The Psalms of Holy Week

He Was Silent like A Lamb Being Led to the Butcher

Isaiah 52: 12 - 15
Isaiah 53
Luke 4: 14 - 21

When Jesus stood to read the lesson in the synagogue, he chose Isaiah 61. Then he sat down to tell the congregation that he was the servant Isaiah wrote about.

The Gospel writers remembered that statement as they used the Servant Song of Isaiah as a strong underpinning for their accounts of Jesus' suffering and death.

Isaiah was an Old Testament prophet, who spoke strongly to the people about their current behavior and what would become of them if they did not change their ways.

We do not know which servant Isaiah was writing about, although he may have been writing about someone he knew personally. We do know that later generations retold the story as though it were happening in their own time and place. The last person to do this, of course, was Jesus, who believed that he was fulfilling the prophecy in his own lifetime.

This passage refers repeatedly to Psalm 22, the psalm that Jesus spoke from the cross as he was dying.

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