we can see the immense significance, to our prophet, of Cyrus. He speaks of him in language that sounds as extravagant as it is daring, showering upon him promises the most lavish and titles the most lofty, like Jehovah's Shepherd or Friend, and Anointed (44: 28; 45: 1) titles which, pronounced as they were upon a foreigner, seem to have stirred the prophet's narrow-hearted countrymen to incredulity and resentment (45:9 ff.). But it is for Israel's sake that Cyrus has been called and equipped to do his mighty work of overthrowing Babylon : primarily for Israel's sake, that she may be emancipated and thus enjoy the great experience of redemption (45:4), but ultimately for the sake of the whole world that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none beside me" (45:6). The goal of history is that every knee shall bow to Jehovah (45: 23), and every soul confess with joy that she belongs to him (445). Thus Israel is Jehovah's Servant, for her mission is to bring the round world to a knowledge of him; and Cyrus is his Anointed or Messiah, for it is through him that Israel is set free, thus winning her historic experience of redemption.

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With such a God, then, who has shown both his power and his love for her by raising up Cyrus, why should Israel be depressed or afraid? She is indeed dull and irresponsive, blind to the signs of the times, and deaf to the sound of the divine footsteps in contemporary history (42: 18); and what she needs to come back to the point from which we started is a vision of God, of his omnipotence and his love. This it is that will comfort (40: 1), encourage, nerve her, if only she can be persuaded to believe it. "Fear not" is rung out by the prophet again and again (44:2, 8; 54:4). Jehovah is mighty, and as kind and tender as he is mighty (54: 8), caring for Israel as a shepherd for his lambs (40: 11), pitying her more than a mother her babe (49: 15), sustaining her with a love that shall outlive the mightiest and most permanent things in

the universe (54: 10). Of these two things, then, the prophet very earnestly seeks to convince his despondent people of God and of their high destiny, which is to bring the world to God. This destiny constitutes Israel in a peculiar sense his Servant.

III. THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH

The figure of the Servant his mission, his experience, and his ultimate destiny is sketched more particularly in four songs, 42:1-4; 49: 1-6; 50:4-9; and 52:1353 12, which it has of late become customary to isolate from the body of the poem and consider independently. These songs reveal a certain progressive development in their idea of the Servant. The first (42: 1-4) concentrates attention upon his mission, which is to bring the true religion to the nations of the world, and upon the kind and unobtrusive way in which he is to accomplish it. The second (49 1-6) touches upon his divine equipment for that mission, and upon the sorrow and seeming futility which has thus far attended his efforts (49: 4). The third (50:4-9) describes more explicitly the sorrow and the opposition he had to endure (50: 6), but sets over against this his invincible faith in God and his splendid confidence in the ultimate triumph of the cause he represents. The climax of the description is reached in the fourth song (5213-53:12), which elaborates with very striking concrete detail the sufferings of the Servant, and shows him in the end crowned with glory and honor.

Who is this Servant? This question has been hotly debated in recent years, and the answers to it divide the critical camp. After the argument of the previous chapter, it is most natural to suppose that Israel is the Servant, as, indeed, in the body of the prophecy he is repeatedly and unambiguously called (cf. 41: 8; 44: 1, 21; 45:4; 48:20). But for several reasons objection has been taken to this view. The temper of the songs differs, it is argued, from

that of the prophecy. The prophecy brings before us the real Israel, irresponsive, blind, and deaf (42:18 ff.); the Servant of the songs is an exalted figure to whom this description would be quite inappropriate. The Servant of the songs suffers for sins that were not his own (53 : 4−6); in the prophecy it is for her own sins that Israel suffers (402). In the prophecy, the foreign nations are looked upon with less generous and sympathetic eyes the impending downfall of Babylon, for example, is celebrated in a scornful elegy (Chap. 47); in the songs, the Servant is to be a light to the Gentiles, and to carry the salvation of Jehovah to the end of the earth (49:6). In general, the Servant of the songs is supremely interested in the heathen; in the prophecy, Israel is more interested in herself, especially in Chaps. 49-55, where attention gathers largely upon the coming welfare and glory of Zion.

