The Wicked and the Rich

By | April 22, 2011

Isaiah wrote this about the Servant:

He was assigned a grave with the wicked,

and with the rich in his death,

though he had done no violence,

nor was any deceit in his mouth (Isa 53:9).

How could this person end his life with the wicked and with the rich? Alec Motyer writes:

“Wicked … rich: the former is plural and the latter singular. If Isaiah had merely intended the contrast between a shameful and a sumptuous burial he would have used two singulars. The use of a plural and a singular suggests that he is talking not about categories but about actual individuals. He offers no explanation, nor is there one until the fulfilment: Matthew alone of the Gospels specifies that Joseph of Arimathaea was ‘rich ‘ (27:37; cf. Mark 15:43; Luke 23:50); John brings out the contrast between the expected (John 19:31) and the actual (John 19:38ff.) burial of Jesus” (Motyer, Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary, TOTC, 1999, 380).

Jesus died between two wicked men, and he was buried in the tomb of one rich man.  Such should not be.  One who dies with the wicked should be buried with the wicked, or not buried at all. David Baron reflects on the marvel of the circumstances of Jesus’s burial.

“And this ‘remarkable coincidence ‘ is truly wonderful, for, in the words of Delitzsch, ‘if we reflect that the Jewish rulers would have given to Jesus the same dishonourable burial as to the two thieves, but that the Roman authorities handed over the body to Joseph the Arimathean, a ‘rich man ‘ (Matt 27:57), who placed it in the sepulchre in his own garden, we see an agreement at once between the gospel history and the prophetic words, which could only be the work of the God of both the prophecy and its fulfillment ‘” (Baron, The Servant of Jehovah, 1922 [reprint 2000], 115; online here).

The reason that some do not believe is not lack of evidence.  Jesus fulfilled prophecy with every breath he took, and even when stopped breathing.

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