Isaiah 41:8

The Lord turned from addressing the nations to speaking to Israel. God had chosen the Israelites for special blessing because He chose to love them more than other peoples. Election rests on love (cf. Deuteronomy 7:7-8). The reference to Jacob recalls the unworthiness of the Israelites, and the mention of Abraham the fact that Abraham loved God (Genesis 18:17-19), the proper response to electing love (cf. 1 John 4:19). Both references also connect to God’s covenant with the patriarchs. God had called Israel to be His servant. This is the first of 31 references to a servant of the Lord in Isaiah. [Note: See Allan A. MacRae, "The Servant of the Lord in Isaiah," Bibliotheca Sacra 121:483 (July 1964):218-27, for a study of the progressive revelation of the servant of the Lord in Isaiah. For a good overview of the title "Servant" in Isaiah, see Willis J. Beecher, "The Servant," in Classical Evangelical Essays in Old Testament Interpretation, pp. 187-204.]

"Old Testament slavery/servanthood must never be thought of on the model of the West Indian slavery of the Christian era. Mosaic legislation extended protection to the slave and-such was the institution-had to make provision for the slave who loved his master and would not leave slavery (Exodus 21:2 ff.). Such a ’slave’, as a matter of social status, may have been at the bottom of life’s heap, but in another sense he was as powerful as his master, for should he ever have been molested, it was the master the molester had to reckon with." [Note: Motyer, p. 312.]