Suffering God, Suffering Messiah,

and Biblical Variants

ISRAEL KNOHL

The Suffering God

There is general agreement in the Hebrew Bible that God transcends suf-
fering. God cannot suffer, only humanity suffers.1 Evidence of a shift in
this conception is the relatively early emendation of Isa 63:9:

In all their troubles He was troubled [‫]לו צר‬, and the angel of His Presence
delivered them. In His love and pity He Himself redeemed them, raised
them, and exalted them all the days of old.

This reading differs markedly from what we find in other textual wit-
nesses. According to the version reflected in the ancient Greek transla-
tion—the Septuagint—as well as in the Isaiah Scroll from Qumran and in
the ketiv tradition of the Masoretic Text, the second Hebrew word is the
negation “lo” (‫ )לא‬instead of the prepositional “lo” (‫)לו‬. In light of this, and
based on the Septuagint, one should punctuate the verse otherwise and
understand it thusly:

In all their troubles it was not an emissary [‫]לא ציר‬, or an angel. His Pres-
ence delivered them. In His love and pity He Himself redeemed them,
raised them, and exalted them all the days of old.

This article is dedicated to David in friendship and the fond memory of the class we
taught together at Harvard in the fall of 2017.
Biblical translations follow the NRSV.
1. See Israel Knohl, “The Suffering Servant: From Isaiah to the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in
Scriptural Exegesis: The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination; Essays in Honour of
Michael Fishbane, ed. Deborah A. Green and Laura S. Lieber (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2009), 89–104, here 89.

255
256 Beloved David

In this original version (reflected in the Greek translation), a statement is

being made that emphasizes that it is God himself and not an angel or an
emissary who redeemed the Israelites from their hardship. This is akin to
what it says in the Passover Haggadah, “I, and not an angel … I and not a
seraph … I and not an emissary. ‫ אני ה' ולא אחר‬,‫ אני ולא שרף‬,‫ ”אני ולא מלאך‬2 The
words “His Presence delivered them” may be understood in the same
vein as Deut 4:37: “He took you out from Egypt by His Presence and his
great might.” In other words, God himself—“His Presence”—saved and
redeemed the Israelites.3
This statement in Isa 63:9 was afterwards emended, and the negative
“lo” (‫ )לא‬was shifted to the prepositional “lo” (‫)לו‬. As a result of this emen-
dation the syntax and the meaning of the verse were changed. Henceforth
one was to punctuate the verse differently and read:

In all their troubles He was troubled [‫]לו צר‬, and the angel of His Presence
delivered them. In His love and pity He Himself redeemed them, raised
them, and exalted them all the days of old.

According to this version God is saddened and participates in Israelite

hardship. For the first time we have the image of God experiencing the
suffering of his people finding its way into the Bible. The idea of a suffer-
ing God was foreign to biblical thinking, but the person who shifted this
verse wished to incorporate this ideological innovation into the Bible.
When was this verse shifted? One cannot be certain, but one may perhaps
offer a terminus ad quem.
With this emendation, the idea of a suffering God found its way into
the Bible, but also a new and unknown angelic figure was created: “the
angel of His Presence.” In other words, there is now a specific angel des-
ignated as “the angel of presence,” and it is he who is sent by God to
redeem the Israelites. “The angel of presence” (‫ שר הפנים‬,‫ )מלאך הפנים‬does
not appear anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible.4 He is, however, men-
tioned many times in postbiblical Jewish literature as an angel who is par-
ticularly close to God and sees God’s countenance. In postbiblical literature
he is named, “Yahoel” or “Metatron.”
According to the book of Jubilees (Jub. 1:27), the “Angel of the Pres-
ence” was the one who dictated the contents of the book to Moses when

