The Function

I. Behold, My Servant

There is a word that stands over this whole book, and it has not once been opened up.

Maskil. The wise one. For two chapters it has travelled along — those chapters showed who they were when the abomination stood on the altar, and to whom their sealed book is addressed. But the word itself kept its door shut. What is a wise one? Scripture gives no definition. It gives a figure — and the first time that figure comes fully into view, there stands beneath it not a definition, but a song.

It stands in the scroll of Isaiah, where the comfort begins. Four times, there among the oracles, a figure surfaces called "my Servant" — visible and gone again, like a face in a crowd. In the first song he is introduced: my Servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one — he will not cry out in the street, will not break the bruised reed nor quench the dimming flax-wick; and then, in a reversal you almost miss: he himself will not grow dim nor be bruised, until he has established justice on the earth.1 What he spares, that he becomes; and he holds firm.

In the second song he speaks himself, and his making sounds like the forging of a weapon: He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me into a polished arrow, in his quiver he concealed me.2 Polished — the refining word that later falls over the wise. The arrow is first ground smooth, then hidden, then only then shot.

In the third song his vocation — not what you would expect of a sword: a tongue of disciples God has given me, to sustain the weary with a word; morning by morning he wakens my ear, to hear as disciples hear.3 First the ear, then the tongue — every morning anew. And in that same song already the price: my back I gave to those who struck, my face I did not hide from shame and spitting.

And then the fourth song. God himself announces it:

"Behold, my Servant shall act wisely; he shall be raised and lifted up and be very high."4

To act wisely — yaskil. The same verb as maskil; the same word that in Daniel becomes the name of the vanguard. The deepest thing God has to say about his Servant opens with the verb of this book.

And then the song plunges downward. As many were appalled at him — so marred was his appearance, no longer human, his form no longer like that of the sons of men.5 The face of the most exalted is first the most ruined. Halfway through, a "we" takes over the song, a chorus that looked too late: who has believed what we heard? He had no form that we should look at him, no beauty that we should desire him. Despised he was, forsaken by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with sickness; despised — and we did not esteem him.6 Despised — so too, in Daniel's vision, is the tyrant named: "the despised one," who seizes the kingship with flatteries. Two bearers of the same word: the one lies his way up to a throne, the other lets himself be pushed down beneath men.7 And the chorus sings on, the heaviest confession of the Old Testament: our sicknesses — he has borne them. For our transgressions he was pierced, for our iniquities crushed; the chastisement that brought us peace was upon him, and by his stripes healing has come to us. We all strayed like sheep, each turned to his own way — and YHWH made the iniquity of us all fall upon him.8 He is led away like a lamb to the slaughter, and like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers he does not open his mouth — the man with the tongue of disciples, the mouth like a sharp sword, is silent.9 He is cut off from the land of the living and given his grave among the wicked — though he has done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

And there, beyond the grave, where no song can go any further, this song goes further. God takes back the word, and what he says is the reversal of everything:

"Out of the travail of his soul he shall see, and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall my righteous Servant justify many, and their iniquities he shall bear."10

By his knowledge. Not by an army, not by a verdict — by what he knows will this one make the many righteous. And what that knowledge is, the song has already said, five lines earlier, in that one worn little phrase: a man of sorrows, acquainted with sickness — literally: who knew sickness.11 Not book-knowledge; knowledge with scars. He knows what he bears, because he has borne it.

So the fourth song runs from extreme to extreme: it opens with "my Servant shall act wisely" and closes with "he shall justify many."

For nearly two centuries later an old man stands by the Tigris, and the voice above the water reads him the future — and the very last thing that voice says about history, before the book lets itself be sealed, is this:

"And the wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament — and those who justify the many, like the stars, forever and ever."12

The wise — the opening word of the Servant song, in the plural. Those who justify the many — the closing word, in the plural. The two ends of the song are here bound together into one verse — and in all of Scripture these two formulas stand together nowhere else than in these two places.13 Not a flourish — a signature. Daniel's prophecy sets its highest word about the vanguard in the words of the suffering Servant: if you would know what a wise one is, do not look at a scholar. Look at him. The wise one does what the Servant does — act wisely and justify many — and the road between the two runs through the travail of the soul.

