{"id":68153,"date":"2020-01-05T14:48:49","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T12:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=68153"},"modified":"2023-07-30T09:22:06","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T06:22:06","slug":"the-suffering-jews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-suffering-jews\/","title":{"rendered":"The Suffering Jews\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[444,661,491],"acf":{"old_id":"68153","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":34243,"related_cahpter":"387","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"An anachronistic view of anti-Semitism?","content":"

The so-called \u201cSuffering Servant\u201d passage\u2014that began with 52:13\u2014has been the subject of so many different interpretations, that two 19<\/span>th<\/span> century Bible scholars, Samuel Driver and Adolph Neubauer, even compiled an entire book of them, entitled:<\/span> The “Suffering Servant” of Isaiah, According to the Jewish Interpreters<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/i> Malbim* was content to go with the conventional identification of the servant as the personification of the Jewish people. The following is his commentary to 53:4: \u201cYet it was our sickness that he was bearing, our suffering that he endured. We accounted him plagued, smitten and afflicted by God.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The ancient idolatrous people attributed two things to Israel. [A] An internal malady; i.e., they considered them spiritually ill and undeserving of any benefit\u2014neither humanistic rewards nor scientific studies nor moral qualities. For that reason, they would not allow them to occupy any offices or positions because they regarded their souls as too sick to receive any instruction or direction. Now they will see that this malady was not intrinsic to them; rather it was the poverty and destitution that made their hearts autistic and barren of positive qualities\u2026 [B] An external malady. The idolaters would occasionally beat Israel and inflict on them grievous afflictions to force them to abandon their religion and worship the sun and the moon. They would say that Israel is susceptible to such afflictions on account of its transgressions. Now they will see that they themselves caused those afflictions by means of their own transgressions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe accounted him plagued\u201d addresses the [ostensible] internal malady, and \u201cafflicted by God\u201d addresses the afflictions and oppressions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Malbim\u2019s description of the \u201csuffering servant\u201d seems to be more consistent with 19<\/span>th<\/span> century Central European Jewish history than Judea in the 8-7<\/span>th<\/span> century BCE. While surely anachronistic, it is an accurate representation, on the one hand, of what Jews have confronted throughout our exile, and, on the other, how the \u201cnormalization\u201d of Jewish history over the past century has changed such perceptions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

*For the significance of Malbim\u2019s commentary to the Book of Isaiah,<\/span> see our introduction to chapter 1.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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