The Great Isaiah Scroll, the best preserved of the biblical scrolls found at Qumran from the second century BC, contains all the verses in this chapter.
The parashah sections listed here are based on the Aleppo Codex.[5] Isaiah 50 is a part of the Consolations (Isaiah 40–66). {P}: open parashah; {S}: closed parashah.
{S} 50:1-3 {P} 50:4-9 {S} 50:10 {S} 50:11 {S}
Verse 3
I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.[6]
The servant songs were first identified by Bernhard Duhm in his 1892 Commentary on Isaiah. The songs are four poems taken from the Book of Isaiah written about a certain "servant of YHWH". God calls the servant to lead the nations, but the servant is horribly repressed. In the end, he is rewarded. Those four poems are:
The third of the "servant songs" begins at Isaiah 50:4, continuing through 50:11. The Jerusalem Bible divides it into two sections:
Isaiah 50:4-9: The servant speaks
Isaiah 50:10-11: Exhortation to follow the servant.[7]
This song has a darker yet more confident tone than the others.[according to whom?] Although the song gives a first-person description of how the Servant was beaten and abused, here the Servant is described both as teacher and learner who follows the path God places him on without pulling back. Echoing the words of the first song, "a bruised reed he will not break",[8] he sustains the weary with a word. His vindication is left in God's hands.[9]
Almost all commentators agree that the language here is individual in nature.[10] Maintaining the collective interpretation of the Servant became more difficult with the detailed allusions to rejection, physical abuse, disfigurement, and eventually death, in 50:4–9 and 52:13–53:12.[11]
^Ulrich, Eugene; Flint, Peter W. (2010). Qumran cave 1. II, The Isaiah scrolls. Ulrich, Eugene; Flint, Peter W.; Abegg, Martin G., Jr. Oxford. pp. 12–13, 21. ISBN9780199566679. OCLC708744480.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