There, even before all grammar, is the answer. A wise one is not an intellectual but a servant-figure: someone through whom, at his own cost, many are set right.

But in the same scroll there is yet another servant. Beside the one who is exalted, a whole people bears that name: "you, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I chose, seed of Abraham, my friend."14 And this second servant is the counter-image of the first. Where the one does not cry out and holds firm, this collective is blind and deaf — "who is blind as my servant?" — scattered, afraid, to be redeemed.15 Two bearers of one name: the one strong in his humiliation, the other weak and to be strengthened.

And precisely over that weak servant falls, oracle after oracle, the same word: fear not. "Fear not, for I am with you [...] I make you strong, I help you, I uphold you with my right hand."16 It issues in the most improbable image in all Isaiah: "fear not, worm Jacob [...] I make you into a sharp threshing-sledge; you shall thresh mountains."17 The worm becomes the thresher; the weary one receives wings like eagles.18 That is not merely comfort — it is, down to the verbs, the pattern of the end-time in Daniel. "The people that knows its God shall be strong and act"; the wise who stumbled "are helped with a little help"; and the very last word about the old man by the river reads: "you shall rise to your destiny at the end of days."19 To become strong, to be helped, to rise: the weak servant Jacob, projected onto the screen of the end. And what is promised to the people, the book first shows in one man: by the river Daniel himself collapses — "there remained no strength in me" — and a hand touches him and raises him up: "fear not, greatly beloved; be strong, yes, be strong."20 Precisely the "fear not, I make you strong" of servant-Jacob, now enacted on a single body.

And the strength does not come out of the collective itself — that is the point. "Fear not, my servant Jacob [...] I will pour water on the thirsty, my Spirit on your seed."21 The servant who rises, rises by an outpoured Spirit — the same promise that Joel sees fall at the end of days (see chapter 10). The weak righteous one is raised up not by a character trait, but by a source outside himself.

So the two servants meet — and in that the last piece of the old puzzle of these chapters slides into place. For after the fourth song something striking happens in Isaiah: the singular "servant" disappears, and in his place come the plural "servants of YHWH" — the seed the Servant had been promised to see.22 The one, who by his knowledge justifies the many, brings forth a lineage of servants; and "all your children shall be taught by YHWH" — disciples, precisely the word with which the Servant himself began.23 There the two collectives touch: the wise Servant makes the servant wise. The maskilim stand at that intersection — they carry the verbs of the one Servant (acting wisely, justifying the many) and they are the strengthened, raised-up collective, the "wise of the people." They are the place where "Israel, my servant" is renewed into "the servants of YHWH"; and "the many" whom they make understand are themselves again that collective in the making. It is the reversal that Daniel 7 paints on the greatest stage: the saints are worn down and trampled by the little horn — and then receive the kingdom.24

One boundary stands here too, the same as with the one Servant: the collective is strengthened and raised up, but the bearing remains his alone. The wise bring the many to the righteousness the Servant won — they teach and witness it, they do not earn it. Whoever confuses this makes of the vanguard a second altar. The worm becomes a thresher; not a redeemer.

II. No Title but a Doing

Only now may the grammar speak — and it turns out to say the same thing as the song.

Our languages turn insight at once into a title. The wise man. The scholar. The master. A noun, something you can be, possess, add to a nameplate — and quietly let gather dust. Hebrew refuses that here. Maskil is not a noun. It is a participle. Whoever says "maskil" says not: someone who is wise, but: someone who is now acting wisely. The word has no resting state. A wise one who stops doing what the verb says is not a wise one at rest; he has stopped being one.

