Ali Ataie – The Prophet Muhammad in Isaiah 42
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Well, good evening, and welcome to blogging theology.
And, this evening, I'm very happy to very
happy to welcome back professor Ali Atay. Welcome
back, sir.
Thank you so much. Great to be back.
And, and, doctor Ali will
before I go into what he's gonna do
tonight. I just want to briefly mention for
the few of you who may not be
aware of who he is. He's a scholar
of biblical hermeneutics
with specialties
in sacred languages. That's biblical Hebrew, Greek
and other languages theology comparative literature.
He
has taught Arabic.
And sciences of the Quran introduction to the
Quran
and seminal ancient texts as well.
He has a PhD,
in cultural and historical studies in religion from
the Graduate
Theological
Union.
He's a native Persian speaker
and can read and write Arabic, Hebrew, and
Greek,
and he joined the Zaytuna College faculty in
2012.
So his proficiency
in,
Arabic, Greek, and Hebrew,
might be particularly relevant tonight where
doctor Ali is going to share with us.
His thoughts on the 42nd
chapter of the book of Isaiah.
And, I'll obviously, I invite you, doctor Ali
to explain
why this is so significant, perhaps for Muslims
and what it tells us if anything about
another prophet and the prophet Muhammad who wants
to come later on so
with that anymore.
Anymore for me, I'll straight over to you
a to
talk about today's subject of Isaiah 42
Great.
Thank you, Paul. Thank you for having me
again.
Let's get right into it. Isaiah 42 is
an absolutely fascinating chapter in
the book of Isaiah in the Tanakh.
Isaiah 42 is is what the classical Muslim
exegetes
reference invariably in their commentaries of the Quran's
claim
that the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
is mentioned in the bible.
So I just wanna read this. This is
from,
this is called, Kitabu Shifa
by Qadhi Ayad ibn Musa. He was a
great Malachite scholar. This is a translation
by Aisha Bewley.
So this is on page 10 in my
copy. So it says that Abdullah ibn Amar
ibn al-'Aas who was a companion of the
prophet,
he said that the Jewish scriptures say,
oh, prophet, we have sent you as a
witness,
a bringer of good news and a warner
and a refuge for the unleaded. You are
my slave and my messenger.
I have called you the one on whom
people rely,
one who is neither coarse nor vulgar and
who neither shouts in the markets nor repays
evil with evil, but rather pardons and forgives.
Allah will not take him back to himself
until the crooked community has been straightened out
by him.
And they say there is no god but
Allah. Through him, blind eyes, deaf ears, and
covered hearts will be opened.
And then something similar is reported from Abdullah
ibn Ulsalam and then Kaab al Ahbar.
So this is this is clearly a summary
and paraphrase,
of Isaiah 42, and we'll see that.
Christians, by the way, believe Isaiah 42 to
be predicting Jesus, peace be upon him, because
this is what Matthew says.
Isaiah is actually the most cited prophet in
the New Testament,
and we'll get into that,
as well inshallah.
But I want to first, however, talk about
the book of Isaiah in terms of its
overall
introduction, its history,
its dating, its authorship, its
theology. And and then I want to literally
go through the entire chapter
42 verse by verse.
And the reason for the latter is because,
I don't want someone to say, well, he
only quoted,
you know, part of it or half of
it or he's taking it out of context.
What about this verse? What about that verse?
Okay. So I want to look at the
entire chapter within its greater context of Deutero
Isaiah, and I'll explain what I mean by
Deutero Isaiah.
Okay. So the book of Isaiah contains a
total of 66
chapters.
Most orthodox Jews and traditional Christians maintain
that the historical prophet
Yesha'aYahu
ben Amoz, so Isaiah, the son of Amoz,
wrote all 66 chapters
in the 8th century before the common era.
No historian
of the bible who is not a devout,
Christian or Jew takes this position as long
as far as I know,
if they're out there, they're very, very much
in the minority.
The general historical consensus is that the book
of Isaiah was written by multiple authors across
100 of years.
So again, we have this sort of wide
gap between the sort of confessional and non
confessional communities
with respect to biblical authorship.
Doctor Bo Lim, that's l I m, who's
a professor of Old Testament
at Seattle Pacific University and an expert on
the book of Isaiah,
he mentions that even before the enlightenment,
medieval Jewish commentators
said that parts of the book of Isaiah
were not written by the 8th century BCE
prophet.
And Isaiahic scholar Martin Sweeney also mentions,
this in his introduction,
to the book of Isaiah in the the
new Oxford annotated bible. Doctor Lim, by the
way, who himself is a Christian,
believes that the book of Isaiah was written
by multiple authors.
And I would imagine that most of doctor
Lim's Christian brothers and sisters
would find his view objectionable
because it does seem a lot like the
New Testament writers believed in a united
Isaiah. In other words, a single authored book
of Isaiah.
In other words, if Lim is correct, then
Mark and Matthew and Paul are seemingly incorrect.
I don't know how Christian historians like Lin
would square this. Obviously, he works it out
somehow.
So just a little bit of background here.
In 19th century,
German scholars established that the first 39 books
of
sorry. 39 chapters of Isaiah
were written during the Assyrian period.
So, like, between
742
to 701 BCE, and they called it Proto
Isaiah, meaning first Isaiah.
And then chapters,
39 through 66 were written during the Babylonian
period.
So like 550
to
539
BCE, something like that. And this is called
deutero or second Isaiah.
So this was the initial division, 1 to
39
proto and then 40 to 66 is deutero.
But then in 18/92,
a German scholar named Bernard Doom,
okay, who was actually a student of Wellhausen,
He modified this in his famous book. It
was called the book of Isaiah translated and
explained.
And according to Duhm, and that's d u
h m, not d o o m,
Deutto Isaiah should really be divided into 2
sections.
Okay? So chapters 40 to 55,
which retain the title Deutto Isaiah, but also
50,
56 to 66,
which is now called Treto Isaiah. So 3rd
Isaiah. Okay? And this third section was dated
to the Persian period, so, like, 5 15
CE,
or later.
According to Doum,
Proto Isaiah was written or spoken by Isaiah,
the son of Amoz of Jerusalem.
Deutero Isaiah was written by,
an anonymous
prophet in Babylon, and Trito Isaiah was written
by yet another
anonymous prophet during the Persian period. So just
just to clarify, the the the historical
Isaiah of Jerusalem,
after which the whole book is named,
is thought to credibly be connected with the
first 39
chapters of that book alone
for particular period. The rest of the book,
is authored by unknown prophets or scribes or
Jewish scribes, whoever. But where it's a historical
prophet himself is associated
incredibly historically with that earlier section
called first Isaiah or proto Isaiah
1 to 39 only. Yep. Just summarizing that.
Yeah. Yes. Exactly. Thank you. And and doom
also originated the concept of the so called
servant songs of Deutero Isaiah and identified 4
of them. So they appear in Isaiah 42,
49,
50, and 53. And by the way, the
the oldest complete manuscript of Isaiah that is
extant,
is called 1QISA.
That's the great Isaiah Scroll found, in cave
1 at Qomran among the Dead Sea Scrolls
in 1947.
According to the Israel Museum of Jerusalem, the
scroll is dated to about 100
BCE.
It's written on parchment and contains all 66
chapters.
So this puts a gap of about 600
years between,
the life of the historical prophet Isaiah,
and the oldest manuscript of the book that
is attributed to him. Now more recently,
and this is over the last, like, maybe
25 years, many scholars have slightly amended the
theory of doom.
Okay? So while they still maintain this
tripartite
division of the book of Isaiah written at
different times, so Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian,
they now say that these three sections were
likely written by multiple authors, so not just
3, but potentially
dozens of authors. Okay? So these authors were
devoted to the teachings of Isaiah, but they
did not consider it,
sort of, impious
to expand and explain,
their master's teachings with additional writings. And also
the the chapter, Isaiah itself, contains big quotes,
big chunks of quotes and other prophets and
other parts of the Bible as well, literally
verbatim quotes. So it's not as if it's
all authored by one person. Sometimes they're they're
gobbling up or copying and pasting other bits
of,
the Torah as well. So I just yeah.
It's the whole so the same. But, yeah,
there is that too. Yeah. There's a whole
section in proto Isaiah. It's it's identical to
something in 2nd Kings chapter 19. I mean,
almost like you said, verbatim, word for word.
Yeah. So so these so these were disciples
of of of Isaiah that belonged to
what historians call the Isianic
school.
Okay? So according to these more recent scholars,
the book of Isaiah is a compendium
of the speeches, oracles, and sermons
of the prophet Isaiah written by his It's
an anthology. It's an anthology is what it's
saying. Anthology. It's an anthology of writings, collection
of oracles,
sayings, whatever.
And they would edit, they would add, they
would revise the teachings of their master over
a span of several generations. So it's a
composite work. This is John Barton's position in
a nutshell.
But this whole this whole issue of Isianic
authorship is highly disputed.
Personally, I'm not convinced that the book of
Isaiah had dozens of authors.
I do think that there definitely was an
Isianic
school of some sort, some sort of like
order or guild of students,
which included other prophets who were devoted to
the prophet Isaiah. This seems very likely.
Now Jewish and Christian apologists are very insistent
about their belief
that the book of Isaiah was
entirely the work of one man, the the
prophet Isaiah in the 8th century BCE during
the Assyrian period.
The Christian because,
as I said, it would otherwise seem to
contradict the position of the New Testament writers.
For Jews, the consequence of Isaiah having more
than one author,
would be that they simply would not know
who wrote the majority of the book
and that the traditional attribution of the book
of Isaiah to one man is simply wrong,
and it's been wrong for centuries.
So let me summarize then the position of
orthodox Judaism
in this regard, and then I'll respond to
it. So if you were to ask, for
example, Rabbi Tovia Singer
about, Isaiah,
this is basically what he would say. I
mean, I don't mean to put words into
his mouth, but I've heard him speak about
this topic in the past. So he would
say that that all of the contents
of what would eventually become the book of
Isaiah,
okay, were written down entirely by Isaiah himself.
Okay?
These writings were then codified, that is to
say, he uses the word assembled,
in book form and then promulgated shortly after
Isaiah's death. So this compilation was done by
King Hezekiah
and his court according to the orthodox.
So Isaiah wrote it, but he did not
compile it because he was killed
by his grandson, Manasseh, according to Jewish tradition.
He was actually, he was cut in half
while hiding in the trunk
of a tree according to the Talmud.
So that's the orthodox
narrative in a nutshell.
