Some improper speculation I stumbled into during morning devotions. I’m in Isaiah, slowly plodding through all of the old testament. This morning I came to the messianic prophecies in chapter 53. And I thought.
Why does the author speak of the messiah in the past tense?
If i may chip some more of my own improper speculation into this post;
Our author seems to flicker between present and past; see verse 6 in particular. We ‘are’ astray, and these inequities ‘have been’ laid upon him.
Is it possible that (and please, bear in mind that this falls well under the heading of speculation) that, in a prophetic voice, the tense of the wording is fluid?
It seems to me that a prophet writing of the future when it concerns the cross would look at Christ’s work as an action which fulfilled a place in history only in the most general of senses. I’m not saying that the cross didn’t happen at a specific time, or that it doesn’t occupy a specific point in history, but, perhaps to a prophet, time doesn’t work in quite the same way.
Perhaps, (and bear with me, this was my point all along) Isaiah is reinforcing the certainty of his prophecies by referring to them as though they had already happened?