CLARK'S 
 
 FOREIGN 
 
 THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 NEW SEEIES. 
 VOL. IX. 
 
 VOL. IL 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 T. & T. CLAEK, 38, GEORGE STREET; 
 
 LONDON : J. GLADDING J WARD AND CO. ; AND JACKSON AND WALFORD. 
 DUBLIN: JOHN ROBERTSON. 
 
 MDCCCLXI. 
 
CHRISTOLOGY 
 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 COMMENTARY ON THE MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS. 
 
 y BT 
 
 E. W. HENGSTENBERG, 
 
 DR. AHT> PROF. OF THEOL. IN BERLIN. 
 
 SECOND EDITION GREATLY IMPROVED. 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN 
 
 BY 
 
 THE EEV. THEOD. M E Y E K, 
 
 HEBREW TUTOR IN THE NEW COLLEGE, EDINBUBGH. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 
 T. & T. CLAEK, 38 GEOEGE STEEET. 
 
 LONDON : HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. ; SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO. : 
 
 WARD AND CO. ; JACKSON AND WALFORD, ETC. DUBLIN : 
 
 JOHN ROBERTSON, AND HODGES AND SMITH. 
 
 DCCCLXI. 
 
NOTICE. 
 
 Tliis Work is copyriijht in this country by arranyemcnt with the Author. 
 
LIST OF COiXTENTS, 
 
 Messianic Predictions in the Prophets. 
 The Prophet Isaiah. 
 
 General Preliminary Remarks, ..... 1 
 
 Chap, ii.— iv. — The Sprout of the Lord, .... 10 
 
 Chap. vii. — Immanuel, ...... 26 
 
 Chap. viii. 23 — ix. 6 — Unto us a Child is born, ... 66 
 
 Chap. ix. 1-7, ........ lb 
 
 Chap, xi., xii. — The Twig of Jesse, ..... 94 
 
 On Matthew ii. 23, . . . . . . . 106 
 
 Chap, xii., ........ 133 
 
 Chaps, xiii. 1 — xir. 27, ...... 135 
 
 Chaps, xvii., xviii., ....... 137 
 
 Chap, xix., ........ 141 
 
 Chap, xxiii. — The Burden upon Tyre, . . . .146 
 
 Chaps, xxiv. — xxvii., ...... 149 
 
 Chaps, xxviii. — xxxiii., . . . . . .154 
 
 Chap. XXXV., . . . . . . .158 
 
 General Preliminary Remarks on Chaps, xl. — Ixvi., . . 163 
 
 Chap. xlii. 1-9, ....... 196 
 
 Chap. xlix. 1-9, . . . . . , . 226 
 
 Chap. 1. 4-11, . . . . . . . 246 
 
 Chap. Ii. 16, . . . . . . .256 
 
 Chaps, lii. 13 — liii. 12, ...... 259 
 
 I. History of the Interpretation. 
 
 A. With the Jews, ...... 311 
 
 B. History of the Interpretation with the Christians, . . 319 
 
 II. The Arguments against the Messianic Interpretation, . . 327 
 
 III. The Arguments in favour of the Messianic Interpretation, . 330 
 
 IV. Examination of the Non-Messianic Interpretation, . . 334 
 Chap. Iv. 1-5, ....... 343 
 
 Chap. Ixi. 1-3, ....... 351 
 
 The Prophet Zephaniah, . . . . . .356 
 
 The Prophet Jeremiah. 
 
 General Preliminary Remarks, ..... 362 
 
 Chap. iii. 14-17, ....... 373 
 
 Chap, xxiii. 1-8, . . . . . . . 3<)8 
 
 Chap. xxxi. 31-40, ....... 424 
 
 Chap, xxxiii. 14-26, ....... 4iS> 
 
THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 
 
 GENERAL PEELIMINABY EEMARKS. 
 
 Isaiah is the principal prophetical figure in the first period of 
 canonical prophetism, i.e., the Assyrian period, just as Jeremiah 
 is in the second, i.e., the Babylonian. With Isaiah are connected 
 in the kingdom of Judah : Joel, Obadiah, and Micah ; in the 
 kingdom of Isi-ael: Hosea, Amos, and Jonah. 
 
 The name "Isaiah" signifies the "Salvation of the Lord." 
 In this name we have the key-note of his prophecies, just as the 
 name Jeremiah : " The Lord casts down," indicates the nature 
 of his prophecies, in which the prevailing element is entirely of a 
 threatening character. That the proclamation of salvation oc- 
 cupies a very prominent place in Isaiah, was seen even by the 
 Fathers of the Church. Jerome says: "I shall expound Isaiah 
 in such a manner that he shall appear not as a prophet only, but 
 as an Evangelist and an Apostle;" and in another passage: 
 " Isaiah seems to me to have uttered not a prophecy but a Gos- 
 pel." And Augustine says, DeCiv. Dei, 18, c. 2 9, that, according 
 to the opinion of many, Isaiah, on account of his numerous pro- 
 phecies of Christ and the Church, deserved the name of an Evan- 
 gelist rather than that of a Prophet. When, after his conversion, 
 Augustine applied to Amhrose with the question, which among 
 the Sacred Books he should read in preference to all others, he 
 proposed to him Isaiah, "because before all others it was he who 
 had more openly declared the Gospel and the calling of the 
 Gentiles." {Aug. Conf. ix. 5.) With the Fathers of the Church 
 Luther coincides. He says in commendation of Isaiah: "He 
 is full of loving, comforting, cheering words for all poor con- 
 sciences, and wretched, afilicted hearts." Of course, there is in 
 Isaiah no want of severe reproofs and threatenings. If it were 
 
 A 
 
2 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 otherwise, he would have gone beyond tlie boundary by which 
 true prophetism is separated from false. "There is in it," as 
 Luther says, "enough of threatenings and terrors against the 
 hardened, haughty, obdurate heads of the wicked, if it might be 
 of some use." But the threatenings never form the close in 
 Isaiah ; they always at last run out into the promise ; and while, 
 for example, in the great majority of Jeremiah's j)rophecies, the 
 promise, which cannot be wanting in any true prophet, iacom- 
 moidy only short, and hinted at, sometimes consisting only of 
 words which are thrown into the midst of the several threaten- 
 ings, e. g., iv. 27 : "Yet will I not make a full end," — in Isaiah 
 the stream of consolation flows in the richest fulness. .The pro- 
 mise absolutely prevails in the second part, from chap. xl. — Ixvi. 
 The reason of this peculiarity is to be sought for chiefly in the 
 historical circumstances. Isaiah lived at a time in which, 
 in the kingdom of Judah, the corruption was far from having 
 ah'eady reached its greatest height, — in which there still existed, 
 in that kingdom, a numerous " election" which gathered round 
 the prophet as their spiritual centre. With a view to this circle, 
 Isaiah utters the words: "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people." 
 The contemporary prophets of the kingdom of the ten tribes, 
 which was poisoned in its very first origin, found a different state 
 of thing's; the field there was already ripe for the harvest of 
 judgment. And at the time of Jeremiah, Judah had become like 
 her apostate sister. Atthat time itwasnot so much needed to com- 
 fort the miserable, as to terrify sinners in their security. It was 
 only after the wrath of God had manifested itself in deeds, only- 
 after the judgment of God had been executed upon Jerusalem, or 
 was immediately at hand, — it was only then that, in Jeremiah, and 
 so in Ezekiel also, the stream of promise broke forth without 
 hinderance. 
 
 Chronology is, throughout, the principle according to which 
 the Prophecies of Isaiah are aiTanged. In the first six chapters, 
 we obtain a survey of the Prophet's ministry under Uzziali and 
 Jotham. Chaj). vii. to x. 4 belongs to the time of Ahaz. From 
 chap. X. 4 to the close of chap. xxxv. every thing belongs to the 
 time of the Assyrian invasion in the fourteenth yearof Hezekiah ; 
 in the face of which invasion the prophetic gift of Isaiah was dis- 
 played as it had never been before. The section, chap, xxxvi. — 
 xxxix, furnLshes us with the historical commentary on the pre- 
 
THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 3 
 
 ceding prophecies from the Assyrian period, and forms, at the 
 same time, the transition to the second part, wliich still belongs 
 to the same period, and the starting point of which is Judah s 
 deliverance from Asshur. In this most remarkable year of the 
 Prophet's life — a year rich in the manifestation of God's glory in 
 judgment and mercy — his prophecy flowed out in full streams, 
 and spread to every side. Not the destinies of Judah only, but 
 those of the Gentile nations also are drawn within its sphere. The 
 Prophet does not confine himself to the events immediately at 
 hand, but in his ecstatic state, the state of an elevated, and, as it 
 were, armed consciousness, in which he was during this whole 
 period, his eye looks into the farthest distances. He sees, espe- 
 cially, that, at some future period, the Babylonian power, which 
 began, even in his time, to germinate, would take the place of the 
 Assyrian, — that, like it, it would find the field of Judah white for 
 the harvest, — that, for this oppressor of the world, destruction is 
 prepared by Koresh (Cyrus), the conqueror from the East, and 
 that he will liberate the people from their exile ; and, at the close 
 of the development, he beholds the Saviour of the world, whose 
 image he depicts in the most glowing colours. 
 
 Isaiah has especialty brought out the view of the Prophetic 
 and Priestly oflices of Christ, while in the former prophecies it was 
 almost alone the Kingly ofiice which appeared ; it is onlyinDeut. 
 xviii. that the Prophetic ofiice, and in Ps. ex. that the Priestly 
 ofiice, is pointed at. Of the two states of Christ, it is the doctrine 
 of the state of humiliation, the doctrine of the sufiering Christ, 
 which here meets us, while formerly it was the state of exaltation 
 which was prominently brought before us, — although Isaiah too 
 can very well describe it when it is necessary to meet the fears 
 regarding the destruction of the Theocracy by the assaults of the 
 powerful heathen nations. The fii'st attempt at a description of 
 the humbled, sufiering, and expiating Christ, is found in chap, 
 xi. 1. The real seat of this proclamation is, however, in the 
 second part, v/hich is destined more for' the election, than for the 
 whole nation. In chap. xlii. we meet the servant of God, who, 
 as a Saviour meek and lowly in heart, does not break the bruised 
 reed, nor quench the smoking fiax, and by this merciful love 
 establishes righteousness on the whole earth. In chap, xlix., the 
 Prophet describes how the covenant-people requite with in- 
 gratitude the faithful labours of the Servant of God, but that 
 
4 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 tbe Lord, to recompense Him for the obstinacy of Israel, gives 
 Him the Gentiles for an inheritance. In chap. 1. we have 
 presented to us that avspect of the sufferings of the Servant of 
 God which is common to Christ and His people — viz., how, 
 in fulfilling His calling. He offered His back to the smiters, and 
 did not hide His face from shame and spitting. Then, finally, 
 in chap, liii. — that culminating point of the prophecy of the 
 Old Testament — Christ is placed before our eyes in His highest 
 work, in His atoning and \ncai'ious suffering, as the truth of 
 both the Old Testament high-priest, and the Old Testament sin- 
 offering. 
 
 There are still the following Messianic features which are 
 peculiar to Isaiah. A clear Old Testament witness for the 
 divinity of Christ is ofiered by chap. ix. 5 (G) ; the birth by a 
 virgin, closely connected with His divinity, is announced in chap, 
 vii. 14; according to chap. viii. 23 (ix. 1.) Galilee, and, in general, 
 the country surrounding the Sea of Gennesareth, being that 
 part of the country which hitherto had cliiefly been covered with 
 disgTace, are, in a very special manner, to be honoured by the 
 a])j)earance of the Saviour, who shall come to have mercy upon 
 the miserable, and to seek that which was lost. Isaiah has, fur- 
 ther, first taught that, by the redemption, the consequences of 
 the Fall would disappear in the irrational creation also, and that 
 it should return to paradisaic innocence, chap. xi. 6 — 9. He 
 has first announced to the people of God the glorious truth, that 
 death, as it had not existed in the beginning, should, at the end 
 also, be expelled, chap. xxv. 8 ; xxvi. 1 9. The healing powers 
 which by Christ should be imparted to miserable mankind, 
 Isaiah has described in chap xxxv. in words, which by the fulfil- 
 ment have, in a remarkable manner, been confirmed. 
 
 Let us endeavour to form, from the single scattered features 
 which occur in the prophecies of Isaiah, a comprehensive view of 
 his prospects into the future. 
 
 The announcement first uttered by Moses of an impending 
 exile of the people, and desolation of the country, is brought 
 before us by Isaiah in the first six chapters, in the prophecies 
 belonging to the time of L^zziah and Jotham, at which the 
 future had not yet been so clearly laid open before the Pro- 
 phet as it was at a later period, at the time of Ahaz, and, very 
 especially, in the fourteenth year of Hezckiah. A reference to 
 
THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 5 
 
 the respective announcements of the Pentateuch is found in 
 chap, xxxvii. 26, where, in opposition to the imagination of the 
 King of Asshur, that, by his own power, he had penetrated as a 
 conqueror as far as Judah, Isaiah asks him whether he had not 
 heard that the Lord, long ago and from ancient times, had formed 
 such a resolution regarding His people. These words can he 
 referred only tothethreatenings of the Pentateuch,which a short- 
 sighted criticism endeavoured to ascrilje to a far later period, 
 without considering that the germ of this knowledge of the 
 future is found in the Decalogue also, the genuineness of which 
 is, at present, almost unanimously conceded: "In order that 
 thy (Israel's) days may be long in the land which the Lord thy 
 God giveth thee." 
 
 In the solemnly introduced short summary of the history of 
 the covenant-people, in chap, vi., there is, after the announce- 
 ment of the impending complete desolation of the country and 
 the carrying away of its inhabitants in vers. 11, 12, the indica- 
 tion of a second judgment which will not less make an end, in 
 ver. 1 3 : "But yet there is a tenth part in it, and it shall again 
 be destroyed ;" and tliis goes hand in hand with the promise 
 that the election shall become partakers of the Messianic salva- 
 tion. 
 
 The Prophet clearly sees that, by the Syrico-Ephrae'mUicwAY, 
 the full realization of that threatening of the Pentateuch will 
 not be brought about, as far as Judah is concerned ; that here a 
 faint prelude only to the real fulfilment is the point in question. 
 Although the allied kings speak in chap. vii. 6: "Let us go up 
 against Judea and vex it, and let us conquer it for us, and set a 
 king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal," the Lord speaks 
 in chap. vii. 7 : " It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass." 
 And although the heart of the king and the heart of his people 
 were moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind, 
 the Prophet says: "Fear not, let not thy heart be tender for the 
 tails of those two smoking firebrands." 
 
 It is Asshur that shall do more for the realization of that di- 
 vine decree first revealed by Moses. It is he who, immediately 
 after that expedition against Judah, shall break the power of the 
 kingdom of the ten tribes, chap. viii. 4 : "Before the child shall 
 be able to cry: 'My father and my mother,' the riches of Damas- 
 cus and the spoil of Samaria shall be carried before the King of 
 
<j MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Assyria." The cotnmunion of guilt into which it has entered 
 with Damascus shall also implicate it in a communion of punish- 
 ment with it, chap. xvii. 3. The adversaries of Rezin shall de- 
 vour Israel with open mouth, chap. ix. 11, 12. Yea Asshiir 
 shall, some time afterwards, put an end altogether to the king- 
 dom of Israel; "Within threescore and five years shall Ephraim 
 be broken that it shall not be a people any more," chap. vii. S. 
 Upon Judah also severe sufferings shall be inflicted by Asshur. 
 He shall invade and devastate their land, chap. vii. 1 7, and chap, 
 viii. He shall irresistibly penetrate to the neighbotirhood of 
 Jerusalem, chap. X. 28 — 32. But when he is just preparing to 
 inflict the mortal blow upon the head of the people of God, the 
 Lord shall put a stop to him: "He shall cut down the thickets 
 of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by the mighty 
 one," chap. x. 34. "Asshur shall be broken in the land of the 
 Lord, and upon His mountains be trodden under foot ; and his 
 yoke shall depart from off them, and his burden depart from off 
 their shoulders," chap. xiv. 25. "And Asshur shall fall with the 
 swordnotof aman," chap.xxxi. 8. Tliese prophecies found their 
 fulfilment in the destruction of Sennacherib's host before Jeru- 
 salem, — an event which no human ingenuity could have known 
 even a day beforehand. But Isaiah does not content himself 
 with promising to trembling Zion the helpof God against Asshur 
 in that momentary calamity. In harmony with Hosea and 
 Micah, he promises to Judah, in general, security from As.shur. 
 He says toHezekiah, after that danger was over, in chap, xxxviii. 
 C : "And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the 
 King of Assyria, and I will defend this city." 
 
 Behind the Assyrian kingdom, the Prophet beholds a new 
 power germinating, viz., the Babylonian or Chaldean ; and he an- 
 nouncesmost distinctly and repeatedly that from this shall proceed 
 a compi-ehensive execution of the thrcatenings against unfaithful 
 Judah. According to chap, xxiii. 1 3, the Chaldeans overturn the 
 Assyrian monarchy, and conquer proud Tyre which had resisted 
 the assault of the Assyiians. Shinar or Babylon appears in chap, 
 xi. 11, in the list of the places to which Judah has been removed 
 in punishment. In chap. xiii. 1 — xiv. 27, Babylon is, for thefirst 
 time, distinctly and definitely mentioned as the threatening 
 power of the future, by which Judah is to be carried into cap- 
 tivity. Tlie corresponding announcement in chap, xxxix. is so 
 
THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 7 
 
 closely and intimately interwoven with tlie historical context, 
 that even Gesenius did not venture to deny its origin by Isaiah, just 
 as he M^as compelled also to acknowledge the genuineness of the 
 prophecy against Tyre, in which the Babylonian dominion is most 
 distinctly foretold, and even the duration of that dominion is fixed. 
 The 70 years of Jeremiah have here already their foundation. 
 
 The Prophet sees distinctly and definitely that Egypt, the rival 
 African world's power, on which the sharp-sighted politicians of 
 his time founded their hope for deliverance, would not be equal to 
 the Asiatic world's power representing itself in the Assyrian and 
 Babylonian phases. He knows what he could not know from 
 any other source than by immediate communication of the Spirit 
 of God, that, by its struggle against the Asiatic power, Egypt 
 would altogether lose its old political importance, and would 
 never recover it ; compare remarks on chap. xix. 
 
 As the power which is to overthrow the Babylonian Empire 
 appear, in chap, xxxiii. 1 7, the Medes. In chap. xxi. 2, Elam, 
 which, according to the usus loquendi of Isaiah, means Persia, is 
 mentioned besides Media. This power, and at its head, the 
 conqueror from the East, Cyrus, will bring deliverance to Judah. 
 By it they obtain a restoration to their native land.^ Neverthe- 
 less Elam appears in chap. xxii. 1 6 as the representative of the 
 world's power oppressing Judah in the future; and from chap. 
 xi. J 1 we are likewise led to expect that the world's power will 
 in future shew itself in an Elamitic phase also, and that the dif- 
 ference between Babel and Elam is one of degree only, just as, 
 indeed, it appeared in history; comp. Neh. ix. 3G, 37. 
 
 An intimation of an European phasis of the world's power, 
 hostile to the kingdom of God, is to be found in chap. xi. 11. 
 
 After the Kingdom of God has, for such protracted periods, 
 been subject to the world's power, the relation will suddenly be 
 reversed ; at the end of the days the mountain of the house of 
 the Lord shall be exalted above all the hills, and all nations shall 
 flow into it, chap. ii. 2. 
 
 This great change shall be accomplished by the Messiah, 
 chaps, iv., ix., xi., xxxiii. 17, who proceeds from the house of 
 
 * Vitringa : Tliere are no predictions in reference to the temporal deliver 
 ance of the Jewish Church, in which the Prophet shews himself more than 
 in those which relate to the downfall of the Babylonian Empire, and the de- 
 liverance of the people of God by Cyrus. 
 
8 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 David, chap. ix. G (7), Iv. 3, but only after it has sunk down to 
 the utmost lowliness, chap. xi. 1. With the human, He combines 
 the divine nature. This appears not only from the names which 
 are given to Him in chap. ix. 5 (G),but also from the works which 
 are assigned to Him, — works by far exceeding human power. 
 He rules over the whole earth, according to chap. xi. ; He slays, 
 according to xi. 4>, the wicked with the breath of His mouth 
 (compare chap. 1. 1 1, where likewise He appears as a partaker of 
 the omnipotent punitive power of God) ; He removes the conse- 
 quences of sin even from the irrational creation, chap xi. 6-9 ; 
 by His absolute righteousness He is enabled to become the sub- 
 stitute of the whole human race, and thereby to accomplish their 
 salvation resting on this substitution, chap. liii. 
 
 The Messiah appears at first in the form of a servant, low and 
 humble, chap. xi. 1, liii. 2. His ministry is quiet and concealed, 
 chap. xlii. 2, as that of a Saviour who with tender love applies 
 himself to the miserable, cliap. xlii, 3, Ixi. 1. At first it is 
 limited to Israel, chap. xlix. 1-6, where it is enjoyed especially 
 by the most degraded of all the parts of the country, viz., that 
 around the sea of Galilee, chap. viii. 23 (ix. 1.) Severe suffer- 
 ings will be inflicted upon Him in carrying out His ministry. 
 These proceed fi-om the same people whom He has come to raise 
 up, and to endow (according to chap. xlii. 6, xlix. 8), with the 
 full truth of the covenant into which the Lord has entered with 
 them. The Servant of God bears these suffering's with unbroken 
 courage. They bring about, through His mediation, the punish- 
 ment of God upon those from whom they proceeded, and become 
 the reason why the salvation passes over to the Gentiles, by whose 
 deferential homage the Servant of God is indemnified for what 
 He has lost in the Jews, chap. xlix. 1-9, 1. 4-11. (Tlie founda- 
 tion for the detailed announcement in these passages is given 
 already in the sketch in chap, vi., — according to which an elec- 
 tion only of the people attain to salvation, while the mass be- 
 comes a prey to destruction.) But it is just by these sufferings, 
 which issue at last in a violent death, that the Servant of God 
 reaches the full height of His destination. They possess a 
 vicarious character, and effect the reconciliation of a whole sinful 
 world, chap. lii. 1 3 — liii. 1 2. Subsequently to the suffering, 
 and on the ground of it, begins the exercise of the Kingly office 
 of Christ, chap. liii. 1 2. He brings law and righteousness to the 
 
THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 9 
 
 Gentile world, chap. xlii. 1 ; light into their darkness, chap. xlii. 
 6. He becomes the centre around which the whole Gentile world 
 gathers, chap. xi. 1 : "And it shall come to pass in that day, the 
 root of Jesse which shall stand for an ensign of the people, to it 
 shall the Gentiles seek, and His rest shall be glory;" comp. 
 chap. Ix., where the delighted eye of the Prophet beholds how 
 the crowds of the nations from the whole earth turn to Zion ; 
 chap, xviii., where the future reception of the Ethiopians into the 
 Kingdom of God is specially prophecied ; chap, xix., according to 
 which Egypt turns to the God of Israel, and by the tie of a com- 
 mon love to Him, is united with Asshur, his rival in the time of 
 the Prophet, and so likewise with Israel, which has so much to 
 suffer from him; chap, xxiii., according to which, in the time of 
 salvation. Tyre also does homage to the God of Israel. The Ser- 
 vant of God becomes, at the same time, the Witness, and the 
 Prince and Lawgiver of the nations, chap. Iv, 4. Just as the 
 Spirit of the Lord rests upon Him, chap. xi. 2, xlii. 1, Ixi. 1, so 
 there takes place in His days an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, 
 chap, xxxii. 15, xliv. 3, comp. with chap. liv. 13. Sin is put 
 an end to by Him, chap. xi. 9, and an end is put especially to 
 war, chap. ii. 4. The Gentiles gathered to the Lord become 
 at last the medium of His salvation for the covenant-people, 
 who at first had rejected it, chap. xi. 12, Ix. 9, Ixvi. 20, 21. 
 The end is the restoration of the paradisaic condition, chap, 
 xi. 6-9, Ixv, 25; the new heavens and the new earth, chap. 
 Ixv. 17, Ixvi. 22; but the wicked shall inherit eternal con- 
 demnation, chap. Ixvi. 24. 
 
10 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 THE LTiOPHECY-OHAP. Il.-iV. 
 
 THE SPROUT OF THE LORD. 
 
 It has been already proved, in Vol. i., p. 4 1 6 ff., that this dis- 
 course belongs to the first period of the Prophet's ministiy. It 
 consists of three parts. In the first, chap. ii. 2-4, the Prophet 
 draws a picture of the Messianic time, at which the Kingdom of 
 God, now despised, should be elevated above all the kingdoms 
 of the world, should exercise an attractive power over the Gen- 
 tiles, and should cause peace to dwell among them; comp. Vol. 
 i., p. 437 tf. In the second part, from chap. ii. 5-iv. 1 , the Pro- 
 phet describes the prevailing corruption, exhorts to repentance, 
 threatens divine judgments. This part is introduced, and is 
 connected with the preceding, by the admonition in ii. 5, 
 addressed to the people, to prepare, by true godliness, for a par- 
 ticipation in that blessedness, to beware lest they should be 
 excluded through their own fault. In the third part, chap. iv. 
 2-6, the prophet returns to the proclamation of salvation, so 
 that the whole is, as it were, surrounded bj'' the promise. It 
 was necessary that this should be prominently brought out, in 
 order tliat sinners might not only be ten-ified by fear, but also 
 allured by hope, to repentance, — and in order that the elect 
 might not imagine that the sin of the masses, and the judgment 
 inflicted in consequence of it, did away with the mercy of the 
 Lord towards His people, and with His faithfulness to His 
 promises. Salvation does not come without judgment. This 
 feature, by which true prophetism is distinguished from false, 
 which, divesting God of His righteousness, announced salvation 
 to unreformed sinners, to the Mdiole I'ude mass of the people, — 
 this feature is once more prominently brought out in ver. 4. 
 But salvation for the elect comes as necessarily as judgment 
 does upon the sinners. In the midst of the deepest abasement 
 of the people of God, God raises from out of the midst of them 
 the Saviour by whom they are raised to the highest glory, chap, 
 iv. 2. They are installed into the dignity of the saints of God, 
 after the penitent ones have been renewed by His Spirit, and the 
 
ISAIAH II. IV. 1 1 
 
 obstinate sinners have been exterminated by His judgment, ver. 
 3, 4. God's gracious presence affords them protection from 
 their enemies, and from all tribulation and danger, ver. 5, 6. 
 The first part, in which Isaiah follows Micah (comp. the argu- 
 ments in proof of originality in Micah, Vol. i., p. 413 ff), has 
 already been expounded on a former occasion. We have here 
 only to answer the question, why it is that the Prophet opens 
 his discourse with a proclamation of salvation borrowed from 
 Micah ? His object certainly was to render the minds of the 
 people susceptible of the subsequent admonition and reproof, 
 by placing at the head a promise which had already become 
 familiar and precious to the people. The position which the 
 Messianic proclamation occupies in Isaiah is altogether misun- 
 derstood if, with Kleinert and Eivald, we assume that the 
 passage does not, in Isaiah, belong to the real substance of the 
 prophecy; that it is merely placed in front as a kind of text, 
 the abuse and misinterpretation of which the Prophet meets 
 in that which follows, so that the sense would be: the blessed 
 time promised by former prophets will come indeed, but on hj 
 after severe, rigorous judgments upon all who had forsaken 
 Jehovah. It is especially ver. 5 which militates against this 
 interpretation, where, in the words : " Come ye and let us walk 
 in the light of the Lord,"^ the prophet gives an express declara- 
 tion as to the object of the description which he has placed in 
 front, and expresses himself in regard to it in perfect harmony 
 
 ^ Light is the image of salvation; to walk in the light is to enjoy a parti- 
 cipation in it. Israel is not wantonly to wander away from the ] ath of light 
 which the Lord has opened up to them, into the dark desolation of misery. 
 In the words ns^JI "13^ there is a clear reference to n^yjl 13^ of the Gentile 
 nations in ver. 3. If the Gentiles apply with such zeal for a ])ariicipation in 
 the blessings of the Kingdom of God, how disgraceful would it be if you, 
 the people of the covenant, the children of the Kingdom, should lose your 
 glorious possession by your ungodly walk. In vers. 6-11 the Piophet states 
 the grounds of his admonition to the people to walk in the light of the Lord 
 M'hich he had expressed in the preceding verse. This admoni ion implies 
 that there existed a danger of losing a participation in the light; and it is 
 this danger which the Prophet here more particularly detail?. It is not 
 without reason, so the words may be paraphrased, that I say: '" Walk ye in 
 the light of the Lord," for at present the Lord has forsaken the people on 
 account of their sins, and with that, a participation in His hght is incom- 
 patible. By beuig full of heathenish superstition, of false confidence in 
 earthly things, yea, even of the most disgraceful that can be imagined for 
 Israel, viz., gross idolatry, they rather become more and more ripe for the 
 divine judgment wliich wiU break in irresistibly upon them. 
 
] 2 ' MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 with Hob. iv. 1 : <po(3ridSjiJi,iv ovv ^jjcr&rs ■/.ara/.U'ro/jjVjrig sTayyi'kiag 
 doxrj Tig e^ it/auv uaTiprjx.ivat. This shows, that 
 after the manner of an evangelical preacher, and in conformity 
 with his name, he wishes to allure to repentance by pointing 
 to the great salvation of the future ; — that the rr/yr/.i r; tSa^iXiia 
 ruv oxipavuv of the first part serves as a foundation to the 
 iLiTctvoiTn oZv of the second. 
 
 The threatening of punishment contained in the second part 
 is destitute of any particular reference. It bears a general char- 
 acter, comprehending the whole of the mischief with which the 
 Lord is to visit the unfaithfulness of His people. Most tho- 
 roughly was the animating idea reahzed in the Roman catas- 
 trophe, the consequence of which is the helplessness which still 
 presses upon the people. The i)reparatory steps were the decay 
 of the people at the time of Ahaz — especially the Chaldean over- 
 throw — ai)d, generally, everythingwhich the people had to sufier 
 in the time of the dominion of the Assyrian, Chaldean, Medo- 
 Persian, and Greek kingdoms. As none of these kingdoms were 
 as yet on the stage, or in sight, it is quite natural that the threat- 
 ening here keeps altogether within general terms; it was given 
 to Isaiah himself afterwards to individualize it much more. 
 
 It is with the third part only that we have here more par- 
 ticularly to employ ourselves. 
 
 Ver. 2. " III that day ike Sprout of the Lord becomes for 
 beauty and glory, and the fruit of the land for exaltation 
 and ornament, to the escaped of Israel" 
 
 Ver. 8. " A nd it shall conu to p«ss, he that ivas left in 
 Zio)i, and was spared in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, every 
 one that is ivritten to life in Jerusalem." 
 
 Ver. 4. " When the Lord has ivashed away the filth of the 
 daughters of Zion, and shall remove the blood of Jerusalem 
 from the midst thereof by the spirit of right and the spirit of 
 destruction." 
 
 Ver. 5. " And the Lord creates over the place of Mount Zion, 
 and over her assemblies clouds by day and smoke, and the 
 brightness of flaming Jire by night, for above all glory is a 
 covering." 
 
 Ver. G. " And a tabomacle shall be for a shadow by day from 
 the heat, and, for a refuge andcovert from stonnand from rain!' 
 
 Ver. 2. " In that day" i.e., not by any means after the suffer- 
 ing, but in the midst of it, comp. chap. iii. 18; iv. 1, where, by 
 
ISAIAH IV. 2 6. ] 3 
 
 the words " in that day," contemporaneousness is likewise ex- 
 pressed. Parallel is chap. ix. 1 (2),where the people that walketh 
 in darkness seeth a great light. According to Micah v. 2 (3) 
 also, the people are given up to the dominion of the world's 
 powers until the time that she who is bearing has brought 
 forth. Inasmuch as the Messianic proclamation bears the same 
 general comprehensive character as the threatening of punish- 
 ment, and includes in itself beginning and end, the suffering 
 may partly also reach into the Messianic time. It dismisses 
 from its discipline those who are delivered up to it, gradually 
 only, after they have become ripe for a participation in the 
 Messianic salvation. — There cannot be any doubt that, by the 
 ' Sprout of the Lord" the Messiah is designated, — an explana- 
 tion which we meet with so early as in the Chaldee Paraphrast 
 {Y^\ ^nr?' 'H **C'^? '^: ^^^!^ ^?1^?)> from which even Kimchi 
 did not venture to differ, which was in the Christian Church, 
 too, the prevailing one, and which Rationalism was the first 
 to give up. The Messiah is here quite in His proper place. 
 The Prophet had, in chap. iii. ] 2-15, in a very special manner, 
 derived the misery of the people from their bad rulers. What 
 is now more rational, therefore, than that he should connect 
 the salvation and prosperity likewise with the person of a 
 Divine Ruler? comp. chap. i. 26. In the adjoining prophecies 
 of Isaiah, especially in chaps, vii., ix., and xi., the person of 
 the Messiah likewise forms the centre of the proclamation of 
 salvation ; so that, a priori, a mention of it must be expected 
 here. To the same result we are led by the analogy of Micah; 
 comp. Vol. i. p. 443-45, 449. Farther — The representation 
 of the Messiah, under the image of a sprout or shoot, is very 
 common in Scripture ; comp. chap. xi. 1-10 ; hii. 2 ; Rev. v. 5. 
 But of decisive weight are those passages in which precisely 
 our word rvyi occurs as a designation of the Messiah. The 
 two passages, Jer. xxiii. 5 : " Behold, the days come, saith the 
 Lord, and I raise unto David a righteous Sprout ;" and xxxiii. 
 15: "In those days, and at that time, shall I cause the Sprout 
 of righteousness to grow up unto David," may at once and 
 plainly be considered as an interpretation of the passage before 
 us, and as a commentary upon it ; and that so much the more 
 that there, as well as here, all salvation is connected with this 
 Sprout of Jehovah ; comp. Jer. xxiii. 6 : " In His days Judah 
 
1 4 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely, and this is His 
 name whereby he shall be called : The Lord our righteousness." 
 The two other psissages, Zeeh. iiL 8 : " Behold, I bring my 
 servant Zemach," and vi. 12: " Behold, a man whose name is 
 Zemach" are of so much the greater consequence that in them 
 Zemach {i.e, Sprout) occurs as a kind of nomen 2'>Topriiim, the 
 s6nse of which is supposed as being known from former prophe- 
 cies to which the Prophet all but expressly refers ; or as Vi- 
 triiiga remarks on these passages : " That man who, in the 
 oracles of the preceding Prophets (Is. and Jer.) bears the name 
 of ' Sprout.'" Of no less consequence, finally, is the parallel 
 passage, chap, xxviii. 5 : "In that day shall the Lord of hosts 
 be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty unto the 
 residue of His people." The words ^2^ and mxsn there mea 
 us again. The Scime is there ascribed to the Lord which is 
 here attributed to the Sprout of the Lord. That can be readily 
 accounted for, only if the Sprout of the Lord be the Messiah. 
 For the Messiah appears everywhere as the channel through 
 which the Lord imparts to His Church all the fulness of His 
 blessings, as the Immanuel by whom the promise given at the 
 very threshold of the Old Testament: " I dwell in the midst 
 of them," is most perfectly realized. " This is the name where- 
 by He shall be called : The Lord our righteousness," says Je- 
 remiah, in the passage quoted. — The " Sprout of the Lord" 
 may designate either him whom the Lord causes to sprout, or 
 him who has sprouted forth from the Lord, i.e., the Son of 
 God. Against the latter interpretation it is objected by Hoff- 
 mann ( Weissagung und Erfilllung. Th. 1 , S. 2 1 4) : " riDV is 
 an intransitive verb, so that npv may be as well connected 
 with a noun which says, who causes to sprout forth, as with 
 one which says, whence the thing sprouts forth. Now it is 
 quite obvious that, in the passage before us, the former case 
 applies, and not the latter, inasmuch as one cannot say that 
 something, or even some one, sprouts forth from Jehovah ; it 
 is only with a thing, not with a person, that n»V can be con- 
 nected." But it is impossible to admit that this objection is 
 well founded. The person may very well be conceived of as 
 the soil from which the sprout goes forth. Yet we must, indeed, 
 acknowledge that the Messiah is nowhere called a Sprout of 
 David. But what decides in favour of the first view are the 
 
IS AT AH IV. 2 6. 1 5 
 
 parallel passages. In Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 1 5, the Lord raises 
 up to David a righteous Sprout, and causes Him to grow up 
 unto David. Hence here, too, the Sprout will in that sense 
 only be the Lord's, that he does not sprout forth out of Him, 
 but through Him. In Zech. iii. 8 the Lord brings his servant 
 Zemach; in Ps. cxxxii. 17, it is said : " There I cause a horn t^o 
 sprout to David," and already in the fundamental passage, 
 2 Sam. xxiii. 5, which contains the first germ of our passage, 
 David says : " For all my salvation and all my pleasure should 
 He not make it to sprout forth." — As the words " Sprout of 
 the Lord" denote the heavenly origin of the Redeemer, so do 
 the words p5<n "'"iD the earthly one, the soil from which the 
 Lord causes the Saviour to sprout up. These words are, by 
 Vitringa and others, translated : " the fruit of the earth," but 
 the correct translation is " the fruit of the land.'" The pas- 
 sao-es, Num. xiii. 26 : " And shewed them the fruit of the land ;" 
 and Deut. i. 25 : "And they took in their hands of the fruit 
 of the land, and brought it unto us, and brought us word 
 again, and said, good is the land which the Lord our God doth 
 give us," — these two passages are, besides that under consi- 
 deration, the only ones in which the phrase Y"^^^ ''"•3 occurs ; 
 and there is here, no doubt, an allusion to them. The excel- 
 lent natural fruit of ancient times is a type of the spiritual 
 fruit. To the same result — that psn designates the definite 
 land, that land which, in the preceding verses, in the descrip- 
 tion of the prevailing conniption, and of the divine judgments, 
 was always spoken of, — to this result we are led by the fact 
 also, that everywhere in the Old Testament where the contra- 
 riety of the divine and human origin of the Messiah is men- 
 tioned, the human origin is more distinctly qualified and limited. 
 This is especially the case in those passages which, being de- 
 pendent upon that before us, maybe considered as acommentary 
 upon it ; in Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 1 5, where the Lord raises a 
 Sprout unto David, and Zech. vi. 12, where the man whose 
 name is Zemach (Sprout) grows up out of its soil ; comp. Heb. 
 vii. 14, where, in allusion to the Old Testament passages of 
 the Sprout — the verb avarkXknv is commonly used of the sprout- 
 ing forth of the plants (see Bleek on this passage) — it is said: 
 jg lobba dvarsraXxiv b Kvpiog ijfiuv, Bengel : ut gei'Tiieii justitiae; 
 farther, Mic. v. 1 (2), where the eternal existence of the Mes- 
 
1 6 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 siah, and His birth in Bethlehem are contrasted with one an- 
 other ; Is. ix. 5, (G), where the words : " Unto us a child is 
 born, unto us a son is given," are contrasted with the various 
 designations of the Messiah, according to His divine majesty. 
 This qualification and limitation which everywhere takes place, 
 have their ground in the circumstance that the Messiah is con- 
 stantly represented to the covenant-people as their property ; 
 and that He, indeed, was, inasmuch as salvation went out from 
 Jews (John iv. 22), and was destined for the Jews, into whose 
 communion the Gentiles were to be received ; comp. my Com- 
 mentary on Revel, vii. 4. " The Sprout of the Lord," " the 
 fruit of the land," is accordingly He whom the Lord shall 
 make to sprout forth from Israel. The Sprout of the Lord, 
 the fruit of the land is to become to the escaped of Israel for 
 beauty and glory, for exaltation and ornament. The passages 
 to be compared are 2 Sam. i. 19, where Saul and Jonathan 
 are called han^^f ''av ; farther, Is. xxviii. 5 : " In that day shall 
 the Lord of hosts be for a crown of beauty, and for a diadem 
 of ornament unto the residue of His people," where the words 
 ^3S and mNsn are likewise used ; finally, chap. xxiv. 1 G, where, 
 in reference to the Messianic time, it is said : " From the utter- 
 most part of the earth do we hear songs of praise : beauty ("•nx) 
 to the righteous." By the a^ppearance of Christ, the covenant- 
 people, hitherto despised, were placed in the centre of the world's 
 history ; by it the Lord took away the rebuke of His people 
 from oflf all the eai'tli, chap. xxv. 8. There is evidently in these 
 words a reference to the preceding threatening of punishment, 
 especially to chap. iii. 18: " In that day the Lord will take 
 away the ornament," &c. : But Drecksler is wrong in fixing and 
 expressing this reference thus : " Instead of farther running after 
 strange things, Israel will find its glory and ornament in Him 
 who is the long promised seed of Abrahainitic descent." For it 
 is not the position which Israel takes that is spoken of, but that 
 which is granted to them. The antithesis is between the false 
 glory which God takes away, and the true glory which He 
 gives. The Lord cannot, by any possibility, for any length of 
 time, appear merely talcing aivay ; He takes those seeming 
 bhsssings, only in order to be able to give the true ones. Every 
 taking away is a prophecy of giving. — "To the escarped of Israel," 
 who, according to the idea of a people of God, and according to 
 
ISAIAH IV. 2-6. 17 
 
 the promise of the Law (comp. Deut. xxx. l,ff.) can never be 
 wanting, as little as it is possible that the salvation should be 
 partaken of by the whole mass of the people ; sifting judgments 
 must necessarily go before and along with it. True prophetism 
 everywhere knows of salvation for a remnant only. On no^^'S, 
 which does not mean "deliverance," so that the abstract would 
 thus here stand for the concrete, but " that which has escaped," 
 comp. remarks on Joel iii. 5, Vol. 1, p. 338. 
 
 All which now remains is to examine those explanations of 
 this verse which differ from the Messianic interpretation. 1 . Fol- 
 lowing the interpretation of Grotius and others, Oesenius, in his 
 Commentary, understands by the Sprout of the Lord the new 
 growth of the people after their various defeats. His explanation 
 is: "Then the sprout of Jehovah will be splendid and glorious, 
 and the fruit of the land excellent and beautiful for the escaped 
 of Israel." Fruit of the land he takes in its literal sense, and 
 understands it to mean the product of the land. The same view 
 is held by Knobel: " He becomes for beauty and glory," i.e., the 
 people, having reformed, prosper and form a splendid, glorious 
 state." And Maurer in his Dictionary says : " The Sprout of 
 Jehovah seems to be the morally improved remnant, the new, 
 sanctified increase of the people." But in opposition to such a 
 view there is, first, the circumstance, that according to it the ^ 
 before ^2V^ and 1D3^ must be undei-stood differently from what 
 it is in pxj!?, and niNSni' which immediately follow and exactly 
 correspond with them. Tliere are, secondly, the parallel pas- 
 sages chap, xxviii. 5, xxiv. 16, according to which '•n^ " beauty" 
 is conferred upon the escaped, but they themselves do not be- 
 come beauty. Finally — It is always most natural to suppose 
 that ni.T" nov and ymn ns correspond with one another, and 
 denote the same subject which is here described after his various 
 aspects only. For in the same manner as nov and na go hand 
 in hand, both being taken from the territory of botany, so mr,^ 
 and ymr] also stand in a contrast which is not to be mistaken. 
 2. Hitzig, Ewald, Meier, and others not only refer " the fruit 
 of the land," but also the " Sprout of Jehovah" to that which 
 Jehovah makes to sprout forth.^ It is true that, in the pro- 
 
 ' So Gesenius also in the Thesaurus: "The whole earth shall be holy and 
 shall more beautifully bloom and be adorned with plenty of fruits and corn 
 for the benefit of tiiose who have escaped from those calamities." Gesenius^ 
 VOL. II. b 
 
1 8 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 phetic announcements, among the blessings of the future the 
 rich produce of the land is also mentioned (comp. chap. xxx. 
 28-25), and the same is very expressly done in the Law also ; 
 but in not a single one of these passages does the strange ex- 
 pression occur, that this fruitfulness should serve to the escaped 
 for beauty and glory, for exaltation and ornament, or any other 
 that bears the slightest resemblance to it. Against this ex- 
 planation there iH,in addit'ion,t'he circumstance that the barren- 
 ness of the country is not at all pointed out in the preceding 
 context. FinnUy — When we understand this expression as re- 
 ferring to the Messiah, this verse, standing as it does at the 
 head of the proclamation of salvation, contains the fundamental 
 thought; and in what follows we obtain the expansion. In the 
 verse before us we are told that in Christ the people attain to 
 glory, — and, in those which follow, how this glory is manifested 
 in them. But according to this view, every internal connexion 
 of the verse before us with what follows is entirely destroyed. 
 3. According to Hendeiverh, by the "Sprout of the Lord," " the 
 collective person of the ruling portion in the state during the 
 Messianic happy time," is designated. This opinion is the be- 
 ginning of a return to the Messianic interpretation. But then 
 only could that ideal person be here referred to, if elsewhere in 
 Isaiah too it would come out strongl}" and decidedly. As this, 
 however, is not the case; as, on the contrary, the Messiah every- 
 where in Isaiah meets us in shining clearness, it would be arbi- 
 trary to give up the person in favour of a persoiiijication. 4. 
 Umbreit acknowledges that, in the case of nin^ riDY, the Messianic 
 interpretation is the only correct one. "The two subsequent pro- 
 phecies in chap. ix. and xi.," he says, "are to be considered as a 
 commentary on our short text." But it is characteristic of his 
 compromising manner that by "the fruit of the land" he under- 
 stands " the consequences of the dominion of the Messiah for the 
 land, the fruits which, in consecpence of his appearing, the conse- 
 crated soil brings forth," — thus plainly overlooking the clear 
 
 wavering clearly shows how little satisfaction the non-Messianic explanation 
 affords to its own abottore. Besides the exjilanations of mn^ HDV by " the 
 new growth of the people," and " the rich produce of the country," he ad- 
 vances still a third one, viz., "a divinely favoured ruler," — an explanation 
 which has even the grammar against it, as we are at liberty to translate only : 
 " The Sjn'out of the Lord;" and likewise the analogy of |*ixn ^"1D, according 
 to which the Genitive can have a reference to the origin only. 
 
ISAIAH IV. 2-6. 19 
 
 contrast between the Sprout of tlie Lord, and the fruit of the 
 land, by which evidently the same thing is designated from dif- 
 ferent aspects. 
 
 Ver. 3. The Prophet now begins to show, more in detail, in 
 how far the Sprout of the Lord and the fruit of the land would 
 serve for the honour and glory of the Church. The words : " He 
 that was left in Zion and was spared in Jerusalem," take up the 
 idea suggested by the " escaped of Israel" in ver. 2. The double 
 designation is intended to direct attention to the thought that 
 the remnant, and the remnant only, are called to a participation 
 in the glory. Zion and Jerusalem, as the centre of the covenant- 
 people, here represent the whole; this is evident from the cir- 
 cumstance that at the close of ver. 2, which is here resumed, the 
 escaped of Israel were spoken of Ever since the sanctuary and 
 the royal palace were founded at Zion, it was in a spiritual point 
 of view, the residence of all Israel, who even personall}^ met there 
 at the high festivals. — Whoever is left in Zion "shall be called 
 holy." The fundamental notion of holiness is that of separation. 
 God is holy, inasmuch as He is separated from aU that is created 
 and finite, and is elevated above all that is finite; comp. my 
 Commentary on Rev. iv. 8. Believers are holy, because they 
 are separated from the world as regards their moral existence 
 and their destiny. Here only the latter aspect is considered. 
 Holy in a moral sense they were already, inasmuch as it is this 
 which forms the condition of their bemg spared in the divine 
 judgments. Tliey became holy Ijecause they are partakers of the 
 beauty, of the exaltation, and ornament which are to be bestowed 
 upon the escaped by the Sprout of the Lord. The circumstance 
 that they have been installed into the dignity of the saints of 
 God implies that, when the Spirit of the Lord has appeared, the 
 world's power has no longer any dominion over them, but that, 
 on the contrary, they shall judge the world. In like manner we 
 read in Exod. xix. 6, in the description of the reward for faith- 
 fulness : " And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a 
 holy nation ; " comp. ver. 5 : " And now if you will obey my 
 voice and keep my covenant, ye shall be a property unto me out 
 of all people." In reference to the exalted dignity and glory, 
 holiness occurs in Deut. vii. 6 : "For thou art an holy people unto 
 the Lord thy God; the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a 
 peculiar people unto himself out of all the people that are upon 
 
20 MESSrANTC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the face of the earth." When the company of Korah said : 
 " All the congregation, they are holy" (Numb. xvi. 3), they 
 had in view, not the moral holiness but the dignity — a circum- 
 stance which is quite obvious from words added : " And in the 
 midst of them is the Lord." And so Moses likewise speaks of 
 the dignity in Numb. xvi. 7: " Whom the Lord shall choose, he 
 is the holy one." In Rom. i. 7 ; Heb. iii. 1 , holiness is declared 
 to consist in being loved, called, and chosen by God. — As reg'ards 
 the fulfilment of this promise, it has its horas and 'moras. It 
 began with the first appearance of Christ, by which the position 
 of the true Israel to the world was substantially and fundamen- 
 tally ch.anged. It was not without meaning that, as early as in 
 the apostolic times, the "Saints" was a kind oi nomen proprium 
 of believers, com p. Acts ix. 13, 32. We are even now the sons 
 of God, and hence even already installed into an important por- 
 tion of the inheritance of holiness ; but it has not yet appeared 
 what we shaU be, 1 John iii. 2. But the beginning, and the 
 continuation pervading all ages, viz., God's dealings throughout 
 the whole of history, whereby he ever anew lifts up His Church 
 from the dust of lowliness, afford to us the guarantee for the 
 completion, which is, with graphic vividness, described in the last 
 two chapters of Revelation. — " To be called" is more than merely 
 " to be;" it indicates that the being is so marked as to procure 
 for itself acknowledgment. — The words : " Every one that /s 
 vjritten to life in Jerusalem " anew point out that judgment will 
 go before, and by the side of grace. The meaning of D'^Ti is, 
 according to the fundamental passage in Ps. Ixix. 29, "not living 
 ones" {Hofrruum, Weiss, i. S. 208), but " life." In Revelation, 
 too, the book of life, and not the book of the living ones, is spoken 
 of " To be written to life" is equivalent to being ordained to 
 life, Acts xiii. 48 ; comp. my Cojnment. on Ps. Ixix. 29 ; Rev. 
 iii. 5. Life is not naked life, — a miserable life is, according to 
 the view of Scripture, not to be called a life, but is a form of 
 death only — but life in the full enjoyment of the favour of God ; 
 comp. my Comment, on Ps. xvi. 11, xxx. 6, xxxvi. 10; xlii. 9; 
 Ixiii. 4. The Chaldean thus para})hrases it: "All they that are 
 written to eternal life shall see the consolation of Jerusalem, i.e. 
 the Messiah." Comp. Dan. xii. 1 ; Rev. iii. 5, xiii. 8, xx. 15, 
 xxii. 1 9 ; Phil. iv. 3 ; Luke x. 20. The bodily death of believers 
 cannot exclude them from a participation in being written to 
 
ISAIAH IV. 4. 21 
 
 life ; for, being a mere transition to life, it can, in truth, not be 
 called a death. Here, too, the word of Christ applies : " The 
 maid is not dead but sleepeth," Matt. ix. 24. The fact that 
 there is no contradiction between bodily death and life, i.e. a par- 
 ticipation in the blessings of the Kingdom of Christ, is pointed 
 out by Isaiah himself in chap. xxvi. 19:" Thy dead men shall 
 live, my dead bodies shall arise, for a dew of light is thy dew." 
 Ver. 4. The Prophet points out that before the Church is 
 raised to the dignity of the saints of God, a thorough change of 
 its moral conditions, an energetic expunging of the sin now pre- 
 vailing in her, must take place, " Whe7i the Lord has vjashed 
 avjay the filth of the daughters of Zion." The " daughters of 
 Zion" are none other than those whose haughtiness, luxury, and 
 wantonness were described in chap. iii. 1 6 ff., and to whom the 
 deepest abasement was then threatened. The filth, under the 
 image of which sin is here represented (comp. Prov. xxx. 1 2) ; 
 "A generation pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from 
 their fil thin ess," forms the contrast to the splendid attire which 
 is there spoken of Behind this splendid attire the filthiness is 
 concealed. The filth is not washed away (1 Cor. vi. 1 1 ; Eph. 
 V. 26) from the daughters of Jerusalem, — for, inasmuch as this 
 washing away is accomplished by means of the spirit of destruc- 
 tion, it could not apply to them — but fi-om Jerusalem ; comp. 
 the phrase, "from the midst thereof," which immediately follows. 
 Jerusalem, the city of the Lord, in which no unclean person, and 
 no unclean thing are permitted to dwell, is cleansed from the 
 filth with which its unworthy daughters contaminate it. "And 
 shall remove the blood of Jerusalem!' The "blood of Jerusalem" 
 is the blood which attaches to Jerusalem, which has been shed 
 in it. The connection of the punishment of the sins of avarice 
 on the part of the rulers, in chap. iii. 13 — 15, with the punish- 
 ment of the luxury and ostentation on the part of the women, 
 is illustrative of the relation of filth and blood to each other. 
 Blood is shed in order to furnish pride and vanity with the 
 means of their gratification. The avarice of the rulers, and their 
 shedding of blood, are put together in Ezek. xxii. 1 3 ; comp. ver. 
 27:" Her princes are in the midst thereof like wolves ravening 
 the prey, shedding blood, destroying souls, to get dishonest gain." 
 Bloodguiltiness those too incur who deprive the poor of the 
 necessary means of support, Mic. iii. 2, 3. The comparison of 
 
22 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 chap. i. ] 5 : " Your hands are full of blood," and of ver. 2 1 : 
 "But now murderers," compared with vers. 17, 23, 2C, shews 
 that we have to think especially of unjust judges and avaricious 
 rulers. Yet, there is no reason for limiting ourselves to the 
 nobles and nilers alone; comp. Ezek. xxii. 29 : "The people of 
 the land use oppression, and boldly practice robbery, and vex 
 the poor and need}', and oppress the stranger." Where sins so 
 gross are still prevalent, where the law of the Lord is so wan- 
 tonly broken, an installation into the dignity of the saints of 
 God is out of the question. For that, it is absolutely essential 
 that exertions be made that the high destination of the people : 
 " Ye shall be holy for I am holy/' become a truth ; that in a moral 
 point of view it show itself as truly separated from the world, — 
 and that is something so infinitely gTeat, that men are utterlyun- 
 able for it, that it can proceed from God only, with whom nothing 
 is impossible. — The last words of the verse are commonly ex- 
 plained: "by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of destruc- 
 tion or burning." In that case the putting away of the filth 
 and blood by the judging activity of the Lord, by the destruction 
 of sin, would be spoken of ddc'D, however, may also be taken in 
 the sense of "right:" by the spirit of right which lays hola of, 
 and changes the well disposed (comp. Mic. iii. 8 : " But I am full 
 of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and of rir/Jd and might"), 
 and by the spirit of destniction which consumes the disobedient. 
 In favour of the latter view are the parallel passages ; above all, 
 chap, xxviii. 6, where it is said of the Messianic time, " In that 
 day the Lord will become, &c.," " And for a spirit of right to 
 him that sitteth for right ;" farther, chap. i. 27, 28 : "Zion shall 
 be redeemed by right, and her converts by righteousness. But 
 the tranagi'essors and sinners are destroyed together, and they 
 that forsake the Lord are consumed." Comp. Matt. iii. 1 1 : avrog 
 
 \)fji,ai jSn-rr-lsii sv rrviu/Mari ayiw y.a.i rrup!, where likewise a double 
 washing, that of grace and that of wrath, is spoken of In chap, 
 xxxii. 15:" Until the Spirit be poured out upon us from on 
 high," Isaiah likewi.se points to the regeneration which, in the 
 Messianic time, will be accomplished by the Spirit ; and it is, 
 according to the whole lisus loquendi of the Old Testament, most 
 natural to think of the Spirit transforming fi-om within The 
 Spirit of God scai'cely occurs elsewhere in the Old Testament 
 as the executor of God's judgments ; so that the supposition is 
 
ISAIAH IV. 2 — 6. 23 
 
 very natural that the spirit of destruction has been brought in 
 by the spirit of right only. — The word -|j?n is, by some, under- 
 stood as " burning," by others, as "destruction." We ourselves 
 decide in favour of the latter signification, which occurs also in 
 chap. iv. 1 3, for this reason, that it is in that signification that 
 nyi is, in Deuteronomy, used as the terminus technicus of the 
 extirpation of the wicked. If the Church does not comply with 
 the command : s^apsTn rhv 'rovripov ^t, vfJi'Mv ahruv, 1 Cor. V. 1 3 ; Deut. 
 xiii. 6 (5), God himself will enforce His authority by His Spirit, 
 who carries out the judgments of the avenging God, just as He 
 carries out every influence of the Creator upon the created. 
 On the " Spirit of the Lord," comp. my remarks on Rev. i. 4. 
 Ver. 5. The image is here taken from the journey of Israel 
 through the wilderness. During that journey, they were guided 
 and protected by a symbol of God's presence, which by day pre- 
 sented itself as smoke, and by night assumed the form of flaming 
 fire. By this symbol the God of Israel was designated as the 
 jealous God, as the living, personal energy, energetic in His love 
 for His people, energetic in wrath against His and tlieir enemies. 
 Comp. especially Exod. xiii. 2 J : " And the Lord went before 
 them by day in a pillar of a cloud to lead them on the way, and 
 by night in a pillar of fire to give them light;" and xl. 38: "For 
 a cloud was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by 
 night;" comp. Numb. ix. 1 5, 1 6. The same phenomenon is to be 
 repeated in future, although in a different form. In a manner 
 the most real, the Lord will manifest himself as the living energy 
 <;)f His Church, dwelling in the midst of her, and ruling over her 
 as a protector, so that the world's power can no longer injure her. 
 Tliat such will be done in and by His Sprout, in Christ, appears 
 from the relation of the verse under consideration to ver. 2 ; for 
 the verse before us still belongs to the expansion of the proposi- 
 tion placed at the head of the whole : " The Sj^rout of the Lord 
 becomes for beauty and glory, and the fruit of the land for 
 exaltation and ornament to the escaped of Israel." Christ in 
 His person and Spirit is the true Shechinah, the true indwell- 
 ing of God in His Church. This indwelling is, even in the 
 Law, designated as the highest privilege of the covenant-people ; 
 its being raised to a higher power is therefore to the Prophet 
 the highest blessing of the future, the source from which all 
 other blessings flow. That which the heathen in vain longed 
 
24 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHET!^. 
 
 for and imagined ; that which Israel hitherto possessed only- 
 very imperfectly, a jyniesens nuvien, whereby the antithesis 
 of heaven and earth is done away with, and earth is glorified 
 into a heaven ; — that, the purified Clnirch of the Lord pos- 
 sesses in the most perfect and real manner, and in it, absolute 
 security against the world, a decided victory over it. Tlie words : 
 ^' Over her cissemblies," show that the whole life of the people 
 shall then bear a religious character, and shall be a continual 
 service of God, comp. Acts ii. 42, where, as a type of the com- 
 ])leti()n of the Church, it is said : " And they continued sted- 
 fastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking 
 of bread, and in prayers." KipD is only the name for that which 
 is called, " the assembly," and stands in Levit. xxiii. and Is. i. 
 1 8 of the rehgious assemblies which were held on the holy days, 
 comp. my pamphlet : Ueber den Tag des Henm S. 32. Tlie 
 same phenomenon is, according to its appearance by day, desig- 
 nated, at the same time, as clouds and smoke. Smoke is never 
 " vapour, vapoury clouds" {Knohel) ; and here the smoke by day 
 corresponds with the fla7)iing jire by night. If then the smoke 
 can be considered as a product of the fire only (comp. my re- 
 marks on Eev. xv. 8), the cloud cannot come into consideration 
 according to its matter, but according to its form only. The 
 smoke a<ssumes the form of a cloud which affords protection 
 from the burning sun of tribulations, as once, in the burning 
 desert, from the scorching heat of the natural sun, comp. Num. 
 X. 34 : "And the cloud of the Lord was upon them;" Ps. cv. 39 : 
 "He spread a cloud for a covermg ;" Is. xxv. 5. The cloud which 
 thus affords protection to the Church turns a threatening face 
 towards her enemies. Rev. xv. 8. — The words : ''For above all 
 ijhny is a covering," point to the ground of the protecting, 
 gracious presence of God iA the Church. Several interpreters 
 explain the sense thus : " As we cover and preserve precious 
 things more carefully, in order that they may not be injured, 
 fM) does God in His grace surround His Church, which has been 
 adorned with glorious virtues, and raised to the high dignity 
 of the saints of God, and protects her from every danger." 
 (^thei-s understand by TUD'^D the whole glory mentioned in 
 the preceding context ; but in that cjvse we should expect the 
 article. One may also supply the limitation : For, in the 
 Kingdom of God, there is a covering over all gloiy. 
 
ISAIAH IV. 2 — 6. " 25 
 
 Ver. 6. God — this is the same sense — protects His Church from 
 every danger and calamity. By His gracious presence in His 
 Sprout, He affords to them that protection which a hut does from 
 sun, storms, and rain. Luther says: "In this passage, accord- 
 ingly, Christ is held up to us as He who in all tribulations, bodily 
 as well as spiritual, is our protection." There is an allusion to 
 the 2 1 st verse of Ps. xxxi. (which was written by David) : 
 "TIiou hidest them in the secret of thy countenance from the 
 conspiracy of every one ; thou keepest them secretly in a pavilion 
 from the strife of tongues." The pavilion in this Psalm is a 
 spiritual one, viz., God's grace and protection. That word of 
 David shall be gloriously fulfilled when the Sprout of the Lord 
 shall appear. — The "Sun" comes into consideration in its 
 scorching quality; and the "heat" is in Scripture the image of 
 temptations, sufferings, and trials; comp. remarks on Rev. viii. 
 12, xvi. 8; Song of Sol. i. 6; Ps. cxxi. 6; Matt. xiii. 6, com- 
 pared with V. 21; Is. xlix. 1 0, xxv. 4 ; and, according to the 
 last passage, we must especially have in view the enmity and 
 assaults of the world's power. The "rain" appears as an image 
 of tribulation in the Song of Sol. ii. 11; Is. xxv. 4: "Tlie 
 spirit of the terrible ones (the passions of the kings of the world, 
 and conquerors) is like a violent shower against the wall ;" xxxii. 
 2. — A comparison of the Messianic prophecy in chap ii. with 
 that which we have now considered shows very clearly how 
 necessary it is to regard the single Messianic prophecies as frag- 
 ments only, supplementing one another, inasmuch as commonly 
 a few aspects only were presented to the spiritual eye of the Pro- 
 phet. Just as the description in chap. ii. receives an important 
 supplement from the passage now considered, inasmuch as the 
 latter contains the mention of the personal Messiah, so it, again, 
 supplements that before us by announcing the participation by 
 the Gentiles in the blessings of the Messianic Kingdom. 
 
26 THE PROPHECY, CHAP. \^I. 
 
 THE PKOPHECY, CHAP. VII. 
 
 IMMANUEL. 
 
 A crisis of the most important nature in the history of Israel 
 is formed by theSyrico-Epliraemitic war,by the expedition of the 
 allied kings, Rezin of Damascus, and Pekah of Samaria, which 
 had been already prepared under the reign of Jotham, and which 
 broke out in the first years of Ahaz. It was in consequence of 
 this war that Asshur came into the land. The inroad of the 
 Assyrian King, Pul, under Menahem of Israel, had been transi- 
 tory only, comp. Vol. 1. p. 165. It was only with the invasion 
 under Ahaz that the tendency of Asshur began of making last- 
 ing conquests on the other side of the Euphrates, which could not 
 fail to bring about a collision with the Egyptian power. The suc- 
 ceeding powers in Asiaand Europe followed Asshur's steps. " Hi- 
 therto," — so says Oaspari,ia his pamphlet on the Syrico-Ephrae- 
 mitic war, S. 17 ff — "hitherto Israel had to do with the small 
 neighbouring nations only, — now, inpunishmentof their sins, op- 
 ])ressedby them ; then, in reward of their obedience, oppressing and 
 ruling over them. And the Syiico-Ephraemitic war itself had been 
 a link only in thechain of these attacks — its last link. Israel, hav- 
 ing arrived at the point of being hardened, and having entered upon 
 a path in accordance with this tendency, required another more 
 severe corrective — its being crushed by the mighty world's power. 
 The appearance of these mighty powers, just at the period when 
 Israel entered upon their hardening, is most providential. — The 
 beginning of the end of the kingdom of the ten tribes had come, and 
 the breaking up of its independent political existence had com- 
 menced. As enmity to Judah liad given its origin to the king- 
 dom of the ten tribes, so also did it bring about its destruction ; 
 born out of it, it died of it. It owed its existence to the incipient 
 enmity; when the latter was accomplished (Isa. vii. 6,) it caused 
 its death. — The Assyrians came to the help of Judah, but 
 charged a high price for their help, viz., Judah's submission and 
 fealty. Thirty heavy years of servitude, and, to a great part, of 
 
MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 2? 
 
 fears of the worst, 2 Kings xvi. 18; Is. xxxiii. 18 (?); xxxvii. 
 3, followed for this kingdom also ; and when, at the close of this 
 period, it freed itself from them after the fashion of the kingdom 
 of Israel, it shared nearly the same fate, 2 Kings xviii. 3 1 ff. It 
 was only to the mercy of the Lord, who looked graciously upon 
 the feeble beginnings of conversion, that it owed its deliverance. 
 The Assyrian power, which had put an end to the kingdoms of 
 Damascus and Israel, and which was the first power that ap- 
 peared on the stage of history and came into conflict with the 
 people of God, became a significant sign of the final fate of the 
 world's power in its attacks upon the Kingdom of God. But, as 
 a prelude to the long series of visitations which it had to endure 
 from the world's power in its different phases, Judah was even 
 now led to the very brink of destruction ; there came a period, 
 the 1 4th year of Hezekiah, when almost nothing more of it was 
 to be seen by the outward eye than its metropolis exposed to 
 the utmost danger." 
 
 A remarkable proof of the fact that the spirit which filled the 
 prophets was a higher one than their own, is the fact that Isaiah 
 recognized so distinctly and clearly the importance of the deci- 
 sive moment. 
 
 In close connection with the great crisis at which the history 
 of the people of God had arrived, stands the richer display of the 
 Messianic announcement which begins with the chapter before 
 us. Messiah is henceforth represented to Judah as an Immanuel 
 against the world's powers, as the surety for its deliverance from 
 the severe oppressions hanging over it, as He who at last, at His 
 appearance, would conquer the world, and lay it at the feet of 
 the people of God. 
 
 After these general introductory remarks, let us turn more 
 particularly to the contents of the chapter before us. It was 
 told to the house of David: "Ai-am is encamped in Ephraim." 
 The position of Ahaz was, humanly considered, desperate. His 
 enemies were far sviperior to him, and he could scarcely hope for 
 help from heaven, for he had an evil conscience. The idea of 
 seeking help from Asshur was natural. Isaiah received a com- 
 mission to oppose this idea before it became a firm resolution. 
 In doing so he, by no means, occupies the position of an inge- 
 nious politician. On the contrary, the whole commission is 
 
28 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 forced upon him. It can scarcely be doubted that the Assyrians 
 would have penetrated to Western Asia, even if Ahaz had not 
 called them to his assistance. The expedition of the Syrians 
 and Ephraimites with the view of making conquests, could not 
 but turn their attention to that quarter. As the instruments of 
 the judgments upon Damascus and Samaria, which Isaiah an- 
 nounced as impending under any cu'cumstances, we can surely 
 think of none but Asshur. But if once they came into these 
 regions, in order to chastise the haughtiness of the Syrians and 
 Ephraimites, who would set up as a new conquering power, then 
 was Judah too threatened bj'^ them. In apolitical point of view 
 ltd id not rtiake any great diffe rence tvhether A haz sought helpfrovo 
 the Assyrians, or not; on the contrary, the king of Asshur could 
 not but be more favourably disposed towards him for so doing. 
 Ixaiah, throughout,rather occupies the p)ositionof therrianof God. 
 The kings of the people of God were, in general, not prevented 
 from forming alliances; but such alliances must belong to the 
 category of pei-mitted human resources. Such, however, was 
 not the case here. Asshur was a conquering power, altogether 
 selfish. His help had to be purchased with dependance, and 
 with the danger of entire destruction; to stay upon him was to 
 stay upon their destroyer, Is. x. 20. Such an alliance was a de 
 facto denial of the God of Israel, an insult to His omnipotence 
 and grace. If Ahaz had obeyed Him; if he had limited himself 
 to the use of the human means granted to him by the Lord with- 
 out trusting in them, and had placed all his confidence in the 
 Lord, He would have delivered him in the same manner as He 
 afterwards delivered Hezekiah, in the first instance from Ai-am 
 and Ephraim, and then from Asshur also. But although Ahaz 
 did not follow the prophet, his mission was by no means in vain. 
 Even before the mission, this result lay open before the Lord who 
 sent him. The great point was to establish, before the first con- 
 flict of Israel with the world's power, thus much, that this con- 
 flict had been brought about by the sin of the house of David, 
 and that hence it did not aflford any cause for doubting the 
 omnipotence and mercy of the Lord whose help had been of- 
 fered, but rejected. 
 
 The Prophet seeks out the king at a place to which he had 
 been diiven by his despairing disquietude which was clinging 
 convulsively to human resources. He endeavours, fii-st, to exert 
 
THE PROPHECY, CHAP. VII. . 29 
 
 an influence upon him by taking with him his son, whose sym- 
 bolical name, containing a prophecy of the future destinies of the 
 people, indicated that the king's fear of a total destruction of the 
 State was without foundation. After the king has thus been pre- 
 pared, he endeavours to make a deeper impression upon him by 
 the announcement, distinct and referring to the present case, 
 that the enemies should not only entirely fail in their intention 
 of conquering and dividing between themselves the kingdom of 
 Judah; but that the kingdom of Ephraim was itself hastening 
 towards that destruction which it was preparing for its brethren, 
 and that after sixty-five years it should altogether lose its nation- 
 al independence and existence, ver. 1-9. But Ahaz makes no 
 reply ; and his whole deportment shows that he does not follow 
 the Prophet's exhortation to "take heed and be quiet," and that 
 the words : " If ye do not believe, ye shall not be established," 
 with which the Prophet closes his address, have not made any 
 impression upon him. In order that the greatness of the king's 
 hardness of heart may become manifest, the Prophet offers, in 
 the commission of the Lord, to confirm the certainty of his state- 
 ment by a miraculous sign, which the king himself is called upon 
 to fix, without any restriction, in order that any suspicion of im- 
 position may be removed. "But Ahaz, the unbeliever, is afraid 
 of heavenly communications, has already chosen his help, wishes 
 that every thing should go on in an easy human manner, and 
 refuses the Lord's ofier in a polite turn which even refers to the 
 Law. A sign is then forced upon him, because as the king 
 of Judah, he must see and hear for all Judah that the Lord 
 is faithful and good."^ The Prophet, in ver. 14, points to the 
 birth of the Saviour by a Virgin. How then was it possible that 
 in the present collision that people should be destroyed, among 
 whom, according to former promises. He was to be born ; that 
 that family should be extinguished from which he was to be 
 descended? The name "Immanuel," by which the future Saviour 
 is designated as "He in whom the Lord is, in the truest man- 
 ner, to be with His people," is a guarantee for His help in the 
 present distress also. The Prophet then states the time in 
 which the land shall be entirely delivered from its present 
 enemies. The contemporaries, as the representative of whom 
 
 1 Meyer^ Blatter far hohere Wuhrheit, iii. S. 101. 
 
30 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the child appears (the Prophet, in the energy of his faith, has 
 transferred the birth of this child from the future to the pre- 
 sent), shall, after the short space of about two years, again 
 obttiin the full enjoyment of the products of the land, ver. 1 5. 
 For, before this period has elapsed, destruction will fall upon the 
 hostile kings in their own land, ver. 1 G. The danger, however — and 
 this is pointed out in ver. 1 7-25— will come from just that quar- 
 ter from which Ahaz expects help, viz., from Asshur. But the 
 security for deliverance from this danger also — the conqueror of 
 the world's power which was soon to begin its coui*se in Asshur, 
 is none other than Immanuel, whom tlie Prophet, in the begin- 
 ning of the humiliation of the people of God, makes, so to say, 
 to become man, in order that, during the impending deep humi- 
 liation of the people of God, He may accompany it in its history 
 during all the stages of its existence, until He should really be- 
 come man. He is, however in this discourse, not yet pointed out 
 as the deliverer from Asshur, and the world's power represented 
 by him. The darkness of the iniseiy to be inflicted by Asshur 
 should not, and could not, in the meantime, be cleared up for 
 Ahaz ; the picture must end in night. But in the following dis- 
 course, chap. viii. 1 , ix. 6 (7), which serves as a necessary sup- 
 plement to the one before us, the Saviour is depicted before the 
 eyes of those despairing in the sight of Asshur; and the two- 
 fold repetition of His name Immanuel, in chap. viii. 8, 1 0, serves 
 to show that the two discourses are intimately connected, and 
 form one whole. 
 
 Ahaz persevered in his unbelief, according to 2 Kings xvi. 7, 
 8. He sent messengers with large presents to Tiglath-piieser, 
 King of Assyria, saying : " I am thy sei^ant and thy son (a 
 word as oniinous as that : " We have no king but Caesar," in 
 John xix. 35) ; come up and save me out of the hand of the 
 King of Aram, and out of the hand of the King of Israel which 
 rise up against me." But before the asked-for help came, king 
 and people had to endure very severe sufferings from Ai-am and 
 Ephraim. Ahaz, after having first made preparations to secure 
 Jerusalem against the impending siege, sent out his armies. 
 They met with a twofold heavy defeat from the divided annies 
 of the allied kings,^ from which he might have been spared by 
 
 • Caspari very justly remarks: " Nothing can be clearer than that 2 Chron. 
 
THE PROPHECY, CHAP VII. 81 
 
 being still, and hoping. The hostile armies then came up to 
 Jerusalem, and laid siege to it. It was probably by the intelli- 
 gence of the advance of Asshur that they were induced to raise 
 the siege. It was now confirmed that the Prophet had been 
 right in designating the two hostile kings as mere tails of smok- 
 ing firebrands. Damascus was taken by the King of Ophir ; the 
 inhabitants were carried away into exile to Kir ; Rezin was 
 slain, 2 Kings xvi. 9 : the land of Israel was devastated ; a por- 
 tion of its inhabitants was carried away into exile ; the king was 
 made tributary, 2 Kings xv. 29. Exactly at the time fixed by 
 the Prophet, th? overthrow of the two hostile kingdoms took 
 place; but the deliverance which, without any farther sacrifice, 
 Ahaz would have obtained, if he had believed the Prophet, had 
 now to be purchased by very heavy sacrifices; and with per- 
 fect justice it is said in 2 Chron. xxviii. 20, 21, that the king of 
 Asshur did not help him, but rather, by coming unto him, dis- 
 tressed him. Ahaz purchased this help at the price of his 
 independence, and had probably to submit to very hard claims 
 being made upon him. {Gaspari, S. GO.) The world's power, 
 to which Ahaz had offered a finger, seized, more and more, the 
 whole hand, and held it by a firm grasp. Under Hezekiah, 
 faith broke thi'ough the consequences of the sin of the family ; 
 but this interruption lasted as long only as did the faith. In 
 addition to that which Ahaz had, for his unbelief, to suffer 
 from Aram, Ephraim, and Asshur, came the rebellion of the 
 neighbouring nations, — of the Edomites, according to 2 Chron. 
 xxviii. 17, and of the Philistines, according to ver. 18. 
 
 Ver. 1. "And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son 
 of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, that Rezin, the king of AraTn, 
 and Pekah the son of Remaliah, the king of Israel, went up to- 
 ward Jerusalem, to war against it, and could not fight 
 against it!' 
 
 In thus tracing back the pedigree of Ahaz to Uzziah, there 
 is a reference to chap. vi. 1 : "In the year that King Uzziah 
 
 xxviii. 5 ff. comes in between 2 Kings xvi. 5 a. b. ; that the author of tlie 
 books of the Kings gives a report of the beginning and end ; the author of 
 the Chronicles, of the middle of the campaign." But we cannot agree with 
 Caspari in his transferring to Idumea the victory of Rezin. According to 
 Is. vii. 2, Aram was encamped in Ephraim. According to 2 Kings xvi. 5, 
 both of the kings came up to Jerusalem and besieged her. The expedition 
 against Elath, 2 Kings xvi. 6, was secondary, and by the way only. 
 
3 2 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 died," &c. Tliese two chapters stand related to each other as 
 prophecy and fulfilment. It was in the year of Uzziah's death 
 that the Prophet had been seized with fearlul forebodings ; 
 and by the divine word these fearful forebodings had soon 
 been raised into a clear knowledge of the threatening judg- 
 ments which were impending. Under Ahaz, the second suc- 
 cessor of Uzziah, this knowledge began to be realized, keeping 
 pace with the hardening which in Ahaz had become personified. 
 He, the type of the unbelieving Jewish people, did not hear 
 and understand, did not see and perceive ; and the announce- 
 ment of the Prophet served merely to increase his hardening. 
 Even as early as that, the germ of the carrying away of the 
 people, announced by the Prophet in chap, vi., was formed. — 
 The circumstance of the hostile kings l^eing introduced as going 
 up implies the spiritual elevation of Jerusalem ; comp. remarks 
 on Ps. xlviii. 3 ; xlviii. 1 7. The city of God is unconquerable 
 unless her inhabitants and, above all, the anointed one of God, 
 make, by their unbelief, their glorious privilege of no avail. 
 In the last words : "And could not fight against it" (the sin- 
 gular ^3% because Rezin is the chief person, Rezin and Pekah 
 being identical with Rezin with Pekah, comp. Esth. iv. IC), 
 the result of the siege is anticipated ; and this is easily ac- 
 counted for by the consideration that ver. 1 serves as an intro- 
 duction to the whole account, statino;, in tjeneral terms, the 
 circumstances wdiich induced the Prophet to come publicly 
 forward. In the following verses, the share only is men- 
 tioned which the Prophet took in the matter ; and the ac- 
 count is closed after he has discharged his commission. The 
 apparent contradiction to 2 Kings xvi. 5, according to which 
 Jerusalem was really besieged, — a contradiction which occurs 
 also in that passage itself : " And they besieged Ahaz, and 
 could not fight" — is most simply reconciled by the remark 
 that a fruitless struggle can, as it were, not be called a struggle, 
 just as, e. g., in the Old Testament, such as have a name little 
 known are spoken of as being without a name. 
 
 Ver. 2, "And it was told to the house of David, saying: 
 Aram rests upon EphraiTn. Then his heart trembled, and 
 the heart of his people, like as the trembling of the trees of the 
 wood before the wind!' 
 
 Tlie representative of the house of David was, according to 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 2, 3. 83 
 
 ver. 1, Ahaz, to whom the suffix in inn^ refers. It is thereby 
 intimated that Ahaz does not come into consideration as an in- 
 dividual, but as a representative of the whole Davidic family, 
 of which the members were responsible, conjunctly and sever- 
 ally, and which in Ahaz denied their God, and gave themselves 
 up to the world's power, — a deed of the family from the con- 
 sequences of which a heroic faith only, like that of Hezekiah, 
 could deliver, but in such a manner only that it at once be- 
 came valid again when this faith ceased, until at length in 
 Christ the house of David was raised to glory. Ver. 19 shows 
 that m must be taken in the signification " to let oneself 
 down," " to sit down," " to encamp." The anguish of the 
 natural man, who has not his strength in God at the breaking 
 in of danger, is most graphically described. 
 
 Ver. 3. "And the Lord said to Isaiah: Go out to meet 
 Ahaz, thou and Shearjashuh thy son, at the end of the con- 
 duit of the up'per "pool, in the highway of the fuller's fields 
 
 Why is the Prophet to seek out the king just at this place? 
 The answer is given by chap. xxii. 2. " And a reservoir yoii 
 make between the two walls for the waters of the old pool : and 
 not do ye look unto him who makes it (viz., the impending 
 calamity), and not do ye regard him who fashioned it long ago. ' 
 When a siege of Jerusalem was imminent, in the lower tenitory, 
 the first task was to cut off the water from the hostile army. 
 This measure Hezekiah, according to 2 Chron. xxxii. 3, took 
 against Sennacherib : " And he took counsel with his princes 
 and his mighty men, to stop the waters of the fountains which 
 were without the city, and they helped him." That might be 
 done in faith ; but he who, like Ahaz, did not stand in the faith, 
 sought in it, jper se, his safety; his despairing heart clung to 
 such measures. The stopping of the fountains was, in his case, 
 on a level with seeking help from the Assyrians. It is thus in 
 the midst of his sin that the Prophet seeks out the king, and 
 recalls to his conscience: "take heed and be quiet." But Avhy 
 did the Prophet take his son Shearjashub with him? It surely 
 cannot be without significance ; for otherwise it would not have 
 been recorded, far less would it have been done at the express 
 command of the Lord. As the boy does not appear actively, 
 the reason can only be in the signification of the name. Ac- 
 cording to chap, viii., the Prophet was accustomed to give to 
 
 VOL. II. c 
 
:> 4- MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Lis sons symbolical names which had a relation to the desti- 
 nies of the nation. They were, according to chap. viii. 18, 
 " for signs and for wondei-s in Israel." But as an interpreta- 
 tion of the name, the |>assage chap. x. 21 is to be considered : 
 "The remnant shall return, the remnant of Jacob unto the 
 mighty God." The word l\\y can, accordingly, be understood 
 of returning to the Lord, of repentance only, comp. chap. i. 27 ; 
 Hos. iii. 5. But with repentance the recovery of salvation is 
 indissolubly connected. The reason why it is impossible that 
 they who commit the sin again.st the Holy Ghost shall never 
 recover salvation lies solely in the circumstance, that it is im- 
 possible that they should be renewed to repentance. The 
 fundamental passage, which is comprehended in the name of 
 the Prophet's son : " And thou returnest unto the Lord thy 
 God. . . . And the Lord thy God tumeth thy captivity {i. c, 
 thy misery), and hath com])assion upon thee, and returneth 
 and gathereth thee from all the nations " (Deut. xxx. 2, 3), 
 emphatically points out the indissoluble connection of the 
 return to the Lord, and of the return of the Lord to His 
 people. This connection comes out so much the more clearly, 
 when we consider that, according to Scripture, repentance is 
 not the work of man but of God, and is nothing else but the 
 beginning of the bestowal of salvation ; comp. Deut. xxx. 6 : 
 " And the Lord thy God circumciseth thine heart, and the 
 heart of thy seed to love the Lord thy God with all thine 
 heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live ;" Zech. 
 xii. 1 0. King and people feared entire destniction ; and it 
 was at this that their powerful enemies aimed. Isaiah took 
 his son with him, " as the living proof of the preservation of 
 the nation, even amidst the most fearful destruction of the 
 greater part of it." After having in this manner endeavoured 
 to free their minds fi'om the extreme of fear, he seeks to ele- 
 vate them to joyful hopes, by the prophetical announcement 
 proper, which showed that, from this quarter, not even the 
 future gi'eat judgment, which would leave a portion only, was 
 to be feared. 
 
 Ver. 4. " And say unto hrai: Take heed and he quiet; fear 
 not, nor let thy heart he tender for the two ends of these 
 svioking firehrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram,, 
 and of the son of Renudiah" 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 4. 35 
 
 Tlie words " Take heed" point to the dangerous conse- 
 quences of fear ; comp. ver. 9 : '• If ye do not believe, ye shall 
 not be established." On the words " he quiet" lit., make quiet, 
 viz., thy heart and walk, comp. chap. xxx. 15: •' For thus 
 saith the Lord : By returning and rest ye shall be saved ; in 
 quietness and confidence shall be your strength ; and ye would 
 not." Such as he was, Ahaz could not respond to the exhor- 
 tations to be quiet. Quietness is a product of faith. But the 
 way of faith stood open to Ahaz every moment, and by his 
 promising word and by his example, the Prophet invited him 
 to enter upon it. In the words : " Fear not," &c., there is an 
 iinmistakable reference to Deut. xx. 1, ff, according to which 
 passage the priest was, on the occasion of hostile oppression, 
 to speak to the people : " Let not your hearts be tender, and 
 be not terrified." That which, in the Law, the priest was 
 commanded to do, is here done by the Prophet, who was 
 obliged so often to step in as a substitute, when the class of 
 the ordinary servants fell short of the height of their calling. 
 — The " firebrand " is the image of the conqueror who destroys 
 countries by the fire of war, comp. remarks on Rev. viii. 8. 
 The Prophet is just about to announce to the hostile kings 
 their impending ovei^throw ; for this reason, he calls them 
 ends of firebrands, which no longer blaze, but only glimmer. 
 He calls them thus because he considers them with the eye of 
 faith; to the bodily eye a bright flame still presented itself, 
 as the last words: " For the fierce anger," &c., and vers. 5 and 6 
 show. Chrysostom remarks: "He calls these kings 'fire- 
 brands,' to indicate at the same time their violence, and that 
 they are to be easily overcome; and it is for this reason, that 
 he adds ' smoking,' i.e., that they were near being altogether 
 extinguished." 
 
 Vers. 5, 6. " Because Aram meditates evil against thee, 
 Ephrair)i and the son of Remaliah, saying: Let us go up 
 against Judah, and drive it to extremity, and conquer it for 
 us, and set up as a king in the midst of it the son of Tabeal" 
 
 We have here, farther carried out, the thought indicated by 
 the words : " for the fierce anger," &c. The interval, in the origi- 
 nal text, between vers. 6 and 7, is put in to prevent the false 
 connection of these verses with ver. 7 {Hitzig and Ewald). — 
 pp always means "to loathe," "to experience disgust;" here. 
 
3G MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 in Hiph., "to cause disgust,'' "to drive to extremity;" comp. 
 my work on Balaam, Rem. on Num. xxii. 3. — yp3 means al- 
 ways : " to cleave asunder," " to open," " to conquer." — The 
 words : " For us," show that Tabeal is to be the vassal only 
 of the two kings. The absolute confidence with which the 
 Prophet recognizes the futility of the plan of the two kings, 
 forms a glaring contras^t to the modern view of Prophetism, 
 Ver. 2 shows in what light ordinary consciousness did, and 
 could not fail to look on the then existing state of things. 
 
 Ver. 7. " Thus saith the Lord Jehovah : It shall not stand, 
 neither shall it come to pass." (A plan stands when it is 
 carried out.) 
 
 Ver. 8. " For the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head 
 of DaTYiasciis is Rezin, and in threescore and five years more, 
 Ephraim shall he broken, and he no more a people" 
 
 Ver. 9. "And the head of Ephraim is Sanuiria, a,nd the 
 head of Samaria is Remalialcs son. If ye helieve not, ye 
 shall not he established^ 
 
 Each of these two verses forms a complete whole. — ^Tlie 
 words: " For the head of Aram," &c., to " Rezin" receive their 
 explanation from the antithesis to vers. 5 and 6, where the 
 king of Aram and the king of Ephraim had declared their in- 
 tention of extending their dominion over Judah. As, con- 
 cerning this intention and this hope, the Lord has declared 
 His will that it shall not be, we must understand: Not as re- 
 cjards Judah, and not as reffixrds Jerusalem. It is in vain that 
 men's thoughts exalt themselves against the purposes of God. 
 From Aram, the Prophet turns, in the second part of the vei"se, 
 to Ephraim: "And even Ephraim! What could it prevail 
 against the Lord and His Kingdom ! It surely should give 
 up all attempts to get more ; its days are numbered, the sword 
 is already suspended over its own head." But inasmuch as it 
 is possible, although not likely, that Ephraim, before its own 
 overthrow, may still bring evil upon Judah, this is expressly 
 denied in ver. 9 : Samaria, according to the counsel of God, 
 and the limit assigned to it, is the head of Ephraim only, and 
 not, at the same time, of Judah, &c. With this ai-e then con- 
 nected the closing words : " If ye believe not, ye shall not be 
 established" (properly, the consequence will be that ye do not 
 continue), which are equivalent to it : it is hence not Samaria 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 8, 9. 37 
 
 and the son of Remaliah that you have to fear ; the enemy 
 whom you have to dread, whom you have to contend against 
 with prayer and supplication, is in yourselves. Take heed 
 lest a similar cause produce a similar effect, as in the last 
 clause of ver. 8 it has been threatened against Ephraim. — This 
 prophecy and warning, one would have expected to have pro- 
 duced an effect so much the deeper, because they were not 
 uttered by some obscure fanatic, but by a worthy member of 
 a class which had in its favour the sanction of the Lawgiver, 
 and which in the course of centuries had been so often and 
 so gloriously owned and acknowledged by God.^ 
 
 * The words : "In threescore and five yeare more, Ephraim shall be broken 
 and be no more a people," have, by rationalistic critics, without and against 
 all external arguments, been declared to be spia-ious. The reasons which 
 serve as fig leaves to cover their doctrinal tendency are the following: (1) 
 " The time does not agree, inasmuch as the ten tribes sustained their first 
 defeat very soon afterwards by Tiglath-pilezer; the second, nineteen to 
 twenty-one years later, by Shalmanezer, who, in the sixth year of Hezekiah, 
 carried the inhabitants of the kingdom of the ten tribes away into captivity." 
 But the question here is the complete destruction of the national existence of 
 Israel; and that took place only under King Manasseh, when, by Azarhaddon, 
 new Gentile colonists were brought into the land, who expelled from it the 
 old inhabitants who had again gathered themselves together ; comp. 2 Kings 
 xvii. 24 with Ezra iv. 2, 10. From that time, Israel amalgamated more 
 and more with Judah, and never returned to a national independence. 
 This happened exactly sixty-five years after the announcement by the Pro- 
 phet. Chap. vi. 12 compared with ver. 13 shows how little the desolation 
 of the country (ver. 16) is connected with the breaking up as a nation. It 
 is, moreover, at least as much the interest of those who assert the spurious- 
 ness, as it is ours to remove the chronological difficidties ; for how could it 
 be imagined that the supjwsed author should have introduced a false chrono- 
 logical statement ? His object surely could be none other than to procure 
 authority for the Prophet, by putting into his mouth a prophecy so very evi- 
 dently and manifestly fulfilled. (2) " The words contain an unsuitable 
 consolation, as Ahaz coidd not be benefitted by so late a destruction of his 
 enemy." But, immediately afterwards, he is even expressly assured that this 
 enemy will not be able to do him any immediate harm. Chrysostoni re- 
 marks: "The king, hearing that they should be destroyed after sixty- five 
 years, might say within himself : What about that ? Although they be then 
 overthrown, of what use is it to us, if they now take us V In order that the 
 king might not speak thus, the Prophet says : Be of good cheer even as to 
 the present. At that time they shall be utterly destroyed ; but even now, 
 they shall not have any more than their own land, for " the head of Eph- 
 raim," &c. Tlie preceding distinct announcement of the last end of his 
 enemy, however, was exceedingly well fitted to break in Ahaz the opinion 
 of his invincibiUty, and to strengthen his faith in the God of Israel, 
 who, with a firm hand, directs the destinies of nations, and, no less, the faith 
 in His servant whom He raises to be j)rivy to His secrets. — (3.) " The use of 
 nmnbers so exact is against the analogy of aU oracles." But immediately 
 afterwards (ver. 15 comp. with chap. viii. 4), the time of the defeat is as 
 exactly fixed, although not in ciphers. In chap. xx. Isaiah announces that 
 
38 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Vers. 10, 11. ''And the Lord sjwke farther unto A has, 
 saying, Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it from the 
 depth, or above from the height." 
 