Now one of the main reasons
that historians
date Deutto Isaiah to the Babylonian
period
is because Isaiah 45
explicitly mentions King Cyrus of Persia,
Exactly.
Who did not become king until 559 BCE.
The Orthodox, of course, they'll say that Isaiah
himself predicted the name of the king
some 160 years earlier through prophecy. And maybe
Isaiah did. Obviously, I do not deny prophecy.
But even with that said, there are other
compelling reasons to date Deutto Isaiah to the
Babylonian period. So you'll hear an Orthodox Jewish
apologist say, you know, historians are atheists, and
atheists don't believe in prophecy, and this is
why they date,
Isaiah 45 to much later. They can't even
entertain the notion
of prophecy or divine revelation.
And my response is, okay, fine. But
Abraham
Ben Ezra,
who certainly was no atheist,
in fact, he was one of the greatest
and most respected commentators of the Tanakh in
history,
even he suggested that Isaiah 40 and beyond
may have been authored later.
So Babylonian era authorship of Deutero Isaiah is
not strictly the argument of secular atheist historians
who reject prophecy.
There's other evidence that points to later authorship.
First of all,
the name Isaiah does not appear anywhere beyond
chapter 39, not even once.
And secondly, the galut, right, the exile is
clearly in the historical background
of chapters 40 to 60 6. I mean,
just read those chapters. It's very clear.
Deutero and Treto Isaiah are clearly addressed to
an audience
already in exile or then coming out of
exile.
And prophets, I would say, generally speak to
their own generations. Right? They died, they console,
they warn their own generations in their own
time,
unless they explicitly state that they're going to
talk about the future. So if Isaiah, the
prophet himself wrote chapters 40 to 66,
why is he talking to future generations and
not his own?
Thirdly,
while chapters 1 to 39 are more of
a narrative style,
chapter 40 and beyond
are more lyrical
and poetic. I mean, it is a markedly
different style.
Okay. So there are good reasons for believing
that Deutero Isaiah was written during the Babylonian
period, reasons that have nothing to do with
rejecting prophecy. I was reading Christine Hayes, professor
at Yale, who's now a specialist in on
this subject, on this, question of authorship. And
she also alludes to,
she she can read a lot as you
can, the Hebrew. And you said that the
Hebrew language, the phrasing, the vocabulary even,
after 3940 onwards appears to be different. It
it reads like a different hand. So it's
not just a question of her being anti
supernaturalist or against prophecy. It actually reads like
a different person anyway, So it would naturally
suggest that to the reader of the Hebrew.
That's I think she mentions that. Yeah. That's
a good point. Yeah. And and I would
say the last piece of evidence is
is if Isaiah, the prophet, the historical prophet,
mentioned Cyrus by name
in the 8th century BCE,
why didn't the prophets between Isaiah and Daniel
also mention him by name? Micah, Jeremiah, Zephaniah,
Obadiah, Ezekiel, none of them mentioned the name
of Cyrus.
In fact, in 2nd Chronicles 3622
written by Ezra
in the 5th century BCE,
Ezra says that Cyrus' action was to fulfill
the word of the Lord
through Jeremiah, yet Jeremiah never named Cyrus. Why
didn't Ezra say something like, oh, this was
the one that the Lord mentioned by name
through Isaiah, if Isaiah had already mentioned his
name
some 300 years
earlier.
Now now I wanna make this clear that
the writings of the book of Isaiah,
they are prophetic. That is to say,
both Proto and Deutero Isaiah have this what's
known as an oracular or predictive
aspect to them. At least, this is what
it seems like to me. For example, in
Isaiah chapter 9 and chapter 11,
Isaiah, the prophet predicted the birth of Hezekiah.
Isaiah 14 speaks of the fall of the
Babylonian
Empire.
Isaiah 14 is in Proto Isaiah
written in the 8th century BCE.
The Neo Babylonian Empire did not even exist
at that time. It started at 6 25
BCE. So Isaiah actually predicted this. I believe
that. And of course, a a critic here
would say that these sections of Isaiah 14
were actually written during the Babylonian period by
the Isaanic school and then placed back into
a proto Isaiah to make it seem as
though Isaiah had predicted this, but there's no
solid evidence of this. And, of course, this
is what many secular historians must say. A
secular historian will not assume
prophecy.
Also, Deutero Isaiah tells us
what God said to Cyrus. Now how did
the author of Deuteronomy Isaiah know this? The
answer is prophecy.
And again, a critic here would say, well,
he made it up.
But I believe in prophecy.
And even more than this,
I believe that there is a Midrashie
aspect to Isaiah.
The servant songs in Deutero Isaiah in particular.
In other words, there is an oracular
predictive
aspect to these texts that is in addition
to their,
right, their original historical,
context. And just just to add that you've
already said and and,
Christine Hayes also says that because we don't
know we don't know the the identity of
2nd or 3rd.
It doesn't mean that there weren't prophets
at work in these texts. Right. You know,
they're unknown prophets, so they they could still
qualify as prophetic utterances even if you don't
know the name of them.
Yeah. That's that's a very good point. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So I I would say that
that,
Isaiah 42 has has a double aspect. You
know? It's and this is the nature of
prophetic utterance. It's it's polyvalent.
It has multiple layers
of meaning. And I'll come back at this.
This is really at the heart of my
argument.
But let me give you sort of my
final verdict on Isianic scholarship.
So my position regarding the book of Isaiah
is sort of a middle ground. I think
it's the most balanced and convincing.
I have no problem with saying that Proto
Isaiah was written or uttered by the historical
Isaiah of Jerusalem and then compiled into a
book shortly after his death.
No problem. Deutto Isaiah, however, I believe was
written by an Isianic disciple
about a 150 years after the death of
Isaiah
during the Babylonian
period. Now if we're going to say as
Muslims
that Isaiah 42 is oracular,
that is to say prophetic,
then we must also say at least for
the sake of argument
that the original speaker of Deutero Isaiah must
have also been a prophet. Right? A Naveed
Emet, a true prophet.
He was a prophet of the Isaanic school
operating in Babylon during the exile.
And as you said, we don't know his
name. The vast majority of prophets are not
known to us by name,
but we do know that like the adherence
to the d school that we talked about
last time, the Deuteronomistic
school,
the prophet speaker of Deutero Isaiah was a
staunch monotheist.
And we'll notice other very interesting themes as
well. But his principal theme is yachiduth,
this type of
uncompromising.
Okay? And the
to to to to hear that Isaiah
is very Islamic in his emphasis on on
Yes. Absolute monotheism
tower. He has very any other prophets, that
I'm aware of extraordinary emphasis on the importance
of that. So yeah. Sorry. Yeah. In the
Quran says in in a surah called the
prophets
That We never sent a Messenger except that
We
inspired him, that there's no god but Me,
so worship Me. So Tawhid is at the
absolute core of the teachings of all the
prophets.
And the Quran also says,
that we believe in what was given to
Moses,
peace be upon him, and Jesus, peace be
upon him, and the prophets,
nabi'un, nabi'im,
the prophets from their Lord. They're not named.
So we have to we'll assume that the
the author of Deutero Isaiah was from them.
So toheed,
oneness of God, is his principal theme. I
Just look at his historical setting,
the historical setting of the author of Deutero
Isaiah.
Sitting in Babylon,
the ancient home of Abraham, the great iconoclast
and quintessential monotheist,
he's surrounded by mushrikein,
pagans,
who worship and supplicate to idols.
The people of Israel are questioning God. They
don't understand why this is happening to them.
And while
Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah, was a prophet of
doom,
the prophet speaker of Deutero Isaiah gives the
people hope. There is a hope of restoration.
Now in Deutero Isaiah,
we have these 4 servant songs. Okay?
Who is this servant? Is it the same
servant in all 4 song? Are they different?
If so, who are they? These questions have
really baffled
biblical scholars for decades decades, and you'll get
a variety of answers
from both the, non confessional sort of historical
community
as well as from the confessional believing community.
One answer, and this is the dominant position
coming from the Orthodox Jewish community,
is that the servant in all four songs
is Israel.
That's easy.
And the proof text,
of this is in chapter 41
verse 8, 4 18 of Deutero Isaiah where
it says,
and you, Israel, are my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
the seed of Abraham, my friend.
So according to this view,
the servant in the subsequent
chapters of Deutero Isaiah must also be Israel.
This is the pashat,
the plain or evident meaning of the text
according to
orthodox most orthodox authorities. And it's it's a
good argument, in my opinion. I can certainly
see that. I I don't totally agree with
it, obviously,
but I can see the reasoning.
Now now as I said, Jewish exegetes
maintained
that in, addition to the peshat of a
given text,
there's also the midrash.
And I talked about these during our discussion
on Isaiah 53. So we have the plain
sense and the subtle sense.
You know, we might call these the vahir
and the batin, the ma'ana and the isharah,
the tafs dir and the tawil. There's different
terms that Muslim scholars
and, you know, there's different ways of thinking
about these terms. So so I said last
time that at the level of Midrash,
a few Jewish authorities
mentioned that the eved machovod,
right, the suffering servant
of Isaiah 53, which is the last servant
song, is a description of the future Josephine
Messiah or even the Davidic Messiah.
And I referenced Ruth Rabbah.
But I want to remind the viewers of
something, and this is very, very crucial.
You know, these two aspects of scripture,
the plain and the subtle,
they cannot contradict each other. They have to
work together theologically.
They have to complement each other.
So it seems to me that it would
be theologically
incorrect for a Christian to say,
Isaiah 53 at the level of the peshat
refers to Israel,
But at the level of the Midrash, it
refers to the Christian Jesus,
who is a God, man, savior, who became
a human sacrifice and died for our sins
in a very real
sense. Right? So that doesn't work. With all
due respect to the Christians
and I don't want to disrespect,
our Christian friends
and listeners and colleagues. I think in a
previous podcast, I realized that,
I might have been a bit too flippant
when talking about Christian beliefs. So I want
to be more careful
as to how I say this,
but I also want I also don't want
to water down these important points.
Okay? Christian exegetes
and apologist,
they obfuscate
clear theological
verses
in the Tanakh
by reading them through the lens of their
trinitarianism.
Okay? And this is what they do even
to,
the Shema, believe it or not. The Shema
is a very
clear, unambiguous,
unequivocal
expression of uncompromising
monotheism.
I did just say did I sorry. Did
did you just remind us what Shema is?
Shema is Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 4. So
it's here, oh, Israel.
Shema Shema Israel.
Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ichad. Here, oh Israel. The
Lord our God,
the Lord is 1.
