Can someone explain this chapter to me?

[Supreme]

Oh gee, ignore my post, which even gave Biblical references. Not even Grace Seeker's posts gave Biblical references.

 

[Esther462]

I think the original poster was hoping that someone would explain this chapter from an Islamic perspective.

Is the following consistent with how this chapter is viewed in Islam?

http://www.mosqueonline.com/saviour/jesus/trinity/is-isaiah-53.htm

:wa:

That link is very helpful. Thank you.

 

[KittenLover]

^ sorry for taking your thread off topic earlier forgive me.

 

[جوري]

so God is a debt collector who's collecting the debt of sin from us by killing his son right?

By killing himself if you want to be in keeping with 'monotheism'

 

[Al-manar]

I think it is possible to give an interpretation of Isaiah 53 without having to attack every Christian concept, after all, they are not all a part of the chapter in question. So, if we can stay focused on that chapter.

That is wise Grace Seeker....

Two things reflect the lack of wisdom & knowledge in a person

1- To get into irrelevant details..

2- To delete others arguments which he not ready yet to refute....

The Jewish commentators have argued that this chapter is a prophecy of the nation of Israel, their suffering, scattering etc.

How does Islam view this chapter?.

If you mean how muslims view this chapter,then they usually like the Jewish commentaries.....


How Islam should view this chapter?

After long time of reflection, it should be neither the christian nor the jewish way .....



1-
Isaiah 53 according to Islam can't be reference neither to Jesus nor to The Jews

we believe in God's justice as some Old Testament verses:

Ezek. 18:20 "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bearthe iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him."

Ezek.33:20 "O ye house of Israel,I will judge you every one after his ways."

Jer. 31:29-30 "In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge. But every one shall ie for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge."



So when Isaiah comes and write:


But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
he punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.


there we say STOP !

God laids not the iniquity of the people on others.... neither Jesus nor the Jews.....


2-


The problem of exclusiveness:and that is the basic weakness of such passage, It is mere a description of things that been experienced by thouthands if not millions !

Isaiah, or at least the writer of the book that bears his name, employs the whole of this chapter, Iiii., in lamenting the sufferings of some deceased persons, of whom he speaks very pathetically. It is a monody on the death of a friend; but he mentions not the name of the person, nor gives any circumstance of him by which he can be personally known; and it is this silence, which is evidence of nothing, that Matthew has laid hold of, to put the name of Christ to it; as if the chiefs of the Jews, whose sorrows were then great, and the times they lived in big with danger, were never thinking about their own affairs, nor the fate of their own friends, but were continually running a Wild-Goose chase into futurity.

To make a monody into a prophecy is an absurdity. The characters and circumstances of men, even in the different ages of the world, are so much alike, that what is said of one may with propriety be said of many; but this fitness does not make the passage into a prophecy; and none but an impostor, or a bigot, would call it so.

Isaiah, in deploring the hard fate and loss of his friend, mentions nothing of him but what the human lot of man is subject to. All the cases he states of him, his persecutions, his imprisonment, his patience in suffering, and his perseverance in principle, are all within the line of nature; they belong exclusively to none, and may with justness be said of many. But if Jesus Christ was the person the church represents him to be, that which would exclusively apply to him must be something that could not apply to any other person; something beyond the line of nature, something beyond the lot of mortal man; and there are no such expressions in this chapter, nor any other chapter in the Old Testament.

It is no exclusive description to say of a person, as is said of the person Isaiah is lamenting in this chapter, He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. This may be said of thousands of persons, who have suffered oppressions and unjust death with patience, silence, and perfect resignation.

.

My advice to Muslims ,just don't follow blindly any Jewish commentary, their commentaries are helpful but not all the way ...


Regards

 

[Grace Seeker]

My advice to Muslims ,just don't follow blindly any Jewish commentary, their commentaries are helpful but not all the way ...


Regards

That's generally good advice with regard to most commentaries, there is good and bad alike to be found in most all of them (though some are so bad as to offer no help at all). Certainly Thomas Paine's commentaries on the Colonial scene were very helpful with regard to the American Revolution, but his writings with regard to Isaiah 53 seem to miss completely that it is a part of a large section of the book of Isaiah. His treatment of it in isolation from that larger context makes it very unhelpful in nature.

 

[Al-manar]

his writings with regard to Isaiah 53 seem to miss completely that it is a part of a large section of the book of Isaiah. His treatment of it in isolation from that larger context makes it very unhelpful in nature.

If you mean his treatment with isaiah 53 was out of context,then I think you should read again my quotation....

his comments has nothing to do with the context.... he plainly put it

The applecation of Isaiah as a prediction to Jesus or even anyone else,has The problem of exclusiveness.......

and that is the reasonable understanding which anyone(except the jews and christians who obliged to argue that the passage must have a meaning) Muslim,non Muslim should get.....


If you would like to know Paine's opinion in Isaiah's writing in general :


"Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to Isaiah, will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except for a short historical part, and a few sketches of history in the first two or three chapters, is one continued, incoherent, bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff; it is...prose run mad." The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine, p. 129-130

"Isaiah is, upon the whole, a wild, disorderly writer, preserving in general no clear chain of perception in the arrangement of his ideas, and consequently producing no defined conclusions from them. It is the wildness of his style, the confusion of his ideas, and the ranting metaphors he employs, that have afforded so many opportunities to priestcraft in some cases, and to superstition in others, to impose those defects upon the world as prophecies of Jesus Christ. Finding no direct meaning in them, and not knowing what to make of them, and supposing at the same time they were intended to have a meaning, they supplied the defect by inventing a meaning of their own, and called it his ." The Life and Works of Paine, Vol. 9, p. 229-30


Regards

 

[Grace Seeker]

If you mean his treatment with isaiah 53 was out of context,then I think you should read again my quotation....

Indeed I did, and still do. Paine tries to interpret Isaiah 53 in isolation from Isaiah 49, 50, 51, and 52, all which provide context to the presentation of a suffering servant. This suffering servant of Isaiah is understood by different groups of people in a variety of different ways -- the future-coming Messiah, the nation of Israel personified, prophecies with regard to Jesus personally -- but Isaiah 53 is most certainly NOT, as Paine describes it, "a monody on the death of a friend."


I also disagree with Paine regarding what he perceives as a lack of structure to the book.