2. See Paul Winter, “Is. LXIII. 9 and the Passover-Haggadah,” VT 4 (1954): 439–41; Sha-
lom M. Paul, Isaiah 40–66: Translation and Commentary, trans. T. Yoreh, Eerdmans Critical
Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 569–70.
3. See Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11: A New Translation with Introduction and Com-
mentary, AB 5 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 214.
4. While Brevard S. Childs is right in arguing that the issue of “God’s face” and “God’s
presence” versus an angel is discussed in Exod 33:1–16 (Isaiah, OTL [Louisville: Westminster
John Knox, 2011], 523), the angel is never called there “the Angel of Presence.”
 Knohl: Suffernn ood Suffernn gfMMrsh 257

he ascended to Mount Sinai. The book of Jubilees was a sectarian work

composed in circles ideologically adjacent to the Qumran sect, and frag-
ments of it were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The author of the
book of Jubilees was thus familiar with the emended version of Isa 63:9,
and it was based on this verse that he most likely introduced the figure of
the “Angel of the Presence” into his book. The book of Jubilees was prob-
ably composed toward the end of the second century BCE,5 and thus it
stands to reason that the emendation of the verse from Isaiah occurred
before that date.

The Suffering Servant as a Messiah

The biblical passages that viewed the king-messiah as a quasi-divine being
(such as Ps 2), did not consider the possibility of a suffering messiah-king.
But we do find the complaint of Ps 89:52, according to which the final
messiah-king of Jerusalem, Zedekiah, was brought low and tortured by
the Babylonians: “How Your enemies, O Lord, have flung abuse, abuse at
Your anointed, at every step.”6
Yet in the Hebrew Bible itself we do not find an image of a quasi-di-
vine suffering Messiah. A shift in how the Messiah could be depicted is
perhaps dependent on how God himself is depicted. From the moment
that the biblical God is depicted as sad and suffering with his people, the
possibility of a quasi-divine Messiah as sad and suffering could also be
considered.
This can be seen in the version of “the suffering servant” prophecy,
found at Qumran. Let us consider first the beginning of the “suffering
servant” passage as it appears in the Masoretic book of Isaiah (52:13–15;
53:1–6):

Indeed, My servant shall prosper, be exalted and raised to great heights.

Just as the many were appalled at him—so marred was his appearance,
unlike that of man, His form, beyond human semblance—so shall he star-
tle many nations. Kings shall be silenced because of him, for they shall see
what has not been told them, shall behold what they never have heard.
Who can believe what we have heard? Upon whom has the arm of the
Lord been revealed? For he has grown, by His favor, like a tree crown,
Like a tree trunk out of arid ground. He had no form or beauty, that

5. The question of the unity of the book of Jubilees, the way it was written, and its date
is a complicated issue, and this is not the place to address it. See Michael Segal, The Book of
Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology, JSJSup 117 (Atlanta: Society of Bibli-
cal Literature, 2013). Regarding the date, see the recent contribution of Cana Werman, The
Book of Jubilees: Introduction, Translation, and Interpretation [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi,
2015), 45–48.
6. See also Lam 4:20, which will be discussed below.
258 Festschrift for David Stern

we should look at him: No charm, that we should find him pleasing. He

was despised, shunned by men, a man of suffering, familiar with disease.
As one who hid his face from us, he was despised, we held him of no
account. Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing, our suffering that he
endured. We accounted him plagued, smitten and afflicted by God; but
he was wounded because of our sins, crushed because of our iniquities.
He bore the chastisement that made us whole, and by his bruises we were
healed. We all went astray like sheep, each going his own way; and the
Lord visited upon him the guilt of all of us.