And so and so some Christian apologist, they
they claim that even the Shemaq contains these
sort of subtle allusions to the trinity because
Adonai Eloheinu
Adonai. Right? So that's that's 3 three times.
That must be the 3 persons of the
trinity, father, son, and holy spirit. The truth
is the repetition
in Semitic rhetoric
is very common and has a very specific
purpose,
that being emphasis.
So in this case, it is meant to
drive the point home
that God is radically 1. And that's the
irony. It actually denotes denotes exactly the opposite
of what some Christian exegetes say it does.
So it's it's not it's not hammering
3 nails
into a single piece of wood. It's hammering
the same nail
three times, one nail.
This is for triple emphasis.
And and just also, without going into this
different subject, but surah
112, is well known to affirm the Shema
in the in the very first,
verse of that with the word or in
the Hebrew
I had in Arabic. It's the same word
and so the is to be explicitly
reaffirming
the, which is a Hebrew for here here
is a which Jesus himself, according to even
the Christian gospels in Mark anyway, actually
said this is the greatest commandment.
Yeah. You know, what's interesting is sometimes Christian
apologists will even translate
the Deuteronomy 64 as the Lord our God,
the Lord alone,
because they actually want to avoid the word
1.
You know? It's it's so strange. The word
ehad, however,
does not mean alone. It means one. The
word
in Hebrew means alone or solitarily
as in Psalm 8610.
The Psalter said,
like, you are God alone.
And, you know, you mentioned also when Mark
had Jesus
Mark had Jesus, peace be upon him, quote
the Shema in 12/29,
he used the exact translation of the Septuagint.
And the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the
Tanakh
translates the word ehad as hes, which is
the cardinal number 1
in Greek. Manas in Greek means alone.
But, again, some Christian apologists, they really want
to avoid the word 1.
Again, it's so strange. It's almost like they
have an aversion
to saying God is 1. The Quran says,
Don't say 3.
God is 1.
So we find this repetition
of this kind in Deutero Isaiah as well.
And as I said, Deutero Isaiah is known
for its uncompromising
monotheistic
worldview. I mean, it is a scathing
denunciation
of idolatry
and the vindication
of Abrahamic Tawhid, monotheism.
So it's no coincidence
that the 2 major biblical prophecies of the
Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
the greatest monotheist of all time,
are found in the 2 most emphatically
monotheistic
books in the entire Tanakh, Deuteronomy
and Deutero Isaiah.
Right? Deutero Isaiah says, you know, quoting God,
I am I am the Lord, and there
is not beside me a savior. Isaiah 4
311. Iben Ezra said that the repetition here
denotes that God is immutable,
that unlike the heavenly host and earthly beings,
God does not change. Even in the Quran,
right? The scene at the burning bush,
Oh, Moses, indeed,
I am
I am
Allah.
You know, this this means that God is
the very ground of being itself. God is.
Right? His existence is necessary.
While our existence is contingent and totally dependent
on his. So this is what the repetition
signifies here in the Quran as well as
in Deutero Isaiah,
that God is the real, capital r, the
hak, the truth,
the truth.
So, Deutto Isaiah condemns all representations
of God. Okay? The true God cannot be
represented
by an image because nothing in creation is
even remotely like him. The famous verse in
Teutarom Isaiah is
Isaiah 40 verse 18. To whom then will
you liken God?
What likeness will you compare him unto?
So this whole idea of God entering
the world and becoming
a man who is the sort of literal
image of God so that people bow down,
worship Him
as God, and call Him their savior,
this is explicitly condemned in Now I don't
want to I'm already coming back to, I
I coming back to the a 112. The
lot the 4th verse there, it says and
in English, there is and there is nothing
like unto him. There's nothing comparable to him.
Exactly the same sentiment echoed in the Quran.
That is Isianic
theology to its core. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. The
Christian argument is this though. They'll say that
when Jews worshipped Jesus and of course they
didn't really worship Him, this is their claim
but nonetheless when certain Jews worship Jesus according
to them, these Jews were not committing
idolatry because the person of the sun, who
is essentially
God,
had entered into the carneness, the flesh of
Jesus. He's an incarnation.
So they were worshiping that divine nature, not
the fleshy body. This is the Christian claim.
The problem with this Christian claim
is that it is exactly the Hindu claim.
So Hindus believe that their,
right, their idols,
can attain the real presence
of the singular divine
that they are infused
with the very essence of Brahmin himself
Wow. As does everything else in the world.
So Hindus will say, we're not worshiping statues
of clay and wood and stone.
Everything is Brahmin. In other words, in Hinduism,
because of its pantheism,
any object in the world is worthy of
worship.
In a similar way, Christians say we're not
worshiping the flesh and blood of Jesus.
Due to hypostatic union,
Jesus is, you know, 1 person with 2
natures, 1 human, 1 divine. We're worshiping the
divine nature.
Judaism, however,
teaches
based upon texts like Deutero, Isaiah.
And Jesus, peace be upon him, was a
rabbi, lest we forget.
It's very simple. And Islam confirms this.
Nothing in the world
was ever worthy of worship,
and nothing in the world
will ever be worthy of worship. Period.
We don't need a
PhD for this.
Does this mean that that that God is
remote and impersonal
and has nothing to do with
creation. No. The reality of God's relationship
to the world is mysterious. It's, you know,
above our pay grade, as they say.
God is close to his creation in knowledge,
in mercy, in wrath. And we stop here.
What we do know, without a doubt, is
that nothing in the world
is worthy of worship. Nothing that
exists or did exist in the created world
is worthy of worship. This is Isianic
and Quranic and Jewish,
theology. This is exactly what makes the theology
of the true prophets unique.
So so any human being who claims to
be god
and worthy of worship has lied according to
the Torah.
God is not a man that he should
like.
Numbers 23/19.
Okay. Now now here's something very interesting.
There is some difference of opinion among the
classical Jewish exegetes
as to the very peshat of the text
of Isaiah 42
with respect to the servant's identity. So there's
there's no difference of opinion
as to its essential theology,
but there's difference of opinion as to who
the chapter is referring to in its immediate
historical
context.
Okay? And and modern Jewish apologists
often make it seem as though there's a
total consensus about this. It's Israel. End of
story. But this is not accurate.
Ibn Ezra points this out. He says that
the majority of exegetes, right, so, like, the
Jumhur, as it were,
they say that the servant of Isaiah 42:1-9,
the first servant's song, is pious Israel or
the pious remnant of Israel. That's the majority.
Ibn Ezra himself, however, does not totally take
this position.
He believes the servant to be Yeshayahu
ben Amoz, the the prophet Isaiah himself
who represents sort of, you know, the righteous
remnant
as you as you can say.
Other exegetes he mentions say that the servant
is Cyrus,
and this is very interesting.
It's interesting because this tells us that some
Jewish
authorities argued
that the servant of Isaiah 42
was not an Israelite.
Not an Israelite
based upon what? The plain sense of Isaiah
42.
And I'll show you why shortly,
inshaAllah, when we get to the actual psukhim,
when we get to the actual verses. This
is an important point because
when Muslims propose that the servant of Isaiah
42 is the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him,
anti Muslim calamises,
they often scoff and moan and gnash their
teeth and stomp their feet, and they say,
why would God praise a non Jew? This
is ridiculous.
And then they rain down all kinds of
abuses and insults upon the prophet.
You know, one of my teachers said their
their similitude is like dogs barking at the
moon.
Right?
Their barking does not diminish beauty of the
moon, one iota.
The prophet of Islam is Muhammad,
the most praised of humanity. God exalted him.
Nobody can debase him, and those who insult
him are is just a complete waste of
time. I mean, never never mind the fact
that in Deutero Isaiah,
God refers to Abraham, a non Jew, as
my friend.
Never mind the fact that according to
Isaiah 45
in Deutarom Isaiah,
God calls
Cyrus
his messiah.
Cyrus,
the
the king of Persia,
ko Amar Adonai li Meshiacho,
the Korres.
And the Lord said to his messiah,
to Cyrus, What is going on here with
Deutero Isaiah? I think this is just amazing.
Deutero Isaiah to me is just really amazing.
You know? It's by far my favorite part
of of the Tanakh. You see, the major
themes of Deutto Isaiah,
in addition to its staunch monotheism,
is God's power,
greatness,
uniqueness,
sovereignty, and otherness.
Okay?
One of the great statements of of Deutero
Isaiah 55:8,
indeed, my thoughts are not your thoughts. My
ways are not your ways, says the Lord.
God does whatever he wants. Okay? He's in
absolute control of the world. He will not
contradict himself,
but he may subvert our expectations
as a demonstration of his absolute volition,
omnipotence, and wisdom. You know, as the Quran
says, God chooses whomever he wills.
God will never be questioned for what He
does. We will be questioned
for what we do. God chose
Cyrus.
He called him his messiah
and subdued nations through him.
God spoke to Cyrus according to Isaiah.
He said to him, I am the Lord,
and there is none else
beside me. There is no God. I strengthened
you, meaning Cyrus, even though you never knew
me. Ibn Ezra, he says the meaning of
you never knew me, in
Hebrew, is you never worshiped me. Why did
God do that? Because God does whatever he
wants consistent within his own nature and word.
In Isaiah 4814
in Deutero Isaiah,
God says he loves Cyrus.
I love him. In Isaiah 41:2,
Cyrus is called tzedek, a righteous
man.
That's the word for saint
also. In Ezra 1:2,
Cyrus is quoted as saying,
Every kingdom of the earth has been given
to me by the Lord God of heaven.
Cyrus acknowledged
that the God of the Jews
was God.
He was a believer.
Okay?
And more than this,
as I said, God spoke to him. He's
apparently a gentile prophet or prophetic figure. You
know, the Greeks hated the Persians,
you know, yet Herodotus
had nothing but praise for Cyrus.
It's called Cyrus the Great. That's what he's
called. Yeah.
Cyrus the Great. I mean, he wrote in
in in the histories. He said that Cyrus's
birth was preceded by portentous dreams
and that he emerged as, quote, the greatest
and best liked man,
of his generation.
That's what God did. His ways are mysterious,
and sometimes the wisdom escapes us, but Isaiah
teaches us that we must trust God and
submit to his decisions.
And by the way, many exegetes of the
Qur'an believe that Dhur Qurnayn,
this ruler who's mentioned in Surah 18 of
the Qur'an, is called Dhur Qurnayn.
Many exegetes believe this is Cyrus.
There's a compelling argument to be made,
in this regard, especially since Dur Qurnayn appears
in Surah 18. One of the major overarching
themes
of surah 17, 18, and 19, these 3
surahs,
is servitude, Ubudiyyah,
to God. These are the, you know, servant
surahs of the Quran, if you will.
