Holy Spirit, Book III, Chapter 2, paragraph 10. Used in
Lectionnaire Monastique
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When the scribe uses the next expression: ‘taken you by the
hand’,12 he introduces another ‘note’ regarding the Servant
which we began to hear earlier when the strength of the Servant
was described. As we progress through the Songs this note will
become a vibrant thread in the symphony of the Songs. The
word he uses is ( וְ אַ ְח ֵזֵ֣קwə-’aḥ-zêq) (preceded by the
consonant is a conjunction. In Hebrew it is in its root נָצַ ר
conjunction ‘and’) from ( חָ זַקPMF\_FP in the root form, and
the verb has a strong sound. It is not only to tenderly take hold
(of His hand) but to strengthen Him and establish Him. The verb
is chiefly one of strengthening, especially a strength of heart, an
endurance. Literally the Hebrew is ‘and I will take hold of your
hand and I will keep you’. This quality will increasingly be
emphasised. But the word intentionally rhymes by using
assonance, with ( ְב ֶצ ֶֶ֖דקḇə-ṣe-ḏeq) (the initial ‘b’ being a ‘v’ as
the daghes is absent, and the first vowel is not the ‘e’ of a
seghol, but a hateph seghol) from ( צֶ ֶדקYXJM IJP to create a
link in the ear and in the consciousness, with the cause of this
strength: it is purity and innocence, which enables Him to set
His face like a flint,13 and which makes Him not falter14 until
justice is brought forth. It is this strength which enabled Jesus to
identify in public with the Servant of Isaiah knowing full well
what the consequences would be.
“I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you.”15 I will pause at
this word ‘keep’ ָ֗( וְ אֶ צָ ְרךwə-’eṣ-ṣā-rə-ḵā) and its initial
12
Isaiah 42.6
Isaiah 50.7 (The Third Servant Song)
14
Isaiah 42.4
15
Isaiah 42.6
13
115
(SF\YXFW ‘to lay up, preserve and keep a hidden treasure’ and it
is the same in the Aramaic. There is a hidden pun and an
invisible rhyme here which perhaps only a Jewish person might
hear, for the verb to treasure is ( אָ צַ רF\YXFW, and though it is
not physically in the text, it is an obvious connection. Perhaps
the poet intends it to be hidden to demonstrate the hiddenness of
the Servant and also the hidden support of the Father. This is in
fact what the prophet says of the Servant in the Second Song;
that He has been hidden in the quiver of the Lord. 16 The Father
kept His Son while He made His pilgrimage through time. He
hid Him, both in Egypt17 and in Nazareth. He guarded Him as
His treasure, His wealth, His Beloved Son, until the trial, when
He was handed over into the keeping of sinners and crucified.
But in His Heart and Mind, the Beloved Son knew that this
handing over was within His Father’s will and that He was not
alone, for the Father was with Him.18
The meaning and essence of this handing over of the Son is
concealed in the word chosen by the prophet to describe this
Covenant: “ and I will give you ָ֗( וְ אֶ תֶ נְ ךwə-’et-ten-ḵā) as a
covenant to the people…” Normally in the Old Testament
Covenants are ‘cut’ or ‘inscribed’. But in this prophecy the
Covenant which is created is the Son who is given. This is not a
tablet or document but a Person. The Son is literally given: the
16
Isaiah 49.2
This refers to the flight into Egypt and the return, Matthew 2.13-15 and 1923.
18
John 16.32
17
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root being ( נ ַָתןSF\YMFS ‘to give’. In the Epistle of Barnabas,
And the prophet's other vision, a vision of hope, had promised
that the Shekinah should return to a supernaturally constructed
sanctuary there to reign visibly, and to dwell eternally with the
new people of a new and eternal covenant, who would be filled
with life-giving contemplation… as St John hints in his
Prologue, the Shekinah is established for the future in the human
nature of the Saviour. There, in his risen body, the new temple,
which is no longer the work of men's hands, it will remain for
ever visible to all those who cling to it. And it is in the final
transfiguration of this resurrection that we must in our turn
contemplate him in faith…”21
the Early Church expresses this Covenant as being ‘in us’: “...by
appearing in person and redeeming from the darkness our
hearts... he might establish a covenant in us by his word... for it
is written how the Father commands him to redeem us from
darkness and to prepare a holy people for himself...”19
SHEKHINA
This Covenant given in the ultimate gift of His life laid down,
was an illumination, a light, to all people which was repeatedly
given during the incarnate life of the Servant: at the Epiphany,
and during the Transfiguration for example. But the radiance
which was to illumine creation would be brightest and complete
in the darkness of Calvary and the darkness would not
comprehend it or overcome it.20 This continues to shine in the
Eucharistic Sacrifice and the gift of the Sacred Species, for the
light which is given is the Person who is given.