The servant is depicted in these passages as a man who was despised, sick,
and suffering, but one whose afflictions were not incurred by his own fail-
ings. He took upon himself the sins of others. He “was wounded because
of our sins,” and “by his bruises we were healed.”
The vision of the suffering servant already raised questions in ancient
times. Who was this servant? Who were the sinners he was atoning for?
Was he an individual or did he represent a collective, and if he was an
individual, who was it?
I share the view of other scholars that the suffering servant in Deutero-
Isaiah was a figure representing the people of Israel7 or the righteous
among them,8 and therefore not an individual Messiah. We should recall,
moreover, that Deutero-Isaiah used the term “Messiah” for Cyrus, a for-
eign king (Isa 45:1), and bestowed the “mercies of David” on the entire
nation (Isa 55:3).9 This, then, rules out a messianism focused on a specific
Israelite individual. The Persian king Cyrus was the Messiah, the “mercies
of David” were given to the nation as a whole, the figure of the servant
represented the Israelite collective, and his suffering was the suffering of
all the Israelites.
A very slight textual addition to this passage found in the Isaiah Scroll
from Qumran changes the entire picture.
In one of the verses describing the servant, we read: “Just as the many
were appalled at him—so marred was his appearance, unlike that of man”
(‫כן משחת מאיש מראהו‬, Isa 52:14). In the Qumran version, a yod was added to
‫ כן משחתי מאיש מראהו‬:‫משחת‬. The verse now reads: “I anointed his countenance

7. See, e.g., Charles Cutler Torrey, The Second Isaiah: A New Interpretation (New York:
Scribner’s Sons, 1928), 409–22; Arthur S. Peake, The Servant of Yahweh: Three Lectures Delivered
at King’s College, London, during 1926, together with the Rylands Lectures on Old Testament and
New Testament Subjects (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1931); Otto Kaiser, Der
Königliche Knecht: Eine traditionsgeschichtlich-exegetische Studie über die Ebed-Jahwe-Lieder bei
Deuterojesaja, FRLANT 70 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962), 129–39; Tryggve N.
D. Mettinger, A Farewell to the Servant Songs: A Critical Examination of an Exegetical Axiom,
Scripta minora 1982–1983: 3 (Lund: Gleerup, 1983).
8. Y. Kaufmann, History of the Religion of Israel, vol. 4, trans. C. W. Efroymson (New
York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1970), 107–36.
9. See Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40–66: A Commentary, trans. David M. H. Stalker, OTL
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 283–84; Childs, Isaiah, 435–36.
 Knohl: Suffernn ood Suffernn gfMMrsh 259

from among men.” In other words, in this version, God anoints a specific
messianic servant. As the eminent philologist Yechezkel Kutscher and oth-
ers claim,10 this was not a textual error.11 A sectarian writer from Qumran
wanted to depict the servant messianically. In his opinion, the suffering
servant did not represent Israel as a collective but was an individual, a
suffering Messiah, who took upon himself the sins of others and atoned
for them.

The Messiah Who Suffers because

of the Sins of Others
The following account appears in the Palestinian Talmud, Tractate Shab-
bat, chapter 16, halakhah A (15C) (There are shorter parallels in Leviticus
Rabbah 15:4, Margaliyot Edition, p. 328; and in Lamentations Rabbah 4:20,
Buber Edition, p. 77a). I quote the Palestinian Talmud according to the
Academy for Hebrew Language Edition, 2001:12

‫ ור׳ חייא רבא ור׳ ישמעאל ביר׳ יוסה היו יושבין ופושטין במגילת קינות ערב‬13‫ ר׳‬.‫דלמא‬
.‫ אמרו‬.‫תשעה באב שחל להיות בשבת מן המנחה ולמעלה ושיירו בה אל״ף בי״ת אחד‬
‫ נפטר לביתו נכשל באצבעו וקרא על גרמיה‬14‫ עם כשר׳‬.‫למחר אנו באין וגומרין אותה‬
.‫״רבים מכאובים לרשע״‬
15
.‫ דכת׳ ״רוח אפינו משיח י״י נלכד בשחיתותם״‬.‫ בחובינו מטתך כן‬.‫אמ׳ ליה ר׳ חייה‬
‫ על אחת‬.‫ בעניין כך היה לנו לומ׳‬16‫ אילו לא היינו עוסקין‬.‫אמ׳ לו ר׳ ישמעאל ביר׳ יוסי‬
.‫ עוסקין בעניין‬17‫כמה וכמה שהיינו‬