 Aliaz observed a dignified silence after those words of the 
 Prophet ; but his whole manner shews the Prophet that they 
 have not made any impression upon him. If David's spirit 
 had rested on Ahaz, he would surely, if he had wavered at 
 all, have, on the word of the Prophet, thrown himself into 
 the arras of his God. But in order that the depth of his 
 apostacy, the greatness of his guilt, and the justice of the 
 divine judgments may become manifest, God shows him even 
 a deeper condescension. The Prophet offers to prove the 
 truth of his announcement by any miraculous work which the 
 king himself should determine, and from which he might, at 
 the same time, see God's omnipotence, and the Divine mis- 
 sion of the Prophet. As Ahaz refused the offered sign, the 
 word 2 Tim. ii. 12, 13: £/' dpvov;Mda, Kaxuvog dpt/yjCirai Tj/zag' 
 
 it dm6TOV[j,iv, sy.ihog TidTog /jbhsr apviisasdai yap iaurov oy duvarai 
 
 came into application. According to Deut. vii. 9 If. the 
 truth and faithfulness of God must now manifest itself in the 
 
 after three yeare the Egyptians and Ethiopians shall sustain a defeat ; in chap, 
 xxiii. 15, that Tyre would flourish anew seventy years after its fall ; in chap, 
 xxxviii. 5, he announces to Hezekiah, sick unto death, that (iod would add 
 fifteen years to his life. According to Jeremiah, the Babylonish captivity is 
 to last seventy years ; and the fulfihnent has shown that this date is not to 
 be understood as a round number. And farther, the year-weeks in Daniel. 
 — But in op]U)sition to this view, and positively in favour of the genuine- 
 ness, are the following arguments : The words have not only, as is conceded 
 by Eicdh/^ " a true old-Hebrew colouring," but in their emphatic and solemn 
 brevity (" he shall be broken from [being] a people'') they do not at all bear 
 the chaiacter of an interpolation. If we blot them out, then the Prophet 
 says less than from present circumstances, from ver. 4, where he calls the 
 kings " ends of smoking firebrands," in opposition to ver. 6, and from the 
 analogy of ver. 9, where the threatening is much more severe, he was bound 
 to say. His saying merely that they would not get any more, was not suffi- 
 cient. He could make the right impression only when he reduced that decla- 
 ration to its foundation — ;'. c, their own destruction and overthrow. Yor. Ki, 
 too, would go far beyond what would be announced here, if we remove thi.s 
 clause. He announces destruction to the king-s themselves. Finally, the 
 synnnetrical j'arallelism would be destroyed by striking out these words. The 
 words : "If ye believe not, ye shall not be established," would, in that case, 
 be without the parallel members. They are connected with the clause under 
 discus.^ion so nuieh the rather, that in them it is not specially Judah's de- 
 liverance from the Syrians and Ephraimitcs that is looked at, but its ?;ilva- 
 tion in general. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 10, 11. 39 
 
 infliction of severe visitations upon the house of David. — ^The 
 character of a sign is, in general, borne by everything which 
 serves for certifying facts which belong to the territory of faith, 
 and not to that of sight. 1 . In some instances, the sign consists 
 in a mere naked word ; thus in Exod. iii. 1 2 : "And this shall be 
 the sign unto thee that I have sent thee : When thou hast brought 
 forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this 
 mountain." Moses' doubts of the truth of his Divine mission 
 originated in the consciousness of his own unworthiness, and in 
 the condition of those to whom he was sent. From these doubts 
 he was delivered by the announcement that, at the place where 
 he had been called, he, at the head of the delivered people, 
 should serve his God. This was to him a sign that God was in 
 earnest in calling him. 2. In other instances the assurance 
 given by the sign consists in its perceptibility and corporeality ; 
 so that the word assumes, as it were, flesh and blood. A case of 
 this kind it is, e.g., when, in chap. viii. 1 8, Isaiah calls his two 
 sons, to whom, at the command of God, he had given symbolical 
 names, expressive of the future salvation of the covenant-people, 
 " Signs and wonders in Israel ;" farther, chap. xx. 3, where the 
 Prophet walks naked and barefoot for a sign of the calamity im- 
 pending over Egypt and Ethiopia in three years. 3. In another 
 class of sio'ns, a fact is announced which is, in itself, natural, but 
 not to be foreseen by any human combination, the coming to 
 pass of which, in the immediate future, furnishes the proof that, 
 at a distant future, that will be fulfilled which was foretold as im- 
 pending. The wonderful element, and the demonstrative power 
 do not, in such a case, lie in the matter of the sign, but in the tell- 
 ino- of it beforehand. It is in this sense that, in 1 Sam. x., Samuel 
 gives several signs to Saul, that God had destined him to be 
 king, e.g., that in a place exactly fixed, he would meet two men 
 who would bring him the intelligence that the lost asses were 
 found; that, farther onwards, he would meet with three men, 
 one of whom would be carrying three kids, another, three loaves 
 of bread, and another, a bottle of wine, &c. In 1 Sam. ii. 34, the 
 sudden death of his two sons is given to Eli as a sign that all 
 the calamities threatened against his family should certainly 
 come to pass. In Jer. xliv. 29, 30, the impending defeat 
 of Pharaoh-Hophras is given as a sign of the divine ven- 
 geance breaking in upon the Jews in Egypt. Even before the 
 
4-0 MESSIANIC PIIEDICTIOXS IN THE PROPIIKTS. 
 
 tiling came to pass, it could not in such a case, be otherwise than 
 that the previous condition and foundation brought before the 
 eyes in a lively manner (Jer. xliv. 30: Behold, I give Pharaoh- 
 Hophras into the hands of his enemies") gave a powerful shock 
 to the doubts as to whether the fact in question would come to 
 pass. 4. In other cases, the assurance was given in such a 
 manner, that all doubtsas to the truth of the announcement were 
 s(?t at rest by the immediate performance of a miraculous work 
 going beyond the ordinaiy laws of nature. Thus, e.g., Isaiah 
 says to Hezekiah, in chap, xxviii. 7 : " And this shall be the 
 sign unto thee from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing 
 which He has spoken," and, as a .si</n that the Lord would 
 add fifteen years to the life of the King, who was sick unto 
 death, he makes the shadow on the sun-dial of Ahaz to go back 
 ten degrees. Of this description were also the signs granted to 
 Gideon, and, in man}'- respects, the plagues in Egypt also. In 
 the passage before us, no other sign can possibly be spoken of 
 than one of the tivo last classes. For it was a real, miraculous 
 sign only which could possibly exert any influence on a mind so 
 darkened as was that of Ahaz, and it was the vain offer of such 
 an one only which was fitted to bring to light his obduracy. 
 If, then, the Prophet was willing and able to give a real, 
 miraculous sign, why, then, is the answer of Ahaz so un- 
 suitable ^ And we can surely not suppose, as Meier does, 
 that he should have intentionally misunderstood the Pro- 
 phet. The temptation of the Lord by the children of Israel, 
 to which the word of the Lord, Deut. vi. 16, quoted by Ahaz, 
 refeis, consisted, accordinj^ to Exod. xvii., in their havins; asked 
 'water, as a viiraculous sign that the Lord was truly in the 
 midst of them. How could the Prophet reproach Ahaz with 
 liaving offended, not men merely, but God, unless he had offered 
 to prove, by a fact which lay absolutely beyond the limits of 
 nature, the truth of his announcement, the divinity of Him who 
 gave it, the divinity of his own mission, and the soundness of 
 his advice? Hendewerk is of opinion that "it isdifticult to say 
 what the author would have m;ide to be the sign in the heavens ; 
 ])robably, a very simple thing." But in making this objection it 
 is forgotten that Isaiah gives free choice to the king. Hitzig 
 says: "Without knowing it, Isaiah here plays a very dangerous 
 game. For if Ahaz had accepted his proposition, Jehovah would 
 
ISATAH, CHAP VII. 10, 11. 41 
 
 probably have left His servant in the lurch, and he would have 
 begun to doubt of his God and of himself." In these words, 
 at all events, it is conceded that the prophets themselves would 
 not be what people in modern times would have them to be. 
 If such was their position towards miracles, then, in their own 
 convictions, ^ro^j/iecies, too, must be something else than general 
 descriptions, and indefinite forebodings. But how should it have 
 been possible that an order could have maintained itself for cen- 
 turies, the most prominent members of which gave themselves 
 up to such enthusiastic imprudence and rashness? Moreover, it 
 is overlooked that afterwards, to Hezekiah, our Prophet grants 
 that in reality which here he offers to Ahaz in vain, — poyn 
 and nnjn are Infvn. absol. "going high," "going low." The 
 Imperat. n^stJ' must be understood after najn also. Some ex- 
 plain rh^^ by "to hell," "down to hell;" but this is against 
 the form of the word, which it would be arbitrary to change. 
 Nor does one exactly see how, if we except, perhaps, the ap- 
 parition of one dead, Isaiah could have given to the king a 
 sign from the Sheol;and in other passages, too (comp. Joeliii. 
 8 [ii. 30] ), signs in the heavens and in the earth are contras- 
 ted with one another. Theodoret remarks that both kinds of 
 miracles, among which the' Lord here allowed a choice to Ahaz, 
 were granted by Him to his pious son, Hezekiah, inasmuch as 
 He wrought a phenomenon in heaven wh\ch affected the going 
 back of the shadow on the sun-dial of Ahaz; and on earth, in- 
 asmuch as He, in a wonderful manner, destroyed the Assyrians, 
 and restored the Idng to health. Jerome farther remarks, 
 that, from among the plagues in Egypt, the lice, frogs, &c., 
 were signs on earth ; the hail, fii'e, and thi-ee day's darkness, 
 were signs in the heaven. It is on the passage befcre us that 
 the Pharisees take their stand, when in Matt. xvi. 1 they ask 
 from the Lord that He should grant them a sign from heaven. 
 If even the Prophet Isaiah offered to prove in such a manner 
 his divine mission, then, according to their opinion, Christ was 
 much more bound to do this, inasmuch as He set up far higher 
 claims. But they overlooked the circumstance tiiat enough 
 had already been granted for convincing those who were well 
 disposed, and that it can never be a duty to convince obsti- 
 nate unbelief in a manner so palpable. 
 
42 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Ver. 12. "And Ahaz said : I will not ask, neither will I 
 tempt the Lord" 
 
 Ahaz declines the offer by referring to Deut. vi. 16., and 
 thus assuming the guise of reverence for God and His com- 
 mandment. "He pretends," says Calvin, "to have faith in the 
 words of tlie Prophet, and not to require anything besides the 
 word." The same declarations of the Law, the Lord opposes 
 to Satan, when the latter would induce Him to do something 
 for which he had no word of God, Matt. iv. 7. That would 
 really have been a tempting of God. Ahaz had no doubt that 
 the miracle would really be performed; but he had a dislike 
 to enter within the mystical sphere. Who knows whether the 
 God who grants the miracle is really the highest God ? comp. 
 Is. X. 10, 1], xxxvi. 18-20, xxxvii. 1 0-1 2. Who knows whe- 
 ther He is not laying for him a trap ; whether, by preventing 
 him from seeking the help of man. He is not to bring upon 
 him the destruction which his conscience tells him he has so 
 richly deserved? At all events the affording of His help is 
 clogged with a condition which he is resolved not to fulfil, 
 viz., his conversion. A better and easier bargain, he thought, 
 could be struck with the Assyrians ; how insatiable soever they 
 might be, they did not ask the heart. How many do even 
 now-a-days rather perish in sin and misery, than be converted! 
 
 Ver. 13. "And he said: Hear ye now, house of David: 
 Js it too little for you to yrovohe mnan, that you 'provoke also 
 my Godr 
 
 When Ahaz had before refused to beheve in the simple an- 
 nouncement of the Prophet, his sin was more pardonable ; for, 
 inasmuch as Isaiah had not proved himself outwardly as a di- 
 vine ambassador, Ahaz sinned to a certain degree against man 
 only, against the Prophet only, by unjustly suspecting him of 
 a deceitful pretension to a divine revelation. Hence, Isaiah 
 continues mild and gentle. But when Ahaz declined the of- 
 fered sign, God himself was provoked by him, and his wicked- 
 ness came evidently to light. It is substantiall}^ the same 
 difference as that between the sin against the Son of Man, 
 the Christ coming outwardly and as a man only (Bengel : quo 
 statu conspicu, qaatenus aequo turn loco cum hondnibus con- 
 versabatur), and the sin against the Holy Ghost who power- 
 fully glorifies Him outwardly and inwaidly. It is the anti- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 10, 11. 43 
 
 thesis of the relative ignorance of what one is doing, and of 
 the absolute unwillingness which purposely hardens itself to 
 the truth known, or easy to be known. We say relative 
 ignorance ; for an element of obduracy and hardening already 
 existed, if he did not believe the Prophet, even without a sign. 
 For the fact that the Prophet was sent by God, and spoke 
 God's word, was testitied to all who would hear it, even by 
 the inner voice, just as in every sin against the Son of Man 
 there is always already an element of the sin against the Holy 
 Ghost. — The truth that godlessness is the highest folly is here 
 seen in a very evident manner. The same Ahaz who rejects 
 the offer of the living God, who palpably wishes to reveal to 
 him that He is a living God, sacrifices his son to the dead idol 
 Moloch, who never yet gave the smallest sign of life ! In this 
 mirror we may see the condition of human nature. — The cir- 
 cumstance that it is not Ahaz, but the house of David that is 
 addressed, indicates that the deed is a deed of the whole house. 
 — The Prophet says, ''My God'' i.e., the God whose faithful 
 servant I am, and in whom ye hypocrites have no more any 
 share. In Ver. 11, the Prophet had still called Him the God 
 of Ahaz. 
 
 Ver. 14. "Therefore the Lord himself giveth you a sign: 
 Behold the Virgin is with child, and heareth a Son, and thou 
 callest his name Immanuel." 
 
 Ahaz had refused the proffered sign ; the whole depth of his 
 apostacy had become manifest; no further regard was to be 
 had to him. But it was necessary to strengthen those who 
 feared God, in their confidence in the Lord, and in their hope 
 in him. For this reason, the Prophet gives a sign, even against 
 the will of Ahaz, by which the announcement of the deliver- 
 ance from the two kings was confirmed. Your weak, prostrate 
 faith, he says, may erect itself on the certain fact that, in the 
 Son of the Virgin, the Lord will some day be with us in the 
 truest manner, and may perceive therein a guarantee and a 
 pledge of the lower help in the present danger also. — "There- 
 fore" — because ye will not fix upon a sign. Reinke, in the 
 ably written Monograph on this passage, assigns to pi? the 
 signification, "nevertheless," which is not supported by the 
 usus loquendi. — jn"' must be translated as a Present; for the 
 pregnancy of the Virgin and birth of Immanuel are present to 
 
44 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 tlie Prophet; and the fact cannot serve as a sign, in so far as 
 it manifests itself outwardly, but only in so far as, by being 
 foretold, it is realized as present. — Sin He, i.e., of His own ac- 
 cord, without any co-operation, such as would have taken place 
 if Ahaz had asked the sign. — DD^ refers by its form to the 
 house of David; but in determining the sign, it is not the real 
 condition of its representative at that time which is regarded, 
 but as he ouoht to be. In substance, the simi fjiven to un- 
 godly Ahaz is destined for believers only. — riin "behold" indi- 
 cates the energy with which the Pi'ophet anticipates the fu- 
 ture ; in his s})irit it becomes to him the immediate present. 
 Tlius it was understood as early as by Clirysostom : //.ovov yap 
 oOx opojvTog Tiv TO, yivo/xiva xai (pavra^ofMvryj x,ai ■ro'k'^riv 'iyjtvroi vcnp 
 rojv iipr,ij,k<j(/iu 'xXripo<popiav, twi/ yap ri/MiTspctjv o^pdaX/Mm \y.i7voi aa(f:ieripo\/ 
 TO, fifj opu/xsva 'i^Xi'TTov. — The article in nopyn cannot refer to ihe 
 virgin hnmvn as the mother of the Saviour; for, besides the 
 jiassage before us, it is only Micah v. 2 (3) which mentions the 
 mother of the Saviour, and it is our passage only which speaks 
 of her as a vivfjm. In harmony with njn, the article in no^yn 
 might be explained from the circumstance that the Virgin is pre- 
 sent to the inward perception of the Prophet— equivalent to "the 
 virgin there." But since the use of the article in the f/eneric 
 sense is so general, it is most natural to understand "the vir- 
 gin as forming a contrast to the married or old woman, and 
 hence, in substance, as here equivalent to a virgin. To this 
 view we are led also by the circumstance that, in the parallel 
 passage, Mic. v. 2 (3) mh* "a bearing woman" is used without 
 the article. — ntD^y is, by old expositors, commonly derived from 
 D^]} in the signification "to conceal" A virgin, they assume, 
 is called a concealed one, with reference to the customs of the 
 East, where the virgins are obliged to lead a concealed life. 
 Thus it was understood by Jerome also: ■'Almah is not ap- 
 plied to girls or virgins generally, but is used emphatically of 
 a hidden and concealed virgin, who is never accessible to the 
 look of males, but who is with great care watched by the 
 parents." But all parties now rightly agree that the word is 
 to be derived from oisy, in the signification, " to grow up." 
 To offer here any arguments in jn-oof would be a work of 
 supererogation, as they are offered by all dictionaries. But 
 with all that, Luther s remark is even now in full force : "If 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 14 15. 45 
 
 a Jew or a Christian can prove to me that in any passage 
 of Scripture Ahnah means "a married woman," I will give 
 him a hundred florins, although God alone knows where I 
 may find them." It is true that r\'ohv is distinguished from 
 n^ina, which designates the virgin state as such, and in this 
 sicmification occurs in Joel i. 8. also where the bride laments 
 over her bridegroom whom she has lost by death. Inviolate 
 chastity is, in itself, not implied in the word. But certain it 
 is that no^y designates an unmarried person in the first years 
 of youth; and if this be the case, un violated chastity is a mat- 
 ter of course in this context ; for if the mother of the Saviour 
 was to be an unmarried person, she could be a virgin only ; 
 and, in general, it is inconceivable that the Prophet should have 
 brought forward a relation of impure love. In favour of "an 
 unmarried person" is, in the first instance, the derivation. 
 Being derived from Dpy, "to gTow up," "to become marriage- 
 able," riD^y can denote nothing else than puella nubilis. But 
 still more decisive is the itsus loquendi. In Arabic and Sy- 
 riac the corresponding words are never used of married women, 
 and Jeroine remarks, that in the Punic dialect also a virgin 
 proper is called no^V- Besides in the passage before us, the 
 word occurs in Hebrew six times (Gen. xxiv. 43; Exod. ii. 8; 
 Ps. Ixviii. 2 6 ; Song of Sol. i. 3, vi. 8 ; Pro v. xxx. 1 9) ; but in 
 all these passages the word is undeniably used of unmarried 
 persons. In the two passages of the Song of Solomon, the 
 nio^y designate the nations which have not yet attained to an 
 union with the heavenly Solomon, but are destined for this 
 union. In chap. vi. 8, they are, as brides, expressly contrasted 
 with the wives of the first and second class. Marriage forms 
 the boundary ; the A Imah appears here distinctly as the anti- 
 thesis to a married woman. It is the passage in Proverbs only 
 which requires a more minute examination, as the opponents 
 have given up all the other passages, and seek in it alone a 
 support for their assertion that no^y may be used of a married 
 woman also. The passage in its connection runs as follows: 
 Ver. 18. "There be three things which are too wonderful for 
 me, and four which I know not. Ver. 1 9. The way of an eagle 
 in the air, the way of a serpent upon the rock, the way of a 
 sliip in the heart of the sea, and the way of a man with a 
 maid. Ver. 20. This is the way of an adulterous woman; she 
 
40 MESSTANir PREDICTIONS IX THE PROPHETS. 
 
 eateth, and wipeth her mouth and saitli: I have done no wick- 
 edness." Accerding to De Wc.tte, Bertheau, and others, the 
 Urtium comparationis for every thing is to lie in this only, 
 that the ways do not leave any trace that could be recognized. 
 But the traceless disappearing is altogether without foundation ; 
 there is not one word to indicate it; and it is quite impossible 
 that that on which every thing depends should have been left 
 to conjecture. Farther, — instead of the eagle, every other 
 bird might have been mentioned, and the words "in the air" 
 would be without meaning, as well as the words "in the 
 heart of the sea" mentioned in reference to the ship. But 
 tlie real point of view is expressly stated in ver. 1 8. It is 
 the incoiiqyrehensible. It is thus only that ver. 20, for 
 which the other verses prepare the way, falls in with the 
 tendency of the whole. In the way of the adulteress, that 
 which is pointed out is not that it cannot be known, 
 but the moral incomprehensibility that she, practising great 
 wickedness which is worthy of death, and will unavoidably 
 bring destruction upon her, behaves as if there were nothing 
 wrong, as if a permitted enjoyment were the point in ques- 
 tion, that she eats the poisoned bread of unchaste enjoyment 
 a^ if it were ordinary bread ; comp. ix. 1 7, xx. 17; Ps. 
 xiv. 4. Four incomprehensible things in the natural territory 
 are made use of to illustrate an incomprehensible thing in the 
 ethical territory. The whole purpose is to point out the mys- 
 te/ry of sin. In the case of the eagle, it is the boldness of his 
 flight in which the miraculous consists. The speed and bold- 
 ness of his flight is elsewhere also very commonly mentioned 
 as the characteristic of the eagle ; it is just that which makes 
 him the king of birds. In the case of the serpent, the wonder 
 is that, although wanting feet, it yet moves over the smooth 
 rock which is inaccessible to the proud horse ; comp. Amos 
 vi. 12: " Do horses run upon the rock." In the ship, it is 
 the circumstance that she safely passes over the abyss which, 
 as it would appear, could not fail to swallow her up. The 
 way of a man with a maid occupies the last place in order to 
 intimate that "["n, as in the case of the adulteress, denotes the 
 spiritual, way. What is here meant is the relation of the 
 man to the virgin, generally, for if any particular aspect had 
 been regarded, e. g., that of boldness, cunning, or secrecy, it 
 
ISAIAH VII. 14. ' -47 
 
 ouglit to have been pointed at. The way of the man with 
 the maid is the secret of which mention is made as early as in 
 Gen. ii. 24, — the union of the strong with the weak and tender 
 (comp. the parallel passage, Jer. xxxi. 22), the secret attraction 
 which connects with one another the hearts, and at last, the 
 bodies. The end of the way is marriage. It is the young love 
 which specially bears the character of the mysterious; after the 
 relation has been established, it attracts less wonder. — nnn is 
 the femin. of the verbal adj. nnn The fundamental passage, 
 Gen. xvi. ] 1, where the angel of the Lord says to Hagar : 
 " Behold thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt 
 call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard thy afflic- 
 tion," shows that we must translate : The virgin is with child, 
 and not : becomes with child. The allusion to that passage in 
 Genesis is very significant. In that case, as well as in the one 
 under consideration, salvation is brought into connection with 
 the bii-th of a child. To the birth of Ishmael, the despairing 
 Hagar is directed as to a security for the divine favour ; to the 
 birth of Immanuel, the desponding people are directed as to the 
 actual proof that God is with them. If the A hnah represents 
 herself to the Prophet as being already with child, then pas- 
 sages such as Is. xxix. 8, Matt. xi. 5, are not applicable. A 
 virgin who is with child cannot be one who was a virgin. — 
 The form nxip may be 8d fem. for nxip, comp. Jer. xHv. 23; 
 but the fundamental passage in Gen. xvi. 11 is decisive for 
 considering it as the 2d fem. : " thou callest," as an address to 
 the virgin ; in which case the form is altogether regular. It 
 was not a rare occurrence in Israel that mothers gave the 
 name to children, Gen. iv. 1, 25, xix. 37, xxix. 32. The cir- 
 cumstance, therefore, that the giving of the name is assigned 
 to the mother (the virgin) affords no ground for supposing, as 
 many of the older expositors do, that this is an intimation that 
 the child would not have a human father. " Thou callest" can, 
 on the contrary, according to the custom then prevalent, be 
 substantially equivalent to : they shall name, Matt. xaXsaouei, 
 Jerome : vocabitur. The name is, of course, not to be con- 
 sidered as an ordinary nomen proprium, but as a designation 
 of his nature and character. It may be understood in differ- 
 ent ways. Several interpreters, e. g., Jerome, referring to pas- 
 sages such as Ps. xlvi. 8, Ixxxix. 25, Is. xliii. 2, Jer. i. 8, see 
 
48 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 ill it nothing else than an appeal to, and promise of divine 
 aid. According to others, the name is to be referred to God's 
 becoming man in the Messiah ; thus Theodoret says : " The 
 name reveals the God who is with us, the God who became 
 man, the God who took upon Him the human nature." In a 
 similar manner Trenaeus, Tertullian, Ghrysostom, Lactantius, 
 Calvin, and otliere, express themselves. But those very parallel 
 passages just quoted show that the name in itself has no dis- 
 tinct reference to the incarnation of God in Christ. But from 
 the passage chap. ix. 5, (G), which is so closely connected with 
 the one before us, and in which the Messiah is called God-hero, 
 (the mighty God), and His divine nature so emphatically 
 pointed out (comp. also Mic. v. I [2],) it plainly appears that 
 the Prophet had in view the highest and truest fonn of God's 
 being with His people, such as was made manifest when the 
 word became flesh. (Ghrysostom says : " Then, above all, God 
 was with us on earth, when He was seen on earth, and con- 
 versed with man, and manifested so gi-eat care for us.") 
 
 According, then, to the interpretation given, this verse be- 
 fore us aftirms that, at some future period, the Messiah should 
 be bom by a virgin, among the covenant people, who in the 
 truest manner would bring God near to them, and open the 
 treasures of His salvation. In Vol. I. p. 500 K, we proved 
 that this explanation occurs already in the Gospel according 
 to St. Matthew. According to the interpretation of the Apostle, 
 the passage can refer to Christ only, and finds in him not only 
 the highest, but the only fulfilment. In the Christian 
 Church, throughout all ages, the Messianic explanation was 
 the prevailing one. It was held by all the Fathers of the 
 Church, and by all other Christian commentators down to tlie 
 middle of the IStli century, — only that some, besides the 
 higher reference to the Messiah, assumed a lower one to some 
 event of that period. With the revival of faith, this view, 
 too, has been revived. It is proved by the parallel passage, 
 chap. ix. 5 (G). That passage presents so remarkable an agree- 
 ment with the one now under consideration, that we cannot 
 l>ut assume the same subject in both. " Behold, a virgin is 
 with child, and bearcth a son" — " A child is born unto us, a 
 son is given ;" — " Tliey caU him Immanuel," i. c. Him in whom 
 God will be with us in the truest manner — " They call Him 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 14. 49 
 
 Wonder-Counsellor, the God-Hero, Ever- Father, the Prince of 
 Peace." Both of these passages can the less be separated from 
 one another, that chap. viii. 8 is evidently intended to lead 
 from the one to the other. In this passage it is said of the 
 worliTs power, which in the meantime, and in the first place, 
 was represented by Assltur: "And the stretchings out of his 
 wings are the fulness of the breadth of thy land, Immanuel," 
 i, e., his wings will cover the whole extent of thy land, — the 
 stretching of the wings of this immense bird of prey, Asshur, 
 comprehends the whole land. In the words : " Thy land, 
 Immanuel," the prophecy of the wonderful Child, in chap. viii. 
 23 — ix. 6 (ix. 1 — 7), is already prepared. The land in which 
 Immanuel is to be born, which belongs to Him, cannot re- 
 main continually the property of heathen enemies. Every 
 destruction is, at the same time, a prophecy of the restora- 
 tion. A look to the wonderful Child, and despair must flee. 
 Behind the clouds, the sun is shining. Every attempt to 
 assign the Immanuel to the lower sphere, must by this pas- 
 sage be rendered futile. For how, in that case, could Canaan 
 be called His land ? The signification " native country" which 
 pS, it is true, sometimes receives by the context, does not 
 suit here. For the passage just points out the contrast of 
 reality and idea, that the world's power takes possession of 
 the land which belongs to Immanuel, and hence prepares for 
 the announcement contained in that which follows, viz , that 
 this contrast shall be done away with, and that this shall be 
 done as soon as the legitimate proprietor comes into His king- 
 dom. Farther, — Decisive in favour of the Messianic explana- 
 tion is also the passage Mic. v. ] , 2, (2, 3), where, in corres- 
 pondence to virgin here, we have, she who is bearing. The 
 latter, indeed, is not expressly called a virgin ; but it follows, 
 as a matter of course, that she be so, as she is to bear the 
 Hero of Divine origin (" of eternity"), who, hence, cannot have 
 been begotten by any mortal. Both of the prophecies mutu- 
 ally illustrate one another. Micali designates the Divine origin 
 of the Promised One ; Isaiah, the miraculous circumstances of 
 His birth " {Rosenmuller) Just as Isaiah holds up the birth 
 of Immanuel as the pledge that the covenant-people would not 
 perish in their present catastrophe ; just as he points to the 
 shining form of Immanuel, announcing the victory over the 
 VOL. II. d 
 
50 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN" THE PROPHETS. 
 
 world, in order to comfort them in the impending severe op- 
 pression by the world's power (viii. 8) ;— so Micah makes the 
 oppression by the world's power continue only until the time 
 that she who is bearing brings forth. As Micah, in v. 1 (2), 
 contrasts the divine dignity and nature with the birth in time, 
 so, in Isaiah, Immanuel, He in whom God will most truly be 
 with His people, is born by a virgin. 
 
 The arguments which the Jews, and, following their ex- 
 ample, the rationalistic interpreters, especially Gesenius, and 
 with them Ohluiusen, have advanced against the Messianic 
 explanation, prove nothing. They are these : 
 
 1. "A reference to the Messiah who, after the lapse of cen- 
 turies, is to be bora of a virgin, appears to be without mean- 
 ing in the present circumstances." This argument proves too 
 much, and, hence, nothing. It would he valid against Mes- 
 sianic 2)Tophecies in general, the existence of which certainly 
 cannot be denied. Do not Jeremiah and Ezekiel, at the time 
 when the people were carried away into captivity, comfort 
 them by the announcement that the kingdom of God should,^ 
 in a far more glorious manner, be established by Messiah, 
 whose appearance was yet several centm'ies distant? The 
 highest proof of Israel's dignity and election, was the promise 
 that, at some future time, the Messiah was to be born amonor 
 them. How, indeed, could the Lord leave, without the lower 
 help in the present calamity, a people with whom He was to 
 be, at some future period, in the truest manner ? The Pro- 
 phet refers to the future Saviour in a way quite similar to that 
 in which the Apostle refers to Him, after He had appeared: 
 " Who did not spare His only begotten Son, but gave Him up 
 for us all, how should He not in Him give us aU things 
 freely?" Let us only realize the ti-utli that the hope in the* 
 Messiah formed the centre of the life of believers; that this 
 hope was, by fear, repressed only, but not destroyed. All 
 wliich was needed, therefore, was to revive this hope, and with 
 it the special hope for the present distress also was given — 
 the assurance, firm as a rock, that in it the covenant-people 
 could not perish. This revival took place in tliis way, that 
 in the mind of the Prophet, the Messianic hope was, by the 
 Holy Spirit, rekindled, so that at his light all might kindle 
 tlieir li'dits. The Messianic idea here meets us in such oriai- 
 
ISATAH, CHAP. VII. 14. 51 
 
 nality and freshness, as if here were its real fountain head. 
 The faith already existing is only the foundation, only the 
 point of connexion. What is essential is the new revelation 
 of the old truth, and that could not fail to be affecting, over- 
 powering to susceptible minds. 
 
 2. " The ground of consolation is too general. The Messiah 
 might be born from the family of Ahaz without the Jewisii 
 state being preserved in its then existing condition, and with- 
 out Ahaz continuing on the throne. The Babj^lonish capti- 
 vity intervened, and yet Messiah was to be born. Isaiah would 
 thus have made himself gviilty of a false sophistical argumen- 
 tation." — We answer : What they, at that time, feared, was 
 the total destruction of state and people. This appears suffi- 
 ciently from the circumstance that the prophet takes his sou 
 Shearjashub with him ; and indeed the intentions of the enemy 
 in this respect are expressed with sufficient clearness in ver. G. 
 It is this extreinie of fear which the Prophet here first opposes. 
 Just as, according to the preceding verses, he met the fear of 
 entire destruction by taking with him his son Shearjashub, 
 " the remnant will be converted," without thereby excluding 
 a temporary carrying away, so he there also prepares the mind 
 for the announcement contained in vers. 15, 16, of the near 
 deUverance from the present danger, by first representing the 
 fear of an entire destruction to be unfounded. A people, more- 
 over, to whom, at some future period, although it may be at a 
 very remote future, a divine Saviour is to be sent, must, in 
 the present also, be under special divine protection. They may 
 be visited by severe sufferings, they may be brought to the 
 very verge of destruction, — whether that shall be the case the 
 Prophet does not, as yet, declare, — but one thing is sure, that 
 to them all things must work together for good ; and that is 
 the main point. He who is convinced of this, may calmly and 
 quietly look at the course of events. 
 
 3. " The sense in which mx is elsewhere used in Scripture, 
 is altogether disregarded by this interpretation. For, accord- 
 ing to it, nix would refer to a future event ; but according to 
 tlie usus loquendi elsewhere observed, niN " is a prophesied 
 second event, the earlier fulfilment of which is to afford a sure 
 guarantee for the fulfilment of the first, which is really the 
 point at issue." But, in opposition to this, it is sufficient to 
 
52 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 refer to Exod. iii. 1 2, where Moses receives this as a sign of 
 his Divine mission, and of tlie deliverance of the people to be 
 effected by him : " When thou hast brought forth my people 
 out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain." In 
 chap, xxxvii. 30, our Prophet himself, as a confirmation of the 
 word spoken in reference to the king of Asshur : " I make thee 
 return by the way by which thou earnest," gives this sign, that, 
 in the third year after tliis, agriculture should already have alto- 
 gether returned into its old tracks, and the cultivation of the 
 country should have been altogether restored.^ The fact here 
 given as a sign is later than that which is to be thereby made 
 sure. The sign consists only in this, that the idea is vividly 
 called up and realized in the mind, that the land would recover 
 from the destruction ; and this of course, implies the destruc- 
 tion of the enemy. But in our chapter itself, — the name of 
 Shearjashub afibrds the example of a sign (comp. chap. vii. 1 8), 
 which is taken from the territory of the distant future. It is 
 time that commonly niK is not used of future things ; but this 
 has its reason not in the idea of niK, but solely in the circum- 
 stance that, ordinaril}'', the future cannot serve as a sign of 
 assurance. But it is quite obvious that, in the present case, 
 the Messianic announcement could afford such a sign, and that 
 in a far higher degree than the future facts given as signs in 
 Exod. iii., and Isa. xxxvii. The kingdom of glory which has 
 been promised to us, forms to us also a sure pledge that in all 
 the distresses of the Church, the Lord will not withhold His 
 help from her. But the Covenant-people stood in the same 
 relation to the first appearance of Christ, as we do to the second. 
 (4.) " Tlie passage, chap. viii. 3, 4, presents the most marked 
 resemblance to the one before us. If there the Messianic ex- 
 planation be decidedly inadmissible, it must be so here also. 
 The name and birth of a child serves, there as here, for a sign 
 of the deliverance from the Syrian dominion. If then fhere 
 the mother of the child be the wife of the Prophet, and the 
 child a son of his, the same must be the case here also." But 
 it is a pnorl improbable that the Prophet should have given 
 
 ' By a minute and trifling exposition of what is to be understood as a 
 whole, and comprehonKivoly, many misunderstandings have been introduced 
 into this i)a.ssage. The defeat of Asshur should take place very soon, but the 
 deva.station of the country had been so comjilete that a longer time would be 
 retiuired before the lields would be again cvinpkttly cultivated. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 14. 58 
 
 to two of his sons names which had reference to the same 
 event. To this must be added the circumstance, that the time 
 is wanting for the birth of two sons of the Prophet. Before 
 Immanuel knows to refuse the evil and choose the good, the 
 country of both the hostile kings shall be desolated, chap. vii. 
 1 5 ; before Mahershalalhashbaz knows to cry My Father, My 
 Mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall 
 be carried before the king of Assyria, chap. viii. 4. The two 
 births hence coincide. At all events, it is impossible to find 
 the time for a double birth by the same mother. Several in- 
 terpreters {Gesenius, Hitzig, Hendewerk,) assume the identity 
 of Immanuel and Mahershalalhashbaz ; but this is altooether 
 inadmissible, even from the difference of the names. It is the 
 less admissible to assume a double name for the child, as the 
 name Shearjashub plainly enough shews that the Prophet was 
 in earnest with the names of his cliildren ; and indeed, unless 
 they had been real proper names, there would have existed no 
 reason at all for giving them to them. To have assigned 
 several names to one child would have weakened their power. 
 The agreement must, therefore, rather be explained from the 
 circumstance, that it was by the announcement in chap. vii. 
 1 4 that the Prophet was induced to the symbolical action in 
 chap, viii. 3, 4. He has, in chap. vii. 14, given to the de- 
 spairing people the birth of a child, who would bring the 
 highest salvation for Israel, as a pledge of their deliverance. 
 The birth of a child and its name were then required as an 
 actual prophecy of help in the present distress, — a help which 
 was to be granted with a view to that Child, who not only 
 indicates, but grants deliverance from all distresses, and to 
 whom the Prophet reverts in chap, ix., and even already in 
 chap. viii. 8. — Moreover, besides the agreement there is found 
 a thorough difference. In chap. vii. the mother of the child 
 is called no^yn, whereby a virgin only can be designated ; in 
 chap, viii., " the prophetess." In chap. vii. there is not even 
 the slightest allusion to the Prophet's being the father; while 
 in chap. viii. this circumstance is expressly and emphatically 
 pointed out. In chap. vii. it is the mother who gives the 
 name to the child ; in chap. viii. it is the Prophet. Far closer 
 is the agreement of chap. ix. 5 (6) with chap. vii. 14. It 
 especially appears in the circumstances that in neither of them 
 
54- MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 is the father of the child designated ; and, farther, in the cor- 
 respondence of Immanuel witli "ii3J i^S, God-Hero. 
 
 (5.) " Against the Messianic explanation, and in fovour of 
 that of a son of the Prophet, is the passage chap. viii. 1 8, where 
 the Prophet says that his sons have been given to him for signs 
 and wondei'S in Israel." But although Immanuel be erro- 
 neovisly reckoned among the sons of the Prophet, there still 
 remain Shearjashub and Mahershalalhashbaz. The latter name 
 refers, in the Jirst inntaiice only, to Aram and Ephraim spe- 
 cially ; or the general truth which it declares is applied to this 
 relation only. But, just as the name Shearjashub announces 
 new salvation to the prostrate 'people of God, so the second 
 name announces near destruction to the triumphing tuorld 
 hostile to God ; so that both the names supplement one 
 another. As signs, these two sons of the Prophet pointed to 
 the future deliverance and salvation of Israel, and the defeat 
 of the world ; and the very circumstance that they did so when, 
 humanly viewed, all seemed to be lost, was a subject for won- 
 der. But that we can in no case make Immanuel a third son 
 of the Prophet, we have already proved. 
 
 Ver. 15. Cream and honey shcdl he eat, when he knows t 
 refuse the evil and choose the good. Ver. 16. For before the 
 hoy shall knotu to refuse the evil and choose the good, the country 
 shall be forsaken of the two kings ofivhich thou standest in awe. 
 
 The older Messianic explanation has, in these two verses, 
 exposed itself to the charge of being quite arbitrary. Most of 
 the interpreters assume that, in ver. 15, the true humanity of 
 the Saviour is announced. The name Immanuel is intended 
 to indicate the divine natiu'e ; the eating of milk and honey 
 the human nature. Milk and honey are in this case consi- 
 dered as the ordinary food for babes ; like other children. He 
 shall grow up, and, like them, gradually develope. Thus Je- 
 rome says : "I sliall mention another feature still more won- 
 derful : That you may not believe that he will be born a 
 })hantasm. He will use the food of infants, will eat butter and 
 milk." Calvin says : " In order that here we may not think 
 of some spectre, the Prophet states signs of humanity from 
 which he proves that Christ, indeed put on our flesh." In 
 the same manner Trenaius, Chrysostom, Basil, and, in our cen- 
 tury, Kleuker and RosenmiUler speak. — But this ex[>lanation 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 14. 5 5 
 
 is altogether overthrown by ver. 1 6. Most interpreters assume, 
 in the latter verse, a change of subject ; by "lyj, not Immanuel, 
 but Shearjashub, who accompanied the Prophet, is to be un- 
 derstood. According to others, it is not any definite boy who 
 is designated by "jy: ; but it is said in general, that the devas- 
 tation of the hostile country would take place in a still shorter 
 time than that which elapses between the birth of a boy and 
 his development. Such is Calviiis view. But the supposi- 
 tion of a change of subject is altogether excluded, even by the 
 circumstance that one and the same quality, the distinction 
 between good and evil, is in both verses ascribed to the sub- 
 ject. Others, like J. H. Michaelis, refer ver. 16 also to the 
 Messiah, and seek to get out of the difficulty by a jam dudum. 
 It is not worth while to enter more particularly upon these 
 productions of awkward embarassment. All that is required 
 is, to remove the stone of offence which has caused these inter- 
 preters to stumble. Towards this a good beginning has been 
 made by Vitringa, without, however, completely attaining the 
 object. In ver. 14, the Prophet has seen the birth of the 
 Messiah as present. Holding fast this idea, and expanding it, 
 the Prophet makes him who has been born accompany the 
 people through all the stages of its existence. We have here 
 an ideal anticipation of the real incarnation, the right of 
 which lies in the circumstance, that all blessings and deliver- 
 ances which, before Christ, were bestowed upon the covenant- 
 people, had their root in His future birth, and the cause of 
 which was given in the circumstance, that the covenant-people 
 had entered upon the moment of their great crisis, of their 
 conflict with the world's powers, which could not but address 
 a call to invest the comforting thought with, as it were, flesh 
 and blood, and in this manner to place it into the midst of 
 the popular life. What the Prophet means, and intends to 
 say here is this, that, in the space of about a tvjelvemonth, the 
 overthrow of the hostile kingdoms would already have taken 
 place. As the representative of the cotemporaries, he brings 
 forward the wonderful child who, as it were, formed the soul 
 of the popular life. At the time when this child knows to dis- 
 tinguish between good and bad food, hence, after the space of 
 about a twelvemonth, he will not have any want of nobler food, 
 ver. 1 5, for before he has entered upon this stage, the land of 
 
56 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the two hostile kings shall be desolate. In the subsequent 
 prophecy, the same wonderful child, grown up into a warlike 
 hero, brings the delivei-ance from Asshur, and the world's power 
 represented by it. — We have still to consider and discuss the 
 particular. What is indicated by the eating of cream arid 
 honey? Tlie eiToneous answer to this question, which has 
 become current ever since Gesenius, has put everj'thing into 
 confusion, and has misled expo.sitors such as Hitzig and Meier 
 to cut the knot, by asserting that ver. 15 is spurious. Cream 
 and honey can come into consideration as the noblest food 
 only ; the eating of them can indicate only a condition of 
 plenty and prosperity. " A land flowing Avith milk and honey" 
 is, in the books of Moses, a standing expression for designating 
 the rich fulness of noble food which the Holy Land oflers. 
 A land which flows with milk and honey is, according to 
 Numb. xiv. 7, 8, a "very good land." The cream is, as it 
 were, a gradation of milk. Considering the predilection for 
 fat and sweet food which we perceive everywhere in the Old 
 Testament, there can scarcely be anything better than cream 
 and honey ; and it is certainly not spoken in accordance with 
 Israelitish taste, if Hofmann {Weiss, i. S. 227) thus para- 
 phrases the sense : " It is not because he does not know what 
 tastes well and better (cream and honey thus the evil !), that 
 he will live upon the food which an uncultivated land can 
 aflbrd, but because there is none other." In Deut. xxxii. 13, 
 1 4, cream and honey appear among the noblest products of 
 the Holy Land. Abraham places cream before his heavenly 
 guests, Gen. xviii. 8. The plenty in honey and cream appears 
 in Job XX. 7, as a characteristic sign of the divine blessing of 
 which the wicked are deprived. It is solely and exclusively 
 vers. 2 1 and 2 2 that are referred to for establishing the erro- 
 neous interpretation. It is asserted that, according to these 
 verses, the eating of milk and honey must be considered as an 
 evil, as the sad consequence of a general devastation of the 
 hind. But there are grave objections to any attempt at ex- 
 plaining a preceding from a subsequent passage ; the opposite 
 mode of proceeding is the right one. It is altogether wrong, 
 however, to suppose that vers. 21, 22, contain a threatening. 
 In those verses the Prophet, on the contraiy, allows, as is usual 
 with him, a luy of light to fall u[)on the dark picture of the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 15, 16. 57 
 
 calamity which threatens from Asshur ; and it could, indeed, 
 a priori, be scarcely imagined that the threatening should not 
 be interrupted, at least by such a gentle allusion to the salva- 
 tion to be bestowed upon them after the misery (comp. in refer- 
 ence to a similar sudden breaking through of the proclamation 
 of salvation in Hosea, Vol. I., p. 175, and the remarks on 
 Micah ii. 12, 13) ; but then he returns to the threatening, 
 because it was, in the meantime, his principal vocation to utter 
 it, and thereby to destroy the foolish illusions of the God-forget- 
 ting king. It is in the subsequent prophecy only, chap viii. 1 ; 
 ix. 6 (7) that that which is alluded to in vers. 21, 22 is car- 
 ried out. The little which has been left — this is the sense — 
 the Lord will bless so abundantly, that those who are spared 
 in the divine judgment will enjoy a rich abundance of divine 
 blessings. Parallel is the utterance of Isaiah in 2 Kings xix. 
 30 : " And the escaped of the house of Judah, that which has 
 been left, taketh root downward, and beareth fruit upward." — 
 If thus the eating of cream and honey be rightly understood, 
 there is no farther necessity for explaining, in opposition to 
 the rules of grammar, inyi^ by " (only) until he knows" (comp. 
 against this interpretation Drechslers Gorn/ment). '\r\V~h can 
 only mean : " belonging to his knowledge, i.e., when he knows. 
 Good and evil are, as early as Deut. i. 39 : "Your sons who 
 to-day do not know good and evil," used more in a physical 
 than in a moral sense. Michaelis : " rerutn o'lmniurti ignan." 
 The parallel expression, " not to be able to discern between 
 the right hand and the left hand," in Jonah iv. 1 1 (Michaelis : 
 " discretio ratio7iis et judicii, ut sciant utra manus sit dextra 
 aut sinistra) likewise loses sight of the moral sense. But 
 good and evil are very decidedly used in a physical sense in 
 2 Sam. xix. 86 (35), where Barzillai says: "I am this day 
 fourscore years old, can I discern between good and evil, or 
 has thy servant a taste of what I eat or drink, or do I hear 
 any more the voice of singing men or singing women ?" The 
 connection with the eating of cream and honey, by which the 
 good and evil is qualified, clearly proves that good and evil 
 are, in our passage, used in a similar sense. To the same 
 result we are led by the circumstance also, that the evil pre- 
 cedes, which must so much the rather have a meaning, that 
 nowhere else is this the case with this phrase. The evil, the 
 
58 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 bad food in the time of war, precedes ; the good follows after 
 it : Cream and honey, the good, he will eat when he knows 
 to refuse the evil and choose the good, i.e., when he is beyond 
 the time where he does not yet know to make iii\y great dif- 
 ference between the food, and in which, therefore, the evil, the 
 bad food, is felt as an evil. If the good and the evil be un- 
 derstood in a physical sense, then, in harmony with chap. viii. 
 4, we must think of the period of about one year. Moral 
 consciousness develops much later than sensual liking and 
 disliking. — The construction of dso and "inn with n points to 
 the attection which accompanies the action. — "3 in ver. 16 
 suits very well, according to the view which we have taken, 
 in its ordinary signification, " for." The full enjoyment of 
 the good things of the land will return in the period of about 
 twelve months (in chap, xxxvii. 80 a longer terra is fixed, be- 
 cause the Assyrian desolation was much greater than the Ara- 
 niean) ; for, even before the year has expired, devastation shall 
 be inflicted upon the land of the enemies. nr^lKn comprehends 
 at the same time the Syrian and Ephraimitish land. 
 
 From ver. 17 — 25 the Prophet describes how the Assyrians, 
 the object of the hope of the house of David, and also the 
 Egj^ptian attracted by them, who, however, occupy a position 
 altogether subordinate, shall fill the land, and change it into a 
 wilderness. The fundamental thought, ever true, is this : He 
 who, instead of seeking help from his God, seeks it from the 
 world, is ruined by the world. This truth, which, through the 
 fault of Ahaz, did not gain any saving influence, obtained an 
 accusioig one ; it stood there as an incontrovertible testimony 
 that it was not the Lord who had forsaken His people, but 
 that they had forsaken themselves. It was a necessaiy condi- 
 tion of the blessed influence of the impending calamity that 
 such a testimony should exist ; without it, the calamity would 
 not have led to repentance, but to despair and defiance. — 
 From the circumstance that in ver. 1 7, Avhich contains the 
 outlines of the whole, upon the words : " The Lord shall bring 
 upon thee and thy people," there follow still the words : " And 
 upon thy father's house," it appears that the fulfilment must 
 not be sought for in the time of Ahaz only. In the time of 
 Ahaz, the beginning only of the calamities here indicated can 
 accordingly be sought for, — the gcnn from which all that fol- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 14-16. 59 
 
 lowed was afterwards developed. Nor shall we be allowed to 
 limit ourselves to that which Judah suffered from the Assy- 
 rians, commonly so called. It is significant that, in 2 Kings 
 xxiii. 29, Nebuchadnezzar is called King of Asshur. Asshur, 
 as the first representative of the world's power, represents the 
 world's power in general. 
 
 We have still to submit to an examination those explana- 
 tions of vers 14-16 which differ, in essential points, from that 
 which we have given. Difference of opinion — the character- 
 istic sign of error — meets us here, and that in a very striking 
 manner, in those who oppose the convictions of the whole 
 Christian Church. 
 
 1 . Rosenmilller expressed his adherence to the Messianic ex- 
 planation, but supposed that the Prophet was of opinion that 
 the Messiah would be born in his time. Even Bruno Bauer 
 (Critik der Synopt. i. S. J 9) could not resist the impression 
 that Immanuel could be none other than the Messiah. But 
 he, too, is of opinion that Isaiah expected a Messiah, who was 
 to be born at once, and to become the "delivere]>from the col- 
 lision of that time." This view has been expanded especially 
 by Eivald. "False," so he says, '' is every interpretation which 
 does not see that the Prophet is here speaking of the Messiah 
 to be born, and hence of Him to whom the land really belongs, 
 and in thinking of whom the Prophet's heart beats with joy- 
 ful hope, chap. viii. 8, ix. 5, 6 (6, 7)." But not being able to 
 realize that which can be seen only by faith — a territory, in 
 general, very inaccessible to modern exposition of Scripture 
 — he, in ver. 1 4, puts in the real Present instead of the ideal, 
 and thinks that the Prophet imagined that the conception and 
 birth of the Messiah would take place at once. By r\i::hv ^^ 
 understands, like (Ourselves, a virgin; but such an one as is so 
 at the present moment only, but will soon afterwards cease to 
 be so ; — and in supposing this, he overlooks the fact that the 
 virgin is introduced as being already with child, and that 
 her bearing appears as present. In ver, 1 5, the time when 
 the boy knows &c., is, according to him, the maturer juvenile 
 age from ten to twenty years. It is during this that the de- 
 vastation of the land by the Assyrians is to take place, of which 
 
60 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the Prophet treats more in detail afterwards in ver. 1 7. ff. But 
 opposed to this view is the circumstance that, even before the 
 boy enters upon this raaturer age (ver. 16), hence in a few 
 years after this, the allied Damascus and Ephraim shall be de- 
 solated ; so little are these two kings able to conquer Jerusalem, 
 and so certain is it that a divine deliverance is in store for this 
 country in the immediate future. And, in every point of view, 
 this explanation shows itself to be untenable. The supposition 
 that a real Present is spoken of in ver. 1 -t saddles upon the Pro- 
 phet an absurd hallucination ; and nothing analogous to it can be 
 referred to in the whole of the Old Testament. According to 
 statements of tlie Prophet in other passages, he sees yet many 
 things intervening between the Messianic time and his own ; 
 according to chap. vi. 11-13, not only the entire carrying away 
 of the whole people, (and he cannot well consider the Assyrians 
 as the instruments of it, were it only for this reason, that he is 
 always consistent in the announcement that they should not 
 succeed in the capture of Jerusalem), but also a later second 
 divine judgment. According to chap, xi., the Messiah is to grow 
 up as a twig from the stem of Jesse completely cut down. 
 This supposition of His appearance, the complete decay of the 
 Davidic dynasty, did not in any way exist in the time of the 
 Prophet. According to chap, xxxix., and other passages, the 
 Prophet recognised in Babylon the appearance of a new phase 
 of the world's power which would, at some future period, follow 
 the steps of the Assyrian power which existed at the time of 
 the Prophet, and which should execute upon Judah the judg- 
 ment of the Lord. We pointed out (Vol. I. p. -t 1 7 ff.) that in 
 the Prophet Micah also, the contemporary of Isaiah, there lies 
 a long series of events between the Present and the time when 
 she who is bearing brings forth. Farther — In hai'mony with 
 all other Prophets, Isaiah too looks for the Messiah from the 
 house of David, with which, by the promise of Nathan in 2 
 Sam. vii. salvation was indissolnbly connected, and the high im- 
 portance of which for the weal and woe of the people ap))ear3 
 also from the circumstance of its being several times mentioned 
 in our chapter. Hence it would be a son of Ahaz only of whom 
 we could here think ; and then we should be shut up to Heze- 
 kiah, his first-born. But in that case there arises the diffi- 
 culty which Luther already brought forward against the Jews : 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. YII. 1 4 1 6. 61 
 
 "The Jews understand thereby Hezekiah. But the blind 
 people, while anxious to remedy their error, themselves manifest 
 their laziness and ignorance ; for Hezekiah was born nine years 
 before this prophecy was uttered!" — "The eating of cream and 
 honey" is, in this explanation, altogether erroneously under- 
 stood as a designation of the devastated condition of the land. 
 From our remarks, it sufficiently appears that the expression 
 "to refuse the evil," &lc., cannot denote the maturer juvenile 
 age. And many additional points might, in like manner, be 
 urged. 
 
 2. Several interpreters do not indeed deny the reference to 
 the Messiah, but suppose that, in the first instance, the Prophet 
 had in view some occurrence of his own time. They assume 
 that the Prophet, while speaking of a boy of his own time, 
 makes use, under the guidance of divine providence, of expres- 
 sions, which apply more to Christ, and can, in an improper and 
 inferior sense only, be true of this boy. This opinion was ad- 
 vanced as early as in the time of Jerome, by some anonymous 
 author who, on that account, is severely censured by him: 
 " Some Judaizer from among us asserts that the Prophet had 
 two sons, Shearjashub and Immanuel. Immanuel too was, ac- 
 cording to him, born by the prophetess, the wife of the Pro- 
 phet, and a type of the Saviour, our Lord; so tliat the former 
 son Shearjashub (which means 'remnant,' or 'converting') de- 
 signates the Jewish people that have been left and afterwards 
 converted; while the second son Immanuel, 'with us is God,' 
 signifies the calling of the Gentiles after the Word became flesh 
 and dwelt among us." This explanation was defended by, 
 among; others Orotius, Richard Simon, and Clericus ; and 
 then, in our century, by Olshccusen, who says: "The unity of 
 the reference lies in the name Immanuel ; the son of Isaiah had 
 the name but Christ the essence. He was the visible God whom 
 the former only represented." In a modified form, this view is 
 held by Lowth, Koppe, and von Meyer, also. According to them, 
 the Prophet is indeed not supposed to speak of a definite boy 
 who was to be born in his time, but yet, to connect the des- 
 tinies of his land with the name and destinies of a boy whose 
 conception he, at the moment, imagines to be possible. "The 
 most obvious meaning which would present itself to Ahaz," 
 says von Meyer, "was this: If now a girl was to marry, to be- 
 
62 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 come pregnant, and to bear a child, slio may call him 'God 
 with us,' for God will be with us at his time." But tlie pro- 
 phecy is, after all, to have an ultimate reference to Christ. "Tlie 
 prophecy," says Loivfh, "is introduced in so solemn a manner; 
 the sign, after Ahaz had refused the call to fix upon any thing 
 fi'om the whole tenitory of nature according to his own choice, 
 h so emphatically declared to be one selected and given by 
 God himself; the terms of the prophecy are so unique in their 
 kind, and the name of the child is so expressive ; they compre- 
 ]iend in them so much more than the circumstances of the birth 
 of an ordinary child require, or could even permit, that we 
 may easily suppose, that in minds, which were already pre- 
 pared by the expectation of a gi-eat Saviour who was to come 
 forth from the house of David, they excited hopes which 
 stretched farther than any with which the present cause could 
 inspire them, especially if it was found that in the succeeding 
 prophecy, publislied immediately afterwards, this child was, 
 under the name of Immanuel, treated as the Lord and Prince 
 of the land of Judah. Who else could this be than the heir 
 of the throne of David, under which character a great, and 
 even divine person had been promised T The reasons for the 
 Messianic explanation are very well exhibited in these words 
 of Loivth ; but he, as little as any other of these interpreters, 
 has been able to vindicate the assumption of a dotihle se7ise. 
 Wlien more closely examined, the supposition is a mere make- 
 shift. On the one hand, they could not make up their minds 
 to give up the Messianic explanation, and, along with it, the 
 authority of the Apostle Matthew. But, on the other hand, 
 they were puzzled by the sanctum artificiura by which the 
 Prophet, or rather the Holy Spirit speaking through him, re- 
 presents Christ as being born even before His birth, places 
 Him in the midst of the life of the people, and makes Him 
 accompany the nation through all the stages of its existence. 
 In truth, if the real, or even the nearest fulfilment is sought 
 for in the time of Ahaz, there is no reason whatever for sup- 
 posing a higher reference to Christ. The r\ty?)} is then one who 
 was a virgin, who had nothing in common with the mother 
 of Jesus, Mary, who remained a virgin even after her preg- 
 nancy. The name Immanuel then refers to the help which 
 God Ls to afford in the present distress. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 4<1 — 46. 63 
 
 3. Many interpreters deny every reference to Christ. This 
 interpretation remained for a long time the exclusive property 
 of the Jews, until J. E. Faber (in his remarks on Harmar's 
 observations on the East, i. S. 28]), tried to transplant it into 
 the Christian soil.^ He-was followed by the Roman Catholic, 
 Isenhiehl {Neu&r Versuchilber die Weissagung vom Immaituel, 
 1778) who, in consequence of it, was deposed from his theo- 
 logical professorship, and thrown into gaol. The principal 
 tenets of his work he had borrowed from the lectures of J. D. 
 Mlchaelis. In their views about the Ahnah, who is to bear 
 Immanuel, these interpreters are very much at variance. , 
 
 (a) The more ancient Jews maintained that the Ahnah was 
 the wife of Ahaz, and Immanuel, his son Hezekiah. Ac- 
 cording to the Dialog, c. Tryph. QQ, 68, 71, 77, this view 
 prevailed among them as early as the time of Justin. 
 But they were refuted by Jerome, who showed that Heze- 
 kiah must, at that time, have already been at least nine 
 years old. Kimchi and Abarbanel then resorted to the 
 hypothesis of a second wife of Ahaz. * 
 
 (b) According to the view of others, the Almah is some vir- 
 gin who cannot be definitely determined b}' us, who was 
 present at the place where the king and Isaiah were speak- 
 ing to one another, and to whom the Prophet points with 
 his finger. This view was held by Isenhiehl, Steudel (in a 
 Programme, Tiibingen, 1815), and others. 
 
 (c.) According to tlie view of others, the Almah is not a real 
 but only an ideal virgm. Thus J. D. Mlchaelis: "At the 
 time when one, who at this moment is still a virgin, can 
 bear," &c. Eichhorn, Paulus, Stdhelin, and others. The 
 sign is thus made to consist in a mere poetical figure. 
 
 (d) A composition of the two views last mentioned is the view 
 of Umbreit. The virgin is, according to him, an actual 
 virgin whom the Prophet perceived among those sur- 
 rounding him ; but the pregnancy and birth are imaginary 
 
 ' Gesenius mentions PelUcanus as the first defender of the Non-Messianic 
 interpretation. But this statement seems to have proceeded from a cur- 
 sory view of an annotation by Cramer on Richard Simon''s Kritische Schriften 
 i. S. 441, where the words: "this historical interpretation PelUcanus too 
 has preferred," do not refer to Isaiah but to Daniel. Nor is there any more 
 ground for the intimation that Theodorus a Mopsuesta rejected the Messianic 
 interpretation. 
 
64 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 merely, and the virgin is to suggest to the Prophet the 
 idea of pregnancy. But this explanation would saddle 
 the Prophet with something indecent. Farther: It is not 
 a birth possible which is sjjoken of, but an actual birth. 
 From chap. viii. 8, it likewise appears that Immanuel is 
 a real individual, and He one of eminent dignity; and 
 this passage is thus at once in strict opposition to both of 
 the explanations, viz. that of any ordinary virgin, and that 
 of the ideal virgin. It destroys also 
 
 (e) The explanation of Meier, who by the virgin understands 
 the people of Judah, and conceives of the pregnancy and 
 birth likewise in a poetical manner. The fact, the ac- 
 knowledgment of which has led Meier to get up this hy- 
 pothesis, altogether unfounded, and undeserving of any 
 minute refutation, is this: "The mother is, in the passage 
 before us, called a virgin, and yet is designated as being 
 with child. The words, when understood physically and 
 outwardly, contain a contradiction." But this fact is ra- 
 ther in ftivour of the Messianic explanation. 
 
 (f) Others, farther, conjecture that the wife of the Prophet is 
 meant by the Almah. This view was advanced as early 
 as by Abenezra and Jarchi. By the authority of Gese- 
 nius, this view became, for a time, the prevailing one. 
 Against it, the following arguments are decisive; part of 
 them being opposed to tlie other conjectures also. As 
 ntj?]! designates "virgin" only, and never a young woman, 
 and, far less, an older woman, it is quite impossible that 
 the wife of the Prophet, the mother of Shearjashub could be 
 so designated, inasmuch as the latter was ah-eady old 
 enough to be able to accompany his father. Gesenius 
 could not avoid acknowledging the weight of this argu- 
 ment, and declared himself disposed to assume that the 
 Prophet's former wife had died, and that he had thereupon 
 betrothed himself to a virgin. Olshausen, Maurer, Hen- 
 deiverk, and others, have followed him in this. But this 
 is a story entirely without foundation. In chap. viii. 1 3, 
 the wife of the Prophet is called simply "the prophetess." 
 Nor could one well see how the Prophet could expect to 
 be understood, if, by the general expression : "the virgin" 
 he wished to signify his presumptive betrothed. There 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 14 — 16. 65 
 
 is an entire absence of every intiviation whatsoever of a 
 nearer relation of the A Imah to the Prophet ; and such an 
 intimation could not by any means be wanting if such a re- 
 lation really existed. One would, in that case at least, be 
 obliged to suppose, as Pluschke does, that the Prophet took 
 bis betrothed with him, and pointed to her with his 
 finger, — a supposition which too plainly exhibits the sign 
 of embarrassment, just as is the case with the remark of 
 Hendetuerk: "Only that, in that case, we must also sup- 
 pose that his second wife was sufficiently known at court 
 even then, when she was his betrothed onlv, although her 
 relation to Isaiah might be unknown ; so that, for this 
 very leason, we could not think of a frustration of the 
 sign on the part of the king." Hitzig remarks : "The sup- 
 position of a former wife of the Prophet is altogether des- 
 titute of any foundation." He then, however, falls back 
 upon the hypothesis which Gesenius himself admitted to 
 be untenable, that njj?]}, "virgin" might not only denote a 
 young woman, but sometimes also an older woman. Not 
 even the semblance of a proof can be advanced in support 
 of this. It is just the juvenile age which forms the funda^ 
 mental signification of the word. In the wife of the Pro- 
 phet we can the less think of such a juvenile age, that he 
 himself had already exercised his prophetic office for about 
 twenty years. Hitzig has indeed altogether declined to 
 lead any such proof. A son of the Prophet, as, in gene- 
 ral, every subject except the Messiah, is excluded by the 
 circumstance that in chap viii. 8, Canaan is called the land 
 of Immanuel. — Farther, — In all these suppositions, niN is 
 understood in an inadmissible signification. It can here 
 denote a fact only, whereby those who were really suscep- 
 tible were made decidedly certain of the impending deliver- 
 ance. This appears cleai-ly enough from the relation of 
 this siffn to that which Ahaz had before refused, accord- 
 ing to which the difference must not be too great, and 
 must not refer to the substance. To this may be added 
 the solemn tone which induces us to expect something 
 grand and important. A mere poetical image, such as 
 would be before us according to the hypothesis of the 
 ideal virgin, or of the real virgin and the ideal birth, does 
 VOL. II. e 
 
66 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 surely not come up to the demand which in this context 
 must be made in reference to this sign. And if the Pro- 
 phet had announced so solemnly, and in words so sublime, 
 the birth of his own child, he would have made himself 
 ridiculous. Faiilier, — How then did the Prophet know 
 that after nine months a child would be born to him, or, 
 if the pregnancy be considered as having already com- 
 menced, how did he know that just a son would be born 
 to him ? That is a question to which most of these 
 Rationalistic interpreters take good care not to give any 
 reply. PlilscJike, indeed, is of opinion that, upon a bold 
 conjecture, the Prophet had ventured this statement. But 
 in that case it might easily have fared with him as in 
 that well known story in Worms, ( Eisenraenger, entdech- 
 tes Juderithum ii. S. 664 ff), and his whole authority 
 would have been forfeited if his conjecture had proved 
 false. And this argument liolds true in reference to 
 those also who do not share in the Rationalistic view, of 
 Prophetism. Predictions of such a kind may belong . to 
 the territory of foretelling, but not to that of Prophecy. 
 
 THE PROPHECY, CHAP. VIII. 23-IX. 6. 
 (Chap. ix. 1-7.) 
 
 UNTO us A CHILD IS BORN. 
 
 In the view of the Assyrian catastrophe, the Prophet is 
 anxious to bring it home to the consciences of the people 
 that, by their own guilt, they have brought down upon them- 
 selves this calamity, and, at the same time, to prevent them 
 from despairing. Hence it is that, soon after the prophecy 
 in chap, vii., he reverts once more to the subject of it. The 
 circumstances in chap. viii. 1 — ix. 6 (7) are identical with 
 tliose in chap. vii. Judah is hard pressed by Ephraim and 
 Aram. Still, some time will elapse before the destniction of 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VIII. 23 IX. 6. 67 
 
 their territories. The term in chap. vii. 16: "Before the boy- 
 shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good," and in 
 chap. viii. 4: " Before the boy shall know to cry, My father 
 and ray mother," is quite the same. This is the less to be 
 doubted when it is kept in mind that, in the former passage, 
 evil and good must be taken in a physical sense. The sense 
 for the difference of food is, in a child, developed at nearly 
 the same time as the ability for speaking. If it had not been 
 the intention of the Prophet to designate one and the same 
 period, he ought to have fixed more distinctly the limits be- 
 ttceen the two terviini. It might, indeed, from chap. viii. 3, 
 appear as if at least the nine months must intervene between 
 the two prophecies of the conception of the son of the Prophet, 
 and his birth. As, however, it cannot be denied that there is 
 a connection between the giving of the name, and the drawing 
 up of the document in vers. 1 and 2, we should be obliged to 
 suppose that, in reference to the first two futures with Vav 
 convers. the same rule applies as in reference to -|^f^"), in Gen. 
 ii. 19. The progress lies first in -i^n'i ; the event falling into 
 that time is the birth. 
 
 Chap. viii. 1 — ix. 6 (7), forms the necessary supplement to 
 chap, vii., the germ of which is contained already in chap. vii. 
 21, 22. The Prophet saw, by the light of the Spirit of God, 
 that the fear of Aram and Ephraim was unfounded ; the 
 enemy truly dangerous is Asshur, i.e., the whole world's power 
 first represented by Asshur. For the King of Asshur is, so 
 to say, an ideal person to the Prophet. The different phases 
 of the world's powers are intimated as early as chap. viii. 9, 
 where the Prophet addresses the "nations," and "all the far- 
 off countries ;" and, at a later period, he received disclosures 
 regarding all the single phases of the world's power which 
 began its course with Asshur. With this the Prophet had only 
 threatened in chap. vii. ; here, however, he is pre-eminently- 
 employed with it, exhorting, comforting, premising, so that 
 thus the two sections form one whole in two divisions. His 
 main object is to induce his people, in the impending oppres- 
 sion by the world's poiver, to direct their eyes steadily to their 
 heavenly Redeemer, who, in due time, will bring peace in- 
 stead of strife, salvation and prosperity instead of misery, 
 dominion instead of oppression. As in chap. vii. 14, the 
 
68 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 picture of Immaniiel is placed before the eyes of the people 
 desponding on account of Aram and Ephraim, so here the 
 care, anxiety, and fear in the view of Asshur are overcome 
 by pointing to the declaration : " Unto us a child is born, 
 unto us a son is given." It is of gieat importance for the 
 right understanding of the Messianic announcement in chap, 
 viii. 23, ix. 6, that tlie historical circumstances of the whole 
 section, and its tendency be clearly understood. As, in gene- 
 ral, the Messianic announcement under the Old Testament 
 bears a one-sided character, so, for the present occasion, those 
 aspects only of the picture of the Saviour were required which 
 were fitted effectually to meet the despondency of the people 
 in the view, and under the pressure of the world's power. 
 
 After these ])relimiiiary remarks, we must enter still more 
 in detail upon the arrangement and construction of the section 
 before us. 
 
 The Prophet receives, first, the commission to w^rite down, 
 like a judicial document, the announcement of the speedy 
 destruction of the present enemies, and to get it confirmed by 
 trust-worthy witnesses, chap. viii. 1, 2. He then, farther, re- 
 ceives the commission to give, to a son that would be born to 
 him about the same time, a name expressive of the speedy 
 destruction of the enemies, vers. 3, 4. Thus far the announce- 
 ment of the deliverance from Aram and Ephraim. There 
 then follows, from vers. 5-8, an announcement of the misery 
 which is to be inflicted by Asshur, of whom Ahaz and the 
 unbelieving portion of the people expected nothing but de- 
 liverance. Up to this, there is a recapitulation only, and a 
 confirmation of chap. vii. But this misery is not to last for 
 ever, is not to end in destruction. In vers. 9,10, the Prophet 
 addresses exultingly tliu hostile nations, and announces to 
 them, what had already been gently hinted at at the close of 
 ver. 8, that their attempts to put an end U) the covenant- 
 people would be vain, and would lead to their own destruc- 
 tion. The splendour of Asshur must fade before the bright 
 image of Immanuol, which calls to the people : " Be ye of 
 good cheer, I have overcome the world." Calvin strikingly 
 remarks : " The Prophet may be conceived of, as it were, 
 standing on a watch tower, -whence he beholds the defeat of 
 the people, and the victorious Assyrians insolently exulting. 
 
ISAIAH CHAP. VIII. 23 IX. 6. 69 
 
 But by the name and view of Christ he recovers himself, for- 
 gets all the evils as if he had suffered nothing, and, freed 
 from all misery, he rises against the enemies whom the Lord 
 would immediately destroy." The Prophet then interrupts 
 the announcement of dehverance, and exhibits the subjective 
 conditions upon which the bestowal of deliverance, or rather 
 the •partaking in it, depends, along with the announcement of 
 the fearful misery which would befal them in case these con- 
 ditions were not complied with. But, so he continues in vers. 
 1 1-1 6, he who is to partake of the deliverance which the Lord 
 has destined for His people, must in firm faith expect it from 
 Him, and thereby inwardly separate himself from the unbe- 
 lieving mass, who, at every appearance of danger, tremble and 
 give up all for lost. He who stands as ill as that mass in the 
 trial inflicted by the Lord ; he to whom the danger becomes 
 an occasion for manifesting the unbelief of his heart; — he 
 indeed will perish in it. At the close, the prophet is em- 
 phatically admonished to impress this great and important 
 truth upon the minds of the susceptible ones. In ver. 1 7 : 
 "And I waited upon the Lord," tfcc, the Prophet reports what 
 eflect was produced upon him by this revelation from the 
 Lord, — thereby teaching indirectly what effect it ought to 
 produce upon all. In ver. 18, the Prophet directs the de- 
 sponding people to the example of himself who, according to 
 ver. 17, is joyful in his faith, and to the names of his sons 
 which announced deliverance. Deliverance and comfort are 
 to be sought from the God of Israel only. Vain, therefore, 
 — this he brings out, vers. 19-22 — are all other means by 
 which people without faith seek to procure help to themselves. 
 They should return to God's holy Law which, in Deut. xviii. 
 ] 4, ff commands to seek disclosures as regards the future, and 
 comfort from His servants the Prophets only, and which itself 
 abounds in comfort and promise. If such be not done, misery 
 without any deliverance, despair without any comfort, are 
 the unavoidable consequences. From ver. 23, the Prophet 
 continues the interrupted announcement of deliverance. That 
 which, in the preceding verses, he had threatened in the case 
 of apostacy from God's Word, and of unbelief, viz., darkness, 
 i.e., the absence of deliverance, will, as the Prophet, accord- 
 ing to vers. 21, 22, foresees, really befal them in future, as 
 
70 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the people will not fulfil the conditions held forth in vers. 1 6 
 and 20, as they will not speak: "To the Law and to the 
 testimony," as they will not in faith lay hold of the promise, 
 and trust in the Lord. The calamity having, in the preced- 
 ing verses, been represented as darkness, the deliverance 
 which, by the grace of the Lord, is to be bestowed upon the 
 people (for the Lord indeed chastises His people on account of 
 their unbelief, but does not give them up to death), is now 
 represented as a great light which dispels the darkness. It 
 shines most clearly just where the darkness had been greatest 
 — in that part of the country which, being outwardly and in- 
 wardly given up to heathenism, seemed scarcely still to belong 
 to the land of the Lord, viz., the country lying around the 
 lake of Gennesareth. The people are filled with joy on ac- 
 count of the deliverance granted to them by the Lord, — their 
 deliverance fi-om the yoke of their oppressors, from the bond- 
 age of the world which now comes to an end. As the be- 
 stower of such deliverance, the Prophet beholds a divine child 
 who, having obtained dominion, will exercise it witli the skill 
 of the God-man; who will, with fatherly love, in all eternity 
 care for His people and create peace to them; who will, at 
 the same time, infinitely extend His dominion, the kingdom 
 of David, not by means of the force of arms, but by means of 
 right and righteousness, the exercise of which will attract the 
 nations to Him ; so that with the increase of dominion, the 
 increase of peace goes hand in hand. The guarantee that 
 these glorious results shall really take place is the zeal of the 
 Lord, and it is this to which the Prophet points at the close. 
 
 Chap. viii. 23 (ix. 1). "For not is darkness to the land, to 
 which is distress; in the former time he has hrour/ht disgrace 
 upon the land of Zebulun and the hind of Naphtali, and in 
 the after-ti'me he brings it to honour, the region on the sea, the 
 other side of the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles!' 
 
 ^3 stands in its ordinary signification, "for." Allow not your- 
 selves to be turned away by anything from tiusting in the 
 God of Israel ; hold fiist by His word alone, and by His ser- 
 vants, — such was the fundamental thought of the whole pre- 
 ceding section. It meets us last in ver. 20, in the exhorta- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VIII. 23. 71 
 
 tion : "To the Law and to the testimony !" in so far as this is 
 rich in consolation and promise. The Prophet, after having, 
 in the preceding verses, described the misery which will befal 
 those who do not follow this exhortation, supports and esta- 
 blishes it by referring to the help of the Lord already alluded 
 to in vers. 9 and 1 0, and to the light of His grace which He 
 will cause to shine into the darkness of the people, — a dark- 
 ness produced by their unbelief and apostacy ; and this light 
 shall be brightest where the darkness was greatest. All the 
 attempts at connecting this ''n wdtli the verse immediately pre- 
 ceding instead of referring it to the main contents of the pre- 
 ceding section, have proved futile. "3 can neither mean "never- 
 theless," nor " yea ;" and the strange assertion that it is almost 
 without any meaning at all cannot derive any support from 
 Isaiah xv. 1 : " The burden of Moab, for in the night the city 
 of Moab is laid waste ; ' for only in that case is '•3 without any 
 meaning at all, if nK'D be falsely interpreted. — Ver. 22, where 
 the phrase npix pjiyo " darkness of distress" is equivalent to 
 "darkness which consists in distress" (compare also : " behold 
 trouble and darkness" in the same verse), shows that ^J?1^ and 
 pXIO are substantially of the same meaning. — Ourvei'se forms 
 an antithesis to ver. 22 ; the latter verse described the dark- 
 ness brought on by the guilt of the people ; the verse under 
 consideration describes, in contrast to it, the renfioval of it called 
 forth by the grace of the Lord. — vh may either be connected 
 with the noun, or it may be explained : not is darkness. It 
 cannot be objected to the latter view that, in that case, }^x 
 should rather have stood ; while the analogy of the phrase : 
 " Not didst thou increase the joy," in chap. ix. 2 (3), seems to 
 be in favour of it. Here we have the negative, the ceasing of 
 darkness ; in chap. ix. 1 (2) the positive, the appearance of 
 light. The suffix, in n? refers, just as the suffix, in nn in ver. 
 2 1 , to the omitted px. — The 3 in ny3 is, by many interpreters, 
 asserted to stand in the signification of ~\^^'2 1 " Just as the 
 former time has brought disgrace, &c. But as it cannot be 
 proved that a has ever the meaning, "just as ;" and as, on the 
 other hand, r\V'2 frequently occurs in the signification, " at the 
 time" (compare my remarks on Numb, xxiii, 13 in my work 
 on Balaam), we shall be obliged to take, here too, the 3 as a 
 temporal particle, and to supply, as the subject, Jehovah, who 
 
72 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 always stands before the Prophet's mind, and is often not men- 
 tioned when the matter itself excludes another subject. More- 
 over, it is especially in favour of this view that, in vers. 3 (4), 
 the Lord himself is expressly addressed. — As regards ^-|^x, 
 either ny3 may be supphed, — and this is simplest and most 
 natural — or it may be taken as an Accusative, " for the whole 
 after-time." — bpr\ means properly to " make light," then " to 
 make contemptible," " to cover with disgrace," and T22n pro- 
 perly then, " to make heavy," " to honour," — a signification 
 which indeed is pecuHar to Flel, but in which the Hiphil, 
 too, occurs in Jer. xxx. 1 9 ; the two verbs thus form an anti- 
 thesis. The n locale in nnx (the word does not occur in Isaiah 
 with the n paragog.) shews that a certain modification of the 
 verbal notion must be assumed : "to bring disgi'ace and honour." 
 nvnx thus would mean " towards the land." The scene of the 
 disgrace and honour, which at fiist was designated in general 
 only, is afterwards extended. First, the land of Zebulun and 
 Naphtali only is mentioned, because it was upon it that the 
 disgrace had pre-eminently fallen, and it was, therefore, pre- 
 eminently to be brought to honour ; then the whole territory 
 along the sea on both sides of it. — D"" can, in this context which 
 serves for a more definite qualification, mean the sea of Gen- 
 nesareth only (m^n D"" Numb, xxxiv. 11, and other passages), 
 just as, in Matt. iv. 1 3, the designation of Capeniaum as ri 'ko.- 
 pa^a^watfff/'a receives its definite meaning from the context. — ^TiT 
 occurs elsewhere also in the signification of versus, e.g., Ezek. 
 viii. 5, xl. 20, 46 ; it will be necessary to supply after it pS, 
 just as in the case of the piTi siv following. It is without any 
 instance that "l")! " way" should stand for " region," " country." 
 The region on the sea is then divided into its two parts pi^n I3y, 
 'jripav To\) 'lopodvou, the land on the east bank of Jordan, and 
 Galilee. The latter answers to the land of Zebulun and Naph- 
 tali ; for the territory of these two tribes occupied the centre 
 and principal part of Galilee. In opposition to the established 
 vsus loquendi, many would understand p'\''r\ "lay as meaning 
 the land " on the side," i.e., this side " of the Jordan," proceed- 
 ing upon the supposition that the local designations must, from 
 beginning to end, be congruous. Opposed to it is also the cir- 
 cumstance that, in 2 Kings, xv. 29, the most eastward and 
 most northward countries, Peraea and Galilee are connected. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VIII. 23. 78 
 
 In that passage the single places are mentioned which Tiglath- 
 pilezer took ; then, the whole districts, " Gilead and Galilee, 
 the whole land of Naphtali." By the latter words, that part 
 of Galilee is made especially prominent upon which the catas- 
 trophe fell most severely and completely. In the phrase, 
 " Galilee of the Gentiles," Galilee is a geographical designation 
 which was ah'eady current at the time of the Prophet. There 
 is no reason for fixing the extent of ancient Galilee differently 
 from that of the more modern Galilee, — for assigning to it a 
 more limited extent. We are told in 1 Kings ix. 11, that the 
 twenty cities wliich Solomon gave to Hiram lay in the land of 
 Gain, but not that the country was limited to them. The qua- 
 lification, " of the Gentiles," is nowhere else met with in the Old 
 Testament ; it is peculiar to the Prophet. It serves as a hint 
 to point out in what the disgrace of Galilee and Peraea con- 
 sisted. This Theodoret also saw. He says : " He calls it 
 ' Galilee of the Gentiles' because it was inhabited by other 
 tribes along with the Jews; for this reason, he says also of 
 the inhabitants of those countries, that they were walking in 
 darkness, and speaks of the inhabitants of that land as living 
 in the shadow and land of death, and promises the brightness 
 of heavenly light." It is of no small importance to observe 
 that Isaiah does not designate Galilee according to what it was 
 at the time when this prophecy was uttered, but according to 
 what it was to become in future. The distress by the Gentiles 
 appears in chap. vii. and viii. everywhere as a future one. At 
 the time when the Prophet prophesied, the Jewish territory 
 still existed in its integrity. In vers. 4, and 5-7, he announces 
 Asshur's inroad into the land of Israel as & future one; in the 
 present moment, it was the kingdom of the ten tribes in con- 
 nection with Ai'am which attacked and threatened Judea. 
 The superior power of the world which, according to the clear 
 foresight of the Prophet, was threatening, could not but be 
 sensibly felt in the North and East. For these formed the 
 border parts against the Asiatic world's power ; it was from 
 that quarter that its invasions commonly took place ; and it 
 was to be expected that there, in the first instance, the Gen- 
 tiles would establish themselves, just as, in former times, they 
 had maintained themselves longest there ; comp. Judges i. 
 30-38; Keil on 1 Kings ix. 11. But very soon after this, 
 
74 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the name " Galilee of the Gentiles" ceased to be one merely 
 prophetical ; Tiglathpilezer carried the inhabitants of Galilee 
 and Gilead into exile, 2 Kings xv. 29. At a later period, 
 when the Greek empire " peopled Palestine, in the most attrac- 
 tive places, with new cities, restored many which, in conse- 
 quence of the destructive wars, had fallen into decay, filled all 
 of them, more or less, with Greek customs and institutions, 
 and, along with the newly-opened extensive commerce and 
 traffic, everywhere spread Greek manners also," this change 
 was chiefly limited to Galilee and Peraea ; Judea remained 
 free from it ; comp. Ewald, Geschichte Israels, iii. 2 S. 264 
 ff. In 1 Maccab. v. Galaaditis and Galilee appear as those 
 parts of the country where the existence of the Jews is almost 
 hopelessly endangered by the Gentiles living in the midst 
 of, and mixed up with them. What is implied in " Galilee 
 of the Gentiles" may be learned from that chapter, where 
 even the expression reverts in ver. 1 5. With external 
 dependence upon the Gentiles, however, the spiritual depend- 
 ence went hand in hand. These parts of the country could 
 the less oppose any great resistance to the influences of 
 heathendom, that they were separated, by a considerable 
 distance, from the religious centre of the nation — the temple 
 and metropolis, in which the higher Israelitish life was con- 
 centrated. A consequence of this degeneracy was the con- 
 tempt in which the Galileans were held at the time of Christ, 
 John i. 47, vii. 52; Matt. xxvi. 69. — But in what consisted 
 the honour or the glorification which Galilee, along with 
 Peraea, was to obtain in the after-time ? Chap. ix. 5 (6), 
 where the deliverance and salvation announced in the pre- 
 ceding verses are connected with the person of the Mexleemer, 
 show that we must not seek for it in any other than that of 
 the Messianic time. Our Lord spent the greater part of His 
 public life in the neighbourhood of the lake of Gennesareth; 
 it was there that Capernaum — His ordinary residence — was 
 situated, Matt. ix. 1 . From Galilee were most of His disciples. 
 In Galilee He performed many miracles; and it was there 
 that the preaching of the Gospel found much entrance, so that 
 even the name of the Galileans passed over in the firet cen- 
 turies to the Christians. Theodoret strikingly remarks : " Gali- 
 lee was the native country of the holy Apostles; there tho 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP VIII. 23. 75 
 
 Lord performed most of His miracles; there He cleansed the 
 leper ; there He gave back to the centurion his servant sound ; 
 there He removed the fever from Peter's wife's mother; there 
 He brought back to life the daughter of Jairus who was dead ; 
 there He multiplied the loaves; there He changed the water 
 into wine." Very aptly has Gesenius compared Micah v. 1 (2). 
 Just as in that passage the birth of the Messiah is to be for 
 the honour of the small, unimportant Bethlehem, so here 
 Gahlee, which hitherto was covered with disgrace, which was 
 reproached by the Jews, that there no prophet had ever risen, 
 is to be brought to honour, and to be glorified by the appear- 
 ance of the Messiah. It was from the passage under review 
 that the opinion of the Jews was derived, that the Messiah 
 would appear in the land of Galilee. Comp. Soha/r, p. 1. fol. 
 119 ed. Amstelod; fol. 74 ed. Solisbae : saijo ••^jn"' b^bil nj;nKn 
 NrT'K^O- " King Messiah will reveal himself in the land of 
 Galilee." But we must beware of putting prophecy and ful- 
 filment into a merely accidental outward relation, of changing 
 the former into a mere foretelling, and of svipposing, in refer- 
 ence to the latter, that, unless the letter of the prophecy had 
 existed, Jesus might as well have made Judea the exclusive 
 scene of His ministry. Both prophecy and history are over- 
 ruled by a higher idea, by the truth absolutely valid in refer- 
 ence to the Church of the Lord, that where the distress is 
 greatest, help is nearest. If it was established that the misery 
 of the covenant-people, both outward and spiritual, was espe- 
 cially concentrated in Galilee, then it is also sure that He who 
 was sent to the lost sheep of Israel must devote His principal 
 care just to that part of the country. The prophecy is not 
 exhausted by the one fulfilment; and the fulfilment is a new 
 prophecy. Wheresoever in the Church we perceive a new 
 Galilee of the Gentiles, we may, upon the ground of this pas- 
 sage, confidently hope that the saving activity of the Lord will 
 gloriously display itself 
 
 Chap. ix. 1 (2). " The people that walk in darkness see a 
 great liglit, they that dwell in the land of the shadoiv of death, 
 upon them light ariseth." 
 
 " The people" are the inhabitants of the countries mentioned 
 in the preceding verse; but they are not viewed in contrast 
 to, and exclusive of the other members of the covenant- 
 
76 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 people, — for according to chap. viii. 22, darkness is to cover 
 the whole of it — but only as that portion which comes chiefly 
 into consideration. Light is, in the symbolical language of 
 Scripture, salvation. That in which the salvation here con- 
 sists cannot be determined from the words themselves, but 
 must follow from the context. It will not be possible to deny 
 that, according to it, the darkness consists, in the first instance, 
 in the oppression by the Gentiles, and, hence, salvation con- 
 sists in the deliverance from this oppression, and in being 
 raised to the dominion of the world; and in ver. 2 (8) flf, we 
 have, indeed, the farther displaying of the light, or deliverance. 
 But it will be as little possible to deny that the sad companion 
 of outward oppression by the Gentile world is the spiritual 
 misery of the inward dependence upon it. Farther, — It is as 
 certain that the elevation of the covenant-people to the do- 
 minion of the world cannot take place all on a sudden, and 
 without any farther ceremony, inasmuch as, according to a 
 fundamental view of the Old Testament, all outward deliver- 
 ance appears as depending upon conversion and regeneration. 
 " Thou returnest," so we read in Deut. xxx. 2, 3, " to the 
 Lord thy God, and the Lord thy God turneth to thy capti- 
 vity." And in the same chapter, vers. 6,7: " The Lord thy 
 God circumciseth thy heart, and tlien the Lord thy God put- 
 teth all these curses upon thine enemies." Before Gideon is 
 called to be the deliverer of the people from Midian, the Pro- 
 phet must fii'st hold up their sin to the people, Judg. vi. 8 ff., 
 and Gideon does not begin his work with a struggle against 
 the outward enemies, but must, first of all, as Jerubbabel, de- 
 clare war against sin. All the prosperous periods in the 
 people's history are, at the same time, periods of spiritual 
 i-evival. We need only think of David, Jehosha])hat, and 
 Hezekiah. Outward deliverance always presents itself in 
 history as an addition only which is bestowed upon those 
 seeking after the kingdom of God. Without the inward 
 foundation, the bestowal of the outward blessins: would be 
 only a mockery, inasmuch as the holy God could not but im- 
 mediately take away again what He had given. But the 
 circumstance that it is the outivard salvation, the deliverance 
 from the heathen servitude, the elevation of the people of God 
 to the dominion of the world, as in Christ it so gloriously took 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. IX. 1. 77 
 
 place, which are here, in the first instance, looked at, is easily- 
 accounted for from the historical cause of this prophetic dis- 
 course which, in the first instance, is directed against the fears 
 of the destruction of the kingdom of God hy the world's power. 
 Ps. xxiii. 4; "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the 
 shadow of death, I fear no evil ; for thou art with me, thy rod 
 and thy staff they comfort me," must so much the more he 
 considered as the fundamental passage of the verse under con- 
 sideration, that the Psalm, too, refers to the whole Christian 
 Church. It was in the appearance of Christ, and the salva- 
 tion brought through Him, in the midst of the deepest misery, 
 that this Psalm found its most glorious confirmation. — mO/V, 
 " darkness of death," is the darkness which prevails in death 
 or in Sheol. Such compositions commonly occur in proper 
 names only, not in appellatives ; and hence, by " the land of 
 the darkness (shadow) of death," hell is to be understood. 
 But darkness of hell is, by way of a shortened comparison, 
 not unfrequently used for designating the deepest darkness. 
 The point of comparison is here furnished by the first member 
 of the verse. Parallel is Ps. Ixxxviii. 4 K, where Israel la- 
 ments that the Lord had thrust it down into dark hell. The 
 Preterite tense of the verbs in our verse is to be explained 
 from the prophetical view which converts the Future into the 
 Present. How little soever modern exegesis can realise this 
 seeing by, and in faith, and how much soever it is everywhere 
 disposed to introduce the real Present instead of the ideal, yet 
 even JSwald is compelled to remark on the passage under con- 
 sideration : " The Prophet, as if he were describing something 
 which in his mind he had seen as certain long ago, here repre- 
 sents everything in the past, and scarcely makes an exception 
 of this in the new start which he takes in the middle." At 
 the time when the Prophet uttered this Prophecy, even the 
 darkness still belonged to the future. As yet the world's 
 power had not gained the ascendancy over Israel ; but here 
 the light has already dispelled the darkness. 
 
