Divine attributes and powers as messianic titles in Isaiah 51.4–8 and cognate passages: A comparison of 1QIsa a and the Old Greek of Isaiah

Abstract

This article examines the interpretation of divine attributes and powers—such as ‘my righteousness’, ‘my salvation’, and ‘my justice’—as messianic titles in two early receptions of Isaiah: the Qumran Isaiah scroll (1QIsa^a) and the Old Greek (OG) translation. Building on John Chamberlain’s analysis of 1QIsa^a, which identifies personified divine qualities as designations for the servant-messiah, the study argues that the OG translator follows a comparable interpretive trajectory. Through strategies of intertextual alignment, lexical harmonization, and explicitation, the OG aligns these divine functions with the servant figure, treating them as titles that identify him as the agent of God’s eschatological purposes. In both corpora, variant pronouns and contextual shifts suggest that what are traditionally read as abstract attributes of God are instead understood as personal names for the servant. Both 1QIsa^a and the OG thus reflect an early apocalyptic messianic reconfiguration of Isaiah’s theology.