And it is not just any participle. It stands in the hiphil — the form by which Hebrew expresses that someone effects something, brings it about in another. The language has already chosen: of the sixty-three times this verb stands in the Hebrew Bible, sixty times in this doing-form.25 In Scripture insight is almost never a condition. It is a working — something that goes somewhere and arrives. And the same form that means "to act wisely" means also: to make another understand, to teach. Gabriel came to Daniel "to give you understanding of insight" — this verb.26 What God gave the wilderness generation through his good Spirit is called, with the same verb, "to instruct them."27 In one form, having and passing on are slid into each other. The title "the wise man" describes a possession. The verb maskil describes a current.

And that current has two banks. Beside this verb stands, in the profile, that other one, bin — to understand — and there the double movement becomes visible down to the spelling. Daniel 12:10: "the wise shall understand" — they receive; something opens in them that stays shut in the wicked. Daniel 11:33: "they shall make the many understand" — they pass it on; through them something opens in others. One root, two directions. And in Hebrew it is in both verses the same written word — יָבִינוּ. The only difference is what follows it: in 12:10 nothing, in 11:33 "to the many."28 Receiving and passing on do not even differ in form in this language; only in the address. One movement — insight that arrives at you and travels on through you: the same water, upstream and downstream of one river.

That is why the definition is strict on both sides. Whoever only receives and does not pass on is not yet a wise one — at most a vessel, and a vessel in Scripture is never given a name. And whoever passes on what he did not receive is worse than nothing: he is the false one. Him too the canon knows, from the first page: the very first "making wise" of the Bible is not from God; it is the offer of the tree in the garden — "desirable to make one wise" — insight promised apart from the commandment, passing on what was never received from above.29 And at the other end, in Daniel's own vision, the end-time king who "by his insight makes deceit prosper in his hand."30 Those two sentences side by side make you shudder: deceit in his hand, prospering by insight — and of the Servant it stood written: no deceit in his mouth. The difference between the wise one and his counterfeit is not intelligence. It is the source, and the direction.

For the current does not begin with people. The first who "gives understanding" in Scripture is God himself: "Your good Spirit you gave to instruct them"; "I will instruct you and show you the way you must go."31 From him it comes down: God gives Daniel understanding through a messenger; the wise give the many understanding; and at the foot of that waterfall stands a human being who catches it. Teaching that comes from above and must go on from hand to hand — that chain was seen beginning at the Tigris; here it proves to be the definition itself. And one line of a psalm catches all this in a single image: God looks down from heaven upon the children of men — to see whether there is a wise one, one who seeks God.32 Heaven does not look to see whether a genius is sitting somewhere. Heaven looks to see whether someone is seeking. The first thing a wise one does is not to know. It is to turn around toward the source.

III. The Man from the Pit

The function is older than the word. Long before there was a Babylon to be carried off from, long before Daniel, Scripture has already shown the wise one once in full — the model, laid ready for later. The story begins at the bottom of a pit.

A boy of seventeen, stripped by his brothers and let down into a pit in the wilderness — "and the pit was empty; there was no water in it."34 Sold into Egypt. A slave in the house of a stranger. And when his master's wife called him to bed day after day, he refused with the sentence that would cost him everything: "how could I do this great evil and sin against God?" He left his garment in her hand and fled outside.35 Falsely accused, thrown into the dungeon; and when, years later, a fellow prisoner is released and promises to remember him, there stands a sentence that softens nothing: but the chief of the cupbearers did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.36 Two full years. A poet later weighed them, and his weighing-words are the words of this book:

"He sent a man before them: as a servant Joseph was sold. They pressed his feet into the fetter, into the iron came his soul — until the time that his word came; the promise of YHWH refined him."37

Sold as a servant — the servant-word of Isaiah. Until the time — the time-formula of Daniel. Refined — the smelting-furnace word of the wise, applied to a single man centuries earlier already. The psalm reads Joseph's dungeon years not as bad luck but as polishing: a word lay over his life, and until that word came, it ground at him — like an arrow in the quiver.

