The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 12, Verses 15-21: But when Jesus knew it, He withdrew from there. And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them all. Yet He warned them not to make Him known, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying:
“Behold! My Servant whom I have chosen, My Beloved in whom My soul is well pleased! I will put My Spirit upon Him, And He will declare justice to the Gentiles.
He will not quarrel nor cry out, Nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets.
A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench, Till He sends forth justice to victory;
And in His name Gentiles will trust.”
The prophecy given here is a direct quotation of the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 42, Verses 1-3. Often, many detractors of the New Testament will argue that although Matthew applies this prophecy from Isaiah to Christ, it is not actually fulfilled nor about Him at all. They will argue that the prophecy points to another (such as Muhammad, or perhaps the Israelites as a whole, or a future, Rabbinic Messiah) rather than the Christ of the Gospels and the New Testament. Let us analyze the prophecy line by line, and prove how it directly is fulfilled and associated with Christ.
“Behold! My Servant whom I have chosen,
My Beloved in whom My soul is well pleased!”
This first line is already quite interesting, as the word for Servant here, עֶבֶד is used to refer to servants or slaves, and is used almost entirely in the singular in the Hebrew Bible. Christ comes to the world in the form of a servant, humbling Himself and taking on a form lesser than the angels (Hebrews 2:9) so any accusation that this cannot refer to Christ as Christ is the Divine and glorious Son of God, is an incorrect argument. As for the second line, the LORD declaring that the servant makes His soul well pleased is directly correlated to the baptism in Matthew 3:17, where He declares again:
And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
We see that even outside the original verse about Isaiah’s prophecy, the New Testament is consistent in applying this language from the Tanakh toward Christ as the beloved, only-begotten, and pleasing Son of God and Messiah.
I will put My Spirit upon Him,
And He will declare justice to the Gentiles.
The Holy Spirit descends to Christ in the verse previous to God declaring the Son to be well-pleasing during the baptism. Here is Matthew 3:16:
When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him.
We see once again that Christ’s narrative already fulfills these prophecies long before the actual prophecy of Isaiah is quoted in Matthew Chapter 12, as these baptism quotes are from Chapter 3. There is no other candidate after the Old Testament who can claim to be the beloved, well-pleasing Messiah who is alighted with the Holy Spirit. In Islamic theology, Muhammad does not claim to be filled with the Holy Spirit or carry its unique presence upon his body, and many Muslims believe the Angel Gabriel to be synonymous with the Holy Spirit, which it clearly is not in the Bible. Therefore, Isaiah 42 cannot be referring to Gabriel, and thus Muhammad has no claim to receiving the Holy Spirit (or the other verses, which are quite clear.)
And He will declare justice to the Gentiles.
Christ is unique in that, although His first mission was to correct and purify His own people, the Israelites, He declares that His words shall be carried to the Gentile nations unlike anything that had been done before in the Old Testament. In Luke 2:23, Simeon, inspired by the Holy Spirit, declares this of Christ:
”A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles,
And the glory of Your people Israel.”
The same prophet Isaiah of earlier, says in Chapter 60, Verse 3 of his prophetic work:
”The Gentiles shall come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising.”
And again in the very chapter, 42, that is quoted by Matthew! Verse 6:
I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people,
As a light to the Gentiles…
Acts 26:23:
“that the Christ would suffer, that He would be the first to rise from the dead, and would proclaim light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles.”
And John 1:9, our first introduction to the details of the cosmic and Divine origin of Christ, the eternal Son of God, the author John declares that He is the Light for all men:
That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
I have displayed clearly for all of you that the New Testament is consistent in Christ fulfilling all aspects of the prophetic forecasts of the Old Testament, and as the beacon of holiness that opens the way for the Gentiles to receive the faith. For in the Old Testament, the Israelites were set apart from other nations and uniquely followed the One True God of Cosmos. There was, however, the expectation, as shown clearly in Isaiah, that one day the Gentiles would receive the light of the Messiah, the light of God. No other prophet or story based off of the Biblical narrative fulfills this role. Even Muhammad, whose religion was spread across great swathes of the world, never claimed to be the key to the Gentiles, nor does the Quran or Hadith mention what a Gentile is in comparison to an Israelite, by whom, and through whom alone prophecy and Scripture had come from. Christ is the only candidate to the question of revealing and representing the Light to the Gentiles.
He will not quarrel nor cry out,
Nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets.