This light, this Shekhina is a reality given to the Ecclesia but
Louis Bouyer gives it particular meaning for the monastic life:
“… the Shekinah could have said to the people: 'It is expedient
for you that I go away.' In Ezechiel's vision of faith, the
Shekinah fleeing from the profaned temple had shown itself as
the invisible companion of the exiles in their exile, of the
afflicted in their affliction, of the captives in their captivity.
19
20
Epistle of Barnabas chapter 14.4-7
John 1.5
117
The spiritual nature of this Light is described in the following
verses of the prophecy. These verses hold the specific points of
identification which Jesus makes in the synagogue at Nazareth.
‘… To open the eyes of the blind’: I am reminded of a phrase in
the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich who says: “I have
always thought that by the Wounds of Jesus there were opened
anew in the human body portals closed by Adam's sin.”22 This is
important, for in giving light to the eyes of the blind, because
Christ not only restored physical sight in His miracles, He also
opened the soul’s eyes, the mind’s eye. This happened in His
Passion as well as in His miracles. In the same vein Clement of
Alexandria writes “‘The opened eyes of the blind’ means
[Christ] provided clear knowledge of the Father through the
21
Louis Bouyer: The Meaning of Monastic Life, Light Inaccessible, pp. 69
and 70
22
Anne Catherine Emmerich, The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical
revelations, Tan Books, Vol I, page 8: ‘I have always thought that by the
Wounds of Jesus there were opened anew in the human body portals closed
by Adam's sin.’
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Son.”23 And Augustine says “... we long with a passion beyond
words for the beauty of the form of God...”24
Adam's heart very much the same as in men of the present day,
but his breast was surrounded by rays of light. In the middle of
his heart, I saw a sparkling halo of glory. In it was a tiny figure
as if holding something in its hand. I think it symbolized the
Third Person of the Godhead. From the hands and feet of Adam
and Eve, shot rays of light. Their hair fell in five glittering
tresses, two from the temples, two behind the ears, and one from
the back of the head … The glittering beams on Adam's head
denoted his abundant fruitfulness, his glory, his connection with
other radiations. And all this shining beauty is restored to
glorified souls and bodies. Our hair is the ruined, the extinct
glory; and as is this hair of ours to rays of light, so is our present
flesh to that of Adam before the Fall. The sunbeams around
Adam's mouth bore reference to a holy posterity from God,
which, had it not been for the Fall, would have been effectuated
by the spoken word.” 25
In Isaiah 42.7 of Deutero Isaiah those who are blind are
ֹות
ָ֗ ‘( ִעוְ ֑רiw-rō-wṯ the adjective being ( עֵ וֵרN[[FWJ from the root
( עָ וַרF\[FW which means ‘to blind [someone]’. It not only
means to be physically blind, but also to be ‘mentally blind’.
