"He said, It is a small thing that thou shouldst be my servant

To raise up the tribes of Jacob,

And to restore the preserved of Israel;

I will also make thee the light of the nations,

That my salvation may reach the ends of the earth.

Thus saith Jehovah, the Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One,
To him that is despised by men, abhorred by the people,
To the servant of tyrants:

Kings shall see, and stand up,

Princes, and they shall pay homage,

On account of Jehovah, who is faithful,

The Holy One of Israel, who hath chosen thee."

So in ch. liv. we have a glowing description of the glorious condition of the Jewish nation which was to follow the sufferings and work of the Servant of God, as described in ch. liii. So, in the chapters following, the same consequences are ascribed to his sufferings and work which, in the other prophets, are ascribed to a triumphant temporal king, to whom no sufferings are ascribed.

Hence, if it be assumed that the predictions of the prophets are objective, that is, that all the prophets had in view a particular historical person, whose actions and fortunes they miraculously foresaw, as if they were looking back upon history, then it will follow that the Servant of God in his humiliation and his sufferings designates the same person with the mighty potentate and victorious king of the other prophets. For the consequences of the work of both are the same. If, on the other hand, it be admitted, as the truth demands, that all the predictions of the Messianic king are subjective, merely setting forth the ideal of the prophetic mind, no one of the prophets pretending to have knowledge of the actions, life, or fortunes of any particular future person, then it will follow that the prophets may have supposed that the glorious future of the Jewish nation might be brought about by very different instrumentalities. Those prophets who lived under kings would naturally suppose that it would be brought about by a king. Malachi, who lived in the time of Nehemiah, might suppose that it would be effected by a prophet like Elijah, or one greater than Elijah. The author of the passage under consideration, Is. lii. 13 – liii., who lived near the close of the Jewish exile, when there was no king and no prospect of one, and when everything seemed to depend upon the virtue and piety of the Jewish people and their disposi

tion to return from exile, might suppose the better part of the Jewish nation, the Jewish church, the true Israel, to be the instrumentality by which the glorious future times would be introduced. One class of prophets might suppose the administration, the virtues, and the victories of a king to be the chief means of accomplishing the work, and another might attribute the same work to the self-denial, the virtues, and the sufferings of the better part of the nation. The conception of the latter class would be partly objective and partly ideal. The past condition of the Jewish church, the people of God, would be actual; but its future condition might be ideal in the mind of the prophet.

The question now recurs, What was the actual instrumentality which the prophet had in view in the passage quoted from Is. lii. 13-liii.? In other words, what is the meaning of the phrase Servant of God in that passage? Does it denote an individual, or a collective body? Now, in order to understand the expression, it is necessary, agreeably to universally acknowledged laws of interpretation, to consider the subject of the whole composition of which it forms a part. As it would be impossible to understand the meaning of any expression in one verse or chapter of an epistle of Paul without examining the use of the same expression in other parts of it, so it is impossible to know what is meant by the phrase Servant of God in Isaiah liii. without considering the use of the phrase in the whole composition of which that chapter is a part, and without considering the subject and design of the whole composition, and the connection of the passage under consideration with what immediately precedes and follows it. It is generally admitted that the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah form one continuous discourse or piece of composition, and relate principally to one subject. Those who think that it consists of three or four discourses,—1. xl.-xlviii.; 2. xlix.-lx.; 3. lxi. — lxiii. 6; 4. lxiii. 7 — lxvi., —yet maintain that they all relate to one principal subject, and were written by the same author, at nearly the same time. There has been some difference of opinion as to what this subject is. Three opinions have been supported by different commentators.

1. The first, the most obvious and the best supported, is, that the subject of the whole composition Is. xl.-lxvi. is the deliver

ance of the Jewish nation from the exile in Babylon, and the state of prosperity and glory which it was to enjoy soon after its return to its own land. The writer is supposed to have lived near the close of the exile at Babylon, and of course to have taken this time as his stand-point. His design was to encourage his contemporaries, to whom his discourse was addressed, to return to Palestine, by predicting their deliverance and their restoration to a high degree of prosperity and glory, so that religious light and Divine favor should through them be extended to all nations.

2. The opinion of Bishop Lowth and others coincides with, and establishes, the preceding view in part. He maintains that the first and main subject of the whole composition is the political restoration of the Jews from the captivity at Babylon, and the subsequent state of things in Judæa. But he thinks that the composition "is a plain instance of the mystical allegory, or double sense of prophecy." "The redemption from Babylon is clearly foretold; and at the same time is employed as an image to shadow out a redemption of an infinitely higher and more important nature." See Lowth's note on xl. 1. Lowth, like the supporters of the first opinion, makes the time of the exile the stand-point of the writer, and finds a reference to Christianity only in the allegorical sense. He also supposes, in many cases, a sudden transition from the meaning, which the common laws of language establish, to the allegorical sense, and from the latter to the former, which is in the highest degree arbitrary. Those who cannot admit an allegorical or double sense will be led by Lowth himself to the first-mentioned opinion.