 It now merely remains for us to view more particularly the 
 quotation of these two verses in Matt. iv. 12-17. 'Axovoag de 
 — thus the section begins — 6V/ 'ludwrjc '7rapid66ri, dvi^uiprjssj i!g 
 rriv TaXiXaiav. Since, in these words, we are told that Jesus, 
 after having received the intelligence of the imprisonment of 
 
78 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 John, withdrew into Galilee, we cannot for a moment think 
 of His having sought in Galilee, safety from Herod; for Gali- 
 lee just belonged to Herod, and Judea afforded security against 
 him. The verb avay^upuv denotes, on the contrary, the with- 
 drawing into the angulus terrae Galilee, as contrasted with 
 the civil and ecclesiastical centre. The time of the beginning 
 of Christ's preaching (His ministry hitherto had been merely 
 a kind of prelude) was determined by the imprisonment of 
 John, as certainly as, according to the prophecy of the Old 
 Testament, the territories of the activity of both were imme- 
 diately bordering upon one another, and by that very circum- 
 stance the place, too, was indirectly determined; for it was 
 fixed by the prophecy under consideration that Galilee was to 
 be the scene of the chief ministry of Christ. If, then, the 
 time for the beginning of the ministry had come, He must 
 also depart into Galilee. The connection, therefore, is this: 
 After he had received the intelligence of the imprisonment of 
 John — in which the call to Him for the besinninsf of His 
 ministiy was implied — He departed into Galilee, and especially 
 to Capernaum, vers. 12, 13; for it was this part of the country 
 which, by the prophecy, was fixed as the main scene of 
 His Messianic activity, vers. 14-16. It was there, there- 
 fore, that He continued the preaching of John, ver. 17. — 
 
 Ka,} xarakirrMv rr,v Na^a^sr it is said in ver. 13 iXduv xa- 
 
 ruxnSiv iig Ku'T'spvaoufi rriv 'TtapaQaXaasiav, sv opioig Za(3ouXuv xat 
 NipduXsifj,. Christ had hitherto had His settled abode at 
 Nazareth, and thence undertook His wanderings. The imme- 
 diate reason why He did not remain there is not stated by 
 Matthew ; but we learn it from Luke and John. In accord- 
 ance with his object, Matthew takes cognizance of this one 
 circumstance only, that, according to the prophecy of the Old 
 Testament, Capernaum was very specially fitted for being the 
 residence of Christ. The town was situated on the western 
 shore of the Lake of Gennesareth. Quite in opposition to his 
 custom elsewhere, Matthew describes the situation of the town 
 80 minutely, because this knowledge served to citford a better 
 insight into the fulfilment of the prophecy of the Old Testa- 
 ment. The designation rrjv 'xapadaXaaalav stands in reference to 
 bdov (JaXaffffr^c, in ver. 15. 'Ec opioti, &c., may either mean : "In 
 the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali," i. e. in that place where 
 
ISATAH, CHAP. IX. 1. 79 
 
 the borders of both the countries meet, — or ra opia may, ac- 
 cording to the analogy of the Hebrew w^Mi,, denote the borders 
 in the sense of " teritory," as in Matt. ii. 16. From a com- 
 parison of 7^ ZafSovXiiv xa/ N£p^aX£/> of the prophecy in ver. 1 5, 
 to which the words stand in direct reference, it follows that 
 the latter view is the correct one. Whether Capernaum lay 
 just on the borders between the two countries was of no con- 
 sequence to the prophecy, and hence was of none to Matthew. 
 — The phrase ha rrXripudfi does not, according to the very sound 
 remark of De Wette, point to the intention, but to the objec- 
 tive aim. The question, however, is to what the ha •rrXTipudij 
 is to be referred, — whether merely to that which immediately 
 precedes, viz., the change of residence from Nazareth to Caper- 
 naum, or, at the same time to avi^ujprjssv sig rriv raXiXalav. The 
 latter is alone correct. The prophecy which the Evangelist 
 has in view referred mainly to Galilee, or the territory of 
 Zebulun and Naphtali in general ; but, according to the ex- 
 press remark of the Evangelist, Nazareth itself was likewise 
 situated in Galilee. The advantage which Capernaum had over 
 it was this only, that in Capernaum the odov daXdrrsrig of the 
 prophecy was found again, and that, therefore, thence the 'zspav 
 roll 'lopddvov of the prophecy also could be better realized, 
 inasmuch as across the lake there was an easy communication 
 from that place with the country beyond Jordan. The con- 
 nection is hence this : After the imprisonment of the Baptist, 
 Jesus, in order to enter upon His ministry, went to Galilee, 
 and especially to Capernaum, which was situated on the lake, 
 in order that thus the prophecy of Isaiah as to the glorifica- 
 tion of Galilee, and of the region on the lake, might be ful- 
 filled. — Matthew has abridged the passage. From chap. viii. 
 28 (ix. 1) he has taken the designation of the part of the 
 country, in order that the agreement of fulfilment and pro- 
 phecy might become visible. The words from /Jj — tZv s6mv 
 may either be regarded as a fragment taken out of its connec- 
 tion, so that they are viewed as a quotation, and as forming a 
 period by themselves (this, from a comparison of the original, 
 seems most natural) ; — or we may also suppose, that the 
 Evangelist, having broken-up the connection with the preced- 
 ing, puts these words into a new connection, so that, along 
 with the 6 XaCg, which has become an apposition, they form 
 
80 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the subject of the following sentence. At all events, odov takes 
 here the place of the adverb, although it may not be possible 
 to adduce instances and proofs altogether analogous from the 
 Greek usus loquendi. — The confidence with which Matthew 
 explains chap. viii. 23, and ix. 1 of Christ can be accounted 
 for only from the circumstance that he recognized Christ as 
 He who in chap. ix. 5, 6, (G, 7) is described as the author of all 
 tlie blessings designated in the preceding verses. It was 
 therefore altoR-ether erroneous in Gesenius to assert that there 
 was the less reason for holding the Messianic explanation of 
 chap. ix. 5, 6, as there was no testimony of the New Testa- 
 ment in favour of it. — It is quite obvious that Matthew does 
 not quote the Old Testament prophecy in reference to any 
 single special event which happened at Capernaum ; but that 
 rather the whole following account of the glorious deeds of 
 Christ in Galilee, as well as in Peraea, down to chap. xix. 1, 
 serves to mark the fulfilment of this Old Testament prophecy, 
 and is subservient to this quotation. This passage of Matthew 
 explains the reason, why it is that he, and Luke and Mark 
 who closely follow him, report henceforth, until the last journey 
 of Jesus to Jerusalem, exclusively facts which happened in 
 Galilee, and in Peraea, ivhich likewise was mentioned by 
 Isaiah. Tlie circumstance that this fact, which is so obvious, 
 was not perceived, has called forth a number of miserable con- 
 jectures, and has even led some interpreters to assail the credi- 
 bility of the Gospel. To Matthew, who wished to show that 
 Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah promised in the Old Testa- 
 ment, the interest must, in the view of the prophecy under 
 consideration, be necessarily concentrated upon Galilee ; and 
 Mark and Luke followed him in this, perceiving that it was 
 not becoming to them to open up a path altogether new. 
 This was reserved to the second Apostle from among the 
 Evangelists. 
 
 Ver. 2 (3). " Thou muUipliest the nation to which thou 
 didst not increase the joy ; they joy before thee like the joy in 
 fiarvest, and as they rejoice ivhen they divide the spoilt 
 
 The Prophet beholds the joy of the Messianic time as pre- 
 sent ; he beholds the covenant-people numerous, free from all 
 misery, and full of joy ; full of delight he turns to the Lord, 
 and praises Him for what He has done to His people. — One 
 
ISAIAH IX. 2. 81 
 
 of the privileges of the people of God is the increase which at 
 all times takes place after they are sifted and thinned by- 
 judgments. Thus, e.g., it happened at the time after their re- 
 turn from the captivity, comp. Ps. cvii. 38, 39: "And He 
 blessetli them, and they are multiplied greatly, and He suffereth 
 not their cattle to decrease. They who were minished and 
 brought low through affliction, oppression, and sorrow." But 
 this increase took place most gloriously at the time of Christ, 
 when a numerous multitude of adopted sons from among the 
 Gentiles were received into the Church of God, and thus the 
 promise to Abraham : " I will make of thee a great nation" (iia as 
 in the passage before us, and not oy), received its final fulfil- 
 ment. From the arguments which we advanced in Vol. i. 
 on Hosea ii. 1, it appears that the increase which the Church 
 received by the reception of the Gentiles is, according to the 
 biblical view, to be considered as an increase of the people of 
 Israel. The fundamental thought of Ps. Ixxxvii. is : Zion the 
 birth-place of the nations ; by the new birth the Gentiles are 
 received in Israel. The manner in which the Gentiles show 
 their anxiety to be received in Israel is described by Isaiah in 
 chap. xliv. 5. The commentary on the words : " Thou mul- 
 tipliest the nation," is furnished to us by chap. liv. 1 ff!, where, 
 in immediate connection with the prophecy regarding the Ser- 
 vant of God who bears the sin of the world, it is said : " Sing, 
 O barren, thou that didst not bear, break forth into singing, 
 and shout thou that didst not travail with child ; for more are 
 the children of the desolate than the children of the married 
 wife, saith the Lord." Comp. also chap. Ixvi. 7-9, and Ezek. 
 xxxvii. 25,26: " And my servant David shall be their prince 
 for ever. And I make a covenant with them and multiply 
 them." Several interpreters, e. g. Calvin, Vitringa, suppose 
 that the Prophet in this verse (and so likewise in the two follow- 
 ing verses) speaks, in the first instance, of a nearer prosperity, 
 of the rapid increase of the people after the Babylonish capti- 
 vity. Vitringa directs attention to the fact, tliat the Jewish 
 people after the captivity did not only fill Judea, but spread 
 also in Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Greece, and 
 Italy. And surely we cannot deny that in this increase, no 
 less than in the new flourishing of the people after the defeat 
 of Sennacherib also, there is a 'prelude to the real fulfilment ; 
 
 VOL. II. / 
 
82 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 and that so much the more that these precursory increases, 
 liappening, as they did, regularly after the decreases, were 
 bestowed upon the covenant-people with a view to the future 
 appearance of Christ. These increases enter into a still closer 
 relation to the prophecy under consideration, if we keep in 
 mind that in chap. vii. the Prophet anticipates in spirit the 
 appearance of Christ, and that it is with this representation 
 that, in tlie Section before us, chap. viii. 8, 10 are connected. 
 In order to refute the explanation of Umhr^iet : " Thou hast 
 multiplied the heathen, and thereby thou hast removed all joy; 
 but now," &c., it will be quite sufficient to refer to the parallel 
 passage, chap. xxvi. 15: " Thou incireasest the joeople, O Lord, 
 thou art glorified, thou removest all the boundaries of the 
 land," where, just as in the verse before us, by ^i:n " the 
 ])eople," Israel is designated ; and that is frequently the case 
 where the notion of the multitude, the mass only is concerned, 
 comp. Gen. xii. 2. — " Thou didst not increase the joy" stands 
 for : to whom thou formerly didst not increase the joy, to 
 whom thou gavest but little joy, upon whom thou inflictedst 
 severe sufferings. The antithesis is quite the same as in chap, 
 viii. 23 (ix. 1), where the former distress is contrasted with 
 the light which is now to shine upon them, the former dis- 
 grace with the later glory ; and in the same manner in chap, 
 ix. 1 (2), where tlie present light is rendered brighter by being 
 contrasted with the former darkness. The contrast of the present 
 increase with the former absence of joys shows that the joy is to 
 be viewed as being connected with the increase, and that if for- 
 merly the joy was less, the reason of it was chiefly in the de- 
 crease. Ps. cvii. 88,39,4], shews how aftliction and decrease, joy 
 and increase, go hand in hand ; farther, Jerem. xxx. 19:" And 
 out of them proceed thanksgivings, and the voice of the merry 
 ones ; and I multiply them, and they do not decrease ; and I 
 lionour them, and they are not small." The decrease is a 
 single symptom only of a depressed, joyless condition, which 
 everywhere in the kingdom of God shall be brought to an 
 end by Christ. Most of the ancient translators (LXX., Chald., 
 Syi\) follow the marginal reading li?, " to him" hast thou in- 
 creased the joy. According to many modern interpreters, 
 nh is supposed to be a different mode of writing for li?. But 
 no proof that could stand the test can be brought forward for 
 
ISAIAH IX. 2, 3. 83 
 
 such a mode of writing ; nor is there any reason for supposing 
 that K^ stands here in a different sense from what it does in 
 chap. viii. 23, and it would indeed be strange that "h should 
 have been placed before the verb. At most, it might be sup- 
 posed that the Prophet intended an ambiguous and double 
 
 sense : -, — didst thou increase the joy. But altogether 
 
 to him 
 
 apart from such an ambiguous and double sense, behind the 
 negative, at all events, the positive is concealed ; thou multi- 
 pliest the people, and increasest to them the joy, thou who 
 formerly didst decrease their joy, &c. ; and it is to tliis posi- 
 tive that the words refer which, in Luke ii. 1 0, the angels 
 address to the shepherds : m (po^iTak, Idoii yap iuayyBXi^6,'j,a,t 
 •jlJjTv yapav [iiya\rjv ring iSTai vavri rw Xau) on Wiydri j/jb7\i GYifiipov 
 sMTrip, og esn XpiaHg Kupiog ; comp. Matth. ii. 10. — In the fol- 
 lowing words, the Prophet expresses, in the first instance, the 
 nature of the joy, then its greatness. The joy over the bless- 
 ings received is a joy before God, under a sense of His imme- 
 diate presence. The expression is borrowed from the sacrificial 
 feasts in the courts before the sanctuary, at which the par- 
 takers rejoiced before the Lord, Deut. xii. 7, 12, 18, xiv. 26. 
 In Immanuel, God with his blessings and gifts has truly en- 
 tered into the midst of His people. With the joy at the 
 dividing of the spoil, the joy is compared only to show its 
 greatness, just as with the joy in the harvest; and it is in 
 vain that Ktiobel tries here to bring in a dividing of spoil. 
 
 Vers. 3, (4). " For the yoke of his burden and the staff of 
 his neck, the rod of his driver thou hojSt broken as in the day 
 of Midian." 
 
 In this verse, the reason of the people's joy announced in 
 the preceding verse is stated : it is the deliverance from the 
 world's power, under the oppression of which they groaned, 
 or, in point of fact, were to groan. He who imposes the yoke 
 and the staff, the driver, (an allusion to the Egyptian task- 
 masters, comp. Exod. iii. 7 ; v. 1 0), is Asshur, and the whole 
 worlds power hostile to the Kingdom of God, which is repre- 
 sented by him, and which by Christ was to receive, and has 
 received, a mortal blow. A prelude to the fulfilment took 
 place by the defeat of Sennacherib under Hezekiah, comp. 
 chap. X. 5, 24, 27 ; xiv. 25. After him. Babel had to expe- 
 
84 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 rience the destructive power of the Lord, the single phases of 
 which, pervading, as they do, all histoiy, are here compre- 
 hended in one great act. Although the definitive fulfilment 
 begins first with the appearance of Christ in the flesh, who 
 spoke to His people : dupaurs, lyu vsvlxrixa rhv xog/mv, yet after 
 what we remarked on ver. 2, we are fully entitled to consider 
 the former catastrophes also of the kingdoms of the world as 
 preludes to the real fulfilment. — D3CJ' " shoulder " does not suit 
 as the TnemhruTYi cui verhera inflicjuntiir ; it comes, as is 
 commonly the case, into consideration as that member with 
 which burdens are borne. The staff or tyranny is a heavy 
 bnrden, comp. chap. x. 27 : " His burden shall be taken away 
 from off" thy shoulder." "As in the day of Midian" is equi- 
 valent to : as thou once didst break the yoke of Midian. 
 This event was especially fitted to serve as a type of the glo- 
 rious future victory over the world's power, partly because 
 the oppression by Midian was very hard, — according to Judges 
 viL 12, Midian, Amalek, and the sons of the East broke in 
 upon the land like grasshoppers for multitude, and their 
 camels were without number, as the sand by the seaside for 
 multitude — partly because the help of the Lord {tJiou hast 
 broken) was at that time specially visible. " I will be with 
 thee," says the Lord to Gideon in Judges vi. 16, " and thou 
 shalt smite the Midianites as one man ;" and Judges vii. 2 : 
 " The people that are with thee are too many, as that I could 
 give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt them- 
 selves against me, saying : Mine own hand hath saved me." 
 
 Vers. 4, (5). " Fo7' every luar-shoe put on with noise, and 
 the garment rolled in blood : it is for burning, food of fire." 
 
 We have here the reason why the tjn-anny is broken : for 
 the enemies of the Kingdom of God shall entirely and for 
 ever be rendered incapable of carrying on warfare. If the 
 noisy war-shoes, and their blood-stained garments are to be 
 burned, they themselves must, of course, have been previously 
 destroyed. But, if that be the case, then all war and tyranny 
 are come to an end, " for the dead do not live, and the shades 
 do not rise," chap. xxvi. 14. The parallel passages, Ps. xlvi. 
 10, and Ezek. xxxix. 9, 10, do not permit us to doubt that 
 the burning of the war-shoes and of the bloody garments come 
 into consideration here as a consequence of the destruction of 
 
ISAIAH IX. 4, 5. 85 
 
 the conquerors. Nor can we, according to these passages, 
 entertain, for a moment, the idea of Meier, that those bloody 
 garments belong to Israel. 
 
 Vers. 5 (6). " For unto us a child is horn, unto us a son 
 is given, and the government is upon his shoulders, and his 
 name shall be called Wonder-Counsellor, God-Hero, Ever- 
 Father, Prince of Peace" 
 
 The Prophet had hitherto spoken only of the salvation 
 which is to spread from Galilee over the rest of the country ; 
 it is first here that its author, in all His sublime glory, comes 
 before him ; and, having come to him, the prophecy rises to 
 exalted feelings of joy. In chap. vii. 14, the Prophet beholds 
 the Saviour as being already born ; hence the Preterites ni?" 
 and JDJ. If any one should imagine that from the use of 
 these Preterites he were entitled to infer that the subject of 
 the prophecy must, at that time, already have been born, he 
 must also, on account of the Preterites in vers. 1 (2) suppose 
 tliat the announced salvation had at that time been already 
 bestowed upon Israel, — which no interpreter does. Hitzig 
 correctly remarks : " Because He is still future, the Pr(.- 
 phet in His first appearance, beholds Him as a cKild, and as 
 the son of another." Whose son He is we are not told ; but 
 it is supposed to be already known. Ever since the revela- 
 tion in 2 Sam. vii., the Messiah could be conceived of as the 
 Son of David only ; compare the words : " Upon the throne 
 of David" in vers. 6 (7), and chap. xi. 1, Iv. 3. As the Son 
 of God the Saviour appears as early as in Ps. ii. ; and it is to 
 that Psalm that the "God-Hero" aUudes, and connects itself. 
 AUuding to the passage before us, we read in John iii. 1 6 : 
 o'jTOi yuf rr/avniiiv 6 ds^g rov kos/x^ov " Tlie zeal of the Lord of hosts 
 will perform this,") vers. 6 [7], wVrg rov v'ldv avrou rov /juovoyBvn 
 Uuixiv. — When grown up, the Son has the government upon 
 His shoulder. The Prophet contrasts Christ with the world's 
 potver, which threatened destruction to the people of God. 
 This, then, refers to the Kingly office of Christ, and the state 
 of glory. Parallel is the declaration of Christ in Matt, xxviii. 
 1 8, iUdn iJboi Taca s^ovda. The Lord has also, in John xviii. 
 87, confirmed the truth that He is King; and it is upon 
 the ground of His own declaration that Pilate designates Him 
 upon the cross as a King. Although His Kingdom is not of 
 
86 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 this world, John xviii. 36, it is, just for that very reason, so 
 much the more all-governing. The hrsvOiv in that passage is 
 contrasted with the words "from heaven" in Dan. ii., by which, 
 in that passage, its absolute superiority over all the kingdoms 
 of the world, and its crushing power are declared to be indis- 
 solubly connected. — " The shoulder " comes, here also, as in 
 vers. 3 (4), chap. x. 27, into consideration in so far as on it 
 we hear ; comp. Gen. xlix. 15 ; Ps. Ixxxi. 7. The bearer of 
 an office has it, as it were, on his shoulders. — The Jewish in- 
 terpreters, despairing of being able, with any appearance of 
 truth, to apply the following attributes to Hezekiah, insist 
 that, with the exception of the last, they denote Him who 
 calls, not Him who is called : the "Wonderful, &c., called him 
 Prince of peace. Altogether apart from the consideration that 
 this is in opposition to the accents, the mentioning of so many 
 names of Jehovah is here quite unsuitable ; and, in all other 
 passages, the noun put after Kip "lOB' designates always him 
 who is called. Modern Exegesis has tried everything with a 
 view to deprive the names of their deep meaning, in order to 
 adapt them to a Messiah in the ordinary Jewish sense, hence, 
 to do tha£ of which the Jews themselves had already de- 
 spaired. But, in doing so, they have considered the names 
 too much by themselves, overlooking the circumstance that 
 the full and deeper meaning of the individual attributes, as it 
 at first sight presents itself, must, in the connection in which 
 they here occur, be so much the rather held fast. The names 
 are completed in the number four, — the mark of that which 
 is complete and finished. They form two pairs, and evei^ 
 single name is again compounded of two nam.es. The first 
 name is i^yv k^d. That these two words must be connected 
 with one another (Theodor. — duvfiaerSig fSouXi-oui) appears from 
 the analogy of the other names, especially of "i"i2J ba with whom 
 f'yr N^s forms one pair ; and then from the circumstance that 
 )^jn* alone would, in this connection, be too indefinite. The 
 words do not stand in the relation of the Status constructus, 
 but are connected in the same manner as DlK N"i3 in Gen. xvi. 
 12. I^"" designates the attribute which is here concerned, 
 while nSs points out the supernatural, superhuman degree 
 in which the King possesses this attribute, and the infinite 
 riches of consolation and help which are to be found in such 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 5. 87 
 
 a King. As a Counsellor, He is a Wonder, absolutely ele- 
 vated above everything which the earth possesses in excel- 
 lency of counselling. As nSs comnaonly denotes " wonder " 
 in the strictest sense (comp. chap. xxv. 1 : "I will exalt thee, 
 I will praise thy name, for thou hast done wonders," Ps. 
 Ixxvii. 15: "Thou art the God that doest wonders;" Exod. 
 XV. II) ; as it here stands in parallelism with Ss God; as the 
 whole context demands that we should take the words in 
 their full meaning; — we can consider it only as an arbitrary 
 weakening of the sense, that several interpreters explain J^yv 
 xSq by " extraordinary Counsellor." Parallel is Judges xiii. 
 18 where the Angel of the Lord, after having announced the 
 birth of Samson, says: " Why askest thou thus after my 
 name ? — it is wonderful," ''x'73, i.e., my whole nature is wonder- 
 ful, of unfathomable depth, and cannot, therefore, be expressed 
 by any human name. Farther — Revel, xix. 1 2 is to be com- 
 pared, where Christ has a name written that no man knows 
 but He himself, to intimate the immeasurable glory of His 
 nature. That which is here, in the first instance, said of a 
 single attribute of the King, applies, at the same time, to all 
 others, holds true of His whole nature; the King is a Wonder 
 as a Counsellor, because His whole person is wonderful. A 
 proof, both of the connection of the two words, and against 
 the weakening of the sense, is afforded by the parallel passage, 
 chap, xxviii. 29, where it is said of the Most High God nvy 
 i<'''7Sn, " He shows himself wonderful in His counsel." — The 
 second name is "il3J Ss " God-Hero." Besides the ability of 
 giving good counsel, a good government requires also mu3 
 strength, heroic power : comp. chap. xi. 2, according to which 
 the spirit of counsel and strength rest upon the Messiah. What 
 may not be expected from a King who not only, like a David 
 in a higher degree, possesses the greatest human measure of 
 heroic strensfth, but who is also a God-Hero, and a Hero-God, 
 so that with His appearance there disappears completely the 
 contrast of the invisible Head of the people of God, and of 
 His visible substitute, — a contrast which so often manifested 
 itself, to the gTeat grief of the coveiiant-people ? The God- 
 Hero forms the contrast to a human hero whose heroic might 
 is, after all, alwaj^s limited, "inj hn can signify God-Hero 
 only, a Hero who is infinitely exalted above all human heroes 
 
88 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 by the circumstance that He is God. To the attempts at 
 weakening the import of the name, chap. x. 21, where nui ^x 
 is said of the Most High, appears a very inconvenient ob- 
 stacle, — a parallel passage which does not occur by chance, 
 but where 31B''' nxc stands with an intentional reference to 
 chap. vii. : " The remnant shall return, the remnant of Jacob, 
 unto the Hero-God," who is furnished with invincible strength 
 for His people ; comp. Ps. xxiv. 8 : " The Lord strong and a 
 hero, the Lord a hero of war." The older Rationalistic expo- 
 sition endeavoured to set aside the deity of the Messiah by 
 the explanation : " strong hero." So also did Gesenius. This 
 explanation, against which chap. x. 21 should have warned, 
 has been for ever set aside by the remark of Hitzig : " Com- 
 monly, in opposition to all the usus loquendi, the word is 
 translated by : strong hero. But ha is always, even in pas- 
 sages such as Gen. xxxi. 29, " God," and in all those pas- 
 sages which are adduced to prove that it means " princeps" 
 " patens,'^ the forms are to be derived not from ^s, but from 
 b^ii, which properly means ' ram,' then ' leader,' ' prince.' " 
 By this explanation, especially the passage Ezek. xxxii. 21, 
 which had formerly been appealed to in support of the trans- 
 lation " strong hero," is set aside ; for the nni33 '•^K of that 
 passage are " rams of heroes." RationaUstic interpi-eters now 
 differ in their attempts at getting rid of the troublesome fact. 
 Hitzig says, " Strong God " — he erroneously views iinj, which 
 always means " hero," as an adjective — " the future deliverer 
 is called by the oriental not strictly separating the Di%ane 
 and human, and He is called so by way of exaggeration, in so 
 far as He possesses divine qualities." A like opinion is ex- 
 pressed by Knobel: " Strong God the MessiaJi is called, be- 
 cause in the wars with the Gentiles He will prove himself as 
 a hero equipped with divine strength. The expression proves 
 a divine nature as little as when in Ps. Ixxxii. 1-6, comp. 
 John X. 34, 35, kings are, in general, called cn^N, "gods. 
 Like God, to be compared to Him, a worthy representative of 
 Him, and hence, likewise, called God." It is true that there 
 is one 1133 ba only, and that, according to chap. x. 21, the 
 Messiah cannot be "il3J bii beside the Most High God, except- 
 ing by _2)a7'f«i:i7«^ in his nature. Such a participation in 
 the nature, not His being merely filled with the jiower of 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. VII. 14. 89 
 
 God, is absolutely required to explain the expression. It is 
 tme that in the Law of Moses all those who have to com- 
 mand or to judge, all those to whom, for some reason or other, 
 respect or reverence is due, are consecrated as the representa- 
 tives of God on earth ; e.g., a court of justice is of God, and 
 he who appears before it appears before God. But the name 
 Elohi'in IS there given in general only to the judicial court, 
 which represents God — to the oJjUce, not to the single indi- 
 viduals who are invested with it. In Ps. Ixxxii. J , the name 
 Elohim in the expression: "He judgeth among the gods" is 
 given to the single, judging individual ; comp. also ver. 6 ; 
 but this passage forms an isolated exception. To explain, 
 from it, the passage before us is inadmissible, even from chap. 
 X. 21, where -ii23 !?S stands in its fullest sense. It must not 
 be overlooked that that passage in Ps. Ixxxii. belongs to higher 
 poetry; that the author himself there mitigates in ver. 6, in 
 the parallel member, the strength of the expression: "I have 
 said ye are Elohim, and sons of the Most High ye all;" and, 
 finally, that there Elohim is used as the most vague and 
 general name of God, while here El, a personal name, is used. 
 Hendewerk, Eiuald, and others, finally, explain "God's hero" 
 i.e., " a divine hero, who, like an invincible God, fights and 
 conquers." But in opposition to this view, it has been re- 
 marked by Meier that then necessarily the words ought to 
 run, h^ inj- It is farther obvious that by this explanation 
 the h^ lUJ here is, in a manner not to be admitted, discon- 
 nected and severed from those passages where it occurs as an 
 attribute of the Most High God; comp. besides chap. x. 21 ; 
 Deut. x. 17 ; Jer. xxxii. 18. 
 
 The third name is Father of eternity. That admits of a 
 double explanation. Several interpreters refer to the Arabic 
 usus loquendi, according to which he is called the father of a 
 thing who possesses it; e.g., Father of mercy, i.e., the mercifvil 
 one. This usus loquendi, according to the supposition for- 
 merly very current, occurs in Hebrew very frequently, especi- 
 ally in proper names, e.g., '•ns nio- "Father of goodness," i.e., 
 the good one. According to this view. Father of eternity 
 would be equivalent to Eternal one. According to the opinion 
 of others. Father of eternity is he %vho luill ever he a Father, 
 an affectionate 'provider, comp. chap. xxii. 21, where Eliakim 
 
90 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 is called "Father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem;" Job xxix, 
 16 ; Ps. Ixviii. 6. Luther, too, thus explains: "Who at all 
 times feeds His Kingdom and Church, in whom there is a 
 fatherly love without end." The latter view is to be prefer- 
 red unconditionally. Against the former view is the circum- 
 stance that all the other names stand in direct reference to 
 the salvation of the covenant-people, while, in the mere eter- 
 nity, this reference would not distinctly enough appear. And 
 it has farther been rightly remarked by Evxikl, that that usus 
 loquendi in Arabic always belongs to the artificial, often to 
 jocular discourse. Whether it occur in Hebrew at all is still 
 a matter of controversy ; Ewalcl, § 27, denies that it occurs 
 in proper names also. On the other hand, the paternal love, 
 the rich kindness and mercy, exceedingly well suit the first 
 two names which indicate unfathomable wisdom, and divine 
 Jieroic strength. The rationalistic interpreters labour very 
 hard to iveaken the idea of eternity. But the " Provider for 
 life agrees very ill with the Wonder-Counsellor, and the God- 
 hero. The absolute eternity of the Messiah's dominion is, 
 on the foundation of 2 Sam. vii., most emphatically declared 
 in other passages also (comp. vol. i., p. 132, 133), and meets 
 us here again immediately in the following verse. The name 
 Ever-Father, too, leads us to divine Majesty, comp. chap. xlv. 
 17: " Israel is saved by the Lord with an everlasting salva- 
 tion; ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded in all eternity" 
 chap. Ivii. ] 5, where God is called Ij; \'2^ "the ever dwelling;" 
 farther, Ps. Ixviii. 6 : "A Father of the fatherless, and a judge 
 of the widows is God in His holy habitation," where the pro- 
 vidence of God for the 'personae nilmrahiles is praised with a 
 special reference to that which He does for His poor people. 
 — Hitzig's explanation : " Father of prey," docs not suit the 
 prophetic style, and has, in general, no analogy from Hebrew 
 to adduce in its favour. The circumstance that, in the verse 
 immediately following, the eternity of the government is men- 
 tioned, shows that *iy must be taken in its ordinary significa- 
 tion "eternity," 
 
 Tlie fourth name. Prince of peace, stands purposely at the 
 end, and is to be considered as strongly emphatic. War, hostile 
 oppression, the distress of the servitude which threatens the 
 people of God, — these are the things whicli, in the first in- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. IX. 6, 7. 91 
 
 stance, have directed the Prophet's eye to the Messiah. The 
 name points back to Solomon who typified Christ's dominion 
 of peace, and who himself, in the Song of Solomon, transfers 
 his name to Christ (comp, my Comment. S. 1 ff.) ; then to the 
 Shiloh, Gen. xlix. 10 (comp. vol. i, 84, 85). We should mis- 
 understand the name were we to infer from it that, in the 
 Messianic time, all war should cease. Were such to be the 
 case, why is it that, immediately before, the Redeemer is de- 
 signated as Ood-Hero? Peace is the aim; it is offered to all 
 the nations in Christ; but those who reject it, who rise up 
 against His Kingdom, He throws down, as the God-Hero, with 
 a powerful hand, and obtains by force peace for His people. 
 But war, as far as it takes place, is carried on in a form dif- 
 ferent from that which existed under the Old dispensation. 
 According to Micah v. 9 (10), ff, the Lord makes His people 
 outwardly defenceless, before they become in Christ world- 
 conquering ; comp. vol. i., p. 515. According to chap. xi. 4, 
 Christ smiteth the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with 
 the breath of His lips He slayeth the wicked. 
 
 Ver. 6 (7.) " To the increase of the government and to the 
 peace, there is no end, upon the throne of David and over his 
 kingdom, so that he establisheth it, and siqyporteth it by justice 
 and righteousness, from henceforth even for ever. The zeal 
 of the Lord of Hosts shall perform, this." 
 
 There is no reason for connecting this verse with the pre- 
 ceding one ; in which case the sense would be : " For the 
 increase of government and for peace without end." For chap, 
 ii. 7 ; Nah. ii. 10; Job. xvi. 8 — in which h with yp occurs in 
 the very same sense — clearly show that the i? in n^h^h and 
 nsiKh may very well be understood as a mere sign of the 
 Dative. And the objection that the following ]'<3<h, &c. would, 
 in that case, be unsuitable, is removed if it be explained : so 
 that He establisheth, &c., or : by His establishing, &c. ; comp. 
 Eivald, Lehrbuch der Hebr. Sprache § 280 d. The words 
 designate the basis on which the increase of government and 
 the peace rest. The Kingdom of God will, throvigh the Re- 
 deemer, acquire an ever increasing extent, and, along with it, 
 perfect peace shall be enjoyed by the world. For it is not by 
 rude force that this kingdom is to be founded and established, 
 as is the case with worldly kingdoms, in which increase of 
 
92 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 government and peace, far from being always connected, are, 
 on the contrary, in-econcilable opponents, but by justice and 
 righteousness. Parallel is Ps. Ixvii. In vers. 11-15 of that 
 Psalm, the Psalmist jnst points to that " by which all nations 
 and kings are induced to do homage to that king ; it is just 
 that which, in the whole Psalm, appears as the root of every- 
 thing else, viz., the absolute justice of the king." Decrease of 
 government and war without end were, meanwhile, in pro- 
 spect, and they were so, because those who were sitting on 
 the throne of David did not support his kingdom by justice 
 and righteousness. But the Psalmist intimates to the tremb- 
 ling minds that such is not the end of the ways of God with 
 His people ; that at last the idea of the Kingdom of God will 
 be realized. From the fundamental passage, Ps. Ixxii. 8-11, 
 and parallel passages, such as chap. ii. '2, 4 ; Mic. v. 3 (4) ; 
 Zech. ix. 1 0, it is obvious that, as regards the endless increase 
 of the government, the Prophet thinks of all the nations of 
 tlie earth. On the peace without end, comp. Ps. Ixxii. 7 ; 
 chap. ii. 4 ; Mic. v. 4 (5), and the words : " He speaketh peace 
 unto the heathen," Zech. ix. 10. The ^ designates the sub- 
 stratum on which the increase of dominion and the peace 
 manifest themselves ; the dominion of the Davidic family and 
 its kingdom gain infinitely in extent, and in the same degree 
 peace also increases. In these words the Prophet gives an 
 intimation that the Messiah will proceed from David's family, 
 comp. chap. xi. 1 where he designates Him as the twig of 
 Jesse. — p^n " to confirm," " to establish," used of throne and 
 kingdom, 1 Sam. xiii. 13, comp. 14; 1 Kings ii. 12, comp. 
 ver. 24, and farther, chap. xvi. 5. — The words: "from hence- 
 forth even for ever" do not, as Umhrelt supposes, refer to 
 every thing in this verse, but to the words immediately pre- 
 ceding. That the words must be understood in their full 
 sense, we have already proved in our remarks on the funda- 
 mental passage, 2 Sam. vii. 13: " And I will establish the 
 throne of His kingdom for ever ;" see Vol. i. p. 131. Michaelis 
 says : " So that that promise to David shall never fail." The 
 nny does not refer to the actual, but to the ideal present, to 
 the first appearance of the Redeemer, to the words : " Unto us 
 a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government 
 is upon His shoulder." — This great change is brought about 
 
ISAIAH IX. 6. 93 
 
 by the zeal of the Lord who raises this glorious King to His 
 people ; comp. John iil 16. The zeal in itself is only energy; 
 the sphere of its exercise is, in every instance, determined by 
 the context. In Exod. xv. 5 ; Deut. iv. 24 ; Nah. i. 2, the 
 zeal is the energy of wrath. In the passage before us, as in 
 the Song of Solomon viii. 6, and in chap, xxxvii. 32 : " For 
 out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and escaped ones 
 out of Mount Zion ; the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this," 
 the zeal of God means the energetic character of His love to 
 Zion. 
 
 We must, in conclusion, stiU make a few remarks, on the 
 intei'pretation of vers. 5 and 6. The older interpreters were 
 unanimous in referring these verses to the Messiah. Even by 
 the Jews, this explanation was abandoned at a subsequent 
 period only. To the Messiah this passage is referred by the 
 Chaldean Paraphrast, by the Commentary on Genesis known 
 by the name Breshith Rabhak in the exposition of Genesis 
 xli. 44 (see Raini. Martini Pugio fidei, Vol. iii. sec. 3, chap, 
 xiv. § 6), by Rabbi Jose Galilaeus in the book Ekha Rahhati, 
 a Commentary on Lamentations (see Raim. Matt. iii. 3 chap. 
 4, § 13). Ben Sira (fol. 40 ed., Amstel. 1679), mentions 
 among the eight names of the Messiah, the following from the 
 passage before us : Wonderful, Counsellor, El Gibbor, Prince 
 of Peace. But the late Jewish interpreters found it objection- 
 able that the Messiah, in opposition to their doctrinal views, 
 was here described as God ; for doctrinal reasons, therefore, 
 they gave up the received interpretation, and sought to adapt 
 the passage to Hezekiah. Among these, however, Rabbi Lip- 
 mann allows the Messianic explanation to a certain degree to 
 remain. Acknowledging that the prophecy could not refer 
 exclusively to Hezekiah, he extends it to all the successors 
 fi-om the House of David, including the Messiah, by whom it 
 is to attain its most perfect fulfilment. Among Christian in- 
 tei-preters, Grotius was the first to abandon the Messianic 
 explanation. Even CleHcus acknowledges that the predicates 
 are applicable to Hezekiah " sensu admodum diluto" only. 
 At the time when Rationalism had the ascendancy, it became 
 pretty current to explain them of Hezekiah. Gesenius modi- 
 fied this view by supposing that the Prophet had connected 
 his Messianic wishes and expectations with Hezekiah, and 
 
94 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 expected their realization by him. At present this view is 
 nearly abandoned ; after Gesenius, Hendewerk is the only one 
 who still endeavours to defend it. 
 
 Against the application to Hezekiah even this single argu- 
 ment is decisive, that a glory is here spoken of, which is to be 
 bestowed especially upon Galilee which belonged to the king- 
 dom of the ten tribes. Farther — Although the prophecy be 
 considered as a human foreboding only, how could the Prophet, 
 to whom, everywhere else such a sharp eye is ascribed, that, 
 from it, they endeavour to explain his fulfilled prophecies, — 
 how could the Prophet have expected that Hezekiah, who was 
 at that time a boy of about nine years of age, and who ap- 
 peared under such unfavourable circumstances, should realize 
 the hopes which he here utters in reference to the world's 
 power, should conquer that power definitively and for ever, 
 should infinitely extend his kingdom, and establish an ever- 
 lastinof dominion ? How could he have ascribed divine attri- 
 butes to Hezekiah who, in his human weakness, stood before 
 him ? Finally — The undeniable agreement of the prophecy 
 before us with other Messianic passages, especially with Ps. 
 Ixxii. and Is. xi., where even Gesenius did not venture to 
 maintain the reference to Hezekiah, is decidedly in opposition 
 to the reference to Hezekiah. 
 
 THE TWIG OF JESSE. 
 
 (Chap, xi., xii.) 
 
 These chapters constitute part of a larger whole which begins 
 with chap. x. 5. With regard to the time of the composition 
 of this discourse, it appears, from chap. x. 9-11, that Samaria 
 was already conquered. The prophecy, therefore, cannot be 
 prior to the sixth year of Hezekiah. On the other hand, the 
 defeat of the Assyrian host, which, under Sennacherib, invaded 
 Judah, is announced as being still future. The prophecy, ac- 
 cordingly, falls into the period between the Oth and the 1 -ith 
 year of Hezekiah's reign. From the circumstance that in it 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. XII. 95 
 
 the king of Asshur is represented as being about to march 
 against Jerusalem, it is commonly inferred that it was uttered 
 shortly before the destruction of the Assyrian host, and hence, 
 belongs to the fourteenth year of Hezekiah. But this ground 
 is not very safe. It would certainly be overlooking the live- 
 liness with which the prophets beheld and represented future 
 things as present ; it would be confounding the ideal Present 
 with the actual, if we were to infer from vers. 28-32 that the 
 Assyrian army must already have reached the single stations 
 mentioned there. The utmost that we are entitled to infer 
 from this liveliness of description is, that the Assyrian army 
 was already on its march ; but not even that can be infeiTed 
 with certainty. In favour of the immediate nearness of the 
 danger, however, is the circumstance that, in the prophecy, 
 the threatening is kept so much in the background ; that, from 
 the outset, it is comforting and encouraging, and begins at 
 once with the announcement of Asshur's destruction, and 
 Judah's deliverance. This seems to suggest that tlie place 
 which, everywhere else, is occupied by the threatening, was 
 here taken by the events themselves ; so that of the two ene- 
 mies of salvation, proud security and despair, the latter only 
 was here to be met. The prophecy before us opens the whole 
 series of the prophecies out of the 1 -ith year of Hezekiah, the 
 most remarkable year of the Prophet's life, rich in the revela- 
 tions of divine glory, in which his prophecy flowed in full 
 streams, and spread on all sides. 
 
 The prophecy divides itself into two parts. The first, chap. 
 X. 5-34, contains the threatening against Asshur, who was just 
 preparing to inflict the deadly blow upon the people of God. 
 The fact that in chap. xi. we have not an absolutely new be- 
 ginning before us, sufficiently appears from the general analogy, 
 according to which, as a rule, the Messianic prophecy does not 
 begin the prophetical discourse ; but still more clearly from 
 the circumstance that chap. xi. begins with " and ;" to which 
 argument may still be added the fact that the figure in the 
 first verse of this chapter evidently refers to the fig-ure in the 
 last verse of the preceding chapter. Asshur had there been 
 represented as a stately forest which was to be cut down by 
 the hand of the Lord ; while here the house of David appears 
 as a stem cut down, from the roots of which a small twig shall 
 
96 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 come forth, which, although unassuming at first, is to grow up 
 into a fruit-bearing tree. The ])urpose of the whole discourse 
 was to strengthen and comfort believers on the occasion of 
 Asshur's inroad into the country ; to bring it home to the con- 
 victions of those who were despairing of the Kingdom of God, 
 that He who is in the midst of them is gi-eater than the world 
 with all its apparent power ; and thereby to awaken and 
 arouse them to resign themselves entirely into the hands of 
 their God. It is for this purpose that the Prophet first de- 
 vscribes the catastrophe of Asshur ; that, then, in chap, xi., he 
 points to the highest glorification which in future is destined 
 for the Church of God by the appearance of Christ, in order 
 that she may the more clearly perceive that every fear regard- 
 ing her existence is folly. 
 
 The connection of the two passages appears so much the 
 more plainly when we consider, that that which, in chap, x., 
 was said of Asshur, and especially the close in vers. 33 and 
 34 : " Behold Jehovah of hosts cuts down the branches with 
 power, and those of a high stature shall be hewn down, and 
 the high ones shall be made low. And He cuts down the 
 thickets of the forest with the iron, and Lebanon shall fall by 
 the glorious one, refers to him as the representative of the whole 
 'Worlds power ; that the defeat of Sennacherib before Jerusa- 
 lem is to be considered as the nearest fulfilment only, but not 
 as the full and real fulfilment. 
 
 From the family of David sunk into total obscurity — such 
 is the substance — there shall, at some future period, rise a 
 Ruler who, at first low and without appearance, shall attain 
 to great glory and bestow rich blessings, — a Ruler fur- 
 nished with the fulness of the Spirit of God and of His gifts, 
 filled with the fear of God, looking sharply and deeply, and 
 not blinded by any appearance, just and an helper of the 
 oppressed, an almighty avenger of wickedness, ver. 1-5. By 
 him all the consequences of the fall, even down to the 
 irrational creation, in the world of men and of nature, shall be 
 removed, ver. 6-9. Around Him the Gentiles, formerly ad- 
 dicted to idols, shall gather, ver. 10. In ver. 11-16 the Pro- 
 phet describes what he is to do for Israel, to whom the discoui'se 
 was in the first instance addressed, and upon whom it was to 
 impress the word : " Fear not." Under Him they obtain de- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XT. XII. 97 
 
 liverance from the condition of being scattered and exiled from 
 the face of the Lord, the removal of pernicious dissensions, 
 conquering power in relation to the world which assails them, 
 and the removal of all obstacles to salvation by the powerful 
 arm of the Lord. 
 
 The reference of the prophecy to the Messiah is, among all 
 the explanations, the most ancient. We find it in the Targum 
 of Jonathan, who thus renders the first verse : "inuno S3^D pD^l 
 '•mn'' '•nin ^:2J2 Nn''SJ'D1 "'K'n. St. Paul quotes this prophecy in 
 Rom. XV. 1 2, and proves from it the calling of the Gentiles. In 
 2 Thes. ii. 8 he quotes the words of ver. 4, and assigns to Christ 
 what is said in it. In Rev. v. 5, xxii. 16, Christ, with refer- 
 ence to ver. 1 and 10, is called the root of David. The Mes- 
 sianic explanation was defended by most of the older Jewish 
 interpreters, especially by Jarchi. Abarbanel, and Kimchi} 
 It is professed even by most of the rationalistic interpreters, 
 by the modern ones especially, without any exception {Eich- 
 horn, De Wette, Gesenius, Hltzlg, Maurer, Ewal(I), although, 
 it is true, they distinguish between Jesus Christ and the Messiah 
 of the Old Testament, — as, e.g., Gesenius has said : " Features 
 such as those in ver. 4< and 5 exclude any other than the poli- 
 tical Messiah, and King of the Israelitish state," and Hitzig : 
 " A political Messiah whose attributes, especially those assigned 
 to him ver. 3 and 4, are not applicable to Jesus." 
 
 But the non- Messianic interpretation, too, has found its 
 defenders. According to a statement of Theodoret, the passage 
 was referred by the Jews to Zerubbabel.^ Interpreters more 
 numerous and distinguished have referred it to Hezekiah. 
 This interpretation is mentioned as early as hy Uphraem Syrus; 
 among the Rabbis it was held by Moses HakJcohen, and Ahen- 
 ezra ; among Christian interpreters, Grotius was the first who 
 professed it, but in such a manner that he assumed a higher 
 reference to Christ. (" The Prophet returns to praise Heze- 
 kiah in words under which the higher praises of Christ are 
 concealed.") He was followed by Dathe. The exclusive 
 reference to Hezekiah was maintained by Herma/nn v. d. 
 
 1 Their testimony is collected by Seb. Edzardi in the treatise : Cap. xi. 
 Esaiae Christo vindicatum adversus Grotium et sectatores ejus, imprimos Herm. 
 V. d. Hardt. Hamburg 1696. 
 
 ^ " The madness of the Jews is indeed to be lamented who refer this pro- 
 phecy to Zerubbabel." 
 
 VOL. II. g 
 
98 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Hardt, in a treatise jjublislied in 1C05, which, however, was 
 confiscated ; then, by a number of interpreters at the com- 
 mencement of the age of Rationalism, at the head of Avhom 
 was Bahrrlt. Among the expositors of the last decade, this 
 interpretation is held by Hendewerk alone. 
 
 The reasons for the Messianic interpretation, and against 
 making Hezekiah the subject of the prophecy, are, among 
 others, the following : — 
 
 1 . The comparison of the parallel passages. The Messiah is 
 here represented under the figure of a shoot or sprout. Tliis 
 lias become so common, as a designation of the Messiah, that 
 the name " Sprout" has almost become a proper name of the 
 Messiah ; compare the remarks on chap. iv. 2. A striking 
 resemblance to ver. 1 is presented by chap. Iviii. 2, where the 
 Messiah, to express His lowliness at the beginning of His 
 course, is, in the same manner as here, compared to a feeble 
 and tender twig. Ps. Ixxii. and the prophecies in chap, ii., iv., 
 vii., ix., and Mic. v., present so many agreements and coinci- 
 dences with the prophecy under consideration, that they must 
 necessarily be referred to one and the same subject. The 
 reception of the Gentile nations into the Kingdom of God, the 
 holiness of its members, the cessation of all hostilities, are fea- 
 tures which constantly recur in the Messianic prophecies. 
 
 2. There are features interwoven with the prophecy which 
 lead to a more than human dignity of its subject. Even this 
 circumstance is of importance here, that the luhole earth ap- 
 pears as the sphere of His dominion. Still more distinctly is 
 the human sphere overstepped by the announcement that, under 
 His government, sin, yea, even all destruction in the outward 
 nature is to cease, and the earth is to return to the happy 
 condition in which it was before the fall. According to ver. 
 4, He slays the wicked in the whole earth by His mere word, 
 — a thing which elsewhere is said of God only ; and according 
 to ver. 10, the heathen shall render Him religious reverence. 
 
 3. A future scion of David is here promised. For sn in ver. 
 1 must be taken as a praeterltwm propheticuin, as is evident 
 from its being connected with the preceding chapter, which has to 
 do with future things, and in which the preterites have a pro- 
 phetic meaning ; as also by the analogy of the following pre- 
 terites from which this can by no means be separated. But 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI., XTI. 99 
 
 at the time "when this prophecy was composed, Hezekiah had 
 long ago entered upon the government. 
 
 4. The circumstances under which the Prophet makes the 
 King appear are altogether different from those at the time of 
 Hezekiah. According to ver. 1 and 10, the royal house of 
 David would have entirely declined, and sunk into the o\>- 
 scurity of private life, at the time when the Promised One 
 would appear. The Messiah is there represented as a tender 
 twig which springs forth from the roots of a tree cut down. 
 In tlie circumstance, too, that the stem is not called after 
 David, but after Jesse, it is intimated that the royal family 
 is then to have sunk back into the obscurity of private life. 
 This does not apply to Hezekiah, under whom the Davidic 
 dynasty maintained its dignity, but to Christ only. Farther: 
 In ver. 1 1 there is an announcement of the return of not only 
 the members of the kingdom of the ten tribes, but also of the 
 members of the kingdom of Judah from all the countries in 
 which they were dispersed. This must refer to a far later 
 time than that of Hezekiah ; for at his time no canying away 
 of the inhabitants of Judah had taken place. This argument 
 is conclusive also against the false modified Messianic expla- 
 nation as it has been advanced by Etuald, according to which 
 the Prophet is supposed to have expected that the Messiah 
 would appear immediately after the judgment upon the Assy- 
 rians, and after the conversion and reform of those in the 
 Church who had been spared in the judgment. The facts 
 mentioned show that between the appearance of the Messiah, 
 and the Present and immediate Future, there lay to the Pro- 
 phet still a wide interval in which an entire change of the 
 present state of things was to take place. Ver. 1 1 is here of 
 special importance. For this verse opens up to us the pros- 
 pect of a whole series of catastrophes to be inflicted upon 
 Israel by the world's powers, all of which are already to have 
 taken place at the time of the King's appearance, and which 
 lay beyond the historical horizon at the time of the Prophet. 
 
 A certain amount of truth, indeed, lies at the foundation of 
 the explanation which refers the prophecy to Hezekiah. The 
 fundamental thought of the prophecy before us : " The exalta- 
 tion of the world's power, is a prophecy of its abasement ; the 
 abasement of the Davidic Kingdom is a prophecy of its exalta- 
 
1 00 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 tion," was, in a prelude, to be realized even at that time. But 
 tlie Prophet does not limit himself to these feeble beginnings. 
 He points to the iiitinitely greater realization of this idea iu 
 the distant future, where the abasement should be much 
 deeper, but the exaltation also infinitely higher. To him who 
 liad first, by a living faith, laid hold of Christ's appearance, 
 it must be easy, even in the present difficulty, to hope for the 
 lower salvation. 
 
 The distinction between the " political Messiah " of the pro- 
 phecy before us, and "Jesus of Nazareth" — a distinction got 
 up by Rationalism — rests chiefly upon the fact that Rational- 
 ism knows Christ as the Sun of Man only, and is entirely" 
 ignorant of His true eternal Kingdom. Hence a prophecy 
 which, except the intimation, in ver. 1, of His lowliness at 
 first, refers altogether to the glorified Christ, could not but 
 appear as inapplicable. But it is just by ver. 4, to which 
 they chiefly appeal, that a " political Messiah" is excluded ; 
 for to such an one the words : " He smiteth the earth with 
 the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He 
 slaj'eth the wicked" do not in the least apply. And so like- 
 wise vers. 6-9 altogether go beyond the sphere of a political 
 Messiah, All that at first sight seems to lead to such an one 
 belongs to the imagery which was, and could not fail to be, 
 taken from the predecessors and tj^pes on the throne of David, 
 since Christ was to be represented as He in whom the Davidic 
 Kingdom attains to its full truth and glory. 
 
 In the whole section, the Redeemer appears as a King. 
 This is altogether a matter of course, for He forms the anti- 
 thesis to the king of Asshur. It is quite in vain that Umhreit 
 has endeavoured to bring political elements into the descrip- 
 tion. Thereby the sense is essentially altered. We must keep 
 closely in view the Prophet's stai-ting- point. Before those who 
 were filled with cares and fears, lest the Davidic Kingdom 
 should be overturned by the Assyrian kingdom, he holds up 
 the bright image of the Kingdom of David, in its last com- 
 pletion. When they had received that into their hearts, the 
 king of Asshur could not fail to appear to them in a light 
 altogether different, as a miserable wretch. The giant at once 
 dwindled down into a contemptible dwarf, and with teai's still 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. 1. 101 
 
 in their eyes tliey could not avoid laughing at themselves for 
 having stood so much in awe of him. 
 
 As is commonly the case in the Messianic prophecies, so 
 here, too, no attention is paid to the development of Christ's 
 Kingdom in time. Everything, therefore, is fulfilled only as 
 to its beginning ; and the complete fulfilment still stands out 
 for that future in which, after the fulness of the Gentiles has 
 been brought in, and apostate Israel has been converted, the 
 consequences of the fall shall, in the outward nature also, he 
 removed. 
 
 Ver. 1. " And there cometh forth a tivig from the stump of 
 Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall hear fruit" 
 
 The circumstance that the words in the first verse are com- 
 ]3leted in the number seven, divided into three and four, inti- 
 mates that the Prophet here enters upon the territory of the 
 revelation of a mystery of the Kingdom of God. Totally dif- 
 ferent—so the Prophet begins — from the fate of Asshur, just 
 now proclaimed, shall that of the royal house of David be. 
 Asshur shall be humbled at a time when he is most elevated. 
 Lebanon falls through the mighty One : but tlie house of 
 David shall be exalted at a time when he is most humbled. 
 Who then would tremble and be afraid, although it go down- 
 ward ? Luther says : " This is a shoit summary of the whole 
 of theology and of the works of God, that Christ did not come 
 till the trunk had died, and was altogether in a hopeless con- 
 dition ; that hence, when all hope is gone, we are to believe 
 that it is the time of salvation, and that God is then nearest 
 when He seems to be farthest off!" The same contrast ap- 
 pears in Ezek. xvii. 24. The Lord brings down the high tree 
 of the world's power, and exalts the low tree of the Davidic 
 house. The word yu does not mean " stem " in general, as 
 several rationalistic interpreters, and Meier last, have asserted, 
 but rather stump, truncus, -/.op/MOi, as Aquila, Symrtiachus, 
 Theodotion, translate. This is proved from the following 
 reasons : (1) the derivation from yn, in Arabic secuit, equiva- 
 lent to ]ni, "to cut off"," chap. ix. 9 ; x. 33. The D^yi: in 
 latter passage clearly refers to the ytJ here. The proud trees 
 of Asshur shall be cut doivn ; from the cut down trunk of 
 David there shall grow up a new tree overshadowing the 
 earth, and offerino; glorious fruits to them that dwell on it. — 
 (2) The usus loquendi. The signification, " stump," is, by 
 
1 02 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the context, required in the two passages in which the word 
 yu still occui-s. In Job xiv. 8, it is obvious. The whole pas- 
 sage there from vers. 7-9 illustrates the figurative representa- 
 tion in the verse under review. " For there is hope of a tree ; 
 if it be cut down it will sprout again, and its tender branch 
 does not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, 
 and the stump thereof die in the dust, through the scent of 
 waters it buds, and brings forth boughs, like one newly 
 planted." We have here the figure of our verse carried out. 
 That which water is to the natural tree decaying, the Spirit 
 and gi-ace of God are to the dying tree, cut down to the veiy 
 roots, of the Davidic family. In the second passage. Is. xl. 28, 
 24, it is only by a false interpretation that j?u has been under- 
 stood of the stem in general. " He bringeth pnnces to no- 
 thing, He destroyeth the kings of the earth. They are not 
 planted ; they are not sown ; their stump does not take root 
 in the earth." The Prophet, having previously proved God's 
 elevation over the creature, from the creation and preservation 
 of the world, now proves it from the nothingness of all that 
 which on earth has the greatest appearance of independent 
 power. It costs Him no eftbrt to destroy all earthly great- 
 ness which places itself in opposition to Him. He blows on 
 them, and they have disappeared without leaving any trace. 
 If God's will be not with it, princes will not attain to any 
 firm footing and prosperity (they are not planted and sown) ; 
 they are like a cut-down stem which has no more power to take 
 root in the earth. A tree not planted dries up ; corn not sown 
 does not produce fruit ; a cut down tree does not take root. 
 — (3.) The connection. In the second member of the verse 
 we read : " A branch from his roots shall bear fi'uit." Un- 
 less we mean to adopt the altogether unsuitable expedient of 
 explaining it of a wild twig which shoots forth from the roots 
 of a still standing tree, we cannot but think of a stem cut 
 down to the very root. Against the opinion of Hendewerk 
 who I'cmarks : " An indirect shoot from the root which comes 
 forth from the root through the stem ;" and against Meier's 
 opinion : " The root corresponds with the stem, and both 
 together form the living tree," it is decisive, that in ver. 
 1 0, the Messiah is simply, and witlumt any mention being 
 made of the stem, designated as ancj' " a shoot from the 
 root." Farther, chap. liii. 2, where the Messiah is represented 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. 1. 103 
 
 as a shoot from the root out of a dry ground. — (4.) It 
 is only when jj^i has the meaning, " stump," that it can be 
 accounted for why the yij of Jesse, and not of David, is spoken 
 of — (5.) The supposition that the Messiah shall be born at 
 the time of the deepest humiliation of the Davidic family, after 
 the entire loss of the royal dignity, pervades all the other 
 prophetical writings. That Micah views the Davidic family 
 as entirely sunk at the time of Christ's appearance, we showed 
 in vol. I. p. 508-9. Compare farther the remarks on Amos 
 ix. 11, and those on Matth. ii. 23 immediately following. — 
 Hitzig is obliged to confess that j;t3 can designate the cut-off 
 stem only; but maintains that Jesse, as an individual long 
 ago dead, is designated as a cut-off tree. But against this 
 opinion is the relation which, as we proved, exists between 
 this verse and the last verses of the preceding chapter; the 
 undeniable correspondence of ytJ with D''J?ni in chap. x. 33. In 
 that case the antithesis also, so evidently intended by the 
 Prophet, would be altogether lost. It is not by any means a 
 thing so uncommon, that a man who is already dead should 
 have a glorious descendant. To this it may further be added 
 that, according to this supposition, the circumstance is not all 
 accounted for, that Jesse is mentioned, and not David, the 
 royal ancestor, as is done everywhere else. Finally — In this 
 very forced explanation, the parallel passages are altogether 
 left out of view, in which likewise the doctrine is contained 
 that, at the time of Christ's appearance, the Davidic family 
 should have altogether sunk. The reason of all these futile 
 attempts at explaining away the sense so evident and obvious, 
 is none other than the fear of acknowledging in the prophecy 
 an element which goes beyond the territory of patriotic fancy 
 and human knowledge. But this dark fear should here so 
 much the more be set aside, that, according to other passages 
 also, the Prophet undeniably had the knowledge and convic- 
 tion that Israel's course would be more and more downward 
 before it attained, in Christ, to the full height of its destiny. 
 We need remind onXj of the prophecies in chap. v. and vi. ; 
 and it is so much the more natural here to compare the latter 
 of them, that, in it, in ver. 13, Israel, at the time of the ap- 
 pearing of the Messianic Kingdom, is represented as a felled 
 tree, — a fact which has for its ground the sinking of the 
 
104 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Davidic race which is here announced. We farther direct 
 attention to the circumstance that in our prophecy itself, 
 Israel's being carried away into all the countries of the earth 
 is foreseen as future, — a circumstance which is so much the 
 more analogous, that there also, as here, the foreknowledge 
 clothes itself in the form of the supiDOsition and not of ex- 
 press announcement. With regard to the latter point, it may 
 still be remarked that Amos also, in chap. ix. 11, by speaking 
 of the raising up of the tabernacle of David which is fallen, 
 anticipates its future lowliness. — The question still arises : — 
 Why is it that the Messiah is here designated as a rod of 
 Jesse, while elsewhere, His origin is commonly traced back to 
 David ? U'liihreit is of opinion that the mention of Jesse may 
 be explained from the Prophet's desire to trace the pedigree as 
 far back as possible; in its apparent extinction, the family of 
 the Messiah was to be pointed out as a very old one. But if 
 this had been his intention, he would have gone back beyond 
 Jesse to the older ancestors whom the Book of Ruth men- 
 tions; and if he had been so anxious to honour the family of 
 the Messiah, it would, at all events, have been far more suit- 
 able to mention David than Jesse, who was only one degTee 
 removed from him. The sound view has been long ago given 
 by Calvin, who says: "The Prophet does not mention David; 
 but rather Jesse. For so much was the dignity of that family 
 diminished, that it seemed to be a rustic, ignoble family rather 
 than a royal one." It was appropriate that that family, upon 
 whom was a second time to be fulfilled the declaration in Ps. 
 cxiii. 7, 8: "He raiseth up the poor out of the dust; He 
 lifteth up the needy out of the dunghill, that He may set him 
 with ])rinces, with the princes of His people," — in which, the 
 second time, the transition should take place from the low 
 condition to the royal dignity, should not be mentioned ac- 
 cording to its royal, but according to its rustic character. 
 This explanation of the fact is confirmed by the circumstance 
 that it agrees exceedingly well with the right interpretation 
 of i?TJ : Jesse is mentioned and not David, because the Davidic 
 dignity had become a yw. The mention of JeSvse's name thus 
 explained, agrees, then, with the birth of Christ at Bethlehem, 
 announced by Isaiah's cotemporary, Micah. Christ was to be 
 born at Bethlehem, because that residence was i)eculiar to the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. 1. 105 
 
 family of David during its lowliness; comp. vol. I., p. 508-9. — 
 The second hemistich of the verse may either be explained : 
 " a twig from his roots shall bear fruit," or, as agi-ees better 
 with the accents : " a twig shall from his roots bear fruit." 
 The sense, at all events, is: A shoot proceeding from his roots 
 (i.e., the cut-off stem of Jesse) shall grow up into a stately 
 fruitful tree; or: As a tree cut down throws out from its roots 
 a young shoot which, at first inconsiderable, grows up into a 
 stately fruit-bearing tree, so from the family buried in con- 
 tempt and lowliness, a King shall arise who, at first humble 
 and unheeded,^ shall afterwards attain to great glory. Parallel 
 is Ezek. xvii. 22-24. The Messiah is there compared to a 
 tender twig which is planted by the Lord on a high hill, and 
 sends forth branches and bears fruit, so that all the birds 
 dwell in the shadow of its branches. — It has now become 
 current to explain: "A branch breaks forth or sprouts;" but 
 that explanation is against the usas loquendi. niQ is never 
 equivalent to ma "to break forth;" it has only the significa- 
 tion " to bear," " to bear fruit," " to be fruitful." Gesenius 
 who, in the later editions of his translation, here explains mQ 
 by, " to break forth," knows, in the Thesaurus, of no other 
 signification. In the passage of Ezekiel referred to, which may 
 be considered as a commentary on the verse before us, •'is ntry 
 corresponds to the ms'' here. The change of the tense, too, 
 suggests that ms"' does not contain a mere repetition, but a 
 progress. This progress is necessary for the sense of the 
 whole verse. For it cannot be the point in question that, in 
 general, a shoot comes forth; but the point is that this shoot 
 shall attain to importance and glory, rns'' comprehends and 
 expresses in one word that which, in the subsequent verses of 
 the section, is carried out in detail. First, there is the 
 bestowal of the Spirit of the Lord whereby He is enabled to 
 bear fr-uit; then, the fruit-bearing itself 
 
 We here subjoin the discussion of the New Testament pas- 
 sage which refers to this verse. 
 
 • Although Umbreit denies it, yet this is implied in the designation of the 
 Messiah as a shoot from the roots. Moreover, the lowliness of the Messiah 
 himseK at His ajjpearance is a necessary consequence of the lowliness of His 
 family ; and it is a bad middle course to acknowledge the latter and deny 
 the former. To this may, moreover, be added the parallel passage Is. liii. 2. 
 
1 06 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 ON MATTHEW II. 23. 
 
 Krxl iT^dijv xarcfariffiv vg irokiv Xiyo/MivTiV Na^a^£7" ovug 'jrXripcadr 
 
 We here premise an investigation as regards the name of 
 the town of Nazareth. Since that name occurs in the New 
 Testament only, different views might arise as to its ortho- 
 graphy and etymology. One view is this: The name was 
 properly and originally "ii*l Being the name of a town, it 
 received, in Aramean, in addition, the feminine termination 
 s<. And, finally, on account of the original appellative signi- 
 fication of the word, a n, the designation of the status er)i- 
 phaticus of feminine nouns in N, was sometimes added. We 
 have an analogous case in the name Dalmamitha, the same 
 place which, with the Talmudist, is called P^r'V- Compare 
 Light/oot decas chorog. Marc, praem., opp. IL, p. 411 sqq. So 
 it is likewise probably that ya^jSada, xn3^ is formed from the 
 masculine 33, dorsum. Our view is that the original name 
 was Nezer, that this form of the name was in use along with 
 that which received a n added, and that this D served for the 
 designation of the status empJiaticus only ; or also, if we wish 
 to take our stand upon the Hebrew form, was a mere harden- 
 ing of the n Femin. (either of which suppositions is equally 
 suitable for our purpose); and this our view we prove by 
 the following arguments: 1. The testimonies of the Jews. 
 David de Potiiis (in Be Dien, critic, sacr. on M. II. 23) says: 
 -is: i^yn i'?):'^ ^o nv: d^»^ n^b\if Tin Q^^tni^n pim h'b^n "A Naza- 
 
 rene is he who is born in the town of Nezer, in Galilee, three 
 days' journey from Jerusalem." In the Talmud, in Breshith 
 Rahha, and in Jalkut Shimeoni on Daniel, the contemptuous 
 name of Bc7i Nezer, i.e., the Nazarene, is given to Christ ; 
 compare the passages in Buxtorf, lex. c. 1383; in Light- 
 foot, disqiiis. chorog. Johan. praem. opp. II., 578 sqq.; Eisen- 
 menger, I., p. 3139. It is true, Gieseler (on Matth. ii. 23, 
 and in the Studien u. Kritiken, 1831, III. S. 591) has tried 
 to give a different interpretation to this appellation. He is 
 of opinion that this appellation has reference to Is. xi. 1 ; 
 that it had come to the Jews from the Christians, who called 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. 1. 107 
 
 their Messiah nV3 p, because He was He who had been pro- 
 mised by Isaiah. But this supposition is correct thus far only, 
 that, no doubt, this appellation was chosen by the Jews with 
 a reference to the circumstance that the Christians maintained 
 that Jesus was the "iVJ announced by Isaiah, just as, for the 
 very same reason, they also assign to Him the names fjIDN: "1V3 
 " adulterous branch," and nj?n3 "li'J " abominable branch " (from 
 Is. xiv. 19) ; comp. Uiseninengerl. S. 1 37, 1 38. But Gieseler 
 is wrong in deriving, from this reference to Is. xi. 1, the origin 
 of the appellation, be it properly or mainly only. Against that 
 even the very appellation is decisive, for in that case it ought 
 to have been Nezer only, and not Ben-Nezer. Gieseler, it is 
 true, asserts that he in whom a certain prophecy was fulfilled 
 is called the " Son of the prophecy," and in confirmation of this 
 usus loqiiendi he refers to the circumstance that the pseudo- 
 Messiah under Hadrian assumed, with a reference to the 3313 
 in Numb. xxiv. 1 7, the name 3313 p or j<3313 13, in so far as 
 the star there promised had appeared in him. But this confir- 
 mation is only apparent ; it can as little be proved from it, that 
 Christ could be called Ben-Nezer because He was He in whom 
 the prophecy of the Nezer was fulfilled, as it can be proved from 
 the ap])ellation Ben Nezer that that pseudo-Messiah could be 
 called Bar Cochba, only because it was believed that in him 
 the prophecy of the star was fulfilled. Reland has alread}^ 
 proved (Geogr. II. p. 727) that Barcochba probably had that 
 name because he was a native of Cocab, a town or district in 
 the country beyond Jordan. And the reason why he laid 
 such special stress upon that descent was, that he sought a 
 deeper meaning in this agreement of the name of his birth- 
 place with the designation of the subject of the prophecy in 
 Numb. xxiv. Moreover the supposition that, by the Jews, 
 he in whom some prophecy was fulfilled, was called the son of 
 that prophecy ; that, e.g., the Messiah, the Servant of God, the 
 Prince of Peace were called the Son of the Messiah, &c., is not 
 only destitute of all foundation, but is, even in itself, most 
 improbable. To this must still be added the consideration 
 that this interpretation of Ben-Nezer is opposed by the con- 
 stant interpretation of the Jews. Jarchi, in a gloss on that 
 passage of the Talmud referred to, explains Ben Nezer by : 
 " He who has come from the town of Nazareth." Aharhanel 
 
108 MESSIANIC PREDICTIOXS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 in his book Majenehajeiihna, after having quoted from Jalkvf 
 iSIdmeoni the passage in question, observes : " Remark well 
 how they have explained the little horn in Daniel vii. 8, of 
 the Ben Nezer who is Jesus the Nazarene!' From the Lexi- 
 con A ruck which forms a weighty authority, Buxtorf quotes : 
 " b^pDn nw "1VJ Nezer, (or Ben Nezer), is the accursed Naza- 
 rene." Finally — It could not well bo supposed that the Jews, 
 in a contest where they heap the most obnoxious blasphemies 
 on Christ, should have given Him an honourable epithet which 
 they had simply received from the Christians. 
 
 2. The result which we have obtained is confirmed by the 
 statements of Christian writers. Even at the time of Euae- 
 bius (Hist. Eccles. i. 7), and of Jerome, the place was called 
 Nazara. The latter says : " Nazareth : there exists up to this 
 day in Galilee a village opposite Legio, fifteen miles to the 
 east of it, near Mount Tabor, called Nazara" (comp. Reland i. 
 S. 497). In Epistol xvii. ad Marcellimi he expressly identi- 
 fies the name with Nezer, by sajdng : " Let us go to Nazareth, 
 and according to a right interpretation of that name, we shall 
 see there the tlower of Galilee." 
 
 3. To this may be added, that the Oentilitia formed fi'om 
 Nazareth can be explained only when the n is not considered 
 as belonging to the original form of the name. For, in that 
 case, it must necessarily be found again in the Gentilitia, just 
 as, e.g., from nnjy we could not by any means form ^n:y, but 
 only "Tinjy. In the New Testament the two forms 'SaZ^upahc 
 ya^aprivog only occur, never the form 'Saf^apsTaTog. Gie^eler has 
 felt the difficulty which these names present to the common 
 hypothesis, but has endeavoured (1. c. p. 592) to remove them 
 by the conjecture that this form, so very peculiar, had been 
 coined by a consideration of "iVJ which the first Christians 
 were accustomed to bring into connection wnth mvi But 
 this conjecture would, at most, be admissible, only if, with 
 the Jews too, the form nv: were not found throughout with- 
 out a n, and if the Arabic form also were not entirely ana- 
 
 loffOUS.^ 
 
 ' Notwitlistaiidiiig tlie ari^aiineiits wliicli we stated in favour of our pro- 
 po-sitioii, that the oripnal iorm of the name is -|V3, EhranK without even 
 atteniptiufj: to refute them, assumes, in favour of a far-fetched conjecture, 
 that the name of the place was written n"lT3 {Kritik. d. Ev. Gtschichtt S. 84b, 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. 1. 109 
 
 The question now is : — In what sense was "iVJ assigned as a 
 nomen propriiim to a place in Gahlee ? Certainly, we must 
 at once reject the supposition of Jerome that Nazareth was 
 thus called, as being " the flower of Galilee," partly because "li'J 
 never occurs in this signification ; partly because it is not 
 conceivable that the place received a name which is due to it 
 ■/.ar dvri (ppaffiv Only. It is mucli more probable that the place 
 received the name on account of its smallness : a weak twig 
 in contrast to a stately tree. In this signification "1V3 occurs 
 in Is. xi. 1, xiv. 19, and in the Talmudical usus loquendi 
 where D''"iv: signifies " virgulta salicum decortlcata, vimina 
 ex quibus corhes Jiunt." There was so much the greater 
 reason for giving the place this name that people had the 
 symbol before their eyes in its environs ; for the chalk-hills 
 around Nazareth are over-grown with low bushes (comp. 
 Burkhardt II. s. 583). That which these bushes were when 
 compared with the stately trees which adorned other parts of 
 the country, Nazareth was when compared with other cities. 
 
 This nonien given to the place on account of its small be- 
 ginnings, resembling, in this respect, the name of Zoar, i.e., a 
 small town, was, at the same time, an omen of its future con- 
 dition. The weak twig never grew up into a tree. Nowhere 
 in the Old Testament is Nazareth mentioned, probably because 
 it was built only after the return from the captivity. Neither 
 is it mentioned in Josephus. It was not, like most of the 
 other towns in Palestine, ennobled by any recollection from 
 the olden times. Yea, as it would appear, a special contempt 
 was resting upon it, besides the general contempt in which 
 all Galilee was held ; just as every land has some place tu 
 which a disgrace attaches, which has often been called forth 
 by causes altogether trifling. This appears not only from the 
 question of Nathanael, in John i. 47 : " Can there any good 
 thing come out of Nazareth?" but also from the fact, that 
 from the most ancient times the Jews thought to mflict upon 
 Christ the greatest disgrace, by calling Him the Nazarene, 
 whilst, in later times, the disgrace which rested on all Galilee 
 
 1st Ed.), and has introduced this opinion even into the text of the new edi- 
 tion of Olshausen's Commentary, edited by him. The circumstance that else- 
 where commonly the Hebrew f is, in Greek, rendered by f', S by <r is, in this 
 case, where the special arguments in favour of "iV3 are so strong, of no con- 
 sequence. 
 
1 1 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Avas removed by the circumstance that the most celebrated 
 Jewish academy, that of Tiberias, belonged to it. 
 
 Let us now examine in how far Christ's abode at Nazareth 
 served the purpose of fulfilling tlie Old Testament prophecy. 
 It is, throughout, the doctrine of the prophets, that the Mes- 
 siah, descending from the family of David, sunk into utter 
 lowliness, would at first appear without any outward rank 
 and dignity. The fundamental type for all other passages 
 here concerned is contained in that passage of Is. xi. 1, now 
 under consideration : " And there cometh forth a twig from 
 the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear 
 fruit," which is strikingly illustrated in the following words 
 of Quenstedt, in his Disnertatio de Germine Jehovae, in the 
 Thesaurus theol. j)}iilol. I. p. 1015: The stem of Jesse which, 
 from low begiimings, was, in David, raised to the glory of 
 royal majesty, shall then not only be deprived of all royal 
 dignity, and all outward splendour which it received in David, 
 but shall again have been reduced to the private condition in 
 which it was before David ; so that it shall present the ap- 
 pearance of a stem deprived of all boughs and foliage, and 
 having nothing left but the roots ; nevertheless out of that 
 stem thus reduced and cut off, and, as it appeared, almost dry, 
 shall come forth a royal rod, and out of its roots shall gTow 
 the twig upon whom shall rest the Spirit of the Lord," &;c. 
 Quite in harmony with this, it is said in chap. liii. 2 : " He 
 grew up before the Lord as a tender twig, and as a root out 
 of a dry ground." To "IVS, in chap, xi., corresponds p:v in chap, 
 liii. ; to "itDn the ^in\^ ; to the cut-off stem the dry land, with 
 this difference, however, that by the latter designation, the 
 low condition of the Servant of God, generally, is indicated; 
 but His descent from the family of David sunk in lowliness, 
 is not specially pointed at thereby, although it is necessarily 
 implied in it. The same thought is further carried out in Ezek. 
 xvii. 22-24. As the descendant of the family of David sank in 
 lowliness, the Messiah ai)pears in that passage as a small tender 
 twig which is taken by the Lord from a high cedar, and, being 
 planted upon a high mountain, growls up into a lofty tree, under 
 which all the fowls dwell. In Jeremiah and Zechariah, the 
 Messiah, with reference to the image of a cut-off tree used by 
 Isaiah, is called the Sprout of David, or simj)!}- the Sprout ; 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. 1. in 
 
 compare remarks on Zech. iii. 8, vi. 12. All that is here 
 required is certainly only to place beside one another, on the 
 one hand, prophecy, and, on the other, history, in order clearly 
 and evidently to point out the fulfilment of the former in the 
 latter. It was not at Jenisalem, where there was the seat of 
 His royal ancestor, where there were the thrones of His house 
 (comp. Ps. cxxii.), that the Messiah took up his residence ; but 
 it was in the most despised place of the most despised province 
 that, by divine Providence, He received His residence, after 
 the predictions of the prophets had been fulfilled by His hav- 
 ing been born at Bethlehem. The name of that place by 
 which His lowliness was designated was the same as that by 
 which Isaiah had designated the lowliness of the Messiah at 
 His appearing. 
 
 We have hitherto considered prophecy and fulfilment inde- 
 pendently of the quotation by St. Matthew. Let us now add 
 a few remarks upon the latter, 
 
 ] . It seems not to have been without reason that the wider 
 formula of quotation : t6 ^ridsv did, ruv '7rpo(priTujv is here chosen, 
 although Jerome infers too much from it when he remarks : 
 " If he had wished to refer to a distinct quotation from Scrip- 
 ture, he would never have said : ' As was spoken by the pro- 
 phets,' but simply, ' as was said by the prophet.' By using 
 prophets in the plural, he shows that it is the sense, and 
 not the words which he has taken from Scripture." No 
 doubt St. Matthew has one passage chiefly in view — that 
 in Is. xi. 1, which, besides the general announcement of 
 the Messiah's lowliness, contains, in addition, a special 
 designation of it which is found again in the nomen 
 and omen of his native place. This appears especially from 
 the circumstance that, if it were otherwise, the quotation : 
 in 'Na^upaTog xXrid/jffsTai, would be inexplicable, since it is very 
 forced to suppose that " Nazarene" here designates generally 
 one low and despised.^ But he chose the general formula of 
 
 ' Hofmann ( Weissagtmg mid Erfullung.^ IT. S. 64) was the last who assumed 
 that the Evangelist had generally in view those passages in which the lowli- 
 ness, contempt, and rejection of Christ are spoken of, and that, in the Old 
 Testament passages in question, the Nafw/jatos was not contained according to 
 the letter, but according to the spirit only. But this is opposed not only by 
 the whole manner of quotation which is given as a hteral one, but also by a 
 whole series of analogies : Christ's birthplace in Bethlehem, His stay in Jeru- 
 salem, His ministry in Galilee, and especially in Capernaum, His entrance 
 into Jerusalem, — all these are by Matthew traced back to prophetical declara- 
 
1 1 2 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 quotation (comp. GersJorf, Beitnuje zur SpraclLcharacteristik 
 I. S. 136), in order thereby to intimate that in Christ's resi- 
 dence at Nazai-eth tliose pro})l)ecies, too, were at the same time 
 fulfilled, which, in the essential point — in the announcement 
 of Christ's lowliness — agree with that of Isaiah. But it is 
 just this additional reference which shows that, to Matthew, 
 this was indeed the essential point, and that the agreement of 
 the name of the town with the name which Christ has in 
 Isaiah, a])pears to him only as a remarkable outward represen- 
 tation of the close connection of prophecy and fullilment; just 
 as, indeed, every thing in the life of Christ appears to be 
 brought about by the special direction of Divine providence. 
 
 2. The phrase 6V/ x/.rtdrjaiTai likewise is explained from the 
 circumstance that Matthew does not restrict himself to the 
 passage Is. xi. 1 , but takes in, at the same time, all those other 
 passages which have a similar meaning. From among them, 
 it was from Zech. vi. 12: " Behold a man whose name is 
 the Sprout, that the phrase 6V/ xXi^d-zjasrai flowed. There is 
 hence no necessity for explaining this circumstance solely from 
 the custom of the later Jews,^ of claiming as the names of tlie 
 Messiah all those expressions by which, in the Old Testament, 
 His nature is designated, inasmuch as, in doing so, they fol- 
 lowed the custom of the prophets themselves, who frequently 
 bring forward as the name of the Messiah that which is merely 
 one of His attributes. This hypothesis is inadmissible, because 
 otherwise it would be difficult to point out any case in which 
 the Evangelists had not admixed something of their own with 
 a quotation which they announced as a literal one. 
 
 tions which have a special reference to these localities. Against the exposi- 
 tion given by us, Hofnmnn advances the assertion that neither "iV3 nor "icn 
 have ever attached to tlieni the idea of lowliness, of unassuming appearance. 
 But even if a twig were not of itself something lowly and uniissiuuing in 
 appearance, yet, in the passage before us, that idea is, at all events, implied 
 in the connection with the stump and roots^ as well as by the contrast to 
 
 1 The following passage, which we take from Raim. Martini Pug. Fid. III. 
 3, 19 p. 6Sa, will fully illustrate that custom: R. Alilni sixid: His name is 
 nin% Lord, according to the word in Jerem. xxiii. (! ; R. Josua hen Levy 
 said: " His name is Sprout, according to what is said in Zech. vi. 12. Othere 
 say that His name will be Comforter, Son of the strength of God, as is de- 
 clared in Lam. i. 16. Those from the School of R. Siloh said: His name will 
 be Shiloh, as is written in Gen. xlix. 10 : ' Until Sliiloh come.' Those from 
 the School of R. Chanina said : His name will be the Gracious one, as Jerem. 
 said in chap. xvi. 13. Those from the School of R. yoHnai said: Jiunon shall 
 be His name, according to Ps. Ixxii. 17, &c.' 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. 2. 113 
 
 Ver. 2. " And the Spirit of the Lord resteth upon Him,, 
 the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of coun- 
 sel and might, the Spirit of knovdedge and of the fear of the 
 Lord." 
 
 The Spirit of the Lord is the general, the principle ; and 
 the subsequent terms are the single forms in which he mani- 
 fests himself, and works. But, on the other hand, in a formal 
 point of view, the Spirit of the Lord is just co-ordinate with 
 the Spirit of wisdom, &c. Some, indeed, explain : the Spirit 
 of God, who is the Spirit of, &;c. ; but that this is inadmissible 
 appears with sufficient evidence from the circumstance that, 
 by such a view, the sacred number, seven, is destroyed, which, 
 with evident intention, is completed in the enumeration ; com- 
 pare the seven spirits of God in Rev. i. 4. To have the Spirit 
 is the necessary condition of every important and effective 
 ministry in the Kingdom of God, from which salvation is to 
 come forth ; comp. Num. xxvii. 18. It is especially the 
 blessed administration of the regal office which depends upon 
 the possession of the Spirit ; comp. 1 Sam. xvi. 1 3 ff where 
 it is said of David : " And Samuel took the horn of oil and 
 anointed him : and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him 
 from that day forward;" comp. 1 Sam. x. 6, 10. The cir- 
 cumstance that the Spirit of the Lord resteth upon the Mes- 
 siah does not form a contradiction to His divine nature, which 
 is intimated by his being born of the Virgin, chap. ^^i. 1 4, by 
 the name iidj ha in chap. ix. 5, and elsewhere (comp. Vol. 1., 
 p. 490, 491), and is witnessed even in this prophecy itself; 
 but, on the contrary, the pouring out of the Spirit fully and 
 not by measure (John iii. 39) which is here spoken of, implies 
 the divine nature. In order to receive the Spirit of God in 
 such a measure that He could baptize with the Holy Spirit 
 (John i. 33), that out of His fulness all received (John i. 16), 
 that, in consequence of His fulness of the Spirit ovei-flowing 
 from Him to the Church, the earth could be filled with the 
 knowledge of the Lord as the waters covering the sea (ver. 9), 
 He could not but be highly exalted above human nature. It 
 was just because they remained Kmited to the insufficient 
 substratum of human nature, that even the best kings, that 
 even David, the man after God's own heart, received the Spirit 
 in a scanty measure only, and were constantly in danger of 
 
 VOL. II. h 
 
1 1 4) MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 losing again that which they possessed, as is shown by David's 
 pitilul prayer: "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me" (Ps. li. 
 ] 3). It was just for this reason, therefore, that the theocracy 
 possessed in the kings a veiy sufficient organ of its reahzation, 
 and that the stream of the divine blessings could not flow 
 freely. In Matt. iii. 1 G : xa/ iids to ■n/sD/za roD dioj -/.aralSaTvov ucii 
 TTipignpav y.al \fiyJ,ij,i\ov W auroi/, it is not the passage before us 
 only which lies at the foundation, but also, and indeed pre- 
 eminently, the parallel passage, chap. xUi. 1 : " Behold my 
 Servant whom I uphold, mine Elect in whom my sovd de- 
 lighteth ; I put my Spirit upon Him," as is apparent from the 
 circumstance that it is to this passage that the voice from 
 lieaven refers in Matt. iii. 1 7 : wrog sanv 6 vi6g fj,ou 6 dya'^rTjTog iv 
 w ihbCxrida. But a reference to the passage before us we meet 
 most decidedly in John i. 32, 33 : Xs^sa/^a/ rcl Trviu/Ma xara/Sa/vof 
 uaii 'irtpiarepdv si^ ovpavou, Kal €/J,smv Icr' avrov Kcf.yuj ohy. vjdiiv auror 
 aXX' 6 rrs/M-^ag /m /SaT-r/^s/i/ sv udari, v/.s/vog jmi si-TTSv sf)' ov dv '/dftg rb 
 'TTViv/iO, xara^amv nal fisvov sv' aOr&'v, euro's sdriv 6 (SwTrrit^uv sv rrvevfjjan 
 dyi'uj. The word n"i3, which in Numb. xi. 25 also is used of 
 the Spirit, combines in itself both the xarajSalviiv and the 
 fisvsiv ; it is requiescere. As the fulfilment of this prophecy, 
 however, we must not look to that event only where it received a 
 symbolical representation, but also to Acts ii. 3 : xal wft)?)<rav 
 avTOig diaf//Spi^6/Mivai yXuiseai uirsl 'Trvpog, sxddiss rs s<p' 'ivct 'ixadrnv 
 airwv ; COmp. 1 Pet. iv. l-i : oVs TO Trig d6^r,g xa/ to roZ 6ioZ rrviij/aa 
 s!p' v/M&g dva-TraviTui (this most exactly answers toniJ). For it is 
 not merely for himself that Christ here receives the Spirit ; 
 but He receives Him as the transforming principle for the 
 hiunan race; He is bestowed upon. Him as the Head of the 
 Church. — In the enumeration of the forms in which the Spirit 
 manifests himself, it was not the intention of the Prophet to 
 set forth all the perfections of the Messiah ; he rather, by way 
 of example, mentions some only after having comprehended all 
 of them in the general : The Spirit of the Lord. Thus, e.g., 
 justice, which is mentioned immediately afterwards in ver. 5, 
 is omitted here. — The first pair are wisdom and understand- 
 ing. Wisdom is that excellency of knowledge which rests on 
 moral perfection. It is oj)po.sed to n^3J, foolishness in a moral 
 sense, which may easily be combined with the greatest inge- 
 nuity and cleverness. The excellence of knowledge resting 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP XI. 2, 3. 11 5 
 
 on a moral basis manifests itself in the first instance, and pre- 
 eminently, in the ny2, understanding, the sharp and penetra- 
 ting eye which beholds things as they are, and penetrates from 
 the surface to their hidden essence, undisturbed by the dense 
 fogs of false notions and illusions which, in the case of the fool, 
 are formed by his lusts and passions. Neither of these attri- 
 butes can, in its absolute perfection, be the possession of any 
 mortal, because even in those who, morally, are most ad- 
 vanced, there ever remains sin, and, therefore, a darkening of 
 the knowledge. — The second pair, counsel and might, are, just 
 as in the passage before us, ascribed to the Messiah in chap, 
 ix. 5 (6), by His receiving the names "Wonder-Counsellor," 
 " God-Hero." From chap, xxxvi. 5 it is seen that, for the 
 difficult circumstances of the struggle, counsel is of no less 
 consequence than raiglit The last pair, knowledge and fear 
 of the Lord, form the fundamental effect of the Spirit of the 
 Lord; all the great qualities of the soul, all the gifts which 
 are beneficial for the Kingdom of God, rest on the intimacy 
 of the connection with God which manifests itself in living 
 knowledge and fear of the Lord ; the latter not being the ser- 
 vile but the filial fear, not opposed to love, but its constant 
 companion. The Prophet has put this pair at the close, only be- 
 cause he intends to connect with it that wliich immediately fol- 
 lows. We have already remarked that the Spirit of the Lord, 
 &c., is bestowed upon the Messiah not for himself alone, but as 
 the renovating principle of the Church. — Old Testament ana- 
 logies and types are not wanting in this matter. Moses puts 
 of his spirit upon the seventy Elders, and the spirit of Elijah 
 rests on Elislia, and likewise on the whole crowd of disciples 
 who gathered around him (2 Kings ii. 9). 
 