Implicit in Anne Catherine’s vision of Adam is the
understanding of our wholeness as human beings. That the
choice of Adam to turn his eyes from God for his own
gratification resulted in a descent through various levels of
darkness and this descent happened both mentally and
spiritually. It was expressed externally in the exclusion from
paradise. Her visions describe the loss of beauty in Adam
through this choice: that the radiance of light which once played
around his heart and in which the Holy Spirit dwelt, became
dull. The rays of light which had shone from his head became
what we know now to be our hair. His being was darkened. In
Christ these portals of light were opened again in the
Crucifixion. Anne Catherine is clear on this point. It was our sin
which in Adam closed down the light in human beings. It was
our sin on Calvary which reopened these portals as Christ was
pierced. In her own words her visions describe Adam before the
sin: “From Adam's mouth I saw issuing a broad stream of
glittering light. And upon his forehead was an expression of
great majesty. Around his mouth played a sunbeam, … I saw
This is a Divine Mystery which mystics understand to be the
way darkness and light are related to the experience of sin and
of suffering. Pain can be the means of enlightenment. A share in
the Passion of Christ is able to open our eyes, to illuminate
levels of inner experience which are transformed and
transformative. We must be willing to pay the price for this
illumination. It is not a cheap grace.
This German visionary was not the only mystic to see this
Mystery. Bernard of Clairvaux and others have done so
likewise, even if they have concentrated on different aspects of
it. Bernard in a sermon on the Song of Songs writes: “...They
23
Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 1.19.92.2. Used in Lectionnaire
Monastique
24
S Augustine, Sermon 194.3-4. Used in Lectionnaire Monastique
119
25
Anne Catherine Emmerich, op. cit.
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pierced his hands and feet and opened his side with a lance, and
through these clefts I may ‘suck honey out of the rock and oil
out of the flinty rock’, which is to ‘taste and see that the Lord is
good’.” 26 He writes in the same Sermon: “The secret of that
heart is laid bare through the openings of the body; that great
mystery of love lies open; revealed is the tender mercy of our
God which has dawned on us from on high. Is it surprising that
the heart should be laid bare through the wounds? Where, more
clearly than in your wounds, does it shine out...” 27
Sister Faustina saw Christ’s wounds radiating coloured rays of
supernatural Light.29 She wrote: ‘In the evening, when I was in
my cell, I became aware of the Lord Jesus clothed in a white
garment. One hand was raised in blessing, the other was
touching the garment at the breast. From the opening of the
garment at the breast there came forth two large rays, one red
and the other pale. In silence I gazed intently at the Lord; my
soul was overwhelmed with fear, but also with great joy’. Saint
Bernard uses words such as ‘the dawn’ and ‘shining’ to describe
these opened portals.
Normally when we listen to these verses from the First Song in
the Lent liturgy we think perhaps of the Epiphany, the gift of
this Theophany to the travellers from the East, and the
expansion of the Evangelium to Gentiles. But mystics know that
the wounds of Christ are radiant. Julian of Norwich describes
them as flashing jewels. “And I looked for the departing with all
my might, and thought to have seen the body all dead; but I saw
Him not so. And right in the same time that methought, by the
seeming, the life might no longer last and the Shewing of the
end behoved needs to be, — suddenly (I beholding in the same
Cross), He changed [the look of] His blessed Countenance. The
hanging of His blessed Countenance changed mine, and I was as
glad and merry as it was possible. Then brought our Lord
merrily to my mind: Where is now any point of the pain, or of
thy grief?” 28 There is also a reference in the Sixth Chapter of
the Long Text of the Revelations to ‘His glorious Wounds’,
which echoes the Paschal Liturgy.
26
St Bernard, Sermon on the Song of Songs 61.3-5 quoting Deuteronomy
32.12 and Psalm 34.8
27
Op. cit., 61.4
28
Op. cit. Cf from the text of the Revelations, Chapter 21.
121
In the creation of the cosmos, the Word, the Logos (from the
Greek), or the
Flm Miltha (from the Aramaic), the Son, is at
the Father’s side,30 and the opening verses of Genesis describe
the darkness without form and void, the abyss. God said “Let
there be light. And there was light.” In the Prologue to the
Gospel of John the Logos, the
Flm Miltha, Jesus of Nazareth
is a Light that shines in the darkness. Between the description of
creation in Genesis and the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, the
scriptures narrate many events which illustrate that creation, and
humankind, are sunk in darkness. From this state the Lord
prepares His Chosen People to recognise the true Light Who
was coming into the world.
In the Epiphany there was Theophany, as at the Baptism. But in
this account of the Servant bringing Light, within the context of
29
On 22 February, 1931, Our Lord appeared to St Faustina Kowalska,
bringing a message of Divine Mercy for all.