An example: Rabbi [= Rabbi Judah the Prince], the Elder Rabbi Ḥiyya,
and Rabbi Ismael ben Rabbi Yose were sitting and explaining the plain
sense of a scroll of Lamentations on a Ninth of Av which fell on a Sabbath
(after the afternoon prayers). They left over one alphabetic poem. They
said, we shall come tomorrow and finish it. When Rabbi was on the way
home, he hurt his finger and recited about himself, many are the evildoer’s
hurts (Ps 32:10). Rabbi Ḥiyya said to him, it is our fault that this hap-

10. Yechezkel Kutscher, The Language and Linguistic Background of the Complete Isaiah
Scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1959), 197.
11. See, e.g., Martin Hengel and Daniel P. Bailey, “The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in
the Pre-Christian Period,” in The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources, ed.
Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher, trans. Daniel P. Bailey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2004), 75–146, here 104–5.
12. A Genizah fragment of the Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Shabbat that contains part
of this story was published by Jacob N. Epstein, “Additional Fragments of the Jerushalmi,”
Tarbiz 3 (1932): 242.
13. In the Genizah fragment: ‫רבי‬
14. In the Genizah fragment: ‫כשרבי‬
15. In the Genizah fragment: ‫בשחיתתם‬
16. In the Genizah fragment: ‫עסוקין‬
17. In the Genizah fragment: ‫עד שאנו‬
260 Festschrift for David Stern

pened to you, as it is written, our spirit, the Eternal’s anointed, was caught
by their corruption (Lam 4:20). Rabbi Ismael ben Rabbi Yose told him, that
could have been said about us if we had not occupied ourselves with it;
so much more since we did occupy ourselves with it.

Rabbi Judah the Prince and two sages close to him, Rabbi Ḥiyya and Rabbi
Ishmael the son of Rabbi Yossi were studying the book of Lamentations on
the eve of the Ninth of Av, which fell on the Sabbath, after midday. They
left the last alphabetic acrostic unlearned, or in other words they con-
cluded Lamentations 3, and did not study Lamentations 4, which is also
an alphabetic acrostic. They decided among themselves to conclude their
study of the scroll on the next day. As he turned to go home, Rabbi Judah
the Prince injured a digit, likely a toe. He then recited the following verse
about himself: “Many are the evildoer’s hurts”; in other words, he
explained his painful injury to his toe as a punishment for a sin. Rabbi
Ḥiyya, however, disagreed with him and said that the pain he had suf-
fered was not due to any sin, but it was on account of their sins (Rabbi
Ḥiyya’s and Rabbi Ishmael’s), or the congregation’s sins. As corroboration
for his claim, he quotes from the alphabetic acrostic of Lamentations 4,
which they had not yet studied: “our spirit, the Eternal’s anointed, was
caught by their corruption.” Rabbi Ishmael supports Rabbi Ḥiyya’s opin-
ion and offers further corroboration with the claim that the affliction that
Rabbi Judah the Prince had suffered had taken place soon after studying
the Lamentations scroll where this verse is found.
In order to fully understand Rabbi Ḥiyya’s homily, one must go back
to the passage from which he was quoting (Lam 4:19–20):

Our pursuers were swifter

Than the eagles in the sky;
They chased us in the mountains,
Lay in wait for us in the wilderness.
The breath of our life, the Lord’s anointed,
Was captured in their traps—
He in whose shade we had thought
To live among the nations.