 Ver. 3. "And He hath His delight in the fear of the Lord, 
 and not after the sight of His eyes doth He judge, nor after 
 the hearing of His ears doth He decide" 
 
 We now learn how the glorious gifts of the Anointed, de- 
 scribed in ver. 2, are displayed in His government. All at- 
 tempts to bring the second and third clauses under the same 
 point of view as the first, and to derive them from the same 
 source are in vain. That He has delight in the fear of the 
 Lord, is the consequence of the Spirit of knowledge and of the 
 fear of the Lord resting upon Him, — He loves what is con- 
 
1 1 6 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 genial to His own nature. That He does not judge after the 
 sight of His eyes, &c., is the consequence of His having the 
 Spirit of wisdom and understanding. It is thereby that He 
 is freed from the narrow supei-ficiality which is natural to man, 
 and raised to the sphere of that divine clearness of vision 
 which penetrates to the depths, rinn with the accusative is 
 " to smell something;" with 3, to " smell at something," " to 
 smell with delight." The fear of the Lord appears as some- 
 thing of a sweet scent to the Messiah. The other explana- 
 tions of the first clause abandon the sure, ascertained usvs 
 loquendi (comp. Exod. xxx. 38; Levit. xxvi. 31 ; Am. v. 21), 
 and, therefore, do not deserve any mention. On the second 
 and third clauses 1 Sam. xvi. 7, is to be compared: "And the 
 Lord said unto Samuel: Look not on his countenance, or on 
 the height of his stature, because I have refused him; for not 
 that which man looks at (do I look at); for man looketh on 
 the eyes (and, in general, on the outward appearance), and I 
 look on the heart." It is especially John who repeatedly men- 
 tions that Christ really possessed the gift here assigned to Him, 
 of judging, not from the first appearance, and according to 
 untnistworthy information, but of penetrating into the inner- 
 most ground of the facts and persons, comp. ii. 24, 25 : aCii-05 
 ds 'irjaoUg ^oiix s'^riffTivsv savrbv auro/s, dia rb aurov yivuaymv -ruvrag, 
 xai on 0X1 ^psiocv iiyjv 'iva rig fiapTvpridrj 'Trip! tou aidpCirtox)' avrbg 
 yap iyivwaxi ri rjv iv dvdptjj'xut. Fartlier — chaj). xxi. 17 where 
 Peter says to Christ: Kvpis ou rrdura oldag' cu yivuaxsig or/ piXcL 
 m. Farther, i. 48, 49 ; iv. 18, 19; vi. 64. In Revel, ii. 23, 
 Christ says: "And all Churches shall know that I am He 
 which searcheth the reins and hearts," 
 
 Ver. 4. "And He judgeth in righteousness the lowly, and 
 doeth justice in equity to the meek of the earth, and sniiteth 
 the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of 
 Bis lijis He slayeth the wicked!' 
 
 The King shall be adorned with perfect justice, and, in the 
 exercise of it, be supported by His omnipotence, — differently 
 from what was the case with David, who, for want of power, 
 was obliged to allow heinous crimes to pass unpunished (2 
 Sam. iii. 39). Just as by the excellency of His will He is 
 infinitely exalted above all former rulers, so is He also by the 
 excellency of might. Where, as in His case, the highest 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XL 4. 117 
 
 might stands in the service of the best will, the noblest results 
 must come forth. The first two clauses refer to Ps. Ixxii., 
 which was written by Solomon, and where, in ver. 2, it is 
 said of Christ : " He shall judge thy people in righteousness, 
 and thy lowly ones in judgment," and in ver. 4 : " He shall 
 judge the lowly of thy people, He shall save the children of 
 the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressors ;" compare 
 farther Pro V. xxix. 14: "A king that in truth judge th the 
 lowly, his throne shall be established for ever." The earth 
 forms the contrast to the limited territory which was hitherto 
 assigned to the theocratic kings.^ — In the second part of the 
 verse px does not by any means stand in contrast to D"'^*t 
 and W^W, and, in parallelism to y:y"i, designate the wicked 
 ones ; but px " earth" stands in antithesis to the narrow ter- 
 ritory in which earthly kings are permitted to dispense law 
 and justice. It is a matter of course, and is, moreover, ex- 
 pressly stated in the second clause, that the earth comes into 
 consideration with a view to those only who are objects of 
 His judging activity. From that which follows, where changes 
 are spoken of which shall take place on the whole earth, it 
 follows that pN must be taken in the signification of "earth." 
 and not of " land." Hand in hand with the infinite extent of 
 the King's exercise of justice goes also the manner of it. "The 
 whole earth," and the "breath of the mouth," correspond with 
 one another. — In the words " with the rod of His mouth," a 
 tacit antithesis lies at the foundation. As kings strike witli 
 the sceptre, so He smiteth with His mouth. — t32tJ', the en- 
 sign of royal dignity, is the symbol of the whole earthly 
 power, which, being external and exercised by external means, 
 must needs be limited, and insufficient for the perfect exercise 
 of justice. The exercise of justice on the part of earthl}^ 
 kings reaches so far only as their hand armed with the smit- 
 ing sceptre. But that great King is, in the exercise of jus- 
 tice, supported by His O'lnyiipotence. He punishes and de- 
 stroys by His mere word. Several interpreters understand 
 this as a mere designation of His severity in punishing, — 
 "the rod of His mouth" to be equivalent to "severity of 
 punishment;" — but that such is not the meaning appears 
 from the following clause, where likewise special weight is 
 attached to the circumstance that the Messiah inflicts punish- 
 ment by His mere word ; " the breath of His lips" is equiva- 
 
1 1 8 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 lent to "mere words," "mere command;" compare " breath of 
 His mouth," in Ps. xxxiii. 6. Hitzigs explanation, "the 
 atjgry breath of His lips," does not interpret, but interpolate. 
 In the future Son of David eveiy word is, at the same time, a 
 deed; He speaks and it is done. The san)e which is here 
 said of the Messiah is, in other passages, attributed to Ood : 
 compare Job xv. 30, wliere it is said of the wicked: "By the 
 breath of His mouth he shall go away;" Hos. vi. 5: "I have 
 slain them by tlie word of my mouth." In general, according 
 to the prectxlent in Gen. i., doing by the mere word is, in 
 Scrij)ture, the characteristic designation of Divine Omnipotence. 
 Parallel is chap. xlix. 2, where Christ says: "And He hath made 
 my mouth Hke a sliarp sword," equivalent to: He has endowed 
 me with His Omnipotence, so that my word also exercises de- 
 structive effect, just as His. In Rev. i. 16, it is said of Christ: 
 "And out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword," — to de- 
 signate the destructive power of His word borne by Omnipo- 
 tence, the omnipotent punitive power of Christ against enemies, 
 both internal and external. An instance of the manner in which 
 Christ smites hj the word of His mouth is offered by Acts v. 
 S (whei'e, according to the analogy of the word spoken in 
 tlie name of God by EHjah, 2 Kings i. 10, 1 2, and by Elisha, 
 
 2 Kings ii. 24, v. 27, the Apostles are to be considered 
 only as His instruments) : aMvuv 6= ' Avaviag rovg Xbyaxjg tovtohs 
 ■na-Jjv s^i-^u^i, comp. ver. 10; xiii. ] 1. The Chaldee translates: 
 " And by the word of His lips wicked Ai-millus shall die." 
 He refers yj^^n not to the ideal person of the wicked, but to an 
 individual, Aimiillvs, {sf'Ti/MAaoc, coiTOsponding to the name of 
 Balaam, compounded of J^^3 " devouring," " destruction," and 
 DV " people") the fonnidable, last enemy of the Jews who shall 
 carry on severe wars with them, slay the Messiah ben Josej)h, 
 })ut at length be slain by the Messiah ben David with a mere 
 word, compare Buxtorf, Lex. Chdld. cap. 221-224: Ei-'^enmenger, 
 entdeldes Judenihum ii. S. 705 ff. In 2 Thess. ii. 8, in the 
 description of Antichrist's destruction by Clirist : h 6 Kufio; 
 'irisoZ; dvay.uiffii rw Tvsjfj.ari rou CT6/j,aroc avroij, there is an inten- 
 tional and sigiiificant allusion to the passage before us, Anti- 
 christ there being, like yen here, an ideal person ; for the 
 arguments in proof, see my Comment, on Revelation, vol. ii. 
 
 Ver. 5. "And rigJdeousness is the girdle of His loins, and 
 faithfulness the girdle of His reins." 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. 4, 5, 119 
 
 Righteousness and faithfulness are in a similar manner con- 
 nected in 1 Sam. xxvi. 13 (? Prov. xii. 17). Faithfulness is 
 trustworthiness. The point of comparison with the girdle is 
 the closeness of the union ; comp. Ps. cix. 1 9 ; Jer. xiii. 1 , 
 2, 11. 
 
 In ver. 6, the Prophet passes from the person of the glorious 
 King to a description of His Kingdom. With regard to ver, 
 6-8, the question arises, whether the description is to be under- 
 stood figuratively or literally ; whether the Prophet intends to 
 describe the cessation of all hostility among men, or whether 
 he expected that, in the Messianic time, even among the irra- 
 tional creation, all hostility and destruction, every thing per- 
 nicious was to cease. Most of the ancient interpreters are 
 attached to the former view. Thus Theodoret says : " In a 
 figurative manner, under the image of domesticated and wild 
 animals, the Prophet taught the change of the habits of men." 
 He refers every thing to the union, within the Christian 
 Church, of those who, in their natural condition, lived far 
 separated from one another, and in hostility the one to the 
 other. Jerome considers the opposite view as even a species 
 of heresy. He says : " The Jews and the Judaizers among 
 ourselves maintain that all this shall be fulfilled according to 
 tlie letter ; that in the light of Christ who, they believe, shall 
 come at the end of the daj^s, all beasts shall be reduced to 
 tameness, so that the wolf, giving up its former ferocity, shall 
 dwell with the lamb, &c." Upon the whole, he states the 
 sense in the same manner as Theodoret, from whom he some- 
 times differs in the allegorical explanation of the details only. 
 In a similar manner Luther also explains it, who, e.g., on ver. 
 6, " the wolf shall dwell with the lambs, etc." remarks : " But 
 these are allegories by which the Prophet intimates that the 
 tyrants, the self-righteous and powerful ones in the world, shall 
 be converted, and be received into the Church." Calvin says ; 
 " By these images, the Prophet indicates that, among the people 
 of Christ there will be no disposition for injuring one another, 
 nor any ferocity or inhumanity." The circumstance that the 
 use of animal symbolism is widely spread throughout Scrip- 
 ture is in favour of this interpretation. One may, e.g. com- 
 pare Ps. xxii., where the enemies of the righteous are repre- 
 sented under the image of dogs, lions, bulls, and unicorns ; 
 
120 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Jer. V. G, where, by lion, wolf, and leopard, the kingdoms of 
 the world which are destnictive to the people of God are 
 designated ; the four beasts in Dan. vii. ; but especially Is. 
 XXXV. 9 : " There (on the way of salvation which the Lord 
 shall, in the future, open up for His people) shall not be* a 
 lion, nor shall any ravenous beast go up thereon," — where the 
 ravenous beasts are the representatives of the world's power, 
 hostile to the Kingdom of God. Nevertheless, the literal 
 interpretation, defended by several Jewish expositors, main- 
 tains an undeniable preference. In favour of it are the fol- 
 lowing arguments : 1. The circumstance that it is impossible 
 to carry through, in the details, the figurative intei'pi'etation ; 
 and it is by this that our passage is distinguished from all the 
 other passages in which the wild, cruel, and destructive ten- 
 dencies in the human sphere appear under the images of their 
 representatives in the animal world. The supposition that 
 "we have here before us only a poetical enlargement of the 
 thought that all evil shall cease" {Hendeiverk, Knobel), removes 
 the boundaries which separate prophecy from poetry. 2. The 
 parallelism with the condition of the creation before the fall, 
 as it is described to us by Holy Scriptui-e. It is certainly not 
 without reason that, in the account of the creation, so much 
 emphasis is laid on the circumstance that all which was created 
 was good. This implies a condition of the irrational creation 
 different from what it is now ; for in its present state it gives 
 us a faithful copy of the first fall, inasmuch as every heinous 
 vice has its symbols and representatives in the animal king- 
 dom. According to Gen. ii. 10, 20, the animals recognize in 
 Adam their lord and king, peaceably gather around him, and 
 receive their names from him. Accordinsx to Gen. i. 30, grass 
 only was assigned to animals for their food ; the whole ani- 
 mal world bore the image of the innocence and peace of the 
 first man, and was not yet pervaded by the law of mutual 
 destruction. Where there was not a Cain, neither was there 
 a lion. The serpent has not yet its disgusting and horrible 
 figure, and fearlessly men have intercourse with it ; comp. 
 Vol. i. p. 15, IG. But the infiuence of sin pervaded and 
 penetrated the whole nature, and covered it with a curse 
 (comp. Gen. iii. 17-19); so that it not only beare evidence 
 to the existence of God, but also to the existence of sin. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. IX. 5. 12] 
 
 Now, as it is by sin that outward discord, and contention, 
 and destruction ai'ose in the irrational creature, so we may 
 also expect that, when the cause has been removed, the 
 effect too will disappear ; that, with the cessation of the 
 discord and enmity among men, which, according to ver. 9, 
 the Prophet expected of the Messianic time, discord and enmity 
 in the animal world will cease also. In the individual features, 
 the Prophet seems even distinctly to refer to the history of 
 the creation ; compare ver. 7 : " The lion shall eat straw like 
 the ox," with Gen. i. 30 ; ver. 8: "the sucking child shall 
 play on the hole of the asp," with Gen. iii. 15. 3. The com- 
 parison of other passages of Scripture, according to which like- 
 wise the reflection of the evil in the irrational creation shall 
 cease, after the evil has been removed from the rational crea- 
 tion ; compare chap. Ixv. 25, Ixvi, 22 ; Matt. xix. 28, where 
 the Lord speaks of the -zaXiyjinGiu., the return of the whole 
 earthly creation to its original condition ; but especially Rom. 
 viii. 1 9 fl! — that classical passage of the New Testament whicli 
 is really parallel to the passage before us. 4. A subordinate 
 argument is still offered by the parallel descriptions of heathen 
 writers. From the passages collected by Clericus, Loivth, and 
 Gesenius, we quote a few only. In the description of the 
 golden age, Virgil says, Ed. i v. 2 1 sqq. ; v. 60: Occidet et 
 serpens et fallax Jterba veneni occidet. — Nee magnos metuent 
 armenta leones. — Nee lupus insidias p)e,cori. Horat. Epod. 
 xiv. 53 : Nee vespeHinus circumgemit ursus ovile nee intu- 
 mescit alta viperis hurtius. — Tlieocrit. Idyll, xxiv. 84. Utter- 
 ances such as these show how unnatural the present condition 
 of the earth is. They are, however, not so much to be regarded 
 as the remains of some outward tradition (against such a sup- 
 position it is decisive that they occur chiefly with poets), but 
 rather as utterances of an indestructible longing in man, which, 
 being so deeply rooted in human nature, contains in itself the 
 guarantee of being gratified at some future period. But, with 
 all this, we must do justice to the objection drawn from the 
 evident parallelism of passages such as chap. xxxv. 9, and to 
 another objection advanced by Vitringa, that it is strange that 
 there is so much spoken of animals, and so little of men. This 
 we shall do by remarking that, in the description of the glori- 
 ous effects which the government of Christ shall produce on 
 tlie earth, the Prophet at once proceeds to the utmost limit of 
 
1 22 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 them ; and that the removal of hostiUty and destruction from 
 the irrational creation implies that all that will be removed 
 which, in the rational creation, proceeds from the principle of 
 hatred, inasmuch as it is certain that the former is only a 
 reflection of the latter, and that the Prophet speaks with a 
 distinct reference to this supposition which he afterwards, in 
 ver. 9, distinctly expresses. Hence, to a certain degree, a 
 double sense takes place ; and, in the main, J. H. Michaelw 
 has hit the right by comparing, first, Gen. i. and Rom. viii., 
 and then continuing : " Parabolically, however, by the wild 
 beasts, wild and cruel nations are understood, which are to be 
 converted to Christ ; or violent men who, by the Spirit of 
 Christ, are rendered meek and gentle, just as Paul, from a wolf, 
 was changed into a lamb." We are the less permitted to lose 
 sight of the reference to the lions and bears on the spiritual 
 territory, that ver. G is, in the first instance, connected with 
 vers. 4 and 5, in which the all-powerful sway of Christ's jus- 
 tice on earth is described, of which the consequences must, in 
 the first instance, appear in tlie huvimi territory ; and, farther, 
 that the point from which the prophecy started, is the raging 
 of the wolf and bear of the world's power against the poor 
 defenceless flock of the Lord. 
 
 Ver. 6. ''And the icolf divelleth with the lamb, and the 
 leopard shall lie doivii ivith the kid, the calf, amd, the lion and 
 the failing together, and a little child leads them." 
 
 Ver. 7. " The cotv and bear go to the pasture; their young 
 ones lie doivn together; and the lion shall eat straiv like the 
 ox." (The going to pasture of the bear corresponds with the 
 lion's eating straw [comp. Gen. i. 80], and we are not allowed 
 to supply the " together" in the flrst clause.) 
 
 Ver. 8. "And the sucking cliild playeih on the hole of the 
 asp, and the weaned child putteth his hand into the den of 
 the basilisk." 
 
 The change in the irrational creation described in the pre- 
 ceding verses is a consequence of the removal of sin in the 
 rational creation ; this i-emoval the Prophet now proceeds to 
 describe. 
 
 Ver. 9. " They shall not do evil, and shall not sin in all 
 my holy mountain, for the earth is fidl of the knowledge of 
 the Lord, as the vjaters covering the sea." 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. 9. 1 23 
 
 The subject are the dwellers in the Holy Mountain. The 
 Holy Mountain can, according to the usus loquendi, be Mount 
 Zion only, and not, as was last maintained by Hofinann, the 
 whole land of Canaan, which is never designated in that man- 
 ner ; comp. chap, xxvii. 1 8, and my Commentary on Ps. Ixxviii. 
 54. The second pai-t of the verse, connected with the first 
 by means of for, agrees with the first only in the event that 
 Mount Zion is viewed as the spiritual dwelling place of the 
 inhabitants of the earth, just as, under the Old Testament 
 dispensation, it was the ideal dwelling place of all the Israel- 
 ites, even of those who outwardly had not their residence at 
 Jerusalem ; on the spiritual dwelling of the servants of the 
 Lord with Him in the temple, compare remarks on Ps. xxvii. 
 4, xxxvi. 9, Ixv. 5, Ixxxiv. 3, and other passages. In chap, 
 ii. 2-4, Ixvi. 23, the Holy Mountain, too, appears as the centre 
 of the whole earth in the Messianic time. From chap. xix. 
 20, 21, where, in the midst of converted Egypt, an altar is 
 built, and sacrifices are offered up, it appears that it is this in 
 an ideal sense only, that under its image the Ghurcli is meant. 
 The designation, " my Holy Mountain," intimates that the 
 state of things hitherto, when unholiness prevailed in the 
 Kingdom of the Holy God, is an unnatural one ; that at some 
 future period the idea necessarily must manifest its power and 
 right in opposition to the reality. — In the second clause, the 
 ground and fountain of this sinlessness is stated. In Zion, in 
 the Church of God, there will then be no more any sins ; for 
 the earth is then full of the knowledge of the Lord, by which 
 the sins are done away with. The general outpouring of the 
 Holy Ghost forms one of the characteristics of the Messianic 
 time ; and the cmisequence of this outpouring is, according to 
 ver. 2, the knowledge of the Lord, — so that the clause may 
 ])e thus paraphrased : For, in consequence of the Spirit poured 
 out, in the first instance, upon Him, the earth is fuU of 
 the knowledge of the Lord ; comp. chap, xxxii. 15: " Until 
 the Spirit be poured upon us from on high ; liv. 1 8 ; Joel 
 iii. 1 ; ii. 28; Jer. xxxi. 34, That pxn is here not the 
 " land," or " country," but the " earth" is sufficiently evi- 
 dent from the antithesis of the sea : as the sea is full of water, 
 so the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord. To this 
 
12-t MKSSIAXIC PREDICTIONS IX THE PROPHETS. 
 
 reason it may still be added that in vers. 6-8 changes are 
 spoken of, which concern the whole territory of the earthly 
 creation, the iraXiyyivisia of the whole earth. As the relation 
 of these chanjjes to that which is stated here is that of cause 
 and effect, here, too, the whole earth can only be thought of 
 Finally, — The following verse too supposes the spreading of 
 salvation over the whole earth. The entire relation of the 
 first section to the second and third makes it obvious that by 
 }''\iir\ the whole earth is to be understood. The passage undei- 
 consideration is alluded to in Hab. ii. 14: " For the earth 
 shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as 
 the waters covering the sea." In that passage, the enforced 
 knowledge of the Divine glory which manifests itself in puni- 
 tive justice, forms the subject of discourse ; but that enforced 
 knowledge forms the necessary condition of the knowledge 
 which is voluntary and saving. 
 
 Ver. 10. " And it shall comie to pass in that day, the root 
 of Jesse which standeth for an ensign to the people, it shall 
 the Gentiles seek, and His rest is glory." 
 
 The words, " and it shall come to pass," introduce a new 
 section ; so that the interval in the Hebrew manuscripts is 
 here quite in its place. With ver. 1 1 again, a new section 
 begins. In ver. 1-9 we have the appearance of the Messiah 
 in relation to the whole earth ; then, in the second section, 
 the way in which he becomes a centre to the whole Gentile 
 world; and in ver. 11 ff, what He grants to the old covenant- 
 people, for whom the Prophet was, in the first instance, pro- 
 phesying, and whose future he therefore describes more in 
 detail. Why His relation to the Gentile world is jirst spoken 
 of appears from ver. 1 2 ; the Gentiles gathered to the Lord 
 are the medium of His salvation to the old covenant-people. 
 — The root designates here (and likewise in cliap. liii. 2), and 
 in the passages founded upon this, viz., in Rev. v. 5, xxii. 16, 
 the product of the root, that whereby the root manifests it- 
 self, the shoot from the root ; just as " seed" so very often 
 occui-s for " product of the seed." This appears from a com- 
 ])arison with ver. 1, where, more fully, the Messiah is called 
 a twig from Jesse's roots. Bengel has already directed atten- 
 tion to the antithesis of the root and ensio-n, in his Commen- 
 taiy on Rom. xv. 12 : "A sweet antithesis : the root is under- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. 10, 11. 125 
 
 most, the ensign rises uppermost ; so that even the nations 
 farthest off may behold it." — am with ^, hn, and nx, has the 
 signification "to apply to the true God, or some imaginary 
 god, in order to seek protection, help, counsel, advice, disclo- 
 sures regarding the future ;" comp. Is. viii. 19 ; Deut. xii. 4, 5, 
 and other passages in Gesenius Thesaurus. The Gentiles feel 
 that they cannot do without the Redeemer ; they see, at the 
 same time, His riches and their poverty ; and this knowledge 
 urges them on to seek Him, that from him they may obtain 
 light (cliap. xlii. 6), that He may communicate to them His 
 law (chap. xlii. 4), that he may teach them of His ways, and 
 that they may walk in His paths (chap. ii. S), fee. St. Paul, 
 in Rom. xv. 12, following the LXX., has It' aurw Uvri iKirtnuei, 
 which, as regards the sense, fully agrees with the original. 
 The beginning of the seeking took place when the representa- 
 tives of the Gentile world, the Maji from the East, came to 
 Jenisalem, saying : " Where is He that is born King of the 
 Jews ? For we have seen His star in the East and aie come 
 to worship Him," Matt. ii. 2. The historical foundation and 
 the type are the homage which, from the Gentile world, was 
 offered to Solomon, 1 Kings x. — nni:o " resting place," " dwell- 
 ing place," "habitation ;" comp. Ps. cxxxii. 13, 14 : " For the 
 Lord hath chosen Zion ; He hath desired it for His habita- 
 tion. This is my rest (TiniJO) for ever ; here will I dwell, for 
 I have desired it." The glory of the King passes over to His 
 residence to which the Gentile world are flowing together, in 
 order to do homage to Him ; Comp. Ps. Ixxii. 10: " The kings 
 of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents ; the kings of 
 Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts." The comparison of this 
 passage alone is sufficient to refute the absui'd interpretation, 
 according to which W'OV and D'^IJ are referred to the Israelitish 
 tribes, — an interpretation which has been tried with as little 
 success in the fundamental passage (Gen. xlix, 1 0), according 
 to which the D''Oy are to adhere to Shiloh ; compare Vol. i. 
 p. 62. 
 
 Ver. 11: " And it shall come to pass in that day, the Lord 
 shall continue a second time with His hand to ransom the 
 remnant of His -people which has remained from Asshur and 
 from Egypt, from Patros and from Gush, from Elam and 
 from Shinar, from Hamath and from the islands of the sea!' 
 
] 2G MESSFANTC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 From the Gentiles, the Prophet now turns to Israel. The 
 reception of the Gentiles into the Messianic Kingdom is not 
 by any means to take place at the expense of the old cove- 
 nant-people ; even they shall be brought back again, and shall 
 be received into the Kingdom of God. pi"'D"i'' must be con- 
 nected with r\)iph, com}). 2 Sam. xxiv. 1 : " And the Lord con- 
 tinued to kill," Jin^. It is unnecessary and arbitrary to supply 
 nh'C'h. n"" is Accusative, " as to His hand," equivalent to " with 
 His hand;" comp. Ps. iii. 5, xvii. 10, 11, 13, 14. Just the 
 hand of God, which here comes into consideration as the in- 
 strument of doing, is repeatedly mentioned in the account of 
 the deliverance from Egypt ; comp. Exod. iii. 20, vii. 4, xiii. 9. 
 The expression : " He shall continue" in general, points out 
 the idea that it is not a new beginning which is here con- 
 cerned, but the continuation of former acting, by which be- 
 lieving was rendered so much the more easy. The expression, 
 " a second time" points more distinctly to the type of the de- 
 liverance from Egypt with which the redemption to be effected 
 by Christ is frequently paralleled ; comp. vers. 15, 16 ; Vol. i. 
 p. 218, 219. " From Asshnr" &c., must not be connected 
 with mjp^, but with ■IKC'^ comp. v. 16, those who have re- 
 mained from Asshur, &c., i.e., those whom Asshur and the 
 other places of punishment, with their hostile influences, have 
 left, who have been preserved in them. The fact that de- 
 structive influences may proceed from those nations also which 
 do not properly belong to the number of the kingdoms of 
 the world, is plainly shown by the history of the Jews after 
 Christ. It would be against the accents, both here and in 
 ver. 6, to connect it with nup? ; the words " which shall re- 
 main" would, in that case, appear to be redundant ; and, 
 farther, it is opposed by Exod. x. 3 : " And eats the residue 
 of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the 
 hail," equivalent to ; which the hail has left to you. Similar 
 to this is 2 Chron. xxx. 6, where Hezekiah exhorts the chil- 
 dren of Israel : '" Turn again unto the Lord in order 
 
 that He may again return to tlie remnant which has been left 
 to you from the hand of the kings of Asshur." A question here 
 arises, viz., whether the dispersion of Israel which is here de- 
 scribed, had already taken place at the time of the Prophet, or 
 whether the Prophet, transferring himself in the Spirit into 
 
ISATAH, CHAP IX. 11. 127 
 
 the distant future, describes the dispersion which took place 
 at a later period, after the carrying away of the ten tribes 
 into the Assyrian exile had preceded, viz., that which took 
 place when Judah was carried away into the Babylonish exile, 
 and especially after the destruction of Jerusalem. The latter 
 view is the correct one. The whole tenor of the Prophet's 
 words shows that he supposes a comprehensive dispersion of 
 the people. It is true that, at the time when the prophecy 
 was written, the ten tribes had already been carried away 
 into captivity; but the kingdom of Judah, the subjects of 
 which, according to ver. 1 2, likewise appear as being in the 
 dispersion, had not yet suffered any important desolation. 
 Tlie few inhabitants of Judah who, according to Joel iv. 6, 
 (iii. 6), and Amos i. 6, 9, had been sold as slaves by the Phi- 
 listines and Phoenicians, and others, who, it may be, in hard 
 times had spontaneously fled from their native country, cannot 
 here come into consideration. Just as here, so by Hosea too, 
 the future carrying away of the inhabitants of Judah is anti- 
 cipated; comp. vol. i., p. 219, 220. The fundamental passage 
 is in Deut. xxx. 3, 4, where the gathering of Israel is promised 
 " from all the nations whither the Lord thy God has scattered 
 thee. If any of thine be driven out into the utmost parts of 
 heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and 
 from thence will He fetch thee." This passage shows with 
 what clearness the future scattering lay before the eyes of the 
 holy men, even at the first beginnings of the people of God. 
 In vers. 1 1 and 1 2 we have the summary of the whole of tlie 
 second part of Isaiah, in which the announcement of Israel's 
 being gathered and brought back is constantly repeated; and 
 it is quite incomprehensible how some grant the genuineness 
 of the prophecy before us, and yet bring forward, against this 
 second part of Isaiah, the argument that the Prophet could 
 not suppose the scattering, that it must really have taken 
 place, since he simply announces theii' being brought back.— 
 As regards the redemption from the scattering, all that which 
 in history is realised in a series of events, is here united in 
 one view. There is no reason for exchiding the deliverance 
 under Zerubbabel; for it, too, was already granted for the 
 sake of Christ, whose incarnation the Prophet anticipates in 
 faith ; comp. remarks on chaps, vii., ix. This redemption. 
 
1 28 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 however, in which those who have been brought back remain 
 servants in the land of the Lord, can be considered as only a 
 prelude to the true one ; comp. vol. i., p. 220 f. 448. The 
 true fulfilment began with the appearance of Christ, and is 
 still going on towards its completion, which can take place 
 even without Israel's returning to Canaan, comp. vol. i., p. 222. 
 Asshur opens the list, and occupies the principal place, because 
 it was through him who, under the very eyes of the Prophet, 
 had carried away the ten tribes, that the dispersion began. 
 But the Prophet does not limit himself to that which was 
 obvious, — did not expect, from the Messiah, only the healing 
 of already existing hurts. — With Asshur, Egypt is connected 
 in one pair. Egypt is the African world's power struggling 
 for dominion with the Asiatic. Its land serves not only as a 
 refuge to those oppressed by the Asiatic world's power (comp. 
 Jer. xlii. ff), but, in that struggle with the Asiatic power, 
 itself invades and oppresses the land ; comp. chap. vii. 1 8 ; 
 2 Kings xxiii. 29 ff.: "In his days Pharaoh Necho, king of 
 Egypt, went up against the king of Assyria." In a similar 
 connection, Asshur and Egypt, the kingdoms on the Euphrates 
 and the Nile, appear in chap, xxvii. 13: " And it shall come 
 to pass in that day, that a great tnimpet is blown, and they 
 come, the perishing ones in the land of Asshur, and the out- 
 casts in the land of Egypt, and worship the Lord in the holy 
 mount at Jerusalem;" Micah vii. 12; Jer. ii. 18; Lam. v. 6. 
 As annexed to Egypt, the second pair presents itself, repre- 
 senting the uttermost South; compare the expression, "from 
 the four comers of the earth," in ver. 1 2. Pathros, in Jer. xliv. 
 1,15, also appears as a dependency of Egypt; and Cush, 
 Ethiopia, was, at the Prophet's time, the ally of Egypt, chap, 
 xxxvii. 9, xviii., xx. 3-6. Gesenius remarks on chap. xx. 4: 
 " Egypt and Ethiopia are, in the oracles of this time, always 
 connected, just as the close pohtical alliance of these two 
 countries requires." — From the uttermost South, the Prophet 
 turns to the uttermost East. " Elam is," as Gesenius in his 
 Commentaiy on chap. xxi. 2 remarks, " in the pre-exiKc 
 writers, used for Persia in general, for which afterwards did 
 becomes the ordinary name;" and according to Dan. viii. 2, 
 the Pereian Metropolis Shushan is situated in Elam. It ap- 
 pears in chap. xxii. 6 as the representative of the world's power 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. 11, 12. 129 
 
 which in futui^e will oppress Judah, and we hence expect that 
 it will appear in an Elamitic phase also. — Shinar, the ancient 
 name for Babylon, is that world's power which, according to 
 chaps, xiii., xiv., xxxix., and other passages, is to follow after 
 the Assyrian, and is to carry away Judah into exile. Elam 
 and Madai appear in chap. xxi. 2 as the destroyers of the 
 Babylonian world's power ; hence the Elamitic phase of it can 
 follow after the Babylonish only. The geographical arrange- 
 ment only can be the reason why it is here placed first. — The 
 last of the four pairs of countries is formed by Hamath, repre- 
 senting Syria, (comp. 1 Maccab. xii. 25, according to whicli 
 passage Jonathan the Maccabee marches into the land of Ha- 
 math against the army of Demetrius,) and the islands of the 
 sea, the islands and the countries on the shores of the Medi- 
 terranean in the uttermost West. As early as in the prophecy'' 
 of Balaam, in Numb. xxiv. 24: "And ships come from the 
 side of Chittim and afflict Asshur, and afflict Eber, and he 
 also perisheth," we find the announcement that, at some future 
 time, the Asiatic kingdoms shall be conquered by a power 
 which comes from the West in ships, by European nations — 
 an announcement which was realised in history by the do- 
 minion of the Greeks and Romans in Asia. 
 
 Ver. 12: "And He setteth up an ensign to the Gentiles 
 and assembleth the exiled of Israel, and gathereth together the 
 dispersed of Judah fro'in the four corners of the earth." 
 
 The setting up of the ensign for the Gentiles, around which 
 they are to assemble for the purpose of restoring Israel, took 
 place, in a prelude, under Cyrus ; comp. chap. xiv. 2, xlix. 2 2 : 
 " Thus saitli the Lord God : Behold I lift up mine hand to the 
 Gentiles, and set up my standard to the nations, and they 
 bring thy sons on their bosom, and thy daughters are carried 
 upon their shoulders ;" where the sons and , daughters cor- 
 respond to the exiled men of Israel, and to the dispersed 
 women of Judah, equivalent to all the exiled and dispersed 
 men and women. As early as in the Song of Solomon, we 
 are taught that in the Messianic time the Gentile nations will 
 take an active part in the restoration of Israel. According to 
 the first part of that Song, the appearance of the heavenly 
 Solomon is connected with the reception of the Gentiles into 
 His Kingdom, and that, through the instrumentality of the 
 VOL. II. i 
 
130 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 old covenant people, as is intimated by tlie name of the 
 daughters of Jeiiisaleni ; comp. my Comment, on Song of Solo- 
 mon, iii. 9-11. In the second part of that Song we have a 
 description of the reunion of apostate Israel with Christ, — 
 which reunion takes place by the co-operation of the daughters 
 of Jerusalem, the same whom they formerly brought to salva- 
 tion. According to Is. Ixvi. 20, the Gentiles, converted to the 
 Lord in the time of salvation, bring the children of Israel 
 for an offering unto the Lord, — A significant allusion to the 
 passage before us is found in John xi. 52: -/.al ohy^ vrrsp roij 
 i&uovg /io'vov, dXX ha y.al ra rexva rou 0£oS ra, biia'/.ofi-~ie/Msva ewaydyr, 
 iig 'iv. It is the same mercy seeking that which is lost that 
 manifests itself in the gathering of apostate Israel, and in the 
 ijatherino: of the Gentiles. What is said of the one furnishes, 
 at tlie same time, the guarantee for the other. 
 
 Ver. 13. "And the envy of Ephravm departeth, and the 
 adversaries of Judah are cut off; Ephraim shall not envy 
 Judaliy and Judah shall not vex Ephraim!' 
 
 According to the explanatory fourth clause, the " adver- 
 saries of Judah" in the second clause, can only be those among 
 Judah who vex Ephraim. At the very beginning of the 
 separation of the two kingdoms, their future reunion had been 
 announced by a prophet; and this must now take place as 
 certainly as Jehovah is God, who had promised to David and 
 his house the eternal dominion over all Israel. The separation 
 had taken place because the house of David had become un- 
 faithful to its vocation. In the Messiah, the promise, to the 
 Davidic race is to be completely realized; and this realiza- 
 tion has, for its necessary consequence, the removal for ever 
 of the separation; comp. Ezek. xxxvii. 22. It was Si preliule 
 to the fulfilment, that a portion of the subjects of the kingdom 
 i)f the ten tribes united with Judah in all those times when, 
 in the blessing accompanying the enterprises of a pious son 
 t)f David, the promise granted to Dax^id was, in some measure 
 i-ealized, — as was the case under Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and 
 Josiah. Even before Christ a])peai'ed in the flesh, the an- 
 nouncement here made was all but realized. The exile put 
 an end to the kingdom of the ten tribes, and hence also to 
 the unnatural separation which had been designated as the 
 severest calamity of the past, chap. vii. 1 7. The other tribts. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XL 14-16. 131 
 
 joined Judah and the restored sanctuary; comp. Acts xxvi. 7; 
 Luke ii. 36. The name of "Jews" passed over to the whole 
 nation; the jealousy disappeared. This blessing was conferred 
 upon the people for Christ's sake, and with a Adew to His 
 future appearance. In Christ, the bond of union and com- 
 munion is so firmly formed that no new discord can alienate 
 the hearts from one another. 
 
 Ver. 14. " ATid they fiy upon the shoulder of the Philis- 
 tines tmvard the West, spoil together the children of the East ; 
 Edom and Moab shall he their assault, the children of Amman 
 their obedience" 
 
 As Israel is united internally, so it shall be externally 
 powerful. According to the Song of Solomon vi. 1 0, the con- 
 gregation of Israel when, by her renewed connection witli the 
 Lord and His heavenly Solomon, she has regained her former 
 strength, is '' terrible as an army with banners." — The nations 
 mentioned are those of the Davidic reign. Even before the 
 time of the Prophet, they had been anew conquered by Jeho- 
 shaphat, in whom the spirit of David had been revived anew ; 
 comp. 2 Chron. xx. ; Ps. Ixxxiii. A prelude to the fulfilment 
 of the prophecy before us took place at the time of the Macca- 
 bees, comp. Vol i. p. 467, 468. But as regards the fulfil- 
 ment, we are not entitled to limit ourselves to the names here 
 mentioned. These names are the accidental element in the 
 prophecy ; the thought is this : As soon as Israel realizes its 
 destiny, it partakes of God's inviolability, of God's victorious 
 power. The Prophet's sole purpose is to point out the victo- 
 rious power, to give prominence to the thought that outward 
 prosperity is the necessary consequence of inward holiness. — 
 In the first clause, the image is taken from birds of prey ; 
 comp. Hab. i. 8 : " They fly as an eagle hastening to eat," 
 which passage refers to the enemies of Israel at the time of 
 wrath. In the time of grace, the relation will be just the re- 
 verse. — T* rh^'O occurs, in a series of passages in Deuteronomy, 
 of that which is taken in hand, undertaken. Edom and Moab 
 are no longer an object of Noli me tangere for them. 
 
 Ver. 15. "And the Lord destroys the tongue of the Sea of 
 Egypt, and waves His hand over the River with the violence 
 of His wind, and smiteth it into seven streams, that one may 
 go through in shoes" 
 
132 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Ver. IG. "And there shall be a highway for the remnant 
 of His people ivhich tvas left from Asshur ; like as it was to 
 Isniel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt!^ 
 
 Tlie miraculous power of the Lord shall remove all obstacles 
 to deliverance. These obstacles are represented by the Euph- 
 rates and the Red Sea (the tongue of the Sea of Egypt, equi- 
 valent to the point of it), with a reference to the fact that, 
 among the countries, in ver. 11, from which Israel is to be 
 delivered, there had been mentioned, Egypt, between which 
 and the Holy Land was the Red Sea, and Asshur, situated on 
 the other side of Euphrates. To Euphrates, upon which there 
 will be repeated that which, in ancient times, was done in 
 the case of Jordan, the Prophet assigns, in ver. 1 5, the last 
 place, on account of ver. 16. The highway in that verse is 
 ])repared by the turning off of Euphrates, so that we might 
 put : " And thus," at the beginning of the verse. As regards 
 the destroying, D"nnn, it is the forced devoting to God of that 
 which would not spontaneously serve Him ; compare remai'ks 
 on Mai. iii. 24. Objects of such devoting can properly be 
 persons only, because they only are capable of spontaneous 
 sanctification to God, as well as of wilful desecration. The 
 fact that it is here transferred to the sea may be accounted 
 for by its being personified. The destruction which is in- 
 flicted upon the sea is, in it, inflicted upon the enemies of 
 God thereby represented, inasmuch as it opposes the people 
 of God, and thus, as it were, strives against God. — With the 
 violence or terror of His wind, i.e., with His violent, terrible 
 wind. There is in this an allusion to Exod. xiv. 21, accor- 
 ding to which the Lord dried up the Red Sea by a ^dolent 
 wind. Ao-amst Drechsler, who thinks of " God's breathing of 
 anger," first, this reference to Exod. xiv. 21, and farther, the 
 circumstance that the nn appears as something which the 
 Lord has in His hand, are decisive. — Li ver. 1 6 we need not, 
 after " from Asshur," supply the other nations mentioned in 
 ver. 11, which would be unexampled; but Asshur appears a.s 
 the representative of all the enemies of God. Similarly in 
 Micah also, Asshur is, with evident intention, used typically ; 
 conip. Vol. i. p. 515, 51 G. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XII. 1-3. 133 
 
 CHAP. XIl. 
 
 This chapter contains Israel's hymn of thanks after having 
 obtained redemption and deliverance, and is connected with 
 chap. ix. 2 (3), where the Prophet had, in general, mentioned 
 the joy of the elect in the Messianic time. Here he embodies 
 it in words. The hymn, which forms a kind of close, and, to 
 a certain degree, belongs to the whole cycle of the preceding 
 Messianic prophecies, is based upon the hymn of thanksgiving 
 by Israel after having passed through the Red Sea, — that 
 historical fact which contained so strong a guarantee for the 
 future redemption, and is in harmony with chap. xi. 15, 16, 
 where the Prophet had announced a renewal of those wonder- 
 ful leadings of the Lord. The hymn falls into three stanzas, 
 each consisting of two verses. In ver. 1 and 2, and in ver. 4 
 and 5, the redeemed ones are introduced speaking ; ver. 3 
 and 5, which likewise form a couple, contain an epilogue of 
 the Prophet on the double jubilus of the congregation. 
 
 Ver. 1. " Atid in that day thou say est: I will j^vaise thee, 
 Lord, for thou wast aiigry with me, and now thine anger 
 is turned away, and thou conifortest me. Ver. 2. Behold, 
 God is 'my salvation; I trust, and am not afraid; for my 
 strength and song is the Lord, and. He hecame my Saviour." 
 
 The words " my strength and my song," are from Exod. xv. 
 2. The two members of the verse enter into. the right rela- 
 tion to one another, and the "^2 becomes intelligible, only if 
 we keep in mind that the words at the beginning, " The Lord 
 is my salvation," are an expression of the conviction of the 
 speaker ; hence are equivalent to : we acknowledge Him as 
 our God ; so that the first part expresses the subjective dis- 
 position of the Church ; the second, the objective circum- 
 stance of the case — that on which that disposition is founded, 
 and from which it grew up. 
 
 Ver. 3. " A'iid ye draw ivater in joy out of the ivells of sal- 
 vation" 
 
 During the journey through the wilderness, the bestowal 
 of salvation had been represented under the form of granting 
 
1 34" MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 water. It i.H to it that we have here an allusion. The spiri- 
 tual water denotes salvation. 
 
 Ver. 4. "Ami in tliat day ye say: Praise the Lord, pro- 
 claim His name, declare His dmiigs among the nations, make 
 mention that His name is exalted. Ver. 5. " Praise the Lord, 
 for He hath done great things; this is known in all the 
 eaiih." 
 
 Ver. 6. " Cry out and shout tho^i inhabitant of Zion; for 
 great is tlie Holy One of Israel in thy midst" 
 
 Tliere now follows a cycle of ten prophecies, which, in the 
 inse'i-i})tions, have the name XL'^ " burden," and in which the 
 Prophet exhibits the disclosures into the destinies of the na- 
 tions which he IukI received on the occasion of the threaten- 
 ing As.syrian invasion under Sennacherib. For, from the 
 pro]>heey against Asshur in chap. xiv. 24, 25, which is con- 
 taineil in the very first burden, it clearly appears that the 
 cycle which, by the equality of the inscriptions, is connected 
 into one well an-anged and congenial whole, belongs to this 
 period. This prophecy against Asshur forms one whole with 
 that against Babel, and by it the latter was suggested and 
 called forth. In that prophecy, the defeat of Asshur, which 
 took place in the 1 4th year of Hezekiah, is announced as 
 future. It is true that the second burden, directed against 
 the Philistines, in chap. xiv. 28-32, seems to suggest another 
 time. Of this burden it is said, in ver. 28, that it was given 
 in the year that king Ahaz died ; not in the year in which 
 his death was impending, but in that in which he died, comp. 
 chap, vi 1. The distressed circumstances of the new king 
 raiscil the hopes of the Philistines, who, under Ahaz, had re- 
 belled against the Jewish dominion. But the Prophet beholds 
 in the Spirit that, just under this king, the heavenly King of 
 Zion would destroy these hopes, and would thrust down 
 Philistia from its imaginary height. But from the time of 
 the original composition of the prophecy, that of its re2y€titioii 
 must be distinguished. That took place, as is just shewn by 
 the proj)hecy's being received in the cycle of the burdens, at 
 the time when the invasion of Sennacherib was immediately 
 impending. The Assyrians were the power from the North, 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS, XIII. 1 XIV. 27 135 
 
 by whom the threatened destruction would break in upon the 
 PhiKstines ; and the truth of the word should be verified 
 upon them, that prosperity is only the forerunner of the fall. 
 In the view of the fulfilment, Isaiah repeated the prophecy. 
 
 From the series of these burdens, we shall very briefly 
 comment upon those which are of importance for our purpose. 
 First. 
 
 CHAPTEES XIIL l.-XIV. 27. 
 
 This prophecy does not contain any characteristically ex- 
 pressed Messianic element ; but it is of no small consequence 
 for bringing out the whole picture of the future, as it was 
 before the mind of the Prophet. It is in it that Babel meets 
 us distinctly and definitely as the threatening world's power of 
 the future, by which Judah is to be carried away into captivity. 
 
 The genuineness is incontrovertibly testified by the close ; 
 and it is only by a naturalistic tendency that it can be denied. 
 With the announcement of the deliverance from Babel is first, 
 in chap. xiv. 24, 25, connected an announcement of deliverance 
 from Asshur ; and then follows in ver. 26 and 27, the close of 
 the whole prophecy from chap^ xiii. ], onward. Vers. 26 and 
 27, which speak of the whole earth and of all the nations, 
 refer to chap, xiii., where the Prophet had spoken of an uni- 
 versal judgment, comp. ver. 5, 9, 10, &c. ; while, in the verses 
 immediately preceding, one single people, the Assyrians only, 
 were spoken of It is thereby rendered impossible to separate 
 chap. xiv. 2-t, 27 from the whole. 
 
 Behind the world's power of the present — the Assyrian — 
 the Prophet beholds a new one springing up — the Babylonish. 
 Those who have asserted that the prophecy against Babel is 
 altogether without foundation as soon as Isaiah is supposed to 
 have composed it, are utterly mistaken. Although the pro- 
 phecy was by no means destined for the contemporaries only, 
 as prophecy is generally destined for all times of the Church, 
 yet, even for the Prophet's contemporaries, every letter was of 
 consequence. If Israel's principal enemies belonged to the 
 future, how very little was to be feared from the present ones ; 
 and especially if Israel should and must rise from even the 
 
1 nC, MFSSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 .lee])est ab.osemeut, how should God not then deliver them 
 from the lower distress and need ? But just because weak 
 faith does not like to draw such inferences, the Prophet at 
 the close expressly adverts to the present affliction, and gives 
 to the weak faith a distinct and sure word of God, by which it 
 may support itself, and take encouragement in that affliction. 
 
 The ])oints of connection must not be overlooked which the 
 l)ropliL'cy in chap. xi. offei's for the prophecy before us. We 
 already met there the total decay of the royal house of David, 
 the cnnying away of Judah into exile, and their dispersion 
 into all lands. It is on this foundation that the prophecy 
 before us takes its stand : it points to the power by which 
 tliese conditions are to be brought about. Farther — There, 
 as well as here, the conditions of the future are not expressly 
 announced as such, but supposed : the Prophet takes his 
 stand in the future. There, as well as here, the Prophet 
 draws consolation in the sufferings of the present from a sal- 
 vation to be bestowed in a far distant future only. 
 
 From the very outset, the Prophet announces an impending 
 oan-jang away of the people, and, at the same time, that, even 
 in this distress, the Lord would have compassion upon His 
 ])eople, comp. e.g. chaps, v., vi. From the very outset, the 
 Prophet clearly saw that it was not by the Assyrians that this 
 cjinying away would be effected. Tliis much we consider to 
 be fully proved by histoiy. The progi'css which the prophecy 
 before us offers, when compared with those former ones, con- 
 sists in this circumstance only, that the Prophet here expressly 
 mentions the names of the future destroyers. And in refer- 
 ence to this circumstance we may remark, that, according to 
 the testimony of history, as early as at that time, the plan of 
 the foundation of an independent power was strongly enter- 
 tained and fostered at Babylon, as is clearly enough evidenced 
 by the embas.sy of the viceroy of Babykm to Hezekiah. 
 
 In chap, xxiii. 13 — the prophecy against Tyre, which is 
 acknowledged to be genuine by the greater number of ration- 
 alistic interpreters — the Prophet shows the clearest insight 
 into the future universal dominion of Chaldea, which forms the 
 l)oint of issue for the prophecy before us. With perfect clear- 
 ness this insight meets us in chap, xxxix. also, on which even 
 Gesenius cannot avoid remarking : " The prophetic eye of 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XVII., XVIII. 137 
 
 Isaiah foresaw, even at that time, that, in a political point of 
 view, Babylon would, in a short time, altogether enter into the 
 track of Assyria." 
 
 CHAPTEES XVII, XVIII. 
 
 These two chapters form one whole, as, generally, the series 
 of the ten burdens is nowhere interrupted by inserted, hetero- 
 geneous, independent portions. Chapter xx. forms an appen- 
 dix only to chapter xix. In the same manner, the prophecy 
 against Sebna in chap. xxii. 16-25, stands in an internal con- 
 nection with vers. 1-15 ; in that which befel him, the destinies 
 of the people were to be typified. That these two chapters 
 belong to one another is clearly proved by the parallelism of 
 chap. xvii. 10, 11, and chap, xviii. 4-6. 
 
 The inscription runs : " Burden of Damascus." It is at the 
 commencement of the prophecy that the Syrians of Damascus 
 are spoken of ; the threatening soon after turns against Judah 
 and Israel. This is easily accounted for by the consideration 
 that the prophecy refers to a relation where Judah and Israel 
 appear in the retinue of Damascus. It was from Damascus 
 that, in the Syrico-Damascenic war, the whole complication 
 proceeded. Aram induced Israel to join him in the war against 
 Judah, and misled Judah to seek help from Asshur. In a gene- 
 ral religious point of view, also, all Israel, the kingdom of the 
 ten tribes, as well as Judah, were at that time, as it were, in- 
 corporated into Damascus ; comp. ver. 1 0, according to which 
 Israel's guilt consisted in having planted strange vines in his 
 vineyard, with 2 Kings xvi. 1 0, according to which Ahaz got 
 an altar made at Jerusalem after the pattern of that which he 
 had seen at Damascus. The circumstance that Israel had 
 become like Damascus, was the reason why it was given up 
 to the Gentiles for punishment. 
 
 From the comparison of chap. x. 28-84, it appears that 
 chap. xvii. 1 2-1 4 belongs to the time of Hezekiah, when Israel 
 was threatened by the invasion of Sennacherib. In chap, xvii, 
 1-11, in which, at first, the overthrow of Damascus and the 
 kingdom of the ten tribes appears as still future, the Prophet 
 
138 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 tluis transfers liiraself back to the stand-point of an earlier 
 time. To this result we are also led by the chronological 
 arrangement of the whole collection. The Prophet, stepping 
 back in spirit to the beginning of the complication, surveys 
 the whole of the calamity and salvation which arise to Israel 
 from the relation to Assliur and the whole world's power re- 
 presented by Asslmr — a relation into which it had been led 
 by Damascus — and takes a view of the punishment which it 
 receives by its sins, by its having become worldly, and of the 
 Divine mercy which sends deliverance and salvation. 
 
 The threatening goes as far as chap, xvii 11. Tlie rod of 
 chastisement is, in the fir.st instance, in the hand of Asshur ; 
 but he, as has been already mentioned, represents the world's 
 power in general. With this, the promise connects itself. The 
 oppressors of the people of God are aimihilated, chap. xvii. 
 12-14. All the nations of the earth, especially Ethiopia, 
 which was, no less than Israel, threatened by Asshur (comp. 
 chap, xxxvii. 9), and to which Egypt at that time occupied 
 tiie position of a subordinate ally, perceive with astonishment 
 the catastrophe by which God brings about the destruction of 
 His enemies, chap, xviii. 1-3. Or, to state it more exactly : 
 Messengers who, from the scene of the great deeds of the Lord, 
 hasten in ships, first, over the Mediterranean, then, in boats 
 up the Nile, bring the intelligence of the catastrophe which 
 has taken place to Gush, the land of the inastling of the wings 
 — thus named from the nistling of the wings of the royal 
 eagle of the world's power, which, being in birth equal to 
 Asshur, has there its seat, vers. 1 and 2 ; comp. chap. viii. 8. 
 All the inhabitants of the earth shall look with astonishment 
 at the catastrophe which is taking place, ver. 3, where the 
 Prophet who, in vers. 1 and 2, had described the catastrophe 
 jis having already taken place, steps back to the stand-point of 
 reality. In vers. 4-6, we have the graphic description of the 
 catiistrophe. At the close, we have, in ver. 7, the words which 
 impart to the prophecy importance for our purpose. 
 
 " III that time shall he hrougld, as a 2)^'csent unto the Lord 
 of hosts, the i^eople far stretched and shorn, and from the 
 pi'ople terrible since it (has been) and omvard, and from the 
 people of laiu-law and trampling down, whose land streams 
 divide, to the jilace of the name of the Lord of hosts, the 
 Mount ZIo))." 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XVIII. 7. 139 
 
 The expression, " shall be brought as a present," (the word 
 '•B' occurs, besides in this passage, only in Ps. Ixviii. 80; Ixxvi. 
 12) points back to the fundamental passage in Ps. Ixviii. 30, 
 where David says, " Because of thy temple over Jerusalem 
 shall kings bring presents unto thee." As outwardly, so spi- 
 ritually too, the sanctuary lies over Jerusalem. The sanctuary 
 of God over Jerusalem is the emblem of His protecting power, 
 of His saving mercy watching over Jerusalem ; so that, " be- 
 cause of thy temple over Jerusalem they bring," &c., is equiva- 
 lent to : On account of thy glorious manifestation as the God 
 of Jerusalem. Gush is in that Psalm, immediately afterwards, 
 expressly mentioned by the side of Egypt, which, at the Pro- 
 phet's time, was closely connected with it. " Princes shall 
 come out of Egypt, Gush makes her hands to hasten towards 
 God." — According to Gesenius, and other interpreters, the p 
 from the second clause is to be supplied before ']^'0J2 Di?. But 
 this is both hard and unnecessary. It is quite in order that, 
 first, the offering of persons, and, afterwards, the offering of 
 their gifts should be mentioned. Parallel is chap. xlv. 1 4 : 
 " The labour of Egypt and the merchandize of Ethiopia, and 
 the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and 
 they shall be thine ;" the difference is only this, that there 
 first the goods are mentioned, and then the men. In chap. 
 Ixvi. 20, we likewise meet men who are brought for an offer- 
 ing. The designations of the people who here appear as the 
 type of the whole Gentile world to be converted at some future 
 period, and who have been chosen for this honour in conse- 
 quence of the historical circumstances which existed at the 
 time of the Prophet, are taken from ver. 2. Gesenius is wrong 
 in remarking in reference to them : " All these epithets have 
 for their purpose to designate that distant people as a power- 
 ful and terrible one." As Gesenius himself was obliged to 
 remark in reference to the last words, " Whose land streams 
 divide :" " This is a designation of a striking pecuharity of the 
 country, not of the people," — the purpose of the epithets can 
 generally be this only, to characterise the people according to 
 their different prominent peculiarities. — y^'Ci'O properly " drawn 
 Old," ''stretched" Prov. xiii, 12, corresponds to the mo ''B'JX 
 " men of extension or stature," in chap. xlv. ] 4. High stature 
 appears, in classical writers also, as a characteristic sign of the 
 
1 [0 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Ethiopians. — On DilD " closely shorn" comp. chap. 1. 6, where 
 C-iO is used of the plucking out of the hair of the beard. — - 
 " To the ])eople feaiful since it and onward," equivalent to : 
 wliich all along, and throughout its whole existence, has been 
 ton-il)lc ; compare x^n >o'D Nah. ii. 9, and the expression : 
 " from this day and forward," 1 Sam. xviii. 9. For every- 
 where one people only is s])oken of, comp. ver. 1, according to 
 which Egypt cannot be thought of — "Ip ip " law-law" is ex- 
 plained from chap, xxviii. 10, 13, where it stands beside ix^V, 
 and designates the mass of rules, ordinances, and statutes. 
 This is characteristic of the Egyptians, and likewise of the Ethio- 
 pians, wlio bear so close an intellectual resemblance to them. 
 With regard to the connection of the verse with what pre- 
 cedes, Gosevius remarks: " The consequence of such great deeds 
 of Jehovah will be, that the distant, powerful people of the Ethio- 
 pians shall present pious offerings to Jehovah," — more correctly, 
 " present themselves and their possessions to Jehovah." — A pre- 
 lude to the fulfilment Isaiah beheld with his own eyes. It is said 
 in 2 Chron. xxxii. 33 : "And many (in consequence of the ma- 
 nifestation of the glory of God in the defeat of Asshur before 
 Jeinisalem) brought gifts unto the Lord to Jerusalem." Yet, 
 we must not limit ourselves to that. The real fulfilment can 
 be sought for only at a later time, <is certainly avS that which the 
 Prophet announces about the destimction of the world's power 
 exceeds, by far, that isolated defeat of Asshur, which can be 
 regarded Jis a prelude only to the real fulfilment ; and as cer- 
 tainly as he announces the destruction of Asshur generally, 
 and, under his image, of the world's power. " He who de- 
 lights in having pointed out the fulfilment of such prophecies 
 in the later history" — Gcsenius remarks — " may find it in 
 Acts viii. 26 fiL, and still more, in the circumstance that Abys- 
 sinia is, up to this day, the only larger Christian State of the 
 Ejist." — In conse(juence of the glorious manifestation of the 
 Lord in His kingdom, and of the conquering power which, in 
 Christ, He displayed in His relation to the world's power, 
 there once existed in Ethiopia a flourishing Christian Church ; 
 and on the ground of this passage before us, we look at its 
 ruins which have been left up to this day, with the hope that 
 the Lord will, at some future time, rebuild it. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XIX. 141 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 The burden of Egypt begins with the words : " Behold the 
 Lord rideth upon a swift cloud, and eometh into Egypt, and 
 the idols of Egypt are moved at His presence, and the heart 
 of Egypt melteth in the midst of it." The clouds with which, 
 or accompanied by which, the Lord comes, are, in the Old and 
 New Testament writings, symbolical indications and represen- 
 tations of judgment ; comp. my remarks on Rev. i. 7 ; and 
 besides the passages quoted there, compare in addition Jer. iv. 
 13 ; Rev. xiv. 1-i. But what judg-ment is here spoken of? 
 According to Gesenius and other interpreters, the calamity is 
 the victory of Psammeticus over the twelve princes, with which 
 physical calamities are to be joined. But against this view, 
 ver. 11 alone is conclusive, inasmuch as, according to this 
 verse, Pharaoh, at the time when this calamity breaks in upon 
 Egypt, is the ruler of the whole land : " How say ye unto 
 Pharaoh : I am the Son of the wise a (spiritual) son of the 
 kings of ancient times," who are celebrated for tlieir wisdom. 
 In ver. 2, according to which, in Egypt, kingdom fights against 
 kingdom, we cannot, therefore, think of independent king- 
 doms ; but following the way of the LXX., vo/^og k'xl i/o'/xoi', of 
 provinces only. Further, — According to Gesenius, tlie fierce 
 lord and cruel king in ver. 4 is assumed to be Psammeticus. 
 But against this the plural alone is decisive. Ezek. xxx. i 2 — 
 according to which outward enemies, the D''"ir, are the cause of 
 the drying up of the Nile, of the ceasing of wealth and pro- 
 sperity — militates against the assumption of a calamity inde- 
 pendent of the political one. The circumstance, that the 
 prophecy under consideration belongs to the series oi theburdens, 
 and was written in the view of Asshur's advance, leaves us no 
 room to doubt that the Lord is coming to judgment in the 
 oppression by the Asiatic world's power. To this may be added 
 the analogy of the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel against 
 Egypt, which are evidently to be considered as a resumption 
 of the prophecy under consideration, and as an announcement 
 that its realization is constantly going on. They do not know 
 any other calamity than being given up to the Asiatic world's 
 power. Compare e.g. Jer. xlvi. 25, 26 : "And behold, I visit 
 Pharaoh and Egypt, and their gods and their kings, Pharaoh 
 
1 42 MKSSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 and them that trust in liim. And I deliver them into the 
 liand of those that seek their soul, and into the hand of 
 Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon." After what we have 
 remarked, the discord among the Egyptians in ver. 2, can be 
 considered as the consequence and concomitant of the real and 
 main calamity only : Where God is not in the midst, there, 
 commonly, intcnial discord is wont to follow upon severe out- 
 ward affliction, inasmuch as one always imputes to the other the 
 cause of matters going on so badly. And what is said of the 
 drying up of the Nile, we shall thus likewise be obliged to con- 
 sider as a consequence of the hostile oppression. Waters are, in 
 Scri]iture, the ordinary image of prosperity ; compare remarks 
 on Rev. xvii. 1, 8, 40; xvi. 4. Here the Nile specially is 
 chosen as the symbol of prosperity, inasmuch as upon it the 
 woe and weal of Egypt chiefly depended. In consequence of 
 the hostile invavsion which consumes all the strength of the 
 land, the Nile of its prosperity dries up ; " its very foundations 
 are destroyed, all who carry on craft are afflicted." 
 
 The scope of the prophecy is this : The Lord comes to judg- 
 ment upon Egypt (through Asshur and those who follow in his 
 tracks), ver. 1. Instead of uniting all the strength against the 
 common enemy, there arises, by the curse of God, discord and 
 dissolution, ver. 2. Egypt falls into a helpless state of distress, 
 ver. 3. " And I give over Egypt into the hand of hard rule, 
 and a fierce king {Jonathan : potens, sc. Nebuchadnezzar) shall 
 rule over them, saith the Lord, Jehovah of hosts," ver. 4. The 
 fierce king is the king of Asshur, the Asiatic kingdom ; com- 
 pare the mention of Asshur in ver. 23-25 ; LXX. ^uatXiT; 
 axXripol. For, the fact that the unity is merely an ideal one, is 
 most distinctly and intentionally pointed at by the CJIN pre- 
 ceding. The prosperity of the land is destroyed, ver. 5-10. 
 The much boasted Egyptian Avisdom can as little avert the ruin 
 of the country as it did formerly, in ancient times ; its bearers 
 stand confounded and ashamed; nothing will thrive and pros- 
 ])cr, vers. 1 1-15. But the misery produces salutary fruits; 
 it brings about the conversion of Egypt to the God of Israel, 
 and, with this convei*sion, a full participation in all the privi- 
 leges and blessings of the Kingdom of God shall be connected, 
 ver. IG, and especially vers. 18-25. This close of the pro- 
 phecy, which for our purpose is of special consequence, we 
 must still submit to a closer examination. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XIX. 18. 143 
 
 Ver. 18. "In that day shall be five cities in the land of 
 Egypt which speak the language of Canaan and swear to the 
 Lord of hosts; city of destruction the one shall be called."*l 
 
 Five, as usual, here comes into consideration as the half of 
 ten, which number represents the whole ; "five cities," there- 
 fore, is equivalent to: a goodly number of cities. On the 
 words : " Who speak the language of Canaan," Gesenius re- 
 marks: "With the spreading of a certain religion resting on 
 certain documents of revelation, as e.g. the Jewish religion, 
 the knowledge of their language, too, must be connected." 
 We must not, of course, limit the thought to this, that Hebrew 
 was learned wherever the religion of Jehovah spread. When 
 viewed more deeply, the language of Canaan is spoken by all 
 those who are converted to the tiue God. Upon the Greek 
 language, e.g. the character of the language of Canaan has been 
 impressed in the New Testament. That language which, from 
 primeval times, has been developed in the service of the Spirit, 
 imparts its character to the languages of the world, and 
 changes their character in their deepest foundation. — " To swear 
 to the Lord" is to do Him homage; Michaelis: Juramento se 
 Domino obstringent; comp. chap. xlv. 23: "Unto me every 
 knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear." In the words : 
 " City of destruction, D"in, one shall be called, there is con- 
 tained an allusion to Din i^p, "city of the Sun" (Heliopolis) 
 which was pecuhar to one of the chief seats of Egyptian 
 idolatry. It is the celebrated Oyi or Befhshemish of which 
 Jeremiah prophesies in chap, xliii. 13: " And he (Nebuchad- 
 nezzar) breaketh the pillars in Beth-shemish, that is in the 
 land of Egypt, and the houses of the gods of Egypt he burnetii 
 with fire." This allusion was perceived as early as by Jona- 
 than, who thus paraphrases: " Urbs domus soils quae des- 
 truetur." By this allusion it is intimated that salvation 
 cannot be bestowed upon the Gentile world in the state in 
 which it is ; that punitive justice must prepare the way for 
 salvation: that everywhere the destructive activity of God 
 must precede that which builds up ; that the way to the 
 Kingdom of God passes through the fire of tribulation which 
 must consume every thing that is opposed to God; compare 
 that which Micah, even in reference to the covenant-people, 
 says regarding the necessity of taking, before giving can have 
 place, vol. i., p. 517. 
 
1 1^ [ MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Ver. 10. "In fJuit day shall there be an altar to the Lord 
 in the inid.^t of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border 
 thereof to the Lord." 
 
 That the altar is to he considered as a " monument" only 
 is a .suppo.sition altogether far-fetched, and which can the less 
 Hnd any support in the isolated case, Josh, xxii., that that 
 account clearly enough intimates how decidedly the existence 
 of an altar furnishes a foundation for the supposition that 
 sjicritice.s are to be offered up there, a supposition intimated by 
 the very name in Hebrew. If it was meant to serve some 
 other purpose, it would have been necessary expressly to 
 stjite it, or, at least, some other place of sacrifice ought to 
 have been assigned for the sacrifices mentioned in ver. 21. 
 But as it stands, there cannot be any doubt that the altar 
 here and the sacrifices there belong to one another. This })as- 
 sage under consideration is of no little consequence, inasmuch 
 as it shows that, in other passages where a going up of the 
 Gentiles to Jerusalem in the Messianic time is spoken of, as, 
 e.g., chap. Ixvi. 23, we must distinguish between the thought 
 .and the embodiment. The pillar at the border bears an in- 
 scription by which the land is designated as the property of 
 the Lord, just as it was the custom of the old eastern con- 
 <luerors, and especially of the Egyptians, to erect such pillars 
 in the conquered territories. 
 
 Ver. 20. " And it is for a sign and for a witn£ss to the 
 Lord of hosts in the land, of Egypt : When they cry unto the 
 Lord because of the oppressors, He shall send them a Saviour 
 and a Deliverer; and he shall deliver them." 
 
 Altar and pillar, as a sign and witness of the confession to 
 the Lord, are, at the same time, a guarantee of the deliverance 
 to be granted by Him. According to Gesenius, the Prophet 
 speaks " without a definite historical reference, of a saving or 
 protecting angel." But we cannot think of an angel on 
 account of the plain reference to the common formula in the 
 Book of Judges, by which it is intimated that, as far as re- 
 dcnq)tion is concerned, Egypt has been made a partaker of 
 the privileges of the covenant-people. It is just this reference 
 which has given rise to the general expression ; but it is 
 Christ who is meant; for the prophets, and especially Isaiah, 
 are not cognizant of any other Saviour for the Gentile world 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XIX. 21-24. 145 
 
 than of Him; and it is He who is suggested by the Messianic 
 character of the whole description. 
 
 Ver. 21. ''And the Lord is known to the Egyptians, and 
 the Egyptians kyioxv the Lord in that day, and offer sacHJice 
 and oblation, and vow vows unto the Lord, aniid perform 
 them." 
 
 Ver. 22. "And the Lord smiteth the Egyptians so that He 
 healeth them, and they are converted to the Lord, and He 
 shall be entreated by them, and shall heal them." 
 
 We have here simply a recapitulation. The prophet de- 
 scribes anew the transition from the state of wrath to that of 
 grace — not, as Drechsler thinks, what they experience in the 
 latter. Upon Egypt is fulfilled what, in Deut. xxxii. 39, has 
 been said in reference to Israel. 
 
 Ver. 23. "In that day there shall be a highway out of 
 Egypt to Asshur, and Asshur cometh into Egypt, and Egypt 
 into Asshur, and Egypt serveth with Asshur." 
 
 12V with nx has commonly the signification " to serve some 
 one ;" here, however, nx if used as a preposition : Egj^t serves 
 God with Asshur. Yet there is an allusion to the ordinary 
 use of lay with riN in order to direct attention to the wonder- 
 ful change: First, Egypt serves Asshur, and the powers that 
 follow its footsteps; then, it serves tuith Asshur. Here also 
 it becomes manifest that the deliverer in ver. 20 is no ordi- 
 nary human deliverer; for such an one could help his people 
 only by inflicting injury upon the hostile power. 
 
 Ver. 24. " In that day Israel shall be the third with Egypt 
 and with Asshur, a blessing in the midst of the earth." 
 
 Tlie " blessing" is not " that union of people formerly sepa- 
 rated," but it is Israel from which the blessing is poured out 
 upon all the other nations ; compare the fundamental passage, 
 Gen. xii. 1-3, and the word of the Lord : ri aojrrif'la ix ruv 
 'lovdaim lerl, John iv. 22. 
 
 Ver. 25. "For the Lord of Hosts blesseth him, saying: 
 Blessed be Egypt my people, and Asshur the work of mine 
 hands, and Israel m.ine inheritance." 
 
 The suffix in "lani refers to every thing mentioned in ver. 
 24. "Assyria and Egypt are called by epithets which else- 
 where are wont to be bestowed upon Israel only." 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to point out how gloriously this, 
 
 VOL. II. k 
 
1 if) MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 pr(){>heoy was fulfilled; how, at one time, there existed a 
 llourishin^' Church in Egypt. Although the candlestick oi 
 that Oluirch be now removed from its place ("Satanas in hoc 
 (jente sevit zizania" — V'driwja), yet we are confident of, and 
 hope for, a future in which this prophecy shall anew power- 
 fully manifest itself The broken power of the Mahommedan 
 delusion opens up the prospect, that the time in which this 
 hope is to be realized is drawing nigh. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE BURDEN UPON TYRE. 
 
 In the view of Sennacherib's invasion, the eyes of the 
 Prophet are opened, so that he beholds the future destinies of 
 the nations within his horizon. It is under these circum- 
 stances that it is revealed to him that Tyi*e also, which, not 
 long before, had successfully resisted the attack of Asshur, 
 and had imagined herself to be invincible, would not, for any 
 length of time, be able to resist the attack of the Asiatic 
 world's power. 
 
 The threatening goes on to ver. 1 4 ; it is, in ver. 1 3, con- 
 centrated in the words: " Behold the laud of the Chaldeans, 
 this [)eople which was not, which Asshur assigns to the beasts 
 of the wilderness, — they set up their watch-towers, they arouse 
 her palaces, they bring them to ruin." The correct explana- 
 tion of this verse has been given by Delitzsch in his Com- 
 mentary on Habakkuk, S. xxi. Before the capture of Tyre 
 could be assigned to the Chaldeans, it was necessary to point 
 out that they should overthrow Asshur, the representative of 
 the world's power in the time of the Prophet. The Chaldeans, 
 a people which, up to that time, were not reckoned in the 
 list of the kingdoms of the world, destroy, in some future 
 period, the Assyrian power, and shall then inflict upon Tyre 
 that destruction which Asshur intended in vain to bring 
 u))on it. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 15 18. 147 
 
 Upon the threatening there follows the promise. Ver. 15. 
 " And it shall come to pass in that day, and Tyre is forgotten 
 seventy years like the days of one king. After the end of 
 seventy years, it shall he unto Tyre according to the song of 
 the harlot. Ver. 16. Take the harp, go about the city, for- 
 gotten harlot, make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou 
 may est he rememhered. Ver. 17. And it shall come to pass, 
 after the end of seventy years, the Lord will visit Tyre, and 
 she returneth to her hire of ivhoredom, and whoreth with all 
 the kingdoms of the earth upon the surface of the earth. Ver. 
 18. And her gain and hire of whoredom shall he holy unto 
 the Lord; not is it treasured and laid up, hut to those who 
 sit hefore the Lord its gain shall he, that they may eat and he 
 satisfied, and for durable clothing^ 
 
 On the "70 years, like the days of one king," Michaelis 
 very pertinently remarks : " Not of one individual, but of one 
 reign or empire, i.e. as long as the Babylonian empire shall 
 last, which, after 70 years, was destroyed by Cyrus." Tlie 
 necessary qualification follows from ver. 13. According to 
 that verse, the one king can be the king of the Chaldeans 
 only. Parallel are the 70 years which, in Jer. xxv. 11, 12, 
 are assigned to the Chaldean empire : *' And these nations 
 serve the king of Babylon 70 years. And it shall come to 
 pass, when the 70 years are accomplished, I will visit upon 
 the king of Babylon, and upon that nation, saith the Lord, 
 their iniquity." In the Commentary on Rev. ii. 1, p. 75, 200, 
 it was proved that, in Scripture, kings are frequently ideal 
 persons; not individuals, but personifications of their king- 
 doms. Gesenius' objection, that the time of the Babylonish 
 dynasty, from the pretended destruction of Tyre to the destruc- 
 tion of Babylon, did not last 70 years, vanishes by the remark 
 that the Prophet says "like the days;" that, hence, it is ex- 
 pressly intimated that the 70 years here, differently from what 
 is the case in Jeremiah, are to be considered as a round desig- 
 nation of the time. From a comparison of Jeremiah we learn 
 that the Chaldean dominion will last 70 years in all. Into 
 wiiich point of thtit period the destruction of Tyre is to fall, 
 Isaiah does not disclose. It is quite proper that in reference 
 to Tyre the announcement should not be so definite, in point 
 of chronology, as in reference to Judah. That the capture of 
 
1 48 MKSSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 'lyre by the Chaldeans, which is here announced, really took 
 place, hivs been more thoroughly established in my book : De 
 i^hu.8 Tyr'wrum; and aftei-wards by Drechshr in his Com- 
 mentary on Isaiah, and by Hdvemick in his Commentaiy on 
 Kzekiel. 
 
 After the end of tlie 70 years. Tyre is to resume her trade 
 (»f whoring, and is to cany it on to a wide extent, and with 
 great success. "By the image of whoredom" — so we re- 
 marked in commenting upon Rev. xiv. 8 — "in some passages 
 i>f the Old Testament, that selfishness is designated which 
 clothes itself in the garb of love, and, under its appearance, 
 seeks the giatification of its own desires. In Is. xxiii. 15 ff., 
 Ty'"'" is, on account of her mercantile connections,^ called a 
 whore, and the profit from trade is designated as the reward 
 of whoredom. The point of comparison is the endeavour to 
 please, to feign love for the sake of gain." Under the do- 
 minion of the Persians, Tyre again began to flourish. 
 
 Tyre's reward of whoredom is consecrated to the Lord, and 
 the bodily wants of His servants are provided from it, — quite 
 in agreement with the words of the Apostle: ii r,[j,iTg vfiTv ra, 
 ■rvixjiMariTta s(fmipa[Miv, iJi^'iya, il rjfjbsT'g v'j^ctjv roc ffapxixd 6ipioo[Mi]i\ 1 Cor. 
 ix. 11. Converted Tyre ofiers, in these gifts, its thanks for 
 the noble gift which it received from the sanctuary. 
 
 Vitrlnga, who remarks that the Prophet was fully aware 
 of " the great interval of time that would intervene betwixt 
 the restoration of Tyre, and her dedication of herself, with 
 her gains, to the Lord," is riglit, while Drechsler, who is of 
 opinion that the doings of consecrated Tyre also are repre- 
 vsented under the image of whoring, is wrong. Whoring 
 designates a sinful conversation which is irreconcilable with 
 conversion to the Lord. It does not designate trade, as such, 
 but trade as it is earned on by those who, with unrenewed 
 hearts, serve the god Mammon. We have here before us two 
 stages, strictly separated. First, she resumes her old whorings ; 
 fhtm, she consecrates her gain to the Lord. The severe catas- 
 trojihe intervening, the new capture of Tyre, as it took place 
 by Alexander, is not yet beheld by Isaiah. The announcement 
 of it was reserved for the post-exilic Prophet Zechariah, 
 chap. ix. 3, 
 
 The announcement of the future conversion of Tyre received, 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XXIV. XXVII. 149 
 
 in the time of Christ, a symbolical representation as it were, 
 in the Canaanitish woman. Vitringa says: "The first fruits 
 of this grace were received by that wise Canaanitish woman, 
 who had been taught, as if she had been in the school of 
 Christ, to ask for divine grace; whom Matth. xv. 22, calls a 
 woman of Canaan, Mark vii. 26, a Syrophenician ; but who 
 was no doubt a Tyrian, inasmuch as she obtained mercy from 
 Christ the Lord himself, while He sojourned in the territory 
 of Tyre and Sidon. Paul found at Tyre a congregation of 
 disciples of Christ already in existence, Acts xxi. 3 tf. At a 
 subsequent period, there existed at Tyre a flourisliing and 
 wealthy church. Eusehius and Jerome describe to us, from 
 their own experience, the fulfilment of this prophecy. 
 
 CHAPTEES XXIV.-XXVII. 
 
 Upon the ten single " burdens " as they were called forth 
 by the threatening Assjrrian catastrophe, there follows here a 
 comprehensive description of the judgments of God upon His 
 people, and uDon the world's power hostile to His Kingdom, 
 The characteristic feature in it is, that the Prophet abstains 
 from all details. 
 
 The prophecy begins in chap. xxiv. 1-13, with the threaten- 
 ing of the judgment upon Judah, The fact that Judah is 
 here spoken of, not alone, it is true, but together with his 
 wmpanions in suffering, with all the other nations crushed 
 ike him by the world's power in its various phases (verse l- 
 lost clearly shows that it is not Judah alone which is spoken 
 ^; comp. the same comprehensive mode of representation in 
 ir. XXV.; Hab. ii. 6), appears from ver. 5: "For they trans- 
 
 essed the laivs, violated the ordinances, broke the everlast- 
 ing covenmit" where there can exist only a collateral reference 
 to the Gentile world; from ver. 13, where tlie continuing 
 gleaning is characteristic of the covenant-people (comp. xvii. 
 (J); but especially from ver. 23, where, after the time of 
 punishment, the Lord reigneth on Mount Zion. 
 
 The judgment upon Judah bears a comprehensive character. 
 
1 '){) MKSSUNIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 As the single phases of the world's power, by which the sins 
 of the peo])le of God are visited, there had been mentioned in 
 the cycle of the burdens, Asshur in chap. xiv. 25; Babylon in 
 chap, xiil, xiv., xxi., (the circumstance that the first burden 
 of tlie first half of the burdens, and likewise the first burden 
 of the second half of the burdens — the ten burdens being 
 thus divided into twice five — is directed against Babylon, 
 .shows that .specially heavy judgments were to be inflicted by 
 Babel) ; ELam in chap. xxii. G (comp. remarks on chap, xi 11). 
 Hero the Idea of judgment upon the covenant-people is viewed 
 })er se, and in-espective of the particular forms of its realisation. 
 
 In vers. 14, 15, there is a sudden transition from the 
 threatening to the promise : " They (the remnant left accord- 
 ing to ver. 1 3) shall lift their voice, they shall shout for the 
 majesty of the Lord, they shall ciy aloud from the sea," — from 
 the sea into which they were driven away by the storm of 
 the judgments of the Lord. To the " sea" here, correspond 
 the " islands of the sea," in ver. 1 5 ; compare the mention of 
 the islands in chap. xi. 11. Ver. 1 5. "Therefore, in the light 
 ))raise ye the Lord, in the isles of the sea the name of the 
 Lord God of Israel." The words are addressed to the elect in 
 the time of salvation. The Plural D''"is denotes the fulness of 
 light or salvation, comp. chap. xxvi. 19; 1 is, in both in- 
 stances, used in a local sense. Tlie light is the spiritual ter- 
 ritory; the isles of the sea, the natural. 
 
 Ver. 16 returns to the threatening: "From the uttermost 
 paits of the earth we hear songs: Glory to the righteous! 
 And I say: Misery to me, misery to me, woe to me! the 
 treacherous are treacherous, and verj^^ treacherous are the 
 treacherous." Tlie song of praise of the redeemed, which is 
 heard coming forth from a far distant future, is suppressed by 
 the same affliction which is immediately impending, by the 
 look to the rod of chastisement by the world's power with its 
 tre<achory, its policy feigning love and concealing hatred, with 
 which the Lord is to visit His people, and the floods of which, 
 Hke a new flood, are, according to ver. 1 5, to overflow tiie 
 whole earth. Compare the very similar transition from trium- 
 j»hant hope to lamentation over the misery of the future more 
 niinicdiately at hand, in Hab. iii. 1 G. 
 
 In ver. '21, ti! the promise breaks forth anew. Ver. 21: 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XXIV. 21 23. 151 
 
 " A nd it shall come to pass in that day : the Lord shall visit 
 the host of the height in the height, and the kings of the earth 
 upon the earth. Ver. 22. And they are all of them gathered 
 together as pHsoners in the pit, and are shut up in the prison, 
 and after many days they are visited. Ver. 28. And the 
 moon blusheth, and the sun is ashamed, for the Lord of hosts 
 reigneth on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before His 
 ancients is glory" 
 
 In ver. 21 the destruction of the world's power is an- 
 nounced. The "kings of the earth" form the explanation of 
 the " host of the height." It is very common to represent 
 rulers under the image of stars; compare Numb. xxiv. 17; 
 Rev. vi. 13, viii. 10; Is. xiv. 12, xxxiv. 4, 5, compared with 
 ver. 12. Dno is used in reference to the great ones of the 
 earth in ver. 4, and in chap. xxvi. 5, also. The explanation 
 by eviJ heavenly powers has no Old Testament analogies in 
 its favour. — In ver. 22, the words: "And after many days 
 they are visited," intimates that the time will appear very long 
 to Zion, until the visitation takes place. "Many days," or 
 " a long time," viz., after the beginning of their raging, which 
 was to continue for a series of centuries, until Christ at length 
 spoke: "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." The 
 visitation consists in their being gathered together. — In ver, 
 23, the words: "The Lord reigneth," contain an allusion to 
 the formula used in proclaiming the accession of earthly kings 
 to the throne, and point to an impending new and glorious 
 manifestation of the government of the Lord, — as it were, a 
 new accession to the throne ; compare remarks on Ps. xciii. 1 ; 
 Rev. xix. 6. The " ancients" are the ideal representatives of 
 the Church; compare remarks on Rev. iv. 4. Before them is 
 glory, inasmuch as the Lord imparts to them of His glory. 
 
 In chap. XXV. 1-5, the Lord is praised on account of the 
 glorious redemption bestowed upon His people. " For thou 
 hast made" — it is said in ver. 2 — "of a city a heap, of a firm 
 city a ruin, the palace of strangers to be no city; it shall not 
 be built in eternity." The city, palace (we must think of such 
 an one as comes up to a city, as is even now the case with 
 the palaces of the princes in India) bear an ideal character, 
 and represent the whole fashion of the world, the whole world's 
 power; comp. ver. 12, chaps, xxvi. 5, xxvii. 10. Gesenius 
 
1 5 2 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 speaks of " the strange conjectures of interpreters who have 
 guessed all possible cities." But he himself has lost himself 
 in the sphere of strange conjectures and guesses, by remark- 
 ing: "The city whose destruction is here spoken of can be 
 none other than Ribylon." Tlie circumstance that Babylon is 
 not mentioned at all in the whole prophecy in chaps, xxiv. — 
 xxvii. shows plainly enough that a special reference to Babylon 
 cannot here be entertained; and the less so, that it would be 
 agjiinst the character of our prophecy, which abstains from all 
 details. 
 
 While in vers. 1-5 the discourse was laudatory and glori- 
 fying, and adch-essed to the Lord, in vers. 6-8 the Lord is 
 spoken of: 
 
 Ver. 0. " And in this mountain the Lord of hosts malceth 
 unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the 
 lees, of fat things full of marrow, of lees well-refined. Ver 7. 
 And destroy eth in the mountain the surface of the vail cover- 
 ing all the nations, and the covering caM iqwn all tite nations. 
 Ver. 8. A nd destroyeth death for ever, and the Lord Jehovah 
 wijyeth away the tears from off all faces, and the rebuke of His 
 people shall He take away from of all the earth; for the Lord 
 hath spoken." 
 
 " In this mountain," ver. G, where He enters upon His go- 
 vernment (chap. xxiv. 23), and dwells in the midst of His 
 people in a manner formerly unheard of. — " Unto all people," 
 comp. chap, il 2 ff. The verse under consideration forms the 
 foundation for the words of Christ in Matthew viii. 2: Xsyu 
 d'i IfiTv on rroXXoi drrh avarokuv y.al duff/Muv jj'^ouff/ xai avaxXi&rjffovTai 
 fj,iTa A^paufii xai 'iffaax y.ai 'laxi/3 iv rri jSaCiXn'cc ruv ovpavuv; comp. 
 xxii. 1 ff.; Luke xxii. 30. In ver. 7, " the surface of the vail" 
 is the vail itself, inasmuch as it lies over it. The "covering" 
 here comes into consideration as a sign of mourning, comp. 
 2 Sam. XV. 30: "And David went up by the ascent of Mount 
 Oh vet, weeping, and his head covered, and so also all the 
 people with him." The explanation is given in ver. 8, where 
 the ]P2 is intentionally resumed. We cannot, thei'efore, agree 
 with Lrerhsler who explains the being " covered," by " dull- 
 ness and deadness in reference to spiritual things." — The first 
 part of ver. 8 is again resumed in Rev. vii. 17, xxi. 4. As 
 death entered into the world by sin (Gen. ii. 1 7 ; Rom. v. 1 2), 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XXVI. 19. 153 
 
 SO it ceases when sin is completely overcome; compare 1 Cor. 
 XV. 5 4, where our passage is expressly quoted. Besides death, 
 tears also are mentioned, inasmuch as they flow with special 
 bitterness in the case of bereavements by death. — The Lord 
 removes the rebuke of His people when all their hopes, which 
 formerly were mocked and laughed at, are fulfilled, and when, 
 out of the midst of them, salvation for the whole world rises. 
 With the people of God in their exaltation, Moab is, in 
 vers. 9-12, contrasted in its weakness and humiliation, and in 
 its vain attempts to withdraw from the supremacy of the God 
 of Israel. Moab comes here into consideration, only as the 
 representative of all the kingdoms hostile to God, and obsti- 
 nately persevering in their opposition to His Kingdom ; just 
 as Edom in chap, xxxiv., Ixiii. The representative character 
 of Moab was recognized by Gesenius also, who thus deter- 
 mines the sense: "Whilst Jehovah's protecting hand rests 
 upon Zion, His enemies helplessly perish." It is intentionally 
 that Moab is mentioned, and not Asshur or Babel, because, in 
 its case, the representative character could not so easily be 
 mistaken or overlooked. — Ver. 12 returns to the world's 
 power in general. 
 
 In chap, xxvi., the rejoicing and shouting for the salvation 
 are continued. A characteristic Messianic feature is contained 
 in ver. 19 only, in which, as in chap. xxv. 8, the ceasing of 
 death and the resurrection of the righteous appear as taking 
 place in the Messianic time. 
 
 Ver. 19. " Thy dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise. 
 Aivake and sing, ye that divell in dust! For a dew of light 
 is thy dew, and thou Tnakest fall to the earth the giants." 
 
 The saints are raised from the earth ; the giants are sunk 
 into the earth. The D"'KQ") "giants" are identical with the ''2\^'> 
 bin in ver. 18. There it was said in reference to the time of 
 wrath : " We have not vvTOught any deliverance in the land, 
 neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen;" compare 
 vers. 9 and 21; Numb. xiv. 32. Parallel is the announce- 
 ment of the defeat of the world's power in ver. 1 4. D"'XD"i, it 
 is true, is there used of the dead; but the signification of 
 the word remains the same: The bodiless spirits were called 
 giants, because they were objects of terror to the living; comp. 
 remarks on Ps. Ixxxviii. 11. The word is, in ver. 14, used 
 
1 5 4 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 with a certain irony. — "Light" is equivalent to "salvation" 
 nie Pliii-al signifies the fuhiess of light or salvation. The 
 coniplt'te iulfihiient whicli the words, " Thy dead shall live," 
 will find in the resun-ection of the body, affords a guarantee 
 for the fiilHlnient of the previous stages. 
 
 In ch;ip. xxvii., it is especially ver. 1 which attracts our 
 attention : " In tfuit day the Lm'd with His sword, Ivard, great, 
 and strofuf, shall visit the leviatfian, the tortuoiLs serpervt, and 
 killeth the dragon that is in the sea." 
 
 We have here three designations of one and the same 
 monster. Gesenius, on the other hand, rightly brings forward 
 the accumulation of the attributes of the sword: With the 
 three epithets applied to the sword, the three epithets of the 
 monster to be killed by it pei-tinently correspond. The levia- 
 than, the dragon, is, as it were, the king of the sea-animals, 
 compare remarks on Ps. Ixxiv. 13, 14. In the spiritual sea 
 of the world, its natural antitype is the conquering world's 
 power; comp. remarks on Rev. xii. 3. But that which is 
 meant is the whole world's power, according to all its phases, 
 which is here viewed as a whole; comp. ver. 13, where it is 
 designated by Asshur and Egypt. The special reference to 
 Babylon rests, here also, on a mere fancy. 
 
 After the single discoui-ses out of the Assyi-ian time, from 
 chap. vii. — xxvii., there follows in chap, xxviii. — xxxiii. the 
 sum and substance of those not fully communicated. Even 
 the uncommonly large extent of the section suggests to us 
 such a comprehensive character. And so likewise does the 
 fact that the same thoughts are constantly recurring, as is the 
 ca.se in several of the minor prophets also, e.g. Hosea. But 
 what is most decisive is, that in chap, xxviii. 1-4 Samaria 
 appears as not yet destroyed. Considering that the chrono- 
 logical principle pervades the whole collection, this going back 
 ciin be accounted for only by the circumstance that we have 
 here a comprehensive representation. And we are the more 
 led to this opinion that, in other passages of the same section, 
 Jerusalem is represented as ]>eing threatened immediately. In 
 this section, it is especially the passage in chap, xxviii. 1 6 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XXVIII. 16. 155 
 
 which attracts our attentioti ; since, in the New Testament, it 
 is referred to Christ. 
 