30
See John 1.1
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the Suffering of the Passion, there is a dimension of this Light
which is intimately related to the Crucifixion and Resurrection
as one whole with two phases. Christ once again says, as it
were, “Let there be Light.” Calvary is Genesis, is new creation,
and the Second Adam is at the heart of it and the ancient
tradition has it that the first Adam’s bones rested beneath
Calvary. Cf Chapter2. It is obvious. Through His actual Body in
its agony on the Cross, creation is reborn. Through His wounds,
Light is poured out once again upon the darkened cosmos.
Adam’s skull is bathed in the Blood of Christ and his bones are
clothed once more in this light.
supported by some Christian mystics who make this connection
also. “And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments
of skin (‘OR), and clothed them (Gen 3. 21). In R. Meir's Torah
it was found written, ‘Garments of light (‘OR): this refers to
Adam's garments, which were like a torch [shedding radiance],
broad at the bottom and narrow at the top. Isaac the Elder said:
They were as smooth as a finger-nail and as beautiful as a jewel
…” 31 The reference to ‘jewel’ in the Midrash reflects the vision
of Julian of Norwich, for the light would be returned to Adam
through the radiance of the wounds of Christ which she sees as
jewels.
In Genesis 1.3 the word for light is ’( א֑ ֹורō-wr) ‚ as we would
expect. But if we move on in Genesis to chapter 3.21 where the
Lord God after Adam had sinned, made clothing of skins for the
man and his wife, for Adam and Eve, the word for skins sounds
precisely the same: it is ’( עֶ֖ ֹורō-wr). The only difference is the
initial consonant: in light it is א
ָ֗ and in skins it is ע. Both
consonants are unvoiced and the pun is extremely clear. Adam
as a motif can be found in a rich and hidden layer of divine
activity in the Incarnate Life of the Son of God and He emerges
into view as the Servant Songs are explored. This choice of the
word for the nature of Adam’s clothing is deliberate, and
expresses the Rabbinic legend that God clothed Adam and Eve
in ’( עֶ֖ ֹורō-wr) in exchange for their garments of light, the
garments in which they had been clothed in Paradise. It is a pun
used consciously to relate the radiant skin of Adam and Eve
before they sinned, to the skins God makes for them after they
have sinned. This is a mystical interpretation which is
I would go further and recall that the menorah used in the
Jewish Liturgies, which is the seven branched candlestick we
associate with the Book of the Revelation to John, is a reminder
of the seven days of Genesis as governed by the creation of
light. This radiance which is lost in Eden is recovered in the
Servant when He is pierced, and His wounds blaze with light. S
Bernard speaks to this theme: “... the nail that pierced became
for me the key that opened the door so that I might see the will
of the Lord. How should I not see through that opening? The
nail cries out, the wound opens its mouth to cry that truly God is
in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” 32 In these
quotations from this great monastic theologian both light and
freedom are illustrated in the images of the Passion. This is what
is also set out by the prophet of Deutero Isaiah in these verses.
But the original Hebrew for ֹות
ָ֗ ִעוְ ֑רblind (‘iw-rō-wṯ from the
31
32
123
From the Midrash Rabbah - Genesis XX:12:
S Bernard, op. cit., 61.3-5 quoting 2 Corinthians 5.19
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root ( עָ וַרF\[FW, also means ‘those who are wakeful and
In the prophecy of Deutero Isaiah, in the final verses of the First
Song, Isaiah 42.7, the Hebrew speaks of this existential prison
as ֵר
ָ֗ ( ִממַ ְסגmim-mas-gêr) ‘from the prison’ from the noun
watching’. These images tell us more about the disciples in
their responses to Christ, for example the Magdalen.
The Magdalen is portrayed in art kissing the feet of the Christ as
He is laid out upon the stone of unction, having been taken
down from the Cross. It is the moment for the rapid anointing
before the Body was placed in the tomb of Joseph of
Arimathaea in the quarry of Calvary. In these portrayals, Mary
Magdalen’s face is close to the wounded Feet. Traumatised but
bold she was also watchful and wakeful, and that quality was to
be rewarded.
