Suffering
This chapter analyzes the Scriptures in several hymns prescribed for Good Friday, whose central theme is Jesus’s suffering as prophesied by Isaiah in the Servant of the Lord songs, where the Messiah is portrayed as a “lamb led to the slaughter” (Isa 53:7; cf. Jer 11:19). Mary, depicted as a “distraught ewe,” participates in her son’s suffering. In the hymnographers’ view, “circling dogs” borrowed from Ps 22:16 (21:17) might be read as a hint at Jesus nailed on a wooden pole with his enemies circling the cross like roaming dogs. The central hymn, “The one who hanged the earth in the waters is today hanged on a tree,” likens the earth hanging within the primordial waters (Gen 1:2) to the one hanging on the cross and wrestling with the evil powers lurking in those waters.