And in
these surahs, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him, and the Prophet Isa alaihis salam, the
Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, are explicitly
called servants of God.
And this is this is a high honor
in the Quran, as well as in the
book of Isaiah, to be called a servant
of God, Abdullah. It's a dignified title. And
then at the end of Surah 19,
we have this beautiful ayah, There
is nothing in the heavens and the earth
that does not approach the most compassionate
except as a servant.
So so here's my opinion. Let me get
this out of the way just for full
disclosure.
Okay? In my view, the Servant Song of
Isaiah 42
verses 1 to 9
at the level of its peshat,
its immediate historical reference,
is a description of Cyrus. So I agree
with the Jewish authorities
that take this position.
Cyrus is the one intended by the plain
sense of the text,
but at the level of the Midrash,
I believe that it is a description
and prophecy of the prophet Muhammad, sallam,
Cyrus,
the righteous,
beloved of God, powerful,
gentile,
prophetic figure
is a type of the prophet Muhammad, and
the prophet Muhammad is the one whom the
servant song indicates at the second level
of its text.
Cyrus is the type. The prophet Muhammad is
the antitype.
Now
there's one last thing I want to mention
before we finally look at the verses of
Isaiah 42.
When I say that the prophet Muhammad is
described at the second level of the text,
I do not mean that it's
some vague allegory or some, like, fuzzy,
esoteric, or cryptic
description.
What I'm saying
is that the very words of Isaiah 42
in their most apparent meanings describe the prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him. Okay? So this
is a typological
reading. It's not a figurative reading because the
author of Deutero Isaiah
rarely uses figurative language in Isaiah 42. Elsewhere,
he does more abundantly,
but not really in chapter 42.
So this is not like what many Christian
apologists
do with the Tanakh or what the Shia
do with the Quran. Again,
I mean no disrespect. I'm speaking here as
a Sunni Muslim.
I'm not trying to disrespect anyone's
religion. I have Christian friends and colleagues. They
are brilliant and beautiful people. I absolutely respect
them,
and I mean that sincerely.
Regarding the shia, I have a shia family
member. My parents are shia. Okay? Full full
disclosure.
So I'm not going out of my way
to disrespect my parents,
God forbid.
I'm mentioning this because I think it's important
that I draw a distinction between what I
will do with Isaiah 42
and what Christians do with the Tanakh
or what the shia do with the Quran.
And it's interesting that both of these groups
have essentially the same method. It tends to
be very
esoteric
and highly figurative.
And the reason is because both of these
groups believe in doctrines
that are not explicitly
found
in their primary texts. Okay? The Tanakh and
Quran respectively. This is my opinion.
The death and resurrection of a of a
savior, man god, and the trinity
in the case of Christianity,
and the
immaculate
imamate in the case of of Shi'ism.
So they have to resort to esoteric
and and highly figurative,
really, eisegesis.
Right? For example,
Ali Al Khoommi, a famous Shihi exeget, he
says in his tafsir,
that when the Quran says, Washamsi will do
walkamari idah talaha,
when, nahar idahjallaha,
walei idah yafshaha,
by by the sun and its light, by
the moon when it follows it,
and by the day when it unveils it,
and by and by the night as it,
as it conceals it. He he says that
the sun is the prophet, the moon is
Ali,
the day is, I think, the Mehdi who's
in occultation,
and the night are those leaders who usurped
authority from the prophet's household.
So it's very cryptic.
With respect to Christianity,
the author of the gospel of John thought
that the serpent of brass,
that Moses made and attached to a pole
that healed the Israelites who looked at it.
This is in Numbers 21. He thought that
the serpent symbolized
Jesus on the cross.
You know, look up at Jesus attached to
the cross and be healed.
The serpent symbolized Jesus.
The synoptics
say nothing like this.
And then John has Jesus say the famous
John 316,
again, missing from the synoptic. Another example from
Isaiah, of course, is the famous story, I
think it's Isaiah 9, where unto us a
child is born.
And and this is a uh-uh a child
who is born
a contemporary of the prophet himself, prophet Isaiah
the identity of the child or could it
be you know the son of the king,
whatever, but the child is already born
past tense in the Hebrew.
And yet it's decontextualized
in the Christian tradition in the New Testament,
obviously, to refer to someone many many centuries
who to come in the future.
And that's a decontextual reading of something that
in its context
clearly refers to someone else a contemporary of
the prophet himself.
Yeah.
Here a Christian apologist would say or an
ex would say
if they're using the methodology of classical Judaism,
they'll say, well, that's the peshat of the
text. It's referring to Hezekiah,
but the Midrash is pointing to the Messiah,
But, again, it has to work theologically.
Right? So a child is born who shall
be called, who shall be called
mighty God,
everlasting
father.
Right? So Yeah. Christian Jesus. Jesus,
son is not the father as a as
a heresy. Patriopy
heresy. Or that Yeah. That is it's not
a trinitarianism.
That's modalism. So that would be a so
they they you can't really use that. Right?
But but another example is, you know, John
the Baptist referring to Jesus and John as
the lamb of God. Right? Behold the lamb
of God who takes away the sin of
the world. Paul says in 1st Corinthians that
Christ was our Passover lamb,
and there are similar things in Hebrews. You
know, it's interesting in the Synoptics,
John the Baptist is all about repentance. It's
about teshuvah.
That's Judaism. Repent. Repent. The Kingdom of God
is at hand. In the gospel of John,
however, it's behold the lamb of god who
takes away the sin of the world. Not
only does this contradict the Baptist's own message
in the synoptics, but clearly antithetical to Judaism,
which does not teach that the Passover lamb
literally takes your sins. No other human or
animal can take your sin.
True forgiveness is through repentance, and, of course,
the entire city of Nineveh
was forgiven without a single sacrifice. But to
speak back to your point, they can because
I'm I'm gonna look at Isaiah 42 through
that lens of of Peshad and Midrash, and
Christians do that as well with Isaiah 9
and 11 and other places as well. But
I would argue that
their Midrash is violating the plain sense of
the text in almost every single instance.
Okay? So I think I think we're ready
to look at Isaiah,
Insha'Allah.
And by the way, generally, the Muslim will
have a slight advantage over the Christian in
in theological
studies of the Bible because
Arabic and Hebrew are are sister Semitic languages,
and you you'll see what I mean by
that. So Isaiah chapter 42 verse 1
My I'm I'm calling the study Bible here.
Great. Yeah. That's right. The new revised standard
version, which I do recommend, folks, is the
best scholarly translation in English, to get your
hands on if you don't have a copy.
If you can't read the Hebrew, of course,
so doctor Ali Atai can read the Hebrew
and so has a great advantage.
Yeah. Yeah. I and I encourage people to
engage in in linguistic studies, learn original languages.
It's gonna open up
incredible worlds of knowledge.
So 421 begins,
Behold my servant.
My
Eved. The Arabic cognate is Abdi. Same exact
letters.
The Arabic translation says, who are the Abdi?
And then in Hebrew it says, Ith Mahbo,
whom I hold up or support.
So God both exalts or raises the rank
of the servant as well as protects the
servant, strengthening the servant with His help.
So the servant has exaltation and protection.
I would say he has rifa'a and 'isma'
in the Qur'an.
God says to the Prophet Muhammad,
We have exalted
your remembrance.
He says to the prophet,
God will protect you from the people.
Okay? And of course, after the titles of
Rasul and Nabi, messenger and prophet,
the prophet Muhammad is called Abd in the
Quran. He is the Abd of God, the
servant of God. More than any other prophet,
he's called this 8 times. In second place
is Jesus, peace be upon him, 4 times.
The prophet Muhammad is the quintessential
servant of God.
Okay? And then it continues,
My chosen
one in whom my soul, my nefesh, is
pleased.
The word nefesh in biblical Hebrew, the Arabic
cognate is nafs.
The word nefesh has several meanings.
It could mean breath or soul or mind
or simply the self.
The servant is pleasing to God's nefesh, to
his self.
You might say that God loves this servant.
And the Hebrew word for pleased is ratza,
which is cognate to radia in Arabic. Same
letters. Like we would say, RadiAllahu
Anhu.
May God be pleased with him.
So this servant has God's rida or ridwan
upon him, his pleasure. The Quran describes the
Prophet and his companions
by saying,
They constantly seek the grace and pleasure of
God, God's ridwan.
Also, one of the most well known titles
of the prophet Muhammad in the Islamic tradition
is the chosen one
or the elect one. Al Mustafa,
Al Mujtaba,
Al Muhtar,
all of these the chosen one. In fact,
according to Wilhelm Gisenius,
okay, the famous
lexicon,
Gesenius'
Hebrew Caldi
Lexicon to the Old Testament,
the Hebrew word bakhir,
which is used here in Isaiah 42:1, chosen
one, he says it's linguistically
related to the Arabic muhtar,
which is the title of the prophet
in the Islamic tradition. They have the khet
and the resh in common, the and the
ra.
Okay? So
far we have Han Abdi eth Mahbo Bikhadiratsa
Nafshi.
In Arabic Who are the Abdi?
Muhtar illadisarat
bihi nafsi. So it's it's almost sounds like
a Qasidah. It sounds like an ode
eulogizing the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
Verse 1 continues.
It says, nathati
ruhi alive.
I have put my spirit upon him.
Okay?
Ibn Ezra says this means,
ruahnavuah,
ruahnebawi,
a prophetic spirit,
a spirit of prophecy.
This eved is a prophet.
Okay? The word Ruach here has has nothing
to do with
the Christian notion of the Holy Spirit as
being the 3rd
hypothesis
of a triune godhead who shares an usia
with 2 other hypotheses.
These are the strange formulations
of 3rd 4th century
Christian theologians. So a Trinitarian
importation
upon Isaiah 42 is inappropriate. It's anachronistic.
It violates the peshat.
Okay? Can't do it.
No. This ruach adonai,
this this is a spirit of prophecy.
And the Quran says,
This is in chapter 16 verse 102 of
the Quran. Say, the spirit of holiness
from your lord, I e a prophetic spirit,
is revealing
it, I. E. The Quran,
in truth.
Verse 1 concludes,
Mishpat Ligoyin
Yotsi.
Mishpat
is usually translated as justice. Okay? Because it's
related to the word shofet, which means a
judge, like a Hakim. The book of judges
is called Shoftim.
But Jesenius,
he mentions that mishpat is closer in this
context
to divine
law or divine religion.