And then the time comes. On the bank of the river — the Nile; the book of Daniel later takes up that Egyptian word for river, of all places for the river of the closing vision38 — a king stands dreaming. Seven cows, sleek and fat, and seven others, ugly and lean, which devour the fat ones and are none the fatter for it. In the morning his spirit is troubled; he summons all the magicians and wise men of Egypt, and no one can interpret the dream for Pharaoh.39 The whole knowledge-industry of the mightiest empire on earth stands around one bed and has nothing to say. Then the cupbearer remembers his sin, and out of the pit a prisoner is hurriedly fetched; they shave him, change his clothes, and there he stands, after thirteen years of darkness, before the throne.40 Pharaoh says: I have heard it said of you that you need only hear a dream to interpret it. And the first word of the man from the pit, face to face with the power that can send him back with a single nod, is a correction of the king:

"Apart from me — God will answer what is for Pharaoh's peace."41

Apart from me. Two words, and the whole definition is in them. What now happens does not come out of him; it flows through him. He interprets the dreams — God has made known to Pharaoh what he is going to do; seven years of plenty, seven years of famine; and the dream came twice: the matter is fixed with God, and God hastens to do it.42 And then, without transition, he does what no interpreter had been asked to do: he translates the understood into policy. "Let Pharaoh now look out for a man of insight and wisdom, and set him over the land of Egypt" — storehouses, overseers, a fifth part of the harvest, everything ready before the famine comes.43 He does not apply for the post. He describes the function — insight that becomes action — and the heathen on the throne recognizes it unerringly:

"Could we find anyone like this — a man in whom the Spirit of God is?" And to Joseph: "Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one with as much insight and wisdom as you."44

The order: since God has made known to you — that is why you are the man of insight. Even Pharaoh understands: this insight is no possession but a receiving. Then the ring goes onto the finger, the fine linen over the shoulders, the golden chain around the neck; the second chariot drives ahead, and before the man from the pit it is cried through the streets that men must bend the knee.45 The years of plenty come, and Joseph gathers up grain like the sand of the sea — until he stops counting: there was no counting it any more.46 Then the famine comes, over all the earth. The whole land cries out to Pharaoh for bread, and Pharaoh says to all Egypt three words that sum up the function once and for all: "Go to Joseph."47 And all the earth came to Egypt, to Joseph, to buy grain — for the famine was strong over all the earth.

Nowhere does Joseph save the land with an army, a miracle, fire from heaven. He saves it with understanding — a well-understood dream and a well-filled barn. Insight, received from above, translated into deeds, becomes bread for a starving world. That is the function, in action.

And the purpose Joseph spells out himself — twice, at the two heaviest moments of his life. First before his brothers, when he makes himself known and they fall silent: God has sent me ahead of you to establish for you a remnant on the earth, and to keep you alive, for a great deliverance; it was not you who sent me here, but God.48 And years later, at his father's grave, when his brothers fear that the reckoning is coming after all and beg him for mercy — then Joseph weeps, and speaks the sentence in which his whole life comes together:

"You devised evil against me; God devised it for good, to do as on this day: to keep a great people alive."49

To keep a great people alive. For this was the pit, for this the iron, for this the forgotten years: that at the end of the chain many should live who would otherwise have died. Scripture nowhere calls Joseph maskil — the word did not yet exist as a name; it calls him "a man of insight and wisdom" and lets the profile speak for itself.50 But lay his life beside the definition and no seam remains visible: received from above ("apart from me"), refined until the time of his word, faithful in the heart of the empire, and by his insight many — a great people — kept alive. And Jacob had already, as he was dying, set him apart with one word that the vanguard will one day bear again: the blessing descends "on the head of Joseph, on the crown of the consecrated one among his brothers."51 This is the wise one in embryo. Only the name is still missing.

IV. The Boy in the Palace

The name falls a good thousand years later — biting irony — in the mouth of the enemy.