The Magdalen, watchful and wakeful, ֹות
ָ֗ ‘( ִעוְ ֑רiw-rō-wṯ was
gazing, her eyes blinded with tears, into the wounds of the
pierced feet as St Bernard describes above: ‘How should I not
see through that opening?’ But the eyes of her soul were not
blinded, they were being opened wide onto a spiritual reality
which would change her forever. Through those cavities in the
flesh of Christ, she saw a new world which stretched into
infinity. It was the reality of divine love through divine Self Gift
opening eternity. Later, she would be in the Garden, alone,
weeping before the empty tomb. She had come with the myrrh
bearing women to anoint Him, but He was Risen. Suddenly He
stood before her looking like a gardener.33 Once again, though
she was blinded by grief, and held captive by it, she saw for the
first time and was liberated.
( מַ ְסגֵרRFXLFWJ and it conveys the nuance of being shut up as
something precious, something unadulterated.34 I would suggest
that the gift of freedom through the Passion and the Resurrection
is the complete restoration of creation to its virginal state. It is
purified, and the human soul, being created, is likewise purified
and restored by participation in this complete Salvific Act. The
Magdalen, identifying with the Beloved, had died with Him.35
She had absorbed, through her participation on Calvary and in
the Garden, the essence of the Servant’s task. But it was
absorbed not only through identification, but also because ‘she
loved much’.36 Her eyes had been on a level with the pierced
Feet. She, like St Bernard, saw.
The Apostle John was present with the Magdalen and Our
Lord’s Mother throughout the Crucifixion, and John refers to the
Crucifixion as the glory of Christ. Perhaps it is in this sense that
we need to understand the phrase in these verses “My glory I
give to no other.”37 It is the glory of the divine love which loves
to the end in the darkness of Calvary. It is the supreme
kenosis,38 and through this kenosis it illuminates human
darkness. The Church Fathers of the first centuries wrestled with
this phrase and used it to develop Christology. It became an
34
Isaiah 42.7
Cf Romans 6.8, Colossians 3.3
36
Luke 7.47
37
Isaiah 42.8
38
The verb means: to empty
35
33
John 20.11-18
125
126
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important prism through which to understand the shared nature
of the Godhead, for if the Father did not give His glory to
another but did bestow it on the Son then the Son was of the
same nature and essence as the Father, He was no ‘other’. John
illuminates this Isaiah phrase by placing it in the context of the
Crucifixion.39 The glory of the Godhead was the supreme Selfoffering of the Son on Calvary and in every Eucharist.
hid it from us. For the future, although no one has ever seen
God, he who has seen Christ has seen the Father.”41
Louis Bouyer traces the connection between this glory and the
divine light: “…shakhan the New Testament has promised a
realization beyond all expectation. 'No man has ever seen God',
St John tells us, 'but now his only begotten Son who abides, in
the bosom of the Father, has himself become our interpreter.'!!
He will not hesitate to place on the lips of Christ himself this
prayer: 'This, Father, is my desire, that all those whom thou hast
entrusted to me may be with me where I am: so as to see my
glory, thy gift to me.'40… Thus, this divine glory, this shining of
a light without compare, of which God said in the Old
Testament: 'I will give my glory to none other', we now
contemplate in Christ' as with unveiled face', according to St
Paul's phrase. Again, as St John says: 'We have seen his glory,
the glory, as it were, of the only-begotten of the Father', the
inalienable glory of God is communicated to us, for its light
inaccessible has come to us in Christ. In him, through the power
of the Spirit, it has pierced through the veil of the flesh which
John is developing the Isaiah prophecy but he also echoes
Wisdom literature: ‘When all things were in quiet silence and
the night was in the midst of her course, Thy almighty word
leapt down from heaven from thy royal throne.’42 If we look at
the Aramaic version of John, he has in his Prologue: and the
Word
Flm Miltha became flesh and dwelt Ng0w
among us. But in the Aramaic ‘dwelt’
immeasurable grandeur of Yahweh יְהוָ ֵ֣הand his infinite
merciful love.”44 Shekinah is from the verb ( שָ כַ ןshaw-kan)
which means ‘to abide’. It forms the foundation for the
Shekinah or glory of the divine light and life which dwelt upon
earth and is portrayed as this in John’s Prologue.