For these and other reasons it has been maintained by many scholars that the Servant of the songs cannot be the Israel of the prophecy, the actual historical Israel, with her blindness and her sin; but that, if the term be collective at all, it must refer either to ideal Israel — Israel, not as she is in reality, but as she is in the purpose of God and in the light of her mission and destiny- or to the group of faithful souls, in whom this ideal found its concrete embodiment. Others deny the collective application in the songs altogether, and regard the Servant there as an individual. Some encouragement has been given to this latter view by two circumstances. (1) Once or twice1 the Servant seems to be expressly distinguished from Israel for example, in 49: 5 f., where, according to the common English translation, his primary task is "to bring Jacob again to Jehovah," "to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel.” But these verses 2 can be fairly read to imply no more than that the restoration of Israel is

1 In 53:8 for "transgression of my people," we should perhaps read either "for our transgressions" or "for the transgression of the peoples." The change in Hebrew would be exceedingly simple. 2 See the commentary.

to be effected by Jehovah; and then Israel, thus restored by him, is to be a light to the Gentiles. (2) Again, the description of the Servant, especially in Chap. 53, is so highly individualized, it is argued, as to necessitate an individual interpretation, the collective reference being unnatural and improbable, if not altogether impossible; and Jehoiachin, Zerubbabel, some Messianic king, have been thought of. But here we have to remember how much more easy personification has always been to the Oriental than to us, and how much more ready he is to work out in minute detail a personification upon which once he has entered. "The whole head is sick," says Isaiah, of Judah, "and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and festering sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with oil" (1 : 5 f.); and Ezekiel (Chaps. 16 and 23) describes the national careers of Israel and Judah in terms of the experience of two unfaithful women, elaborating his comparison with detail of the most painfully concrete kind. The fact, then, that the description of the Servant is so highly individualized is no proof that he is an individual; consequently we are free to consider the possibility of his being the people — Israel.

It is something in favor of this interpretation that everywhere in the body of the prophecy the Servant is undoubtedly Israel (cf. 41:8). Once even in the songs, the Servant is explicitly addressed as Israel (49:3), and the Greek version of 42: 1 reads "Jacob my servant" and "Israel my chosen." Even if these be all late insertions, they are at any rate evidence for the view that the servant was very early regarded as Israel. The context of the songs strongly suggests that they are integral to the prophecy, and that their theme is the same. 42 : 6, “I will give thee for a light of the Gentiles," clearly points back to the first song (42:1-4); and 52: 10, "The LORD hath made bare his holy arm,' as clearly prepares the way for the last (52:13-53:12; cf. 53: 1, "to whom hath the

arm of the LORD been revealed ?"). Cross references between the songs and the prophecy are numerous; and, in cases where the phraseology is almost identical, it is most natural to interpret the possibly ambiguous references of the songs by the unambiguous references of the prophecy. For example,

Attend unto me, O my people,

And give ear unto me, O my nation;1
For a law shall go forth from me,

And my judgement for a light of the peoples (51:4). Here the allusion to the first song (42: 1-4) is unmistakable. Here (in 51:4) it is the people who are addressed; why not then also in 42: 1-4? So also 51: 8, admittedly addressed to the people (cf. vs. 7), unmistakably recalls 50:9, where the Servant speaks.

Another argument which makes strongly for the collective and against the individual interpretation is the large outlook of the passages which describe the work the Servant is commissioned to do, and the impression made by his sufferings and triumph. His mission is to the world, and it is whole nations that are astonished at his humiliation and exaltation (52: 14 f.). All this seems to point most naturally to experiences upon a national scale; it is the fortunes of a people rather than of an individual that are watched by the world. Further, the function of the Servant in bringing religion and justice to the Gentiles (42: 14) is curiously paralleled by the noble prophecy in 2: 2-4, which pictures the nations as flocking for justice to Jerusalem. All these considerations strongly suggest that in the songs, as in the prophecy, the Servant is Israel. The outlook in both upon the world is much the same; there is only a difference in emphasis. Certainly in the prophecy - especially towards the close - Zion and her

1 Even if, with Duhm, Cheyne, Marti, Box, we delete O my nation as metrically superfluous, and as a corruption of the two preceding Hebrew words, the argument is unaffected. O my people in the first clause stands, and the context shows that the address is to Israel (vss. I, 7).