And he actually gives the Arabic word deen
as being the closest in meaning to the
Hebrew.
Wow. Okay. So
to the Gentiles,
he will cause to come out. The verb
is he feel. It's causative. We can say
he will bring
deen to the umiyin,
the gentiles. Umiyin means gentiles.
He will bring divine religion
to the gentiles.
And we have confirmation in the Quran, 61:9
of the Quran,
He he it is. God is the one
who sent his messenger
with guidance and the religion of truth, the
mishpat.
That's 629 of the Quran.
He it is who sent his messenger who
he it is who sent among the Gentiles
a messenger.
And, of course, you have the famous verse
7157.
Those who follow the messenger, the gentile
prophet who is mentioned in the Torah and
in the gospel.
So that's verse 1.
Okay?
Verse 2, it says
He shall not cry out nor lift up
nor cause His voice to be heard in
the streets,
meaning outdoors.
Ibn Ezra says this was
so that people would flock to him and
not flee from him. Right? In the Quran,
we have this beautiful verse in the Quran
where God says to the Prophet,
So he says, it is part of the
mercy of God
that you have a gentle disposition.
If you would have been harsh
or hardhearted,
then people would have fled from your presence.
That's chapter 3 verse 159
of the Quran.
Of course, our mother Aisha Radi Allahu Anha,
the wife of the prophet, peace be upon
him, she said describing the prophet,
He will not he did not shout in
the marketplace.
Right? He will not raise his voice in
the streets. This is a perfect description
of the prophet Muhammad.
Verse number 3 elaborates,
a bruised
reed you shall not break
nor a smoldering wick will he put out.
The meaning here according to ibn Ezra
is that this this servant, this avid, this
prophet, this nabi
has a gentle disposition.
Okay? Rashi said that the reed and the
wick,
the kaneh and the pishta represent the meek
and the poor. The meek and the poor
will be attracted
to his message.
Now the critic of Islam at this point
is probably, you know, wringing his hands
and thinking, but Mohammed was a warrior.
You know, these people, they don't know anything
about the sunnah of the prophet Mohammed, peace
be upon him. They don't know anything about
sahluul khuluq
lain ul janif, the prophet is described,
easygoing,
gentle in his disposition. This is everywhere in
the hadith.
People don't study. That's number 1. And number
2, if the critique is coming from
a Jewish or Christian apologist,
then they're applying a double standard.
And you've pointed this out in the past.
And Numbers chapter 12,
Moses, who is described as meek and humble,
it says the meekest of all people on
the earth.
Numbers chapter 12. Yet Moses ordered 3,000 people
killed in one day
in Exodus 32. That's a bloodbath.
Just talking about the the the meekness applying
to Jesus's passage. Well, if you look at
the last book of the Christian Bible, the
book of revelation, you have Jesus
no more mister nice guy. He slaughters his
enemies on an industrial
global scale.
So he's not very gentle,
on occasions.
Yeah. That that's also true. And if you
if you look at, our scholars, they've estimated
about 500,
enemy casualties
in the 23 years of the prophet Muhammad's
ministry.
700 men. All men on the battlefield.
7 just 700?
Wow. Yeah. The Bani Choreda incident is highly
disputed. In Numbers 31,
it was the same Moses,
according to Numbers,
who scolded the Israelites for not
slaughtering
all of the Midianite women
in addition to the men. He complained, why
did you leave the women alive? Where does
the Prophet Muhammad order the slaughter of women?
Where does he order the slaughter of children?
There were hypocrites in Medina
pretending to be companions, and the Prophet knew
who they were. And he did not order
even them to be killed.
Yet Moses is a true prophet and Muhammad
is false because he was a warrior. I
mean, the logic is just astounding.
It's out of this world. You know, in
2nd Kings,
we're told that 4 little children made fun
of the prophet Elisha's bald spot.
Right? This is in 2nd Kings. They were
calling him Baldy.
In Hebrew, they were saying to him, Alekhareah,
which means, like, get going Baldy.
These were little children. What did Elisha do?
This is a true prophet,
and Nevi Emet, according to the Bible.
He cursed them in the name of the
Lord. Then 2 bears came out of the
wilderness
and ripped apart
42 children,
ripped them apart.
Imagine the carnage.
This story, if you haven't heard of this
story before, you might think that doctor Alayatay
is making this up.
I assure you he's not. This is actually
in the Jewish bible. Prophet was called Baldy.
I mean, they were seriously, this is exactly
what happened. You can go and read it
for yourself, and retribution
was swift on these kids.
It's all there, I'm afraid. Yeah. I've I've
been accused of making things up too. I've
I've I've quoted stories and
oh, what what what version is that? I
said, this is in every you know, compare
that to Taif.
At Taif,
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam went to
Ta'if, and slaves and children stoned him out
of the city, and he prayed for them.
Yet Elisha is a true prophet, but the
prophet Muhammad, who defended his city from invading
hordes of pagans,
who had seized the Muslims possessions,
who defended his city from Bedouin mercenaries,
who were * bent on plunder and pillage,
who defended his city from treasonous Jews from
within the city who plotted against him. He
was a violent warrior, and therefore, he's not
a prophet. This is just astounding.
But anyway, verse 3 ends
by saying,
Extraordinary statement. He will bring forth justice for
truth, which is a kind of a weird
translation.
For the sake of truth, he shall bring
Din,
the the divine religion,
or it can be translated
he shall bring the true religion.
He shall bring the true religion, the deen
alhaqq.
In Christian exegetes and apologists, they they say
this is a Christian Jesus bringing Trinitarian Christianity.
That's their opinion. I obviously disagree, and I've
already explained why. There is no compelling reason
to believe that Jesus is God. A prophet,
yes.
But God, no.
Verse number 4,
He says
He shall not grow dim
or be bruised
until he has established
the true religion
on the earth.
And in Ibn Ezra, he says the prophet
of Isaiah 42,
will not fail in his mission. He will
not be overcome by any violence of man.
Now according to Christian theology, Jesus' mission was
to die for our sins by getting himself
killed,
at the hands of of men, God becoming
a human sacrifice.
So we have to ask with respect,
is this mishpat
paredtz?
Is this deen al Haqfil'ard?
Is this the true religion of god on
earth? I would respectfully disagree.
The the establishment of the true religion on
earth is the prophet Muhammad
refining
and restoring the true law of Moses
and reestablishing
true Abrahamic
Tawhid
monotheism,
as well as vindicating
Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, by telling
the world the truth about him. That Jesus
was not a false prophet nor was he
a divine being. Both of these positions are
hulu, they're they're extremism.
The Quran says in the context of its
Christology,
Oh Jews and Christians,
Don't be extremist
in your religions.
This is.
This is.
And you see how Jesus, peace be upon
him, is a key component of this. So
I am not saying that Jesus has nothing
to do with Isaiah 42.
No. He has He plays a major role.
The prophet of Isaiah 42, who is the
prophet Muhammad,
will tell the world the truth about Jesus.
Jesus is vindicated
by this prophet.
Okay? This is what establishes
the mishpat,
upon the, the true religion upon the earth.
Now verse 4 concludes,
so and the islands
or coastlands
shall await his teaching.
Okay. So, the word for his teaching here
is Torah to, which literally means his
Torah.
Now Torah just means teaching or instruction.
Okay?
When the Tanakh
uses the word Torah,
it is not necessarily
referring to the exact
Torah that was given to Moses on Sinai.
How do we know that? Well, in Genesis
26:5,
we're told that Abraham kept the Torah of
god.
Abraham.
So this was 500 years prior to Sinai.
What that means is Abraham kept God's teachings.
Right? The law of God for that time.
And now, Deutero Isaiah is saying that the
teachings of this future
prophet described in Isaiah 42
will reach the islands.
In other words, it'll be far reaching,
Okay? But also in a real sense, I
mean, over 60% of Malaysia is Muslim,
and there are over 200,000,000 Muslims in Indonesia.
That's more than Pakistan, India, Egypt, Saudi, Turkey,
Morocco.
However, a Christian apologist, okay, may interject here
and say this. They'll say, no. No. No.
The Iyim
in the Tanakh that's mentioned here
is a reference to the coastlands
of the Mediterranean Sea.
Okay? That's what he'll say. Okay. Fine.
I'll accept that. There there are 21 countries
that have coastlines
on the Mediterranean Sea,
and they are Albania, Algeria,
Bosnia,
Croatia,
Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Palestine,
Italy,
Lebanon, Libya, Malta,
Monaco, Montenegro,
Morocco, Slovenia,
Spain, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. More than half
of those countries
are Muslim majority.
And there are large minority populations of Muslims
and the ones that are not majority. Some
of them used to be Muslim countries that
are no longer Muslim. So the fact is
the dominant religious
teachings
practiced by these coastlands,
these iyim
are the teachings of the prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him, this fulfillment of prophecy any
way you slice it as it were.
Verse number 5, I'll say it in English,
thus thus,
said god the lord
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what it
brings forth, who gave neshama,
breath to the am, the people upon it,
and gave ruach,
life to those who walk upon it. Verse
6,
I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness.
Okay? So it's almost like an oath formula
here.
Just some interesting tidbits about verse 6, the
beginning of the verse. The verb karateika,
I have called you, is actually related to
the word Iqra,
the first word of revelation
given to the prophet Muhammad in the Quran,
which is also related to this word.
Also, the word siddiq is related,
righteousness
is related to the Prophet's pre Islamic title
among his tribes, Asadi Qul Amin.
Now verse 6 continues,
the Aghzayk
Beadeka
the Itzarka, I will hold you by the
hand and watch over you.
So I will hold you by the hand
meaning I will guide you, I will protect
you.
Okay? The Hebrew
verb natsar is related to the Arabic
to give victory.
Of course, God says to the prophet in
the Quran,
that God may aid you with a mighty
victory. So what does this mean in Isaiah?
It means that this prophet will be a
colossal
success,
and, of course, he was.
By the 6th century of the common era,
the vast majority of the followers of Jesus
Christ, peace be upon him, were full blown
Trinitarians
worshiping
3 persons as god, the second of which
became a human being according to them.
Europe was sunk in the dark ages.
The the two most powerful
Muhammad died in 632 CE, and within 80
years of his death,
his monotheistic
teaching,
the
the the tawhid of the Quran and Sunnah
stretched from Spain to China.
And, of course,
today, there are Muslims living in every country
in the world
except for the Vatican.
The prophet Mohammed did what Israel could not.
This is very important point. I'm gonna come
back to this. The prophet Mohammed, peace be
upon him, he
did what Israel
could not.