Again a world empire, again a boy carried into it against his will. Nebuchadnezzar has Jerusalem in his grip and gives his chief steward an order that sounds like a plunderer's requisition: take from the sons of Israel boys for the palace. And then the profile the recruiter is given:

"Boys in whom there is no blemish at all, handsome in appearance, wise in all wisdom, knowing knowledge and understanding science — and in whom there is strength to stand in the palace of the king."52

Wise in all wisdom — there it stands: maskilim. The first time the book of Daniel uses its key word, it stands in a Babylonian job posting. The empire that plundered God's house empty writes out, without knowing it, heaven's job description — and thereby selects its own antagonist into the palace. The close — strength to stand — returns at the end, when an old man worn out to death by a river has no strength left and a voice says: stand up in your place — and as the very last word about him: you shall rise to your destiny.53 Between those two standing-places — the boy in the palace of the enemy, the old man who rises at the end of days — the whole career of the wise one is stretched.

The sequel is Joseph, image for image, as though history were re-enacting itself with other names. Again a king whose spirit is troubled by a dream — the narrator even uses the same rare verb, and the same Egyptian professional name for the magicians who stand powerless around the throne.54 Again a young Hebrew brought up out of oblivion. And again, as the first word before the power, the signpost upward: the secret the king asks, no wise men, enchanters or magicians can make known — but there is a God in heaven who reveals hidden things; and to me this secret has been revealed, not by wisdom that would be in me above all the living.55 Not by wisdom that is in me — it is "apart from me," thirteen centuries later, word for word the same movement. And God gave these four boys knowledge and understanding in all writing and wisdom — it says gave, not they acquired — and the king found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole realm.56

But the book does with Daniel something it does with no one else: it keeps the teacher in the school-bench all his life. The man who interprets dreams no one heard and reads writing no one could read sits in his old age bent over scrolls and counts: "I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years about which the word of YHWH had come to the prophet Jeremiah" — seventy years.57 The greatest seer of his century simply reads an older prophet, fasting, in sackcloth and ashes. And while he is still praying, the messenger comes in swift flight, touches him about the time of the evening offering, and says:

"Daniel, now I have come out to give you understanding of insight. [...] For greatly beloved you are; understand then the word."58

To give you understanding of insight — the maskil-verb, with Daniel as its object. The wise one of the book is here made wise. Before Daniel ever gave a single human being any understanding, heaven had to give him understanding; the teacher of the many is first and abidingly a pupil from above. Whoever reverses this order falls out of the function — that was the lesson of the court and of the smooth king. Whoever accepts it becomes part of the chain. And even where the understanding stopped — I heard it, but I did not understand it — the passing on went on: the man who was not permitted to understand the end sealed the book about it and left it behind, and so became, twenty-five centuries later, still a teacher of readers he never met. The function is stronger than the comprehension of its bearer. That too belongs to its definition.

And then the vision itself sketches, in two relay-verses, how the function works in the crucible. First the front line: the enemy "will make those who act wickedly against the covenant play the hypocrite with smooth words" — flattery, the weapon-craft of the despised one. Over against that:

"But the people that knows its God shall be strong and act. And the wise among the people shall make the many understand — and they shall stumble by sword and by flame, by captivity and by plunder, for days on end."59

The chain runs link by link. To know — it begins with the people that knows its God; not theory about him, but him. To be strong — knowing makes one hard in the right place; whoever knows who God is cannot be softened with smooth words. To act — the strength does not stay inside; it does. And to make understand — out of that knowing, strong, acting people the wise arise, and they pass the knowledge on to the many. To know, to be strong, to act, to teach: four links, none of them available separately. And the small words: "the wise of the people" — no caste above it, no order beside it; they come out of the people as a flame out of a fire, and they exist for the many they serve.

Joseph and Daniel, the two ends of the exile's history, thus carry one and the same figure. Twice a boy in the heart of the empire. Twice insight that comes from above and is immediately passed on — to a Pharaoh, to a king, to the many. Twice faithful in the place where faithfulness costs the most: not in the wilderness, far from power, but in the palace, under its eyes. The function has a preferred workplace, the strangest imaginable: the center of the enemy's power. There, where the pressure is highest, God sets down his wise ones — and through them keeps many alive.

V. The Four Strings

The song, the pit, the palace, the vision — straight through the texts of this chapter the same instrument sounds again and again: four strings, which together make the sound of the wise one. The whole book at hand is tuned to these four.