 " Behold I have laid for a foundation in Zion a stone, a 
 tried {stone), a precious corner stone of jyerfect foundation ; he 
 that believeth need not make haste" viz., for an escape or refuge 
 for himself, Ps. Iv. 9. In opposition to false hopes, this stone 
 is pointed to as the only true foundation, and all are threa- 
 tened with unavoidable destruction who do not make it their 
 foundation. The stone is the Kingdom of God, the Church ; 
 compare Zech. iii. 9, where the Kingdom of God likewise 
 appears under the image of the stone. But since the King- 
 dom of God (which, in chap. viii. 1 6, had been represented 
 under the image of the quietly flowing waters of Siloah) is, 
 for all eternity, closely connected with the house of David 
 which centres in Christ, that tvhich, in the first i/nsiance, is 
 said of the kingdom of God refers, at the same time, to its 
 liead and centre. Parallel is Is. xiv. 32; "The Lord hath 
 founded Zion, and the poor of His people trust in it." The posn 
 here corresponds with the non with 3 there. The difference 
 is, that there Zion itself is the object of confidence, while here 
 it is the stone which is in Zion. There, Zion is the spiritual 
 Zion ; not the mountain as an assemblage of stones, nor the 
 outward temple as such, but Zion in so far as it is a sanctuary, 
 the seat of the presence of the Lord. The Lord — such is the 
 sense — has founded His Kingdom among us ; and the circum- 
 stance that we are citizens of the Kingdom gives us security, 
 enables us to be calm even in the midst of the greatest danger. 
 Here, on the contrary, Zion is the outward Zion, and the 
 Kingdom of God is the Church as distinguished from it. The 
 Zion here corresponds to the holy mountains in Ps. Ixxxvii. 1, 
 where, in a similar manner, a distinction is drawn between 
 the material and spiritual Zion : " His foundation is in the 
 holy mountains," on which I remarked in my Commentary : 
 " The foundation of Zion took place spiritually by its being 
 chosen to be the seat of the sanctuary. It was then only that 
 the place, already existing, received its spiritual foundation." 
 The stone laid by God as a foundation in Zion, in the pas- 
 sage under consideration, is, in substance, identical with the 
 "tent that He placed among men,'' in Ps. Ixxviii. 60. "In 
 substance the sanctuary was erected by God alone, who, by 
 
156 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 fiiltilling His promise, ' I dwell in the midst of them,' breathed 
 the living soul into the body, and caused His name to dwell 
 there." In Ezek. xi. the substance of the sanctuary, the 
 Shechinah, withdraws into heaven. — Our passage, farther, 
 touches veiy clo.sely upon chap. viiL It: " And He (the Lord) 
 becomes a sanctuaiy and a stone of offence, and a rock of 
 stumbling to both the houses of Israel, and a snare and a trap 
 to the inhabitants of Jerusalem." The stone here is the 
 Church ; there it is the Lord himself, according to His relation 
 to Israel, the Lord who has become manifest in His Church. 
 Another point of contact is offered by Ps. cxviii. 22: "The 
 stone which the builders rejected has become the corner-stone." 
 In that passage, too, the stone is the Kingdom and people of 
 God : " The people of God whom the kingdoms of the world 
 despised, have, by the working of God, then been raised to 
 the dignity of the world-ruling people." 
 
 A simple quotation of the passage before us is found in 
 Rom. X. 11: Ksyn yap i] ypa^rj' ^ag 6 TiffTtduv Jt' aurw ou xara/ff- 
 y^vvdrtOiTai. In chap. ix. ver. 3, we have chap. viii. 1 4, and the 
 passage under considei'ation blended in a remarkable manner : 
 idoii ridriiJ,! sv 2;wv Xidov <7rpox6/Jt>/J>aTog -/mi 'Zirpccv cxcivdaXow xui 
 rrag 6 rritmuMv st' auTui ov ■/.araieyjjv&riairai, and from the remarks 
 already offered, the right to this blending is evident. Peter, 
 in 1 Pet. ii. 6, 7, adds to these two passages, that in Ps. cxviii. 
 22 : biori mpt'iy^it sv rp ypa(pri: Idov rldri/j^t sv 2/a/v \iSov dx,poyu- 
 vtaTov, sxXsxrov, svri'jbov, y.ai 6 msrsvuv s x' avrw ou /ji,ri xarata- 
 y\jvd^. u/mTv ovv r] rifirj ro?i -Triersjojaiv a,-7rsT^ou6i ds Xi6ov ov d'TTsdoKifiaaav 
 01 olxoOo/^ouvTsg^ ovtos sysvYi&r] sic xsipuXriV yuviocg, xal kldog rrpoaxofifia- 
 Tog xai Tsrpa axavdd'Aov, on which Beugel remarks : " Peter quotes, 
 in ver. and 7, three passages, the first from Isaiah, the second 
 from the Psalms, the third again from Isaiah. To the third 
 he alludes in ver. 8, but to the second and first, in ver. 4, 
 having, even then already both of them in his mind." Matth. 
 xxi. 42-44 refers only to Ps. cxviii. and to Is. viii. 14, 15. to 
 the latter passage in ver. 44 ; Acts iv. has Ps. cxviii. only 
 in view. 
 
 The second Messianic passage of the section which is of 
 importance for our puii^ose, is chap, xxxiii. 17. 
 
 " Thine eyes simll see the King in His beauty ; tJtey shall 
 see the laiid that is far of" 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XXXIII. 17. 157 
 
 The " King" is the Messiah. This appears from the refer- 
 ence to the Song of Solomon i. 16, where the bride says to 
 the bridegi'oom, the heavenly Solomon, " Behold thou art fair, 
 my beloved" (comp. Ps. xlv. 3 ;) and from the words imme- 
 diately following : " they shall see the land that is far off." 
 The wide extension of the Kingdom of God is indissolubly con- 
 nected with the appearance of the Messiah. Those who refer 
 the prophecy to Hezekiah refer "the land that is far off" 
 (literally : " the land of distances") to " a land sti'etching far 
 out," in antithesis to the siege when the people of Jerusalem 
 were limited to its area, since the whole country was occupied 
 by the Assyrians. But the passage, chap. xxvi. 15:" Thou 
 increasest the nation, God, thou art glorified, thou removest 
 all the boundaries of the land," is conclusive against this ex- 
 planation. Comparing this passage, as also chap. Ix. 4; Zech. 
 X. 9, Michaelis correctly explains : " The land of distances is 
 the Kingdom of Christ most widely propagated." In chap, 
 viii. 9, likewise, the Gentile coim tries are designated by the 
 " distances of the earth." Farther — Hezekiah could not be 
 designated simply by i^d without the article. It is only by 
 the utmost violence that the whole announcement can be 
 limited to the events under Hezekiah, which everywhere form 
 the foreground only. We might rather, with Vitringa, think 
 of Jehovah, with a comparison of ver. 22 : "For the Lord is 
 our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our King ; 
 He will save us," and of Ps. xlviii. 3, where he is called 3"i 'i?J2- 
 To Jehovah, the passage, chap. xxx. 20, 21 also refers, — a 
 passage which has been so often misunderstood : " And the 
 Lord giveth you bread of adversity, and water of affliction, 
 and not does thy teacher conceal himself any more, and thine 
 eyes see thy Teacher. And thine ears hear a voice behind 
 thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it ; do not turn to 
 the right hand, nor to the left." The affliction prepares for 
 the coming of the heavenly teacher ; by it the eyes of the 
 people have been opened, so that they are able to behold His 
 glorious form. But although we should understand Jehovah 
 by "the King in His beauty," we must, at all events, think 
 of His glorious manifestation in Christ Jesus, who said, He 
 who sees me sees the Father, and in whom the fulness of the 
 Godhead dwells bodily ; and it was indeed in Christ that God, 
 
1 58 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 in the truest manner, revealed and manifested himself as the 
 Teacher of His people. 
 
 The close of the whole of the first part of Isaiah is, in chaps, 
 xxxiv., XXXV. formed by a comprehensive announcement, on 
 the one Jmnd, of the judgments upon the God-hating world, 
 here individualized by Edom, that hereditaiy enemy of Israel, 
 who was so much the more fitted for this representation that 
 his enmity was the most obstinate of all, and remained the 
 same throughout all the phases of Israel's oppression by the 
 great kingdcnns of the world (lie always appears as he who 
 helped to bring misery upon his brethren) ; and, on the other 
 hand, of the mercy and salvation which should be bestowed 
 upon the Church trampled upon by the world. 
 
 On chap, xxxiv. 4;, 5, where the heaven is that of the princes, 
 the whole order of rulers and magistrates ; the stars, the single 
 piinces and nobles, compare my remarks on Rev. vi. 13. 
 
 The description of the salvation in store for the Church, in 
 chap. XXXV., is pre-eminently Messianic, although the lower 
 blessings also are included which preceded the appearance of 
 Christ. The description contains features so characteristic, 
 that we must necessarily submit it to a closer examination. 
 
 Ver. 1. " The guilder )iess and dry land sludl he glad for it, 
 and the desert sluxll rejoice and sprout Wee the bidb." 
 
 The wUderness is Zion — the Church to be devastated by 
 the world. — " For it," — i.e. for the judgment upon the world, 
 as it was described in chap, xxxiv. with which the changed 
 fate of the Church is indissolubly connected. 
 
 Ver. 2. " It sJudl sprout, and rejoice with joy and shouting. 
 The glory of Lebanon is given unto it, tJie excellency of Carmel 
 and Slmron. Tliey shall see the glory of the Lord, the eaxel- 
 hncy of our God." 
 
 " The glory of Lebanon," &c. is a glory like unto that of 
 Lebanon. The real condition of the glory of Zion, or the 
 Church, is brought before us in the subsequent verses only ; 
 it consists in the Lords glory being manifested in it. The 
 majestic, wooded Lebanon, and fruitful Carmel, are contrasted 
 with one another ; the latter is put together with the lovely 
 fmitful plain of Sliaron, rich in flowers ; compare remarks on 
 Song of Sol. vii, 6. Mlchaelis says : " The Lebanon excels 
 among the forests ; the Carmel among the fruitful hills ; the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XXXV. 3-5. 159 
 
 Sharon among the lovely fields or valleys." — To " see the glory 
 of the Lord, the excellency of God" means to behold Him in 
 the revelation of the full glory of His nature. Prophecy would 
 have fed the minds of the people with vain hopes, if God had 
 revealed himself in any other way than in Christ, the bright- 
 ness of His glory and the express image of His person, in 
 whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Col. ii. 
 9), and who, along with His own glory, revealed, at the same 
 time, that of the Father ; for it was the glory as of the only- 
 begotten of the Father, John i. 14; ii. 11. 
 
 Ver. 3. Strengthen ye the slack hands, and confirm ye the 
 tottering knees." The words are addressed to all the members 
 of the people of God ; they are to strengthen and confirm one 
 another by pointing to the future revelation of the glory of 
 the Lord. 
 
 Ver. 4. " Say to them that are of a fearful heaH : Be 
 strong, fear not ; behold, your God will come for vengeance, 
 for a gift of God: He will come and save you." 
 
 " To them that are of a fearful heart," — literally of a " hasty 
 heart," who allow themselves to be carried away by the Present, 
 and are unmindful of the respice finem. — Dp3 and ijIDJ are 
 Accusatives, used in the same manner as in verbs of motion, 
 to designate the object of the motion. — On hoj, " gift," comp. 
 remarks on Ps. vii. 5. " The gift of God" forms a contrast to 
 the poor gifts, such as men offer. He comes for vengeance 
 upon His enemies, and for bestowing the most glorious divine 
 gifts upon His people. The words : " He will come and save 
 you," are an explanation of " the gift of God." It is in Christ 
 that the words : " He will come and save you," found their 
 true fulfilment, — a fulfilment to which every lower blessing 
 pointed, and which is still going on, and constantly advancing. 
 — That which, in the subsequent verses, is said of the conco- 
 mitant circumstances of this salvation, is by far too high to 
 admit of the fulfilment being sought in any other than Christ. 
 All these forced explanations, such as : "In their joy they feel 
 as if they were healed" {Knohel, after the example of Gesenius), 
 ordy serve to show this more clearly. They are overthrown 
 even by the parallel announcement of the impending resurrec- 
 tion of the dead in chap. xxv. 8 ; xxvi. 1 9. 
 
100 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Ver. 5. " Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the 
 ears of tlte deaf shall he unstopped." 
 
 The blind and deaf are the individualizing designations of 
 the wretched; in Luke xiv. 13-21, the blind are named along 
 with the poor, lame, and maimed as an individualizing desig- 
 nation of the whole genus of personae miserabiles; com p. 
 John V. 3. But this individualizing designation must be 
 carefully disting-uished from the image. The blind and deaf 
 are mentioned as the most perspicuous species in the genus ; 
 but they themselves are, in the first instance, meant, and that 
 which has been said must, in the first instance, be fulfilled 
 upon them. Farther — as blind and deaf are, without farther 
 remark and qualification, spoken of, we shall, in the first 
 instance, be obliged to think of the bodily blind and deaf, 
 inasmuch as they, according to the common usus loquendi, are 
 tiius designated. But a collateral reference to the spiritually 
 blind and deaf must so much the rather be assumed, that they, 
 too, form a portion of the genus here represented by the bUnd 
 and deaf; and the more so that it is just Isaiah who so fre- 
 (piently speaks of spiritual blindness and deafness ; comp. 
 chap. xxix. 18: '' And in that day (in the time of the future 
 salvation, when the Lord of the Church shall have put to 
 shame the pusillanimity and timidity of His people), the deaf 
 hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind see out 
 of obscurity and darkness ;" xlii. 18 : " Hear ye deaf, and look 
 ye blind and see;" xliii. 8: "Bring forth the blind people, 
 that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears ;" Ivi. 10 ; vi. 10 ; 
 Matth. XV. 14- ; John ix. 39 ; Ephes. i. 18 ; 2 Pet. i. 9. Spi- 
 ritual blindness and deafness are specially seen in the relation 
 of the people to the leadings of the Church, and to the pro- 
 mises of Scripture. The blind cannot undei-stand the compli- 
 cated ways of God ; the deaf have, especially in the time of 
 misery, no ear for His promises. Besides the natui'al and 
 spiritual blindness, Scri[)ture knows of still a third ; it desig- 
 nates as blind those who cannot see the way of salvation, the 
 helpless and drooping ; compai'e my Commentary on Ps. cxlvi. 
 8 ; Zeph. i. 17 ; Isa. xlii. 7. Now, it is blindness and deaf- 
 ness of every kind which, along with all other misery, shall 
 find a remedy at the time of salvation. — If we ask for the 
 fultilment, our eye is, in the first instance, attracted by Matt. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XXXV. 6. 161 
 
 xi. 5, where, with an evident reference to the passage before 
 us, the Lord gives to the question of John : " Ai't thou he 
 that should come, or do we look for another," the matter-of- 
 fact answer, that the blind receive their sight, the deaf hear, 
 the lame walk: comp. Matth. xv. 81 : uffre roug lyKwg 6a\JiM6LGui /3Xg- 
 vovrac, xaxpovg XaXoiiTag, xvX'Aoug vynTg, -^uXovg iripiiraTOwrag xal TV(pXoiig 
 /SXsffoiras ; xxi. 14; xa/ 'irposri'Kdov aurw rv^Xoi zal yjtikal h rCj Upw 
 xai shpaTnvffiv avrovg; Mark vii. 37, where after the healing of 
 the deaf and dumb, the people say : xaXug 'iravra 'TrmoinKv xai 
 Toiig xu(poug -TronT dxovsiv, xal rovg aXdXovg XaXun. Yet shall we not 
 be able to see, in these facts, the complete fulfilment of the 
 prophecy, in so far as it refers to the healing of the bodily 
 blind and deaf — inasmuch as it promises the healing of all, 
 not of some only — but only a pledge of the complete fulfilment 
 of it ; just as Christ's raising some from the dead only pre- 
 figures what He shall do in the end of the days. The com- 
 plete fulfilment belongs to the time of the resun*ection of the 
 just, of which it is said : Whatever is here afiiicted, groans, 
 prays, shall then go on brightly and gloriously. More com- 
 prehensive was the fulfilment which the prophecy received, in 
 reference to spiritual blindness and deafness, immediately at 
 the first appearance of Christ, who declared that He had come 
 into the world, that they which see not, might see (John ix. 
 89). But even here the completion as certainly belongs to 
 the future world, as (SXs-Tro/j.iv dpn hi' sao'TTTpou hv ahiy/Mari. 
 
 Ver. 6. " Then shall the lame leajy as an hart, and the tongue 
 of the dumb shall shout; for in the wilderness shall waters be 
 opened, and streams in the desert." 
 
 The leaping and shouting imply that they have obtained 
 deliverance from their bodily defects, — at this deliverance the 
 preceding verse stopped — and proceed from the natural delight 
 at the appearance of this salvation, personal as well as general, 
 of which these are an emanation. On the first words espe- 
 cially. Acts iii. 8 is to be compared, where it is said of the 
 lame man to whom Peter, in the name of Jesus spoke. Arise 
 and walk : xai s^aXXo/xsvog sdrri xai Tsp/STaTS/, xai iieriXk duv auroTg ilg 
 TO ispov, "TTspi-Traruv xai aXXo/xsvog xai aivuv rov hov ; farther. Acts Vlll. 
 7 '. 'TToXXoi d's 'jrapaXiXvfMsvoi xai yuXol sSipa'TsudyiSav ; XIV. 8 ; John 
 V. 9. Of spiritual lameness, Heb. xii. 13 is spoken. It 
 appears especially in dark times of afiliction, as Vitringa says: 
 " In the time of wild persecution, and when the Church lan- 
 VOL. II. I 
 
1 G2 MESSIANIC PREDICTIOXS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 guishes, not a few men begin to halt, to vacillate in their 
 views, to suspend their opinions," &c. On the words: " tlie 
 tongue of the dumb shall shout," compare Matt. xii. 22 : Tin 
 ■jrpoerys'/^dri uItw 5a//zo^^6'/x£^oc, rvpXog y.al zufog' xai lOipdmvffiv a'jrov, 
 'Man rbv rufAov xai y.uihv xoci y^a/.uv xal (SX'sTiiv. Spil'itual dumb- 
 ness is the incapacity for the praise of God which, in the time 
 when salvation is withheld, so easily creejjs in, and which is 
 removed by the bestowal of salvation. The words : " For in 
 the wilderness," &c., state the gi'ound -of the leaping and 
 shouting, point to the bestowal of salvation, which forms the 
 cause. Tiie waters are the waters of salvation, compare re- 
 marks on chap. xii. 3. The words contain, moreover, an 
 allusion to Exod. xvii. 3 fF. ; Numb. xx. 1 1 , where, during 
 the journey through the wilderness, salvation is represented 
 by the bestowal of water. The desert here is an image of 
 misery. 
 
 Ver. 7. "And the scorching heat of the sun becomes a pool, 
 and the thirsty land, springs of 'water ; in the habitation of 
 dragons shall be their couching place, grass vJtere formerly 
 reeds and rushes." 
 
 '' The scorching heat of the sun," stands for " places scorched 
 by the heat" (" parched ground," English version). The pas- 
 sage chap. xlix. 10, forbids us to explain it by mirage, the 
 appearance of water. The suffix in nva"i refers to Zion. Dra- 
 gons like to make their abode especially in the waterless wil- 
 derness. The circumstance that Zion has there her couching 
 place, supposes that it has been changed into a garden of God ; 
 while, on the contrary, in chap, xxxiv. 1 3, it is said of the 
 world that " it becomes an habitation of drasfons." Besides the 
 dry land, the moor-land which bears nothing but baiTen reeds, 
 shall undergo a change ; nourishing grass is to take its place ; 
 "Vin has no other signification than this. 
 
 Ver. 8. " A nd a high-way shall be there, and a way, and it 
 sliall be called the holy ivay ; an unclean slmll not jxiss over 
 it ; and it shall be for them, that they may walk on it, that 
 fools also may not err!' 
 
 " The way" is the way of salvation which God opens up to 
 His people in the wilderne.ss of misery ; comp. chap, xliii. 1 9 : 
 '■ I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert;" Ps. 
 cvii. 4: " They wandered in the wilderness, in the desert with- 
 out ways," where the pathless wildernes.s is the image of misciy; 
 
ISATAH, CHAP. XXXV. 6. 163 
 
 Ps. XXV. 4 ; xxvii. 1 1, where the ways of God are the ways of 
 salvation which He reveals to His people, that they may walk in 
 them. The way is holy (comp. remarks on chap. iv. 3), because 
 inaccessible to the profane world, to the unclean, who are not 
 allowed to disturb the righteous walking on it; comp. ver. 9, 
 which shows how entirely out of place is the remark that "the 
 author, in his national hatred, will not allow any Gentiles to 
 walk along with the covenant-people." It is only as converted, 
 as fellows and companions of the saints, that the Gentiles are 
 allowed to enter on the way, and not as unclean and their 
 enemies. The circumstance that even the foolish cannot miss 
 the way, indicates the abundant fulness of the salvation, in 
 consequence of which it is so easily accessible; and no human 
 effort, skill, or excellence, is required to attain the possession 
 of it. 
 
 Ver. 9. " No lion shall he there, nor any ravenous beast go 
 
 up thereon, it shall not he found there ; and the redeemed- 
 
 walk on it!' 
 
 By the lion, the ravenous beast, heathenish wickedness and 
 
 tyranny, the world's power pernicious to the Kingdom of 
 
 God, is designated; comp. remarks on chap. xi. 7. The Lord 
 
 declared that the fulfilment had taken place, when He said v 
 
 Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. 
 
 Ver. 10. " And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and 
 
 come to Zion, and everlasting joy shall he upon their heads. 
 
 Joy and gladness they shall ohtain, and sorrow and sighing 
 
 shall flee away." 
 
 GENERAL PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON 
 CHAPTERS XL— LXVL 
 
 The historical section, chap, xxxvi. — xxxix., forms the tran- 
 sition from the first to the second part of the prophecies of 
 Isaiah. Its close is formed by the announcement of Judah's 
 being carried away to Babylon, an announcement which Isaiah 
 uttered to Hezekiah after the impending danger from the 
 
104- MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Assyrians had been successfully warded off, as had been men- 
 tioned in the preceding chapter. In chap, xxxix. 6, 7, it is 
 said: "Behold days are coming, and all that is in thine house, 
 and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this 
 day, shall be carried to Babylon, and nothing shall be left, 
 saith the Lord. And of thy sons shall they take away, and 
 they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon." 
 In this announcement, we have at the same time the concen- 
 tration of the rebuking and threatening mission of the Pro- 
 phet, and the point from which proceeds the comforting mis- 
 sion which, in the second part, is pre-eminently attended to. 
 This second part at once begins with the words : " Comfort ye, 
 comfort ye my people," which stand in closest connection with 
 tlie preceding announcement of a great calamity, yea, even 
 necessarily demand this. It is just for this reason that the 
 historical chapters cannot be a later addition and interpolation, 
 but must be an original element of the collection wi-itten by 
 tlie Prophet himself^ 
 
 The contents of the second part are stated at once, and 
 generally, in the introductory words, chap. xl. 1, 2: "Comfort 
 ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak to the heart 
 of Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, 
 that her iniquity is pardoned, that she receives of the Lord's 
 liHud double for all her sins." The comfort must, accordingly, 
 form the fundamental character of the second part. But since, 
 for the people of God, there does not exist any purely exter- 
 nal salvati(m; since, for them, salvation is indissolubly con- 
 nected with repentance, — exhortation must necessarily go hand 
 ill hand with the announcement of salvation. This second 
 feature and element concealed behind the first, is, moreover, 
 expressly brought forward in what immediately follows, inas- 
 much as by it the " Comfort ye" does not receive any addition, 
 
 ' Cliiip. xxxvii. 88, (comp. 2 Kings xix. 37), describing apparently the 
 min-der of Sennacherib jus belonging to the past, does not decide any thing 
 a.s to the composition of this chapter by Isaiah, "inasmuch as the year 
 wiiich is a,ssigned for Sennacherib's death, B.C. 09G, is not hi.storically 
 a-< t-rtained and certain. iS'or can the siH)i)osition, that Is<iiah lived until 
 llir time of .Manasseh, and himself arranged and edited the collection of his 
 prophecies on the eve of his life, be liable to any well-founded doubts" 
 ( /\Vj7, J'Jtnlcitinifi, S. 271). The inscription in chaj). i. 1, only indicates that 
 til.' collection does not contain any ijrophecies which go beyond the time f 
 lJtv.ekiah. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. XL. LXVI. 165 
 
 but is only commented upon and enlarged. The servants of 
 the Lord (the whole chorus of the messengers of the divine sal- 
 vation is addressed in vers. 3, 5), complying with His command, 
 announce the impending salvation, designating it as a mani- 
 festation of the Lord's glory, and exhort to a worthy prepara- 
 tion for it. Vers. 8 and 4 treat of preparing in the desert a 
 high-way for the Lord, who is to manifest himself gloriously. 
 The way is prepared by repentance; the desert symbolizes the 
 condition of bodily and spiritual misery. It is from this 
 miserable condition that the Lord is to deliver and redeem His 
 ])eople; but in order that He may perform His part, they must, 
 previously, have performed theirs. In ver. 5, this manifestation 
 itself is described, with which is connected the fulness of sal- 
 vation for the covenant-people. The servants of God are to 
 announce the approach of salvation to mourning Jerusalem, in 
 which the covenant-people appears to the Prophet as personi- 
 fied. (Jerusalem does not stand for "the carried away Zion- 
 ites;" it is an ideal person, the afflicted and bowed down widow 
 sitting on the ground in sackcloth ; the distressed and mourn- 
 ing mother of the children partly carried away, and partly 
 killed, — compare chap. iii. 26, where Jerusalem, desolate and 
 emptied, sits upon the ground.) But this salvation can be 
 granted to those only whose hearts are prepared to receive it. 
 Thus the announcement of salvation is preceded by the fiiTaw- 
 i/Ti, by the call to remove all the obstacles which render im- 
 passable the path through the desert into the land of promise; 
 which render impossible the transition from misery to salva- 
 tion; which prevent the Lord from coming to His people in 
 their miserv, and leading- them out from it. Then, to those 
 who have complied with the exhortation, the manifestation of 
 the glory of the Lord is promised — He comes to them, in a 
 glorious manifestation, in the way which, in the power of 
 His Spirit, they have prepared and opened up to Him — and 
 in, and with it, all the glorious things which, according to 
 ver 2, the servants of the Lord were to promise regarding the 
 Future. 
 
 The comfort oftentimes moves in general terms, and consists 
 in pointing to a Future full of salvation and grace. But, in 
 other passages, the announcement of salvation is more indivi- 
 dualised, becomes more speciaL These special announcements 
 
1 no MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 refer to a twofold object, First — The Prophet comforts hi> 
 peoj)le by annouiiciiig the deliverance from the Babylonish 
 captivity. This deliverance he describes by the most lovely 
 images, frequently taken from the deliverance of the people 
 from Egypt. But it is to be well observed that even those 
 prophecies which pre-eminently I'efer to the lower object, have 
 something exuberant and overflowing; so that, even after 
 having been fulfilled, they cannot be looked upon as antiquated. 
 He states the name of the ruler, Koresh, the king from the 
 rising 'of the sun, who, sent by the Lord, shall punish the 
 oppressors of Zion, and bring back the people to their land. 
 The second object is the deliverance and salvation by the Ser- 
 vant of God, the Messiah, who, after having passed through 
 humiliation, suffering, and death, and having thereljy effect(.'d 
 redemption, will remove from the glorified Kingdom of God 
 all the evil occasioned by sin. Of this higher salvation the 
 soul of the Prophet is so full, that the references to it are con- 
 stantly pressing forward, even where, in the first instance, he 
 has to do with the lower salvation. In the description of the 
 higher salvation, the relation of time is not observed. Now, 
 the Prophet beholds its Author in His humiliation and suflTer- 
 ing; then, the most distant Future of the Kingdom of Christ 
 jn'esents itself to his enraptured eye, — the time in which the 
 Gentile world, alienated from God, shall have returned to Him ; 
 when all that is opposed to God shall have been destroyed ; 
 when inw^ard and outward peace shall prevail, and all the evil 
 caused by sin shall have been removed. Elevated above time 
 and space, from the height in which the Holy Spirit has placed 
 him, he surveys the whole development of the Messianic King- 
 dom, from its small beginnings to its glorious end. 
 
 While the first part, containing the predictions which the 
 Prophet uttered for the present generation during the time of 
 his ministry, consists mainly of single prophecies which, separ- 
 ated by time and occasion, were first made publiclj^ known 
 singly, and afterwards united in a collected whole, having been 
 marked out as different prophecies, either by inscriptions, or 
 in any other distinguishable way, — the second part, destined 
 as a legacy for posterity, forms a continuous, collected whole. 
 The fact, first observed by Fr. RUckert, that it is divided into 
 tlrree sections or boulcs, is, in the first instance, indicated by the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. LX. LXVI. 167 
 
 circumstance that, at the close of chap, xlviii. and chap. Ivii., 
 the same thought recurs in the same words: "There is no 
 peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked;" and that the same 
 thought, viz. the exclusion of the wicked from the promised 
 salvation, is found also a third time at the close of the whole, 
 although there in another form. Yet, if nothing else could 
 be advanced in favour of this tri- partition, we might perhaps 
 be permitted to speak of an accident as Knohel indeed does. 
 But a closer consideration shows that the three sections are, 
 inwardly and essentially, distinguished from one another. Be- 
 yond chap, xlviii. 22, there is no farther mention of Babel, 
 which in the first book is mentioned four times (chap, xliii. 
 14, xlvii. 1, xlviii. 14, 20) ; nor of the Chaldeans, which occur 
 there five times (chap, xliii. 14, xlvii. 1, 5, xlviii. 14, 20) ; 
 nor any farther mention of Koresh, neither of his name (chap, 
 xliv. 28, xlv. 1), nor of his person, which in chap. xl. — xlviii. 
 is so prominently brought before us (chap. xli. 2, 25, xlvi. 11, 
 xlviii. 14, 15, i.e. immediately at the beginning, after the in- 
 troduction contained in chap, xl., at the close, and several times 
 in the middle) ; nor of Bel and Nebo. Farther — The whole 
 first book is pervaded with the argumentation by which the 
 God of Israel is proved to be the true God, from His having 
 foretold the deliverance to be eflfected by Koresh. This argu- 
 mentation we meet with in chap, xli., immediately after the 
 introductory chap, xl., and so still in the last chap, xlviii.; but 
 never again afterwards. With the end of the first book, this 
 arguing and proving from prophecy, that the Lord is the true 
 God, as well as the reference to Koresh, the subject of this 
 prophecy, altogether disappear. But, in like manner, the an- 
 nouncement of a personal Messiah is wanting in the first book, 
 the sole exception being chap. xlii. 1 — 9, where, after the first 
 announcement of the author of the lower salvation, the Author 
 of the higher salvation is, by way of anticipation, contrasted 
 with him. To give a more minute and finished description 
 of the Author of the higher salvation is the object of the 
 second book. In the third book, the person of the Redeemer 
 is spoken of briefly only, is, as it were, only hinted at, in order 
 to connect this book with the second; just as, by chap, xlii., the 
 first book is connected with the second. The third book in so 
 far as it is 'proviising, is taken up with the description of the 
 
168 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 glory of the Kingdom of God, in that new stage upon which 
 it enters by the Redeemer, — a glory, the cuhniuating point 
 of which is tlie creation of the new heavens and the new 
 earth, chap. Ixv. 17, Ixvi. 22. A description of the glory of 
 Zion, like that in chap. Ixii., is not found in the first and 
 second book. In the third book, however, reproof and ex- 
 hortaiion ])revail, in contradistinction to the first and second 
 book, in which the direct 2}romise pi-evails. A transition from 
 this, however, to the reproof and exhortation, is made at the 
 close of the second book. From chap. Iv. 1 , the preaching of 
 repentance appears first intermingled with the announcement 
 of salvation. Up to that the prevailing tendency of the Pro 
 phet had been, throughout, to comfort the godly; but from 
 chap. Iv. 1, the other tendency shows itself by the side of it, 
 that of calling sinners to repentance, by which alone they can 
 obtain a participation in the promised salvation. In chap. Ivi. 
 9, Ivii. 21, the latter tendency appears distinctly and exclu- 
 sively. The second book had commenced with the announce- 
 ment of salvation, and thence to the close had advanced to 
 reproof and threatening. The third book takes the opposite 
 course; and thus the two principal portions of reproof and 
 threatening border upon one another. Yet, the reproof and 
 threatening do not go on without interruption and distinction, 
 so that no boundary line could be recognized between the two 
 books. At the close of the second book, the Prophet has pre- 
 eminently to do with apostates, while, at the beginning of the 
 third, he has to do with hypocrites; so that thus these two 
 portions of reproof supplement one another, and conjointly 
 form a complete disclosure of the prevailing corruption, accord- 
 ing to its two principal tendencies. But the third book is 
 distinguished from the second by this circumstance, that in it 
 reproof and threatening are not limited to the beginning, 
 which corresponds with the close of the second book. At the 
 close of chap. lix. the Prophet returns to the announcement 
 of salvation; but with chap. Ixiii. 7, a new preaching of re- 
 pentance commences, which goes on to the end of chap. Ixiv. 
 The Prophet, in the Spirit, transposes himself into tlie time 
 when the visitation has already taken place, and puts into tlie 
 mouth of the peoj)le the words by which they are, at that 
 time, to supplicate for the mercy of tlie Lord. This discourse 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. XL.— LXVI. 169 
 
 implies what has preceded. In the view of the glorious mani- 
 festation of the Lord's mercy and grace which are there ex- 
 hibited, the Prophet calls here upon the people to repent and 
 be converted, in order that they may become partakers of that 
 mercy. If they, as a people, are anxious to attain that object, 
 they must repeat what the Prophet here pronounces before them. 
 But that up to this time has not been done, and hence that 
 has taken place which is spoken of by St Paul: "The election 
 have obtained it, but the rest have been blinded." In chap. 
 Ixv., which contains the Lord's answer to this repenting prayer 
 of the people, and is nothing else than an indirect ijaraenesis, 
 reproof and threatening likewise prevail, and it is only at the 
 close that the promise appears. The last chapter, too, begins 
 with reproof aiid threatening. Rightly have the Church 
 Fathers called Isaiah the Evangelist among the prophets. 
 This appears also from the circumstance that the reproof is so 
 thoroughly an appendage of the promise, that it is only at the 
 close, after the whole riches of the promise have been exhibited, 
 that it expands itself It appears, farther, also from the cir- 
 cumstance that, even in the last book, the threatening does 
 not prevail exclusively, but that, even there, it is still inter- 
 woven with the most glorious promises which are so exceed- 
 ingly fitted to allure sinners to repentance. 
 
 In the whole of the second part, the Prophet, as a rule, 
 takes his stand in the time which was announced and foretold 
 in the former prophecies, and especially, with the greatest 
 clearness and distinctness, in chap, xxxix., on the threshold of 
 the second part, — tlie time when Jerusalem is captured by the 
 Chaldeans, the temple destroyed, the country desolated, and 
 the people carried away. It is in this time that he thinks, 
 feels, and acts; it has become present to him; from it he looks 
 out into the Future, yet in such a manner that he does not 
 everywhere consistently maintain this ideal stand-point. He 
 addresses his discourse to the people pining away in captivity 
 and misery. He comforts them by opening up a view into a 
 better Future, and exhorts them to remove by repentance the 
 obstacles to the coming salvation. 
 
 Rationalistic Exegesis, everywhere little able to sympathize 
 with, and enter into existing circumstances and conditions, and 
 always ready to make its own shadowy, coarse views the rule 
 
1 70 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 and arbiter, lias been little able to enter into, and sympathize 
 with this ideal stand-point occupied by the Prophet; nor has 
 it had the earnest will to do so. To its rationalistic tenden- 
 cies, which took offence at the clear knowledge of the Future, 
 a welcome pretext was here offered. Thus the opinion arose, 
 that the second part was not written by Isaiah, but was the 
 work of some anonymous prophet, living about the end of the 
 exile, — an opinion which, at the time of the absolute dominion 
 of Rationalism, hsis obtained so firm a footing, that it has be- 
 come all but an axiorn, and, by the power of tradition, carries 
 away even such as would not think of entertaining it, if they 
 were to enter independently and without prejudice upon the 
 invovstigation. 
 
 The ftxct which here meets us does not by any means stand 
 isolated. The prophets did not prophesy in the state of ra- 
 tional reflection, but in exstnsis. As even their ordinary name, 
 " seei"s," indicates, the objects were presented to them in inward 
 A^sion. They did not behold the Future from a distance, but 
 they were rapt into the future. This inward vision is fre- 
 (juently reflected in their representation. Very frequently, 
 that appears with them as present which, in reality, was still 
 future. They depict the Future before the eyes of their hearers 
 and readers, and thus, as it were, by force, drag them into it 
 out of the Present, the coercing force of which exerts so perni- 
 cious an influence upon them. Our Prophet expressly inti- 
 mates this peculiar manner of the prophetic announcement by 
 making, in chap. xlix. 7, the Lord say: " Fiist I said to Zion: 
 Behold there, behold there," by which the graphic character of 
 ])rophecy is precisely expressed, and by which it is intimated 
 that liearers and readers were led in rem praesentem by the 
 prophets. Even grammar has long ago acknowledged this 
 fact, inasmuch as it speaks of Praeterita j^vopJietica, i.e., such 
 as denote the ideal Past, in contrast to those which denote the 
 real Past. Unless we have attained to this view and insight, 
 it is only by inconsistency that we can escape fi'om Eichhorns 
 view, that the prophecies are, for the most part, disguised his- 
 torical descriptions, — a view into which even expositors, such 
 as Ew<dd and Hitzicj, frequently relapse. Frequently, the 
 whole of the Future appears with the prophets in the form of 
 the Present. At other times, they take their stand in the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. XL.— LXVI, l7l 
 
 more immediate Future; and this becomes to them the ideal 
 Present, from which they direct the eye to the distant Future. 
 From the rich store of proofs which we can adduce for our 
 view, we shall here mention only a few. 
 
 This mode of representation meets us frequently so early as 
 in the parting hymn of Moses, Deut. xxxii., which may be 
 considered as the germ of all prophetism ; compare e.g. vers. 7 
 and 8. On the latter verse, Clericus remarks: "Moses mourns 
 over this in his hymn, as if it were already past, because he 
 foresees that it will be so, and he, in the Spirit, transfers him- 
 self into those future times, and says that which then only 
 should be said." 
 
 In Isaiah himself, the very first chapter presents a remark- 
 able proof The Present in chap. i. 5-9 is not a real, but an 
 ideal Present. In the Spirit, the Prophet transfers himself 
 into the time of the calamity impending upon the apostate 
 people, and, stepping back upon the real Present, he, in the 
 farther course of the prophecy, predicts this calamity as future. 
 The reasons for this view have been thoroughly stated, even 
 to exhaustion, by Gaspari, in his Beitrdge zur Einleitimg in 
 das Buck Jesaia. In the second half of ver. 2, the kingdom 
 appears as flourishing and powerful. To the same result we 
 are led also by the description of the rich sacrificial worship 
 in vers. 1 5-19. If, then, we view vers. 5-9 as a description 
 of the Present, we obtain an irreconcilable contradiction. 
 Farther — Everywhere else Isaiah always connects, with the 
 description of the sin, that of the punishment following upon 
 it, but never that of the punishment which has followed it. — 
 In chap. V. 1 3, in a prophecy from the first time of his minis- 
 try, the future carrying aiixiy of the people presents itself to 
 the Prophet as present. Similarly, in vers. 25, 26, the Praet. 
 and Fut. with Vav Conv. must be understood prophetically; 
 for in chap. i. — v., the Prophet has, throughout, to do with 
 future calamity. In the Present, according to ver. 19, the 
 people are yet in a condition of prosperity and luxury,— as 
 yet, it is the time of mocking ; it is only of future calamity 
 that vers. 5 and 6 in the parable speak of, the threatenings of 
 which are here detailed and expanded. — In the prophecy 
 against Tyre, chap, xxiii., the Prophet beholds as present the 
 siege by the Chaldeans impending over the city, and describes 
 
1 7 2 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 as an eye-witness the flight of tlie inhabitants, and the im- 
 pression which the intelligence of their calamity makes up(ja 
 the nations connected with them. From the more immediate 
 Future, which to him has become present, he then casts a 
 glance to the more distant. He announces that after 70 
 years — counting not from the real, but from the ideal Present 
 — the city shall again attain to its ancient greatness. His 
 look then rises still higher, and he beholds how at length, in 
 the days of Messiah, the Tyrians shall be received into the 
 communion of the true God. — The future dispersion and carry- 
 ing away of the people is anticipated by the Prophet in the 
 ]){issage, chap. xi. 11, also, which may be considered as a com- 
 prehensive view of the whole second part. — It is true that, in 
 the second part, as a rule, the misery, and not the salvation, 
 appears as present; but, not unfre(;[uently, the latter, too, is 
 viewed as present by the Prophet, and spoken of in Preterites, 
 comp. e.g., chap. xl. 2, xlvi. 1, 2, li. 3, lii. 9, 10, Ix. 1. If, 
 then, the Prophet is to be measured by the ordinary rule, these 
 pas.sages, too, must have been written at a time when the sal- 
 vation had already taken place. — In chap. xlv. 20, the escaped 
 of the nations are those Gentiles who have been spared in the 
 divine judgments. They are to become wise by the sufferings 
 of others. The Prophet takes his stand in a time when these 
 judgments, which were to be inflicted by Cyrus, had already 
 been completed. Even those who maintain the spuriousness 
 of the second part must here acknowledge that the Prophet 
 takes his stand in an ideal Present. — In chap. liii. the Prophet 
 trikes his stand between the sufferings and the glorification of 
 the Messiah. The sufferings appear to him as past; the glori- 
 fication he represents as future. 
 
 Hosea had, in chap, xiii., predicted to Israel great divine 
 judgments, the desolation of the country, and the carrying 
 away of its inliabitauts by powerful enemies. This punish- 
 ment and judgment appear in chap. xiv. 1 (xiii. 16) as still 
 future; but in ver. 2 (1 ft!) he transfers himself in spirit to 
 the time when these judgments had already been inflicted. 
 He anticipates the Future as having already taken place, aiul 
 does not by any means exhort his coJifemjwraines to a sincere 
 repentance, but those upon wh(im the calamity had already 
 been inflicted: "O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. XL. LXVI. 173 
 
 thou hast fallen by thine iniquity." This parallel passage 
 shews especially, with what right it has been asserted that the 
 addresses to the people pining away in exile " were out of 
 place in the mouth of Isaiah, who, as he lived 150 years 
 before, could prophesy only of the exiled" {Knohel). — Micah 
 says in chap. iv. 8 (compare vol. i., p. 449 ff.): "And thou 
 tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, unto thee it 
 will come, and to thee cometh the former dominion." If the 
 Prophet, a cotemporary of Isaiah, speaks here of a former do- 
 7ninion, and announces that it shall again come back to the 
 house of David, he transfers himself from his time, in which 
 the royal family of David still existed and flourished, into 
 that period of which he had just before spoken, and during 
 which the dominion of the Davidic dynasty was to cease. In 
 vers. 9, 10: "Now why dost thou raise a cry! Is there no 
 king in thee, or is thy counsellor gone ? For pangs have 
 seized thee as a woman in travail, &c., mourning Zion, at the 
 time of the carrying away of her sons into captivity, stands 
 before the eye of the Prophet, and is addressed by him. (In 
 commenting upon this passage, we pointed already to Hosea 
 xiii. 9-11 as an analogous instance of representing as present 
 the time of the calamity.) The moment of the carrying away 
 into exile forms to him the Present; the deliverance from it, 
 the Future: "There shalt thou be delivered, there the Lord 
 thy God shall redeem thee out of the hand of thine enemies." 
 In chap. vii. 7, Micah introduces, as speaking, the people already 
 canied away into exile, and makes them declare both the jus- 
 tice of the divine punishment, and their confidence in the 
 divine mercy. In the answer of the Lord also, ver. 11, the 
 city is supposed to be destroyed; for He promises that her 
 walls shall be rebuilt. — The anticipation of the Future prevails 
 throughout the whole prophecy of Obadiah also. The song 
 of Habakkuk in chap. iii. takes its stand in the midst of the 
 anticipated misery. In the announcement of the invasion of 
 the Chaldeans in chap. i. 6 ff., the Future presents itself in 
 the form of the Present. Here, as in the case of Obadiah, 
 Hitzig and others, overlooking and misunderstanding this pro- 
 phetic peculiarity, and considering the ideal, to be the 7'eal 
 Present, have been led to fix the age of the Prophet in a 
 manner notoriously erroneous. — Jeremiah, in chap. iii. 22, 25, 
 
174 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 introduces as speaking the Israel of the Future. In chap, xxx, 
 and xxxi., he anticipates the future caiTying away of Judah. 
 Even in the Psahns we ])ercuive a faint trace of this prophetic 
 peculiarity. On Ps. xciii. 1 : " The Lord reigneth, He hath 
 clothed himself with majesty," Szc, we remarked: "The Pre- 
 terites are to be e.Kjilained from the circumstance that the 
 Singer as a seer has the Future before his eyes. He beholds 
 rejoicingly how the Lord enters upon His Kingdom, puts on 
 the garment of majesty, and girds himself with the sword of 
 strength in the face of the proud world." A similar antici- 
 pation of redemption, even before the catastrophe has taken 
 place, we meet with in Ps. xciv. 1 . Tlie situation in the 
 whole Psalm, yea in the whole cycle to which it belongs, the 
 lyrical echo of the second part of Isaiah, is not a real, but an 
 ideal one. This cycle bears witness that the singers and seei-s 
 of Israel were living in the Future, in a manner which it 
 would be so much the greater folly to measure by our rule as, 
 for the people of the Old Covenant, the Future had a signi- 
 ficance altogether different from that which it has for the 
 people of the New Covenant. That which is common to all 
 the Psalms, from xciii. onward, is the confident expectation of 
 a glorious manifestation of the Lord, which the Psalmist, fol- 
 lowing the example of the prophets, beholds as present. A 
 counterpart is the cycle Ps. cxxxviii. — cxlv., in which David, 
 stirred up by the promise in 2 Sam. vii., accompanies his 
 house throughout history^ 
 
 Several interpreters cannot altogether resist the force of 
 these facts. They gi-ant " that other prophets also sometimes, 
 in the Spirit, transfer themselves into later times, especially 
 into the idealistic times of the IVIessiah," and draw their argu- 
 ments from the circumstance only, that the latter again came 
 back to their personal stand point, whilst our Prophet con- 
 tinues cleaving to the later time. Now it is true, and must 
 be conceded, that this mode of representation is here employed 
 to an extent greater than it is anywhere else in the Old Testa- 
 ment. But, in matters of this kind, measuring by the ell is 
 quite out of place. In other respects also, the second part of 
 Isaiah stands out as quite unique. There is, in the whole Old 
 Testament, no other continuous prophecy which has so abso- 
 lutely and pre-eminently proceeded fi-om ciira posteriUvtis. If 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. XL. LXVI. 175 
 
 it be acknowledged that the prophesying activity of Isaiah 
 falls into two great divisions, — the one — the results of which 
 are contained in the first 39 chapters — chiefly, pre-eminently 
 indeed, destined for the Present; the other, — which lies before 
 us in the second part, belonging to the evening of the Pro- 
 phet's life — forming a prophetical legacy, and hence, therefore, 
 never delivered in public, but only committed to writing; — 
 then we shall find it quite natural that the Prophet, writing, 
 as he did, chiefly for the Future, should here also take his 
 stand in the Future, to a larger extent than he has elsewhere 
 done. 
 
 That it is in this manner only that this fact is to be accounted 
 for, appears from the circumstance that, although our Prophet so 
 extensively and frequently represents the Past as Present, yet he 
 passes over, in numerous passages, from the ideal into the real 
 Present.^ We find a number of references which do not at 
 all suit the condition of things after the exile, but necessarily 
 require the age of Isaiah, or, at least, the time before the exile. 
 If Isaiah be the author, these passages are easily accounted 
 for. It is true that, in the Spirit, he had transferred himself 
 into the time of the Babylonish exile ; and this time had be- 
 come Present to him. But it would surely be suspicious to 
 us, if the real Present had not sometimes prevailed, and attracted 
 the eye of the Prophet. It is just thus, however, that we find 
 it. The Prophet frequently steps out of his ideal view and 
 position, and refers to conditions and circumstances of his 
 time. Noiv, he has before his eyes the condition of the un- 
 happy people in the Babylonish exile ; then, the State stiU 
 existing at his time, but internally deranged by idolatry and 
 apostacy. This apparent contradiction cannot be reconciled 
 in any other way than by assuming that Isaiah is the author. 
 As a rule, the punishment appears as already inflicted ; city 
 and temple as destroyed ; the country as devastated ; the 
 people as carried away ; compare e.g., chap. Ixiv. 10, 11. But 
 in a series of passages, in which the Prophet steps back from 
 the ideal, to the real stand-point, the punishment appears as 
 still future; city and t&fnple as still existi^ig. In chap, xliii. 
 
 ' To a certain degree analogous are those other passages of the Old Testa- 
 ment, in which the Past jjresents itself in the form of the Present, as the 
 dehverance from Egypt in Ps. Ixvi. 6; Ixxxi. 6. Faith, at the same time, 
 makes all the old things new, fresh, and lively, and anticipates the P'uture. 
 
17C MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 22-28, the Prophet meets the delusion, as if God had chosen 
 Israel on account of their deserts. Far from having brought 
 about their deliverance by their own merits, they, on the 
 contrary, sinned thus against Him, that, to the inward apos- 
 tacy, they added the outward also. The greater part of Israel 
 had left ot!" the worsliip of the Lord by sacrifices. It is the 
 mercy alone of the Lord which will deliver them from the 
 misery into which they have plunged themselves by their sins. 
 But how can the Lord charge the people in exile for the omis- 
 sion of a service which, according to His own law, they could 
 otfer to Him in their native country only, in the temple con- 
 secrated to Him, but then destroyed ? The words specially : 
 " Put me in remembrance," in ver. 26, "of what I should have 
 forgotten," imply that there existed a possibility of acquiring 
 apparent merits, and that, hence, the view of our opponents 
 who, in vers. 22-24, think of a compulsory, and hence, guilt- 
 less omission of the sacrificial service during the exile, must 
 be rejected. Vers. 27, 28 also, which speak of the punish- 
 ment which Israel deserves, just on account of the omitted 
 service of the Lord, and which it has found in the way of its 
 works, prove that this view must be rejected, and that vers. 
 22-24 contain a reproof. The passage can, hence, have been 
 "written only at the time when the temple was still standing. 
 ( )f this there can so much the less be any doubt that, in vers. 
 27, 28, the exile is expressly designated as future : " Thy first 
 father (the high-priestly office) hath sinned, and thy mediators 
 l)ave transgressed against me." (The sacrificial service was by 
 a disgraceful syncretism profaned even by those whose office 
 it was to attend to it). "Therefore I will profane the princes 
 of the sanctuary, and will give Jacob to the curse, and Israel 
 to reproaches." Even 9?nii.) is the common Future, and to 
 njnxi the n optativum is added ; and hence, we cannot by any 
 means translate and explain it by : / gave. — In chap. Ivi. 9, 
 it is said : " All ye beasts of the field come ye to devour all 
 the beasts in the forest." This utterance stands in connection 
 ■with the VX3pJ^, at the close of the preceding verse. The 
 gathering of Israel by God the good Shepherd, promised there, 
 must be preceded by the scattering, by being given up to the 
 world's power — mercy, by judgment. By the wild beasts are 
 to be understood the Gentiles who shall be sent by God upon 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XL. LXVI. l77 
 
 His people for punishment. This mission they must first fulfil 
 before they can, according to ver. 8, be added to, and gathered 
 along with, the gathered ones of Israel. By the " beasts in 
 the forest," brutalized, degraded, and secularized Israel is to 
 be understood, comp. Jer. xii. 7-12 ; Ezek. xxxiv. 5 ; and my 
 Commentary on Rev. ii. 1. 
 
 The beasts have not yet come ; they are yet to come. We 
 can here think of nothing else than the invasion of the Chal- 
 deans, which the Prophet, stepping back to the stand-point of 
 his time, beholds here as future ; whilst, in what precedes, 
 from his ideal stand-point, which he had taken in the Baby- 
 lonish exile, he had, for the most part, considered it as past. — 
 In chap. Ivi. 10-12, we meet with corrupted rulers of the 
 people, who are indolent, when everything depends upon ward- 
 ing off the danger, greedy, luxurious, gormandizing upon what 
 they have stolen. The people are not under foreign dominion, 
 but have rulers of their own, who t;yTannize over, and impo- 
 verish them ; comp. Is. chap. v. ; Micah, chap. iii. — In chap. 
 Ivii. 1, it is said : " The righteous perisheth and no man layeth 
 it to heart, and the men of kindness are taken away, no one 
 considering that, on account of the evil, the lighteous is taken 
 away." The Prophet mentions it as a sign of the people's 
 hardening that, in the death of the righteous men who were 
 truly bearing on their hearts the welfare of the whole, they 
 did not recognize a harbinger of severe divine judgments, from 
 which, according to a divine merciful decree, these righteous 
 were to be preserved by an early death. " On account of the 
 evil," i.e., in order to withdraw them from the judgments, 
 which were to be inflicted upon the ungodly people, comp. 
 Gen. XV. 1 5 ; 2 Kings xxii. 20 ; Is. xxxix. 8. The evil, i.e. 
 according to 2 Kings xxii. 20, the Chaldean catastrophe, appears 
 here as stiU future. In chap. Ivii. 2 : " They enter in peace, 
 they rest in their beds who have walked before themselves in 
 uprightness," the " peace" forms the contrast to the awful con- 
 dition of suffering which the survivors have to encounter. — 
 In chap. Ivii. 9, it is said : " And thou lookest on the king 
 anointed with oil, and increasest thy perfumes, and sendest 
 thy messengers far off, sendest them down into hell." The 
 apostacy from the Lor"d their God is manifested not only in 
 idolatry, but also in their not leaving untried any means to 
 
 VOL. IL VI 
 
178 MESSTAN'IC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 j)rocure for tliemselves hmiiiin helpei-s, in their courting human 
 .lid. The personiticjition of Isniel as a woman, which took 
 j)lace in the preceding verses, is here continued. She leaves 
 no means untried to heighten her charms ; she makes every 
 ctfoi-t to please the mighty king.s. The king is an ideal per- 
 son comprehending a real plurality within himself A parallel 
 passage, in which the seeking for help among foreign nations 
 is represented under the same image, is Ezek. xvi. 20 ff., comp. 
 Hos. xii. 2 (1). It occurs also in immediate connexion with 
 seeking help from the idols, in chap. xxx. 1 ff. The verb 
 "lie means always "to see," "to look at;" and this significa- 
 tion is, here too, quite appropriate : Israel is coquetting with 
 her lover, the king. The reproach which the Prophet here 
 raises against the people has no meaning at all in the time of 
 the exile, when the national independence was gone. We find 
 ourselves all at once transferred to the time of Isaiah, who, in 
 chap. xxxi. 1, utters a woe upon them " that go down to Egypt 
 for help," — who, in chap. xxx. 4, complains : " His princes are 
 at Zoar, and his ambassadors come to Hanes," — who, in chap, 
 vii., exhibits the dangerous consequences of seeking help from 
 Asshur. The historical point at issue is brought before us by 
 passages such as 2 Kings xvi. 7 : " And Ahaz sent messen- 
 gers to Tigiathpileser, king of Assyria, saying : I am thy servant 
 and thy son ; come up and save me out of the hand of the 
 king of Aram, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, who 
 rise against me." — In chap. Ivii. 11-13, the thought is this: 
 Israel is not becoming weary of seeking help and salvation 
 from others than God. But He will soon show that He alone 
 is to be feared, that He alone can help ; that they are nothing 
 against whom, and from whom help is sought. The words in 
 ver. 11: " Am I not silent, even of old ; therefore thou fearest 
 me not," state the cause of the fooHsh forgetfulness of God, and 
 hence form the transition to the subsequent announcement of 
 judgment. The prophecy is uttered at a time when Israel 
 still enjoyed the sparing divine forbearance, inasmuch as for 
 time immemorial (since they were in Egypt), no destructive 
 catastrophe had fallen upon them. It was in the Babylonish 
 catastrophe only that the Egyptian received its counterpart. 
 But how does this suit the time of the Babylonish exile, when 
 the people were groaning under the severe judgments of God, 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XL. LXVI. 179 
 
 and had not experienced His forbearance, but, on the contrary, 
 for almost 70 years, the full energy of His punitive justice ? 
 In ver. 1 3, it is said : " In thy crying, let thy hosts (thyVhole 
 Pantheon so rich, and yet so miserable) help thee." " In thy 
 crying," i.e., when thou, in the judgment to be inflicted upon 
 thee in future, wilt cry for help." In chap. Ixvi. the punishment 
 appears as future ; temple and city as still existing ; the Lord 
 as yet enthroned in Zion. So specially in ver. 6 : "A voice of 
 noise from the city, a voice from the temple, the voice of the Lord 
 that reudereth recompence to His enemies," A controversy 
 with the hypocrites who presumed upon the temple and their 
 sacrificial service, in vers. 1, 3, has, at the time of the exile, no 
 meaning at all, Gesemus, indeed, was of opinion that the Pro- 
 phet might judge of the worship of God in temples, and of the 
 value of sacrifices, although they were not offered at that time ; 
 but it must be strongly denied that the Prophet could do so in 
 such a context and connection. For, the fact that the Prophet 
 has in view a definite class of men of his time, and that he 
 does not bring forward at random a locus communis which, at 
 his time, was no longer applicable — a thing which, moreover, 
 is not by any means his habit — appears from the close of the 
 verse, and from ver. 4, where divine judgment is threatened 
 to those men : " Because they choose their own ways, and 
 their soul delighteth in their abominations : I also will choose 
 their derision, and will bring their fears upon them." Even 
 in ver. 20 : "And they (the Gentiles who are to be converted 
 to the Lord), shall bring all your brethren out of aU nations 
 for a meat-offering unto the Lord, upon horses, &c., just as 
 the children of Israel are bringing (isus expresses an habi- 
 tual offering), the meat-offering in a clean vessel into the house 
 of the Lord" the house of God appears as still standing, the 
 sacrificial service in full operation ; the future spiritual raeati- 
 offering of the Gentiles is compared to the bodily meat-offer- 
 ing which the children of Israel are now offering in the temple- 
 Throughout thewhole secondpart we perceive the peojjle under 
 the, as yet, unbroken power of idolatry. It appears everywhere 
 as the principal tendency of the sinful apostacy among the 
 people ; to counteract it appears to be the chief object of the 
 Prophet. The controversy with idolatry pervades everything. 
 At the very commencement, in chap. xl. ] 8-26, we are met 
 
1 80 MESSJANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 with a description of the nothingness of idolatry, and an im- 
 pressive warning against it. In the whole series of passages, 
 commencing with chap. xli. — of which we shall afterwards 
 speak more in detail — the sole Deity of the God of Israel, and 
 the vanity of the idols arc proved from prophecy in connection 
 with its fulfilment ; and this series has for its supposition the 
 power which, at the time when the prophecy was uttered, 
 idolatry yet possessed over the minds of men. Chap. xlii. 17 
 announces that the future historical development shall bring 
 confusion upon those " that trust in graven images, that say 
 to the molten images : Ye are our gods." In chap. xliv. 1 2-20, 
 the absurdity of idolatry is illustrated in a brilliant description. 
 We have here before us the real locus classicus of the whole 
 Scripture in this matter, the main description of the nothing- 
 ness of idolatry. The emotion and excitement with which the 
 Prophet speaks, shew that he has here to do with the princi- 
 pal enemy to the salvation of his people. According to chap, 
 xlvi. the idols of Babel shall be overturned and carried away. 
 From this, Israel may lear-n the nothingness of idolatry, and 
 the apostates may return to the Lord. In the hortatory and 
 reproving section, the punishment of idolatry forms the begin- 
 ning ; in chap. Ivii. idolatry is described as far-spread, mani- 
 fold, advancing to the greatest horrors. The otfering up of 
 children as sacrifices especially appears as being in vogue ; and 
 it can be proved that this penetrated into Israel, from the 
 neighbouring nations, at the time of the Prophet (comp. 2 
 Chron. xxviii. 3 ; xxxiii. 6), while, .at the time of the exile, 
 there was scarcely any cause for warning against it, — at least, 
 existing information does not mention any such sacrifices 
 among the Babylonians (comp. Milnter, die Religion der 
 Bahi/lonier, S. 72). The people appear as standing under the 
 dominion of idolatry in chaj). Ixv. 3: "The people that pro- 
 voketh me to anger continually to my face, that sacrificeth in 
 gardens, and burneth incense upon the bricks ;" comp. ver. 7 : 
 ■ Who have burned incense u])on the mountains, and blas- 
 ])hemed me upon the hills;" chap. Ixvi. 17 : " They that sanc- 
 tify themselves and purify themselves in the gardens behind 
 one in the n)idst, who eat swine's flesh, and the abominations, 
 and mice, shall be consumed together, saith the Lord." Ido- 
 latry is the service of nature, and was, therefore, chiefly prac 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP XLI. LXVI. 181 
 
 tised in places where nature presents herself in all her splen- 
 dour, as in gardens and on the hills. The gardens are mentioned 
 in a similar way in chap. i. 29 : "Ye shall blush on account 
 of the gardens that ye have chosen." (On the words which 
 precede in that verse : " For they shall be ashamed of the oak't 
 which ye have desired," chap. Ivii. 5 offers an exact parallel : 
 " Who inflame themselves among the oalcs under every green 
 tree.") In chap. Ixv. 11, they are denounced who forsake the 
 Lord, forget His holy mountain (on which, at the time when 
 this was written, the temple must still have stood), who pre- 
 pare a table to FoHuue, and offer drink-offerings to Fate. The 
 second main form of sinful apostacy — hypocrisy and dead cere- 
 monial service — is only rarely mentioned by the Prophet (in 
 chap. Ivii., Ixvi.), while he always anew reverts to idolatry. 
 No w this absolutely j^revailing regard to idolatry can he accounted 
 for, only if Isaiah he the author of the second ^iart From Solo- 
 mon, down to the time of the exile, the disposition to idolatry 
 in Israel was never thoroughly broken. During Isaiah's mi- 
 nistry, it came to the fullest display under Ahaz. Under 
 Hezekiah it was kept down, indeed ; but with great difhculty 
 only, as appears from the f\^ct that, under the reign of Ma- 
 nasseh, who was a king after the heart of the people, it again 
 broke openly forth; comp. 2 Kings xxi. 1-18; 2 Chron. 
 xxxiii. 1-J8; 2 Kings xxi. 6, according to which Manasseh 
 made his own son to pass through the fire. But it is a tact 
 generally admitted, and proved by all the books written dur* 
 ing and after the exile, that, with the carrying away into 
 exile, the idolatrous disposition among the people was greatly 
 shaken. Tliis fact has its cause not only in the deep impres- 
 sion which misery made upon their minds, but still more in 
 the circumstance that it was chiefly the godly part of the 
 nation that was carried away into captivity. The dispropor- 
 tionately large number of priests among the exiled and those 
 who returned — they constitute the tenth part of the people- 
 is to be accounted for only on the supposition, that the hea- 
 thenish conquerors saw that the real essence and basis of the 
 people consisted in the faith in the God of Israel, and were, 
 therefore, above all, anxious to remove the priests as the main 
 representatives of this principle. If, for this reason, they car- 
 ried away the priests, we cannot think otherwise but that, in 
 
1 82 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS, 
 
 the selection of the others also, they looked chiefly to the 
 tlieocratic disposition on ■which the nationality of Israel rested. 
 To this we are led by Jer. xxiv. also, where those carried away 
 are designated as the flower of the nation, as the nursery and 
 hope of the Kingdom of God. Incomprehensible, for the time 
 of the exile, is also the strict antithesis between the servants of 
 the Lord, and the servants of the idols — the latter hating, 
 assailing, and persecuting the former — an antithesis which 
 meets us especially in the last two chapters ; comp. especially 
 chap. Ixv. 5 ff 13-15 ; Ixvi. KJ. That such a state of things 
 existed at the time of the Prophet is, among other passages, 
 shown by 2 Kings xxi. 16, according to which Manasseh shed 
 much innocent blood at Jerusalem, and, according to ver. 10, 
 1 1 , especially the blood of the prophets, who had borne a 
 powerful testimony against idolatry. 
 
 If it be assumed that the second part ivas composed diiHng 
 the exile, then those passages are incompveltensihle, in which 
 the Prophet proves thcU the God of Israel is the tr^e God, 
 frof)i His pirediciivg the appearance of the conqueror from, the 
 east, and the deliverance of the peoj)le to he wrought by 
 Him. in connection with the fulflment of these predictions. 
 The supernatural character of this announcement which the 
 Prophet asserts, and which forms the ground of its probative 
 power, took place, only if it proceeded from Isaiah, but not if 
 it was uttered only about the end of the exile, at a time when 
 Cyrus had already entered upon the stage of history. These 
 passages, at all events, admit only the alternative, — either that 
 Isaiah -SAas the real author, or that they were forged at a later 
 period by some deceiver ; and this latter alternative is so de- 
 cidedly opposed to the whole spirit of the second part, that 
 scarcely any one among the opponents will resolve to adopt 
 it. Considering the very great and decisive importance of 
 these passages, we must still allow them to pass in review one 
 by one. In chap. xli. 1-7, the Lord addresses those who are 
 serving idols, summons them triumphantly to defend them- 
 selves against the mighty attack which He was just execut- 
 ing against them, and describes the futility of their attempts 
 at so doing. The address to the Gentiles is a mere form ; to 
 work upon Israel is the real })urpose. To secure them from 
 the allurements of the world's religion, the Prophet points to 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XL. LXVI. 183 
 
 the gi-eat confusion which the Future will bring upon it. This 
 confusion consists in this: — that the prophecy of the conqueror 
 from the East, as the messenger and instrument of the Lord — ■- 
 a prediction which the Prophet had uttered in the power of 
 the Lord — is fulfilled without the idolators being able to pre- 
 vent it. The answer on the words in ver. 2 : " Who hath 
 raised up from the East him whom righteousness calleth whither 
 he goes, giveth the nations before him, and maketh kings 
 subject to him, maketh his sword like dust, and his bow like 
 driven stubble?" is this: According to the agreement of pro- 
 phecy and fulfilment, it is none other than the Lord, who is, 
 therefore, the only true God, to whose glory and majesty every 
 deed of His servant Koresh bears witness. The argumentation 
 is unintellio-ible, as soon as,a.ssuming that it was Isaiah who wrote 
 down the prophecy, it is not admitted that he, losing sight of the 
 real Present, takes his stand-point in an ideal Present, viz., the 
 time of the appearance of the conqueror from the East, by which 
 it becomes possible to him to draw his arguments from the 
 prophecy in connection with the fulfilment. It is altogether 
 absurd, when it is asserted that the second part is spurious, 
 and was composed at a time when Cyrus was already stand- 
 ing before Babylon. It would indeed have required an im- 
 mense amount of impudence on the part of the Prophet to 
 bring forward, as an unsissailable proof of the omniscience and 
 omnipotence of God, an event which every one saw with his 
 bodily eyes. By such argumentation, he would have exposed 
 himself to general ridicule. — In chap. xli. 21-29, the discourse 
 is formally addressed to the Gentiles ; but in point of fact, 
 the Prophet here, too, has to do with Judah driven into exile, 
 to whom he was called by God to offer the means to remain 
 stedfast under the temptations from the idolators by whom 
 they were surrounded. Before the eyes, and in the hearing of 
 Israel, the Lord convinces the Gentiles of the nothingness of 
 their cause. They are to prove the divinity of their idols by 
 showing forth the announcements of the Future which pro- 
 ceeded from them. But they are not able to comply with 
 this demand. It is only the Loid, the living God, who can do 
 that. Long before the appearance of the conqueror from the 
 North and East, He caused it to be foretold, and comforted 
 His Church with the view of the Future. Hence, He alone is 
 
184 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 God, and vanity are all those who are put beside Him. It is 
 said in ver. 22 : "Let them brine: forth and shew to us wliat 
 shall ha})pen ; the former things, what they be, show and we 
 will consider them and know the latter end of them ; or the 
 coming (events make us to hear)." The foi-rtier things are 
 those which are prior on this tenitory ; hence the former pro- 
 }>hecies, as the comparison of the parallel passage, chap, xlii 
 9, clearly shows. The eJud of prophecy is its fulfilment. niS2n 
 " the coming, or future," are the events of the more distant 
 Future. As the Prophet demands from the idols and their 
 servants that only which the true God has already performed 
 by His servants, we have here, on the one hand, a reference 
 to the whole cycle of pro])hecies formerly fulfilled, as e.g., that 
 of the oveii-hrow of the kingdoms of Damascus and Ephraim, 
 and the defeat of Asshui-, — and, on the other hand, to the 
 prophecy of the conqueror from the East, fcc, contained in the 
 second part. The former prophecies, however, are here men- 
 tioned altogether incidentally only ; the real demand refers, as 
 is shown by the words : " What shall happen," only to the 
 proy)hecies in reference to the Future, corresponding to those 
 of our Prophet regarding the conqueror from the East, whose 
 appearance is here represented as belonging altogether to the 
 Future, and not to be known by any human ingenuity. In 
 ver. 2(3 : " Who hath declared (such things) from the begin- 
 ning, that we may know, and long beforehand, that we may 
 say : he is righteous ?" the l^NiD " from the beginning" puts 
 insurmountable obstacles in tlie way of the opponents of the 
 genuineness. If the second part of Isaiah be spurious, then 
 the idolaters might put the same scornful question to the God 
 of Israel. The Uii^D denotesjust the opposite of a vaticinimn 
 post eventum. — In chap. xlii. 9 : '•' The former (things), behold, 
 they are come to pass, and new things do I declare ; before 
 they spring forth, I let you hear," the Pro])het proves the true 
 divinity of the Lord, from the circumstance that, having 
 already proved himself by prophecies fulfilled, He declares 
 iiere, in the second part, the future events before they spring 
 forth, before the facts begin to sprout forth from the soil of the 
 Present, and hence could have been known and predicted by 
 human combination. The words, " before they spring forth," 
 become completely enigmatical, if it be denied that Isaiah 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XL. XLYI. iSo 
 
 wrote the second part ; inasmuch as, in that case, it would 
 have in a great part, to do with things which did not belong 
 to the territory of prophetic foresight, but of what was plainly 
 visible. — In chap, xliii. 8-13, the Prophet again proves the 
 nothingness of idolatry, and the sole divinity of the God of 
 Israel, from the great work, declared beforehand by the Lord, 
 of the deliverance of Israel, and of the overthrow of their 
 enemies. He is so deeply convinced of the striking force of 
 this argument, that he ever anew reverts to it. After having 
 called upon the Gentiles to prove the divinity of their idols 
 by true prophecies given by them, he says in ver. 9 : " Let 
 them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified." 
 By the witnesses it is to be proved, by whom, to whom, and 
 at what time the prophecies were given, in order that the 
 Gentiles may not refer to deceitfully forged prophecies, to vati- 
 c'hiiia post eventum. According to the hypothesis of the spu- 
 riousness of the second part, the author pronounced his own 
 condemnation by thus calling for witnesses. " Ye are my 
 witnesses, saith the Lord, and witness is my Servant whom I 
 have chosen," is said in ver. 10. While the Gentiles are in 
 vain called upon to bring forward witnesses for the divinity 
 of their idols, the true God has, for His witnesses, just those 
 whose services he claimed. The prophecies which lie at the 
 foundation of their testimony, which are to be borne witness 
 to, are those of the second part. The Prophet may safely 
 appeal to the testimony of the whole nation, that they were 
 uttered at a time, when their contents could not be derived 
 from human combination. " The great unknown" {Ewald), 
 could not by any possibility have spoken thus. — In chap. xlv. 
 19-21, it is proved from the prophecy, in connection with the 
 fulfilment, that Jehovah alone is God, — the like of which no 
 Gentile nation can show of their idols. The argumentation is 
 followed by the call to all the Gentiles to be converted to this 
 God, and thus to become partakers of His salvation — a call 
 restino^ on the striking force of this argumentation — and with 
 this call is, in ver. 28-25, connected the solemn declaration of 
 God, that, at some future time, this shall take place ; that, at 
 some future time, there shall be one shepherd and one flock. 
 How would these high, solemn, words have been spoken in 
 va,iji, if " the great unknown" had spoken them ! In ver. 1 9 
 
186 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 it is said : " I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of 
 the earth ; I said not unto tlie seed of Jacob : Seek ye me in 
 vain ; I the Lord speak righteousness, I declare rectitude." 
 The Lord here says, fii-st, in reference to His prophecies, those 
 namely which He gave through our Prophet, that they were 
 made Jcnmvn jyublidy, that, hence, there could not be any doubt 
 of their genuineness, — altouether different from what is the 
 case with the prophecies of idolatrous nations which make 
 their ap])earance post eventum only, no one knowing whence. 
 Every one might convince himself of their truth and divinity. 
 This is expressed by the words : " I have not spoken in secret, 
 in a dark place of the earth." Then he says that the Lord 
 had not deceived His people, like the idols who leave their 
 servants without disclosures regarding: the Future ; but that, 
 by the prophecies gi*anted to our Prophet, He had met the 
 longings of his people for revelations of the Future. While 
 the gods of the world leave them in the luixjh, just when their 
 help is required, and never answer when they are asked, the 
 Lord, in reference to prophecies, as well as in every other 
 respect, has not spoken : " Seek ye me in vain," but rather : 
 When ye seek, ye shall find me. And, finally, he says that 
 his ])ro})hecies are true and right ; that the heathenish pro- 
 phets commit an unrigJdeousness by performing something 
 else than that which they promised to perform. To declare 
 righteousness is to declare that wdiich is righteous, which does 
 not conceal internal emptiness and rottenness under a fair 
 outside. The words : " I the Lord speak lighteousness, I 
 declare rectitude," could not but have died on the lips of the 
 " great unknown." — In chap. xlvi. 8-1 3 the apostates in Israel 
 are addressed. They are exhorted to return to the true God, 
 and to be mindful, 1. of the nothingness of idols, ver. 8 ; 2. of 
 the proofs of His sole divinity which the Lord had given 
 throughout the whole of the past history ; 3. of the new ma- 
 nifestjition of it in announcing and sending Koresh (Cyrus), 
 ver, 1 0, 1 1 ; " Declaring the end from the beginning, and 
 from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying : 
 My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. Calling 
 from the East an eagle, from a far country the man of His 
 counsel ; I have spoken it, and will also bring it to pass ; I 
 have formed it, and will also do it." To the mruKi, the for- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XL.' — XLVI. 187 
 
 mer events, the fulfilled prophecies from foimer times (comp. 
 xlii. 9), here the new proof of the sole divinity of the God of 
 Israel is added, in that He sends Koresh : God notv declares. 
 The Prophet, by designating the time in which the announce- 
 ment was issued as n''t^•X"l and D"ip, as beginning and ancient 
 times, and by founding the proof of the divinity of the Lord 
 just upon the high age of the announcement, again puts an 
 insurmountable obstacle in the way of the opponents of the 
 genuineness. The announcement and declaration prove any 
 thing in connection with the execution only ; the bringing to 
 pass, therefore, is connected with the declaring, the doing with 
 the speaking. These words are 'iiotv spoken, since, fron the ideal 
 stand-])oint, the carrying out is at hand; they form the antece- 
 dent to the calling, of which ver. 11 treats. Dip properly "to 
 rise," opposed to the laying down, means " to bring to stand," 
 " to bring about," " to be fulfilled." " The counsel," i.e., the con- 
 tents of the prediction which was spoken of before ; it is the 
 divine counsel and decree to which Koresh served as an instru- 
 ment. — Finally— In chap, xlviii., the same subject is treated of; 
 the divinity of the Lord is proved from His prophecies, in three 
 sections, ver. 1-11, ver. 12-16, ver. 22. Here, at the close of 
 the first book of the second part, the argumentation occuis 
 once more in a very strong accumulation, because the Prophet 
 is now about to leave it, and, in general, the whole territoiy 
 of the lower salvation. First, in ver. 1-11 : Israel should 
 return to the Lord, who formerly had manifested and proved 
 His sole divinity by a series of prophecies and their fulfd- 
 ments, and noiv was granting new and remarkable disclosures 
 regarding the Future. Ver. 6 : " New things I shew thee 
 from this time, hidden things, and thou didst not know them, 
 ver. 7. Now they have been created and not of old, and 
 before this day thou heardest them not ; lest thou shouldest 
 say : Behold, I knew them." The deliverance of Israel by 
 Cyrus — an announcement uttered in the preceding, and to be 
 repeated immediately afterwards— is called nciu in contrast to 
 the old prophecies of the Lord already fulfilled ; Jiidden in 
 contrast to the facts which are already subjects of history, or 
 may be known beforehand by natural ingenuity. To be created 
 is equivalent to being made manifest, inasmuch as the hidden 
 Divine counsel enters into life, only by being manifested, and 
 
188 MF.SSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the prophesied events are created for Israel, only by the pro- 
 phecy. Ver. 8 : " Thou didst not hear it, nor didst thou know 
 it, likewise thine ear was not opened beforehand ; for I knew 
 that thou art faitliless, and wast called a transgressor from the 
 wornb." I have, says the Lord, communicated to thee the 
 knowledge of events of the Future which are altogether un- 
 heard of, of which, befoi'e, thou didst not know the least, nt)r 
 couldst know. The reason of this communication is stated in 
 the words : " for I knew," &c. It is the same reason whicli, 
 according to vers. 4, o, called forth also the former definite 
 prophecies regarding the Future, now already fulfilled, viz., 
 the unbelief of the people, which requires a palpable proof that 
 the Lord alone is God, because it is but too ingenious in find- 
 ing out seeming reasons for justifying its apostacy. All that 
 is perfectly in keeping with, and suitable to the stand-point 
 of Isaiah, but not to that of " the great unknown," at whose 
 time the conqueror from the East was already beheld with the 
 bodily eye ; and Habakkuk had long ago prophesied the de- 
 struction of the Babylonish world's power, and Israel's deliver- 
 ance ; and Jeremiah had announced the destruction of Babylon 
 by the Modes much more distinctly and definitely than is done 
 here in the second part of Isaiah. In ver. 10 it is said : 
 " Come ye near unto me, hear this : from the beginning I have 
 not spoken in secret ; from the time that it was, I was there, 
 and now the Lord God hath sent me and His Spirit." The 
 sense is : Ever since the foundation of the people, I have given 
 them the most distinct prophecies, and made them publicly 
 known (referring to the whole chain of events, from the calling 
 of Abraliam and onward, which had been objects of prophecy) ; 
 by mine omnipotence I have fulfilled them ; and now I have 
 sent my servant Isaiah, and filled him with my Spirit, in order 
 that, by a new distinguished prophecy, he may bear witness 
 to my sole divinity. It is only the accompanying mission of 
 the Spirit which gives its importance to that of the Prophet. 
 It is from God's Spirit searching the depths of the Godhead, 
 and knowing His most hidden counsels, that those prophecies 
 of the second part, going beyond the natural consciousness, 
 have proceeded. 
 
 We believe we have incontrovertibly proved that we are 
 not entitled to draw any arguments against Isaiah's being the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. XL.-^LXVI. 189 
 
 author of the second part, from the circumstance " that the 
 exile is not announced, but that the author takes his stand in 
 it, as well as in that of Isaiah's time, inasmuch as tljis stand- 
 point is an assumed and ideal one. But if the form, can prove 
 nothing, far less can the prophetic contents. It is true that 
 these contents cannot be explained from the natural conscious- 
 ness of Isaiah ; but it is not to be overlooked, that the assailed 
 prophecies of Isaiah are even as directly as possible opposed 
 to the rationalistic notion of prophetism, which is arbitrary, 
 and goes in the face of all facts, and from which the arguments 
 against their genuineness are drawn. In a whole series of 
 passages of the second part (the same which we have just been 
 discussing), the Prophet intimates that he gives disclosures 
 which lie beyond the horizon of his time ; and draws from this 
 circumstance the arguments for his own divine mission, and 
 the divinity of the God of Israel. He considers it as the dis- 
 gi'ace of idolatry that it cannot give any definite prophecies, 
 and with a noble scorn, challenges it to vindicate itself by 
 such prophecies. That rationalistic notion of prophetism re- 
 moves the boundaries which, according to the express state- 
 ments of our Prophet, separate the Kingdom of God from 
 heathenism. The rationalistic notional God, however, it is 
 true, can as little prophesy as the heathenish gods of stone and 
 wood, of whom the Psalmist says : " They have ears, but they 
 hear not, neither speak they through their throat" 
 
 It is farther to be considered that the predictions of the 
 Future, in those portions of Isaiah which are assailed just on 
 account of them, are not so destitute of a foundation as is 
 commonly assumed. There existed, in the present time and 
 circumstances of the Prophet, important actual points of con- 
 nection for them. They farther rest on the foundation of 
 ideal views and conceptions of eternal truths, which had been 
 familiar to the Church of the Lord from its very beginnings. 
 They only enlarge what had already been prophesied by former 
 propliets ; and well secured and ascertained parallels in the 
 prophetic announcement are not wanting for them. 
 
 The carrying away of the covenant-people into exile had 
 been actually prophesied by the fact, that the land had spued 
 out its former inhabitants on account of their sins. Tlie 
 threatening of the exile pervades the whole Pentateuch from 
 
100 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 bef^inniug to end ; compare Genuineness of the Pentateuch, 
 p. 270 f. It is found in the Decalogue also : " That thy days 
 may be long upon the lai»d wliich the Lord thy God giveth 
 thee." David shows a clear knowledge of the sufferings im- 
 pending over his family, and hence also over the people of 
 God; comp. my Connnentary on Song of Sol. S. 243. Solo- 
 mon points to the future carrying away in his prayer at the 
 consecration of the temple. Amos, the predecessor of Isaiah, 
 foresees with absolute clearness, that, before the salvation comes, 
 all that is glorious, not only in Israel, but in Judah also, must 
 be given over to destruction, compare Vol. i. p. 357. In like 
 manner, too, Hosea prophesies not only the destruction of the 
 kinordom of the ten tribes, but also that Judah shall be carried 
 away into exile, comp. Vol. i. p. 176. In Isaiah, the fore- 
 knowledge of the entire devastation of the city and land, and 
 the carrying away into captivity of its inhabitants — a fore- 
 knowledge which stands in close connection with the energy 
 of the knowledge of sin with the Prophets — meets us from the 
 very beginning of his ministry, and also in those prophecies, 
 the genuineness of which no one ventures to assail, as, e g., in 
 chap, i.-vi. After the severity of God had been manifested 
 before the bodily eyes of the Prophet in the carrying away of 
 the ten tribes, it could not, even from human considerations, 
 be doubtful to him, what was the fate in store for Judah. 
 
 The knowledge, that the impending carrying away of Judah 
 would take place by the Chaldeans, and that Babylon would 
 be the place of their banishment, was not destitute of a certain 
 natural foundation. In the germ, the Chaldean power actu- 
 ally existed even at that time. Decidedly erroneous is the 
 view of Hitzig, that a Chaldean power in Babylon could be 
 spoken of only since the time of Nabopolassar. This power, 
 on the contrary, was very old ; compare the proofs in DelitzscKs 
 Commentary on Habakkuk, S. 21. The Assyrian power, 
 although, when outwardly considered, at its height, when 
 more closely exa.mined, began, even at that time, already to 
 sink. A weakening of tlie Assyrian power is intimated also 
 by the circumstance, that Hezekiah ventured to rebel against 
 the Assyrians, and the embassy of the Chaldean Merodach 
 Baladan to Hezekiah, implies that, even at that time, many 
 things gave a title to expect the speedy downfal of the Assy- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. XL. LXVI. 191 
 
 rian Empire. But the fact that Isaiah possessed the clear 
 knowledge that, in some future period, the dominion of the 
 world would pass over to Babylon and the Chaldeans, — that 
 they would be the executors of the judgment upon Judah, we 
 have already proved, in our remarks on chaps, xiii., xiv., from 
 the prophecies of the first part, — from chap, xxiii. 13, where 
 the Chaldeans are mentioned as the executors of the judgment 
 upon the neighbouring people, the Tyrians, and as the de- 
 stroyers of the Assyrian dominion, — and from chap, xxxix. 
 The attempt of dispossessing him of this knowledge is so much 
 the more futile, that his contemporary Micah undeniably pos- 
 sesses it ; comp. Vol. i. p. 464. So also does Habakkuk, be- 
 tween whose time and that of Isaiah, circumstances had not 
 essentially changed, and who likewise still prophesied before 
 the Chaldean monarchy had been established. 
 
 While this foreknowledge of the future elevation of Babylon 
 had a historical foundation, the foreknowledge of its humilia- 
 tion and fate, following soon after, rested on a theological 
 foundation. With a heathenish people, elevation is always 
 followed by haughtiness, with all its consequences; and, ac- 
 cording to the eternal laws of the divine government of the 
 world, haughtiness is a matter-of-fact prophecy of destraction. 
 Proceeding from this view, the downfal of the Chaldean mon- 
 archy was prophesied by Habakkuk also, at a time when it 
 was still developing, and was far from having attained to the 
 zenith of its power. In the same manner, the foreknowledge 
 of the future deliverance of Israel rises on a theological founda- 
 tion, and is not at all to be considered in the same lio-ht as if 
 e.g., the Prophet had foretold to Moab its deliverance. That 
 which the Prophet here predicts is only the individualization 
 of a general truth which meets us at the very beginnings of 
 the covenant-people. The principle which St. Paul advances 
 in Rom. xi. 2 : " God hath not cast away His people whom 
 He foreknew," and ver. 29 : " For the gifts and calling of God 
 are without repentance," meets us, clearly and distinctly, as 
 early as in the books of Moses. In Levit. xxvi. 42-45, the 
 deliverance from the land of captivity is announced on the 
 ground of the election of Israel, and of the covenant with the 
 fathers, and as a fulfilment of the promise of future election, 
 whicli was given by the fact of Israel's being delivered from 
 
1 9 2 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 P]g}']it. And according to Dent. iv. 30, 31, xxx, ff, and the 
 close of chap, xxxii., the end of all the catastrophes which are 
 inflicted upon the covenant-people is always Israel's conversion 
 and reception into favour; behind the judgment, mercy is 
 always concealed. In the prayer of Solomon, the carrying 
 away goes hand in hand with the reception into favour. But 
 it will be altogether fruitless to denv to Isaiah the knowledge 
 of the future deliverance of Israel from Babylon, since his con- 
 temporary Micah, in chap. iv. 10, briefly and distinctly ex- 
 presses the same: "And thou coraest to Babylon; there shalt 
 thou be delivered; there shall the Lord redeem thee from the 
 hand of thine enemies." 
 
 The only point in the prophetic foreknowledge of the second 
 part which really seems to want, not only a historical or ideal 
 foundation, but also altogether corresponding analogies, is the 
 mention of the name of Koresh. But this difficulty disappears 
 if, in strict opposition to the current notion, it is assumed that 
 Cyrus was induced, by our book only, to appropriate to him- 
 self that name. Recent investigation has proved that this 
 name is originally not a proper name, but an honorary title, — 
 that the Greek writers rightly explain it by Sun, — that the 
 name of the sun was, in the East generally, and especially 
 with the Persians, a common honorary title of rulers; comp. 
 Bilrnouf and others in Hdvernick's Einleitung, ii. 2, S. 165. 
 This honorary title of the Persian kings, Isaiah might very 
 easily learn in a natural way. And the fact that this Noraen 
 dignitatis became, among several others, peculiar to Cyrus 
 (the mention of the name of Koresh by Isaiah does not ori- 
 ginally go beyond the announcement of the conqueror from 
 the Eavst) is explained by the circumstance that Cyrus assumed 
 this name in honour of our book, and as an acknowledjxment 
 of the mission assigned to him by it, although the Prophet 
 had not used this name in any other manner than Balaam had 
 that of Agag, perhaps with an allusion to its signification; 
 compare the phrases " from the East," " from the rising of the 
 sun," in chap. xli. 2, 25. And it is historically settled and 
 certain, that Cyrus had originally another name, viz., Agra- 
 dates, and that he assumed this name only at the time of his 
 ascending the throne, which falls into the time when the pro- 
 phecies of our book could already be known to him (comp. the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. XL. LXVI. 193 
 
 proofs in Hdverniclcs Elnleit) And as it is farther certain 
 that the prophecies of our book made a deep impression upon 
 him, and, in important points, exercised an influence upon his 
 actions (this appears not only from the express statement of 
 Josephus, [Ai'ch. xi. c. 1. § 1, 2,] but still more from an au- 
 thentic document, the Edict of Cyrus, in Ezra i. 1 ff, which 
 so plainly implies the fact reported by Josephus, that Jahn 
 rightly called Josephus statement a commentary on this Edict, 
 which refers, partly with literal accuracy, to a series of pas- 
 sages from the second part of Isaiah, compare the particulars in 
 Kleinert, ilher die Echtheit des Jesaias, S. 142) ; — as the condi- 
 tion of the Persian religion likewise confirms this result gained 
 from the Edict of Cyrus {Stuhy, die Religionssysteme des alien 
 Orients, S. 373 ff, proves that in the time of Cyrus, and by 
 him, an Israelitish element had been introduced into it); — 
 there will certainly not be any reason to consider our suppo- 
 sition to be improbable, or the result of embarrassment. 
 
 But to this circumstance we must still direct attention, that 
 those prophetic announcements of the second part which have 
 reference to that which, even at the time of " the great un- 
 known," still belonged to the future, are far more distinct, and 
 can far less be accounted for from natural causes, than those 
 from which rationalistic criticism has drawn inferences as re- 
 gards the spuriousness of the second part. The personal Mes- 
 sianic prophecies of the second part are much more charac- 
 teristic than those concerning Cyrus. He who cannot, by the 
 help of history, supplement and illustrate the prophecy, re- 
 ceives only an incomplete and defective image of the latter. 
 And, indeed, a sufficiently long time elapsed before even Exe- 
 gesis recognised with certainty and unanimity that it was 
 Cyrus who was meant. Doubts and differences of opinion on 
 this point meet us even down to last century. The Medes 
 and Persians are not at all mentioned as the conquerors of 
 Babylon, and all which refers to the person of Cyrus has an 
 altogether ideal character; while the Messiah is, especially in 
 chap, liii,, so distinctly drawn, that scarcely any essential fea- 
 ture in His image is omitted. And it is altogether a matter 
 of course that here, in the antitypical deliverance, a much 
 greater clearness and distinctness should prevail ; for it stands 
 
 VOL. II. n 
 
19 4 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 in a far closer relation to the idea, so that form and substance 
 do far less disagree. 
 
 It would be inappropriate were we here to take up and 
 refute all the arguments against the germineness of the second 
 part, which rationalistic criticism has brought together. Be- 
 sides those which we have already refuted, we shall bring into 
 view only this argument, which, at first sight indeed, may 
 dazzle and startle even the well-disposed, viz., the difference 
 between the first and second parts, as regards language and 
 mode of representation. The chief eiTor of those who have 
 adduced this argument is, that they judge altogether mthout 
 reference to person, — a matter, however, quite legitimate in 
 this case,' — that they simply apply the same rule to the pro- 
 ductions of Isaiah which, in the productions of less richly 
 endowed persons, has indeed a ceHain right, e.g., on the pro- 
 })hetical territory of Jeremiah, who, notwithstanding the dif- 
 ference of subject, yet does not understand so to change his 
 voice, that it should not soon be recognized by the skilled 
 More than of all the prophets that holds true of Isaiah, which 
 Fichte, in a letter to a Kdnigsherg friend, writes of himself (in 
 his Life, by his son, i. S. 196): "I have properly no style at 
 all, for I have them all." " Just as the subject demands," says 
 Eivald, without assigning to the circumstance any weight in 
 judging of the second part, "just as the subject demands, every 
 kind of speech, and every change of style are easily at his 
 command; and it is just this in which here his greatness, as, 
 in general, one of his most prominent perfections, consists." 
 The chief peculiarities of style in the second part stand in 
 close relation to the subject, and the disposition of mind 
 thereby called forth. The Prophet, as a rule, does not address 
 the mass of the people, but the election (sTcXoyri); nor the sinful 
 congregation of the Lord in the present time, but that of the 
 future, purified by the judgments of the Lord, the seed and 
 germ of which were the election of the Present. It is to the 
 congregation of brethren that he addresses Comfort. The be- 
 ginning: "Comfort ye, Comfori ye, Zion," contains the key- 
 note and principal subject. It is from this that the gentle, 
 tender, soft character of the style is to be accounted for, as 
 well afi the frequent repetitions ; — the comforting love follows, 
 step by step, the grief which is indefatigable in its repetitions. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. XL. LXVI. 195 
 
 From this circumstance is to be explained the habit of adding 
 several epithets to the name of God ; these are as many shields 
 which are held up against despair, as many bulwarks against 
 the things in sight, by which every thought of redemption 
 was cut off Where God is the sole help, every thing must 
 be tried to make the Congregation feel what they have in 
 Him. A series of single phrases which several times recur 
 verhcitmi, e.g., " I am the Lord, and none else, I do not give 
 mine honour to any other, I am the first and the last," are 
 easily accounted for by the Prophet's endeavour and anxiety 
 to impress upon the desponding minds truths, which they were 
 only too apt to forget. If other linguistic peculiarities occur, 
 which cannot be explained from the subject, it must be con- 
 sidered that the second part is not by any means a collection 
 of single prophecies, but a closely connected whole, which, as 
 such, must necessarily have its own pecuKar usus loquendi, a 
 number of constantly recurring characteristic peculiarities. The 
 character of unity must necessarily be expressed in langTiage 
 and style also. The fact, however, that, notwithstanding the 
 difference of style betwixt the first and second parts, the 
 second part has a great number of characteristic peculiarities 
 of language and style in common with the first part (a fact 
 which cannot be otherwise, if Isaiah was the author of both), 
 was first very thoroughly demonstrated by Kleinert, while 
 Kuper and Caspari have been the first conclusively to prove, 
 that the second part was known and made use of bj^ those 
 prophets who prophesied between the time of Isaiah and that 
 of "the great unknown." 
 
