SONG 9: Isaiah 53:7-10a
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.
Of all the movements in the Fourth Servant Song of Isaiah, this section is the most upsetting to the human spirit. Not only does the Servant absorb the hatred inflicted upon him in silence, the Servant does so knowing that the end is bleaker than the torture and death inflicted upon him/her. At the time of Isaiah, there was no after life, no Heaven and no Hell. We hear mentioned in the psalms of a place called Sheol, the realm of dead in which the shades/ghosts of the dead wander aimlessly and formlessly. The realm of the dead seems similar to that of that pictured in Greek Mythology of Hades. Yet, in spite of such a bleak and hopeless future, the Servant remains dedicated and resolute, enduring torture and death. The words that leapt out of the text for me are, “By a perversion of justice he was taken away.”
This section of text from the Fourth Servant Song is similar in content to that of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me …”. Were just this part of the Fourth Servant Song and the opening passages of Psalm 22 read, we would be filled with despair. Yet, these lines are not the end. God’s love is far more enduring than despair and death. The utter defeat and destruction of the Servant will end up, as we will see in the final section of the Fourth Servant Song, being the pathway to ultimate victory and glorious joy.
Of all the music in this collection of songs, this song was the most difficult to compose. In composing this song I ended up discarding and erasing many attempt to capture the text. I zeroed in on the words of the Servant being “led away”. With a Christian predisposition of seeing in the Servant the person of Jesus of Nazareth, along with the narrative of the Passion and Death of Jesus in the Gospels, images of an armed cohort leading Jesus away dominated my meditation. This armed cohort, first, that of the Temple guard leads Jesus to the court of the Sanhedrin to be beaten and interrogated, and following being tried before Pilate who ordered the torture of Jesus and subsequent sentencing to death, Jesus is led away by Roman Soldiers to his execution on Golgotha. These images being led away suggested to me a macabre death march.
As you listen to the music, note how the march begins at a pretty fast tempo. While it begins pianissimo (very soft) the volume of the music increases until it reaches fortississimo (ridiculously loud) and the music becomes more chaotic and jagged in sound. Then, abruptly, the tempo slows to a crawl and eventually ends as softly as the song began with a three octave sound of the pitch, G.