Verse 6 concludes,
it says, this very important verse,
very important,
yet it has been notoriously difficult
to understand.
Now Christians tend to render the first part
along the lines of,
I will give you as a covenant for
the people.
Right? I will give you as a covenant,
that God gave Jesus Christ as the new
covenant, that Christ is the covenant. You know,
God gave him in the sense that he
sacrificed him,
for our sins. God sacrificed himself, essentially.
You know, in in Neo Babylonian
religion, you have these stories of of gods
trying to kill their children and their parents,
Yet Christian exegetes maintain that the author of
Deutero Isaiah
sitting in Neo Babylon
and surrounded by all of this idolatry
and all of these, you know, khorefah. These
are myths of gods
wanting to kill their children. They believe that
the author of Isaiah 42 was predicting exactly
that,
that God would sacrifice his own son one
day.
Again, I respectfully disagree.
The best translation
of this,
that I've seen of this part of the
verse 6,
is in the in what's known as the
complete Jewish bible.
And this is what it says. And I
made you for a people's covenant.
So there's a Lamed here. I made you
for a people's covenant,
for a light to nations.
In other words, and and Rashi mentions this,
the meaning is
God is saying to this prophet, this servant,
you were created
for this purpose.
I created you in order for me to
establish
a people's covenant
and to enlighten the nations.
Now Christian apologists will point out that when
the word am, people, is mentioned in juxtaposition
to Gentiles,
goyim,
like what like here, the former refers to
Israel.
So so their claim is that when am
was used in the previous verse, it referred
to the whole of humanity.
You know, when it said that God gave
breath
to the people on the
earth. But here in verse 6, it's restricted
to Israel.
I have no problem with that. Okay? God
God raised the prophet Muhammad in order to
fulfill his promise to the Israelites
of sending the prophet of Isaiah 42.
In fact,
the Quran seems to refer to this
when God says, oh, children of Israel, remember
my blessing which I've bestowed upon you
and fulfill my covenant.
That's chapter 2 verse 40.
And Imam al Qurtubi, he said that this
means that Israel must now believe
in the prophet Muhammad who is predicted
in their scriptures.
God fulfilled his promise.
Now Israel must believe
in him, in prophet, and obey him.
Okay? And not only is the prophet Muhammad's
message for the Israelites,
as the verse in Isaiah indicates, it is
a light to all other nations.
This iconic verse in the Quran,
21107
which is in a surah called Al Anbiya
Nabiem the Prophets.
We did not send you, O Muhammad,
except as a mercy to all the worlds.
There's many ayaat, Khadjaaakum
min Allahhi Nurun
wati tabun Mubin.
We have sent from God a light and
a clarifying book. What is the clarifying book?
The Quran. What is this light? The prophet,
he's called light just as he's called here
in Isaiah.
And not only is the prophet's message as
we said for the Israelites, it's for the
whole world. So remember
remember something. The the Peshad of Isaiah 42,
according to an opinion of Jewish commentators mentioned
by Ibn Ezra, is a description of Cyrus,
the king of Persia. Now the reason why
these Jewish commentators
identified
Cyrus
as the servant of Isaiah 42
in its immediate context is because they understood
the phrase
or goyim,
a light of gentiles,
a light of nations
to mean a light from the gentiles,
that this servant is a gentile.
This becomes crystal clear when we look at
the 2nd servant song. So Isaiah 49
verses 5 and 6. And I know I'm
gonna I'm jumping around a little bit. I
apologize. But if we can quickly look at
Isaiah
49,
5, and 6, and we'll come back to
42.
Isaiah 495,
who is the speaker? It says, and now
the lord who formed me from the womb
as a servant to him
said to bring Jacob back to him.
He's saying the Lord told him to bring
Jacob, that's Israel,
back to God.
The servant is not Jacob.
The servant was told by God to bring
Jacob
back to God.
And it continues. And Israel shall be gathered
to him, and I will be honored in
the eyes of the Lord, and my and
my God is my strength. Now verse
6. And he said, is it too little
that you should be my servant?
In other words, do people think that it's
inappropriate
for you to be my servant
to establish the tribes of Jacob and to
bring back the besieged of Israel?
Ibn Ezra says to bring Israel back to
their land
by your word. So who brought Israel back
to their land by his word, by his
decree? The Lord is clearly talking to Cyrus
here in in in Isaiah 49.
But now listen. But I will make you
a light of nations,
Or goyim. This is the same phrase
used in Isaiah 426.
So that my salvation shall be unto the
end of the earth. So what I'm saying
here is that in Isaiah 49,
5, and 6,
Cyrus is explicitly called or goyim, a light
of Gentiles,
because he was a Gentile.
The same
construct phrase is used in 4 two six,
the first servant song about the prophet Muhammad
at the level of the Midrash. So Cyrus,
a gentile, is called a light of nations,
or goyim.
The nevi and eved
of Isaiah 42 at the level of Midrash
will mirror Cyrus in this regard.
He will be a gentile prophet, a Nebi
Umi,
who will bring disobedient
Israel back from spiritual exile,
and God, through him, will establish
a new covenant
with Israel.
And I encourage people to read Quran 157158.
Alright? Those 2 verses,
those iconic verses that establish that the prophet,
peace be upon him, is mentioned in the
Torah and the gospel,
the themes of those 2 ayaat are very
Isyanic.
Okay?
Now going back to Isaiah
42.
Okay?
42:7,
to open the eyes of the blind,
and I'll and I'll pipe bypass some of
the Hebrew here because
it's getting a little too late here. I
don't want to go forever.
To open the eyes of the blind, to
free the captives from prison,
and releasing those who sit in dark dungeons.
So we see how this applies
to Cyrus in the immediate reference. I mean,
I mean, I mean, Ezra points that out.
But at the level of Midrash,
the prophet Mohammed's message gave sight to the
spiritually blind.
It freed people from the prisons of their
passions.
Christians will say, no. No. No. No. This
refers to Jesus giving sight to the physically
blind.
However,
when we keep reading Isaiah 42,
we will see that it actually means the
spiritually blind,
the blindness of the heart as ibn Ezra
says. That becomes clearer later on. We'll get
to that verse.
Verse 8, he says, I am the lord,
Ani Adonai Hu Shmi. I am Yod Vav,
the tetragrammaton.
That is my name. I will not give
my glory to another nor share my praise
with carved idols.
Now a critic will say here,
but the name of God in the Quran
is Allah. It's not Yahweh.
So here's my response to this. The the
word
Yahweh is a human invention.
In the Tanakh, the name of God is
represented by 4 letters,
It's called the tetragrammatin,
the Shem
Forash.
Nobody knows
how to pronounce these letters
or what they really mean.
The the words Yahweh or Jehovah
are fabrications of the tetragrammatin
that are not scriptural.
However, sometimes in the Tanakh,
the tetragrammatin
is abbreviated
as who or ho in Hebrew with the
two middle letters, the hey and the wow,
the hey and the valve.
These are the prominent letters of the tetragrammatin.
For example, and I mentioned this last time
as well, the name Joshua,
Yehoshua,
the Lord is Salvation.
Involved. Yehoshua.
The name Elijah.
Eliyahu.
My God is the Lord.
Hu. Hey, Invav.
The Quran says, Allahu
Same letters.
Right? Say, huwa is God, the 1 and
only. So this is confirmed in the Quran.
You know, it's it's a bit strange to
me
that Christians claim that Emmanuel
mentioned in in Isaiah 714
is a prophecy of Jesus.
This is what Matthew says, but Jesus's name
was not Emmanuel.
It was Jesus. The names Emmanuel and Jesus
have nothing in common.
The response would be, well,
the meaning of Immanuel
applies to Jesus.
Okay.
So what is the meaning of the tetragrammaton?
Nobody knows definitively,
but the dominant opinion is that it probably
has something something to do with eternality
that God is.
Okay. Fine. That meaning is also in the
Quran.
Okay? That's
the first sentence of Ayatul Kursi, the verse
of the throne, chapter 2 verse 255.
God, there is no God but who?
He? The living. Al Hay. The living, meaning
the eternal, the self subsisting.
So in that first line, you have the
meaning of Al Ismul
Adam HaShem
Hamaforash.
So the tetragrammatin
is confirmed in the Quran
both in its articulation
as well as in its meaning.
Okay?
And, obviously, that's we can talk about that
later. That's a different topic, but this is
a very common trope. Right?
Allah is not the tetragrammaton,
the name of God is Yahweh.
The the word Yahweh does not appear anywhere
in the Bible. You've added these vowels.
As it be interesting that the Christians I
I I agree. I hear this all the
time, but, of course, the word Yahweh is
never mentioned in the New Testament either. As
long as if the gospels have this word
around. Paul never mentions the word Yahweh or
anyone else. So Yeah. He's pretty absent from
the New Testament.
Yeah. So we'll use the same, you know,
again, the Christians will say, Emmanuel is not
the name of Jesus. Oh, that's what his
name means. Okay. Then fine. What does Yahweh
mean? It probably means Yehveh, which means to
be. It's the present tense verb of of
of the of the verb, Chava, which means
to be, meaning God is,
eternal. And that meaning is also found,
in the Quran.
But, anyway, now verse 9 of Isaiah 42.
Verse 9 is very important because this represents
a sort of pivot in the chapter.
It says, Behold,
the former things have come to pass. In
other words,
what I said in the past came true
and now I will prophecy again
some new things
and I will tell them before they happen.
So now the author of Deutero Isaiah will
be speaking explicitly
about future events.
Okay. So I said that usually a prophet
speaks to his own generation
unless he explicitly states that he's going to
be speaking to future generations.
So from verse 10 until the end of
the chapter, I believe the prophet Muhammad
is now being described
at the primary
level of the text,
no longer at the level of Midrash. He
is no longer the mirror image of Cyrus.
Now he is the image itself.
And how does it begin?
Sing unto the Lord a new song.
A shir in Hebrew
is a lyrical hymn that praises God. This
is the only appearance of the phrase new
song in Isaiah. It does occur in the
Psalms,
but the Psalms were written by totally different
authors in a different country,
separated by 100 of years. So just because
another author, you know, used the same two
word phrase
in another book of the Tanakh does not
mean that it's identical in meaning. The Bible,
as we said, is a compendium. It's an
anthology, as you said. It's a library. It
has multiple authors, and multiple authors
often use the same words to mean different
things. So this is going to be a
new scripture that praises God, a new song
unto the Lord and his praise,
tahillah,
from the ends of the earth. You who
sail to the sea and you, the creatures
in it, you islands and coastlands and their
inhabitants, we already established these
these coastlands.
