They thought, according to what I have read, the Suffering Servant referred to the experiences of exile, then restoration.
The idea I was saying is:
God fulfills prophecies the way God fulfills prophecies. It is possible to have an entire concept that makes sense put together, but that doesn't mean that's the way God reads it.
God is the master, and we are here, doing his will, if we love him. You can be sure He will fulfill the prophecies exactly the way he has in mind, and don't be surprised if that's not exactly the way others thought it ought to have been done.
And just who is in a position to know that what is transpiring before them or what is reported to have transpired IS or WAS God fulfilling this or that prophecy or if it is God doing anything at all? If a concept makes sense, you wrote, that doesn't mean God reads it that way. By the same token, something might be happening that we humans (including those who believe in "him" and love "him") interpret a certain way whereas God might not understand it that way at all. If God has a different understanding, who is going to set him or herself up as telling the rest of us accurately what God's understanding IS, as "he" plays out a fulfillment of prophecy that is different than any human had expected. As far as I'm concerned, maybe God has still not fulfilled prophecies of the messiah and all that the New Testament says about what was fulfilled is nothing more than humans thinking they understood what went down and just interpreting it all their own, mistaken way.