11. Because of the labour of his soul he shall behold; By his knowledge shall he, the righteous one, my servant, justify many, And shall bear their sins. 12. Therefore will I allot to him the mighty, And he shall distribute the strong as a spoil; As a reward, because he gave up his life unto death, PART III. ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST THE MESSIANIC INTERPRE TATION. It now remains, first, to disprove the arguments against the Messianic interpretation; secondly, to bring forward the arguments in favour of this exposition; and, thirdly, to show that no interpretation other than the Messianic, is admissible. § 1. Arguments against the Messianic Interpretation considered. The arguments against the Messianic interpretation we borrow from Gesenius, who has collected every thing at all plausible, which earlier writers, and especially the Jews, have ever alleged.* I. "Though there is here a great similarity in the condition of the innocent sufferer to that of Christ, yet there is much also, which will not apply to him." All that Gesenius here alleges has already been set aside in our exposition; with this exception only, that according to c. 52: 15, kings are to pay homage to the servant of God in person. This, however, refutes itself; for this passage no more contains any thing of a personal kind, than the parallel one in c. 49: 7. But that kings have * A refutation of the arguments employed by Ammon in his Bibl. Theol. II. p. 40 sq. may be found in Jahn, 1. c. p. 63. These arguments are probably now rejected by the author himself. bowed their knees before the glorified Messiah, and still continue to do so, who can deny, without casting reproach upon all history? Thus this argument is as little tenable, as the remark of Ábarbanel on v. 10, from which this argument seems to have been moulded: "The verb denotes a seeing which belongs to a man who is alive." yet II. "The name, servant of God, is never employed to designate the Messiah." Admitting this assertion to be correct, still it would prove nothing. The appellation, servant of Jehovah, designates in a more limited sense, as we have already seen, every one who is called to the execution of any divine purpose, one who stands in a similar relation to God, as those employed in the service of a court, called among the Hebrews , do, to earthly kings. Moses is called "the servant of The Jehovah," Num. 12: 7. Joshua also, Judg. 2: 8. Every Israelitish king was a servant of Jehovah; David is not unfrequently so called, e. g. Ps. 89: 21. Eliakim bears this name, c. 22: 20. The prophet names himself thus, c. 20: 3. Jewish people also, in so far as it was destined to maintain the knowledge and worship of the true God, has this name in many passages. It is given to the angels in Job 4: 18, where 17, his servants, stands in parallelism with 1, his messengers. Nebuchadnezzar himself is called, in Jer. 25: 9. 27: 6, a servant of Jehovah, in so far as he was an instrument in the hand of God, though without his own knowledge and will. It is merely incidental, that Cyrus does not bear this name; all the properties of a servant of God are attributed to him. Thus we can perceive no ground, whatever, why the Messiah, the great messenger of God,† he who, having assumed the form of a servant, was obedient to God even unto death,‡ who came, not to do his own will, but the will of him who had sent him, might not receive this appellation; since he was strictly that which the appellation designates-an appellation, which cannot at all be regarded as the proper name of an individual rank or class, or of an individual person; but is common to all the servants and instruments of God. In addition to all this, the assertion itself is by no means correct. The Messiah actually bears this name in Zech. 3: 8, a passage which is unanimously explained as referring to the Messiah. "I will bring forward my servant Tse * 1727 172, dum adhuc vivit et superstes est. .1 :3 .Mal מַלְאָכִי f Phil. 1: 7. § John 6: 38. VOL. II. No. 7. 65 mah ()," says God; which the Chaldee explains by an, Messiam et revelabitur.* He bears this name also, in c. 42: 1. 49: 3, 6. 50: 10; consequently in nearly all the Messianic predictions in the second part of Isaiah. III. "The idea of a suffering and atoning Messiah is foreign to the Old Testament, and even stands in contradiction to its prevailing representations; even admitting it to have been entertained by some about the time of Christ." This argument also is borrowed from the Jews. It is sufficiently refuted by what has been said in the general introduction to this work. The argument can never be valid, so long as the authority of Christ holds good in the church; for he himself says, that all his sufferings were foretold in the writings of the Old Testament, and explains to his disciples the predictions which relate to it. Besides, if the idea of a suffering and atoning Messiah occurred in no other passage of the Old Testament, still this would prove nothing. We cannot justly come to the conclusion a priori, that God might not impart to an individual prophet, who showed himself adapted to this very revelation, illumination on a particular subject which he concealed from others. It is indeed true, that in the Messianic predictions, the prophetic and regal office of Christ is more frequently described, than the sacerdotal. The great mass of the people, who were to be retained by the Messianic predictions in an adherence to Jehovah, even though it were but an external one, were as little capable of comprehending this doctrine, as were even the apostles, previous to the out-pouring of the Spirit; while for the pious, in whose hearts this doctrine found a welcome reception, the intimations given (and which are collected in the place referred to) were