It is sufficient to say that, in early Christian reflection, following arguably from the teaching of Jesus himself, the passages about the ‘suffering Servant’ in particular were taken as the vital clue to understanding how the messianic victory over the forces of evil was accomplished. It was through this strange figure, the king who was also the servant, who was also (it seems) the ‘arm’ of YHWH himself. The servant was to embody both the vocation of Israel and the vocation – so to say – of Israel’s God, and thereby take upon himself the weight of exile, shame and death, in order to renew the
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