Marring Of A Servant (part 1)

His form was so marred he no longer looked human---so now he will startle many nations. – Isaiah 52:15a  (NET)

When one takes a look at the prophecy of Isaiah and the “suffering servant” that has come to carry such a tremendous amount of significance to the understanding of Jesus’ crucifixion and Resurrection, an observer is met with some rather unsettling words.  One learns that the servant will be “so marred” that he will not even be recognizable as a human.  Time can be allocated for a brief and useful analogy here, and say that even though these words, following the lead of the earliest believers, can be rightly applied to Jesus, due to that which He underwent through the ordeal of the crucifixion (including the scourging and the crown of thorns), it is also possible to make words such as these, lifted from their immediate context of course, apply to the whole of humanity. 

Humanity was created in the divine image, but the fall, as it is reported in the Scriptural narrative, marred that image, so much so that what can be seen in self and others can and should be thought of as barely recognizable as human.  Following in the logic of that same Scriptural narrative, it is only when Jesus mysteriously works in and through believers by the Spirit, as He represented and fulfilled the Creator God’s intention for His divine-image-bearing creation, that such an individual can actually be recognized as human. 

Is it not ironic that, in order for this recognition of humanity to take place, through a union with the Christ by faith, that Jesus had to endure an infliction of suffering that would so mar Him that He would be unrecognizable as a human?  The indication of Scripture, and more appropriately the understanding that followed that indication, was that He would be marred so as to provide the basis for the reversal of the marring of humanity, beginning with those that believed in Him as the Christ and cast their allegiance with Him and His kingdom model as and Lord and King of all. 

So the suffering servant of Isaiah would be horribly marred.  Prior to that, however, it can be read “Look, My servant will succeed!  He will be elevated, lifted high, and greatly exalted” (52:13).  Words such as these create an expectation of something different than what is to come, so a reader could be justifiably confused by the next verse, which says, “(just as many were horrified by the sight of you) he was so disfigured he no longer looked like a man” (52:14).  The same one that is to succeed, be elevated, lifted high, and exalted is the same one that will be disfigured and marred.  It is quite the interesting contrast, but compares well with the first part of the fourteenth verse and the horror experienced on the part of the nations at the sight of the covenant God’s people Israel.  The suffering servant, as representative of Israel, is going to be marred and made unrecognizable, because as the embodiment and representative of Israel, he must share in their cursing. 

Here one must recognize that Israel itself could easily be recognized as the suffering servant, marred and no longer recognizable as the covenant people, suffering because they had failed to be the servants of all humanity in their representation of their covenant God. With that in mind,  a question can be asked as to what Isaiah is referring when he writes “just as many were horrified by the sight of you”?  He seems to be hearkening back to the ever-present comprehension and narrative-coloring of the Levitical and Deuteronomic curses, and the statement to be found attached to those curses as Israel wantonly violates its covenant with their Creator God by going after idols, not reverencing His sanctuary, and dis-honoring His Sabbaths, that “You will become an occasion of horror, a proverb, and an object of ridicule to all the peoples to whom the Lord will drive you” (Deuteronomy 28:37).  In this, it can then be seen that Israel itself was disfigured, no longer resembling the nation that the Creator God had drawn out from Egypt and set forth as the representative of His glory and the light to all nations.