Read­ing Rabbi Schulman’s com­metary we realise that the ser­vant of God spo­ken of by Isa­iah is the right­eous rem­nant of Israel in the mes­sianic times.

How can that be still applied to Jesus? How did he ful­fill these prophe­cies? Are the gospel writ­ers at fault when they claim he did ful­fil these prophecies?

I sug­gest they aren’t at fault. Isa­iah describes a group expe­ri­ence. The indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence doesn’t have to be iden­ti­cal for every sin­gle mem­ber of the mes­sianic com­mu­nity, includ­ing the Mes­siah him­self, and doesn’t even have to hap­pen at the same moment of time.

Thus, the gospel writ­ers are cor­rect when they state that Jesus ful­filled the prophecy.

How­ever, there is another prob­lem we face. Accord­ing to the prophecy Gen­tiles will be jus­ti­fied by teach­ing them the ways of right­eous­ness, that is, the law of God. (If you accept the prophecy of Jere­miah about the new covenant, then you also accept that the law wasn’t abol­ished by the cross of Christ.) Here tra­di­tional Chris­t­ian the­ol­ogy falls flat again, for it claims that jus­ti­fi­ca­tion comes by faith in Jesus alone, and it seems to be in total con­tra­dic­tion with the Isa­iah (and many other) prophe­cies. Per­haps we have some work to do in this area to come up with a the­ol­ogy that explains both satisfactorily.

What is your solution?