It seems likely that these verses refer to the capture of King Zedekiah, the
last king of Jerusalem, by the Babylonians after he tried to flee the con-
quered city (see 2 Kgs 25:4–6). His depiction as “The breath of our life, the
Lord’s anointed” is in the same vein as the Egyptian tradition18 wherein
Pharaoh is described as providing the breath of life to his subjects. More-
over, descriptions of monarchs as providing shade and shelter to the
inhabitants of the land appear in other Egyptian sources. Zedekiah would

18. See Delbert R. Hillers, Lamentations: A New Translation with Introduction and Com-
mentary, AB 7A (New York: Doubleday, 1972), 92.
 Knohl: Suffernn ood Suffernn gfMMrsh 261

have been known as “the Lord’s anointed” in light of the Judean and Isra-
elite practice to anoint their monarchs with oil. The expression “was cap-
tured in their traps” refers to Zedekiah’s capture in the trap set by the
Babylonians. The form ‫ בִ ְׁשחִ יתֹותָ ם‬is the plural of ‫שחת‬, a cavity or a hole in the
ground that was used as a trap.19
Rabbi Ḥiyya, however, disconnects this word from its original mean-
ing of “trap” and reads it as referring to “sin,” which is one of the mean-
ings of the root ‫שחת‬.20 Thus, he is able to claim that Rabbi Judah the Prince,
who was seen by his contemporaries as fulfilling messianic expectations,21
injured his foot because he bore the sins of his generation. As Moshe Aber-
bach notes, the words that follow in the verse, “he in whose shade we had
thought to live among the nations,” could very easily have been under-
stood as a reference to Rabbi Judah the Prince who protected his genera-
tion from the rigors of Roman subjugation.22 This account stands out
among other sources suggesting that Rabbi Judah the Prince was the Mes-
siah, mostly based on his political success and his great wealth. In this
passage, Rabbi Judah the Prince is transformed into the suffering Messiah,
akin to the suffering servant of Isaiah, though, in contrast to the Isaianic
servant, there is no explicit reference that through his (Rabbi Judah the
Prince’s) suffering he atones for the sins of others.
The thread that ties together the three passages dealt with in this piece
is that, according to the original version of each, there was no inherent
connection between divinity and suffering or between messianism and
suffering. Later editors and sages shifted the reading of these verses, and
in doing so imported new ideas into the biblical text, namely, the notion
that God suffers together with his chosen nation, and that the messiah
suffers as an ideal figure.

Bibliography
Aberbach, Moshe. “Hezekiah King of Judah and Rabbi Judah the Patri-
arch: Messianic Aspects” [Hebrew]. Tarbiz 53 (1984): 353–72.
Childs, Brevard S. Isaiah. OTL. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2011.
Epstein Jacob N. “Additional Fragments of the Jerushalmi” [Hebrew]. Tar-
biz 3 (1932): 242.

19. See Prov 22:14; 26:27, and the discussion in Jacob Klein, Lamentations [Hebrew],
Mikra Leyisrael (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2017), 237.
20. As in Gen 6:11–12: ‫ וירא אלהים את הארץ כי נשחתה כי‬, ‫ותשחת הארץ לפני האלהים ותמלא הארץ חמס‬
.‫“( השחית כל בשר את דרכו על הארץ‬The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with
lawlessness. When God saw how corrupt the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways
on earth”).
21. See Moshe Aberbach, “Hezekiah King of Judah and Rabbi Judah the Patriarch: Mes-
sianic Aspects” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 53 (1984): 353–72.
22. Ibid., 359.
262 Festschrift for David Stern

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the Pre-Christian Period.” In Thf Suffernn Sfevsnt: IMsrsh 53 rn JfwrMh
and Christian Sources, edited by Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhl-
macher, 75–146. Translated by Daniel P. Bailey. Grand Rapids: Eerd-
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Hillers, Delbert R. Lamentations: A New Translation with Introduction and
Commentary. AB 7A. New York: Doubleday, 1972.
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Studie über die Ebed-Jahwe-Lieder bei Deuterojesaja. FRLANT 70. Göt-
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Efroymson. New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations,
1970).
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2017.
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