A Consideration of New Covenant Passages (Pt. 5)

PART FOUR

Although being cognizant of Fredrickson’s research regarding pre-19th century commentators on Isaiah 42:6 and 49:8 I think a selection of quotes from representative scholarship will help drive my point home. My point being that it is not some novel view that understands the “covenant” in these texts as being, in fact, Jesus Himself. Many may wish to avoid saying “Jesus is the New covenant.” But I think it hard to circumvent the claim that “Jesus is the embodiment of the New covenant.”

I do not think we can discard the opinions of the following scholars lightly:

C. W. E Nagelsbach, “When Christ calls Himself the way (Jn. xiv. 6), or the resurrection (Jn. xi. 25), so, too, He may be called the covenant… This identity of language [with Isa. 42:6] makes it evident that He who is made a covenant of the people is in both passages the same.” – The Prophet Isaiah (Lange’s Commentary, Vol. 6), 451, 535.

Franz Delitzsch: “An unprejudiced commentator must admit that the ‘servant of Jehovah’ is pointed out here, as He in whom and through whom Jehovah concludes a new covenant with His people, in the place of the old covenant that was broken, namely, the covenant that was promised in ch. 54:10, 59:8, Jer. 31:31-34, Ezek. 16:60…It cannot, in fact, denote any other than that Prophet who is more than a prophet, namely, Malachi’s ‘Messenger of the covenant” (ch. 3:1).” – The Prophecies of Isaiah, 2. 179-180 (refs altered to Arabic).

Thomas Edward McComiskey: “The prophet emphasized another aspect of the covenant in 42:6 and 49:8. In both passages the servant himself is called a covenant.. The reference to the servant as a covenant is a unique concept in the Old Testament. It evidently means that the servant would function as does a covenant.” – The Covenants of Promise, 90.

Alec Motyer: “…the Servant is more than a covenant officiant or instigator; he is in his own person the
Lord’s covenant….To speak of the Servant as the covenant means that while, as we know, it is through his work that covenant blessings become available, it is only in him, in the union of personal relationship, that these blessings can be enjoyed. Prophets preached the covenant and pointed away from themselves to the Lord; the Servant will actualize the blessings and point to himself.” – The Prophecy of Isaiah (UK edition), 391.

Gary V. Smith: “The terminology here suggests that this servant is the personification or embodiment of the covenant.” – Isaiah 40 – 66, NAC, 168.

Paul R. Williamson: “This individual will be the very embodiment of God’s covenant; hence the agent and guarantor of God’s covenant love and blessing to all people.” – Sealed with an Oath, 160.

Walther Eichrodt: This manifestation of the berit in the last times is, however, no isolated act of a ritual
character, no new constitution or organization, but something embodied in the life of a human person, the Servant of God, who is defined as the mediator of the covenant to the nation. – Theology of the Old Testament, Vol. 61-62.

Larry D. Pettegrew: “The personification of the covenant by the Servant is also remarkable. Up to this point one might have thought that the Servant was only a mediator like Moses was for the Old Covenant… But in the Servant songs one learns that the Messiah would be more than a mediator. As Odendaal points out, “He is the impersonated, incarnated covenant. We may regard him, in other words, to be the one who is able so fully to represent the ʿām in the covenant, that he himself can be considered to be the incorporated covenant.” – “The New Covenant,” MSJ 10 (Fall 1999), 262-263.

Sinclair Ferguson: “[U]ltimately God’s covenant with his people is not found in Jesus Christ; it is Jesus Christ. The new covenant, the final covenant…” – Forward to Cornelis P. Venema, Christ and Covenant Theology, ix.

Michael P. McKelvey: “God states that he gives the servant himself as a “covenant”… This means that the servant is the embodiment of all that the new covenant reveals. All God’s saving, life-giving, restorative, covenantal purposes are found in him and brought about through him.” – “The New Covenant as Promised in the Major Prophets,” Covenant Theology: Biblical, Theological, and Historical Perspectives, edited by Guy Prentiss Waters, et al,” 206.

O. Palmer Robertson: “The anticipation of the future focuses on a single individual who shall embody in himself the essence of the covenant…” – The Christ of the Covenants, 51.

In light of these witnesses it is both surprising and a little embarrassing that so many dispensationalists resist the plain-sense of Isaiah 42:6 and 49:8. My plea is for them to drop their fixation with Jeremiah 31 and focus again on the fuller testimony, both of the Old and the New Testaments.