The Talmudic reading — Sanhedrin 98b
The Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 98b (Rodkinson PD translation, ≤50 words quoted), records a discussion of the Messiah''s name. The Rabbis of Rabbi Yochanan''s school answer:
"The leper of the school of Rabbi is his name, as it is written, Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." (Sanhedrin 98b, citing Isa 53:4)
The text identifies the Messiah from Isaiah 53. The "leper" gloss derives from the Hebrew naga (stricken), which in Leviticus 13 is the standard verb for leprous affliction. The rabbis read the Servant as the messianic figure who bears the affliction the people deserve.
Sanhedrin 98a–b also includes the famous prayer: "May he come, and may I not see him" — the rabbinic recognition that the Messiah''s sufferings (read from Isaiah 53) are too painful to witness, even from those who long for his arrival.
The Targum Jonathan
The Aramaic Targum Jonathan ben Uzziel on Isaiah (compiled c. 200 AD; reflecting earlier traditions) opens Isaiah 52:13 with a direct messianic identification:
"Behold, my servant, the Messiah, shall prosper..."
The Targum identifies the Servant as the Messiah by name — and then (in the chapters that follow) transfers the suffering language away from the Messiah onto Israel and the Gentiles. The Targum reads the exaltation parts as messianic and the suffering parts as not. This is the strongest rabbinic-tradition evidence that the original messianic reading was known and was deliberately interpreted away from suffering — because the Servant''s suffering had become embarrassing in light of Christian use of the chapter.
The medieval debate
By the 11th–12th centuries, two interpretive streams compete:
- Rashi (1040–1105) reads the Servant as corporate Israel — the suffering of Israel under the nations. This becomes the dominant medieval Jewish reading.
- Ibn Ezra (1089–1164) hesitates between corporate Israel and an individual righteous sufferer.
- Don Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) adopts Rashi''s corporate reading explicitly to counter Christian apologetic use.
Yet the messianic reading never disappears entirely. Rabbi Moshe Alshich (c. 1508–1593), in his commentary on Isaiah, writes:
"Our rabbis with one voice accept and affirm the opinion that the prophet is speaking of the Messiah, and we shall ourselves also adhere to the same view." (Alshich on Isa 53; 19th c. PD English translation)
Alshich is writing in the late 16th century, after centuries of Rashi-school dominance, and reaffirming the older messianic reading.
What this drilldown is and is not
It is a survey of how the Jewish interpretive tradition has read Isaiah 53. It is not a polemic. The rabbinic tradition is not monolithic; the messianic reading is internal to it (Sanhedrin 98b, Targum Jonathan, Alshich) and the corporate-Israel reading is also internal to it (Rashi, Abravanel). Both are presented at full strength.
The MannaFest editorial position (the founder''s drawer below) takes Isaiah 53 as Christ-prophecy on the strength of the four-Songs unit, the manuscript witness of 1QIsa-a, the NT''s consistent quotation across multiple authors, and the structural fit of the chapter with the historical events of c. 30 AD. That position is offered without flattening or hiding the rabbinic alternatives.