Verse 11,
very important verse.
Let the desert and cities
lift up their voice.
The cities or sorry. The villages that Kadar
inhabits.
The inhabitants
of let the inhabitants of Selah
sing for joy. Let them shout from the
tops of the mountains.
Who is Kedar?
So according to Genesis,
he is the second son of Ishmael,
peace be upon him.
Imam at Tabari, he says in his tariq
that the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
is a direct descendant of Kadar.
Others as well, ibn Uqayim Al Khortibi, others
say this as well. Okay? This is just
something mass transmitted, as we would say, That
the prophet is a descendant of Ishmael. Nobody
but a crazy revisionist,
would dispute this.
The the Keterites are Arabs.
Okay? Where did they live during the Prophet's
time? In the Hejaz,
in the Arabian Peninsula.
The Quraysh, the tribe of the Prophet, were
Kedarites.
Jesenius says, quote, the rabbins, meaning the rabbis,
call all the Arabians
universally by this name,
whence Lishan Qadr is used of the Arabic
language. He's saying here that in Hebrew, the
way to say Arabic is Lishan Qaidar. Lisanu
Qaidar. That's how you say Arabic in Hebrew.
You say the tongue of kedar.
Okay? Where is Salah?
According sometimes translated the the inhabitants of the
rock.
Right? According to commentaries,
biblical commentaries,
Selah is Petra,
which was a chief city of the Edomites
and then the Nabateans.
The Nabateans were named after
Navaoth,
the firstborn
son of Ishmael.
So the Nabateans
and the Kedarites,
I. E. The Arabs,
will lift up their voices
and sing for joy when this 'Abdulla,
when this Nabi'il Ummi will arrive.
The 2 major Arab capitals of the ancient
world were Petra and Mecca.
The former was the capital of the Nabataeans,
and the latter was the capital of the
Kedarites.
And incidentally, there is a mountain in Medina
called Salah as well. There's also that, which
is quite interesting, but that's just a little
more
that's like the cherry on top. So so
we have we have a gentile prophet
who will bring true religion,
the divine religion, to the coastlands,
to the Nabataeans,
to the Kedarites,
whose character perfectly matches the prophet Muhammad,
yet Christian apologists act like, So what?
And then they say that that when God
told the snake in Genesis
that the seed of the woman will crush
its head, they say, isn't it obvious this
is Jesus?
The seed of the woman will will step
on the on a snake's head.
I don't see the obviousness of that at
all. They further say that
by crushing the head of the snake, Jesus
destroyed Satan
and thus sin,
but he clearly did not
from their own perspective.
Why? Because Christian polemicists and apologists say that
600 years later,
Satan deceived Mohammed
into thinking he was a prophet of God.
And by doing so, he was able to
convince 1,000,000,000 that Jesus was not God,
not crucified,
there's no trinity,
etcetera. It seems like the snake is very
much alive
from their perspective.
Now in Isaiah 11:1,
when Isaiah predicts the branch, the netzer shall
grow out of the roots of Jesse,
Matthew
Matthew, the author of the gospel of Matthew,
he distorts this, okay,
and he quotes it as he shall be
called the Nazarene.
Okay? If Matthew was even referring to Isaiah
111,
okay, Matthew said this was spoken by the
prophets. Which prophets where? He doesn't tell us.
I'll afford him some goodwill and assume
that he was referring to Isaiah 11:1
and did not just invent this verse
out of whole cloth,
which is what Jewish apologists say, by the
way, yet Kedar,
sellah,
coastlands,
gentile prophet, divine religion to the gentiles,
a new song, a new law,
coincidence.
Head of the snake,
obvious.
Passover lamb,
obvious.
Brass serpent,
obvious.
Again, I do not intend
to be disrespectful,
but this is clear as day.
This is clear
as day.
The Quran says in chapter 6 verse 20,
those to whom we gave the scripture beforehand,
they know the prophet like they know one
of their own sons.
Those who ruin their own souls
refuse
to believe.
In other words,
the description of prophet in the Bible is
so obvious
that the people of the book
recognize recognition.
The word is marifa, you arifu.
They recognize him as being almost like one
of their own children.
Like, when you see a group of 10
children,
immediately you recognize your child. This is how
clear
these descriptions are of the prophet.
Verse number 12. Let them give glory to
the Lord and declare His praise in the
coastlands.
Here's a tidbit about this verse.
The word for praise here is tahillah,
which is related to the word tahleel
in Arabic.
What is tahleel?
Tahleel
is to say La Illaha Illallah.
When you say La Illaha Illallah, there's no
god but Allah, there's nothing worthy of worship
except Allah, there's no illah except Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. This is called tahleel in Arabic.
The most common
praising of God in the coastlands
today is La ilaha illallah.
Verse 12 is fulfilled. Verse 13. The Lord
shall go forth like a mighty man, gibbor,
like a man of war, Ish milhamut.
He steers up zeal with a shout. He
will raise
the battle cry and prevail over His enemies.
This does not mean that the Lord will
become
a mighty man or a man of war.
Why? Because God is not a man. Lo
ish El. That is a clear cut text.
We can't violate the clear cut text. You
know, Matthew quoted the first three verses
of Isaiah 42
in chapter 12, verses 18 to 20 of
Matthew.
Matthew quoted Isaiah 42
in chapter 12.
Okay? After Jesus healed a group of people,
Matthew wrote that it might be fulfilled what
was spoken by Isaiah the prophet
saying, behold my servant whom I uphold, etcetera,
until the end of verse 3. But then
Matthew added something extra.
Okay? He falsified the text by adding a
sentence at the end of verse 3,
giving the impression to his audience that this
was also spoken
by Isaiah. It was not. Matthew added, and
in his name
shall the Gentiles trust.
Isaiah did not say this. This is a
Matthean fabrication. I mean, it's.
It's a fabrication of the text.
Secondly,
every Christian will agree that Jesus was not
a man of war.
He was he was not an ish mal
hamot, at least not in his first coming
as you pointed out. The second coming That's
a different story. That's a different story. Exactly.
But the Johannan Jesus told Pilate, if my
kingdom were of this world,
my disciples would have fought, but my disciple
my kingdom is not from here. You know,
Jordan Peterson, he famously said, Mohammed was a
warrior, and I don't know what to do
with that. Well, he needs to study.
That's what he can do with that.
So what does this mean then?
The Lord shall go forth like a mighty
man.
Ibn Ezra says it means that God's
divine
decrees
shall go forth
and those who oppose God's decrees
revealed through this servant will be vanquished.
So it's a it's a figure of speech
similar to Deuteronomy
33:2
when it says Adonai Nisenei Ba, the Lord
came from Sinai.
Wait. The Lord came from Sinai? No. Moses
came from Sinai
with the Lord's decrees,
okay?
Verse 14.
For a long time, I have kept silent.
I have restrained myself, but now like a
woman in labor, I will shout and pant.
For 600 years, God did not reveal a
kitab, a sefa,
a scripture, a revelation.
Right? God kept, you know,
silent during those 6 centuries while while the
darkness of ignorance and idolatry swept over,
the world.
The temple destroyed,
you know, the Jews scattered among the nations.
The gospel of Jesus corrupted. Jesus himself deified
and worshiped as God,
the light of true monotheism
flickering
in the wind, and then what happened? And
then the prophet of the Abrahamic
restoration, the prophet Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
This verse,
619 of the Quran,
right, is the essence of Isaiah
chapter
42, 61:9. It is he who has sent
his messenger
with guidance and the religion of truth in
order for it to be uppermost over all
religion, even though the idolaters might detest it.
And we're gonna get to,
idolatry in Isaiah 42 in a minute here.
So we're coming down to the end, verse
15. I will destroy mountains and hills and
all their grass I will dry out.
And I will make rivers into islands and
I will dry up the pools. So Rashi
says here, I will destroy mountains and hills.
He says it means, I will slay kings
and rulers.
In any case, God's servant of Isaiah 42
will oppose the evil and arrogant forces in
the world
and bring a theological, spiritual, moral, political upheaval
and reformation.
Okay? The world's going to change with him.
Verse 16. And I will lead the blind
on a road they did not know,
in paths they did not know. I will
lead them. I will make darkness into light
before them and crooked paths into straight ones.
These things I will do and I will
not forsake them.
I referred to this verse earlier when I
mentioned the spiritually blind.
Who are these spiritually blind?
First of all, to be spiritually blind in
sacred text
means not to understand something.
Okay. The spiritual heart is the seat of
emotion and intelligence.
It is the mind.
They are blind in their mind's eye.
So who are they? These are the disobedient
Israelites
whom God will not forsake.
God will raise up for them and all
of humanity
this great efid,
this great prophet,
this great light of the Gentiles,
and bring them to the straight path, it
says. Sirat Mustaqim.
And in doing so, take them out of
darkness into light.
You
know, the Quran is confirming these these ideas.
They they don't know this path. It's not
the path of Moses.
It's the path of Muhammad, although the path
of Muhammad confirms
the path of Moses in many respects.
Verse 17,
check this one out, they shall not, sorry,
they shall turn back greatly ashamed
those who trust in graven images
who say to molten idols,
you are our gods.
You see, Jesus, peace be upon him, did
not come to a people who were worshiping
idols.
He came to Jews.
This prophet of Isaiah 42
will be a bulwark against idolatry.
This prophet is idolatry's worst nightmare.
This prophet will say Hasboon Allah, God is
sufficient for us. This prophet will say, Qudu
Allahu ahad,
Say He is God, the 1 and only.
This Prophet will say, Falataduuma
Allahi ahadah. Don't call on anyone with God.
This prophet will say,
There's nothing like God whatsoever. This prophet will
repudiate the trinity. He will repudiate the divinity
of Christ. He will say la ilaha illallah.
There's no god save god save Allah.
This prophet,
and I think this is key,
this prophet will do what Israel
could not do,
what Israel failed to do.
He will bring the light of Tawhid,
the light of El Ihad
to the nations of the earth.
And, remember, I said one of the main
themes of Deutero Isaiah
was God's sovereignty
and otherness. He does whatever he wants. He's
in absolute control over the world.
He will not contradict himself,
but he may subvert our expectations.
No one can dictate to God. God is
sovereign. During the Babylonian
period, the Jews were expecting
a Jewish king from David's line
to save them, just as Hezekiah had saved
them during the Assyrian period. Hezekiah was a
Davidic messiah, meaning a Jewish king from David's
line.
But God chose
Cyrus,
a gentile
king,
and called him his messiah. The only mention
of David in 2nd Isaiah is in Isaiah
55.
