Isaiah 49 Bible study: A light to the nations

The chapter opens with a voice that says me, and it speaks to the far places: "Listen, islands, to me. Listen, you peoples, from afar: the LORD has called me from the womb; from the inside of my mother, he has mentioned my name" (49:1). He says what the LORD made of him: "He has made my mouth like a sharp sword. He has hidden me in the shadow of his hand. He has made me a polished shaft. He has kept me close in his quiver" (49:2). Then he tells what the LORD said to him: "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified" (49:3) (tap servant, glorified). And he tells what he said back: "I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength in vain for nothing; yet surely the justice due to me is with the LORD, and my reward with my God" (49:4) (tap labored). Here is what almost everyone misses: the servant's first words about his own work are "I have labored in vain" (49:4), and in the same verse he leaves what is due to him with the LORD.

Isaiah 49:10→leads toRevelation 7:16-17

In the words the LORD speaks in Isaiah 49:8-12, those who are bound are told, "Come out!" (Isaiah 49:9), and of them the LORD says, "They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun strike them, for he who has mercy on them will lead them. He will guide them by springs of water" (Isaiah 49:10). Revelation is "the Revelation of Jesus Christ" (Revelation 1:1). In it John sees "a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain" (Revelation 5:6), and later one of the elders tells him of those who are "before the throne of God" (Revelation 7:15): "They will never be hungry or thirsty any more. The sun won’t beat on them, nor any heat" (Revelation 7:16), "for the Lamb who is in the middle of the throne shepherds them and leads them to springs of life-giving waters" (Revelation 7:17). Revelation doesn't name Isaiah, and no link between the Hebrew and Greek words is claimed, so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some hear in Revelation 7:16-17 the hunger, thirst, sun, heat and springs of water of Isaiah 49:10, with the Lamb leading them. Others read Isaiah 49:10 in its own chapter, of those who "shall come from afar" (Isaiah 49:12) in its own verses (Isaiah 49:9-12), and read Revelation 7 on its own. The line says nothing about who the servant of Isaiah 49:1-6 is, and these notes pick neither reading.

עֶבֶדevedsay EH-ved

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "slave, servant". Strong's: "a servant". The chapter has it four times. "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified" (49:3): in Hebrew my servant is avdi. "he who formed me from the womb to be his servant" (49:5); "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant" (49:6); and the LORD speaks "to a servant of rulers" (49:7). Before chapter 41 the LORD says my servant of Isaiah (Isaiah 20:3), Eliakim (Isaiah 22:20) and David (Isaiah 37:35). From chapter 41 he speaks again and again to Israel as his servant (Isaiah 41:8), and other passages speak of a servant the verse doesn't name (Isaiah 42:1). This chapter's honest question sets out how Christians read the servant of 49:1-6, and chooses none.