 The close connection of the second part with the first is, 
 among other things, proved also by the circumstance that both 
 are equally strongly pervaded with the Messianic announce- 
 ment. Chap, i.-xii. especially have, in this resjDect, a remark- 
 able parallel in the second book of the second part. The fact, 
 moreover, that the single Messianic prophecies of the second 
 part agree, in the finest and most concealed features, Avith 
 those of the first part, will be shown in the exposition. 
 
1 0(; MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 CHAP. XLIL 1-9. 
 
 The 40tli chapter has an introdnctoiy character. It com- 
 forts the people of the Lord by pointing, in general, to a Fu- 
 ture rich in salvation. In chap. xli. the Prophet describes the 
 appearance of the conqueror from the East for the destruction 
 of Babylon, — an event from which he derives, as from a rich 
 source, ample consolations for his poor wretched people, while, 
 at the same time, he represents idolatry as being thereby put 
 to shame. It is on purpose that, immediately after the first 
 announcement of this conqueror fi'om the East, his antitype 
 is, in chap. xlii. 1-9, contrasted with him. In the preceding 
 chapter, the Prophet had shown how, by the influence of the 
 king from the East, the Lord would put idolatiy to shame, 
 and work out deliverance for His Church. In the section 
 now before us, he describes how, by the mission of His sei'vant, 
 the Lord would effect, definitely and absolutely, that which 
 the former had done only in a preliminary, limited, and imper- 
 fect manner. In the subsequent section, the Prophet then 
 fii"st farther carries out the image of the conqueror from the 
 East ; and from chap. xlix. he turns to a more minute repre- 
 sentation of the image of the true Saviour. In chaps, xlii. 1 0, to 
 xliii. 7, the discourse turns, from a general description of God's 
 instruments of salvation, to a general description of the salva- 
 tion in its whole extent ; just as it is the manner of the second 
 part ever again to return from the particular to the general 
 
 Here, where the Servant of God is first to be introduced, 
 He is at fii-st spoken of ; it is in ver. 5 that the Lord first 
 speaks to His servant. In chap, xlix., on the contrary, the 
 Sei'vant of God, being already known from chap, xlii., is, with- 
 out farther remark, introduced as speaking. 
 
 In the whole section, the Lord is speaking. It falls into 
 three divisions- — First, the Lord speaks of His servant, vers. 
 1 -4 ; then He speaks to His servant, ver. 5-7 ; finally. He 
 addresses some closing words to the Church, ver. 8, 9. The 
 representation, in harmony with the nature of the prophetic 
 \'ision, bears a dramatic character. 
 
 In ver. 1-4, the Lord, as it were, points to His servant, in- 
 troduces Him to His Church, and commends Him to the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLII. 1 9. 197 
 
 world : " Behold my Servant," &;c. He, the beloved and elect 
 One, upheld by God, and endowed with the fulness of the 
 Spirit of God, shall establish righteousness upon the whole 
 earth, and bring into submission to himself the whole Gentile 
 world, by showing himself meek and lowly in heart, an helper 
 of the poor and afflicted, and combining with it never-failing 
 power. The aim : He shall bring forth right to the Gentiles. 
 is at once expressed at the close of ver. 1. In ver. 2-4, the 
 means by which He attains this aim are then stated. The 
 bringing forth, or the establishing of right, recurs again in ver. 
 3 and 4, in order to point out this relation of ver. 2-4 to 
 ver. 1. 
 
 In ver. 6 and 7, after having pointed to His Omnipotence 
 as aflbrding a guarantee for the fulfilment of a prophecy so 
 great that it might appear almost incredible, the Lord turns 
 to His Servant and addresses Him. He announces to Him 
 that it should be His glorious destination, partly to bring, in 
 His person, the covenant with Israel to its full truth, partly 
 to be the light for the Gentile world, — to be, in general, the 
 Saviour of the whole human race. 
 
 In the closing verees, 8, 9, the Lord addresses the Church, 
 and directs its attention to the object which the announcement 
 of the mission of His Servant, declared in the preceding con- 
 text, serves : God, because He is God, is anxious for the pro- 
 motion of His glory. In order, therefore, that it may be 
 known that He alone is God, He grants to His people disclo- 
 sures as regards the distant Future, as yet fully wrapped up 
 in obscurity. 
 
 There is no doubt, and it is now generally admitted, that 
 the Servant of the Lord, here described, is the same as He 
 who is brought before us in chap. xlix. 4 ; liii., Ixi. It is, 
 hence, not sufficient to point out an individual to whom, appa- 
 rently, the attributes contained in this prophecy belong ; but 
 we must add and combine all the sia:ns and attributes which 
 are contained in the parallel passages. 
 
 The Chaldean Paraphrast who, in so many instances, has 
 faithfully p eserved the exegetical tradition, understands the 
 Messiah^by the Servant of God ; and so, from among the later 
 Jewish expositors, do Dav. Kimchi a.nd A barhanel, the latter 
 of whom says of the non-Messianic interpi-etation, rhu 72^ 
 
108 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 aniioa lan D'oann " that all these expositors were struck witli 
 blindness." That this exposition was the cun-ent one among 
 the Jews at the time of Christ, appears from Luke ii. 32, where 
 Simeon designates the Saviour as the light to be revealed to 
 the Gentiles fug si; drroxd}.v^iv sOvuv, with a reference to Is xlii. 
 (j ; xlix. 6. It is especially the latter passage which Simeon 
 hfis in view, as also St. Paul in Acts xiii. 46, 47, as appears 
 from the words immediately preceding Sti ildov o) 6<p6aXf/,oi /mov to 
 (rcor^pinv aov o ijToifia6ag xard rrf>6<fu~ov rravruv ruv Xauv, which evi- 
 dt^ntly refer to chap. xlix. But chap. xlix. is, as regards the 
 point which here comes into consideration, a mere repetition 
 and confirmatioii of chap. xlii. 
 
 By the New Testament, this exposition has been introduced 
 aiid established in the Church of Christ. The words which, 
 at the baptism of Christ, resounded from heaven : o5r6g Igrn h 
 ■j'lug !J,o\t dya-rrnrhg, sv c5 iidr'rA.r,sa, Matt, iii, 1 7 (comp. Mark i. 1 1) 
 evidently refer to ver. 1 of the chapter before us, and point 
 I tilt that He who had now appeared was none other than He 
 who had, centuries ago, been predicted by the prophets. And 
 so do likewise the words which, according to Matt. xvii. 5 
 (compare Mark ix. 7 ; Luke ix. 3 5 ; 2 Pet. i. 1 7), at the trans- 
 figuration of Christ, towards the close of His ministry, re- 
 sounded from heaven in order to strengthen the Apostles : 
 'I'uTog iffriv o v'log ,«-(/u 6 ayaTrsT^g, if w evd6xy,6a' avroij dy.olnri. These 
 voices at the beginning and the close of Christ's ministry have 
 not been sufficientl}^ attended to by those who have raised 
 doubts against the Messianic interpretation ; for a doubt in 
 this must necessarily shake also the belief in the reality of 
 those voices. In both of the passages, the place of the Ser- 
 vant of God in chap. xlii. 1 (which passage is indeed not so 
 much quoted, as only, in a free treatment, referred to) is taken 
 l>y the Son of God, from Ps. ii. 7, just as, at the transfigura^ 
 tion, the words a jroD azousre are at once added from Deut. xviii. 
 1 ."). The name of the Servant of God was not high enough 
 fur the sul)lime moment ; the Son formed, in the second pas- 
 sage, the contrast to the mere servants of God, Moses and 
 Elijah. — In Matt. xii. 17-21, ver. 1-3 are quoted, and referred 
 to Christ. The Messianic explanation of chap, xlii., xlix. lies 
 at the fovmdation of all the otlier pass;\ges also, where Christ 
 is spoken of as tlie rrccTg ©soD. In Acts iii. 1 3 : ib(j^a«i rov tx/Oo, 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLIT. 1 9. . 199 
 
 auTou 'iTjfl-ouv, we shall be obliged to follow Bengel in explaining 
 it by : TYiinislruTn suum, partly on account of Matt. xii. 1 8, 
 and because the LXX. often render niy by xa?; ; partly on 
 account of the obvious reference to the Old Testament passages 
 which treat of the Servant of God, and on account of the spe- 
 cial allusion to chap. xlix. 3 in the sbh^aai (LXX. hoZKoi imov i7 
 6u \^ic(>ari'k\ y.ci\ h aoi ihho^aeSrifto^ai). And SO likewise in Acts 
 iii. 26 ; iv. 27 : i-r/ tov dyiov 'xaTbd ffou 'li^aovv, ov s^piffag, where 
 the last words refer to chap. Ixi. 1 ; farther, in Acts iv. 30. 
 In all these passages it is not the more obvious dou7'.oi, but 
 Taj's which is put, in order to remove the low notions which, 
 in Greek, attach to the word dovXog. 
 
 Taking her stand partly on these authorities, partly on the 
 natural sense of the passage, the Christian Church has all along 
 refeiTed the passage to Christ ; and even expositors such as 
 Clericus, who, everywhere else, whensoever it is possible, seek 
 to set aside the Messianic interpretation, are here found among 
 its most decided defenders. In our century, with the awaken- 
 ing faith, this explanation has again obtained general domi- 
 nion ; and wherever expositors of evangelical disposition do 
 not yet profess it, this is to be accounted for from the still 
 continuing influence of rationalistic tradition. 
 
 We are led to the Messianic interpretation by the circum- 
 stance that the servant of God appears here as the antitype of 
 Cyrus. A real person can be contrasted with a real person only, 
 but not with a personification, as is assumed by the other ex- 
 planations. We are compelled to explain it of Christ by this 
 circumstance also, that it is in Him only that the signs of the 
 Servant of God are to be found, — that in Him only the cove- 
 nant of God with Israel has become a truth, — that He only 
 is the light of the Gentiles, — that He only, without external 
 force, by His gentleness, meekness, and love, has founded a 
 Kino-dom, the boundaries of which are conterminous with 
 those of the earth. The connection, also, with the other Mes- 
 sianic announcements, especially those of the first part, compels 
 us to refer it to Christ. 
 
 The reasons against the Messianic interpretation are of little 
 weight. The assertion that nowhere in the New Testament 
 does Jesus appear as the Servant of Jehovah (Hendewerk), is 
 at once overthrown by Matt. xii. 18, as well as by the other 
 
200 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 passages already quoted, in which Christ appears as ■ra/j ©soD. 
 Phil. ii. 7, fiop(priv dovXov XalSijv comes as near the nin'' lay, as it 
 was possible, considering the low notion attached to the Greek 
 ioiJKoi. The passages which treat of the obedience of Christ, 
 such as Rom, v. 1 U ; Phil. ii. 8 ; Heb. v. 8 ; John xvii. 4 : rbv 
 'ifyov snXiluaa, o d'sduxdg (lot ha. -roi^eu, give only a paraphrase of 
 the notion of the Servant of the Lord. With perfect sound- 
 ness Dr Nitzsch has remarked, that it was required by the 
 typical connection of the two Testaments, that Christ should 
 somehow, according to His v-ra/co^j, hvorayr], be represented as 
 the perfect manifestation of the nay- — The assertion : " The 
 Messiah is excluded by the cii'cumstance that the subject is 
 not only to be a teacher of the Gentiles, who is endowed with 
 the Spirit of God, but is also to announce deliverance to Israel" 
 {Gesenius), rests only on an erroneous, falsely literal interpre- 
 tation of ver. 7, which is not a whit better than if, in ver. 3, 
 we were to think of a natural bruised reed, a natural wick 
 dimly burning*. — The objection that this Servant of the Lord 
 is not foretold as a future person, but is spoken of as one pre- 
 sent, forgets that we are here on the territory of prophetic 
 vision, that the prophets had not in vain the name of seers, 
 and puts the real, in place of the ideal Present, — a mistake 
 which is here the less pardonable that the Prophet pre-emi- 
 nently uses the Future, and, in this way, himself explains the 
 ideal character of the inserted Pi'eterites. — In order to refute 
 the assertion, that the doctrine of the Messiah is foreign to 
 the second part of Isaiah, that (as Euuld held) in it the for- 
 mer Messianic hopes are connected with the person of a heathen 
 king, viz., Cyrus (how very little have they who advance such 
 opinions any idea of the nature of Holy Writ '), it is only 
 necassary to refer to chap. Iv. 3, 4, where the second David, 
 the Messiah, appears, at the same time, as Teacher, and as the 
 Prince and Lawgiver of the nations, who is to extend the 
 Kingdom of God far over all heathen nations. That which, 
 in that passage, is declared of the Messiah, and that which, in 
 those passages which treat of the Servant of God, is declared 
 of Him, exclude one another, as soon a.s, by the Servant of 
 God, any other subject than the Messiah is understood. 
 
 Even this circumstjxnce must raise an unfavourable preju- 
 dice against the uou-Messituiic interpretation, that its defen- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLII. 1 9. 201 
 
 ders are at one in the negative only, but differ in the positive 
 determination of the subject, and that, hitherto, no one view- 
 has succeeded in overthrowing the other ; and farther, that 
 ever anon new subtleties are advanced, by means of which it 
 is attempted to patch up and conceal the inadmissibilities of 
 every individual exposition. 
 
 Passing over those expositions which have now become 
 obsolete,— such as of Cyrus, the Prophet Isaiah himself — we 
 shall give attention to those expositions only which even now 
 have their representatives, and which have some foundation 
 in the matter itself 
 
 The LXX. already understood Israel by the Servant of the 
 Lord. They translate in ver. 1 : 'la.}tdj(3, 6 -rraTg /mov, dvrtX/;-^oficn 
 avrou, 'lepayjX, 6 sxXiKTog fiov, 'Xfocsihi^aro avrov i] -^Myri fJ'OV. Among 
 the Jewish interpreters, Jarchi follows this explanation, but 
 with this modification, that, by the Servant of the Lord, he 
 understands the collective body of the righteous in Israel. In 
 modern times, this view is defended by Hitzig. It appeals 
 especially to the circumstance that, in a series of other pas- 
 sages of the second part, Israel, too, is designated by the Ser- 
 vant of God, viz. in chap. xli. 8 : " And thou Israel, my servant, 
 Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham my friend," ver. 
 9 : " Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the eartli, 
 and called thee from its sides, and said unto thee : Thou art 
 my servant, I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away," chap, 
 xlii. 19, xliii. 10, xliv. 1, 2 : "And now hear, O Jacob my 
 servant, and Israel whom I have chosen. Thus saith the Lord 
 that made thee, formed thee from the womb and helpeth thee : 
 Fear not, O Jacob, my servant, and thou Jeshurun, whom I 
 have chosen ;" chap. xliv. 21, xlv. 4, xlviii. 20 ; "Say ye, the 
 Lord hath redeemed His servant Jacob." In the face of tliis 
 fact, we shall not be permitted to refer to " the general signi- 
 fication of the expression, and its manifold use." For, gene- 
 rally, it is of very rare occurrence that Israel is personified as 
 the Son of God (in Ps. cv. 6, it is not Israel, as Koster sup- 
 poses, but Abraham who is called Servant of God ; Jer. xxx. 
 10, xlvi. 27; Ezek. xxxvii. 25 are, in all probability, depen- 
 dent upon the second part of Isaiah, by which this designa- 
 tion first obtained a footing), and never occurs in such accu- 
 mulation as here. For this very reason, we cannot well think 
 
202 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 of an accident ; anrl if there was an intention, we can seek it 
 only in the circumstance that there exists a close reference to 
 those prophecies which, ex, 'profenm, have' to do with the Ser- 
 vant of God. To this we are led by another circumstance, also. 
 While those passages in which Israel or Jacob is spoken of as 
 the servant of God, occur in great numbers in the first book 
 of the second part of Isaiah, they dimppear altogether in the 
 second book, which is the proper seat of the detail prophecies 
 of the Servant of God in question, who, in the first book was, 
 by way of anticipation only, mentioned in chap. xlii. After 
 chaj). xlviii. 20, where the words : " The Lord hath redeemed 
 His servant Jacob," occur with evident intention, once more 
 at the close of the first book, Jacob, the servant of God, is, in 
 general, no more spoken of, but the Plural is used only of the 
 Israelites as the servants of God in chap. Ixiii. J 7 : " For thy 
 servants' sake, the tribes of thine inheritance;" Ixv. 8, 9-13, 
 Ixvi. 1 4, — passages which make it only the more evident that 
 the Pro])lict purposely avoids bringing forward Jacob as the 
 ideal person of the Servant of the Lord. Finally — The idea 
 of chance is entirely excluded by chap. xlix. 3, where the 
 Messiah is called Israel. 
 
 From these facts, however, we are not entitled to infer that, 
 in the prophetic announcement, Israel is simply spoken of as 
 the servant of God; but on the contrary the context must be 
 viewed in a different and nicer way. This is evident from the 
 circumstance that, while in the passages chaps, xli. 7, xlviii. 
 20, Israel and Jacob are intentionally spoken of as the servant 
 of God, or, at least, Israel is so distinctly pointed out that it 
 cannot be at all misunderstood, such an express pointing to 
 Israel is (with the sole exception of chap. xlix. 3), as intention- 
 ally, avoided in the prophetic announcement of the Servant of 
 God. The phrase "My servant Jacob," which, in the former 
 passages is the rule, never occurs in the latter. This circum- 
 stance clearly indicates that, besides the agreement, there exists 
 a difference. The facts, however, which point out the agree- 
 ment, receive ample justice by the supposition that the Pro- 
 phet considers Chiist as the concentration and essence of 
 Israel, that he expects from Him the realization of the task 
 which was given to Isi'ael, but had not been fulfilled by them, 
 and just thereby, also, the realization of the promises given to 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLII. 1 9. 203 
 
 Israel. But, besides other reasons, the fact that the whole 
 description of the Servant of God stands in direct contradic- 
 tion to what the Prophet elsewhere says of Israel, proves that 
 Israel is not meant in opposition to the Messiah, — the body 
 without the head. It is especially chap. xlii. 1 9 which here 
 comes into consideration : " Who is so blind as my servant, or 
 so blind as my messenger whom I send ?" Israel is here called 
 servant of the Lord, because it had been called by Him to 
 preserve the true religion on earth. Parallel is the appella- 
 tion : " My messenger whom I send." Israel, as the messenger 
 of God, was to deliver His commands to the Gentiles. The 
 Prophet sharpens the reproof, in that he always contrasts what 
 the people were, and what they ought to have been, according 
 to the destination given to them by the Lord. The servant 
 of the Lord, who, in order to execute His commissions, must 
 have a sharp eye, is blind ; His messenger is deaf and cannot 
 hear what He says to him. The immense contrast between 
 idea and reality which is here pointed out, implies, since the 
 idea must necessarily be realized, that it shall receive another 
 bearer ; that in place of the messenger, who has become blind 
 and deaf, there should come the true Messenger who first opens 
 the eyes of Israel, and then those of the Gentiles, — that the 
 destination of Israel, which the members are unfit to realize, 
 should be realized by the head. We are not at liberty to say 
 that the servant who had become blind and deaf shall be eon- 
 verted, shaU put off the old man and put on the new man, 
 and shall then accomplish the great things which, in the pro- 
 phecies of the Servant of God, are assigned to him. For the 
 conversion, — on which everything depends, and apart from 
 which the announcement of the Prophet would be an empty 
 fancy — is, in all these prophecies, not mentioned by a single 
 word. On the contrary, the Servant of God is everywhere, 
 from His very origin, brought before us as the absolutely just. 
 No more glaring contrast can really be imagined than that 
 which exists between that which the Prophet says of the ordi- 
 nary Israel (whose outward state, as it is described in chap, 
 xlii. 22 : "This is a people robbed and spoiled, they are all 
 of them snared in holes, and hid in prison-houses," is only a 
 faithful image of the internal condition), and the Son of God 
 in whom His soul delighteth, who in exuberant love seeks 
 
204 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 that which is lost, whose ovei-flowiiig righteousness justifies 
 many, and who, as a substitute, can sutler for others. It is 
 in Christ only, that Israel attains to its destination, both in a 
 moral point of view, and as regards the Divine preservation 
 and gloritication. To this it may still be added, that neither 
 here, nor in the parallel passages is nin"- iny ever connected with 
 a Plural, but always with the Singular only ; while elsewhere, 
 in the cjise of collective nouns and ideal persons, the real 
 plurality not uncommonly shines forth from behind the unity ; 
 and in those passages, es})ecially, where Israel appears personi- 
 fied as a unity, the use of the Singular is interchanged with 
 that of the Plural. Comp., e.g., chap. xli. 8 : " And thou Israel, 
 my servant, Jacob wliom I have chosen, seed (jjosferity) of 
 Abraham, my friend," chap, xliii. 10: " Ye are my tuitnesses. 
 saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen." But a 
 circumstance, which alone would be sufficient for the proof, is 
 the fact, that in chap. xli. 6, (comp. chap. xlix. 5, 6) the Ser- 
 vant of the Lord is plainly distinguished from the people. 
 How can the Lord say of the people, that He will give it for 
 a covenant of the people, that in it He will cause the cove- 
 nant with the people to attain to its truth ? The fact, that 
 this passage opposes an insurmountable barrier to the explana- 
 tion which makes the people the subject, sufficiently appears 
 from the circumstance, that the expositors saw themselves 
 obliged to set aside its natural sense by a forced, unphilologi- 
 cal explanation. Finally, — In understanding the people by 
 the Servant of God, the prophecies of the Servant of God are 
 brought into irreconcileable contradiction with all other pro- 
 phecies, with the first i)art of Isaiah, and even with the second 
 part, inasmuch as things would then be prophesied of the 
 people which, everywhere else, are constantly assigned to the 
 Messiah. This is quite openly expressed by Kostev : " The 
 Servant of Jehovah is the Jewish people ; viewed, however, 
 by the Prophet in such a manner as to combine in itself the 
 attributes of both, the prophets and the Messiah." Prophetism 
 would have dug its own grave if its organs had, in a manner 
 so inconsiderate, contradicted each other as regards the highest 
 hopes of the people. The national conviction of the inspira- 
 tion of the prophets, which formed the foundation of their 
 activity and efficiency, could, in that case, not have arisen at 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLII. 1 9. 205 
 
 all. Tlie same arguments decide partly also against a modifi- 
 cation of this explanation which evidently has proceeded from 
 embarrassment only,^ against those who, by the Servant of 
 God, understand the better portion of Israel, — such as Maurer, 
 Ewald, Oehler ( Ueber den Knecht Goifes, Tubinger Zeitschrift, 
 1 840. The latter differs from the other supporters of this 
 view in this, that, according to him, the notion of the ideal 
 Israel which, he thinks, prevails in chap. xHi. and xlix., is, in 
 chap, liii., raised to the view of an individual — the Messiah), 
 Knobel ("The theocratic substance of the people, to which 
 especially the prophets and priests belonged.") By this modi- 
 fication, the explanation which makes the people the subject, 
 loses its only apparent foundation, inasmuch as it can no more 
 appeal to those passages in which Israel is spoken of as the 
 Servant of the Lord ; for it is obvious that, in these, not merely 
 the pious portion of the people is spoken of. At the very out- 
 set, in ver. 19, the whole of the people are undeniably desig- 
 nated by the Servant of the Lord. It is they only who are 
 blind and deaf in a spiritual point of view. The whole people, 
 and not a portion of them, are in the condition of servitude, 
 ver. 22. In ver. 24, Jacob and Israel are expressly mentioned. 
 The whole people, and not merely the pious portion, are objects 
 of the Lord's election (chap. xli. 8, xliv. 1, 2) ; the whole 
 people are to be redeemed from Babylon, chap, xlviii. 20. The 
 hypothesis of the pious portion of the people can as little ac- 
 count for the unexceptional use of the singular, as the hypo- 
 thesis of the whole people ; like it, it isolates the prophecies 
 of the Servant of God, and brings them into contradiction with 
 all the other prophecies, which assign to Christ the same things 
 that are here assigned to the Servant of God. But what is 
 especially in opposition to this hypothesis is ver. 3, where the 
 Servant of God is designated as the Saviour of the poor and 
 afilicted, which, in the first instance, are no other than the 
 better portion of the people ; as well as other reasons, which 
 we shall bring out in commenting upon chap. liii. by which 
 section the hj^pothesis is altogether overthrown. 
 
 According to De Wette {de Tnorte expiat. p. 2G) and Gesenius, 
 
 ' This embarrassment becomes still more obvious in the explanation of 
 Vatke^ who vmderstands by the Servant of God, "the harmless ideal ab- 
 stract of the people;" and that of Beck^ who understands thereby "the 
 notion of the people." 
 
206 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the subject of the prophecy is the collective body of the pro- 
 pliets. Substantially, Umhreit too {Der Knecht Gottes, Ham- 
 burg 1840) adheres to this interpretation. He rejects the 
 explanation which refers it to Christ in the sense of the Chris- 
 tian Church, and on p. 13 he completely assents to Gesenius, 
 by remarking that he could not find in the prophets any super- 
 natural, distinct predictions of future events. The Prophet, 
 according to him, formed to himself, by his own authority, an 
 " ideal of a Messiah," the abstraction of what he saw before his 
 eyes in the people, especially in the better portion of them, 
 but chiefly in the order of the prophets, and then persuaded 
 himself that this self-invented image would, at some future 
 period, come into existence as a real person. " The highest 
 ideal of the prophetic order, viewed as teaching, is represented 
 in the unity of a person." " We find the prophets as a collec- 
 tive body in the nay, but chiefly, the prophets who, in future 
 only, on the regained paternal soil, are, in some person, to 
 reach the highest perfection." 
 
 This hy^3othesis of the collective body of the prophets vio- 
 lently severs the prophecy before us, and the parallel passages 
 from those passages of the second part in which Israel is spoken 
 of as the Servant of God. It is quite impossible to point out an}-- 
 where in the Old Testament, and especially in the second pait of 
 Isaiah, an analogous personification of the order of the prophets 
 as the Servant of God. The reference to chap. xliv. 26 : 
 " That establisheth the word of His servant, and performeth 
 the counsel of His messengers; that saith of Jerusalem: She 
 shall be inhabited, and of the cities of Judah: They shall be 
 built, and I will raise up the walls thereof," is, in this respect, 
 iiltogether out of place, inasmuch as the servant of the Lord, 
 in that verse, is not the collective band of the prophets, but 
 Isaiah himself, just as in chap, xxiii. The parallelism between 
 the servant of the Lord and His messengers is not a synony- 
 'mous, but a synthetic one, just as, afterwards, Jerusalem and 
 the cities of Judah are jilaced beside one another. The parallel 
 passages clearly intimate that, by the servant of the Lord, 
 Isaiah only is to be understood. Throughout, the Prophet 
 refers exclusively to his own prophecies, as regards the im- 
 j)ending salvation of Israel (the prophecies of othei-s he men- 
 tions, everywhere else, always in reference to the past only); 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLII. 1 9. 207 
 
 and it cannot be imagined that, in this single passage only, 
 he should have designated himself as one among the many. If 
 we consider those parallel passages, we must assume that the 
 messengers also are represented chiefly by our Prophet; that 
 he is their mouth and organ, just as, in Rev. i. 1, and xxii. 6, 
 the servants of God and the prophets are represented by John. 
 Farther — It cannot be denied that a certain amount of 
 truth lies at the foundation of the explanation which makes 
 the prophetic order the subject. The Messiah appears in our 
 prophecy pre-eminently as the Prophet, in harmony and con- 
 nection with Deut. xviii. (comp. Vol. i., p. 107); and the sub- 
 stratum of the description forms chiefly the prophetic order, 
 while, in the prophecies of the first part, it is chiefly the regal 
 office which appears, and, in chap, liii., the priestly. But the 
 mistake (as Uvibreit himself partly saw) is, that this explana- 
 tion changes the person into a personification, instead of re- 
 cognizing that the idea, which hitherto was only imperfectly 
 realised by the prophetic order, demands a future perfect 
 realisation in an individual, so that we could not but expect 
 such an one even if there did not exist any Messianic prophecy 
 at aU. Every prophet who, in human weakness, performed 
 his office, was a guarantee of the future appearance of tlie Pi'o- 
 phet, as surely as God never does by halves what, according 
 to His nature, and as proved by the existence of the imperfect, 
 He must do. But the fact that, here, we have not before us 
 a mere personification of the prophetic order, noi", as little, ac- 
 cording to the opinion of Urnbreit, a single individual by 
 whom, in future, the idea of the prophetic order was to be 
 most perfectly realised, is evident from the circumstance that 
 the Servant of God does not, by any means, represent himself 
 as being only the Prophet. The contrast between Cyrus and 
 the Servant of God, which G. Muller advances: "Evidently, 
 the former is a conqueror; the latter, a meek teacher," is one- 
 sided; for the Servant of God appears, at the same time, as a 
 powerful ruler, just as Christ, in chap. Iv. 4, is at the same 
 time designated as a Witness, and as Prince and Lawgiver of 
 the nations. To the mere teacher not even ver. 8 is applicable, 
 if the parallel passages are compared, but far less ver. 4 : "The 
 isles shall wait for His laiv" Nor does a mere teacher come 
 up to the embodied covenant with Israel in ver. 6, nor to tfie 
 
208 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 light, i.e., Salvation and Saviour of the Gentiles. By mere 
 teaching, salvation cannot be wrought out. Ver. 7 also does 
 not apply to the mere teacher. 
 
 The collective body of the prophets, or the ideal prophet, is 
 altogether out of place in chap. liii. ; for there the Servant of 
 God does not appear as a Prophet, but as a High Priest and 
 Redeemer. This hypothesis meets with farther difficulties by 
 the mention of Israel in chap. xlix. 3. Farther — It cannot 
 well be conceived how the Prophet who, according to these 
 expositors, lived about the end of the exile, could expect such 
 glorious things of tlie prophetic order, as that from it even a 
 preliminary and partial realization of his hopes should proceed. 
 At that time the prophetic order was already dying out; and 
 a prophetic order among the exiled cannot well be spoken of 
 Finally — That which is here ascribed to the Servant of God — 
 the gi-and influence upon the heathen world — is not of such a 
 character, as that the prophets could be considered as even the 
 [)recursors and companions in the work of tlie Propliet. Neither 
 prophecy nor history assigns to the prophets any share in this 
 woi^k. This hypothesis severe the second part from its con- 
 nection with the whole remaining Old Testament, according to 
 which it is by Christ alone that the reception of the Gentiles 
 into the Kingdom of God shall be effected. And in this second 
 part itself, it stands likewise in contradiction to chap. Iv. 3, 4. 
 
 Ver. 1 . " Behold my Servant vjhom I uphold, mine elect, in 
 whom my soul delight eth; I have put my Spirit upon Him, 
 He shall h'ing forth rigJit^ to the Gentiles." 
 
 Every pious man is called, in general, " servant of the Lord," 
 comp. Job i. 8 ; Ps. xix. 12, 14; but ordinarily, the designa- 
 tion is, in a special sense, applied to those whom God makes 
 use of for the execution of His purposes, to whom He entrusts 
 the administration of His affaire, and whom He equips for the 
 j)romotion of His glory. David, who, according to Acts xiii. 
 36, had in his generation served the counsel of God, calls him- 
 
 ' The Hebrew word is DDK'D, wliich means "judgment," "right," "law." 
 Dr. JIoK/.stenhfni has translatod il by Richt, which is, as nearly as possible, 
 expressed by the English word "right," (jus,) as including "law" and 
 " statutes."— Tr. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLII. 1. 209 
 
 self in his prayer in 2 Sam. vii., not fewer than ten times, the 
 servant of God, (Vol. i, p. 135, 136); and the same designa- 
 tion he gives to himself in the inscriptions of Ps. xviii. and 
 xxxvi. The Prophets are called servants of God in 2 Kings 
 xiii. 3 ; Jer. xxvi. 5. In the highest and most perfect degree, 
 that designation belongs to Christ, who, in the most perfect 
 manner, carried out the decrees of God, and to whom all 
 former servants and instruments of the Lord in His kingdom, 
 pointed as types. But the designation has not merely a refer- 
 ence to the subjective element of obedience, but points, at the 
 same time, to the dignity of him who is thus designated. It 
 is a high honour to be received by God among the number of 
 His servants, who enjoy the providence and protection of their 
 mighty and rich Lord. That this aspect — the dignity — comes 
 here chiefly into consideration, in the case of Him who is the 
 Servant of God xar' iZ^oyJ^v, and in whom, therefore, this dignity 
 must reach its highest degree, so that the designation, My 
 Servant, borders very closely upon that of My Son, (comp. 
 Matth. iii. 1 7, xvii. 5) ; — that this aspect comes here chiefly 
 into consideration is probable even from the circumstance that, 
 in those passages of the second part which treat of Israel as the 
 servant of God, it is just this aspect which is pre-eminently 
 regarded. Thus it is in chap. xli. 8 : " And thou Israel, my 
 servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham, 
 my friend." To be the servant of God appears here as an 
 honour, as the privilege which was bestowed upon Israel in 
 preference to the Gentiles. On ver. 9 : " Thou, whom I have 
 taken from the ends of the earth, and from her borders called 
 thee, and said unto thee : Thou art my servant, I have chosen 
 thee and not cast thee away," Luther remarks : " The name, 
 ' my servant,' contains the highest consolation, both when we 
 look to Him who speaks, viz.. He who has created everything, 
 and also to him who is addressed, viz., afflicted and forsaken 
 man." In chap. xliv. 1, 2 : " And now hear, Jacob, my 
 servant, and Israel whom I have chosen ; thus saith the Lord 
 that made thee, and formed thee from the womb, who will 
 help thee : Fear not, O Jacob, my servant, and Jcshurun, 
 whom I have chosen," all the designations of God and Israel 
 serve only for an introduction to the exhortation : " Fear not," 
 by lajdng open the necessity which exists for the promise in 
 VOL. II. o 
 
210 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 ver. 3, which, without such ca foundation, would be baseless. 
 The context and the parallelism with "whom I have chosen" 
 show that the designation, "servant of God" in these verses 
 lias no reference to a duty imposed, but to a privilege, a rela- 
 tion which is the pledge of divine aid to Israel. Jeshurun 
 stands as a kind of nomen propHuin, and is not parallel to 
 "nay, but to Jacob. In chap. xliv. 21 : "Remember this, O 
 Jacob, and Israel, for thou art my servant, I have formed thee 
 for a servant to me, Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of me," 
 the n^K " this" refers to the folly of idolatry exhibited in the 
 preceding vei'ses. The duty that Israel should remember this, 
 is founded upon the fact, that he is the servant of the Lord, 
 called by Him to a glorious dignity, to high prerogatives, of 
 which he must not rob himself by apostatizing fi-om Him. It 
 is He who has bestowed upon him this dignity, and He will 
 soon show by deeds, that He cannot forget him, if only his 
 heart does not forget his God. In a similar manner, in chap, 
 xlv. 4, the protecting providence and love of God are looked 
 to. The aspect of the duty and of the service which Israel 
 has to perform to his Lord, is specially pointed out in a single 
 passage only, in chap. xlii. 19; all the other passages place the 
 dignity in the foreground. That, in the designation. Servant 
 of God, in the passage before us, prominence is also given to 
 the dignity, is confirmed by the addition of " whom I uphold," 
 which presents itself as an immediate consequence of the relation 
 of a servant of God, and by the parallel : " mine elect in whom 
 my soul delighteth." — 1»n "to take," "to seize," "to hold," when 
 followed by 3, always signifies to lay hold of, to hold fast, to 
 support. With the words : "Behold my servant whom I uphold," 
 corresponds what the Lord says in John viii. 29 : 6 -ri/x^/ac /jli 
 fjbST s/Mov eariv ovx, aiprix's fLi [lovov 6 llar/ip, on lyu ra apsara. aurw rroiui 
 rrdvrori ; comp. John iii. 2 ; Acts x. 38. The Preterite *nn3 
 is employed, because the communication of the Spirit is the con- 
 dition of his bringing forth right, just as, in ver. 6, the calling 
 is the gi'ound of the preservation. In the whole of the de- 
 scription of the Servant of God, the Future prevails through- 
 out ; the Praeteriturti propheticum is employed only, where 
 something is to be designated, which, relatively, is antecedent ; 
 compare the words : " And the Spirit of the Lord rests upon 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLII. 1. 211 
 
 Him," in chap. xi. 2 ; Ixi. 1 ; Matt. iii. 16 ; John iii. 34. The 
 three passages in Isaiah which speak of the communication of 
 the Spirit to Christ are inseparably connected with one an- 
 other, and, on the whole Old Testament territory, there is no 
 passage exactly parallel to them. The Hiphel of KV must not 
 be explained by " to announce," as some interpreters do ; for 
 in this signification it nowhere occurs ; and according to what 
 follows, and the parallel passages, the Servant of God does not 
 by any means establish right by the mere announcement, but 
 by His holy disposition. But as little can we explain ^''i'ln by 
 " to lead out," in contrast to the circumstance that, under the 
 Old Testament, right was limited to a single nation. For in 
 the parallel passage, chap. li. 4 : " Hearken unto me, my 
 people, and give ear unto me, my congregation, for law shalt 
 proceed from me, and I will set my right for the light of the 
 nations," NV does not mean to go out, but to go forth, i.e., to 
 proceed. In the same way, in Hab. i. 4 : " And not does 
 right go forth for ever," i.e., it never comes forth, is never esta- 
 blished, comp. Vol. i., p. 442, 443. Hence x'^vin here can mean 
 only " to bring to light," " to bring forth." DDJJ'O is, by several 
 interpreters, taken in the signification, " rehgion ;" but it is 
 just ver. 4, by which they support their view, which shows 
 that the ordinary signification " right," must be retained here. 
 For in that verse, right stands in parallelism with law, by 
 which right is established ; comp. chap. li. 4. Before God's 
 Kingdom was, by the Servant of God, extended to the Gentile 
 nations, there existed amoncf them, notwithstanding all the 
 excellence of outward legal arrangements, a condition without 
 right in the higher sense. Right, in its essence, has its root 
 in God, as may be seen from the Ten Commandments, which 
 everywhere go back to God, and in all of which Luther, in 
 his exposition of the ten commandments, rightly rej^eats : 
 " We shall fear and love God." Where, therefore, the living 
 God is not known, there can be no right. The commandment : 
 " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," e.g., has any mean- 
 ing only where the eye is open for the divine image which the 
 neighbour bears, and for the redemption of which he is a fel- 
 low-partaker. The commandment : " Honour thy father and 
 thy mother" will go to the heart only where the divine pater- 
 nity is known, of which all earthly paternity is only an image. 
 
2 1 2 MESSTANlf PREDICTIONS IN THK PROPHETS. 
 
 In Dcut. iv. 5-8, Israel's ha])piness is praised, in that they 
 alone, among all the nations, are in possession of God's laws 
 and connnandments. Those privileges of Israel are, by the 
 Servant of God, to be extended to the Gentiles who, because 
 they are destitute of right, are, in Deut. xxxii. 21, called a 
 foolish nation. In Ps. cxlvii. 19, 20, it is said : " He showeth 
 His word unto Jacob, His statutes and laws unto Israel. He 
 hsus not dealt so with any nation, and law they do not know." 
 'J'his passage touches very closely upon that before us ; like it, it 
 denies right to the Gentiles in general. " The Gentiles, being 
 without God in the world, do not know any right at all. For 
 that which they call so, is only the shadow of that which 
 really deserves this name, is only a dark mixture of right and 
 wrong:." As regards the first table of the Ten Commandments, 
 they grope entirely in the dark ; and with respect to the second 
 table, it is only here and there that they see a faint glimpse 
 of light. — A consequence of the bringing forth of right to the 
 Gentiles is the ceasing of war, as it is described in chap. ii. 4. 
 When right has obtained dominion, it caimot tolerate war 
 beside it ; where there is trne right, there is also peace. The 
 V)enefit which, in the first instance, is confeiTed upon the Gen- 
 tiles, is enjoyed by Israel also : Tlie intention of comforiing 
 and encouraging Israel clearly appears in the parallel passage, 
 cliaj). li. 4. For the right which ol)tains dominion among the 
 Gentiles, is Israel's pride and ornament, so that, along with 
 their God and His right, they obtain also the dominion over 
 the Gentile world, by which they were hitherto kept in bon- 
 dage ; and whensoever and wheresoever the divine right obtains 
 dominion, the violent oppression must cease, under which the 
 ])eople of God had been groaning up to that time. The Ser- 
 vant of God, however, who brings forth right to the Gentiles, 
 foi-ms the contrast to the worldly conqueror, of whom it was 
 said in chap. xli. 25 : " He cometh upon princes as mortar, and, 
 just as the potter treadeth the clay." — The words : " He shall 
 bring forth right," purposely return again in ver. 3 ; and equally 
 intentionally, the words : " He shall found right on the earth," 
 in ver. 4, refer to them. " We have thus" — Stier pertinently 
 rtsmarks — " in ver. ] , the sum and substance, even to its aim. 
 But it is immediately bi'ought more distinctly to view, what 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLII., 1. 213 
 
 will be the spirit and character, the mode of operation, by 
 which this aim is to be brought about." 
 
 Ver. 2 ; " He shall not cry nor lift up, nor cause His voice 
 to he heard in the street!' 
 
 After ^'^'' " he shall lift up," "His voice" must be supplie<l 
 from the context. The words must not be understood in such 
 a manner, as if they stood in opposition to chap. Iviii. 1 : " Cry 
 with thy throat, do not refrain, lift up thy voice like the trum- 
 pet, and show my people their transgression, and to the house 
 of Jacob their sins." The Prophet, in that passage, encourages 
 himself; and he cannot mean to represent that as objection- 
 able, by the circumstance that, in the case of the Servant of 
 God, the very ideal of all the servants of God, he points out 
 and praises the very opposite. And, in like manner, ever}' 
 interpretation is to be avoided according to which " dumb dogs 
 which cannot bark" find a pretext in this passage. Accord- 
 ing to Prov. i. 20 : " Wisdom crieth aloud without, she uttereth 
 her voice in the streets. Just as the prohibition of swear- 
 ing in Matt. v. 34 is qualified by the opposition to Pharisaic 
 levity in cursing and swearing, so here, also, tlie antithesis to 
 the loud manner of the worldly conqueror must be kept in ^ 
 view, — the contrast to his violence which stakes every thing 
 \ipon carrying his own will, which cries and rages when it 
 meets vvith opposition and resistance, (Matt, renders pyv 
 by spissi, " He shall contend"), to the earnestly sought publi- 
 city, to the intention of causing sensation, as it proceeds from 
 vanity or pride. The xpa-jyasu, by which Matthew renders 
 the Nt^*% has nothing in common with the hpa^i which, in John 
 vii. 28, 37, is said of Christ. With the passionate restless- 
 ness, with which the conqueror from the East seeks to carry 
 through his human plans, and to place himself in the centre 
 of the world's history, is here contrasted the inward composui e 
 and deportment of the Servant of God, His equanimity, His 
 freedojiLirojjnexcitement, — all of which are based upon the 
 clear consciousness of His dignity and mission, upon the con- 
 viction of the power of the truth which is of God, of the power 
 of the Spirit which opens up the minds and hearts for it, and 
 which has its source in the declaration : "I put my Spirit 
 upon Him," by which the gTeat wall of separation between 
 Him and the conqueror from the East is set up. It is just 
 
214 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 l)ccau.se of His not being beat upon carr3dng through any 
 thiiio;, because of His (jreat confidence, tliat the Servant of 
 God rjdivs eveiytliiug, and obtains His object of bringing 
 riglit to the nations. — Matt., in chap. xii. 15-21, finds the 
 confirmation of the character here assigned to Christ in two 
 circumstances : — -firsf, in His not entering into a violent dis- 
 pute with the Pharisees opposing Him (0/ dk (papieaihi evfL^oh'/.m 
 'iXa^ov xar avrov s^i7.06vTsg, oTug aurov ocroXsauffiv), in His not excit- 
 inf; ag-ainst them the masses who were devoted to Him, but 
 in withdrawing from them (6 de 'ijjffoDg yvoug anyj^priGiv iXiTkv, 
 ver. 1 5), being convinced that the cause was not His but God's, 
 and that there was no reason for getting angry with those who 
 were contending against God ; just as David said of Shimei : 
 " Let him ci^rse, because the Lord has said unto him, Curse 
 David." — Secoiully, in the circumstance that instead of availing 
 himself of the excitementof the aroused masses, He charged them 
 that they should not make known His miraculous deeds {y.cci 
 I'Trsri/j.Tiaiv airoTg ha [i,'}\ <panif>h\i aurov rroir^aotidiv, ver. 1 6), being con- 
 vinced that He did not need to seek to draw attention to him- 
 self, but that, by the secret and hidden power of God, His 
 work would be accomplished. 
 
 Ver. 3. " Tlie bent reed shall He not break, and the dimly 
 bvrninc) wich shall He not quench ; in tmth shall He bvimj 
 forfh right" 
 
 Here, too, the antithesis to the worldly conqueror who, 
 without mercy, " Cometh upon princes as mortar, and as a 
 potter treadeth the clay" (chap. xli. 25), whose mind is bent 
 only upon destroying and cutting off" nations not a few (chap. 
 X 7), who does not give rest until he has fully cast down tt> 
 the ground the broken power. The Servant of God, far from 
 breaking the bent reed, shall, on the contrary — this is the posi- 
 tive op])oscd to the negative — care for, and assist the wretched 
 with tender love. Just thereby does He accomplish the object 
 of His efforts. The confirmation of the character here assigned 
 to Christ is, by Matthew, found in His healing the sick (xa/ 
 idipd'jiueiv a-jToiig itasirac, ver. 1 5), as prefiguring all that which 
 He," who has declared the object of His coming to be to seek 
 all that which was lost, did and accomplished, in general, for 
 the^misery of the human race. There cannot be any doubt that 
 the bent reed and the dimly burning wick are figurative desig- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP, XLII, 3. 215 
 
 nations of those who, beaten down by sufferings, feel them- 
 selves to be poor and miserable. These the weary and heavy 
 laden, the Servant of God will not drive to despair by severity, 
 but comfort and refresh by tender love. His conduct towards 
 them is that of a Saviour. As a bent reed, p^n njp, Pharaoh 
 appears on account of his broken powei*, in chap, xxxvi. 6, 
 and in chap. Iviii. 6, the D''Vlvn are the oppressed. The fact, 
 that the wick dimly burning and near to being extinguished is 
 an image of exhausted streng-th, is shown by chap, xliii. 1 7, 
 where, in reference to the Egyptians carried away by the 
 judgment, it is said : " They are extinct, they are quenched 
 like a wick." In the parallel passages which treat of the Ser- 
 vant of God, the tveai'y in chap. 1. 4, and the broken-hearted 
 in chap. Ixi. 1 , correspond to it. Elsewhere, too, the wretched 
 appear as objects of the loving providence of the Saviour. 
 Thus, in chap. xi. 4 : " And He judges in righteousness^' t h e 
 low ;" in Ps. Ixxii. 4 : " He shall judge the poor of the people ; 
 He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in 
 pieces the oppressor ;" and in vers. 1 2-1 4 : " For He delivereth 
 the needy when he crieth, and the miserable, and him that 
 hath no deliverer. From oppression and violence He delivereth 
 their soul, and precious is their blood in His sight." Just as, 
 in the passage before us, the bringing forth of right appears 
 as a consequence of the loving providence for the bent reed, 
 and the dimly burning wick, so in that Psalm, the great fact : 
 " And all the kings worship Him, and all the nations serve 
 Him," is traced back to the tender love with which He cares 
 for and helps the poor and needy. In the Sermon on the 
 Mount, the beatitude of the ttuxoI, Matt. v. 3, of the -ra- 
 hwTsc, ver. 4, and in Matt. xi. 28, the invitation of the Tto^iuvnc 
 Kai Te^opriffpbhoi, exactly correspond. The wicked and ungodl}^ 
 upon whom the judgments of God have been inflicted, are not 
 included, because they are not wretched in the full sense ; for 
 they harden themselves against the suffering, or seek to divert 
 themselves in it ; they do not take it fully to heart. The ru; 
 ^vvj/Mccri, " in their consciousness," which in Matthew is added 
 to the simple 'tttco^oi, which alone we find in Luke, must be 
 understood as a matter of course. He only is poor in the full 
 een§e^(^ho feels and takes J;i3.1ieart_^hiS-,..pDverty. According 
 to an interpretation widely spread, repenting sinners are desig- 
 
216 MESSIANIC TREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 nated by the bent reed, and dindy burning wick. Thus Luther 
 writes : " That means that the wounded conscience, those who 
 are ten'ified at the sight of their sins, the weak in life and 
 faith are not cast away by Him, are not oppressed and con- 
 demned, but that He cares for them, tends and nurses them, 
 makes them whole and embraces them with love." But re- 
 penting sinners do not here come into consideration per se, but 
 only as one species of the wretched, inasmuch as, according to 
 Luther's expression, truly to feel sin is a torment beyond all 
 torments. — The last words : " In truth sliall He bring forth 
 right" again take up the close of ver. 1 , after the means have 
 been stated, in the intervening words, by which He is to bring 
 about the result. The njoah must not. be translated : " For 
 truth" (LXX : slg dXri^siav) ; fjr there is a thorough difference 
 between f) and ha ; the former does not, like the latter, designate 
 the motion towards some object, but is rather, here also, a pre- 
 position signif_ying "belonging to;" hence n^ah means " belong- 
 ing to truth," " in a true manner," " in truth." By every other 
 mode of dealing, right would be established in appearance and 
 ouhbxtrdly only. Matthew renders it : ews civ ex(3d7.r] dg mT-koz 
 rrjv y.piaiv, " until He has led right to victory." By the addi- 
 tion of sw; he intimates, that the last words state the result 
 which is brought about by the conduct of the Servant of God 
 described in the preceding words. Elg vhtog is a free transla- 
 tion of riDX^ ; Ttpioig is "right," as in chap, xxiii. 23. — How 
 objectionable and untenable all the non-Messianic explanations 
 are, appears very clearly in this verse. If Israel were the 
 Servant of God, then the Genf'de ivorld must be represented 
 by the bent reed and dimly burning wick. But in that case, 
 we must have recourse to such arbitrary interpretations as, 
 e.g., that given by Kosfer: " The weak foith and imperfect 
 knowledge of the Gentiles." No weak faith, no imperfect 
 knowledge, however, is spoken of; but the Servant of God 
 appears as a Saviour of the })Oor and afflicted, of those broken 
 by sufferings. Those who, by the Servant of God, understand 
 the better portion of the people, or the prophetic order, speak 
 of " the meek s])irit of the mode of teaching, which does not 
 by any mejins altogether crush the sinner already brought low, 
 but, in a gentle, affectionate manner, raises him up," {U'm.hreit) ; 
 or say with Kuohd : "These poor and afflicted He does not 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLII. 4. 21 7 
 
 humble still more by hard, depressing words, but speaks to 
 them in a comforting and encouraging way, raising them up 
 and strengthening them." But in this explanation everything 
 is, "without reason, drawn into the territory of speech, while 
 Matthew rightly sees, in the healing of the sick by Christ, a 
 confirmation by deeds of the prophecy before us. In chap. Ixi., 
 also, the Servant of God does not only bring glad tidings, but 
 creates, at the same time, the blessings announced. According 
 to chap, Ixi. 3, He gives to them that mourn in Zion beauty 
 for ashes, joy for mourning, garment of praise for a weak 
 (nna) spirit. Verse 6 of the chapter before us most clearly 
 indicates how little we are allowed to limit ourselves to mere 
 speaking ; for, according to that verse, the Servant of God is 
 himself the covenant of the people, and the light of the 
 Gentiles, and according to ver. 7, He opens the eyes of the 
 blind, &c. 
 
 Ver. 4. "He shall not fail nor run away until He shall 
 have founded right in the earth, and for His latv the isles{ 
 shall wait." 
 
 On : " He shall not fail," properly, " He shall not become 
 dim," comp. Deut. xxxiv. 7, where it is said of Moses, the ser- 
 vant of God : " His eye had not become dim, nor had his 
 strength fled." The p-i"i x^ " He shall not run away" (properly, 
 " He shall not run") is qualified and fixed by the parallelism 
 with nny ah " He shall not fail." yn in other passages also, 
 several times receives, by the context, the qualified signifi- 
 cation " to run away," " to take to flight," " to flee ;" comp. 
 Judges viii. 21 ; Jer. xlix. 1 9. The words : " He shall not fail 
 nor run away" imply that, in the carrying out of His vocation, 
 the Servant of God shall meet with powerful obstacles, with 
 obstinate enemies, and shall have to endure severe sufferings. 
 That which is here merely liinted at, is carried out and de- 
 tailed in chap, xlix., 1., liii. How near He was to failing and 
 running away (David, too, was obliged to say: "Oh! that 1 
 had wings like a dove, then would I fly away and be at rest") 
 is seen from His utterance in Matt. xvii. 1 7 : <2 yina, a-Tncroi 
 
 '/.at htiCTpaiJjijjivri, 'zug -roVs iSoiMcii {j^iS' v/j^c/jV, iug iruri dvi^o/j^ai vfcojv. 
 
 According to the current opinion, pT* is here assumed to be 
 the Future of |*vn, for p^, and that in the appropriate signifiw 
 cation : " He shall not be broken." (Thus it was probably 
 
21 8 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 viewed- by the Chaldean Paraphrast who renders ''k^'' i6 iion 
 laborabit ; by the LXX., who translate o-l dpa-odcriairat, while 
 A quila and Synimachus, according to the account of Jerome, 
 render, non curvet, thus following the derivation from pi). 
 As nna^ points back to hhd in the preceding vei-se, so, in that 
 case pi"" would point back to pn " He shall not break that 
 which is bent, nor quench that which is dimly burning ; but 
 neither shall He himself be broken or quenched." But this 
 explanation is opposed by the circumstance, that we must 
 make up our minds to admit a double anomaly. The temtories 
 of the two verbs Y)n and pi are everywhere else kept distinct, 
 and the former everywhere else means " to break," and not " to 
 be broken." In the only ])a.ssage, Eccl. xii. 6, brought forward 
 in support of this irregularity, p"i "to run," "to flee away," 
 being in parallelism with pm: " to be removed," is quite appro- 
 priate ; just as in the second clause of that verse p"i " to be 
 crushed," is in pai-allelism with laK'a " to be broken." — D''^K are, 
 in the usus loquendi of Isaiah, not so much the real islands, as 
 rather the islands in the sea of the world, the countries and king- 
 doms ; compare remarks on Rev. vi. 1 4, and Ps. xcvii. 1 (second 
 Edition). The law for which the islands wait is not so much 
 a ready-made code of laws, as the single decisions of the living 
 Lawgiver, which the Gentiles, with anxious desire, shall receive 
 as their rale in all circumstances, after they have spontaneously 
 submitted to the dominion of the Servant of God, having been 
 attracted by His loving dispensations. Several unphilologi- 
 cally translate : " for His doctrine," which does not even give 
 a good sense, for it is not the doctrine which is waited for ; 
 its value is known only after it has been preached. The Ser- 
 vant of God appears here as the spiritual Ruler of the nations ; 
 and this He becomes by being, in the fullest sense, the Servant 
 of God, so that His will is not different from the will of God, 
 nor rnin from that of God, just as, in a lower territoiy, even 
 Asaph speaks the bold word : " Hear, my people, my law." " The 
 singer comes forth as one who has full authority, the " Seer" 
 and " Prophet' utter laws which leave no alternative between 
 Salvation and destruction." Parallel is chap. ii. 3, 4, where 
 the nations go up to Zion, in order there to seek laws for the 
 reo-ulation of their practical conduct, and according to which 
 the Lord judges among the nations, and the law goes fortli 
 
ISATAH, CHAPS. XLII. 5. 219 
 
 out of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Tlie 
 difierence is this only, — that, in that passage, the matter is 
 traced back immediately to God, while here, the Servant of 
 God is mentioned as the Mediator between Him and the Gen- 
 tiles. But we must keep in mind that, for chap. ii. also, the 
 parallel passages in chap, iv., ix., xi., furnish the supplement. 
 We must, farther, compare also chap. li. 5 : " My righteous- 
 ness is near, my salvation goes forth, m.ine arms shall judge 
 the nations, the isles shall wait for me, and on mine arm shall 
 they hope." The judging in that passage does not mean divine 
 punitive judgments ; but it is rather thereby intimated that 
 all the nations shall recognise the Lord as their King, to whose 
 government they willingly submit, and with whom they seek 
 the decision of their disputes. Matthew purposely changes it 
 into : " And in His name shall the Gentiles trust." The de- 
 sire for the commands of the Lord is an effect of the love of 
 His name, i.e., of Him who is glorified by His deeds. For 
 the name is the product of deeds, — here especially of those 
 designated in ver. 2 and 3. The commands are desired and 
 longed for, only because the person is beloved on account of 
 His deeds. Matthew has only distinctly brought out that 
 which, in the original text, is intimated by the connection 
 with the preceding verses. In consequence of this, His quiet, 
 just, and merciful dispensation, the isles shall wait for His 
 law. 
 
 In ver. 5-7 the Lord addresses His Servant, and promises 
 Him that, by His omnipotence, the great work for which He 
 has called Him, shall be carried out and accomplished, viz., 
 that the covenant relation to Israel shall be fully realized, and 
 the darkness of the Gentile world shall be changed into light. 
 
 Ver. 5. " Thus saith God the Lord, who createth ihe heavens 
 and stretcheth them out ; who spreadeth forth the earth and 
 that which cometh out of it ; who giveth breath unto the people 
 upon it, and spirit to thera that walk thereon" 
 
 The Prophet directs attention to the omnipotence of God, in 
 order to give a firm support to faith in the promise which 
 exceeds all human conception. It is by this that the accumu- 
 lation of the predicates is to be accounted for. He who fully 
 realizes what a great thing it is to bring an apostate world 
 back to God, to that God who has become a stranger to it, 
 
220 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 will surely not explain this accumulation by a " disposition, 
 on the part of the Pro])het, to diffuseness." 
 
 Ver. (S. " I the Lord have called thee in righteoum-ess, and 
 I will seize thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for 
 the covenant of the people and, for tJie Light of the Gentiles." 
 
 It is so obvious that pnva must be translated by " in righte- 
 ousness," that the explanations which disagree with it do not 
 deserve to be even mentioned. The mission of the Servant of 
 God has its root in the divine righteousness, which gives to 
 every one his due, — to the covenant-people, salvation. Even 
 apart from the promise, the appearance of Christ rests on the 
 righteousness of God. For it is in opposition to the nature 
 and character of a peoj-tle of God to be, for any length of time, in 
 misery, and shut up to one corner of the earth. That which is 
 to be accomj)lished for Israel by the Servant of God, forms, in 
 the sequel, the first subject of discourse. But even that which 
 He affords to the Gentiles is, at the same time, given to Israel, 
 inasmuch as it is one of their prerogatives that salvation for 
 the Gentiles should go forth from them. As, here, the mission 
 of the Servant of God, so, in chap. xlv. 1 8, the appearance of 
 the lower deliverer appears as the work of divine righteous- 
 ness : " I have raised him up in righteousness, and all his ways 
 I will make straight." Similarly also in chap. xli. 2 : " Who 
 raised up from the East him whom righteousness calls wher- 
 ever he goes," i.e., him, all whose steps are determined by 
 God's righteousne.ss, who, in all his undertakings, is guided by 
 it. — The seizing by the hand, the keej^ing, &c., are the conse- 
 (juence of His being called, and are equivalent to : just be- 
 cause I have called him, therefore will I, &c. Luther remarks: 
 " Namely, for this reason, that Satan and the world, with all 
 their might and wisdom, will resist thy work." In the words: 
 " For the Covenant of the people, and for the Light of the 
 Gentiles," oy and D''1J form an antithesis. The absence of the 
 article shows that we ought properly to translate : " For a 
 Covenant of a people, for a Light of Gentiles." It is thus, in 
 the first instance, only said that the Servant of God should be 
 the personal covenant for a people ; but what people that 
 should be, cannot admit of a moment's doubt. To Israel, as 
 such, the name of the people pre-eminently belongs. Israel, 
 in preference to all others, is called oy (compare Gescnius. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. XLII. 6. 221 
 
 Thesanrns s.v. iij), because it is only the people of God that is 
 a people in the full sense, connected by an internal unity ; 
 the Gentiles are DJ? ah, non-people, according to Dent, xxxii. 
 21, because they lack the only real tie of unity. But what 
 is still more decisive is the mention of the Covenant. The 
 covenant can belong to the covenant-people only, Siv a'l diu- 
 9r,7Mi, Rom, ix. 4, — the old, no less than the new one. The 
 covenant with Abraham is an everlasting covenant of absolute 
 exclusiveness, Gen. xvii. 7. The Servant of God is called the 
 personal and embodied Covenant, because in His appearance 
 the covenant made with Israel is to find its full truth ; and 
 every thing implied in the very idea of a covenant, all the 
 promises flowing from this idea, are to be in Him, Yea and 
 Amen. The Servant of God is hei-e called the Covenant of 
 Israel, just in the same manner as in Mic. v. 4 (comp. Ephes. 
 ii. 1 4), it is said of Him : " This (man) is Peace," because 
 in Him, peace, as it were, represents itself personally ; — 
 just as in chap. xUx. 6, He is called the Salvation of God, 
 because this salvation becomes personal in Him, the Saviour, — 
 just as in Gen. xvii. 10,1 3, circumcision is called a cove- 
 nant, as being the embodied covenant, — just as in Luke 
 xxii. 20, the cup, the blood of Christ, is called the New 
 Covenant, because in it it has its root. The explanation : 
 Mediator of the, covenant, diad'/jxric syyjog, is meagre, and 
 weakens the meaning. The circumstance that the Servant of 
 God is, without farther qualification, called the Covenant of the 
 people, shows that He stands in a different relation to the 
 covenant from that of Moses, to whom the name of the Mediator 
 of the covenant does not the less belong than to Him. From 
 Jer. xxxi. 31, we learn which are the blessings and gifts 
 which the Servant of God is to bestow, and by which He re- 
 presents himself as the personal Covenant. They are concen- 
 trated in the closest connection to be established by Him 
 between God and His people : " I will be their God, and they 
 shall be my people." It is only in the New Covenant, de- 
 scribed in that passage of Jeremiah, that the Old Covenant 
 attains to its truth. The second destination of the Servant 
 of God, which, according to the context, here comes into 
 special consideration, is, to be the Light of the Gentiles. By 
 the realization of this destination, an important feature in 
 
222 MKSSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the former was, at the same time, realized. For it formed 
 part of tlie promi.ses of the covenant with Israel that, from 
 the midst of tliem, salvation for all the families of the earth 
 should <jjo forth, as our Saviour says: ^ e'jjrripia sx ruv 'lovdaluv ssriv. 
 Light is here, acconling to the common usus loqiiendi of 
 Scripture, a figurative designation of salvation. In tlie parallel 
 passage, chap. xlix. G, light is at once explained by salvation. 
 The designati(jn j)roceeds upon the supposition that the Gen- 
 tiles, not less tlian Israel, (comp. chap. ix. 1 [2]) shall, until 
 the appearance of the Servant of God, sit in darkness and in 
 the shadow of death, — that tliey are in misery, although, in 
 Bome instances, it may be a brilliant misery. The following 
 verse farther carries out and declares what is implied in the 
 promise : " Light of the Gentiles." Parallel is chap. Ix. 3 : 
 " And the heathen walk in thy (Zion's) light" — they become 
 ])artakors of the salvation which shines for Zion — " and kings 
 in the brightness which riseth to thee." — The supporters of that 
 opinion, which understands Israel by the Sei-vant of God, are in 
 no smaU difficulty regarding this verse, and cannot even agree 
 as to the means of escape from that difficulty. Several assume 
 that Dj; is used collectively, and refer it to the Gentile nations. 
 But opposed to this explanation is the evident antithesis of Dy 
 and D^U ; and it is entirely overthrown by the parallel passage 
 in chap. xlix. Scripture knows nothing of a covenant with 
 the Gentiles. According to the view of the Old, as well as of 
 the New Testament, the Gentiles are received into the com- 
 munion of the covenant with Israel. Others {Hitzig, Etoald) 
 explain: "covenant-people, i.e., a mediatorial, connecting people, 
 a bond of union between God and the nations." But the 
 ])assage, chap. xlix. 8, is most decidedly opposed to this. 
 Farther — The parallelism with WM "lis shows that DJ? nna is 
 the fitatu.s coihstructns. But foidus alicujiis, is, according to 
 the remark of Gesenius, fcedus cutyi aliquo sancitum. Thus 
 in Lev. xxvi. 45, the covenant of the ancestors is the covenant 
 entered into with the ancestors; Deut. iv. 31 ; Lev. xxvi. 42 
 (the covenant of Jacob, the covenant of Isaac, «fcc.) AccorcUng 
 to Knohel: "the true theocrats are to become a covenant of 
 the people, the restorers of the Israelitish Theocracy, they 
 tliemselves having connection and unitj"^ by faithfully holding 
 fast by Jehovah, and by representing His cause." This ex- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLII. 7. 223 
 
 planation, also, is opposed to the ^tsus loquendi, accordino- to 
 which " covenant of the people" can have the sense only of 
 " covenant with the people," not a covenant among the people. 
 And, farther, the parallel passage in chap. xlix. 8 is opposed 
 to this interpretation also, inasmuch as, in that passage, the 
 Servant of the Lord is called Dy n''"i3, not on account of what 
 He is in himself, but on account of the influence which He 
 exercises upon others, upon the whole of the people: "That 
 thou mayest raise up the land, distribute desolate heritages, 
 that thou mayest say to the prisoners : Go forth," &c. In that 
 passage the land, the desolate heritages, the prisoners, &c., 
 evidently correspond to the people. Finally — A covenant is 
 a relation between two parties standing opposite one another. 
 " The word is used, says Gesenius, " of a covenant formed be- 
 tween nations, between private persons, e.g., David and Jona- 
 than, between Jehovah and the people of Israel." But here 
 no parties are mentioned to be united by the covenant. 
 
 Ver. 7. " That thou mayest open blind eyes, bring out them 
 that are bound from the prison, and fror)i the house of con- 
 Jinement them that sit in darhnessP 
 
 On account of the connection with the " for the Liffht -of 
 the Gentiles," which would stand too much isolated, if, in the 
 words immediately following, Israel alone were again the sub- 
 ject of discourse, the activity of God here mentioned refers, 
 in the first instance, to the Gentiles; and the words: "them 
 that sit-in darkness," moreover, evidently point back to "for 
 the Light of the Gentiles." But from chap. xlix. 9, and also 
 from ver. 16 of the chapter before us, where the blindness of 
 Israel is mentioned, it appears that Israel too must not be ex- 
 cluded. Hence, we shall say: It is here more particularly 
 described how the Servant of God proves himself as the Cove- 
 nant of the people and the Light of the Gentiles, how He puts 
 an end to the misery under which both equally gi'oan. It will 
 be better to understand blindness, in connection with imprison- 
 ment, sitting in darkness, as a designation of the need of sal- 
 vation, than as a designation of spiritual blindness, of the want 
 of the light of knowledge. That is also suggested by the 
 preceding: "for the Light of the Gentiles," which, according 
 to the common usus loquendi, and according to chap. ix. 1 (2) 
 is not to be referred to the spiritual illumination especially, 
 
:224< MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 l)ut to the bestowal of salvation. To this view we are like- 
 wise led by a comparison of ver. 10: " And I will lead the' 
 blind by a way that they knew not, I will lead them in paths 
 that they have not known, I will change the darkness before 
 them into light, the crooked things into straightness." The 
 blind in this verse are those who do not know what to do, 
 and how to help themselves, those who cannot find the way 
 of salvation, the miserable; they are to be led by the Lord on 
 the ways of salvation, which are unknown to them. In a 
 similar sense and connection, the blind are, elsewhere also, 
 spoken of, comp. Remarks on Ps. cxlv. 8. — On the words: 
 " Bring out them that are bound from the prison," Knobel 
 remarks: "The citizens of Judah were, to a gi-eat extent, im- 
 prisoned; the Prophet hopes for their deliverance by the theo- 
 cratic portion of the people." A strange hope ! By this 
 coarsely literal interpretation, the connection with " for the 
 Light of the Gentiles" is broken up; and this is the less ad- 
 missible that the words at the close of the verse: " those that 
 sit in darkness," so clearly refer to it. Iwiwison7)ient is a 
 figurative designation of the minerahle condition, not less than, 
 the darkness, which, on account of the light contrasted with 
 it, and on account of chap. ix. 1 (2), cannot be understood 
 otherwise than figuratively. Under the image of men bound 
 in dark prisons, the miserable and afflicted appear also in Ps. 
 cvii. 10-lG; Job xxxvi. 8, where the words, "bound in fet- 
 ters," are explained by the parallel "holden in the cords of 
 misery." When David, in Ps. cxlii. 8, prays: "Biing my soul 
 out of the prison," he himself explains this in Ps. cxliii. 11 by 
 the parallel : " Thou wilt bring my soul out of trouble;" comp. 
 also Ps. XXV. 17: " O bring thou me out of my distresses." If 
 we here understand the prison literally, we might, with the 
 same propriety in other passages, also, e.g., in Ps. Ixvi. 11, 
 understand literally the net, the snare, the trap. 
 
 Ver. 8 : "I the Lord, that is my name, and my honour I 
 vjill not give to another, nor my glory to idols. Ver. 9. The 
 former (things), behold, they came to pass, and new (things) 
 do I declare; before they spring forth, I cause you to Jwar." 
 
 We have here the solemn close and exhortation. At the 
 close of chap, xli. it had been pointed out, how the prediction 
 of the Conqueror from tlie East serves for the glory of Jehovah, 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLII. 8. 225 
 
 who thereby proves himself to be the only true God. Here 
 the zeal of God for His glory is indicated as the reason 
 which has brought forth the prediction of the Servant of God 
 and His glorious work, — a prediction which cannot be ac- 
 counted for from natural causes. It is thus the object of the 
 prophecy which is here, in the first instance, stated. It is 
 intended to manifest the true God as such, as a God who is 
 zealously bent on His glory. But the same attribute of God 
 which called forth the prophecy, calls forth also the events 
 prophesied, viz., the appearance of the Servant of God, and 
 the victory over the idols accomplished thereby, the bringing 
 forth of the law of God over the whole earth through Him, 
 and the full realization of the covenant with Israel. The 
 thought is this : — that a God who does not manifest and prove 
 himself as such, who is contented with the honour granted to 
 Him without His interference, cannot be a God ; that the true 
 God must of necessity be filled with the desire of absolute, 
 exclusive dominion, and cannot but manifest and prove this 
 desire. From this thought, the prophecy and that which 
 it promises flow with a like necessity. — According to Stier, 
 jy\i^ir\, " the former (things)" means " the redemption of 
 the exiled by Cyrus," which in chaps, xli. xlviii. forms the 
 historico-typical foreground, whose coming is here antici- 
 pated by the Propliet. But the parallel passages, chaps, 
 xli. 22, xliii. 9, xlviii. 3, are conclusive against this view ; 
 for, according to these passages, it is only the former 
 already fulfilled predictions of the Prophet and his col- 
 leagues, from the beginnings of the people, which can be 
 designated by " the former (things)." By " the new (things)" 
 therefore, is to be understood the aggregate of the events which 
 are predicted in the second part, to which belongs the prophecy 
 of the Servant of God which immediately precedes, and which 
 the Prophet has here as pre-eminently in view (Michaelis: et 
 nova, imprimis de Messia), as, in the parallel passage chap. xli. 
 22, the announcement of the conqueror from the East. Both 
 of these verses seem to round off" our pi'ophecy, by indicating 
 that such disclosures regarding the Future are not by any 
 means intended to serve for the gi^atification of idle curiosity, 
 but to advance the same object to which the events prophesied 
 are also subservient, viz., the promotion of God's glory. The 
 VOL. II. p 
 
'2-2C) MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 modern view of Prophetisin is irreconcileable with the vei"ses 
 under consideration, which evidently shew, that the prophets 
 themselves were filled with a different consciousness . of their 
 mission and })ositioa And in like manner it follows from 
 them, that there is no reason to put, by means of a forced inter- 
 pretation, the pr<jphecy within the horizon of the Prophet's time, 
 seeinf^ that the Prophet himself shows himself to be thoroughly 
 penetrated by its altogether supernatural character. 
 
 CHAPTEK XLIX. 1-0. 
 
 The Servant of God, with whose person the Prophet had. 
 l)y way of preparation, already made us acquainted in the 
 first book of the second part, in chap, xlii., is here, at the be- 
 ginning of the second book, at once introduced as speaking, 
 surprising, as it were, the readers. In ver. 1-3, we have the 
 destination and high caDing which the Lord assigned to His 
 Servant ; in ver. 4, the contrast and contradiction of the re- 
 sult of this mission ; the covenant-people, to whom it is, in 
 the first instance, directed, reward with ingratitude His faith- 
 ful work. In ver. 5 and 6, we are told what God does in 
 order to maintain the dignity of His Servant ; as a compen- 
 sation for obstinate, rebelUous Israel, He gives Him the Geti- 
 tiles for an inheritance. From ver. 7 the Prophet takes the 
 word. In ver. 7 the original contempt which, according to 
 the preceding verses, the Servant of God meets with, especially 
 in Israel, is contrasted with the respectful worship of nations 
 and kings which is to follow after it. Ver. 8 and 9 describe 
 how the Servant of God proves himself to be the embodied 
 covenant of the people, and form the transition to a general 
 description of tlie enjoyment of salvation, which, in the Mes- 
 sianic times, shall be bestowed upon the Congregation of the 
 Lord. This description goes on to chap. 1. 3, and then, in 
 cliap. 1. 4 ff., the person of the Servant of the Lord is anew 
 brought before us. 
 
 The Messianic explanation of our passage is already met 
 with in the New Testament. It is with reference to it that 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLIX. 1-9. 227 
 
 Simeon, in Luke ii. 30, 31, designates the Saviour as the 
 auTTipiov of God, which He had prepared before the face of all 
 people (comp. ver. 6 of our passage : " That thou mayest be 
 my salvation unto the end of the earth"), as the <pug sis aitmu.- 
 Xv4'/v U\m %a\ So^av XaoD dw 'laparjX ; comp. again ver. 6, accord- 
 ing to which the Servant of God is to be at the same time, 
 the light of the Gentiles, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and 
 to restore the preserved of Israel. Ver. 1 : " The Lord hath 
 called me from the womb, from the bowels of my mother hath 
 He made mention of my name," is alluded to in Luke ii. 21 : 
 Kai iTikrj&ri to moiia. auroij 'irjSoug, to xXrj9'iv v'tto tov dyy'sXov "Trpd rou 
 a\j'KXri<p&rivai aurov sv rfj xoihia (comp. i. 31 : GuKkri-^Ti sv yadrpi xai 
 TsBfl^iov zai KaXsSiig rhovofia avrou 'Irjffovv) as is sufficiently evident 
 from h rfj KoiX/asc. rtiatris, which exactly answers to the p2D 
 in the passage before us. In Acts xiii. 46, 47, Paul and Bar- 
 nabas prove, from the passage under review, the destination 
 of Christ to be the Saviour of the Gentiles, and their right to 
 offer to them the salvation despised and rejected by the Jews : 
 !6oi) erpsipo/Msda ug ra sSvri' ourw yap hrsraXrai rifju/v 6 Kvpiog' rsSetxd 
 ce iig (poug s9vuv rod iiva! a sjg ffurrjpiav sug ie-^drov rrig yrig. In the 
 destination which, in Isaiah, the Lord assigns to Christ, Paul 
 and Barnabas recognize an indirect command for his disciples, 
 a rule for their conduct. In 2 Cor. vi. 1, 2, ver. 8 is quoted, 
 and referred to the Messianic time. 
 
 It is obvious that the Jews could not be favourable to the 
 Messianic interpretation ; but the Christian Church has held 
 fast by it for nearly 1800 years. Even such interpreters as 
 Theodoret and Clericus, who are everywhere rather disposed 
 to explain away real Messianic references, than to find the 
 Messiah where He is not presented, consider the Messianic 
 interpretation to be, in this place, beyond all doubt. The 
 former says : " This was said with a view to the Lord Christ, 
 who is the seed of Abraham, through whom the nations re- 
 ceived the promise." And when, in our century, men returned 
 to the faith, the Messianic interpretation also returned. If 
 the Church has Christ at all, it is impossible that she should 
 fail to find Him here. 
 
 Gesenius, and those who have followed him, appeal to the 
 circumstance, that the Messiah could not well be introduced as 
 speaking, and, least of all, in such a manner, without any in- 
 
228 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 tioduction and preparation. But it is difficult to see how tliis 
 argument can be advanced by those who themselves assume 
 that a mere personification, the collective body of the prophets, 
 or, as B<rh expresses it, the Pi'()])het y.ar i^oyjjv as a general 
 substantial individual, or even the people, can be introduced 
 i\n speaking. The introduction of persons is a necessary result 
 of the dramatic character of prophetic S[)eech, comp., (?.^., chap, 
 xiv., where now the king of Babylon, tlien the inhabitants of 
 the Sheol, and again Jehovah, are introduced as speaking. 
 The person who is here intn^duced as speaking is already known 
 from chap, xlii., where he is sjyoJcen of. The prophecy before 
 us stands to that prophecy in the very same relation as does 
 Ps. ii. 7-9, where the Anointed One suddenly appears as 
 s[)eaking, to the preceding verses, where He was spoken of 
 The Messiah is here so distinctly described, jis to His nature 
 and character, that it is impossible not to recognise Him. 
 Who but He should be the Covenant of the people, the Light 
 of the Gentiles, the Saviour for all the ends of the earth ? The 
 point which was here concerned was not, first to introduce 
 Him to the knowledge of the people. His image existed there 
 already in shai-p outlines, even from and since Gen. xlix. 10, 
 where the Peaceful One meets us, in whom Judah attains to 
 the full height of his destination, and to whom the people 
 adhere. The circumstance that it is just here that the Mes- 
 siah appears as speaking, forms the most apy^ropriate introduc- 
 tion to the second book, in which He is the principal figure. — 
 It is by a false literal interpretation only that ver. 8, 9 have 
 l)oen advanced in opposition to the Messianic interpretation. 
 
 llie arbitrariness of the non-Messianic interpretation mani- 
 fests itself in this also, that its supporters can, up to this day, 
 not agree as to the subject of the ])rophec3^ 1. According to 
 several interpreters — Hitzirj, last of all — the Servant of God 
 is to be Israel, and the idea this, that Israel would, at some 
 future period, be the teacher of the Gentiles, and would spread 
 the true religion on earth. It is apparently only that this 
 interpretation receives some countenance from ver. 3, where 
 the Servant of the Lord is called Israel. For this name does 
 not there stand as an ordinary iwrtien proprium, but as an 
 honorary name, to designate the high dignity and destination 
 of the Servant of Ciod. As this name had passed over from 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLIX. 1-9. ' 229 
 
 an individual to a people, so it may again be transfeiTed 
 from the people to that person in whom the people attain 
 their destination, in which, up to that time, they had failed 
 But decisive against this explanation, which makes the whole 
 people the subject, is ver. 5, according to which the Servant 
 of God is destined to lead back to the Lord, Jacob and Israel 
 (in the ordinary sense), who then must be different from Him . 
 ver. 6, according to which He is to raise up the tribes of 
 Jacob ; ver. 8, 9, according to which He is to be the Covenant 
 of the people, to deliver the prisoners, &c. {Knohel remarks 
 on this verse : " Nothing is clearer than that the Servant of 
 God is not identical with the mass of the people, but is some- 
 thing different.") Supposing even that the people, destined 
 to be the teachers of the Gentiles, appear here as speaking, it 
 is difficult to see how, in ver. 4, they could say that hitherto 
 they had laboured in vain in their vocation, and seen no fruits, 
 since hitherto the people had made no attempt at all at the 
 conversion of the Gentiles. 2. Maurer, Knohel, and others, 
 endeavour to explain it of the better portion of the people. 
 But conclusive against this interpretation is ver. 6, accord- 
 ins to which the Servant of God has the destination of restca- 
 ing the preserved of Israel, and hence must be distinct from 
 the better portion ; ver. 8, according to which He is given 
 for a Covenant of the people, from which, according to ver. 
 4 and 6, the ungodly are excluded ; so that the idea of the 
 f)eople is identical with that of the better portion. In general, 
 the contrasting of the better portion of the people with the 
 whole people, Jacob and Israel, the centre and substance <>f 
 which was formed just by the s-A\oyr,, can scarcely be thought of, 
 and is without any analogy. Nor is the mention of the immh. 
 and bowels of the motJtsr, in ver. 1 , reconcileable with a merely 
 imaginaiy person, and that, moreover, a person of a character 
 so indistinct and indefinite, — a character which has no de- 
 finite and palpable historical beginnings. The parallel pas- 
 sages, in which the calling from the womb is mentioned, treat 
 of real persons, of individuals. — 8. According to several inter- 
 preters {Jarchi, Kimchi, Abenezra, Grotkts, Steudel, Umbreit, 
 Hofmann), the Servant of the Lord is to be none other than 
 the Prophet himself. No argument has been adduced in favour 
 of this view, except the use of the first person, (" If here, with- 
 out introduction and preparation, a discourse begins with the first 
 
230 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS 
 
 ptM-son, it refers most naturally t() tlie Prophet, who is the author 
 of the Book'), — an arijjument of very subordinate significance, and 
 the more so tliat the person of the Prophet, everywhere else in the 
 second part of Isaiah, steps so entirely into the background be- 
 liind tlie great objects with which he is engaged. To follow 
 tlius the fii-st ap])earance may, indeed, be becoming to a euuuch 
 fi-om Ethiopia, but not a Christian expounder of Scripture. 
 The contents of the prophecy are decidedly in opposition to 
 this opinion. Even the circumstance that a single prophet 
 should assume the name of Israel, ver. 3, appeal's an into- 
 lerable usui-pation. Farther — Like all the other prophets, 
 Isaiah was sent to the Jews, and not to the Gentiles ; but 
 at the very outset, the most distant lands and all the distant 
 ludions are here called upon to hearken. The Lord says to 
 His Servant that the restoration of Israel was too little for 
 Him, that He should be a light and salvation for all the 
 heathen nations from one end of the earth to the other ; 
 kings and Princes shall fall down before Him, adoring and 
 worshipping. The Prophet would thus simply have raised 
 himself to be the Saviour. Umhreit expressly acknowledges 
 this : " He is to be the holy pillar of clouds and fii'e which 
 leads the people back to their native land, after the time of 
 their punishment has expired. But a still more glorious voca- 
 tion and destination is in store for the prophets ; they receive 
 the highest, the Messianic destination." The usurpation of 
 which the Servant of God would have made himself guilty, 
 appears so much the more clearl}'-, when it is known, that the 
 work of the Servant of God comprehends even all that also, 
 whicli is described in ver. 10-23, viz., the blossomingr of the 
 Church of God, her enlargement by the Gentiles, «fec. It is 
 oJmous that, if the interpretation which refers this prediction 
 to the prophets were the correct one, the authority of tlie Old 
 Testament proj)hecy would he gone ; the authority of the Lm^d 
 himself ivould be endangered, inuh-much as He always recog- 
 nizes, in tliese pi'ophets, organs of divine inspiration and 
 /Miver. A vain attempt is made at mitigating this usur]:)a- 
 tion, by imperceptibly substituting tlie collective body of the 
 l)rophets for the single prophet. This view thus leads to, and 
 interferes with another which we shall immediately examine. 
 But if we would not give up the sole argument by which this 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLIX. 1. 281 
 
 exposition is supported, viz., the use of the first person, every- 
 thing must, in the first instance, apply to and be fulfilled in 
 Isaiah ; and the other prophets can come into consideration 
 only as continuators of his work and ministry. He is entitled 
 to use the first person in that case only, when he is a perfect 
 manifestation of prophetism. — 4. According to Gesevins, the 
 Servant of the Lord is to be the collective body of the ^wophets, 
 the prophetic order. In opposition to this view, Stier remarks : 
 " We maintain that, according to history, there did not at that 
 time (the time of the exile, in which Gesenius places this pro- 
 phecy) exist any prophetic order, or any distinguished blossom 
 of it ; that hence it was impossible for any reasonable man to 
 entertain this hope, when viewed in this way, without look- 
 ing farther and higher." Ver. 1 is decisive against a mere 
 personification. The name of Israel, too, in ver. 8, is very 
 little applicable to the whole prophetic order. This is suffi- 
 ciently evident from the fact that Gesenius, in his Commen- 
 tary, declared this word to be spurious ; and it was at a later 
 period only, when he had become bolder, that he endeavoured 
 to adapt it to his self-chosen subject. Nowhere in the Old 
 Testament do the prophets appear like the Servant of God 
 here — as the Covenant of the people, ver. 8, as the Light of 
 the Gentiles, ver. 6. 
 
 Ver. 1 . " Listen, isles, unto me, and hearken ye people 
 from far ; the Lord hath called me from, the ivomb, fro7)i the 
 bowels of my mother hath He made mention of my name." 
 
 As the stand-point which the Messiah occupies in the vision 
 of the Prophet, we have to conceive of the time, at M^hich He 
 had already entered upon His office, and had already expe- 
 rienced many proofs of the Jews' unbelief and hardness of 
 heart, — an event of the Future, the foresight of whicli was, 
 even in a human point of view, very readily suggested to the 
 Prophet after the painful experience acquired during his own 
 long ministry ; comp. chap. vi. For the fruitlessness of His minis- 
 try among the mass of the covenant-people, ver. 4, as well as 
 the great contempt which the Servant of God found among 
 them, vei'. 7, are represented as having already taken place ; 
 
232 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 while tlie enlightenment of the Gentiles, the worship of the 
 kings, &c, which are to be expected by Him, are represented 
 as being still future. In the same manner, in chap, liii., the 
 humiliation of the Servant of God appears as past ; the glori- 
 ficiition, as future, llie reason why the isles are addressed 
 (comp. remarks on cha}>. xlii. 4) appears in ver. 6 only, at the 
 close of the discourse of the Servant of God, for all that pre- 
 cedes serves as a preparation. In that verse, the Servant of 
 the Lord announces that the Lord had appointed Him to 
 be the Light of the Gentiles ; that He should be His salvation 
 unto the ends of the earth. It is very significant that the 
 second book at once begins with an address to the Gentiles, 
 inasmuch us, thus, we are here introduced into the sphere of a 
 redemption which does not refer to a single nation, like that 
 with which the Jirst book is engaged, but to the ends of the 
 earth. At the close of the first book, in chap, xlviii. 20, it 
 was said : " Declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of 
 the earth, say ye : The Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob." 
 The fact that the redemption, in the first instance peculiar to 
 Jacob, is to be proclaimed to all the nations of the earth, leads 
 us to expect that these nations, too, have their portion in the 
 Lord ; that at some future period they are to hear a message 
 which concerns them still Tnore particularly. This expecta- 
 tion is realized here, at the opening of the .second book. The 
 fact that the Gentiles are to listen here, as those who have a 
 personal interest in the message, is proved by the circumstance, 
 that the words : *' Unto the ends of the earth," in Ver. 6 of 
 the chapter before us, point back to the same words in chap, 
 xlviii. 20. — The Lord had called me from the luomb. It is 
 sufficient to go thus far back in order to repress or refute the 
 idea of His having himself usurped His office, and to furnish 
 a foundation for the expectation that God would powerfully 
 uphold and protect His Servant in the office which He him- 
 self had assigned to Him. Calvin remarks on these words : 
 " They do not indicate the commencement of the time of His 
 vocation, Jis if God had, only from the womb, called Him ; but 
 it is just as if it were said : Before I came forth from the 
 womb, God had decreed that I was to undertake this office. 
 In the same manner Paul also says that he had been sepa- 
 rated from his mother's womb, although lie was chosen before 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLIX. 2. 233 
 
 the foundation of the world." To be called from the womb 
 is, in itself, nothing extraordinary ; it is common to all th.e 
 servants of the Lord. Jeremiah ascribes it to himself in chap, 
 i. 5 : " Before I formed thee in the belly, 1 knew thee ; and 
 before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee ;" and 
 in harnKmy with this passage in Jeremiah — not with that 
 before us — Paul says in Gal. i. 1 5 : o koQ 6 d(pnfiffa,g (corre- 
 sponding to : I have sanctified thee) /n s-a, ■/.oi'kiag iMriTpog (lou. 
 But we have here merely the introduction to what follows, 
 where the calling, to which the Servant of God had been des- 
 tined from the womb appears as quite unique. — From the 
 bowels of my mother hath He made mention of my name. 
 The name is here not an ordinary proper name, but a name 
 descriptive of the nature, — one by which His office and voca- 
 tion are designated. This making mention was, in the case of 
 Christ, not a thing concealed ; the prophecy before us received 
 its palpable confirmation and fulfilment ; inasmuch as, in refer- 
 ence to it, Joseph received, even before His birth, the com- 
 mand to call Him Jesus, Saviour : rs^srai ds vib\> xai -/.aXiang rd 
 oco/za aurov 'IijiroDv* axjrhg yap ffusii rbv Xabv aurov a'xb rcov afiapriuv 
 ttvruv, Matth. i. 2 1, after the same command had previously come 
 to Mary, Luke i. 31 ; comp. ii. 21, where, as we have already 
 remarked, there is a distinct reference to the passage before us. 
 
 Ver. 2. " And He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword, 
 in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me, and He hath 
 made me a sharpened arrow, in His quiver hath He hid me!' 
 