Louis Bouyer op cit Pp 68-70
Wisdom 18:14-18
43
Compare also John 1.18, ‘He who is nearest the Father’s heart’, and the
ancient Christmas hymn, ‘Corde Natus ex Parentis’, ‘Of the Father’s Heart
Begotten’, by Marcus Aurelius Prudentius, 348-405.
44
Louis Bouyer: The Meaning of Monastic Life, Light Inaccessible, Pp. 6870
42
See, for instance, the use of the word ‘glory’ in the High Priestly Prayer of
John 17 immediately before the Passion account.
40
John 17.24
127
(OaAG'eN)means
also ‘to descend upon us/ rest upon us.’ This carries a sense of
the ‘leapt down’ of the Wisdom verse. John continues: And we
saw His glory, glory as the only begotten who is from the Father
who is full of grace and truth.43 In Rabbinic circles and in the
Targumim the abiding presence of God had come to be
expressed as the Shekina. “The Hebrews… had discovered in
the Shekinah both holiness and the ( ֶחֶ֖סֶ דPMJM XJI both the
41
39
Ng0w
(OaAG'eN)
128
Chapter 4 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
For John the night is symbolic and, in this night, the Uncreated
Light shone and continues to shine. It is argued by some
scholars that John’s ‘‘it was night’’ (13:30) at the moment when
Judas leaves the Upper Room to betray his Lord, is sourced to
the last of the Hymn of the Four Nights found in an ancient
Targum. The Targum passage is referring to Genesis 1 in the
passage about creation. But John was already using Genesis
itself, and his comprehension of the nature of his Lord was
already far advanced, with its source in the Incarnate Word’s
Self-revelation and teaching.45 Reading Targumim in the
synagogues after the authentic scripture reading was a
controversial and fairly late development. Targumim were
translations in the form of explanation or commentary upon the
actual scripture text. For John the Light shines in the darkness
which does not comprehend or overtake it. The Aramaic46 for
this means ‘comprehended/overwhelmed/overtaken/known’ it.
This expands our understanding of John’s term. The Aramaic
for this is Creation was begun in the darkness and the Light
shone over it and upon every man who comes into the world.
Mark and Luke tell us that on calvary there was darkness over
the whole land, but this is precisely what John means by the
glorification of the Son, for He, the Light, was shining on the
cross which was encompassed by darkness. For John it is
important also that the Magdalen came to the tomb while it was
still dark…
45
“In TgN Exod 12:42 the first night is described in the following way: “The
first night: when the Lord was revealed over the world to create it. The world
was without form and void, and darkness was spread over the face of the
129
Chapter 4 The First Servant Song: Isaiah 42.1-9
Isaiah’s light given to the nations, the Shekina, is the Light
which dwells in us and is celebrated in the Exultet: This is a
study of nuanced connections waiting to be done. The
relationship, if any, between the Hymn of the Four Nights, and
the Christian Pasch, also is a rich vein to be mined. I would like
to think that the composer of the Midrash who created the pun
of the clothing of Adam was an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, or
an unconscious instinct that humanity would one day be clothed
again in Light… the Light of Christ.47
ממרא
abyss, and the Word
(Memra) of the Lord was the Light, and it
shone. And He called it the First Night”. Quotation from Ks. Mirosław S.
Wróbel, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, The Gospel According to
St. John in the Light of Targum Neofiti 1 to the Book of Genesis
46
47
hkrd0
(
2 Cor 5:2-4
130
A select bibliography of works referenced in the book.
Sister Anne Eason O.S.B. is a Benedictine of St Cecilia’s Abbey,
Pax Cordis Jesu (Cong. Solesmes), Ryde, Isle of Wight, UK.
https://stceciliasabbey.org.uk
After five years of study at Rhodes University, South Africa, she
graduated with a degree in English (specialising in poetry), and in
Biblical Studies (specialising in Hebrew exegesis). An independent
student of Aramaic, she is also an artist and iconographer.