Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 01:3 (Summer 1958)
Article: The Servant Of Jehovah In Isaiah And The Dead Sea Scrolls
Author: Martin J. Wyngaarden

BETS 1:3 (Summer 1958) p. 20

The Servant Of Jehovah In Isaiah And The Dead Sea Scrolls

Martin J. Wyngaarden

Calvin Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan

SOURCES: THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS OF ST. MARK’S MONASTERY, VOL. I, EDITED BY MILLAR BURROWS WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF JOHN C. TREVER AND WILLIAM H. BROWNLEE. KITTEL HEBREW BIBLE, SEVENTH OR EIGHTH EDITION, THIRD CRITICAL APPARATUS. ET CETERA.

In consultation with the Chairman of the Program Committee, this paper represents a textual critical study of the major poems concerning the Servant of Jehovah in Isaiah as found in the Masoretic Text and in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in Isaiah A.

Part I

Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12. The word mish-chath, commonly translated: marring of, has an extra yodh at the end of the word. The Hebrew Grammar of Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley treats various of such final extra yodhs, showing that no change of meaning is usually involved. But Brownlee has repointed this word with the extra yodh, in such a way that an altogether different meaning is involved: ma-shach-ti, meaning: I anointed. This meaning has been attacked and defended with vigor, but neither side has clinched the argument. It remains an interesting alternative reading, but its authority cannot be established. No doubt this reading deserves further discussion, more calm than the discussion Brownlee had to face. “So had I anointed his face more than man and his form more than the sons of man” is debatable. 52:15 The two relatives, ‘asher and ‘asher, are preceded by ‘eth’s, as the sign of the accusative. There is nothing wrong about the insertion of the ‘eth’s, but in poetry the ‘eth, as the sign of the accusative may be omitted. (See article on Poetry, in the International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia.) Now who put those ‘eth’s in here, one of the professors or one of the students ? Probably the latter, because the alteration is very amateurish, and unnecessary for the obvious meaning. 53:2 adds lo, to him, after comeliness, there is no form to him and no comeliness to him. This second lo, this second: to him, does not essentially change the sense, it is also quite unnecessary, for the sentence is not ambiguous without it; and so the addition of this second lo, to him, may also be regarded quite amateurish, and we might as well credit the students with it and not the professors, at old Qumran.

52:15 But whether we have the work of the Qumran professors or students, in 52:13 and in 43:2, we do not have a plural in