Several early Christians identify Isaiah's Servant of the Lord as Jesus yet Paul appears to
connect the Servant with himself. In this study Daniel Cole examines the hermeneutical
warrants and ethical implications of Paul's use of texts within Isa. 49-54 arguing that this
section constitutes a coherent prophetic narrative in which God saves a new people from sin by
the Servant's death and subsequent work in his followers the servants. While several Second
Temple works interpret elements of this prophecy with differing conceptions of history Paul
sees Isaiah's Servant fulfilled in Jesus' death and subsequent spiritual union with the
apostle. The author thus demonstrates that the coherent salvation history of the Servant
prophecy provides both the interpretive framework for Paul's reading of Isaiah and the
relational definitions for the imperatives that Paul places on himself and others.