This is the next line of Isaiah’s prophecy, quoted in Matthew, that we must assess. Throughout the Gospels, Christ vehemently opposes showering Himself in fame and the vainglorious approval of men, and tells those that He associates with not to reveal who He is, what He has done, or where He is going. Matthew Chapter 8, Verse 4:
And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one; but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
Mark 7, Verse 36:
Then He commanded them that they should tell no one; but the more He commanded them, the more widely they proclaimed it.
Mark 9, Verse 9:
Now as they came down from the mountain, He commanded them that they should tell no one the things they had seen, till the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
Finally, Luke Chapter 8, Verse 56:
And her parents were astonished, but He charged them to tell no one what had happened.
Jesus Christ fulfills the prophetic line concerning none hearing His voice rise in the streets, nor quarrel or crying out. As for the quarreling, one can merely be referred to the episodes in the Gospels where Christ deflects His detractors, but does not fight with them or maintain argument, nor does He engage in physical confrontation. Each time He is opposed by the Pharisees, He leaves them with an answer from the Scripture or the Law of Moses, and then disappears or carries on with His tasks. The next lines to assess in the quoted prophecy of Isaiah are:
A bruised reed He will not break,
And smoking flax He will not quench,
Till He sends forth justice to victory
I have given much of my own interpretative analysis of these prophecies, and will instead give to you the commentary by renowned English Biblical theologian Charles Elicott. He writes,
‘A bruised reed shall he not break.—The prophet’s words described a character of extremest gentleness. The “bruised reed” is the type of one broken by the weight of sorrow, or care, or sin. Such a one men in general disregard or trample on. The Christ did not so act, but sought rather to bind up and strengthen. The “smoking flax” is the wick of the lamp which has ceased to burn clearly, and the clouded flame of which seems to call for prompt extinction. Here (as afterwards, in Matthew 25:1-8) we read a parable of the souls in which the light that should shine before men has grown dim. Base desires have clogged it; it is no longer fed with the true oil. For such the self-righteous Pharisee had no pity; he simply gave thanks that his own lamp was burning. But the Christ in His tenderness sought, if it were possible, to trim the lamp and to pour in the oil till the flame was bright again. We cannot help feeling, as we read the words, that the publican-apostle had found their fulfillment in his own personal experience of the profound tenderness of his Master.’
I would also add that the “bruised reed” of the prophecy can refer to Egypt, as the Bible speaks of nations using their topographical, geographical, and cultural descriptions as placeholders for their character. Egypt is the only nation referred to by name as a reed, and it was Christ, not a false Messiah, not a future Messiah, not Muhammad, nor Ezra, nor any other candidate that entered Egypt and left Egypt, the reed, peacefully.
Another element of the prophecy of Isaiah that I found quite interesting would actually be the verses that appear after what has been quoted by Matthew in his Gospel. In Verse 5 of Isaiah’s Chapter 42 prophecy, we read:
Thus says God the LORD,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it,
Who gives breath to the people on it,
And spirit to those who walk on it:
This language is mirrored as well in the Letter to the Hebrews, which itself is quoting Psalm 102:25. Here is the quotation from Hebrews 1, Verse 10, which quotes said Psalm:
You, LORD, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth,
And the heavens are the work of Your hands.
This is the God the Father speaking to the Son, reversing the praise rendered unto God from a mortal man, and applying it from God the Father to the Divine Son. Above in Isaiah 42:5, extremely similar language is utilized, showing us that God and God alone stretched forth the heavens and laid the foundation of the earth. Both of these are applied to Christ. It seems only fitting to include this detail here at the end of my essay, as the very prophecy Matthew quotes in Chapter 12, later includes a verse that is again fulfilled in Christ, this time on a much grander scale.
In summation, Christ fulfills the description of being the Servant by virtue of making Himself lower than angels; He fulfills the description of being the Beloved whom is well-pleasing to God the Father; He is the only candidate who is alighted by the Holy Spirit; the only candidate who is described as bringing the Israelite faith to the Gentiles, and being the Light of these Gentiles; Christ fulfills the lack of quarreling or hearing of His voice in the streets; the gentle nature of not breaking the reed, and fulfilling the smoking flax not being quenched.
Written by Jeem.
We recently had a chat with him on our podcast!
--------------------------- Check out Jeem and his channel over here: His written articles: https://substack.com/@jeemapologetics IG: https://www.instagram.com/jeemapologetics/ His page for support/donations: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jeemapologetics