 According to the common interpretation, the words : " He 
 hath made my mouth like a sharp sword. He hath made me a 
 sharpened arrow," are to express only such a gift of powerful, 
 impressive speech as is common to all the servants of God, to 
 all the prophets. But the two subjoined clauses are opposed 
 to that interpretation. The second and fourth clauses state 
 the reason of the first and third, and point to the source from 
 which that emanates which is stated in them. There cannot 
 be any doubt but that in the second and fourth clauses, the Ser- 
 vant of God indicates that He stands under the protection of 
 divine omnipotence, so that the expression : " Whom I uphold," 
 in chap. xlii. 1 , is parallel. The shadow is the ordinary figure 
 of protection. The figure of the sword is dropped in the 
 second clause, and hence the objection, that a drawn sword 
 does not require any protection, is out of place. This will 
 
•234- MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 api^'ar from a companson of chap. li. IG : "And I put my 
 words in tliy mouth, and I cover thee with the shadow of 
 mine hand," where the sword is not mentioned at all, and the 
 shadow l)elongs simply to the pei-son. The quiver which 
 keeps the arrow is likewise a natural image of divine protec- 
 tion. The two accessory clauses do not suit, if the fii-st and 
 third clauses are referred to the rhetorical endoivme-nf of the 
 Servant of God ; that does 'not Jioiv from the source of the 2^ro- 
 tecting onivijjotence of God. These accessory clauses rather 
 suggest the idea that, by the comparison of the mouth with 
 the sharp sword, of the ivhole ijcrson with the sharpened 
 aiTOw, there is indicated the absolutely conquering power 
 vjhich, under the i)rot€ction of omnipotence, adheres to tite 
 word ami 2)erson of the Servant of God, so that He will easily 
 put down everything which opposes, — equivalent to : He has 
 endowed me luith His omnipotence, so that my vjord produces 
 destructive effects, and puts dotvn all opposition, just as does 
 His word; so that there would be a parallel in chap. xi. 4, 
 where the woixl of the Servant of God likewise appears as 
 being borne by omnipotence : " He smiteth the earth with the 
 rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He slayeth 
 the wicked." To the same result we are led also by a compa- 
 rison of chap. li. 16, where the word of the Lord, which is put 
 into the mouth of the Servant of God, is so living and power- 
 ful, so borne by omnipotence, that thereby the heavens are 
 planted, and the foundations of the eai-th are laid. But of 
 special importance are those passages of Revelation which 
 refer to tlie verse under consideration. In chap. i. 16, the 
 sharp two-edged sword does not by any means represent the 
 power of the discourse piercing the heart for salvation ; but rather 
 the destinictive power of the word which is borne by omnipo- 
 tence. It designates the almighty punitive power of Christ 
 directed against his enemies. " By the circumstance, that the 
 sword goes out of the mouth of Christ, that destructive power 
 is attributed to His mere word, He appeai-s as partaking of 
 divine omnipotence. For it belongs to God to slay by the 
 words of His mouth, Hos. vi. 5." The same applies to chap, 
 ii. 1 6. On Rev. xix. 15:" And out of his mouth goeth a 
 sharp sword, that with it He should smite the nations," we 
 remarked : " the sharp sword is not that of a teaching king. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLIX. 3. 235 
 
 but that of omnipotence which speaks and it is done, and 
 slayeth by the breath of the lips. How Christ casts down 
 His enemies by the word of His mouth is seen, in a prophe- 
 tical instance, John xviii. 6 ; Acts ix. 4, 5." With the sword, 
 Christ appears even where He does not mean to destroy, but 
 to bring salvation ; for, even in those who are to be blessed, 
 hostile powers are to be overcome. The image, however, is 
 here, in the fundamental passage, occasioned by the compa- 
 rison of the Servant of God with the conqueror from the East, 
 whose sword, according to chap. xli. 2, the Lord makes as dust, 
 and his bow as the driven stubble. Where the mere wo7^d 
 serves as a sword, the effect must be much more powerful. 
 The conquering power throwing down every opposing power, 
 which, in the first clause, is assigned to the mouth, is, in the 
 third clause (" And He hath made me a sharpened arrow"), 
 attributed to the whole person. He, of whom it was already 
 said in Ps. xlv. 6 : " Thine arrows are sharp, people fall under 
 thee, they enter into the heart of the king's enemies," is him- 
 self to be esteemed as a sharp arrow. 
 
 Ver. 3. " And He said unto me : Thou aii, m^y Servant, 
 Israel, in whom I glorify myself." 
 
 "My Servant" stands here as an honorary designation ; to 
 l>e the Servant of God appears here as the highest privilege, 
 as is evident not only from the analogy of the parallel pas- 
 sages, which treat of the Servant of God (comp. remarks on 
 chap. xlii. 1 ), but also from the parallel second clause. In it, 
 the Servant of God is called IsH^ael as the concentration and 
 consummation of the covenant-people, as He in whom it is to 
 attain to its destination, in whom its idea is to bo realized. 
 (It is evident from ver. 5, and from those passages in the 
 second part in which the people of Israel is spoken of as the 
 Servant of God [comp. remarks on chap, xlii.], that Israel must 
 here be understood as the name of the people, not as the name 
 of the ancestor only.) Hdvernick rightly remarks that the 
 Messiah is here called Israel, " in contrast to the people to 
 whom this name does not properly belong." Analogous is 
 Matt. ii. 1 5, where that which, in the Old Testament, is writ- 
 ten of Israel, is referred to Christ. As the true Israel, Christ 
 himself also represents himself in John i. 52; with a reference 
 to that which in Gen. xxviii. 12 is written, not of Jacob as 
 
236 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 an individual, but as the representative of the whole race, it 
 is said there : kt' uf>Tt '6-^i<rdi rhv oj^avflf aviwyora, y.ai rovi ayy'i' 
 Xoof roD 6iti\i ava^aivovrai xai xaTalSaivovrag evl roe u'ibv rov avOp'Jjvov. 
 All those declarations of the Old Testament, in which the 
 name of Jacob or Israel is used to designate the election, to 
 the exclusion of the false seed, the true Israelites in whom 
 thej-e is no guile, — all those passages prepare the way for, 
 and come near to the one before us. Tlius Ps. Ixiii. 1 : 
 " Truly good is God to Israel, to such as are of a clean heart ;" 
 and then Ps. xxiv. 6 : " They that seek thy face are Jacob," 
 i.e., those only who, with zeal and energy in sanctification, 
 seek for the favour of God. In the passage before us, the 
 same principle is farther canied out. The true Israel is desig- 
 nated as he in whom God glorifies, or will glorify himself, in- 
 asmuch as his glorification will bear testimony to God's mercy 
 and faithfulness; comp. John xii. 23 : i>.r,K\)div t] upalvabo^aqdri 
 it v/cig roj av&puirrou ; xvii. 5 ". xa/' vvv ho^aaov /xs fft) 'xanp. The verb 
 "INE5 means in Piel, " to adorn," in Hithp. " to adorn one's self," 
 '' to glorify one's self" Tims it occurs in Judg. vii. 2 ; Is. x. 
 15; Ix. 21 : " Work of my hands for glorifying," i.e., in which 
 I glorify myself; Ixi. 3 : " Planting of the Lord for glorifying." 
 There is no reason for abandoning this well-supported signifi- 
 cation either here or in chap. xliv. 23 : "The Lord hath re- 
 deemed Israel and glorified himself in Israel." If God glorifies 
 himself in His Servant, He just thereby gets occasion to glory 
 in Him as a monument of His goodness and faithfulness. 
 Our Saviour prays in John xii. 28 : UaTtp ^j^affov eov ri ovofiu. 
 The Father, by glorifying the Son, glorifies at the same time 
 His name. Those who explain "isans by : per quern ornahor, 
 overlook the circumstance that, also in the phrase : " Thou art 
 my Servant," the main stress does not, according to the parallel 
 passages, lie in that which the Servant has to perform, but in 
 His being the protected and preserved by God. 
 
 Ver. 4. "And I said: I Juive laboured in vain, I have 
 spent ray strength for emptiness and vanity ; hut my right 
 is with the Lord, and my retvard luith my God." 
 
 The Servant of God, after having spoken of His sublime 
 dignity and mission, here prepares the transition for proclaim- 
 ing His destination to be a Saviour of the Gentiles, to whom 
 His whole discourse is addressed. He complains of the small 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLIX. 4. 237 
 
 fruits of His ministry among Israel ; but comforts himself by 
 the confidence placed upon the righteousness of God, that the 
 faithful discharge of the duty committed to Him cannot remain 
 Vv'ithout reward. The speaking on the part of the Servant of 
 God in this verse refers to the speaking of God in verse 3. 
 Jerome, who remarks on this point : " But when the Father 
 told me that which I have repeated, I answered Him : How 
 wilt thou be glorified in me, seeing that I have laboured in 
 vain?" recognised this reference, but erroneously viewed the 
 words as being addressed to the Lord. It is a soliloquy which 
 we have here before us. Instead of " I said," we are not at 
 liberty to put : " I imagined ;" the Servant of God had in 
 reahty expended His strength for nothing and vanity. As the 
 htsne of the vain labour of the Servant of Gocl, the heathen 
 world cannot be thought of; inasmuch as this is, first in ver. 
 (), assigned to Him as an indemnification for that which, 
 according to the verse before us, He had lost elsewhere. It is 
 Israel only which can be the object of the vain labour of the 
 Servant of God ; for it was to them that, accordins: to ver. 5, 
 the mission of the Servant of God in the first instance referred : 
 The Lord had formed Him to be His Servant, to bring back 
 to Him Jacob and Israel that were not gathered. Since, then, 
 the mission is directed to aposfaie Israel, it can the less be 
 strange that the labour was in vain. To the same result we 
 are led also by the circumstance that, in ver. 6, the saving 
 activity of the Servant of God appears as limited to the pre- 
 served of Israel, while the original mission had been directed 
 to the whole. And this portion to which His activity is 
 limited, is comparatively a small portion. For that is sug- 
 gested by the circumstance that to have the preserved of Israel 
 lor His portion is represented as a light thing — not at all cor- 
 responding to the dignity of the Servant of God. As, in that 
 verse, the preserved of Israel form the contrast to the mass of 
 the people give^i uj^ by the Lord, so in the verse under consi- 
 deration, the opposition which the Servant of God finds, is 
 represented as so great, that His ministry was, in the main, in 
 vain ; so that accordingly the great mass of the people must 
 have been unsusceptible of it. — In the view that a great por- 
 tion of the people would reject the salvation ofiered in Christ, 
 and thereby become liable to judgment, the Song of Solomtm 
 
23 8 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 liad already preceded our Prophet. As regards the natural 
 grounds of this foresight, we remarked in the Commentary on 
 the Song of Solomon, S. 24<5 : " With a knowledge of human 
 nature, and especially of the nature of Israel, a,s it was pecu- 
 liar to the peojde from the beginning, and w.is firmly and 
 deeply impressed upon them by the Mosaic laws, — after the 
 experience which the journey through the wilderness, the time 
 of the Judges, tlie reign of David and of Solomon also offered, 
 it was absolutely impossible for the enlightened to entertain 
 the hope that, at the appearance of the Messiah, the whole 
 ])eople would do homage to Him with sincere and cordial de- 
 votion." How very much this was the case, the very first 
 chapter of Isaiah can prove. It is impossible that one who 
 has so deeply* recognized the corrupted nature of his people, 
 siiould give himself up to vain patriotic fancies ; to such an 
 one, the time of the highest manifestation of salvation must 
 necessarily be, at the same time, a period of the highest real- 
 ization of judgment. The same view which is given here, we 
 meet with also in chap. liii. 1-3. • In harmony with Isaiah, 
 Zechariah, too, prophesies, in chaps, xi., xiii. 8, that the gi-eater 
 portion of the Jews will not believe in Christ. Malachi iii. 
 l-(), 19, 24, contrasts with the longed-for judgment upon the 
 heathen, the judgment which, in the Messianic time, is to be 
 executed upon the people itself. — On the words : " My right 
 is with the Lord, and my reward with my God," comjiare Lev. 
 xix, 13: " The reward of him that is hired shall not abide 
 with thee all night until the morning." The God who watches 
 that among men the well-earned wages of faithful labour shall 
 not be withheld, will surely himself not withhold them from His 
 Servant. The right, the well-desei'ved reward of His Servant 
 is v.ntli Him; it is there safely kept, in order that it may be 
 delivered up to Him in due time. That which the Servant 
 of the Lord here, in the highest sense, says of himself, holds 
 true of His inferior servants also. Their labour in the Lord 
 is, in truth, never in vain. Their right and their reward can 
 never fail them. 
 
 Ver. 5. " And nmo, saith the Lord that fovnud me from 
 the ivomb to be a Servant to himself, to bring Jacob ayain to 
 Hi/m, and Israel which is not gathered, and I am honoured 
 in the eyes of the Lord, and my God ivas my strength. Ver. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLIX. 5. 239 
 
 6. And He saith : It is too light a thing that thou shouldest 
 he my Servant only to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to 
 restore the preserved of Israel, and I give thee for a light to 
 the Gentiles, that thou may est be my Salvation unto the ends 
 of the earth" 
 
 The confidence which the Servant of the Lord has placed in 
 Him has not been put to shame by the result, but rather has 
 been gloriously justified by Him. He who was, in the first 
 instance, sent to Israel, is appointed to be the Saviour of the 
 Gentiles, in order to compensate Him for the unbelief of those 
 to whom His mission was in the first instance directed. And 
 now, i.e., since the matter stands thus (Gen. xlv, 8), — since 
 Israel, to whom my mission is, in the first instance, directed, 
 reject me. Saith the Lord — That which the Lord spoke foUows 
 in ver. 6 only, which, on account of the long interruption, again 
 begins with : " And He saith," equivalent to : I say. He hath 
 spoken. The declaration of the Lord has reference to the des- 
 tination of His Servant to be the Saviour of the Gentiles. 
 This declaration is, in ver. 5, based upon two reasons : — -first. 
 the frustration of the original mission of the Servant of the 
 Lord to the Jews ; and secondly, on the intimate relation in 
 which He stands to the Lord, who cannot withhold from Him 
 the reward which He deserves for His work. In the New 
 Testament, also, the mission of Christ appears as being at first 
 directed to the Jews only. The Lord says, in Matt. xv. 24 : 
 oux aT£(TTaA?]i/ it fxri ilg ra TpotSara to, avoXuKora olxou 'Idpari'A. He 
 says, in Matt, x, 6, to the Apostles, after having forbidden 
 them to go to the heathens, and to the Samaritans, who were 
 nothing but disguised heathens : vopixjisk hi /MaXXov vpbg ra tt^po- 
 iSocTa TO, aToXwXoVa o'xou 'iff^a^X. Paul and Barnabas say, in Acts 
 xiii. 46 : v/mTv i^v ccvayxaTov "Trpurov XaXrjdyj^ai rbv Xoyov rou &sou' s'^nibti 
 hi amti&iTaQi alrov xai oux, a^iovg xpivin kauTovg rrig aiuviou ^Mtjg, 18ou 
 Grpi(p6/Mi6a iig ra £<?v)). It is rather an idle question to ask what 
 would have happened, if the Jews as a nation had accepted 
 the offered salvation. But so much is certain that here, in 
 the prediction, as weU as in history, the rejection of Christ, on 
 the part of the Jews, appears to have been a necessary condi- 
 tion of His entering upon His vocation a*s the Saviour of the 
 Gentiles. Those who understood the people by the Servant 
 of the Lord refer 22wb to Jehovah, and consider it as a Gerund. 
 
240 MESSfANIC PREDICTIONS IX THE PROPHETS. 
 
 reducendo, or qui reducit ad se Jacohuin. In the same way 
 they explain also the Iiitiiiit. with h in the following verse, as 
 also in cha]). li. 1 fj. But although the Infinit. with ^ is some- 
 times, indeed, used for the Genind., yet this is neither the 
 original nor the ordinary use ; and nowhere does it occur in 
 such accumulation. Moreover, by this explanation, this verse, 
 as well as the following ones, are altogether broken up, and 
 the words vi'N 3pr 23it;6 must indicate the destination for which 
 He was formed. And it is not possible that Jehovah's bring- 
 in«T Jacob back to himself should be a display of Israels being 
 formed from the womb to be the Servant, inasmuch as the 
 bringing back would not, like the formation, belong to the 
 first stage of the existence of the people. — " And Israel, ivhich 
 is not fjathered." Before "itJ^S, i6 nmst be supplied. Accord- 
 ing to the parallel words: "To bring Jacob again to Him," 
 tlie not gathering of Israel is to be referred to its having 
 wandered away from the Lord. It was appropriate that this 
 should be expressly mentioned, and not merely supposed, as is 
 the case in : " To bring Jacob again to Him." The image 
 which lies at the foundation, is that of a scattered flock ; comp. 
 Mic. ii. 1 2. Parallel is Isaiah liii. 6 : " All we like sheep have 
 gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way." — To 
 the words under consideration the Lord alludes in Matt, xxiii. 
 *)7 : 'lifovsaXrjfM .... TOffax/f ^diXriffa Itti cii^iayayih ra rjxva ffou 
 oc 'rrpo'TTOv i'Xiauvayii opvig tcc vosa'ia saurT^g l/to rag Tripvyag xal ohx 
 7,0-\r;ffars; COmp. also Matt. ix. 8G : Idojv bs ro-ig oyjKoug la-xXay- 
 ■yvicdr\ rrspi alrm on riSav laxDA/xivoi y.al sppifi/ji,ivoi uasi <rpo/3ara /ajj 
 £;/ovra -roz/zsva. On account of chap. xi. 1 2, it will not do to 
 take 5)Di< in the signification of " to snatch away," " to carry 
 (jtf," as is done by Hitzig. Moreover e)DK3 means, indeed, " to 
 be gathered," but never " to be carried off" The Mazoreths 
 would read x^ for 1^ : " And that Israel might be gathered to 
 Him." Thus it is rendered, among the ancient translators, by 
 Aqw'ila and the Chaldee ; while Symmachus, Theodoret, and 
 the Vulgate express the negation. Most of the modern inter- 
 ])reters have followed the Mazoreths. But the assumption of 
 several of these, that ab is only a different writing for '\h: Ls 
 altogether without foundation, compare the remarks on chap, 
 ix. 2 ; and the reading of the Mazoreths is just like all the 
 Kris, a mere conjecture, owing its origin, as has ali'eady been 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLIX. 6. 24-1 
 
 remarked by Jerome, only to a bad Jewish patiiotism. The 
 circumstance that, with the sole exception, of 2 Chron. xxx. 
 3, — an exception which, from the character of the language of 
 that book, is of no importance— the verb tlDX in the significa- 
 tion "to gather" has the person to whom it is gathered never 
 joined to it by means of h^ but commonly by means of hvi, is 
 of so much the greater importance, that h has nothing to do 
 with Sn. When 8tkr remarks that ver. 6, where Jacob and 
 Israel were again beside each other in a completely parallel 
 clause, proves that Israel's gathering can be spoken of posi- 
 tively only, he has overlooked the essential difference of ver. 
 5, which refers to the position of the Servant of God towards 
 the whole people and ver. 6, which refers to His destination 
 for the election. — ^The words : " And I am honoured in the 
 eyes of the Lord, and my God is my strength," i.e., my pro- 
 tection and helper, recapitulate what, in ver. 2 and 3, was 
 said about the high dignity of the Servant of God, of which 
 the efiect appears, in ver. 6, in His appointment to be the 
 Saviour of the Gentiles, after the mission to Israel has been 
 fruitless. In ver. 6, it is not the decree of the salvation of 
 the Gentiles through Christ which forms the subject (that de- 
 cree is an eternal one), but rather that this decree should be 
 carried out. It is for this that Israel's unbelief offers an occasion 
 " As the salvation of the elect among Israel (in reference to the 
 great mass, the Servant of God had laboured in vain, ver. 4) 
 would be too small a reward for thee, I assign to thee in addition 
 to them, an infinitely larger inheritance, viz., the whole heathen 
 world." y^^ in Hip] til frequently means " to lead back," in 
 the ordinary sense, but sometimes also " to lead back into the 
 former, or non'mal condition," " to restore," compare remarks 
 on Dan. ix. 25; Ps. Ixxx. 4. The parallel, " to raise up," 
 which is opposed to the lying down (Ps. xli. 9), shows that 
 here it stands in the sense of " to restore." The local leading 
 back belongs to the sphere of Koresh, to whom the first book 
 is dedicated ; but, with that, the abnormal condition ofmiseiy 
 and abasement, which is so much opposed to the idea of the 
 people of God, is not completely and truly removed. That 
 which the Servant of God bestows upon the elect of Israel, 
 viz., raising up and restoration, is, in substance, the same 
 which, according to what follows, He becomes to the Gentiles, 
 VOL. II. q 
 
21' 2 MESSr.VNIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 viz., light aiul salvation. By becoming light and salvation to 
 the elect of Israel, He raises them up and leads them back, 
 inaamueh as this was the normal, natural condition of the 
 covenant-people, from which they had only fallen by their 
 sins. It is to that, that the election is restored by the Ser- 
 vant of God. By the trihcH of Jacob, the better part only of 
 the people is to be understood, to the exclusion of those souls 
 who are cut off from their people, because they have broken 
 the covenant of the Lord, comp. ver. 4. This appears from 
 the addition : " And the preserved of Israel" (tlie Kethibh 
 n'jf3 is an adjective form with a passive signification ; the mar- 
 ginal reading "•niv: is the Part. Pass.) ; just as, similarly in Pa. 
 Ixxiii. 1, Israel is limited to the true Israel by the explanatory 
 clause : " Such as are of a clean heart." The verb nX3, " to 
 watch," is, according to Gesenius, especially used de Jehova 
 homines custodienfe et tuente. Hence, the preserved of Israel 
 are those whom God keeps under His gracious protection and 
 care, in contrast to the great mass of the covenant-breakers 
 whom He gives up. Chap. Ixv. 13, 14: " Behold my ser- 
 vants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry ; behold my servants 
 shall drink, but ye shall be thii-sty ; behold my servants shall 
 rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed ; behold my servants shall 
 sing for joy of heart, but ye shall cry for soitow of heart, and 
 shall howl for vexation of spirit," likewise points to a great 
 separation which shall take place in the Messiaiiic time. Light 
 (compare remarks on cha]). xlii. 6), and salvation are related 
 to one another, as the image to the thing itself From the 
 circumstance that the point here in question is the reward for 
 the Servant of God, who is to be indemnified for the loss which 
 He suffered by Israel (comp. ver. 4), it is obvious that we must 
 not explain : " that my salvation be," but : " that thou mayest 
 be my salvation ; " for it is only when He is the salvation that 
 such an indemnification is spoken of Moreover, the Infinitive 
 with ? can here not well be understood otherwise than in the 
 preceding clause. The servant of God is the personal salva- 
 tion of the Lord for the heathen world ; comp. chap. xlii. G, 
 and, in the chapter under consideration, ver. 8, where He is 
 called the covenant of the people, because this covenant finds 
 in Him its truth; compare also the expression: "This man 
 ia i)eace," in Mic. v. 4 (5). Gesenius rightly remarks, that 
 
ISATAH, CHAP. XLIX. 7. 243 
 
 there is here an allusion to the promises given to the Patri- 
 archs, Gen. xii. 3, &c. In Christ, the Shiloh to whom the 
 people adhere, the old promise of the future extension of sal- 
 vation to all the Gentiles is to be fulfilled. 
 
 Ver. 7. " Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, his 
 Holy One, to Hvm that is despised by every one, to the abhor- 
 rence of the people, to the servant of riders : Kings shall see 
 and rise up, princes, and prostrate themselves because of the 
 Lord that is faithfid, the Holy One of Israel that hath chosen 
 thee!' 
 
 Hitherto, the Servant of the Lord has spoken : here, the 
 Prophet speaks of Him. He gives a short and comprehensive 
 summary of the contents of ver. 1-6, the rejection of the Ser- 
 vant of God by the people to whom His mission was, in the 
 first instance, directed, and His appointment to be the Saviour 
 of the Gentiles. The matter is traced back to the Redeemer 
 of Israel and their Holy One, i.e., the high and glorious God, 
 because the Servant of God is, in the first instance, sent to 
 Israel as didxovog <TipiTO/jbr,g V'jrip akri&uag 6io\J s'lg to jSiiSaiuffat rag 
 irtayyzkiag ruiv 'zarspojv, Rom. XV. 8 ; but still more, because He 
 himself is the concentration of Israel (ver. 3), the -AspaXri t-oD 
 ffuifiarog r^g iX'/iXrisiag, Col. i. 1 8, — He in whose glorification the 
 true Israel, as opposed to the darkened refuse, attain to their 
 right. According to the context, the contempt, &c., must pro- 
 ceed chiefly from the apostate portion of the covenant-people : 
 The princes and kings must, according to ver. 6 (comp. chap. 
 Hi. 1 5), be conceived of as heathenish ones. The verse under 
 consideration merely exhibits, in short outlines, the contrast 
 already alluded to in the preceding context. It cannot appear 
 at all strange that the Prophet foresees the reproach of Christ, 
 and His sufferings from the ungodly world. In those Psalms 
 which refer to the suffering righteous one, righteousness and 
 the hostility of the wicked world are represented as being 
 inseparably connected with each other. Hence it cannot be 
 conceived of otherwise, but that the Servant of God, who, in 
 in His person, represented the ideal of righteousness, should, 
 in a very special manner, have been liable to this hostility. 
 Moreover, it can be proved that, in some Psalms which refer 
 to the suffering righteous one, David has, besides the indivi- 
 dual and the whole people, in view, at the same time, his own 
 
241- MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 laniily, and Him in whom it was to centre ; comp. my com- 
 mentary on Ps. Vol. iii. p. Ixxx. ft*. There seems here to be a 
 special reference to Ps. xxii. 7, 8 : " And 1 am a worm and no 
 man, a re})roach of man and despised of tlie people. All they 
 that see me laugli me to scorn, open their lips, shake their 
 heads;" and it is the more natural to assume this reference 
 that, in chap. Hi. 1 4 ; liii. 8, this passage also is refeiTcd to. 
 •"it3 is, after the example of KimcJd, viewed by several inter- 
 preters as an infinitive form standing in place of a Noun, 
 " dos])ising or contemning," instead of " contempt," and this 
 again instead of " object of contempt." Others view it as tlie 
 iSfat. construct, of an adjective nf2 with a passive signification. 
 This latter view is more natural ; and the reason which Stier 
 adduces ao-ainst it, viz., that of verbs n^ no such forms are 
 found, cannot be considered as conclusive. {ysmTS, literally 
 the "despised one of the said" might, according to Ezek. 
 xxxvi. 5 : " Against Edom who have taken my land into their 
 possession with the joy of all their heart, with the contempt 
 of their soul," mean, " who is inwardly and deeply desj)ised," 
 the soul being viewed as the seat of the aftections. But we 
 are led to another explanation by the fundamental passage, Ps. 
 xxii. 7, and by the circumstance that E'D3 is here parallel to 
 '1J, and that the latter corresponds to the UV in Ps. xxii. " Tlie 
 despised one of the soul" must, accordingly, be he who is de- 
 spised of every one. The soul con-esponding to man in Ps. 
 xxii. is, as it were, conceived of as a great concrete body. In 
 a similar manner, " soul" is used for all that has a soul, in 
 Gen. xiv. 21, where the king of Sodom says to Abraham: 
 " Give me the soul, and take the goods to thyself" — " To the 
 abhorrence of the peojile." 3J/n in Piel never has another sig- 
 nification than "to abhor." Such is the signification in Job 
 ix. 31 also, where the clothes abhor Job plunged in the dirt, 
 resist being put on by him ; likewise in Ezek. xv. 25, where 
 Judah abhors his beauty, disgi-acefully tramples under feet his 
 glory, as if he hated it. In favour of the signification : " To 
 cause to abhor" {Rodiger: horrorem incidiens 2^opulo, qui 
 oh<ym'inafi(mi est lyopulo), intei^preters cannot adduce even one 
 apparent passage, exce]">t that before us. We are, therefore, 
 only at liberty to explain, after the example of Kivichi : " to 
 the . . . people abhorring," i.e., to him against whom the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XLIX. 7. 245 
 
 people feel an abhorrence. ^13 is used of the Jewish people in 
 Is. i. 4 also. Hofinaim is of opinion that it ought to have 
 the article, if it were to refer to the Jewish people. But no 
 one asserts a direct reference to them ; it designates, in itself, 
 the mass only, in contrast to single individuals, just as Dj; in 
 Ps. xxii. The abhorrence is felt by the masses — is popular. 
 The fact that it is among Israel that the Servant of God meets 
 this general abhorrence, is not implied in the word itself, 
 but is suggested by the whole context. While rS3 and '13 
 designate the generality of this hatred, a^huD points to the 
 highest places of it. Of heathen rulers this word occurs in 
 chap. xiv. 5 ; of native rulers, in chap. lii. 5 ; xxviii. 1 4. The 
 heathen rulers can here come into consideration, in so far only 
 as they are the instruments of the native ones ; comp. John 
 XIX. 10 : Xiysi ajT'Jj 6 TLiXdrog' sfx,o! ou XaXj/i; ohx, olbag oti s^ovSiav 
 \')(jji araupMsai Si %ai s^ousiav l-^oi aToXuaa! si. The servant of rulers 
 forms the contrast to the servant of the Lord. But in the 
 words : " Kings shall see," &c., it is described how the original 
 dignity finally breaks forth powerfully, and reacts against the 
 momentary humiliation. It was especially at the crucifixion 
 that Christ presented himself as " He that was despised by 
 every one, as the abhorrence of the people, as the servant of 
 rulers." The historical commentary on these words we have 
 in Matt. xxii. 39 ff. : oi Ss Tapa'Tropmofji.Bvof sj3Xasip-/i/j,ouv auTov x.r.X. 
 oiJjQicag hi Tiai 01 df^npit's i/i'zai^ovTsg /Agra ruv ypa/M/aaTsuv xa/' 
 'rpssiSuTipcav sXsyov aXKoug ssotS'v x.r.X. rh B' avr& xai oi X'/jsrat 
 
 0( Si/SravpcitdsvTsg auTSi uviihiZpv avrov. After 1K"1' " they shall 
 
 see," the object must be supplied from ver. 6, viz., the bril- 
 liant turn which, under the Lord's direction. His destiny 
 shall take, — His beingr constituted the lig-ht and salvation of 
 the Gentiles. The kings who sit on their thrones rise up ; 
 the nobles who stand around the throne prostrate themselves. 
 The Servant of God is the concentration of Israel, ver. 3. 
 Hence His glorification is, at the close, once more traced back 
 to the Holy One of Israel ; and that so much the rather, be- 
 cause the glorification which is bestowed upon Him is bestowed 
 upon Him for the benefit of the Congregation, whom He ele- 
 vates along with himself out of the condition of deep abase-^ 
 ment ; comp. vers. 8 and 9. The verse before us forms the germ 
 of that which, in chap. lii. 1 3, is carried out and expanded. 
 
24(5 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Ver. (S. " TliVfi saith ihe, Lord : hi the time of favour have 
 I heard thee, and in the day of salvation have I helped thee ; 
 and I will preserve thee, and give thee for the Covenant of 
 tlie people, that thov may est raise up the land, divide desolaie 
 heritages. Ver. 9. That thou mayest say to the prisoners : 
 Go foi-lh ; to them that are in darkness : Come to light ; they 
 sJiall feed in the icays, and on all hare hills shall be their 
 pasture" 
 
 The time of favour may be either the time when God shows 
 His delight in, and favonr to His Sei-vant, and, in Him, to the 
 Church, q. d., of delight in thee, mercy for thee, — in which 
 case chap. Ix. 1 would be parallel : " In my wrath I smote 
 thee, and in my favour have I had mercy on thee ;" or, " in 
 the time of favour," may be equivalent to : " at the agreeable, 
 acceptable time" (LXX., which Paul follows in 2 Cor. vi. 1, 2, 
 xaipZ dsxruj, Vulg. tempore placito); in contrast to a preceding 
 unacceptable time, in which the Lord seemed to have forsaken 
 His Servant, in whicli it appeared as if He had laboured in 
 vain, and spent His strength for nought and vanity. Accept- 
 able is the time to all parties, not only to the Servant of God, 
 but also to those who are to be redeemed through Him ; and 
 not less to God, to whom it is a joy to pour out upon His 
 Servant the rivers of His salvation. The Preterites in ver. 8 
 must be viewed as prophetic Preterites. Concerning " Cove- 
 nant of the people," comjiare remarks on chap. xlii. 6. The 
 idea of the people is more closely defined and qualified by ver. 
 () and 7. The souls who have been cut off from their people, 
 because they have broken the covenant of the Lord, and de- 
 spised His Servant, are justly passed by. But since Dy can 
 here be understood of the better portion of the people only, of 
 the invisible Church in the midst of the visible, the Servant 
 of God cannot be the better portion of the people. — In the 
 words : " That thou mayest raise up the land, divide deso- 
 late heritages," the bestowal of salvation is described under 
 tlie image of the restoration of a devastated country. In ver. 
 9, the miseiy of the Congiegation of God is described under 
 the image of pining away in a dark prison ; comp. remarks on 
 chap. xlii. 7. With the .second half of the verse, there begins 
 a more general descri])tion of the glorious salvation which the 
 L(M(1 will giant to His peoj)le ; and the person of the Media- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. L. 4.-11. 2t7 
 
 tor steps into the back-grcvind, in order afterwards to come 
 forth more prominently. The ways and hare hills have come 
 into consideration as places which, in themselves, are com- 
 pletely barren, and which the wonderful grace of God can alone 
 cause to bud and flourish. 
 
 CHAPTER L 4-11. 
 
 The Servant of God here also appears as speaking. In ver. 
 
 4, He intimates His vocation : God has bestowed upon Him 
 the gift of comforting those who are weaiy and heavy laden. 
 He then at once turns to His real subject, — the sufferings 
 which, in fulfilment of this vocation he has to endure. The 
 Lord has inwardly manifested to Him that, in the exercise of 
 His ojfice. He shall experience severe trials ; and willingly has 
 He borne all these sufferings, all the ignominy and shame, ver. 
 
 5, 6. With this willingness and fortitude He is inspired by 
 His firm confidence in the Lord, who, he certainly knows, will 
 help Him and destroy His enemies, ver. 7 9. The conclusion, 
 in ver. 1 and 1 1 , forms the prophetic announcement of the 
 different fates of the two opposing parties among the people. 
 At the foundation of this lies the fbi'esight of heavy afl^lictions 
 which, after tlie appearance of the Servant of God, will be laid 
 upon the covenant-people. That portion of the people who 
 are devoted to the Servant of God, are told to hope in the 
 midst of the misery, and may hope ; their sorrows shall be 
 turned into joy. But the ungodly who, without regarding the 
 Lord, and without hearkening to His Servant, would help 
 themselves, will bring destruction upon themselves by their 
 self-willed doing-s, and shall be visited by the avenging hand 
 of the Servant of God. 
 
 All intimation of the lowliness of Christ at His first appear- 
 ance occure as early as in chap. xi. 1. In chap. xlii. 4, the 
 words : " He shall not fail nor run away," intimate that the 
 Servant of God has to struggle with great obstacles and difli- 
 culties in the exercise of His calling. According to chap. xlix. 
 4, He will labour in vain among the great mass of the cove- 
 
248 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 nanfc-people, and spend his strength for nought and vanity. 
 In ver. 7, it is expressly intimated that severe sufferings shall 
 l>e inflicted upon Him by the people. That which was there 
 alluded to, is here carried out and expanded. But the suffer- 
 ing of the Servant of God is here described from that aspect 
 only which is common to Christ with His members. It is 
 first in cliap. liii. that its vicarious power is pointed out. The 
 Servant of God comes here before us in His deepest humilia- 
 tion. Even in the description of His vocation in ver. 4, the 
 most iniassuraing aspect, the prophetic office only, is brought 
 forward. It is only quite at the close that a gentle intima- 
 tion is given of the gloiy concealed behind the lowliness : He 
 there appears as the judge of those who have rejected Him. 
 
 In the Messianic explanation of this Section, the Lord him- 
 self has gone before His Church. We read in Luke xviii 3 1 , 
 JJ2, 'za.paXa^m hi rovg buibiTW li'n rrphg avroug' Idou dvu^alvo/j^iv t/( 
 'UpogoXv/Ma x,al riX-g^^SiTai ^dvra rd, ysypafMfLsva hid, rojv rrpopTjTojv rw 
 ■j}(jj roD av^pu)-rou' Tapadod^dsrcii ydp TbTs i&vt<ti xal ifLirai^6ri6iTai xou 
 iSpKS&ritfsrat xal sfj,'7rru6d^Sirai xai fj^aoriyuxfuvrsg d'lroxrevovdiv aurov. 
 There cannot be any doubt that the Lord here distinctly refers 
 to ver. 6 of the prophecy under consideration. There is, at 
 all events, no other passage in the whole of the Old Testament, 
 except that before us, in which there is any mention made of 
 being spat upon. But in other respects, too, the reference is 
 visible : " I gave my back to the smiters {fiMgny weavng, LXX. 
 tig fiMigTiyag), and my cheeks to those plucking {iii.Tai'/jir,airai — 
 the plucking of the beard, an act of degrading wantonness), 
 my face I hid not from shame (•j/3p<ffJ^(rera/) and spitting." Bengel 
 draws attention to the fact of how highly Christ, in the pas- 
 sage quoted, placed the prophecy of the Old Testament : " Jesus 
 most highly valued that which was written. The word of 
 God which is contained in Scripture is the rule for all which 
 is to happen, even for that which is to happen in eternal life." 
 If, in respect of the high estimation of prophecy, our age were 
 to follow in the steps of Jesus, it would also most readily agree 
 with Him as regards the subject of the prophecy before us. 
 This alone is the cause of the aben-ation from Him, that people 
 confined and sliut up the prophet within the horizon of his 
 time, and then imagined that he could not know anything of 
 the suffering of Christ. It was altofrcther different in the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. L. 4-11. 249 
 
 ancient Christian Church. In it, the Messianic interpretation 
 prevailed throughout ; and Grotius, who in a lower sense would 
 refer the prophecy to Isaiah, and, in a higher sense only, to 
 Christ, met with general opposition, even on the part of 
 Clei'^icus. 
 
 In favour of the Messianic explanation there is the remark- 
 able agreement existing between prophecy and fulfilment, eomp. 
 Matt, XXvi. 67, 68 : ToVj svs'xrvsav s/g ro 'jrpoectyjrov dliToZ xal s/ioXd- 
 (piffav avTov. O/ de sppdxiaav Xeyovrig' 'ffpoprjTiudov J^/x/i', yften, rlc sffriv 
 6 vulaag ffs; XXVlL 30 : xa/ sfi'ZTvaavrii ug aurov sXalSov tov xdXafj,ov 
 xai iTWTtTov iig rr^v KBtpaXrjv aurou, — an agreement, the significance 
 and importance of which are only enhanced by the circum- 
 stance that one of the most individualizing features of the 
 prophecy, viz., the plucking off" of the beard, is not met with in 
 the history of Christ ; for it is just thereby that this agree- 
 ment is proved to be a free and spontaneous one. Farther — 
 The exactness with which, in ver. 1 and 1 1 , the destinies of 
 Israel, after the rejection of Christ, are drawn ; and the de- 
 struction which the mass of the people, who did not believe 
 in the Servant of God, prepared for themselves, by their attempts 
 to help themselves by their own strength, by enkindling the 
 fiame of war, whilst those who fear the Lord and listen to the 
 voice of Hs Servant, obtain salvation. Farther — Ver. 1 1 , 
 where the Servant of God ascribes to himself the judgment 
 upon the unbelieving mass of the people : " From my hand is 
 this to you," in harmony with Matt. xxvi. 64 and other pas- 
 sages, where the Son of Man appears as executing judgment 
 upon Jerusalem. Finally — The parallel passages. 
 
 Most of the modern interpreters assume that the Prophet 
 himself, Isaiah, or Pseudo-Isaiah, is the subject of the prophecy. 
 Jerome mentions that this explanation was the prevailing one 
 among the Jews of his time. The explanation which refers it 
 to the better portion of the people, found only one defender, 
 viz., Paulus. The explanation which refers it to the whole 
 of the Jewish people, or to the collective body of the prophets, 
 has been entirely abandoned, although it is maintained in re- 
 ference to the parallel passages. 
 
 Since it is undeniable that this Section is related to the other 
 prophecies which treat of the Servant of God, — and hence an 
 identity of subject is necessarily required — those who, in the 
 
250 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Section under consideration, are compelled to give up their 
 former hypothesis, themselves bear witness against the correct- 
 ness of it, at the same time, also against the soundness of their 
 explanation of the jiassage Lefore us. For an explanation 
 which compels to the severance of what is necessarily con- 
 nected, cannot be right and true. It is only then that Exe- 
 gesis has attained its object, when it has arrived at a subject 
 in whom all those features, which occur in the single prophe- 
 cies which are connected with each other, are found at the 
 same time. Knuhel, in saying : " This small unconnected 
 Section, is the only one in the whole collection, in which the 
 Projihet speaks of himself only, and represents his suffering's 
 and hopes," has thereby himself pronounced judgment upon 
 his own intei-pretation of this Section, and at the same time, 
 of the other prophecies of the Servant of God. 
 
 Moreover, the Prophet would here form rather a strange 
 figure ; he would appear as it were, as if he had been blown 
 in by a snow-storm. According to Hofmann, he describes 
 how he is rewarded for his activity and zeal in his vocation. 
 But how does this suit the contents of the second part, which 
 evidently is a whole, the single parts of which must stand in 
 a close relation to its fundamental idea ! It is only a person 
 of central impmiance that is suitable to this context. It is 
 only when we refer it to Christ, that the expectations are satis- 
 fied which were called forth by the words : Comfort ye, com- 
 fort ye my people. This call is answered only by pointing to 
 the future Saviour of the world. 
 
 One element of truth, indeed, there is in the explanation 
 which makes the Prophet the subject. It is revealed to him, 
 indeed, that the Servant of God shall undergo pei*secution, 
 shame, and ignominy ; but he has the natural substratum for 
 this knowledge in the experience of himself and his colleagues, 
 comp. Matt, xxiii. 29-37 ; Heb. xi. 3G, 37. The divine, 
 wherever it enters into the world of sin, as well as the servant 
 of truth who upholds it in the face of prevailing falsehood, 
 must undergo struggles, shame, and ignominy. Tliis truth 
 was confirmed in the case of the prophets as types, in the case 
 of Christ as the antitype. All that which the prophets had 
 to experience in their own ca,ses was a prophecy by deeds of 
 the sufferings of Christ ; and we should the less have any dif- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. L. 5. 251 
 
 ficulty in admitting their kn<iwledge of this, that it would be 
 rather strange if they were destitute of such knowledge. 
 
 Ver. 4. " The Lord Jehovah hath given rae a disciples 
 tongue, that I should know to help the tveary %vith a word : 
 He awakeneth morning by morning, tvaJceneth mine ear, that 
 I may hear as the disciples." 
 
 The greater number of expositors explain a disciple's tongue 
 by : " A tongue such as instructed people or scholars possess, 
 — an eloquent tongue." But n»7, everywhere else in Isaiah, 
 means " pupil," " disciple," and is used especially of the dis- 
 ciples of the Lord, those who go to His school, are instructed 
 by Him ; comp. chaps, viii. \ 6 ; liv. 18. A disciple's tongue 
 is such as the disciples of the Lord possess. Its foundation 
 is formed by the disciple's ear mentioned at the close of the 
 verse. He who hears the Lord's words, speaks also the Lord's 
 words. The signification, " learned," is not suitable in the 
 last clause of the verse, and its reference to the first does not 
 permit of our assuming a difi'erent signification in either clause. 
 Just as here the Servant of God traces back to God that wliich 
 He speaks, so Jesus says, in John viii. 26 : xdyoj a fjxovca -Trap' 
 avTOv roAJra "hakZi iig rov zoV/xoi', COmp. lil. 34 : ov yap dTsffriiXiv b 
 khg TO, ^71/j.ara tow 6ioZ XaXu. The verb niV, which occurs only 
 here, means, according to the Arabic, " to help," " to support ;" 
 A quila : lirocrripieat, Vulg. suslentare. Like other similar 
 verbs, e.g., ^dd, in Gen. xxvii. 37, it is construed with a double 
 accusative : " that I may help the weary, word," i.e., may sup- 
 port him by comforting words. The weary or fatigued are, 
 like the bent reed, the faintly burning wick, in chap. xlii. 3 ; 
 the blind, the prisoners sitting in darkness, ibid., \er. 7 ; the 
 broken-hearted, chap. Ixi. 1 ; them that mourn, Hid., ver. 2. 
 Just as hei'e the Servant of God represents the suffering and 
 afflicted ones as the main objects of His mission, so Christ 
 announces, that His mission is specially directed to these, 
 comp. e.g., Matt. v. 4 ; xi.'J. 28. In order to be able to fulfil 
 this mission. He must be able to draAv from the fulness of God, 
 who looketh to him that is poor and of a contrite .spirit, chap. 
 Ixvi. 2, and who alone understands to heal the broken in 
 heart, and to bind up their wounds, Ps. cxlvii. 3. — In the 
 words : " He wakeneth, &c." we are told in what manner the 
 Lord gives to His Servant the disciple's tongue. To waken 
 
252 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 tlie ear is equivalent to : to make attentive, to make ready for 
 the reception of the divine communications. The expression 
 " morning by morning" indicates that the divine wakening is 
 going on uninterruptedly, and that the Servant of God unre- 
 servedly surrenders himself to the influences which come from 
 above, in which He has become an example to us. 
 
 Ver. 5. " The Lord JeJwvah hath opened 'mine ear, and I 
 was not rehellioas, and have not turned hack." 
 
 The phnxses " to open or uncover the ear" have always the 
 signification, " to make known something to some one," " to 
 reveal to him sometliing." " to infonii him," both in ordinary 
 circumstances (comp. 1 Sam. xx. 1 2 ; Ruth iv. 4), and on the 
 religious territory, comp. 2 Sam. vii. 27 : " For thou, Lord of 
 Hosts, God of Israel, hast opened the ear of thy servant, say- 
 ing : I will build thee an house ;" Isa. xlviii. 8 : " Thou heard- 
 est not, thou knewest not, nor was formerly thine ear opened ;" 
 chap. xlii. 20 : " The ear was opened to him." According to 
 this well established usus loqueiuU, "The Lord hath opened 
 mine ear," can only mean : The Lord hath revealed to me, hath 
 informed me inwardly; Ahenezra : '•^5 niD nb " He has made 
 known to me His secret." What the Lord has made known 
 to His Servant, we are not here expressly told ; but it may be 
 inferred from ver. 6, where the Servant declares that which, in 
 consequence of the divine manifestation, He did, viz., that He 
 should give His back to the smiters, &:c. The words : " The 
 Lord hath opened mine ear" here are connected with : " Tlie 
 Lord wakeneth mine ear, that I may hear," in the preceding 
 verse : The Lord has specially made known to me that, in 
 carrying out my vocation, I shall have to endure severe suf- 
 ferings. To this subject the Servant of God quickly passes 
 over, after having, in the introduction, described, by a few 
 features, the vocation, in the carrying out of which these suf' 
 fenngs should befal Him. As the authors of these sufferings, 
 we must conceive of the party opposed to the weary, viz., the 
 proud, secure, unbroken sinners. On " I was not rebellious," 
 compare what, in Deut. xxi. 20, is written of the stubborn and 
 rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father ; and 
 farther, the words : crXj^v ov^ wg lyu di}.u aW ui aO, Matt, xxvl 
 39. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. L. 6, 7. 253 
 
 Ver. 6. " / gave my hack to the smiters, and my cheeks to 
 the pluckers, I hid not my face from shame and spitting!' 
 
 The words express in an individualizing manner the thought, 
 that the Servant of God, in His vocation as the Saviour of the 
 personae miserabiles, would experience the most shameful and 
 ignominious treatment, and would patiently bear it. In God's 
 providence, part of the contents was literally fulfilled upon 
 Christ. But the fact that this literal agreement is not the 
 main point, but that it serves as a hint and indication only 
 of the far more important substantial conformity which would 
 take place, although the hatred of the world against the Sa- 
 viour of the poor and afflicted should have manifested itself in 
 forms altogether different, — this fact is evident fi'om the cir- 
 cumstance that regarding the fulfilment of the words : " and 
 my cheeks to the pluckers" — plucking the cheeks, or plucking 
 off" of the beard being the greatest insult and disgTace in the 
 East, comp. 2 Sam. x. 4 — there is no mention in the New 
 Testament history. 
 
 In vers. 7-9 we have the future glory, which makes it easy 
 for the Servant of God to bear the sufferings of the Present. 
 If God be for Him, who may be against Him ? 
 
 Ver. 7. " But the Lord Jehovah helpeth me, therefore I am 
 not confounded,, therefore I make my face like a flint, atid I 
 know that I am not put to shame." 
 
 TiO^Da refers to nio^D in the preceding verse. He whom the 
 Lord helps is not confounded or put to shame by all the igno- 
 miny which the world heaps upon him. The expression : " I 
 make my face like a flint" denotes the " holy hardness of per- 
 severance" (Stier) ; comp. Ezek. iii. 8. In that passage it is 
 especially the assailing hardness which comes into considera- 
 tion ; here, on the contrary, it is the suffering one. There is 
 an allusion to the passage before us, in Luke ix. 51: lymre 8$ 
 r(t) ev/M'^rXi^pouffdai rag yj/xspag rrig dva'A/j-^iug avrov, xai avrog rd Tpo- 
 CWXOV aVTOV SOTTlpl^i TOU 'TTopivisSai i)g 'lipoDeaXrifjj. 
 
 Ver. 8. "He is near that just Ifieth me; who will contend 
 with one ? Let us stand together ; who has a right upon me, 
 let him come nearTne." 
 
 In the confidence and assurance of Christ, His redeemed 
 ones, too, partake, — those that hear the voice of the Servant 
 of God, ver. 10, comp. Rom. viii. 83, 34, where this and the 
 
254 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 following verse are iiitentional]y alluded to. The justification 
 is one by deeds. It took place and was fulfilled, in the first 
 instance, in the resurrection and glorification of Christ, and, 
 then, in the destruction of Jerusalem. — ''UDC'D ^V2 literally, 
 " the master of my right," i.e., he who according to his opinion 
 or assertion which, by the issue is proved to be false, has a 
 right over me, comp. the iv e/moI o'j-a. 'iyji cyubiv which, in John 
 xiv. 30, the Lord says in reference to the chief of His enemies. 
 
 Ver. 9. " Behold the Lord Jehovah ivlll help me ; who is he 
 that shtdl condemn me? Lo, they ahall wcix old as a garment, 
 the moth shall eat them." 
 
 That which is said herein reference to the enemies of Christ 
 is, in chap. li. 8, with a reference to our passage, said of the 
 opponents of those who know righteousness, and in whose 
 heart is the law : " The moth shall eat them up like a gar- 
 ment." Enmity to Christ and His Church is, to those who 
 entertain it, a prophecy of sure destruction. The words : " The 
 moth shall eat them," are farther expanded in ver. 1 1, where 
 it is described how the people who ventured to condemn the 
 Servant of God, become a prey to destruction. 
 
 The Servant of God closes with a double address ; first, to 
 the godly ; and then, to the ungodly. 
 
 Ver. 1 0. " Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that 
 oheyeth the vjord of His Servant? When hewalketh in dark- 
 ness, in which there is no light to him, let him trust in the 
 name of the Lord, and stay upon his God." 
 
 From the words : " Of mine hand," in ver. 11 , it appears 
 that the Servant of God is continuing the discourse. Hence 
 ." the voice of His Servant," q.d., the voice of me who am His 
 Servant. By the words : " Among you," the address is di- 
 rected to the whole of the people. In this two parties are 
 distinguished. The first is formed by those who fear the 
 Lord, and obey the voice of His Servant. Both of these 
 things appear as indissolubly connected. The fear of God 
 must necessarily prove itself in this, that He whom He has 
 sent is obeyed. It is a mere imagination on the part of the 
 people to think that they can fear God without obeying the 
 voice of His Servant ; comp. John v. 23. There is in this an 
 allusion to the emphatic " Unto him ye shall hearken," which, 
 in Deut. xviii. 1 5, had been said in reference to the Prophet. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. L. 11. 255 
 
 From ver. 1 1 it appears that the darkness in which those 
 walk who fear the Lord, is not to be understood of personal 
 individual calamity which befals this or that godly one, nor 
 of the sufferings which happen to the pious godly party, in 
 contrast to the ungodly wicked, but rather that we have be- 
 fore us the foresight of a dark period of sufferings which, after 
 the appearance of the Servant of God, shall be inflicted upon 
 the whole people ; so that both of the parties, — that devoted 
 to the Servant of God, and that opposed to Him, — are thereby 
 affected, but with a different issue. For in ver. 1 1 , it is de- 
 scribed how the ungodly, who likewise walk in darkness, 
 endeavour to light up their darkness by a fire which they 
 have kindled, but do so to their own destruction. Beliind the 
 exhortation : " Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and 
 stay upon his God," there is concealed the promise : he may 
 trust, his darkness shall be changed into light, his sorrow into 
 joy. Wlien the destruction of Jerusalem approached, the cry 
 came to believing Israel : " Lift up your heads, for your re- 
 demption draweth nigh," Luke xxi. 28. In the destruction 
 of apostate Israel, not obeying the Servant of God, but perse- 
 cuting His faithful ones, they beheld the beginning of the 
 victory of the true people of God over the world. 
 
 Ver. 11. " Behold all ye that kindle a Jire, that gird sparks, 
 — walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye 
 have kindled. From mine hand is this to you ; ye shall lie 
 doivn in pain." 
 
 The image begun in the preceding verse is continued. The 
 pious walk in confidence and patience through the lightless 
 darkness, until the Lord kindles a light to them. Those who 
 do not hear the Lord, who do 7wt obey the voice of His Ser- 
 vant, kindle a fire which is to light up their darkness ; but 
 instead of that, they are consumed by the fire. Thus the 
 Servant of God, who brings this destruction upon them, obtains 
 His right upon them. — The fire is often in Scripture the fire 
 of war, chap. ix. 18; Jer. li. 5 ; Rev. viii. 7-10. According 
 to several interpreters {Hitzig, Eiuald, Knohel), it is assumed 
 that the discourse is here not of " self- assistance by rebellion," 
 but " of the attacks of the wicked upon the godly, and of the 
 destruction, into which these attacks turn out for their authors." 
 But this view is opposed by the circumstance that the dark- 
 
SoG MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 ness is common to both parties ; hence, it must come from 
 some other quarter. The fire which the wicked kindle is des- 
 tined to enlighten the darkness in which they also are, which 
 is especially evident from the words : " Walk in the ligltt of 
 your fire." They now have a light which enlightens their 
 darkness ; hut this self-created light consumes them. — Ho gird 
 stands for, " to siUTOund one's self with a girdle," " to put on 
 a girdle." In substance it is equivalent " to provide one's self 
 with it." — The drra^ "kiybfunv n"ip''T cannot with certainty be ex- 
 plained from the dialects. The connection and parallelism are 
 in favour of the signification "sparks," " flames," which is found 
 as early as in the Septuagint (^>.oya), and Vulg. {flamrnas). 
 In Syriac xpM has the signification " lightning." Tlio.se who 
 explain it by " fiery darts" are not at liberty to refer it to the 
 D^r in Prov. xxvi. 1 8. The signification "flames" (not " sparks," 
 as Slier holds), is, in that passage, quite suitable ; simple 
 arrows could there not be mentioned after the fiery darts 
 without making the discourse feeble. — 13^ " walk ye," is equi- 
 valent to : " ye shall walk," yet with an intimation of the fact 
 tliat tliis result, as we are immediately afterwards expressly 
 told, proceeds from the speaker : sic volo, sic jubeo. The 
 words : " From mine hand is this to you," are, by those who 
 make the Prophet the subject of this prediction, supposed to 
 be spoken by Jehovah. But throughout the whole section, 
 the Lord is always only spoken of, and never appears as speak- 
 ing. The words are in harmony with the exalted dignity 
 which, elsewhere also, is attributed by the Prophet to the 
 Servant of God who plants the heavens, and lays the founda- 
 tion of the earth, chap. li. 16; whose mouth the Lord makes 
 like a sharp sword, chap. xlix. 2 ; who is the pereonal salva- 
 tion, the Saviour for the whole earth, chap. xlix. 6 ; and the 
 embodied Covenant for the covenant-people, chaps, xlii. 6 ; xlix. 
 8. The last passages, especially, are of no small importance. 
 The saving and judging activity go hand in hand, and cannot 
 be separated. We have here thus the Old Testament begin- 
 nings and preparation for the doctrine of the New Testament, 
 that the Father has given all judgment to the Son, Tlie 
 Servant of God, in the liighest sense, is Lord and judge of 
 the fellow .servants.— -The ^ in n^^fyo^ serves for designating 
 the condition : so that you belong to pain, aaiy occurs in 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XI. 1. 257 
 
 chap, xliii. 1 7 of the Egyptians lying down ; comp. Ps. xli. 9 : 
 " He that lieth shall rise up no more." In the announcement 
 that Israel's attempt to help themselves would turn out to 
 their destruction, the Song of Solomon, in chap. iii. 1-3; v. 7, 
 has preceded our Prophet : " The daughter of Zion, in her 
 restlessness, endeavours to bring about, by worldly, rebellious 
 doings, the Messianic salvation. It is in vain ; what she is 
 seeking she does not find, but the heavenly watchmen find 
 her." 
 
 CHAPTEE LI. 1-16. 
 
 Ver. 1. ''And I i^ut my words m thy iniouih, and cover 
 thee in the shadoiu of mine hand, that thou mayest ])lant the 
 heaven and lay the foundation of the earth, and say unto 
 Zion : Thou art my i^eople" 
 
 The discourse in chap. li. to Iii. ] 2 is not addressed to the 
 whole of Israel, but to the election. They are, in chap. li. 1 , 
 called those that follow after righteousness, that seek the Lord ; 
 in ver. 7, those who know righteousness, in whose heart is the 
 law of the Lord. These the Prophet seeks to comfort and 
 strengthen by pointing to the future glorious mercies of the Lord. 
 
 The Section chap. li. 4-8 comforts the elect by the coming 
 of the salvation, by the dominion of the people of God over 
 the whole world ; points to the foundation of these successes, 
 viz., the eternity of the salvation and righteousness for the 
 Church ; and exhorts them that, having this eternal salvation 
 before them, they might patiently bear the tempoiul reproach 
 of the world given over to destniction. 
 
 In vers. 9-11, the Church calls upon the Lord to do as He 
 had promised ; and this prayer, founded upon His almighty 
 love, which in times past had so gloriously manifested itself, 
 passes over, at the close, into hope and confidence. 
 
 In vers. 1 2-1 6 follows the answer of the Lord, who exhorts 
 the Church to be stedfast, by reminding her that her opponents 
 are weak mortals, while the omnipotent God is her protector ; 
 and announces that, with the same omnipotence which He 
 manifests in nature, He would soon bring about her deliver- 
 
 VOL. II. r 
 
258 MESSIANIC PRKDICTIOXS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 iuice, and that Ho would do so by His Servant, in whom all 
 His promises should be Yea and Amen, and whom at the close 
 Ho addresses, committing to Him the work of redemption. 
 According to the current oj)inion, the discourse in ver. IG is 
 addressed to the people. But, in that case, we must also make 
 up our minds to view the Infinitive with b a Gerund, "plant- 
 ing," or " by planting," — a supposition which is beset with 
 great difficulties. It was only by an inconsistency that Stier, 
 who, in chap. xlix. rejects this view, could here agree to it. 
 And, farther, it is obvious that the words at the close : " Thou 
 art my people," are the words which, according to the com- 
 mencement of the verse, are put into the mouth of the speaker, 
 and that hence, the planting of heaven and earth, which pre- 
 ])ares for this speaking, belongs to Him. If this be not sup- 
 posed, one does not at all see to what the : " I put my words 
 in thy mouth," is to refer. What farther militates against 
 this explanation is the unmistakable relation of the passage 
 before us to chaps, xlix., 1., which it is impossible to refer to 
 the people. The same reason is also against the supposition 
 of Ge.senius and Umbreit, that the discourse is addressed to 
 the prophetical order. Nor is it defensible to explain : " to 
 plant the heaven and lay the foundation of the earth," by : 
 to establish the new state of Israel. To these arguments it 
 may be added that, according to this explanation, the words : 
 " Tliou art my people," are unsuitable ; for Israel was not the 
 people of the Prophet, but the people of God and of His Ser- 
 vant. The discourse is addressed rather to the Messiah, com- 
 pare the parallel passages, chap, xlix., especially ver. 2, and 
 chap. 1., especially vers. 4 and 5. Considering the dramatic 
 character of the whole section, the change of the person 
 addressed is a circumstance of very little importance ; and 
 chap. lix. 21, where the word of God is put into the mouth of 
 Jacob, is parallel in appearance only. Even a priori we could 
 not expect that, in this context, treating, as it does, of the 
 personal Messiah, the whole section, chap. li. 1 to Hi. 1 2, should 
 lack all reference to the Messiah. By the words : " I put my 
 word in thy mouth," the Messiah is appointed to be, in the 
 highest sense, the speaker of God ; the realization of the divine 
 counsels is conmiitted to Him. For the fact that it is not 
 mere words which arc here treated of, but such as are living 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIT. 12-16. 259 
 
 and powerful, like those which God spoke at the creation, be- 
 comes evident by the circumstance that the planting of heaven 
 and earth is attri]:)uted to the Servant of God as bearer of His 
 words, — a thing which cannot be done by the ordinar}^ word ; 
 comp. Isa. xl. 4, according to which the Messiah smites the 
 earth with the rod of His mouth, and slays the wicked with 
 the breath of His lips. — 1 cover ihee in the slcadoiu of mine 
 luind, designates the divine protection and providence which 
 are indispensable in order that the Servant of God may fulfil 
 His vocation to be God's speaker. The words form an acces- 
 sory thought only : I appoint thee my speaker whom, as such, 
 I will keep and protect in order that thou, etc. ; — for that 
 which follows is that which the Servant of God is to perform 
 as His Speaker. By the word of Omnipotence committed to 
 Him, He plants a new heaven, and lays the foundation of a 
 new earth, and invests Zion with the dig-nity of the people of 
 God. — To plant the heaven and lay the foundation of the 
 earth, is ec^uivalent to founding a new heaven, a new earth ; 
 comp. chaps. Ixv. 1 7, Ixvi. 2 2 ; Rev. xxii. For, as long as 
 the old heaven and the old earth exist, a planting and found- 
 ing activity cannot take place in reference to heaven and earth. 
 All that is created, in so far as it opposes the Kingdom of 
 God, is unfit for being an abode of the glorified Kingdom of 
 God, and must be shaken and broken to pieces, in order that 
 this Kingdom may enter into its natural conditions, and find a 
 worthy abode. The activity of God and His Servant, neces- 
 sary for this purpose, will most completely take place at the 
 end of days, at the rraXiyyivisia announced by the Lord, Matt, 
 xix. 28 ; compare what is said in chap, xi., in reference to the 
 entire change of the conditions of the earth. But in a pre- 
 paratory manner, this activity pervades all history. The 
 heaven, according to the usus loquendi of Scripture, and also 
 of Isaiah, is not only the natural heaven, but also the heaven 
 of princes, the whole order of rulers and magistrates, (comp. 
 my remarks on Rev. vi. 1 3), whose form and relation to the 
 Kingdom of God underwent a great change, even at the first 
 appearance of Christ.— ^The saying, according to the preced- 
 ing : That thou mayest plant, &c., is not to be referred to the 
 mere announcing ; but, according to the frequent iisus loquendi, 
 it includes the performing also, just as e.g., in ver. 12, the 
 
2G() MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 (M)iiiibrting is effected by a discourse hi deeds. The distinc- 
 tion between, and separation of word and deed belongs to 
 human weakness. God speaks and it is done ; and what holds 
 true of His word, iip])lies also to the word of His Servant, 
 which he has put into His mouth. 
 
 CHAPTEES LIl. 1;I-L1II. 11 
 
 Tliis section forms the climax of the prophecies of Isaiah, 
 of j)iophetism in general, of the whole Old Testament, as ap- 
 pears even from the circumstance that the Lord and His 
 Apostles refer to no part of the Old Testament so frequently 
 and so emi)hatically as to this, — a section which, according to 
 Lafher's demand, every Christian should have committed ver- 
 batim. Christ is here, with wonderful clearness, described to 
 us in His highest work — His atoning suffering. 
 
 In vers. 1 3-1 5 of chap. lii. Jehovah speaks. These verses 
 contain a short summary of what is enlarged upon in chap, 
 liii. Tlie very deepest humiliation of the Servant of God shaU 
 be followed by His highest glorification. In consequence of 
 the salvation wrought' out and accomplished by Him, the 
 nations of the earth and their kings shall reverently submit 
 to Him. In chap. liii. 1-10, the Prophet utters the senti- 
 ments of the elect in Israel. At first, in His humiliation, they 
 had not recognized the Redeemer ; but now they acknowledged 
 Him as their Redeemer and Saviour, and saw that He had 
 taken upon Him His sufferings for our salvation, and that 
 tliey had a vicarious character. The commencement foi*ms, in 
 ver. 1, the lamentation that so many do not believe in the 
 report of the Sei-vant of God, that so many do not behold the 
 glory of God manifested in Him. In vers. 2 and 3, we have 
 tlie cause of this fact, viz., tlie appearance of the Divine, in the 
 form of a Sei-vant — the offence of the cross. In lowliness, 
 without any outward splendour, the Servant of God shall go 
 about. Sufferings, heavier than ever befel any man, shall be 
 inflicted upon Him. In vers. 4-G, the vicarious import of 
 these sufferings is pointed out. The people, seeing his suffer- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. LII. 13 LTII. 12. 261 
 
 ings, and not knowing the cause of them, imagmed that thev 
 were the well-merited punishment of His own transgressions 
 and iniquities. But the Church, now brought to believe 
 in Him, see that they were were wrong in imagining thus. 
 It was not His own transgressions and iniquities which 
 were punished in Him, but rours. His sufferings were 
 voluntarily undergone by Him, and for the salvation of 
 mankind, which else would have been given up to destruc- 
 tion. God himself was anxious to re-unite to himself those 
 who were separated from Him, and who walked in their 
 own ways. To the vicarious import of the sufferings of tlie 
 Servant of God corresponds, according to ver. 7, His conduct : 
 He suffers quietly and patiently. In vers. 8-1 we have tlie 
 reward which the Servant of God receives for His passive obe- 
 dience. God takes Him to himself, and He receives an un- 
 speakably gi-eat generation, ver. 8, the ominous burial with 
 the rich, ver. 9, numerous seed and long life, and that the 
 pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand; ver. 1 0. In 
 vers. 1 1 and 1 2, the Lord again appears as speaking, and con- 
 firms that which has been declared by the faithful Church. 
 
 The two vei-ses of the close, together with the exordium, 
 chap. lii. 13-15, occupy five verses — five being the signature 
 of the half and incomplete. The main body, ten verses, is 
 divided into seven referrina; to the humiliation and suffering, 
 and three referring to the exaltation of the Servant of God. 
 The seven are, as usual, divided into three and four. In the 
 three verses, the suffeiing of the Servant of God is exhibited ; 
 in tlie four, its cause and vicarious import. 
 
 By the "Behold^' with which the prophecy opens, the Pro- 
 phet intimates that we have here before us a vision beheld V>y 
 him in the spirit. As the period in which the Prophet be- 
 holds the vision, we have to suppose the time between the 
 suffering and the glorification of the Servant of God. The 
 glorification is described chiefly by Futures, the suftering by 
 Preterites ; but, from the fact that this stand-point is not 
 strictly adhered to, it is evident that we have to do with a 
 stand-point which is purely ideal. 
 
 The section forms, in a formal and material point of view, a 
 whole by itself; but, notwithstanding its absolute independ- 
 ence, it must stand in a certain connection with what precedes 
 and what follows. Let us, therefore, now consider the relation 
 
•2i\2 MKSSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 ill whicli it stands to tlie poi-tions surrounding it. Its rela- 
 tion to what goes before is thus strikingly designated by 
 Calvin : " After Isaiah had spoken of the restoration of the 
 Church, he pswsses over to Christ, in whom all things are 
 gathered together. He speaks of the prosperous success of 
 the Church, at a time when it was least to be expected, which 
 calls them back to their King, by whom all things are to be 
 restored, and exhorts them to expect Him." The preceding 
 section begins with chap. li. 1. We have already stated the 
 contents up to li. 16. Vers. 17-23 are closely connected with 
 the preceding, in which salvation and mercy were announced 
 to the Church of God. This announcement is here continued 
 in new forms. Chap. lii. 1 -G : As the Lord had formerly 
 delivered His people out of the hand of Egj'pt and Asshur, st), 
 now too, He will deliver them. Zion appears under the image 
 of a woman imprisoned, fettered, lying powerlessly in a miser- 
 able garment, on a dirty floor, and is called upon to arise, to 
 strengthen herself, to throw off her bands, to put on festive 
 garments, inasmuch as the time of her deliverance from the 
 misery is at hand. Vers. 7-10 : In the last words of ver. G, 
 the Lord had announced that He was already at hand for the 
 redemption of His Church. This salvation now presents itself 
 vividly to the sj)iritual eye of the Prophet, and is graphically 
 described by him. He beholds a messenger hastening with 
 the glad tidings to Jerusalem ; watcJnnen, who are standing 
 on the ruins of Jcmsalem in longing expectation, discover him 
 at a distance, and exultingly call upon the ruins to shout 
 aloud for joy.'' " How beautiful" — so verse 7 runs — "upon 
 the mountainsthe feet of the Messenger of joy, that announceth 
 peace, that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth salvation, 
 that saith unto Zion: Thy God reigneth." In Rom. x. 15, 
 the Ajjostle refers this passage to the preaching of the Gospel. 
 That is more than mere application ; it is real explanation. 
 The deliverance from Babylon is only the fiist faint beginning 
 of the salvation, which the Prophet has before his eye in its 
 
 ' One neerls only to oonpidcr pasFages such as this, to be enabled to distin- 
 guish between the ideal and real Present, and to be convincetl of the utter 
 futility of the chief argument against the genuineness of the second jiart, viz., 
 that the Habylonish exile ajijieai's as jiresent. "Proceeding from the cer- 
 tainty of deliverance" — so 7/(Vc/V/ remarks — "the Projihet here Inhohls in 
 spirit that going on, to which, in cliaj). xl. 9, he exhoris." If the Pro] het 
 beholds at all in the spirit, why should he not see iu si-irit the misery alioV 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LII. 13 LIII. 13. 263 
 
 whole extent. As the substance of the salvation, the circum- 
 stance that Zion's God reigneth, is intimated. There is, in 
 this, an allusion to the formula which was used in proclaimino- 
 the ascension of earthly kings to the throne. Even this allusion 
 shows that the point here in question is not the continuous o-o- 
 vernment of the Lord, but a new, glorious manifestation of His 
 government, as it were a new ascension to the throne. This "the 
 Lord reigneth," found a faint beginning only of its confirmation 
 and fulfilment in the destruction of Babylon, and the deliver- 
 ance of Israel ; but as to its full import, it is Messianic. In 
 Christ, the Lord has truly assumed the government, and will 
 still more gloriously reign in future. — Ver. 8 : The voice of 
 thy watchmen ! they lift up the voice, they shout together ; 
 for they see eye to eye that the Lord returneth to Zion." The 
 watchmen are ideal persons, representatives of the truth that 
 the Lord is around His people, and that the circumstances of 
 His Church are to Him a constant call to help ; or they may 
 be viewed as the holy angels who, as the servants of the watch- 
 men of Israel, form the protecting power for the Church. These 
 watchmen continue to stand even on the destroyed walls ; for, 
 even in her misery, the Lord is Zion's God. The anxious 
 waiting eye of the watchmen, and the mercy-beaming eye of 
 God returning to Zion meet one another. The returning here 
 is opposed to the forsaking, over which Zion had lamented in 
 chap. xlix. 1 4. Instead of the concealed presence of the Lord 
 during the miserj^, which, to the feeling, so easily appears as 
 entire absence, there comes the presence of God manifested 
 in the salvation. This return of the Lord to Zion truly took 
 place in Christ only, Luke i. 68. — Ver. 9 : "Break forth into 
 joy, sliout together, ye ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord com- 
 forteth Jerusalem, redeemeth His people." Tliis call goes far 
 beyond the time of the restoration of Jerusalem after the 
 exile ; for, even at that time, the spiritual eye still beheld 
 ruins, where the bodily eye saw firm, walled buildings. The 
 condition of the Kingdom of God was still miserable, the eye 
 of the faithful remained still fixed, with hopes and longings, 
 upon the Future which was to bring, and has brought, fru^ 
 comfort and consolation. — Ver. 10: " The Lord maketh bare 
 His Holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of 
 the earth see the salvation of our God." The making bare of 
 the arm of the Lord designates the manifestation, by deeds, of 
 
204) MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS 
 
 the divine power and glory, such as took place by the sending 
 of Christ, and by the wonderful elevation of the Church over 
 the world, — an elevation which has it roots in Hira ; comp. 
 chap. liii. 1. In vers. 11 and 12 there is still the exhortation 
 to the Church of the Lord that, by true repentance, she should 
 worthily prepare for the impending salvation. 
 
 After the Prophet has, in chap. li. 1 to Hi. 1 2, described the 
 transition of the Church of God from humiliation and sorrow 
 to glorification, it is quite natural that he should now turn 
 from the members to the Head, through whose mediation this 
 transition was to be accomplished, after the same contrast had 
 been exhibited in Himself There is the most intiroate con- 
 nection between the Church of God and His Servant ; for, 
 all that He does and suffers. He does and suffers for her ; and 
 all that befals her is prefigured by the way in which He has 
 been led by the Lord. 
 
 With what follows, too, the section before us stands in a 
 close relation. The glorification of the Servant of God de- 
 scribed at the close of chap, liii., is, in Him, bestowed at the 
 same time, upon the Church. Thus chap, liv., in which the 
 Church is comforted by pointing to her future glorification, is 
 connected with the preceding. The Church of the Lord ap- 
 pears here as a woman who, after having been put away by 
 her husband, and after having, for a long time, lived in a 
 childle.ss, sorrowful solitude, is again received by him, and sees 
 herself surrounded by numerous children. The time of punish- 
 ment is now at an end, and the time of mercy is breaking. 
 
 Chap. lii. 1 3. Behold, my Servant sladl act ivlsely, He shall 
 he exalted and extolled, and he very hi(jh." 
 
 h''2^n always means "to act wisely" (LXX. ewrieu; Aquil. 
 Syon. : sTigdj^fMoviadrigsTai), never "to be successful" (the Chal- 
 dean, whom most of the modern interpreters follow, renders 
 it by n^v), and this ascertained sense (comp. Remarks on Jer. 
 iii. 1 5 ; xxiii. 5, where the verb is used of the Messiah, just as 
 it is here), must here be maintained so much the more, that 
 our passage evidently refers to David, the former servant of 
 God. Of him it is said in 1 Sam. xviii. 14, 15 : "And David 
 Wiis acting wisely in all his M'ays, and the Lord was with hin). 
 And Saul saw that he was acting very wisely, and was afraid 
 of him ; comp. 1 Kings ii. 3, wliere David says to Solomon : 
 " And keep the charge of the Lord thy God .... in t)rder 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LII. 18 LIII. 12. 265 
 
 that thou mayest act wisely in all that thou doest, and whither- 
 soever thou turnest thyself;" Ps. ci. 2, where David, speaking 
 in the name of his family, says : "I will behave myself wisely 
 in a perfect way;" and 2 Kings xviii. 7, where it is said of 
 Hezekiah : " And the Lord was with him, and whithersoevtjr 
 he went forth, he acted wisely." According to these funda- 
 mental and parallel passages, the expression, " He shall act 
 wisely" refers to the administration of government, and is 
 equivalent to : He shall rule wisely like his ancestor David. 
 Stier is wi'ong in opposing the view, that the Messiah here 
 presents himself as King. He says : " The King has here 
 stepped behind the Prophet, Witness, Martjrr, Saviour ;" but in 
 chap. liii. 1 2, the royal office surely comes out with sufficient 
 distinctness. We must never forget that the different offices of 
 Christ are intimately connected with one another by the unity 
 of the person. The prosperity and success which the Servant 
 of God enjoys, are first brought before us and detailed in what 
 follows ; and appear, just as in the fundamental passages 
 quoted, as the consequence of acting wisely : " My Servant 
 shall, after having, through the deepest humiliation, attained 
 to dominion, administer it well, and thereby attain to the 
 highest glory." To the words : " He shall act wisely" corre- 
 spond, afterwards, the words : " The pleasure of the Lord shall 
 prosper by His hand," chap. liii. 10. The fact that a person 
 acts wisely is, in a twofold aspect, a fruit of his connection 
 with God : first, because God is the source and fountain of all 
 wisdom, and, secondly, because from God the blessing proceeds 
 which always accompanies his doings. The ungodly is by God 
 involved in circumstances which, notwithstanding all his wis- 
 dom, make him appear as a fool. Compare only chap. xix. 1 1 : 
 " The princes of Zoan become fools, the counsel of the wise 
 counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish ; how can ye say 
 unto Pharaoh : a son of the wise am I, a (spiritual) son of the 
 (wise) kings of ancient times?" comp. ver. 13; Job xii. 17, 
 20; Eccles. ix. 11. In the second clause the Prophet puts 
 togetlier the verbs which denote elevation, and still adds '^\xo 
 " ver}^" in order most emphatically to point out the glory of 
 the exaltation of the Servant of God. 
 
 Ver. 14. "As many were shocked at thee — so marred frora 
 man was His look, and His form from the sons of man — Vei-. 
 15. So si call He sprinkle many nations ; kings shall shut their 
 
2G6 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 vwvths on account of Ilhn, for they ivlto had not been told, 
 they see, and they who did not hear, they perceive." 
 
 Ver. 14 contains tlie jn'ofasi,^, ver. 15 the apodosis. The 
 former describes the deep humiHation, the Litter the highest 
 jrlorification of the Servant of God. The so in ver. 14 begins 
 a parenthesis, in whicli the reason wliy many were shocked is 
 stated, and which goes on to the end of the verse. In keep- 
 ing with tlie dramatic character of the prophetic discourse, the 
 Lord addresses His Servant in ver. 14: " At thee ;" while, in 
 ver. 1 5, He speaks of Him in the third person : " He shall 
 sprinkle ;" " on account of Him" This change has been 
 occasioned by the parenthetical chiiise which contains a remark 
 of the Prophet, and in which, therefore, the Servant of God 
 could not but be spoken of in the third person. Hdvernick 
 and Stier refuse to admit the existence of a parenthesis. Their 
 reasons : " Parentheses are commoidy an ill-invented expedient 
 only," and : " It is not likely that the same particle should 
 have a different signification in these two clauses following 
 immediately the one upon the other," are- not entirely desti- 
 tute of force, but are far-outweighed by counter-arguments. 
 They say that the apodosis begins with the first p, and that 
 in ver. 15a second ajwdosis follows. But no tolerable thought 
 comes out in this way ; — it is hard to co-ordinate two apodoses, 
 — and the transition from the 2d to the 3d person remains 
 unaccounted for. Do*^ " to be desolated" is then transferred 
 to the spiritual desolation and devastation, and receives the 
 signification " to be horrified," " to be shocked." — Who the 
 many are that are shocked and otfended at the miserable aj)- 
 peai'ance of the Servant of God, appears from chap. xlix. 4, 
 according to which the opposition to the Servant of God has 
 its seat among the covenant people ; farther, from the contrast 
 in ver. 1 5 of the chapter before us, according to which the 
 respectful surrender belongs to the Gentiles ; and farther, from 
 chap. liii. 1, where the unbelief of the former covenant-people 
 is complained of; from vers. 2-4, where even the believers 
 from among Israel complain that they had had difficidty in 
 surmounting the oflfence of the Cross. nnc'D, properly " cor- 
 ruption," stands here as ahstractum pro concreto, in the signi- 
 fication, " corrupted," " marred." As to its form, it is in the 
 status constriLctus which, in close connections, can stand even 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LII. 1 4, 15. 267 
 
 before Prepositions. From the corresponding C^''^ bin in 
 cliap. liii. 3, it appears that the Preposition stands here only 
 for the sake of distinctness, and might as well have been 
 omitted. The p serves for designating the distance, " from 
 man," " from the sons of men," so that He is no more a man, 
 does no more belong to the number of the sons of men. The 
 correctness of this explanation appears from chap. liii. 8, and 
 Ps. xxii. 7 : "I am a worm and no man." As regards the 
 sense of the whole parenthesis, many interpreters remark, that 
 we must not stop at the bodily disfiguration of the Servant of 
 God, but that the expression must, at the same time, be under- 
 stood figuratively. Thus, Luther says : " The Prophet does 
 not speak of the form of Christ as to His person, but of the 
 political and royal form of a Ruler, who is to become an earthly 
 King, and does not appear in royal form, but as the meanest 
 of all servants ; so that no more despised man than He has 
 been seen in the world." But the Prophet evidently speaks, 
 in the first instance, of the bodily appearance only ; and we 
 can tlie less tliink of a figurative sense, that bodily disfigura- 
 tion forms the climax of misery, and that, in this ^^CL^t, the 
 whole of the miserable condition is delineated. Even the severe 
 inward sufFerinos are a matter of course, if the outward ones 
 have risen to such a pitch. How botli of these go hand in 
 hand is seen from Ps. xxii. These interpreters are, farther, 
 wrong in this respect, that they refer the pretended figurative 
 expression solely to the lowliness and humility of the Messiah, 
 and not, at the same time, to His sujferings also. Thus, 
 among the ancient interpreters, it was viewed by Jerome: 
 " The horrid appearance of His form is not thereby indicated, 
 but that He came in humility and poverty;" and among recent 
 interpreters by Martini: "The sense of the passage does not 
 properly refer to the deformity of the face, but to tlie whole 
 external weak, poor, and humble condition." But, for that, 
 the expression is by far too strong. Mere lowliness is no 
 object of horror (comp. 1 Cor. i. 23, according to which it is 
 the Cross which ofifends the Jews) ; it does not produce a de- 
 formity of tlie countenance ; it cannot produce the effect that 
 the Servant of God should, as it were, cease to be a man. All 
 this suggests an unspeakable suffering of the Servant of God, 
 and that, moreover, a suffering which, in the first instance. 
 
268 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 manirested itself upon His own lioly body. Farther — We 
 must also take into consideration that the KprinMing, in ver. 
 1 5, has for its background the sliedding of blood, and is the 
 fruit of it, at first concealed. If any doubt should yet remain, 
 it would be removed by the subsequent detailed representa- 
 tion of that which is here given in outline merely. Tlie sole 
 reason of that narrow view is, that interpreters did not under- 
 stand the fundamental relation of the section under considera- 
 tion to the subsequent section ; that they did not perceive 
 that, here, we have in a complete sketch what there is given in 
 detail and expansion. — Ver. 15. The verb nu occurs in very 
 many passages, and signifies in Hiphil, everywhere, " to 
 sprinkle." It is especially set apart and used for the sprinkling 
 with the blood of atonement, and the water of purification. 
 When " the anointed priest" had sinned, he took of the blood 
 of the sacrijice, and sprinkled it before the vail of the sanc- 
 tuary, Lev. iv. 6; comp. v. 16, 17. The high piiest had, 
 every year, on the great day of atonement, to sprinkle the 
 blood before the Aik of the Covenant, in order to obtain foi- 
 giveness for the people. Lev. xvi. 1 4, comp. also vers. 18, 19 : 
 " And he shall sprinkle of the blood upon it (the altar) with 
 his finger seven times, and cleanse it, and hallow it from the 
 uncleanness of the children of Israel." In the same manner 
 the verb is used of the sprinkling of blood upon the healed 
 leper,- Lev. xiv. 7, and frequently. According to Numb. xix. 1 9, 
 the clean person shall sprluJde upon the unclean, on the third 
 day, and on the seventh day, " with the water in wdiich are 
 the ashes of the red heifer" when any one has become unclean 
 by touching a dead body. The outward material ])urification 
 frequently serves in the Old Testament to denote the spiritual 
 purification. Thus, e.g., in Ps. i. 9 : " Purge me with hyssop, 
 and I shall be clean ;" Ezek. xxxvi. 25 : " And I sprinkle 
 clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your 
 filthiness." In all those passages there lies, everywhere, at the 
 loundation an allusion to the Levitical purifications (the two 
 liust (pioted especially refer to Numb, xix.) ; and this allusion 
 is by no means so to be understood, as if he who makes the 
 allusion were drawing the material into the spiritual sphere. 
 On the contrary, he uses as a figure that which is, in the law, 
 used symbolically. All the laws of purification in the Peuta- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LII. 14, 15. 269 
 
 teucli have a symbolical and typical character. That which 
 was done to the outward impurity was, in point of fact, done 
 to the sin which the people of the Old Testament, well versed 
 in the symbolical language, beheld under its image. Hence, 
 here also, the sprinkling has the signification of cleansing 
 from sin. The expression indicates that Christ is the true 
 High Priest, to whom the ordinary priesthood with its sprink- 
 lings typically pointed. The expression is a summary of that 
 which, in the following chapter, we are told regarding the 
 expiation through the suffering and death of the Servant of 
 God. The words : " When His soul maketh a sin-offering," 
 in ver. ^ 0, and : " He shall justify," in ver. 1 1 , correspond. 
 Among the ancient expositors, this t]-anslation is followed by 
 the Syriac and Vulgate, the asperget of which Jerome thus 
 explains : He shall sprinkle many nations, cleansing them by 
 His blood, and in baptism consecrating them to the service of 
 God." In the New Testament, it is alluded to in several pas- 
 sages. Thus, in 1 Pet. i. 2, where the Apostle speaks of the 
 payTiG'Mbg a'iiMaroc 'iTjffoD Xpidrov. Farhter, in Heb. X, 22 : igoai/- 
 TKTfjbsvoi rag xapbiag a-irh (fvvsidr}<!ic*jg 'Trovrjpag ; xii. 24 : xai aiiiart 
 pav7i6iMo\J -/.puTTOV "kaXoZ'j-i -rapa rov "a/3sX, and also in chap. ix. 1 3, 
 14. Among Christian interpreters, this view was always the 
 prevailing one, was indeed the view held by the Church. 
 Schroder observ. ad origin. Hebr. c. viii. § 1 0, raised some 
 objections which were eagerly laid hold of, and increased by 
 the rationalistic interpreters. Even some sound orthodox ex- 
 positors allowed themselves to be thereby dazzled. Stier 
 declares " that, for this time, he must take the part of mo- 
 dern Exegesis against the prevailing tradition of the Church." 
 Yet his disrelish for the doctrine of the atonement held by the 
 Church has no doubt exercised a considerable influence in this 
 matter ; and Hofmann, too, in so decidedly rejecting this ex- 
 planation, which rests on such strong arguments, and is not 
 touched by any weighty counter-arguments, seems not to have 
 been guided by exegetical reasons only. But let us submit 
 these objections to a closer examination. 1. The verb ought 
 not to be construed with the Accusative of the thing to be 
 sprinkled, but with py." Re'inhe (in his Monograph on Is. liii.) 
 brings forward, against this objection, the passage Lev. iv. 16, 
 1 7 ; but he is wrong in this, inasmuch as nx is there not the 
 
270 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 sign of the Accusative, but a Preposition. ^3B ns in the signi- 
 fication " before," is, elsewhere also, very frequently used. But 
 even Gesenius is compelleJ to agree with Sivnonis} and to 
 acknowledge that, in the proper name n>T\ the verb is con- 
 nected witli an Accusative. The deviation is there still greater, 
 inasmuch as the Kal is, at the same time, used transitively. 
 But even apart from that, such a deviation cannot appear 
 strange. It htis an analogy in chap. liii. 1 1, where \>'^^')iT\, which 
 everywhere else is construed with the Accusative, is followed 
 by h ; and likewise in NQ"i, followed by h in chap. liii. 5. The 
 signification of the verb, in such cases, undergoes a slight 
 modification. nrn with hv means " to sprinkle ;"' with the 
 Accusative, " to sprinkle upon." This modification of the 
 meaning has the analogy of other languages in its favour. 
 In the Ethiopic, the verb DTi, which corresponds to the Hebrew 
 nrj, is used of the sprinkling of both persons and things ; Heb. 
 ix. 19, xi. 28; Ps. li. 9. In Latin, we may say: spargere 
 aquam, but also spargere corpus aqua ; aspergere quid alicui, 
 but also re aliquem, conspergere, perspergere, respergere quern. 
 " Why should not this be allowed to the Jews also," — remarks 
 Koclier — " who have to make up for the defect of compound 
 verbs by the varied use of simple verbs ?" But the Prophet 
 had a special reason, in the liberty specially aftbrded by the 
 higher style, for deviating from the ordinary connection. The 
 hv had to be avoided, because, had it been put, the perception 
 of the correspondence of the subsequent \hv with the yhv, in 
 ver. 14, would have becimie more difficult. — 2. It is asserted 
 that it is against the connection ; that the contrast to D5J'D 
 induces us to expect something corresponding. Beck says : 
 " A change in those who formerly abhorred the Servant is to 
 be expressed here, not a deed by the Servant himself" If 
 there were here, indeed, a contrast intended to the many who 
 formerly were shocked, we might answer that, indirectly, the 
 words : " He shall sprinkle," suggest, indeed, an opposite con- 
 duct of the " many Gentiles." No one is cleansed by the Ser- 
 vant of God, who does not allow himself to be cleansed by 
 
 ■ Siiuoiiis, Oiitim.: n^p, (/nmi aspcnjnt^ i.e., }>nr[ficet el erpiet Domimts ; 
 Gei^enius: t/iiod lix aliter e.r{ilic<iri jiotist (iiiaiii : (/iiein eoii.yiejy/et, i.e., expialnt 
 Jehova. Fiirst gives a different derivation ; but it at once shows itself to be 
 untenable. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LII., 1 4, 1 5. 271 
 
 Him. But no one will desire to be cleansed by Him, who 
 does not put his whole trust in Him, who does not recognize 
 Him as his King and Lord. To the contempt and horror 
 with which the Jews shrink back from the Messiah in His 
 humiliation, would thus be opposed the faithful, humble con- 
 fidence, with which the heathens draw near to the glorified 
 Messiah. But the fact that the real contrast to the iKDOti' is 
 not nV: but rather iVDp\ is clearly shown by vhv, which corre- 
 sponds with y^]). The nf corresponds rather to : " He was 
 disfigured." Just as this states the cause of their being shocked, 
 so in : " He shall sprinkle," the cause of the shutting of the 
 mouth is stated. This is also seen from a comparison of chap, 
 liii. 3, 4. His sufferings appeared formerly as the proof that 
 He was hated by God. Now that the vicarious value of His 
 suflTering manifests itself, it becomes the reason of humble, 
 respectful submission. Just as, formerly, many were shocked 
 at Him, because he was so disfigured, so, now, even kings shall 
 shut their mouth at Him on account of His atonement. More- 
 over, one does not exactly see how this reason could be brought 
 forward, as, in a formal point of view, there is, at all events, " a 
 deed by the Servant himself" before us, in whatever way we 
 may view the nr\ — 3. " If sprinlding were meant to be equi- 
 valent to cleansing by blood, the matter of purification could 
 not be omitted. If it were objected to this, that the noun 
 " blood might easily be supplied from the verb's being ordina- 
 rily used of cleansing with blood, the objection would be of 
 no weight, inasmuch as sprinkling was done not only with 
 blood, but also with water and oil." But the sprinkling with 
 oil, denoting sanctification, appears only quite isolated, and 
 has for its foundation the sprinkling with blood, comp. Exod. 
 xxix. 21 : "And thou shalt take of the blood which is upon 
 the altar, and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it upon Aaron, 
 and he shall be hallowed." The sprinkling with water has 
 likewise the shedding of blood for its foundation. It was 
 done with such water only, as had in it the ashes of the sin- 
 offering of the red heifer. But the Prophet has certainly on 
 purpose made no express mention of the blood, because that 
 water, too, should be included. This fact, that the sprinkling 
 here comprehends both, was perceived by the author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, in chap. ix. 13, ] 4 : si yap ro uT/j^a 
 
2 ( 2 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 ra-jpojv xai rpdyuv r.ai ffvodhg da/j^dXiug lawiZovaa roiig xixoivufMsvovi 
 dyid^si Tpog rriv Trig ffapKog xadaforriTa.' /MaXKov ri al/ji,a tou XpitSTou 
 . /ia9af'ii? Trjv ffuviidriffiv rj/j,uv drro vtxpuv 'ipyuv sig ri Xarpivnv 
 (r>ijj Zuvri. The defilement by dead bodies, against which tlie 
 water of purification was specially used, is the most significant 
 symbol of sinners and sins. — 4. " It is, in general, not probable 
 that the Servant of God, who farther down is described as a 
 sacrificial beast (!), — who, by taking upon Himself the sins of 
 His people, dies for them, should here appear as the High 
 Priest justifying them." Thus Umbreit argxies. But in oppo- 
 sition to this view, it is sufficient to refer to : " He shall 
 justifj'," in chap. liii. 11, which is parallel to "He shall 
 sprinkle." That which, in the typical sacrifices, is separated, 
 is, in the antit3q)ical, most closely connected. Even at the 
 very first beginnings of sacred history, it was established for 
 all times, that the difference between him who offers up, and 
 that which is oflfered up, should not go beyond the territory 
 of animal sacrifice. But there is the less ground for settingr 
 aside the reference to the priestly office of the Messiah, that, 
 even before Isaiah, David, in Ps. ex. 4, designates Christ as 
 the true High Priest on account of the atonement to be made 
 by Him ; and, after Isaiah, Zechariah says in chap. vi. 13: 
 '■ And He sitteth and i-uleth upon the throne, and He is a 
 Priest upon His throne." — It has now become current to derive 
 riv from njj in the signification " to leap" — " He shall cause to 
 leap. This explanation made its appearance at first in a very 
 cautious way." Martini says : " I myself feel how very far from 
 a right and sure interpretation that is, which I am now, but 
 very timidly, to advance, regarding the sense of the received 
 reading nv." By and by, however, expositors hardened them- 
 selves against the decisive objections which stand in the way 
 of it. These objections are the following. 1. The Hebrew 
 uiius loquendi is in nt3 so sure, that we are not entitled to 
 take the explanation from the Arabic. The verb is, in Hebrew, 
 never used except of Jiuids. In Kal, it docs not mean " to 
 leap," but "to spatter," Lev. vi. 20 (27) : "And upon whose 
 garment is spattered of the blood ;" 2 Kings ix. 33 ; Is. Ixiii. 
 5. In Hiphil, it is set apart and used exclusively for the 
 hoi}'- sprinklings ; and the more frequently it occurs in this 
 signification, the less are we at liberty to deviate from it. 2. 
 " He shall make to leap" would be far too indefinite,' — a cir- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIT. 1 4 1 5. 273 
 
 cumstance which appears from the vague and arbitrary con- 
 jectures of the supporters of this view. Gesenius, in his Com- 
 mentary, Stier, and others, think of a leaping for joy, in sup- 
 port of which they have quoted the Kamus, according to 
 which the verb is used of wanton asses ! According to Qese- 
 nius in the Thesaurus, Hofm/inn, and others, the Gentiles are 
 to leap up, in order to show their reverence for the Servant of 
 God. According to Hitzig and others, it is to leap for asto- 
 nishment, while, according to Unibreit and others, it is for 
 joyfid admiration. One sees that the mere " He shall make 
 to leap" is in itself too meaningless ; and interpreters are 
 obliged to make the best addition which they can. — 3. Accord- 
 ing to this explanation, no cause is assigned by which the 
 homage of the Gentiles is caUed forth ; and that cause can the 
 less be omitted, that the horror of the Jews is traced back to 
 its cause. The parenthesis in ver. 1 4 lacks its antithesis ; 
 and that this antithesis must lie in nf, is rendered probable 
 even by the circumstance, that this word signifies, in a formal 
 point of view, something which the Servant of God does, and 
 not something which the Gentiles do, while we should, by the 
 antithesis to 1»0^, be led to expect just this.^ — In the protasis, 
 the discourse is only of many ; here, it is of many nations 
 (Gousset : " It is emphatic, so that it comprehends all, and 
 denotes, at the same time, that they are numerous"), and of 
 kings. This is quite natural ; for it was only members of the 
 covenant-people who felt shocked, while the reverence is felt 
 by the whole Gentile world. — The shutting of the mouth 
 occurs elsewhere, too, repeatedly, as a sign of reverence and 
 humble submission. The reference of VPJ? to y?]}, shows that 
 Ewald is wrong in explaining it by " besides Him." Since 
 the preceding hv designated the object of the horror, — the sub- 
 stratum of it — it must here, too, designate the substratum of 
 the shutting of the mouth, and " over Him," be equivalent to : 
 " on account of Him," " out of reverence for Him." — In the 
 exposition of the last words, the old translations differ. We 
 may explain them either : " They to whom it had not been 
 
 ' In order to defend this explanation, interpreters have referred to the 
 LXX : oi/Tw davfidaovTai kdv-r) iroWa ew' avri^ ; but even Martini remarks : 
 " From a dark passage, they have tried, by ingenious conjecturing, to bring 
 out any sense whatsoever." 
 