sufficient. We here, in addition to c. 50, refer to the passage in c. 11: 1, which is explained even by Gesenius as relating to the Messiah; where the coming of the Messiah in a state of humiliation, is indicated (as also in 53: 2) by the figure of a slender shoot springing up from the decayed stock of Jesse. But it is difficult to conceive, in what the alleged contradiction between the doctrine of the suffering Messiah and the doctrine of the glorified Messiah, can consist. Even if there were a seeming contradiction, still it would be removed by the history of Christ. Indeed, the suffering appears in the prediction before us, as the Comp. Rosenmüller ad h. 1. זהו מלך,Kimchi-הא עבדי משיחא,Where the Chaldee explains + . המשיח very condition of the glorification; the latter as a consequence and reward of the former. Even here, too, the Messiah appears as a king, to whom all earthly kings with their people will become subject.-The whole assertion proceeds upon the false idea, that each individual Messianic prediction must contain a full picture of the Messiah; whereas, on the contrary, these various prophecies mutually supply each other, and for the most part exhibit Christ to us, each only in a single point of view. IV. "In the Messianic exposition, every thing is taken as future; but this, the language will not admit. The suffering, the being despised, and the death of the servant of God, are here described throughout as past; for every thing in c. 53: 1-10, is expressed in the praeter. The exaltation only appears as future, and is expressed by futures. Thus the writer stands between the suffering and the exaltation, and declares that he who has hitherto suffered, shall hereafter be exalted. The last only is still impending." The answer to this has already been given in the note on c. 52: 13.* The position of the prophet is not an historical, but a prophetic one. The prophetic view moreover was not an external one, but an internal; and the prophets describe events, as they follow one another in this view. That which forms the condition, is expressed in the present or past; that which forms the consequence is expressed in the future. Compare the general introductory remarks on the second part of Isaiah.† As the prophet there took his position in the Babylonish exile, and thence viewed the deliverance as future; so he here takes his stand between the suffering and the exaltation of the Messiah. From this point, the suffering appears to him as past; the exaltation, as future. In this way only could he distinguish the condition and the consequence from each other, and exhibit the suffering and the exaltation in their proper relation. Moreover it is by no means true, that the prophet always represents the suffering as past, and speaks of it in the praeter. In some passages he has involuntarily passed from the prophetic position into the historical, and has used the future where he speaks of the suffering. So v. 7, пp; v. 8, ni; v. 10, n; and according to the explanation of Gesenius, v. 12, 4. * See page 331 above. † See Bibl. Repos. Vol. I. p. 705 sq. The ancient translators also have not taken these praeters as designating the real past; but have frequently rendered them by futures. So the Seventy v. 14, txoriσortai--άdoso. Aquila and Theodotion v. 2, ἀναβήσεται. On the contrary, he makes use of the praeter N in v. 12, with respect to the future state of exaltation.* Compare on bo, v. 11. V. "It is perfectly evident, that the servant of God here, is the same person spoken of in the parallel passages, c. 42: 1–7. 49: 1-9. 50: 4-11.61:1-3. But in these passages there occurs still much more, which cannot be true of Christ." We here fully agree with our opponents, that the subject of this passage must be one and the same with that of the other passages designated; and we must with them complain of the mischievous inconsistency of those interpreters, who in those passages find the Messiah, but in the present one, a different subject. But we believe it to have been sufficiently demonstrated in our comments on those passages, that all which Gesenius alleges from them as incompatible with the Messianic exposition, either depends upon a false interpretation, which is too literal and mistakes the figurative character of prophetic language; or else, if what be alleges be correct, it militates still much more against the exposition of Gesenius himself. E. g. how can the fact, that the Messiah is introduced in some of the designated passages as speaking, occasion any difficulty to him, according to whose own exposition likewise a person is introduced as speaking? and that too not a real, but an imaginary person, the collective body or whole number of the prophets? VI. "In what precedes and follows, the prophet speaks of the restoration of the state after the exile. Now it was quite impossible, that a reader of the prophecy at that time, should obtain from it the idea of a Redeemer who was to be expected in remote futurity." But this was not necessary. The only point of importance was, that the prophet and his hearers should, as the condition of their salvation, become acquainted with the future suffering of the great servant of God, and should embrace the future Redeemer with the same love, with which we ought now to embrace him after that he has appeared. This was suf ficient; the when they needed not to know, as indeed the nature of prophetic vision did not admit of their knowing it. Without detriment to the reality, they might ever suppose that the great event would take place immediately after the deliverance from The same thing is found also in the parallel passage c. 49: 8. Gesenius himself there remarks: "As the deliverance is still impending, the praeters and 7 cannot well be otherwise under stood than as futures." |