Okay? It says that if the Israelites
listen to God, that is obey God, then
the, quote, sure mercies of David will return
the
De
Deutto
Isaiah understands
Zedekiah being deposed
and 2nd Samuel 7 effectively being canceled.
So the promise in 2nd Samuel 7 that
there will always be a king sitting on
David's throne
must have been contingent
upon Israel's obedience.
Now, let's face reality.
No Davidic king ever came.
And He will never come because David's line
is lost. There is no way for anyone
today to substantiate
his claim
as being a descendant of David.
His line is lost. What does this mean?
It means that ultimately Israel did not listen
to God.
So just as the gentile
Cyrus
replaced the Jewish King Messiahs,
the gentile prophet Muhammad
and Nabi'ul Ummi
replaced the Jewish prophets.
Israel can still come into God's good graces
by believing in and following the Prophet Muhammad.
Remember the verse said, I will not forsake
them. They can still believe in the prophet.
What they cannot do is to continue to
dictate
to God.
No Davidic king is coming. That promise was
a two way street, and Israel
failed to live up to their end of
it.
The way to salvation
now is through the gentile prophet. He is.
This is not to say that I deny
the second coming of Jesus. I believe in
the second coming of Jesus, but I don't
believe Jesus was a king messiah. And he's
certainly not a descendant of David, but that's
a different story.
Now verse 18,
you deaf ones, listen,
it says. Listen, that means obey.
And you blind ones, look,
look and see.
Rashi says this is Israel. Rashi says this,
that God is speaking to Israel here. Oh,
Israel, obey and understand what will happen.
Verse 19, and this verse also has been
notoriously difficult to interpret.
Who is blind but my servant or deaf
as my messenger that I send?
Who is blind as he that is perfect
and blind is the Lord's servant? Some Jewish
commentators say that servant here refers to Isaiah
the prophet that he is being called blind
and deaf by other Jews,
in pious Jews
who rejected his message and that God sort
of defends him here by saying that
Isaiah is rather perfect and the Lord's servant.
How can he be blind
and deaf? So God is basically quoting the
rejecters. And he's saying, you know, these are
questions. Like, who is blind but my servant
or deaf as my messenger that I send?
Who is blind as he that is perfect
and blind as the Lord's serve? In other
words, how dare you call my perfect
servant and messenger
blind and deaf? And in the next verse,
God says, verse 20,
you Jewish rejecters of this prophet, you are
the blind and deaf ones.
Okay? And I agree with this in part.
I agree that God is quoting the impious
Jews who reject his message. But, again, the
prophet writer of Deutero Isaiah
in this passage is talking about the future.
He says that explicitly. This is not Isaiah
who is being called blind and deaf. It
is this future gentile prophet,
this future Abdu of Allah who is being
called blind and deaf by impious Jews
who will reject His message. It is as
if God is saying, Are you really calling
my servant blind? Are you really calling my
messenger deaf? Are you really calling the one
who is my perfect
servant blind?
Now here's something else about this verse.
The servant here is called Evet. That's Ab.
He's called Malaak, which is Rasool Messenger.
He's also called perfect.
The New American Standard Bible translates this as
the one who is at peace
with me.
Now the actual Hebrew word here
is.
Okay?
Who is blind as he that is perfect?
The word,
okay, is a pu'al passive participle. Now I
don't wanna get too much into this grammar
stuff here, but this is important point to
make here.
Wilhelm Jacenius
defines this word in his famous Hebrew Caldi
lexicon to the Old Testament.
He says, to live friendly, mushallam,
the friend of God. And then he says
it's Israel or Christ. He cites Isaiah 42/19.
Justinius was a Christian, and Christians like Matthew
believe Isaiah 42 is referring to Jesus.
But then he tells us to compare this
to he feel number 2. In other words,
this word as a po'al participle
is similar in meaning to its he feel
or causative form, which he defines as to
submit oneself by a treaty of peace.
But then then he says,
the Hebrew hifiel form
is equivalent to form 4 of Salima in
Arabic.
Okay? And this he defines as, quote, to
submit oneself to the dominion of another
of anyone,
especially to commit one's affairs to God,
followed by illah,
whence Islam,
obedience or submission to God and to Muhammad,
hence true religion,
meaning Mohammedism.
In other words, Wilhelm Jacenius,
the German
scholar
of the 19th century, is telling his readers
that essentially,
this word in Isaiah 42/19,
has the same or nearly the same meaning
as the form 4 participle in Arabic, which
is the word Muslim,
literally
Muslim.
This servant is called a Muslim. This is
the only occurrence of the word in
the entire Tanakh.
I'm almost positive. I couldn't find it anywhere
else. Obviously, there's words that are derived from
shalam.
Right? But
as as this participle form. And it's describing
the prophet of Isaiah 42,
who will convert the people of the coastlands,
the Kedarites, the Nabataeans
will bring divine religion and a new law
to the Gentiles. Another coincidence,
I guess.
Verse 21. We're coming down to the end.
I'm gonna go through these quickly. Because of
his righteousness, his,
the Lord was pleased to magnify his instruction
and make it glorious. I don't really like
that. So the verb for make it glorious,
okay, in its in its cal form, its
basic form, means to be wide or expansive.
And the verb here in the Hebrew is
he feel, it's causative,
which literally means to make expansive.
So this servant will refine and perfect the
law of God
so that all races,
all people, until the day of judgment will
follow it.
Verse 22,
but this is a people plundered and looted.
They are all trapped in holes hidden in
prisons.
They've become plunder with none to rescue,
spoil with none to say restore.
So the Jews, after the destruction of the
second temple
and after the Bar Kokhba rebellion,
they found
themselves plundered,
scattered, and persecuted.
The Christians became trinitarians, and the Jews were
quite often demonized
by many of the early church fathers and
theologians for their theology.
Islam restored Abrahamic monotheism
and vindicated the major aspects
of Jewish theology, and the Jews flourished under
Muslim rule. The rabbis used to say,
We'd rather live under Arabs, Muslims, than under
Christian rule,
than under Christendom.
No.
Verse 23. Who among you will hear this?
Let him listen and obey in the future.
The last word here
in the future is,
which means later time. The future, According to
Justinius, this prophet will raise up your condition
if you obey him, oh Jews, oh Bani
Israel.
Verse 24, Who gave Jacob to the robber
and Israel to the plunderers?
Was it not the Lord?
Have we not sinned against him?
They were not walking they were not willing
to walk in his ways, and they would
not listen to his instruction.
This is a warning. This is called the
in Arabic. Do not let history repeat itself.
The Lord punish the Israelites for disobedience in
the past.
Do not disobey this coming prophet.
And finally, the final verse,
verse 25. Therefore, he poured out his fury
on them and destroyed them in battle. They
were enveloped in flames, but they still refused
to understand. They were consumed by fire, but
they did not learn their lesson. I think
this is a reference to the future destruction
of the second temple by the Romans. That
Israel was punished by God for, by and
large,
rejecting Jesus, the prophet messiah.
So don't reject the next prophet,
the prophet of Isaiah 42,
the prophet Muhammad alayhi salam. It can because
if you accept his prophecy, then you will
automatically
accept the truth about Jesus Christ, peace be
upon him.
So that's the entire
chapter.
Good to know. Congratulations on getting through. Oh,
fantastic.
Thank you.
And and just a a quick book recommendation.
Oh, yes, please. Yeah. There's a there's a
series of books called it's a series called
the forms of of the old testament literature,
F OTL.
Okay? And there's there's dozens of these, but
the the 2 that I recommend are on
Isaiah.
There's 2 on Isaiah, Isaiah 1 through 39,
which has an introduction to the history and
theology.
And then Isaiah 40 to 66, they're both
by Sweeney,
Marvin Sweeney, who's a professor of Hebrew Bible
at Claremont School of Theology.
And Sweeney also did a good introduction
to the entire Tanakh.
Excellent. It's called Tanakh,
a theological and critical introduction to the Jewish
Bible. And then John Barton's book on Isaiah
is good as well.
But
I I I I I had privilege of
interviewing John Barton on this channel. Give us
the same John Barton. Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that that's,
sorry. That's just amazing. There's so much information
there. I'm gonna I'm gonna have to cut
up this video into
smaller, payments, because there's, there's just so much.
Have you concluded or you've pausing? Yeah. That's
that's basically
that's basically my my spiel to use a
Yiddish word. Hey. Is that a Yiddish word?
I didn't realize that Yiddish word. I think
it is.
Well, that's absolutely absolutely,
incredible.
Thank you so much. I don't know where
to start. There's so much,
so many gems,
hackneyed word, in that whole,
discussion there. Absolutely amazing.
And just so so just thank you very,
very much, doctor Ali and Syed, for your
incredible efforts to bring to light,
this extraordinary,
passage, which is so central to Islamic understanding,
of of prophet Mohammed upon MBP. So absolutely
amazing. Thank you for that.
So, maybe we we will draw draw to
a close there. I will make efforts to,
reduce the size of this. I've already got
I've already made some notes of some of
my favorite, segments here, which we can,
produce into smaller, videos.
Just almost a random. You you mentioned in
one point where Christians complain that, Yahweh is
not mentioned in the Quran.
You gave a fascinating and multifaceted response to
that because they're different,
elements to your response. So one of which
I was not aware of. So other,
thank you for that and and many others
as well. So is there anything in conclusion,
would you like to to say or,
before we depart?
Well, I would just say, you know, as
I said, in in previous podcast,
reminder,
keep studying,
you know, knowledge, as they say, is power.
Seek seek knowledge from reliable sources.
Supplicate to God for knowledge. Right? Every all
things are easy with
with the help of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And the beautiful du'a in the Quran, Rabbi
Zideen'ilima, which is actually our school motto here
at Zaytunah,
Oh my Lord, increase me in knowledge.
So, you know, continue to seek knowledge, continue
to ask God to give you openings and
knowledge,
and
may Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala bless everyone who's
watching and everyone who is reached by this
video, and may Allah
bless you, Paul, for this beautiful platform.
And thank you so much. It's it's always
great and an honor. I'm so excited to
the whole week, I'm just I'm on cloud
9
waiting to come and and speak to you.
So thank you so much for that. Miss
Megha, I I know many viewers are anxiously,
waiting to see this video. I I know
that because they say so endlessly in comments.
So,
that this is fantastic. Well well, thank you
very much again, doctor Alyotai, for your fantastic
contribution,
enlightening, informative,
as always. So, until next time. Thank you
very much. Thank you. Bye bye.