3. Other interpreters, among whom the most celebrated is Vitringa, exclude entirely the meaning which the common laws of language give to the passage, and the principal subject which naturally presents itself to the reader, and suppose the whole passage to be an allegorical prediction of the deliverance of the world from the bondage of sin by Jesus Christ. These critics maintain that the prophet takes for his sole stand-point the wilderness of Judæa and the time of the preaching of John the Baptist. Besides the insuperable objection to this theory arising from the improbability that a Jewish prophet, overlooking his contemporaries and their circumstances, should choose his position in a period

and state of things which would not exist until many ages after he wrote, it is also to be observed that this theory of Vitringa supposes a use of language by the prophet which could not possibly be understood by his contemporaries, or even by the prophet himself. It does not extract the writer's meaning from his language, but puts one into it of which he could have had no conception. It is founded wholly on the allegorical or double sense.

I do not think it necessary, by a careful analysis of the passage (Is. xl.-lxvi.), to prove, what has been made evident by Bishop Lowth, that the return of the Jews from the captivity at Babylon and the glorious condition of the Jewish nation, and through it of the world, is what was in the prophet's mind. Whoever rejects mystical and allegorical senses must come to this conclusion.

The design of the discourse under consideration appears to me equally evident with the main subject of it. It was to raise the spirits of the Jewish people in exile, to awaken in them a desire to return to their native land, to inspire them with courage and resolution to overcome the obstacles which were in the way, and to induce them to abandon the sins which prevented the Divine favor.

It may be supposed, as seems to be implied in the exhortations of the prophet, that among the Jews at Babylon there was an opposing party of the irreligious and idolatrous, who thought they might as well remain in Babylonia where they were; that there was another portion who were indolent or indifferent, and needed to be aroused; and that only the remaining portion, perhaps a minority, consisted of the true and faithful Israelites who sighed for the enjoyment of their religious privileges in their native land. Such being the state of things among the exiles, it was evidently the design of the prophet to say a word in season to the different classes of them, in order to qualify them for a return from exile, to stir them up to exertion, and to inspire them with confidence in Jehovah.

The prophecy or discourse under consideration, Is. xl. – lxvi., is one of the most interesting in the Old Testament. If it do not contain, strictly speaking, the sublimest poetry, it does at least contain the loftiest eloquence, and the most spiritual and comprehensive views of religion, which are to be found in any of the sacred

books before Christ. It is one incessant stream of fervent and stirring thoughts. But it has been much misunderstood on account of want of attention to the subject and design of the writer, and especially on account of the false supposition that, instead of addressing his contemporary exiles at Babylon, he was writing to men in general in all subsequent ages.

In this discourse there is frequent mention of a "Servant of God" who had, and was to have, great influence in the accomplishment of the glorious things predicted for the Jewish nation and the world. Now as ch. liii. forms a component of this whole discourse, which has one main subject and design, how evident is it that it can only be understood by viewing it in its connection with the discourse of which it forms a part! If chapters lii. and liv. relate to the Jewish nation, to its deliverance from exile, and to its expansion and prosperity, how contrary is it to all just laws of interpretation to suppose that ch. liii. relates to an entirely different subject viz. the spiritual deliverance of those who were not the Jewish nation! Especially in regard to the phrase "Ser vant of God," how absurd is it to suppose that it means one thing in ch. lii. 13 – liii., and altogether another in all the other parts of the discourse where it occurs!

In regard to the meaning of the phrase itself, independent of any particular application, it may denote one who serves the Lord with the obedience of his heart and life, i. e. a pious and good man; or it may be applied in an official sense to one who is raised up by the Deity for the accomplishment of a particular work. I apprehend that the phrase is employed in the passages we are about to examine in both these senses united. The "Servant of God" denotes one truly devoted to the service of God, and one employed by God for the accomplishment of his pur poses.

With these preliminary remarks let us now examine the use of the phrase "Servant of God” in every place where it occurs in Is. xl. - lxvi., in order to see what meaning the usus loquendi of the writer requires it to have in lii. 13 – liii.

The first passage in which the phrase occurs, is in ch. xli. 8– 17, where it is so closely defined that there can be no mistake about its meaning: