Read the Bible with Me!

Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! I'm reading the Bible clear through this year, and I invite you to read along with me. But first, let us pray: 

Everlasting Father,

All time belongs to you, and all the ages. In signs, in songs, in words of promise, you reassured your chosen ones, “I am with you; fear not.” You taught them through the prophets to trust that your saving deeds were not limited to the past.

When Jesus came, he fulfilled “all that was written in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

The Church has found him everywhere in these same holy books.

Help me to find Jesus in my reading today, to listen to him, and to follow him with all my heart.

Amen.

Today's chapters are Isaiah 41-43.

With a full chapter of encouraging promises, we come to the first of the Songs of a mysterious "Suffering Servant." 

Just who this "Servant of the Lord" was supposed to be has intrigued religious scholars since Isaiah's time. The word used, "ebed," can be translated "servant" or "son." Since the people Israel was sometimes referred to as God's "servant" or "son," the prophecies could be understood of the whole people. (Is 41:8-16 identifies the whole people as God's servant.) Then again, there are ways in which the prophecies could be read in the light of God's great servants in Israel's history, men like Moses and David who were "anointed with God's spirit." But this Servant of the Lord seems to surpass anyone history has ever known, both in the scope of his mission (a "light to the nations"!) and in the depths of degradation he must undergo before being "lifted high and greatly exalted." Truly, these are prophecies that will only begin to make sense in the light of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus.

These prophetic texts are so striking that they are proclaimed at Mass during Holy Week, starting on Monday with Isaiah 42:1-7. (The next three "Suffering Servant Songs" are read on Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week, and then on Good Friday itself.) We are in many ways at the heart of the "fifth Gospel" (with a hat tip to St Jerome). 

For now we have the first of these magnificent texts, followed by even more magnificent and reassuring words spoken in the name of the Lord to a battered little nation: "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name .... You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you."

Start reading here.

If you are looking for a solid but approachable companion to the Bible, I can wholeheartedly recommend A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament by John Bergsma and Brant Pitre. Although the authors are top-level Scripture scholars, they write for "real" readers. Notes include recent findings from archaeology and ancient manuscripts, and how each book of the Bible has been understood by the Church Fathers and used in Liturgy.