The first string is the darkest: the suffering. "They shall stumble by sword and by flame, by captivity and by plunder"; "some of the wise shall stumble."60 Nowhere is protection promised; the stumbling stands in the same breath as the teaching, joined by nothing but a conjunction. The Servant is a man of sorrows; Joseph's soul comes into the iron; Daniel goes into the lions. Whoever accepts the function accepts the price — that was Eleazar on the rack, that was the mother at the pan.

The second string sounds longer than all the others: the endurance. The stumbling refines "until the time of the end, for it still waits for the appointed time"; and at the edge of the book stands the beatitude of the long breath: blessed is the one who waits, and arrives.61 Joseph's dungeon years last "until the time that his word came"; Daniel serves seventy years; the Servant is ground smooth in the quiver and, when it comes to it, does not open his mouth — endurance in its stillest form. The function is no sprint of heroes. It is remaining standing when it drags on.

The third string is the reason the others exist: the witness. "They shall make the many understand." By his knowledge the Servant justifies the many; by Joseph's insight a great people stays alive; by Daniel's book knowledge increases among those who search it. Take this string away and the instrument falls silent: a suffering, enduring believer without passing on is a precious human being, but not yet a wise one. The wise one is there for the many, or he is not there at all.

And the fourth string is of another material; it sounds from the far side: the glory. "The wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament — like the stars, forever and ever." The Servant shall be raised and lifted up and be very high; the man from the pit rides in the second chariot of Egypt; the man from the lions' pit shall rise to his destiny at the end of days. But this string is struck only after the other three, never before. The glory is no starting point and no wage paid out in advance; it is the crown upon a night endured — the song begins at "marred was his appearance" and only after that ends at "very high."

Four strings: suffering, endurance, witness, glory. Strike one and the other three sing along — the hallmark of the true instrument. And they are exactly the four of the song with which this chapter opened: the man of sorrows (the suffering), the lamb that does not open its mouth and the travail of the soul (the endurance), the knowledge by which he justifies many (the witness), and the "raised and lifted up and very high" (the glory). The four strings of the wise are the four strings of the Servant. And because that one Servant sees a seed, the instrument never stands alone: every wise one is one of the many servants who come forth from him. That is no longer a figure of speech; that is the definition. A wise one is someone who understands from above and passes on to the many, at the price that stands upon it, as long as it lasts — and who in doing so, whether he knows it or not, walks in the track of the Servant: through his travail, toward his glory.

That is why "wise one" in this book is never an honorary title, and whoever wears it as an honorary title has already lost it. It is a function — no, stricter: a verb, and verbs exist only as long as they are conjugated. This chapter gave the wise a face — and it turned out to be the face of the Servant. What still lies open is how a person becomes so: in which smelting-furnace the strings come up to tension, and who it is that keeps pulling at the circle.

For whoever reads this in those days.

Perhaps you began reading because you wanted to understand — because the time around you was growing dark and you sought light, for yourself. That is a good beginning; so Daniel began too, with his heart set on understanding. But know now what you have been given into your hands. Understanding in this book is never a possession; it is the first part of a breath, and whoever breathes in must breathe out or suffocate. The same word that says you shall understand says — with not a letter of difference — that understanding must be passed on to the many; the only thing added is an address. So look around you: the people who will soon no longer be able to buy or sell, the young ones who look on as they once looked at an old man on a rack, the weary one who can be sustained with a single word — those are the many, and you who understand are meant for them. Expect no honor for it. The function is no badge of honor but a service, and it runs — this is told you honestly, here, beforehand — along the way of the Servant: sword and flame stand in your job description, and endurance until a time that is fixed but not told to you. But there is something else in it, all the way at the end, and it is sworn with the same certainty: those who justify the many shall shine like the stars, forever and ever. You need not understand everything in order to pass it on; the greatest of all passed on what he did not understand, and his letter has reached you. So pass on what you have received. Receive, in order to pass on. For Someone looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see whether there is a wise one — one who seeks God. Let him find at least one today.