Who is God’s servant in Isaiah 49:1-12?
 God calls and names him before he is born, makes his mouth like a sword, and will be glorified in him. God uses the servant to bring the nation of Israel back to Himself, to be a light of salvation to all the world, to be a covenant, and to release prisoners. There is plenty of overlap between this description and that of Isaiah 42, where we identified the servant as the Messiah. The New Testament finds the servant’s attributes in Jesus Christ, in both comings: Matt. 1:21, John 8:12, John 9:5, John 17:1-5, Rev. 1:16, Rev. 2:16, Rev. 19:15.
 If this servant is the Messiah, why does God call Him “Israel” here (Isa. 49:3)?
 Earlier we found that in this section of Isaiah, God’s servant “Israel/Jacob” refers to the nation. But here the name “Israel” (without a parallel reference to “Jacob”) clearly applies to the individual servant, who restores the nation to God (Isa. 49:5). The individual servant has become the ideal embodiment or representative of the nation whose failure has compromised its use of the name “Israel” (Isa. 48:1).
 What new element appears here? Isa. 49:4, 7.
 Here is the first intimation of the difficulty involved in the servant’s task. He laments, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity” (Isa. 49:4, NRSV), an idea echoed in Daniel 9:26: “an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing” (NRSV). But he clings to faith: “Yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God” (Isa. 49:4, NRSV). J. Alec Motyer observes: “Thus, Isaiah foresaw a Servant with a real human nature, tested like we are and proving himself to be the author and perfecter of the way of faith, a real, personal faith that can still say my God when nothing any longer seems worthwhile.” — The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1993), p. 387.
 Isaiah 49:7 is startling. The servant is “deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers,” but the Lord says to him: “Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you” (NRSV).