 VOL. II. S 
 
274 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHEl'S. 
 
 told, see ;" thus the LXX. : oJg ovx dvriyytAri "TTipi avrou, o-^ovrai, 
 xa) 0/ ojx ay.Tjxoaci, e-jvriaovai, whom Paul follows in Rom. XV. 21. 
 (Ill that context, however, the difference of the two explanations 
 is of no consequence ; the passage would be equally suitable, 
 even according to the other interpretation.) Or, we may ex- 
 })lain them : " That which had not been told them, they see," 
 &c. Thus the other ancient translations explain. According 
 to the first view, the connection would be this : For, in order 
 that ye may not wonder at my speaking to you of nations 
 and kings, they who, &c. According to the second view, the 
 ground of the reverence of the heathen kings and their people 
 is stated. 1'hat which formerly had not been told to them, 
 had not been heard by them, is the expiation by the Servant 
 of God. By Him they receive a blessing not formerly hoped 
 for or expected, and are thereby filled with silent reverence 
 towards the Author of the gift. We decide in favour of the 
 former view, according to which chap. Ixvi. 19:" That have 
 not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory," is parallel. 
 The contrast, in our verse, to those who did not bear and who 
 now perceive, is, in the subsequent verse, formed by those who 
 do hear, and do not believe. The words : " Who had not 
 been told, who did not hear," refer to the Messianic announce- 
 ment which was given to Israel only, and from which the 
 Gentiles were excluded.^ 
 
 Upon this sketch, there follows in chap. liii. 1-10, the en- 
 largement. First, in vers. 1-3 that is expounded which, in 
 ver. 1 4 had been said of the many being shocked, and of the 
 cause. The commentary upon iooej' " they were shocked," is 
 given in ver. 1 : a great portion of the Jews do not believe 
 in the salvation which had ai)peared. The enlargement of: 
 " so mai-red," &c., is given in vers. 2, 3. The cause of the 
 
 • Thus Theodoret says : " For they who did not receive the prophetic pro- 
 mises and announcements, but served idols, shall, through the messengers of 
 the truth, see tlie power of the promised One, and perceive His greatness." 
 Jerome: " The rulers of the world, who had not the Law and the Prophets, 
 and to whom no prophecies concerning Him were given, even they shall see 
 and perceive. By the comparison witli them, the liardiiess of the Jews is 
 reproved, who, although they saw and heard, yet verified I.-^aiuh's prophecy 
 against them." Colciii: " Tlie Jews had, through the Law and the Prophets, 
 lieard something of Christ, but to the Gentiles He was altogether unknown. 
 Hence it follows that these words properly refer to the Gentiles." 
 
ISAIAH, CHAR LIII. 1. 275 
 
 unbelief is, that the glory of the Servant of God is concealed 
 behind humiliation, misery, and shame. 
 
 Chap. liii. 1 : " Who believes that luhich we hear, and the, 
 arm of the Lord, to who'm it is revealed t" 
 
 The Prophet, whose spiritual eye is just falling upon the 
 large, the enormously large number of unbelievers, overlooks, 
 at the moment, the other aspect, and, in his gr-ief, expresses 
 that which took place in a large portion only, in such a man- 
 ner as if it were general. Similar representations we else- 
 where frequently meet with, e.g., Ps. xiv. 3 (compare my Com- 
 mentary) ; Jer. v. 1 — T\]3'\'QV is commonly understood in the 
 signification, " message" or " discourse." But in favour of the 
 explanation : " That which is heard by us," q.d., " that which 
 we hear," there is, in the first instance, the usus loquendi. 
 Tlie word never occurs in any other than its original significa- 
 tion, " that which is heard," and in the signification, " rumour," 
 which is closely connected with the former. In Isa. xxviii. 
 9, a passage which is most confidently referred to in proof of 
 the signification, institutio, doctrina, nyiot^ is that which the 
 Prophet hears from God. The mockers who exclaim : " Whom 
 will he make to understand nyvot^?" take, with a sneer, out of 
 his mouth the word upon which chap. xxi. 10: " That which 
 I have heard of the Lord of Hosts, I declare unto you," forms 
 a commentary, 'a^ojj too, by which, in the New Testament, 
 njnot^ is rendered, has not at all the signification, " discourse," 
 " preaching." 'Axo?j in Rom. x. 16, 1 7, is not the preaching, 
 but the hearing, as is shown by the [j^ri ohx moveav in ver. 1 8. 
 The axori, according to ver. ] 7 : h ^s axorj did pniMarog Qsov, is the 
 passive to the active to the word of God. " Who believes our 
 axori, our hearing," i.e., that which we hear, which is made 
 known to us by the Word of God. In a passive sense, a,x.o/} 
 stands likewise in the passages Matt. iv. 24, xiv. 1, xxiv. 6, 
 which Stier cites in support of the signification " discourse," 
 "preaching;" it is that which has been heard by some one, 
 " rumour," " report." In Heb. iv. 2 (as also in 1 Thess. ii. 1 8) 
 Xoyog d-M7]c, is the word which they heard. That passage : o'vx 
 uj(pBXria:v 6 \iy(>z r^g a>co^S sxs/v&i/s, /a)5 evy/iiTifafLivoi rr Tidrii rcTg 
 d%o'o6aGi, may simply be considered as a paraphrase of our : 
 Who believes that which we hear. A second argument in favour 
 of our explanation : " That which we hear" lies in the rela- 
 
27<; MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 tioii to the preceding, which, only when thus explained, arranges 
 itself suitably : " Those understand what they fonnerly did 
 not hear; Israel, on the contraiy, does not believe that which 
 they have heard." Of gi-eat importance, finally, is the circum- 
 stance, that it is only with this interpretation that the unity 
 of the speaker in vers. 1-10 can be maintained. In the sequel, 
 the we everywhere refers to the believing Church. But, for 
 this reason, it is difficult to think here of the order of the 
 teachers, which must be the case when we translate : " Who 
 believes our preaching." It has been objected that, even in 
 this case, no real change of subject takes place, but that, in 
 both cases, the Prophet is speaking, with this difference only, 
 that, in ver. 1, he numbers himself among the proclaimers of 
 the message, while, in ver. 2 ff., he reckons himself among the 
 believing Congregation. But we shall be obliged not to bring 
 in the Prophet at all. In ver, 2 ff , the speaker is the believ- 
 ing Church of the Future, in the time after the appearance of 
 the Saviour, and just so, in ver. 1, the preaching, if it should 
 be spoken of at all, cannot belong to the Prophet and his con- 
 temporaries, but to those only who came forward with the 
 message of the manifested Saviour ; just as in John xii. 38 ; 
 Rom. X, 1 6, our verse is referred to the unbelief of the Jews 
 in the manifested Saviour. The cause of the unbelief over 
 which ver. 1 laments is indeed, according to vers. 2 and 3, the 
 appearance of the Saviour in the form of a Servant, and His 
 bitter suffering. That, then, must first have taken place, 
 liefore the unbelief manifested itself^ Stier rightly remarks : 
 " Between ' the aim of God,' and ourselves, a nyiOB' is placed as 
 the medium, and the point is to believe in it." It is the 
 gospel, the tidings of the manifested Saviour. By the side of 
 the joy over the many Gentiles who with delight hear and 
 understand the message of the Servant of God, there is the 
 sorrow over the many in Israel who do not believe this mes- 
 sage. — The arTn of the Lord comes into consideration as the 
 seat of His divine power ; comp. chap. xl. 1 0, li. 5-9, lii. 1 0. 
 
 ' According to Knolxl^ tlio author is supposed to speak, in cliap. liii. 1, in 
 his own name and that of the other prophets; in vers. 2-(J, in the name of 
 the whole poojjle; in vers. 7-l(i, in his own name. An explanation which 
 is compelled to resort to such chanjivs, witlu)ut their being in any way clearly 
 and distinctly intimated, pronounces its own condemnation. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIU. 2. 277 
 
 According to the context, the manifestation of this power in 
 Christ is here spoken of Stier says : " In this Servant, the 
 redeeming arm manifests itself, personifies itself Christ him- 
 self is, as it were, the outstretched arm of the Lord." In Rom. 
 i. 16, the Gospel is designated as dvvafiis &ioiJ slg Gurriplav --ravTi 
 TtZ ma-s-jovri. TVi is elsewhere commonly construed with ^Xor 
 7, here with hv- This indicates that the revealing of the arm 
 of the Lord is of a supernatural kind, such an one as conies 
 down from above. The Lord has revealed His arm, His 
 power and glory, as He has manifested them in the mission of 
 His servant, in the eyes of all (eomp. chap. lii. 10: " The Lord 
 hath made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, 
 and all the ends of the earth see the salvation of our God") ; 
 but it is reaUy seen by those only whose eyes God opens. The 
 deeds of God, even the most manifest, always retain the nature 
 of a mystery which remains concealed to the worldlj^ disposi- 
 tion. God can be recognised only by God. Of the un- 
 godly it holds true : " With seeing ej^es they do not see, and 
 with hearing ears they do not hear." What was the cause of 
 this unbelief in the Son of God, we are told in the sequel. It 
 is the appearance of the Divine in the form of a servant, which 
 the gross carnal disposition cannot understand, and by which 
 it is oifended. This offence which, according to the sequel, 
 even the God-fearing had to overcome, is, for the ungodly, a 
 lasting one. 
 
 Ver. 2. "And He greiv up as the sprout before Him, and 
 as the root from a dry ground. He lead no form nor come- 
 liness : and ive see Hitn, hut there is no appearance that we 
 should desire Him." 
 
 The relation of this verse to the preceding one was correctly 
 seen by llichaelis : " The cause of the offence is this, that He 
 does not rise or stand out like the cedar, but He grows up gra- 
 dually," &c. The subject, the Servant of God, is easily infer- 
 red from r^i? in ver. 1 5. This is the more admissible that ver- 
 1 , too, indirectly refers to Him. He is the subject of the report 
 in whose appearance the arm of the Lord has been revealed. 
 The sprout, the twig, designates, even in itself, the poor con- 
 dition ; and, notwithstanding Stier s counter-remarks, it is the 
 pointing to such a poor condition alone which suits the con- 
 nection, and there is no reason why we should here already 
 
278 MESSIANIC PKEDICTIOXS IX THE PROPHETS. 
 
 supply " from a dry ground." A member of the royal house 
 before its fall resembled, at his very ori<^dn, a proud tree, or, 
 at least, a proud branch of such a tree. The sprout, here, 
 supposes the stump, yiJ, in chap. xi. 8. pJV elsewhere always 
 signifies "suckling;" comp. here chap. xi. 8. Of the sprout, 
 elsewhere, the feminine np3V is used. According to Stier, this 
 deviation from the common use is here not a matter of acci- 
 dent. Supposing a double sense, he finds it an indication of 
 the helpless infancy of the Redeemer, and in this a represen- 
 tation of His lowliness. Tlie LXX. : ws rraidiov. The suffix in 
 "i"':d!5 "before Him" refers to the immediately preceding mn', 
 not to the people. Before Him, the Lord — known to Him, 
 watched by Him, standing under His protection, comp. Gen. 
 xvii. 1 8 ; Job viii. 1 G. The lowliness here, and the contempt 
 of men in ver. 3, form the contrast ; He is low, but He will 
 not remain so ; for the eye of the Most High is directed to- 
 wards Him. Before the eyes of men who are not able to 
 penetrate to the substance through the appearance, He is con- 
 cealed ; but God beholds Him, beholds His concealed glory, 
 beholds His high destination ; and because He beholds, He 
 also takes care, and prepares His transition from lowliness to 
 gloiy. But the " before Him " does not by any means here 
 form the main thought ; it only gives a gentle and incidental 
 hint. — The 7'oo^ denotes here, a>s in chap. xi. 1,10, the product 
 of the root, that whereby it becomes visible, the sprout from 
 the root. In i-eference to this parallel passage, Stier strikingly 
 remarks : " It is, by our modern interpreters, put aside as 
 quietly as possible ; for, with a powerful voice, it ])roclaims 
 to us two truths : that the same Isaiah refers to his former 
 ])rophecy, — and that this Servant of the Lord here is none 
 other than the Messiah there." A twig which grows up from 
 :i dry place is insignificant and poor. Just as the Messiah is 
 here, in respect to His state of humiliation, and specially iu 
 reference to His origin from the house of David, sunk into 
 complete obscurity, compared to a weak, insignificant twig, so 
 Pie is, in Ezek. xvii. 23, in reference to His state of glorifica- 
 tion, compared to a lofty, splendid cedar tree, under which all 
 the fowls of heaven dwell. The Jews, in opposition even to 
 ver. 22 of Ezekiel, expected that He should appear so from 
 the very beginning ; and since He did not appear so, they 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 2. 279 
 
 despised Him. The in^nji is, by most of the modern interpre- 
 tei-s, in opposition to the accents, connected with the first 
 member : " He had no form nor comeliness that ice should 
 have seen Him" But from internal reasons, tbis explanation 
 must be rejected. " To see," in the sense of " to perceive," 
 would not be suitable. For, how could they have such views 
 of the condition of the Servant of God, if they overlooked 
 Him ? But it is not possible to adduce any real demonstra- 
 tive parallel passage in support of nsi with the Accusat., with- 
 out 2, ever having the signification, " to look at," " to consider 
 M'ith delight." The circumstance that the Future is used 
 in the sense of the Present : " and we see Him/' is explained 
 from the Prophet's viewing it as present. — The statement that 
 the Servant of God had no form, nor comeliness, nor appear- 
 ance, must not be referred to His lowliness before His sufter- 
 ings only ; we must, on the contrary, perceive, in His suffer- 
 ings and death, the completion of this condition ; in the Ecce 
 Homo, the foil historical realization of it. Calvin rightly 
 points out that that which here, in the first instance, is said 
 of the Head, is repeated upon the Church ; He says : This 
 must not be understood of Christ's person only, who was de- 
 spised by the world, and was at last given up to an ignomi- 
 nious death, but of His whole Kingdom which, in the eyes of 
 men, had no form, nor comeliness, nor splendour." 
 
 Ver. 3. " Despised and most univorthy amiong raen, a man 
 of pains and an acqaintance of disease, and like one hiding 
 His fojce from, us, despised, and ive estee^ned Him not." 
 
 In the preceding verse, we are told what the Sers^ant of 
 God had not, viz., anything which could have attracted the 
 natural man who had no conception of the inward glory, and 
 as little of the cause why the Divine appears in the form of 
 a Servant and a sufferer. Here we are told what He had, viz. : 
 everything to offend and repulse him to whom the arm of the 
 Lord had not been revealed, — the full measure of misery and 
 the cross. Instead of " the most unworthy among men," the 
 text literally translated has: "one ceasing from among men" 
 (pin in the signification " ceasing" in Ps. xxxix. 5), i.e., one 
 who ceases to belong to men, to be a man, exactly con-espond- 
 ing to " from man," and " from the sons of men," in the sketch, 
 ver. 1 4, and to : "I am a worm and no man," in Ps. xxii. 
 
280 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 The explanation : " Forsaken by men, rejected of men," is 
 opposed by the usils loqiiendi, and by these parallel passages. 
 — " A man of pains" — one who, as it were, possesses pains as 
 his property. There is a similar expression in Prov. xxix. 1 : 
 " A man of chasteninn:s" — one who is often chastened. " An 
 acquaintance of disease," — one who is intimately acijuainted 
 with it, who has, as it were, entered into a covenant of friend- 
 ship with it. The passive Participle has no other signification 
 than this, Deut. i. 13, 15, and does not occur in the significa- 
 tion of the active Participle " knowing." — There is no reason 
 for supposing that disease stands here figuratively. It com- 
 prehends also the pain arising from wound.s, 1 Kings xxii. 34 ; 
 Jer. vi. 7, x. 19 ; and there is so much the greater reason for 
 thinking of it here, that ^^nn in ver. 1 0, evidently refers to 
 the ^^n in this place. As an acquaintance of disease, the Lord 
 especially showed himself in His passion. And then everi/ 
 sorroiv may be viewed as a disease ; every sorrow has, to a 
 certain degree, disease in its train. On Ps. vi., where sickness 
 is represented as the consequence of hostile persecution, Luthei- 
 remarks : " Where the heart is afflicted, the whole body is 
 weary and bruised ; while, on the other hand, where theie 
 is a joyful heart, the body is also so much the more active and 
 strong." "I'Tion always means "to hide;" the whole phrase 
 occurs in chap. 1. 6, in the signification " to hide the face." 
 "iDDD is the Participle in Hiphil. In the singular, it is true, 
 such a form is not found any where else ; but, in the Plural, 
 it is, Jer. xxix. 8. In favour of the interpretation : " Like 
 one hiding His face from us," is the evident reference to the 
 law in Lev. xiii. 45 : "The leper in whom the plague is, his 
 clothes shall be rent and his head bare, and the heard heshall 
 liave covered over, and shall cry : Unclean, unclean," — where 
 that which the leper crieth forms the commentary upon the 
 symbolical act of the covering. They covered themselves, as si 
 sign of shame, as far as possible, in order to allow of breath- 
 ing, up to the nose ; hence the mention of the beard. In my 
 Commentary on the Song of Solomon i. 7, it was proved that 
 covering has every where the meaning of being put to shame 
 — of being in a shameful condition. The leper was by tlie 
 law condemned to be a living representation of sin. No 
 horror was like that which was felt in his presence. Hence 
 
ISAIAH, CHAPS. LIII. 3. 281 
 
 it is the highest degree of humiliation and abasement tvhich 
 is expressed by the comparison luith the leper, ivlto must hide 
 his face, whom God has marked. It is the more natural to 
 suppose this reference to the leper, that probably, the D''ti'''X hir\ 
 likewise pointed to the leper. The leper was " one ceasing 
 from men." In 2 Kings xv. 5 ; 2 Chron. xxvi. 21, a house- 
 in which lepers dwell is called a " house of liberty," i.e., of 
 separation from all human society ; compare the expression 
 " free among the dead," in Ps. Ixxxviii. 6. Lepers were con- 
 sidered as dead persons. Uzziah, while in his leprosy, was, 
 according to the passage in Chronicles already cited, cut off 
 from the house of the Lord, and forfeited his place there, where 
 all the servants of the Lord dwell with Him. To leprosy, the 
 term yiJ3 in ver. 4 likewise points. Beck's objection : " The point 
 in question here is not that which the unfortunate man does 
 but that which others do in reference to him," is based upon 
 a misconception. Neither the one nor the other is spoken of 
 The comparative 3 must not be overlooked. The comparison 
 with the leper, the culminating point of all contempt, is highly 
 suitable to the parallelism with nrn:. Ordinarily "inOD is now 
 understood as a substantivum verbale: "He was like hiding 
 of the face before Him," i.e., like a thing or person before 
 which or wdiom we hide our face, because we cannot bear its 
 horrible and disgusting appearance. But with one before 
 whom we hide our face, the Servant of God could not be com- 
 pared ; the comparison would, in that case, be weak. — riDJ 
 is not the 1st pers. Fut. but Partic. Niph., "despised." — The 
 close of the verse returns to its beginning, after having been, 
 in the middle, established and made good. 
 
 The second subdivision from ver. 4 to ver. 7 furnishes us 
 with the key to the sufferings of the Servant of God de- 
 scribed in what pi-ecedes, by pointing to their vicarious cha- 
 racter, to which (ver. 7) the conduct of the Servant of God 
 under His sufferings corresponds. 
 
 Ver. 4. " But our diseases He bore, and our pains He took 
 upon Him : and we esteemed Him plagued, smitten of God, 
 and ajfiicted." 
 
 The words ""^n and as^aa of the preceding verse here appear 
 again. He was laden with disease and pains ; but these suffer- 
 ings, the wages of sin, were not inflicted upon Him on account 
 
282 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 of His ovm sins, luit on account of our sins, so that the horror 
 falls back upon ourselves, and is changed into loving admira- 
 tion of Him. Beck remarks : " Properly speaking, they had 
 not Lecome sick or unfortunate at all ; this had a prioi'i been. 
 rendered impossible by the vicarious suffering of the Son of 
 God ; but since they deserved the sickness and calamity, the 
 averting of it might be considered as a healing." But this 
 view is altogether the result of embarrassment. Disease is 
 the inseparable companion of sin. If the ])ersons speaking are 
 subject to the latter, the disease cannot be considered fis an 
 evil merely threatening them. If they speak of their diseases, 
 we think, in the first instance, of sickness by which they have 
 already been seized ; and the less obvious sense ought to have 
 been expressly indicated. In the same manner, the healing 
 also suggests hurts already existing. But quite decisive is 
 ver. 6, where the miserable condition clearly appears to have 
 already taken place. — According to the opinion of several in- 
 terpreters, by diseases, all inward and outward sufferings are 
 figuratively designated ; according to the opinion of others, 
 spiritual diseases, sins. But even from the relation of this 
 verse to the preceding, it appears that here, in the first in- 
 stance, diseases and pains, in the ordinary sense, are spoken 
 of ; just as tiie blind and deaf in chap. xxxv. are, in the first 
 instance, they who are naturally blind and deaf. — Disease and 
 pain here cannot be spoken of in a sense different from that 
 in which it is spoken of there. Diseases, in the sense of ains, 
 do not occur at all in the Old Testament. The circumstance 
 that in the ]>arallel passage, vers. 1 1 and 1 2, the bearing of 
 the tran.'^f/re.ssions and .sins is spoken of, does not prove any- 
 thing. The Servant of God bears them also in their conse- 
 quences, in their punishments, among which sickness and pains 
 occupy a prominent })lace. Of the bearing of outward suffer- 
 ings, ^^n xy'j occurs in Jer. x. 1 9 also. If the words are rightly 
 understood, then at once, light falls upon the apostolic quota- 
 tion in Matt. viii. 10, 17: rravrag rou; -/.ay.iijg iy^ovrac eOipd-rivaiv, 
 fj-~ujs rr'ATlpui'^ti TO pTjtl-v Oicc 'Haai'ov roj rrpofriTou '/.iyovrog' ahrhc rag 
 dir9eviiag y}ij,uiv iKajii y.ai ra^ vdaovi i/3affraffj ,• and this deserves a 
 consideration so much the more careful, that the Evangelist 
 here intentionally deviates from the Alexandrine version (oSrog 
 
 Tci; aiLupTiac r,/j,cov ^'ipii xal rrspl ri/jbuiv hh-jmrai). In doing SO, " we 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 5. 283 
 
 do not give an external meaning to that which is to be under- 
 stood spiritually ;" but when the Saviour healed the sick, He 
 fulfilled the prophecy before us in its most proper and obvious 
 sense. And this fulfilment is even now going on. For him 
 who stands in a living faith in Christ, sickness, pain, and, in 
 general all sorrow, have lost their sting. But it has not yet 
 appeared what we shall be, and we have still to expect the 
 complete fulfilment. In the Kingdom of glory, sickness and 
 pain shall have altogether disappeared. — Some interpreters 
 v/ould translate Xij'j by " to take away ;" but even the paral- 
 lel ^20 is conclusive against such a view ; and, farther, the 
 ordinary use of XC'3 of the bearing of the punishment of sin, 
 e.g., Ezek. xviii. 19 ; Num. xiv. 33 ; Lev. v. 1, xx. 17. But 
 of conclusive weight is the connection with the preceding 
 verse, where the Servant of God appears as the intimate ac- 
 quaintance of sickness, as the man of pains. He has, accord- 
 ingly, not onlypi(^ away our sicknesses and pains, but He has, 
 as our substitute, taken the'm iqion Him ; He has healed us 
 by His having himself become sick in our stead. This could 
 be done only by His having, in the first instance, as a substi- 
 tute, appropriated our sins, of which the sutieiings are the 
 consequence; compare 1 Peter ii. 2-i : og rag afxaprlag ri/xuv 
 
 avrhg avyivsyxsv sv rw auifj^ari aurou s'xl to ^uAoi/. Plagued, smitten 
 
 of God, afflicted, are expressions which were commonly used 
 in reference to the visitation of sinful men. It is especially in 
 the word ]jlagued., which is intentionally placed first, that the 
 reference to a self-deserved sufi'ering is strongly expressed, 
 compare Ps. Ixxiii. 14 : "For all the day long am I plagued, 
 and my chastisement is new every morning." Of Uzziah, 
 visited on account of his sin, it is said in 2 Kings xv. 5 : 
 '- And the Lord inflicted a plague upon the king, and he was 
 a leper unto the day of his death." yJ3 " plague" is in Lev. 
 xiii., as it were, nomen proprium for the leprosy, which in 
 the law is so distinctly designated as a punishment of sin.^ — • 
 r^-2T\ too, is frequently used of the infliction of divine punish- 
 ments and judgments. Num. xiv. 1 2 ; Deut. xxviii. 2 2. The 
 people did not err in considering the suffering as a punishment 
 of sin, but only in considering it as a punishment for the sins 
 committed by the Servant of God himself. According to the 
 view of both the Old and New Testament, every sufi'ering is 
 
284 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 punishment. The suffering of a perfect saint, however, involves 
 a contradiction, unless it Ite vicarious. By his completely 
 stepping out of the territory of sin, he must also step out of 
 the territory of evil, which, according to the doctrine esta- 
 l)lislied at the very threshold of revelation, is the wages of 
 sin, for otherwise God would not be holy and just. Hence, as 
 regards the Servant of God, we have only the alternatives : 
 either His sinlessness must be doubted, or the vicarious nature 
 of His sufferings must be acknowledged. The persons speak- 
 ing took up, at first, the former position ; after their eyes had 
 been ojiened, they chose the latter. 
 
 Ver. 5, " And He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed 
 for our iniquities ; the chastisement of our peace tvas upon 
 Him, and by His wounds ive are healed." 
 
 Nin " He" stands in front, in order emphatically to point out 
 Him who suffered as a substitute, in contrast to those who 
 had really deserved the punishment : " He, on account of our 
 transgressions." There is no reason for deviating:, in the case 
 of 7?n, from the original signification " to pierce," and adopting 
 the general signification "to wound;" the LXX. irpav/jbaTic^r,. 
 The chastisement of our peace is the chastisement whereby 
 peace is acquired for us. Peace stands as an individualizing 
 designation of salvation ; in the world of contentions, peace is 
 one of the highest blessings. Natural man is on all sides sur- 
 rounded by enemies ; 6iy.aicoi)svrs; r/. T/'anuc uprivriv iy(o,u.iv Tph; rov 
 &SOV diu Tou -/.upiov r,ij.uv 'ijjcoC/ Xpisroij, Rom. V. 1, and peace with 
 God renders all other enemies innocuous, and at last removes 
 them altogether. The peace is inseparaltle from the substitu- 
 tion. If the Servant of God has borne our sins, He has there- 
 by, at the same time, acquired peace ; for, just as He enters 
 into our guilt, so we now enter into His reward. The justice 
 of God has been satisfied through Him ; and thus an open way 
 has been prepared for His bestowing peace and salvation. The 
 chastisement can, according to the context, be only an actual 
 one, only such as consists in the infiiction of some einl. It is 
 in misconception and narrowncvss of view that the explanation 
 of the followers of Moih' originated: "The instruction for 
 our peace is with Jlim." This explanation militates against 
 the whole context, in which not the doctriiie but the svferiiuf 
 of the Servant of God is spoken of; against the parallelism 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 5. 285 
 
 With : " By His wounds we are healed ;" against the v^j?, 
 " upon Him," which, according to a comparison with : " He 
 bore our disease, and took upon Him our pains," must indicate 
 that tlie punishment lay upon the sufferer like a pressing 
 burden. It is only from aversion to the doctrine of the vica- 
 rious satisfaction of Christ, that we can account for the fact, 
 that that doctrine could be so generally received by that theo- 
 logical school. More candid are the rationalistic interpreters. 
 Thus Hitzig remarks : " The chastisement of our peace is not 
 a chastisement which would have been salutary for our morality, 
 nor such as might serve for our salvation, but according to the 
 parallelism, such as has served for our salvation, and has allowed 
 us to come off safe and unhurt." Stier, too, endeavours to 
 explain the " chastisement of our peace," in an artificial way. 
 According to him, there is always implied in idid the ten- 
 dency towards setting right and healing the chastised one 
 himself; but wherever this word occurs, a retributive pain 
 and destruction are never spoken of But, in opposition to 
 this view, there is the fact that "idid does not by any means 
 rarely occur as signifying the punishments which are inflicted 
 upon stiff-necked obduracy, and which bear a destructive 
 character, and which, therefore, cannot be derived from the 
 principle of correction, but from that of retribution only. Thus, 
 e.g., in Prov. xv. 10: " Bad chastise'ment shall be to those that 
 forsake the way, and he that hateth chastisement shall die," 
 on which Michaelis remarks : " In antaiutclasi ad correptio- 
 nem amwam et paternaw,, rmortem et mala quaelihet inferens, 
 in ira" Ps. vi. 2. Of destructive punishment, too, the verb 
 is used in Jer. ii. 1 9. But one does not at all see how the 
 idea of " setting right" should be suitable here ; for surely, as 
 regards the Servant of God himself, the absolutely Righteous, 
 the suffering here has the character of chastisement. It is not 
 the mere suffering, but the chastisement, which is upon Him ; 
 but that necessarily requires that the punishment should pro- 
 ceed from the principle of retribution, and that the Servant of 
 God stands forth as our Substitute. — NS13, Prefer. Niph., hence 
 "healing has been bestowed upon us;" — xsn with i?, in the signi- 
 fication " to bring healing," occurs also in chap. vi. 1 0, but 
 nowhere else. The healing is an individualising designation 
 of deliverance from the punishments of sin, called forth by the 
 
2S6 MESSIANIC PHEDK TIOXS IN THE PKOPIIETS. 
 
 circumstance tliat disease occupied so prominent a place amonpj 
 them, and had therefore been so prominently brought forward 
 in what precedes. In harmony with the Apostolic quotation, 
 the expression clearly shows that the punitive sufferings were 
 already lying upon the persons sj^eaking ; that by the Substi-* 
 tute they were not by any means delivered from the future 
 evils, but that the punishment, the inseparable companion of 
 sin, already existed, and was taken away by Hira. 
 
 Ver. 6. "All ive Wee sheep have gone astray, we have twnted 
 every one to Ms oum vxiy, and the Lord hath made the ini- 
 quities of us all to fall upon Him" 
 
 Calvin remarks : " In order the more strongly to impress 
 upon the hearts of men the benefits of Chnst's death, the 
 Prophet shews how necessary is that healing which was men- 
 tioned before. There is herd an elegant antithesis ; for, in 
 ourselves we are scattered, but, in Christ collected ; by nature 
 we go fistray and are carried headlong to destruction, — in 
 Christ we find the way in which we are led to the gate of 
 salvation ; our iniquities cover and oppress us, — but they are 
 transferred to Christ by whom we are unburdened." — All uk- 
 — in the first instance, members of the covenant-people, — not, 
 however, as contrasted with the rest of mankind, but as par- 
 taking in the general human destiny. — We have turned every 
 one to his own way ; we walked through life solitary, forsaken, 
 miserable, separated from God and the good Shepherd, and 
 deprived of His pastoral care. According to Hofmann, the 
 going astray designates the liability to punishment, but not 
 the misery of the speakers ; and the words also : " We have 
 turned," &c., mean, according to him, that they chose their 
 own ways, but not that they walked sorrowful or miserable. 
 But the ordinary use of the image militates against that view. 
 In Ps. cxix. 170 : "I go astray like a lost sheep, seek th}'- 
 servant," the going astray is a figurative designation of being 
 destitute of salvation. The misery of the condition is indi- 
 cated by the image of the scattered flock, also in 1 Kings xxii. 
 17: "I saw all Israel scattered upon the hills as sheep that 
 have not a shepherd." Mii-ItdcHs pertinently remarks : " No- 
 thing is so miserable as sheep without a shepherd, — a thing 
 which Scripture so often repeats, Num. xxvii. 17," &c. As a 
 commentary upon our passage, Ezek. xxxiv. 4-6 may serve; 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 7. 287- 
 
 and according to that passage we shall be compelled to think 
 of their being destitute of the care of a shepherd : " And they 
 are scattered, because there is no Shepherd ; and they become 
 meat to all the beasts of the field. My sheep wander on all 
 the mountains, and on every high hill, and over the whole 
 land my sheep are scattered, and there is none that careth for 
 them, or seeketh them." The point of comparison is very dis- 
 tinctly stated in Matt. ix. 36 also : IBijv d- ro-jg o^Xovg sffT/.ay- 
 •yviaQri rspl avrouv^ on rjoav saxvX/j^svoi xai \ohfj,svoi ojffil -TrpojSarci. /j,ri 
 sy^ovTu 'TToi/xiva. Without doubt, turning to one's own ways is 
 sinful, corap. chap. Ivi. 1 1 ; but here it is not so much the 
 aspect of sin, as that of misery, which is noticed. As the chief 
 reason of the sheep's wandering and going astray, the bad con- 
 dition of the shepherd must be considered, comp. Jer. 1. 6 : 
 " Perishing sheep were my people ; their shepherds led them 
 astray, John X. 8 : 'Zavnc oaoi ^po s/j,o\j rj}.dov, xX's'rrTai iiffi nai 
 Xriorai. — yjs with 2 signifies "to hit;" hence Hiphil, "to cause 
 to hit." The iniquities of the whole community hit the Ser- 
 vant of God in their punishments ; but according to the biblical 
 view, their punishments can come upon Him only as such, 
 only by His coming forward as a substitute for sinners, and 
 not because He suffers for the guilt of others to which He 
 remained a stranger. By this throwing the guilt upon the 
 Servant of God, the condition of being without a shepherd is 
 done away with, the flock is gathered from its scattered con- 
 dition. The wall of separation which was raised by its guilt, 
 and which separated it from God, the fountain of salvation, is 
 now removed by His substitution, and the words : " The Lord 
 is my Sheplierd," now become a truth, comp. John x. 4. 
 
 Ver, 7. " He was oppressed, and when He was plagued, He 
 does not open His mouth, like a lamb ivhich is brought to the 
 slaughter, and as a sheep which is dumb before her shearers, 
 and He does not open his mouth." 
 
 In these words, we have a description of the manner in 
 which the Servant of God bore such sufferings. It flows ne- 
 cessarily from the circumstance, that it was a vicarious suffer- 
 ing. The substitution implies that He took them upon Him 
 spontaneously ; and this has patience for its companion. First, 
 the contents of ver. 6 are once more summed up in the word 
 B'JJ, " He was oppressed :" then, this condition of the Servant 
 
288 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PEOPHETS. 
 
 of God is brought into connection witli His conduct, which, 
 only in this connection, appears in its full majesty. — ^ii is the 
 Preterite in Niphd, and not, as Beck thinks, 1st pers. Fut. 
 K(d. For the Future would be here unusual ; the verb has 
 elsewhere the Future in o; the sutiix is wanting, and the 
 sense which then arises suits only the untenable supposition 
 that, in vers. 1-10, the Oodiles are speaking. The Nijikal 
 occurs in 1 Sam. xiii. 6, of Israel oppressed by the Philistines ; 
 and in 1 Sam. xiv. 24, of those borne down by heavy toil 
 and fiitigue. ^'JJ and r^'i)}'^ " to be humbled, oppressed, abused," 
 do not, in themselves essentially differ ; it is only on account 
 of the context, and the contrast implied in it, that the same 
 condition is once more designated by a word which is nearly 
 synonymous. The words "and He" separate n:]}: from what 
 precedes, and connect it with wliat follows. The explanation : 
 " He was oppressed, but He suffered patiently," has this 
 opposed to it, that the two N'lplials, following immediately 
 upon one another, cannot here stand in a different meaning. 
 The idea of patience would here not be a collateral, but the 
 main idea, and hence, could not stand without a stronger de- 
 signation. — In ^nD^ the real Future has taken the place of the 
 ideal Past ; it shows that the preceding Preterites are to be 
 considered as prophetical, and that, in point of fact, the suffer- 
 ing of the Servant of God is no less future than His glorifica- 
 tion. The himh points back to Exod. xii. 3, and designates 
 (-Christ as the true paschal lamb. With a reference to the 
 verse under consideration, John the Baptist calls Christ the 
 Lamb of God, John i. 29 ; comp. 1 Pet. i. 18, 19 ; Acts viil 
 32-35. But since it is not the vicarious character of Christ's 
 sutferino-s which here, in the first instance, comes into consi- 
 deration, but His patience under them, the lamb is associated 
 with the female sheep, and that not in relation to her slayers, 
 but to her shearei-s. The last words : " And He does not 
 open His mouth," are not to be referred to the lamb, as some 
 think, (even the circumstance that the preceding pm is a 
 feminine noun militates against this view), but, like the first : 
 " He does not open His mouth," to the Servant of God. It is 
 an expressive repetition, and one which is intended to direct 
 attention to this feature ; comp. the close of ver. 3 ; Gen. xlix. 
 t : Judges V. IC. The fulfilment is shown by 1 Pet. ii. 23 : 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 8. 289 
 
 og Koidopo{j,u,evog ovx avTiXoidopii, 'xaSyav ovk rjTi/Kii, vapididov 8s rOj 
 xplvovri dixaioog ; and likewise Matt, xxvii. 12-1 4 : xal iv ruj xa- 
 rrjyopiTffdai aurov Wo ruv apyjipsuv %a} tuv Tpiff^urspuiv oukv aTixpivaro. 
 Tore K'iysi aurS) 6 Il/Xaros' ovx, dxovsig 'TtoSacou Karoc/jLapr-jpovdi ; Kai 
 OVA aTSxpidr) alruj Trpbg ohbh 'iv priiJ^a, uGn dav/J/d^siv rov ^ys/x.ova Xiav. 
 Comp. xxvi. 62 ; Mark xv. 5 ; Luke xxiii. 9 ; John xix. 9. 
 
 The tliird subdivision of the principal portion, vers. 8-10, 
 describes the reivard of the Servant of God, by expanding the 
 words : " Kings shall shut their mouths on account of Him," 
 in chap. lii. 1 5, and " He shall be exalted," in ver. J 3. 
 
 Ver. 8. " From oppression and from judgment He was 
 taken, and His generation who can think it out ; for He was 
 cut of out of the land of the living for the transgression of 
 my people, ivhose the punishment!' 
 
 God — such is the sense — takes Him to himself from heavy- 
 oppression, and He who apparently was destroyed without 
 leaving a trace, receives an infinitely numerous generation 
 (compare John xii. 32 : xdyu Idv -j-^oi&m 1% rr,g yr\g itdyrag kXTivou 
 irphg sfiaxjTov), as a deserved reward for having, by His violent 
 death, atoned for the sins of His people, delivered them from 
 destruction, and acquired them for His property. — "li'V " oppres- 
 sion," as Ps. cvii. 39, properly, according to the signification of 
 the verb : " Shutting up," " restraining," " hindering." From 
 what goes before, where the evils from which the Servant of 
 God is here delivered are described more in detail, it appears 
 that here we have not to think of a prison properly so called ; 
 for there, it is not a prison, but abuse and oppression which 
 are spoken of. — DDK'O is commonly referred to the judgment 
 which the enemies of the Servant of God passed upon Him, 
 The premised "ivy then furnishes the distinct qualification of 
 the judgment, shows that that which, in a formal point of 
 view, presents itself as a judicial proceeding, is, in point of 
 fact, heavy oppression. But, at the same time, tiDC'O serves as 
 a limitation for "isy. We learn from it that the hatred of the 
 enemies moved within the limits of judicial proceedings, — just 
 as it happened in the history of Christ. But behind the 
 human judgment, the divine is concealed, Jer. i. 16; Ezek. 
 V. 8 ; Ps. cxliii. 2. This is shown by what precedes, where 
 the suffering of the Servant of God is so emphatically and 
 repeatedly designated as the punishment of sin inflicted upon 
 VOL. II. t 
 
290 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Him by God. — nph with p " to be taken away from ;" accord- 
 ing to Stier: "taken aw.ay from suffering, being delivered 
 from it by God's having taken Him to him.self, to the land of 
 eternal bliss." This view, according to which the words refer 
 to the glorification of the Servant of God, has been adopted by 
 the Church. It is adopted by the Vulgate : " De angustia et 
 judicio suhlatus est;" by Jerome, who says on this passage : 
 " From tribulation and judgment He ascended, as a conqueror, 
 to the Father;" and hy MlcJmells who thus interprets it: 
 " He was taken away, and received at the right hand of the 
 Majesty." By several interpretations, the words are still re- 
 ferred to the state of humiliation of the Servant of God : 
 " Through oppression and judgment He was dragged to execu- 
 tio)i." But the Prophet has already, in ver. 3, finished the 
 description of the mere sufferings of the Servant of God — vers. 
 4-7 exhibit the cause of His sufferings and His conduct under 
 them ; npb cannot, by itself, signify " to be dragged to execu- 
 tion" — in that case, as in Prov, xxiv. 11, "to death" would 
 have been added; p must be taken in the signification, "from," 
 " out of," as in the subsequent y^HD, compare 2 Kings iii. 9, 
 where nph with p signifies " to take from." In the passage 
 under consideration, as well as in those two passages which 
 refer to the ascension of Elijah, there is a distinct allusion to 
 Gen. V. 24, where it is said of Enoch : " And he was no more, 
 for God had taken him. — And His generation tvho can think 
 it out l "in, properly " circle," is not only the communion of 
 those who are connected by co-existence, but also of those who 
 are connected by disposition, be it good or bad.^ Thus, the 
 generation of the children of God in Ps. Ixxiii. 1 5 ; the sfenera- 
 tion of the righteous, Ps. xiv. 5 ; the generation of the upright, 
 in Ps. cxii. 2. Here, the generation of the Servant of God is 
 the communion of those who are animated by His Spirit, filled 
 with His life. This company will, after His death, increase 
 to an infinite greatness. n^C' a-'id rT'B' "to meditate," is com- 
 monly connected with 3 of the object, but occurs also with 
 
 • Geseniiis : Ncffh'cta acfatix undone saepe est genus hominum, in honam 
 partem — in inuhim jxirtini; — and in reference to the passage under considera- 
 tion : Genus ejiis^ Servi Jehovac, sunt homines ([ui iisdem cum illo studiis ttneu- 
 tur. In the same manner it is explained by Maurer, who refers to Ps. xiv. 
 5, xxiv. 6. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIU, 8. 291 
 
 the simple Accusative, in the signification " to meditate upon 
 something," in Ps. cxlv. 5. There is, as it appears, an allu- 
 sion to the promise to Abraham, Gen. xiii. 16: " And I make 
 thy seed as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can num- 
 ber the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be num- 
 bered," — a promise which received its complete fulfilment 
 just by the Servant of God. The explanation which we have 
 
 given was adopted by the LXX. : 7-/51/ yznav avrou rig dirr/'/jdirai. 
 
 Next to it, comes the explanation : " Who can think out His 
 posterity;" but against this, it is conclusive that in never 
 occurs in the signification "posterity." The parallel passage 
 in ver. 10: " He shall see seed," or *' posterity," holds good 
 even for our view ; for since the posterity is a spiritual one, 
 it is substantially identical with generation here. But it may, 
 a priori, be expected that the same thing shall be designated 
 from various aspects. If "generation" be taken in the signi- 
 fication "posterity," then the words: "He shall see seed" 
 would be a mere repetition. The appropriateness of the sense 
 which, according to our explanation, comes out, will become 
 especially evident, if we consider that, in vers. 8- J 0, we have 
 the carrying out of that which, in the sketch, was said of the 
 respectful homage of the many nations and kings. A whole 
 host of explanations assigns to in significations which cannot 
 be vindicated. Thus, the translation of Luther : " Who shall 
 disclose the length of His life ?" that of Hitzig: His destiny ; 
 that of Beck : His importance and influence in the history of 
 the world ; that of Knohel : His dwelling place, i.e., His grave, 
 who considered ? The signification, " dwelling place," does not 
 at all belong to in- In Isaiah xxxviii. 12, nn are the cotem- 
 poraries from whom the dying man is taken away, and who 
 are withdrawn from him : " My generation is taken away, and 
 removed from me like a shepherd's tent" — dying Hezekiah 
 there laments. Inadmissible, likewise, is the explanation : 
 " Who of His cotemporaries will consider, or considered, it " 
 for nx, the sign of the Accusative, cannot stand before the 
 Nomin. Ahsol. In Nehem. ix. 34, this use is by no means 
 certain, and, at all events, we cannot draw any inference from 
 the language of Nehemiah as to that of Isaiah. The Ellipses : 
 "the true cause of His death," " the importance and fruit of 
 His death," " the salvation lying behind it" (Stier), are very 
 
202 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 liard, and the sense which is purchased by such sacrifices is 
 rather a common-place one, little suitable to this context, and 
 to the relation to chap. lii. 1 5. — " For He tvas cut off from the 
 la/lid of tfie living, for the transgression of my peo])l€, vjhose 
 tli.e imnishment." The reason is here stated why the Servant 
 of God receives so glorious a reward ; why, after He has been 
 removed to God, a generation so infinitely great is granted to 
 Him. He has deserved this reward hy His having suffered 
 for the sins of His feoiile, as their substitute. The first clause 
 must not be separated from the second : " for the transgres- 
 sion," &c. For it is not the circumstance, that the Servant of 
 God sufifered a violent death at all, but that for the sin of His 
 ])eople He took it upon Him, which is the ground of His glori- 
 fication. ")TJ2 " to be cut oflT' never occurs of a quiet, natural 
 lieath ; not even in the passage, quoted in support of this use 
 of the word, \az., Psa. Ixxxviii. G ; Lam. iii. 54, but always of 
 a violent, premature death. The cognate nJ3 also has, in Psa. 
 Kxxi. 23, the signification of extermination. i)o^, poetical form 
 for nrh, refers to the collective Dj?. Before it, the relative pro- 
 noun is to be understood : for the sin of my people, whose the 
 punishment, q.d., whose property the punishment was, to whom 
 it belonged. Stier prefers to adopt the most violent interpre- 
 tation rather than to conform and yield to this so shnple sense, 
 which, as he says, could be entertained only by that obsolete 
 theory of substitution where one saves the other firom suffer- 
 ing. Several interpreters take the suffix in \t2h ^^ a Singular : 
 " on account of the transgression of my people, punishment 
 was to Him." And passages, indeed, are not wanting where 
 the supposition that io designates the Singular, has some 
 appearance of probability ; but, upon a closer examination, 
 this appearance everywhere vanishes.^ Moreover, as we have 
 already remarked, it is, on account of the sense, inadmissible 
 to separate the two clauses. — By -"loj; " my people," the hypo- 
 thesis of the non-Messianic interpreters is set aside, that in 
 
 ' The double 10^ in Deut. xxxiii. 2 refers to Israel, not to God. In refer- 
 ence to the 1D^ in Is. xliv. 15, ./. H. Michaelis remarks: iis tcilihiis f///.v, 
 ver. 7. But the suffix rather refers to the trees, ver. 14 ; comp. ono in ver. 
 15. If construed thus, the sense is much more expressive. In Job xxii. 2, 
 b^DCD is u.sed collectively. In Ps. xi. 7, the plural suffix is to be explained 
 from the richness and fulness of the Divine Being. These are all the pas- 
 sages which Eirald quotes in § 247 d. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 9. 298 
 
 vers. 1-10 the Gentiles are speaking. It is a single people to 
 which the speakers belong, the covenant-people, for whose 
 benefit the atonement and substitution of the Servant of God 
 were, in the JiTst instance, intended (comp. msu rhv Xaov abrov 
 u-zli Tuv a/MapTiuv a-jruiv, Matth. i. 21) yea, were, to a certain de- 
 gree, exclusively intended, inasmuch as the beheving Gentiles 
 were received into it as adopted children. It is a forced expe- 
 dient to say : every single individual of the Gentiles, or of 
 their princes, says that the Servant of God has suffered for 
 the sin of His people, hence also for His own. And just as 
 inadmissible is the supposition that a representative of the 
 heathen world is speaking ; the whole heathen world cannot 
 be designated as a people. 
 
 Ver, 9. "And thei/ gave Him His grave with the wickecl, 
 and luith a rwh in His death, because He had done no vio- 
 lence, neither luas any deceit in His mouth" 
 
 jn''l is intentionally without a definite Subject, q.d. : it was 
 given to Him, Ewald § 273a. The acting subject could not 
 be at all more distinctly marked out, because there was a double 
 subject. Men fixed for Him the ignominious grave with crimi- 
 nals ; by the providence of God, He received the honourable 
 grave with a rich, and that for the sake of His innocent suffer- 
 ings, as a prelude to the greater glorification which, as a reward, 
 was to be bestowed upon Him, as an example of what is said 
 in ver. 12: " He shall devide spoil with the strong." The 
 wicked who are buried apart fi'om others, can be the real cri- 
 minals only, the transgressors in ver. 1 2. Criminals received, 
 among the Jews, an ignominious burial. Tlius Josephus, Arch, 
 iv. 8, § 6, says : " He who has blasphemed God shall, after 
 having been stoned, be hung up for a day, and be buried 
 quietly and without honour." Maimonides (see Iken on this 
 passage in the Biblia Hagana ii. 2) says : " Those who have 
 been executed by the court of justice are not by any means 
 buried in the gi"aves of their ancestors ; but there are two 
 graves appointed for them by the court of justice, — one for 
 the stoned and burnt ; the other for the decapitated and 
 strangled." Just as the Prophet had, in the preceding verse, 
 said that the Servant of God would die a violent death like a 
 criminal, so he says here, that they had also fixed for Him a 
 grave in common with executed criminals. And, with a rich 
 
204 MESSIANIC PREDICTION'S IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 (they gave Him His grave) in His death : they gave Him 
 His grave, fii-st with the wicked ; but, indeed, He received 
 it with a rich, since God's providence was watching over the 
 dead b(^dy of His Sei-vant. jn'l, in so far as it refers to the 
 first clause, receives its limitation by the second. Before their 
 lultilment, the words had the character of a holy riddle ; but 
 the fulfilment has solved this riddle. The designation of 
 Joseph of Arimathea as avrdpuTos rzXoueiog in Matt. xxvi. 57, is 
 e(|uivalent to an express quotation. Although it was by a 
 special divine providence that the Singular was chosen, yet we 
 may suppose that, in the first instance, the rich man here is 
 contrasted with the wicked men, and is an ideal person, the 
 personified idea of the species. In His death is, in point of 
 fact, equivalent to : " after He had died ;" but, notwithstand- 
 ing, there is no necessity for giving to the 2 the signification 
 "after." Death rather denotes the condition of death; in 
 death is contrasted with : in life. Altogether in the same 
 manner we find in Lev. xi. 3 1 : " Whosoever doth touch them 
 in their death," for, " after they have died." Farther — 1 
 Kings xiii. 31 : "In my death you shall bury me in the 
 sepulchre." The Plural D^nw " the deaths," " conditions of 
 death," cannot be adduced as a proof that the subject of the 
 prophecy must be a collective person ; for, in that case, rather 
 the Plural of the suffix would be required (Ps. Ixxviii. 64 is a 
 rare exception) ; and in Ezek. xxviii. 8, 1 0, death is likewise 
 spoken of in the Plural. The Plural is formed after the ana- 
 logy of D"n, for which reason it commends itself to explain 
 D"n pN in the preceding verse, " land of life," instead of " land 
 of the living." But the Plural can here the less occasion any 
 difficulty, that it is not dying which is spoken of, but the con- 
 tinuing condition of death. — Because He had done no violence, 
 &c. bv very frequently denotes the cause upon which the 
 effect depends, e.g., in 1 Kings xvi. 7 ; Ps. xliv. 23, Ixix. 8 ; 
 Jer. XV. 1 5 ; Job xxxiv. 0. The whole following clause is treated 
 as a noun. Ordinarily, it is explained : Although, kc. But 
 this use of hv is quite isolated ; it occurs only in two passages 
 of the Book of Job, in x. 7 and xxxiv. G. The former explan- 
 ation is found in the Alexand. version : Sti dic,'Miav oux s'roir,es. 
 The innocence is designated negatively, and in an external 
 manner (ddh and nr3"io are gross sins). The reason of this is 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 9. 295 
 
 in the intention of His enemies, which is expressed in the pre- 
 ceding words, to give Him His grave with the wicked. Since 
 He had not acted Uke them, God took care that He did not 
 receive their ignominious burial, but an honourable one. In 
 reference to the passage under considei-ation, it is said in I 
 Pet. ii. 22 : og d/iapTiav oxjk sToiriffs ovBi sups^s doXog iv rui srinitxri 
 ahraX). Instead of " violence," Peter intentionally employs 
 " sin." — Hof'niann has advanced the following arguments 
 against the explanation which we have given. 1 . " By what 
 is this contrast (which, according to our explanation, is con- 
 tained in the words : They gave Him His grave with the 
 wicked, and with a rich man in His death) to be recognized 
 in the text ? There remains no trace of a contrast, unless it 
 be contained in Q"'j?Bn and "i^cy. Are these really two ideas so 
 contradictory, that they alone are sufficient to bring into con- 
 trariety two clauses which have altogether the appearance of 
 being intended for the same purpose ?" But in this argument, 
 Hofmann overlooks the circumstance, that the wicked are 
 specially criminals — for they alone had a peculiar grave — and 
 that it is not the general relation of the wicked and rich to 
 one another which comes into consideration, but especially the 
 relation in which they stand to one another as regards the 
 burial. If this be kept in view, it is at once evident that 
 the contrariety is expressed with sufficient clearness. From 
 Isa. xxii. 16 ; Job xxi. 32 ; Matt, xxvii. 57, it appears that 
 the rich man, and the honourable gi-ave, are closely connected 
 with each other. Hence, it must have been by an opposite 
 activity that to the Servant of God a grave was assigned Avitli 
 the wicked, and with a rich. 2. " To be rich is not in itself 
 a sin which deserved an ignominious burial, far less received 
 it, but on the other hand, to find his grave with a rich man 
 is not an indemnification to the just for the disgrace of having 
 died the death of a criminal." But the fact that the first 
 Evangelist reports it so minutel}'- (Matt, xxvii. 57-61) clearly 
 enough shows the importance of the circumstance ; comp, also 
 how John, in chap. xix. 33 if, points out the circumstance that 
 Christ's legs were not broken, as were those of the malefactors. 
 In the little, the gi-eat is prepared and prefigured. And 
 although the burial with a rich man is, in itself, of no small 
 importance when viewed as the first point where the exalta- 
 
296 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 tion began — in the connoction with the preceding aiid follow- 
 ing verses, we cannot but look upon it as being symbolically 
 significant and important. And how could it be otherwise, since 
 the burial of the Servant of God with a rich man implies that 
 the rich man himself has been gained for Him ? It has, farther, 
 been objected that Christ was not buried with Joseph, but in his 
 grave only, but in an ideal point of view ivith has its full right. 
 Comp. chap. xiv. 1 9, where it is said to the king of Babylon : 
 " But thou art cast out of thy grave," although, bodily, he had 
 not yet been in the grave ; but he had a right to come like 
 his ancestors ; he had, in an ideal point of view, taken his 
 place there. — Beck says : " The orthodox expositors are strongly 
 embarrassed with these words." Tliat is indeed a remarkable 
 interchange of positions. Embarrassment ! — that is the sign 
 of everything which unscriptural exegesis advances on this 
 verse. It is concentrated in the T'K'y. Tlie most varied con- 
 jectures and freaks are here so many symptoms of helpless 
 embarrassment. According to the opinion of several interpre- 
 ters, the rich man here stands in the sense of the ungodly. 
 In this, even Luther (marginal note : " rich man, one who in 
 his doings founds himself on riches, i.e., an ungodly man), 
 and Calvin had preceded them. The assertion that the rich, 
 can simply stand for the wicked, can neither be proved from 
 Job xxvii. 19 (for there, according to the context, the rich is 
 equivalent to " he who is wicked, notwithstanding his riches"), 
 nor from the word of the Lord in Matt. xix. 23 : dvffxoXojg 
 ■irXove-og iiSiXsuesrai i'lg rrjv iSaetXiiav ruv ovpavSjt/. For that which, 
 on a special occasion, the Lord here says of the rich, applies 
 to the poor also. Poverty, not less than wealth, is encom- 
 passed with obstacles to conversion, which can be removed 
 only by the omnipotence of divine grace. According to Matt, 
 xiii. 22, the word is not only choked by the deceitfulness of 
 riches, but is as much so by care also, the dangers of which 
 are particularly set forth by our Lord in ]\Iatt. vi. 25 ff In 
 Prov. XXX. 8, 9 it is said : " Give me neither poverty nor 
 riches, lest I be full and deny thee, and say : Where is the 
 Lord ? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of mj' 
 God in vain." The dangers of riches are more frequently 
 pointed out in Scripture than those of poverty ; but this fact 
 is accounted for by the cucumstance, that riches are sur- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 9. 297 
 
 rounded with a glittering appearance, and that it is therefore 
 necessary to warn those who are apt to choose them for their 
 highest good. Stier rightly calls to mind the promise of 
 earthly blessings to those who fear God. But the circumstance 
 must not be overlooked that the rich comes here into considera-. 
 tion, chiefly as to his burial. The Prophet would then not only 
 proceed from the idea that all rich people are wicked, but also 
 would simply suppose that all the rich receive an ignominious 
 burial. But of that, the parable of the rich man in Luke xvi. 
 22, knows nothing : dTidavi ds %a] 6 'TrXoUiog nai sTa^ri, according 
 to his riches; it is in hell only that he receives his reward. 
 In opposition to Gesenius, Hitzig remarks : " That transition 
 of the signification is a fable." Following the example of 
 Martini he derives "T'tJ'y from the Arabic. But in opposition 
 to that, Gesenius again remarks in the Thesaurus : " Sed haud 
 minoribus difficultatibus laborat ea ratio, qua improbitatis sig- 
 nijicatuni volaerunt Martinius et Hitzigius, collata nimirum 
 radice ityj; " caespitavit." Turn eiiirn haec radix nullam 
 prorsum cum verbo yc']} necessitudinem habet, ita ut T'K'j; h. I. 
 a'T. Xsy. esset ; tuTYi caespitandi vis nusquam ad peccatum, licet 
 ad fortunam adversam, tra'oslata est." If, with words of such 
 frequent occui-rence, it were allowable to search in the dialects, 
 the business of the expounder would be a very ungrateful 
 (me. Nor does the form, which is commonly passive, favour 
 this interpretation. According to Beck, T'B'y is another form 
 for f'ny. Others would change the reading. Eivald proposes 
 p'Cj'y; Bottcher, jrT'K^J/- Against all those conjectures, moreover, 
 the circumstance militates, that, according to them, the verse 
 would still belong to the humiliation of the Servant of God ; 
 whereas the description of the glorification had already begun 
 in the preceding verse. For vnittl " in His death," Gesenius 
 and others propose to read vniDn, to which they assign the 
 signification " His tomb-hill." But, altogether apart from this 
 arbitrary change of the vowels, there is opposed to this con- 
 jecture the circumstance, that non never occurs of the grave. 
 According to Gesenius, nyo"!, in Ezek. xliii. means "tombs;" 
 but the common signification " high places," must be retained 
 there also. In a spiritual point of view the sanctuaries of the 
 Lord had become " high places." 
 
 Ver. 10. " And the Lord was pleased painfully to crush 
 
208 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Him : when His soul hath given restitution, He shall see seed, 
 He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall 
 prosper through His hand." 
 
 And the Lord was ^^^^rtsccZ— This j)lcasure of the Lord is 
 not such an one as proceeds from caprice. The ground on 
 which it rests has already been minutely exhibited in what 
 precedes. By the vicarious influence of this suffering, peace 
 is to be acquired for mankind ; and since thisobject is based upon 
 the divine nature, upon God's mercy, the choice of the means 
 also, by which alone it could be attained (for, Avithout a viola- 
 tion of the divine character, sin could not remain unpunished), 
 must be traced to the divine chanicter. Here the ground 
 on which the pleasure rests is stated in the words immediately 
 following, — a connection which is clearly indicated by the 
 obvious i-elation in which the nin"' }'sn of the close stands 
 to ysn mn^ of the beginning; so that the sense is: It was 
 the pleasure, &c., and this for the purpose that, after having 
 made an offering for sin, He should see seed, &c. Hence the 
 pleasure of the Lord has this in view: — that the will of the 
 Lord should be i-ealized, His Servant glorified, and the salva- 
 tion of mankind promoted. Painfully to crush Him. nhn " to 
 be sick," " to suffer pains." In this sense the Niphal occurs 
 in Amos vi. 6, and the participle n^DJ in the signification 
 " painful," "grievous," in Nah. iii. 19 ; Jer. xiv. 17, and other 
 passages, InHiphil it means: "to make painful," Mic. vi. 1 3. 
 The common explanation, " The Lord was pleased to crush 
 Him, He has made Him sick," has this against it, that Copula 
 and Suffix are wanting in 'hr\r\, and that the word would come 
 in unconnected, and in a very disagreeable manner. And then 
 the passage in Micah, which we have quoted, decides against 
 it. — When His soul hatli given restitution. There cannot be 
 any doubt that, in a formal point of view, it is the soul which 
 gives restitution. KnoheVs explanation : " His soul gives itself," 
 is not countenanced by the usus loquendi ; n''^ is not a re- 
 flective verb. As little can we suppose with Hofmanii that 
 D'KTI is the second person, and an address to Jehovah. In 
 opposition to this view, there is not only the circumstance 
 that Jehovah is spoken of before and afterwards, but, in a 
 material point of view, the circumstance also, that offerings for 
 sin, and, generally, all sacrifices, were never offered up by God, 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 9. 299 
 
 but always to God. The fact also, that according to the sequel, 
 the Servant of God receives the reward for His meritorious 
 work, proves that it is He who offers up the sacrifice. But, 
 on the other hand, it is, in point of fact, the soul only which 
 can be the offering, the restitution; for it could scarcely be 
 imagined that, just here, that should be omitted on which 
 everything mainly depends. It is sufficiently evident, from what 
 precedes, wJio it is that offers the restitution; what the resti- 
 tution was, it was necessary distinctly to point out. Farther 
 — In the case of sacrifices, it is just the soul upon which every 
 thing depends; so that if the soul be mentioned in a context 
 which treats of sacrifices, it is, a jynori, probable that it will 
 be the object offered up. In Lev. xvii. 1 1 , it is said : " For 
 the soul of the flesh is in the blood, and I give it to you upon 
 the altar, to atone for your souls, for it is the blood that maketh 
 an atonement for the soul," viz., by the soul "per animam, 
 vi aniiriae in eo sanguine constantis" {Gussetius)} The soul, 
 when thus considered as the passive object, is here therefore 
 in a high degree in its proper place ; and there can the less 
 be any doubt of its occurring here in this sense, that it occurs 
 twice more in vers. 11 and 12, of the natural psychical life of 
 the Servant of God, which was given up to suffering and death. 
 But, on the other hand, if the soul be considered as the active 
 object, it stands here at all events rather idle, — a circumstance 
 which is sufficiently apparent from the supposition of several 
 interpreters, that B'Q: " soul," stands here simply for the per- 
 sonal pronoun, — " His soul," for " He," a usiis loquendi which 
 occurs in Arabic, but not in Hebrew. And, strictly speaking, 
 the offering of the sacrifice does not belong to the soul, but to 
 the spirit of the Servant of God, compare Heb. ix. 14, accord- 
 ing to which passage, Christ hia 'jrvevfiarog aiuviov iai/rov vpnerjviy- 
 xei/ aiioiijjov Tw 0ew ; and on the subject of the difference between 
 soul and spirit, compare my Commentary on Ps. iv. p. Ixxxvii. 
 But how will it now be possible to reconcile and harmonize 
 
 ' Thus Bdhr, SymhoUk', ii. S. 207, says: "It is not the material elements 
 of the blood which make it a means of expiation, but it is the CQJ which is 
 connected with it, which is in it, whose instrument and bearer it is, which 
 gives to it atoning power. The EJ'DJ is thus the centre around which, in the 
 last instance, everything moves. This is especially confirmed by the circum- 
 stance, that the object of the expiation to be effected by the {J'QJ in the 
 sacrificial blood, is, according to this passage, the tJ'BJ of him who offers up 
 the sacrifice. 
 
300 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 our two results, that, in a formal point of view, the soul is 
 that which offers up, and, in a material point of view, 
 that which is offered up ? By tlie hypothesis that, in a rhe- 
 torical way of speaking, that is here assigned to the soul as 
 an action vjhich, in iioint of fact, is done upon it. All that is 
 necessary is to translate : "If His soul puts or gives a trespass- 
 offering;" for, "to put," stands here, as it does so frequently, 
 in the sense of " to give," compare Ezek. xx. 28, where it is 
 used in this sense in reference to sacrifice. But, in point of 
 fact, this is equivalent to : " If it is made a trespass-offenng," 
 or, " If He, the Servant of God, offers it as a trespass- offering." 
 It is analogous to this when, in Job xiv. 22, the soul of the 
 deceased laments ; and a cognate mode of representation pre- 
 vails in Rev. vi. 9, where, to the souls of the slain, life is 
 assigned for the sole purpose of their giving utterance to that 
 which was the result of the thought regarding them, in com- 
 bination with the circumstances of the time. To a certain 
 degi'ee analogous is also chap. Ix. 7, where it is said of the 
 sacrificial animals : " They ascend, for my pleasure, mine altar." 
 The fact that it is in reality the soul which is offered up, is 
 confirmed also by the remarkable reference to the passage 
 before us in the discourses of our Lord. Our Lord says in 
 John X. 12: lyu) i'ijM 6 Toif^riv 6 xaXo;- 6 'zoi/zriv 6 xaXh; t7\v x^X'^'^ 
 auTou Tidrjaiv urrep tuv rrpo^druv. Ver. 15 : xal tYiV X^X^^ '"'°^ 
 ridrjfn urr'fp tuv rrpoiSdruv. Vers. 17, 18: bid roiJTO b 'rrarrip jJjI 
 ccyaTa, or/ iyu rldri/Ji,i ttiv -^/uj^^^v/ioy iva rrdXiv Ad!3u a'Jrriv. Oubslg 
 a'/pii avrriv drr J/i,oD, aXX* iyu rldriiMi avrr,v drr' i/j.awrou' sizovaiav 
 iyjti diTvai ahrriv xa/ £t,ou(s!av 'iyja 'jd'kiv "ka^iTv a-jrr,v. In John 
 XV. 13 : /ze/'^ota Tavrrig dydTriv olbslg h/ii 7va rig rriv -vj/ u p<; ;^ c alrou 
 6ji 'wTTip (pi'Kuv abroZ. Tlie expression : " To put one's soul for 
 some one," does not, independently and by itself, occur any- 
 where else in the New Testament ; in John xiii. 87, 38, Peter 
 takes the word out of the mouth of the Saviour, and in 1 
 John iii. 16, it is used in reference to those declarations of 
 our Lord. The expression is nowhere met with in any profane 
 writers, nor in the Hellenistic usus loquendi. Tlie following 
 reiisons prove that it refers to the Old Testament, and espe- 
 cially to the passage under consideration. 1 . Its Hebraizing 
 character. De Wette and Lilcke erroneously take 6iTmi in the 
 sense of laying down ; but that is too negative. It is evident 
 that the Hebraism " to put," instead of " to give," has been 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 10. 301 
 
 transferred into Greek, as is proved by the synonymous dovmi 
 rriv ■4'vy^riv abrou in Mark X. 45 ; Matt. XX. 28. — 2. The fact 
 that the same uncommon expression occurs not fewer than five 
 times in the same discourse of Christ, and that so intentionally 
 and emphatically, is explicable only when it was thereby in- 
 tended to point to an important fundamental passage of the 
 Old Testament. — 3. In the discourses of our Lord, the expres- 
 sion is, no less than in the passage before us, used of His sacri- 
 ficial death. — If, then, it be established that those passages in 
 which our Lord speaks of a putting of His soul, refer to the 
 passage under consideration, this must be acknowledged of 
 those also in which He speaks of a giving of His soul, as in 
 Matt. XX. 28 : houvai rriv -^vyjriv avrou "kurpov dvrl 'ttoaXuv, where 
 the Avrpov clearly points to the DD'X here. In all those utter- 
 ances, the Saviour simply has reduced the w^ords to what they 
 signify, just as, in quoting the passage Zech. xiii. 7, in Matt, 
 xxvi. 31, He likewise drops the rhetorical figure, the address 
 to the sword. He himself appears simply as He who offers 
 up ; the soul is that which is offered up. — u^a is, in Numb. 
 V. 5, called that of which some one has unjustly robbed another, 
 and which he is bound to repay to him. An essential feature 
 of sin is the robbing of God which is thereby committed, the 
 debt thereby incurred, which implies the necessity of recom- 
 pence. All sin-offerings are, in the Mosaic economy, at the 
 same time debt-offerings ; and this feature is very intentionally 
 and emphatically pointed out in them. If, besides the sin- 
 offerings, there is still established a kind of trespass- 
 offerings, the Dt^K, for sins in which the idea of incurring a 
 debt comes out with special prominence, this is done only with 
 the view, that this feature, thus brought forward by itself and 
 independently, may be so much the more deeply impressed, in 
 order that, in the other sin-offerings too, it may be the more 
 clearly perceived. Compare the investigation on the sin-offer- 
 ings and trespass-offerings in my work on the Genuineness of 
 the Pentateuch, ii. p. 174 ff". But the sin- and trespass-offer- 
 ings of the Old Testament tj^ically point to a true spiritual 
 sin- and trespass-offering ; and their chief object was to awaken 
 in the people of God the consciousness of the necessity of sub- 
 stitution (compare my Book : Die Opfer der Heil. Schrift., 
 Berlin 1852). This antetypical sacrifice will be offered up by 
 the true High-Priest. For the sins of the human race which 
 
302 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 without compensation, cannot be forgiven, He furnishes the 
 restitution which could not he paid by the sinners, and thereby 
 works out the justification of the sinner before God. — To the 
 trespass-offering here, all tliose passages of the New Testament 
 point, in which Christ is spoken of as the sacrifice for our sins, 
 especially 2 Cor. v. 2 1 , where the apostle says that God made 
 Christ to be afiapria for us, that in Him we might be made 
 righteous before God ; Rom. viii. 3, according to which God 
 sent Christ mpi kihapriac, as a sin-offering; Rom. iii. 25, where 
 Christ is called 'iXaartipiov, propitiation ; 1 John ii. 2 : xai abro; 
 
 i\agfi6g sSTi Tipl rSjv a>j,apriuv rnjbZv, iv. 10 ; Heb. ix. 14". The DK 
 
 at the beginning must not be explained by " as" a signification, 
 which it never has ; it has its ordinary signification " when,' 
 and the Future is to be understood as a real Future : the 
 offering of the trespass-ofiering is the condition of His seeing, 
 &c., and, according to the context, indeed, the absolutely Tieces- 
 ■sary condition. The translation : " Even if" could proceed 
 from one only who had not understood this context. It is not 
 death in general, but sacrificial death, which is specially spoken 
 of; and to such a death, which is a necessary foundation of the 
 glorification, and especially the foundation of "He shall see seed," 
 '■ when" only is suitable, and not " even if" — In the words : 
 " He shall see seed, prolong His days," that is, in a higher 
 sense, promised to this Servant of God, which, under the Old 
 Testament, was considered as a distinguished divine blessing. 
 The spiritual interpretation has the less difficulty, that it must 
 necessarily be granted in the case of n^n, immediately preced- 
 ing. Just in the same relation in which the sin-offering of 
 the Servant of God stands to the sin-offering of the bullocks 
 and goats, does His posterity, the length of His days, stand to 
 the ordinary posterity and length of days. The seed of the 
 Servant of God, identical with His generation, in ver. 8, are 
 just those for whom, according to the words immediately pre- 
 ceding, He offers His soul as a trespass-offering — the many 
 who, according to ver. 1 2, are assigned to Him as His portion ; 
 who, according to chap. Iii. 15, are to be sprinkled by Him ; 
 who, according to ver. 1 1 , are to be justified by Him ; they 
 whose sins He has taken u])on Him (ver. 5), and for whom 
 He intercedes before God, ver. 1 2. Even in the Old Testfi- 
 ment, the word " children" is frequently used in a spiritual 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 11. 303 
 
 sense. In Gen. vi. 2, believers appear as the children of God. 
 The Israelites are not unfrequently designated as sons of 
 Jehovah. Those prophets who were endowed with specially 
 rich gifts, were surrounded by a crowd of sons of the prophets. 
 The wise man, too, looks upon his disciples as his spiritual 
 sons, Prov. iv. 20, xix. 27 ; Eccles. xii. 12. In the New Tes- 
 tament, the Lord addresses the man sick of the palsy by rixvnv. 
 Matt. ix. 2 ; and with special emphasis. His apostles as little 
 children, nyivla sn fiixpov n,i6' v/jjuv sifMi, John xiii. 33 ; and the 
 Apostles, too, consider those who have been awakened by their 
 ministry as their spiritual children, 1 Cor. iv. 1 7 ; 1 Tim. i. 
 2 ; 1 Pet. V. 13. The thought is this — that in the sacrificial 
 death of the Servant of God there will be an animating power; 
 that, just thereby, He ivill found His Church. The words : 
 " He shall prolong His days, allude, as it appears, to the pro- 
 mise which was given to David and his seed, comp. Ps. xxi 5 : 
 " He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it to him, even length 
 of days for ever and ever ;" 1 Sam. vii. 13: "I will establish 
 the throne of His kingdom for ever," comp. ver. 16; Ps. Ixxxix. 
 5, cxxxii. 12, — a promise which found its final fulfilment in 
 Christ. But the long life here must not be viewed as isolated, 
 but must be understood in close connection both with what 
 precedes and what follows. It is the life of the Servant of 
 God in communion with His seed, in carrying out the will of 
 God. |*Dn never means "business," but always "pleasure;" 
 and this signification, which occurs in chap. xliv. 28 also, is 
 here the less to be given up, that the fsn here, at the close, 
 evidently refers to the J*sn at the beginning. By this refer- 
 ence, the reason is stated why it was the pleasure of the Lord 
 to crush Him. According to vers. 1 1 and 1 2, it is the plea- 
 sure of God that sinners should be justified through Him, on 
 the foundation of His vicarious suffering ; according to chap, 
 xhi. and xlix., that Israel should be redeemed, and the Gentiles 
 saved. While the pleasure of the Lord is prospering through 
 His hand, he, at the same time, sees seed. 
 
 In vers. 1 1 and 1 2, we have the closing words of the Lord. 
 
 Ver. 11. ''On account of the sufferings of His soul He 
 seeth, He is satisfied; by His knoiuledge He, the Righteous 
 One, my Servant, shall justify the many, and He shall bear 
 their iniquities" 
 
30+ MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Tlie p ill ^oyo is " on account of." In ver. 1 0, to which tlie 
 (iiscourse of the Lord is, in the first instance, connected, the 
 suffering likewise appears as the cause of the glorification. 
 The Vulgate translates : " Pro eo quod laboravit anima ejus ; " 
 
 tlie LXX. rather feebly : a-ro roD t&voh rrjg -^vyrig aiirou. With 
 HNi^ the object is omitted, and that purposely, in order that 
 the words of God may be immediately connected with ver. 1 0. 
 We must supply : the fruits and rewards of His sufferings 
 announced there (just a.s, in a manner quite similar, in chap, 
 xlix. 7, "they shall see," refers to the preceding verse), spe- 
 cially that the pleasure of the Lord shall jirosper through His 
 hand, — which, in the sequel, is enlarged upon. The words : 
 " He is satisfied," point out that the blissful consequences of 
 the atoning suffering will take place in the highest fulness. 
 inna must, according to the accents, be connected with the 
 subsequent words. The knowledge does not belong to the 
 Servant of God, in so far as it dwells in Him, but as it con- 
 cerns Him ; just as the a/aTjj roD 0s&D in Luke xi. 42, and in 
 other passages does not mean the love which dwells in God, 
 but the love which has God for its object. " By His know- 
 ledge" is thus equivalent to : by their knowing Him, getting 
 acquainted with Him, This knowledge of the Servant of God 
 according to His principal work, as it was desciibed in what 
 precedes, viz., mediatorial office, or faith, is the subjective con- 
 dition of justification. As the efficient cause of it, the vica- 
 rious suffering of the Servant of God was represented in the 
 preceding context. It is just this, which is subjectively ap- 
 propriated by the knowledge of the Servant of God, and which 
 must be conceived of as essential and living. Thus J. H. 
 Michaelis says : Per scientiam S'ui {Clericus : Cognitlonesui), 
 non qua ipse cognoscit, sed qua vera fide et fiducia ipse tan- 
 quarti propitiator cognoscitur. The explanation : " By His 
 knowledge (in the sense of understanding) or wisdom," gives 
 a sense unsuitable to the context. In the whole prophecy, 
 the Servant of God does not appear as a Teacher, but as a 
 Redeemer ; and the relation of pns to pnxn shows that here, 
 too, He is considered as such. To supply, as is done by some 
 interpreters : " in which (knowledge) He perceived the only 
 possible means of redemption and reconciliation, and gave prac- 
 tical effect to this knowledge," is, after all, too unnatural; the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. IJII. 11. 305 
 
 discourse would in that case be so incomplete that we should 
 have been shut up to conjectures. Others translate : " By 
 His doctrine ;" but nyT never means " doctrine." The explan- 
 ation : " By His fuU, absolute knowledge of the divine counselJ: 
 (Hdvernick), or, " by the absolute knowledge of God" {ITmbreif), 
 puts into the simple word, which only means " knowledge," 
 more than is implied in it. According to the parallelism 
 with the subsequent words : " He shall bear their iniquities." 
 and according to the context (for, in the whole section, the 
 Servant of God is not described as a Teacher, but as a Priest, 
 as He who, in order to expiate our sin, has offered himself 
 up as a sacrifice), pnvn must not be translated " to convert," 
 but to "justify." In favour of this translation is also 
 the construction with 7, which is to be accounted for from 
 a modification of the signification : " to bring righteousness." 
 But it is specially the position of pnv which is decisive in 
 favour of it. It is for the justification only that the personal 
 righteousness of the Servant of God has that significant mean- 
 ing which is, in this manner, assigned to it. Moreover, in the 
 ibsus loquendi, the meaning to justify only occurs. In it, the 
 verb is used, chap. v. 23, 1. 8 ; and there is no reason for de- 
 viating from it in the only passage which can be adduced in 
 favour of the signification " to convert," viz., Dan, xii. 3 : " And 
 the wise, d''!5''DB'», shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, 
 and justify many as the stars, for ever and ever." In this 
 passage, that is applied to believers which, in chap, liii., was 
 ascribed to Christ. Even a certain strangeness in the style 
 makes us suppose such a transference ; and the fact, that Daniel 
 had our passage specially in view, cannot be doubted, if we 
 compare the D''i5"'3^D of Daniel with the ^"25^% with which the 
 prophecy under consideration opens (chap, lii, 1 3), and Daniel's : 
 "justify many," with the passage before us. Tlie justification, 
 which in its full sense belongs to Christ the Head only, is by 
 Daniel ascribed to the " wise," because they are the instru- 
 ments through whom many attain justification ; Calvin: Quia 
 causa sunt ministerialis justitiae et salutis multorum. Hd- 
 vernich refers, for a comparison, to 1 Tim. iv. 16: " For, in 
 doing this, thou shalt save both thyself and them that hear 
 thee." p^nv must not be immediately connected with nay ; for, 
 in that case, it ought to have stood after it, and been qualified 
 VOL. II. u 
 
30G MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 by the article. On the coutrai-y, pnv stands first, because it 
 stands by itself and substantively : " The righteous One-, My 
 Servant." A similar construction occurs, Jer. iii., vii. \ : 
 " And she does not turn unto me, the treacherous one, nT'jn, 
 lier sister Judah." By thus making pny prominent, and con- 
 necting it immediately with pn^Ti, it is intended to point out 
 the close connection in which the righteousness of the Servant 
 of God, who, although altogether innocent and sinless, ver. 9, 
 yet suffered the punishment of sin, stands with the jvistifica- 
 tion to be bestowed by Him. Maurer thus pertinently ex- 
 presses this : " To many, for righteous is my Servant, shall 
 He procure righteousness." By these words thus the nr. in 
 chap. Iii. 1 5, is explained ; and the seal of the divine contir- 
 mation is impressed upon that which, in wevs. 4-6, the believ- 
 ing Church had said, especially upon the words : " By His 
 wounds we are healed," ver. 5. The "many" points back to 
 chap. liii. 1 5, and forms the contrast not to all (Stier : " Be- 
 cause He cannot, overturning all laws, save all by coercion, or 
 arbitrary will," — a Hmitation which would in this context be 
 out of [)lace), but to feiv : The one, the many, Rom. v. 1 5. — 
 " And He shall bear their iniquities ;" the iniquities and their 
 punishment, as a heavy burden which the Servant of God lifts 
 off from those who are gToaning under their weight, and takes 
 upon himself Jerome says : " And He himself shall bear 
 the iniquities which they could not bear, and by the ■weight 
 <^f which they were borne down." Calvin expresses himself 
 thus : " A wonderful change indeed ! Christ justifies men by 
 giving them His righteousness, and in exchange. He takes 
 upon Him their sins, that He may expiate them." In opposi- 
 tion to those who translate : " He bore their initjuities," (the 
 Future might, in that case, he accounted for fi*om the Prophet's 
 viewing the whole transaction as present), even Gescnius has 
 remarked that the preceding and subsequent Futures all refer 
 to the state of glorification. Even the parallelism with pnv 
 shows that we must translate as the LXX. do : xai rag d/jbafTias 
 a-jTuv avTog dvolest. Moreover, the subject of discourse in the 
 whole verse is not the acquiring of the righteousness, which 
 was done in the state of humiliation, but the cominunication 
 of it, as the subjective condition of which the knowledge of 
 the Servant of God was mentioned in the preceding clause. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LI II. 12. 307 
 
 In the case of every one who, after the exaltation of the Ser- 
 vant of God, fulfils this condition, He takes upon Himself their 
 sins, i.e., He causes His vicarious suffering to be imputed to 
 them, and grants them pardon. The expression : " He shall 
 bear their iniquities" is, in point of fact, identical with : " He 
 shall justify them." The Servant of God has borne the sin 
 once for all ; by the power of His substitution, effected by the 
 shedding of His blood, He takes upon himself the sins of eveiy 
 individual who /(;/ioios Him. The "taking away" is impHed 
 in ^2D) in so far only, as it is done by bearing. It was only 
 because he was misled by his rationalistic tendencies, that 
 Gesenius explains : " And He lightens the burden of their 
 sins, i.e., by His doctrine He shall correct them, and thereby 
 procure to them pardon." By such an explanation he contra- 
 dicts himself, inasmuch as, in ver. 4, he referred the bearing 
 of the diseases and pains to the vicarious satisfaction. It can- 
 not, in any way, be said of the Teacher, that he takes upon 
 himself iniquities. 
 
 Ver. 1 2. " Therefore will I give Hinn a ijortion in the 
 many, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, hecaune 
 He hath poured out His soul unto death and was numbered 
 with the transgressors, and He beareth the sin of many, and 
 for the transgressors He shall make intercession." 
 
 The first words are thus explained by many interpreters : 
 " Therefore I will give Him mighty ones for His portion, and 
 strong ones He shall divide as a spoil." But p^n with 2 can- 
 not mean simply " to allot," (altliough, indeed, this explana- 
 tion is given by the LXX. ; dia rovrb avrbg xXripovniiiriSii 'iro'AXoOg ; 
 Vulg. : ideo dispertia)n ei plubrimos) ; it only signifies " to 
 give a portion in," Job xxxix. 1 7. From the comparison with 
 D''a") in ver. 11 and at the close of this verse, as weU as from 
 the reference to the many nations in the sketch, ver. 15, it 
 is evident that D"'3"i here, too, cannot mean " mighty ones," 
 but " many." Even elsewhere, the signification " great ones," 
 " mighty ones," appears oftentimes to be only forced upon D''n"i. 
 In Job XXXV. 9, the " many" are the many evil-doers ; and in 
 Job xxxii. 9, the vitterance : " Not the many are wise," is ex- 
 plained fi'om the circumstance, that the view given by Jobs 
 friends was that of the great mass. The fact that the JIK in 
 the second clause is not the sign of the Accusative, but a Pre- 
 
308 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 position, is probable even from the circumstance, that the for- 
 mer ns commonly stands before qualified nouns only ; and, 
 farther from the corresponding ; " with the transgressors." 
 But what is conclusive is, that the phrase hh'^ phn always means 
 " to divide spoil," never " to distribute as spoil," and that the 
 phrase D'XJ ns \h\:^ \hn "to divide spoil with the proud" occurs 
 in Prov. xvi. 1 9. The reason of the use of this expression lies 
 in the reference to ordinary victors and conquerors of the 
 world, especially to Cyrus. By His sufferings and death, the 
 Servant of God shall secure to himself the same successes as 
 they do by sword and bow. Although participating in the 
 government of the world, and dividing spoil are here ascribed 
 to the Servant of God, yet the participation in worldly triumphs 
 is not spoken of On the contraiy, behind the equality which 
 has given rise to the secular-looking expression (the thought 
 is merely this, that through Christ and His sacrificial death, 
 the Kingdom of God enters into the rank of world-conquering 
 powers), a contrast lies concealed, — as appears, 1. From what 
 is stated, in the preceding verses, about the manner in which 
 the Servant of God has attained to this glory. Worldly 
 triumphs are not acquired by the deepest humiliation, by 
 sufterings and death voluntarily undergone for the salvation 
 of mankind. 2. From that which the Servant of God, in the 
 state of glory, is to do to those who turn to Him. According 
 to chap. lii. 1 5, He is to s])rinlde them with His blood ; and 
 this s])riukling is there expressly stated as the reason of the 
 reverential homage of the Gentile world. He is to justify 
 them and to bear their sins, ver. 1 1, and to make intercession 
 for them, ver. 1 2. All that docs not apply to a worldly con- 
 queror and ruler. — The merits of the Servant of God are then 
 once more pointed out, — the merits by which He has acquired 
 so exalted and all-important a position to himself, and, at the 
 same time, to the Kingdom of God, of which He is the Head. 
 " Because He hath poured out His soul unto death," my in 
 the Nlphal, " to be poured out," means in Piel " to pour out," 
 Gen, xxiv. 20, and Ps. cxli. 8, where it is said of the soul : 
 " Do not pour out my soul," just as here the Hiphil is used. 
 The term has been transferred to the soul from the blood, in 
 which is the soul. Gen. ix. 4 : " Flesh with its soul (namely 
 with its blood) you shall not eat." Ver. 5 : " Your blood in 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 12. 309 
 
 which your souls." nz^z, " He was numbered," is here, accord- 
 ing to the context, equivalent to : He caused himself to be 
 numbered ; for it is only that which was undergone volun- 
 tarily whicli can be stated as the reason of the reward. This 
 voluntary undergoing, however, is not implied in the word 
 itself, but only in the connection with : " He hath pouied out 
 His soul ;" for that signifies a voluntary act. The n''y*J'D here, 
 just as the D^yE'") in ver. 9, are not sinners, but criminals. This 
 aj^pears from the connection in which the being " numbered 
 M^ith the transgressors" stands with the " pouring out of the 
 soul unto death." We can hence think of executed criminals 
 only. The pure, innocent One was not only numbered with 
 sinners, such as all men are, but He was numbered with cri- 
 rninals. It is in this sense also that our Lord underetands 
 the words, in His quotation of them in Luke xxii. 37 : '/.iyu 
 yap uf/.i'i/, on sV/ rovro rb yiypa/z/Mivov BsT nAied^voci sv s/j^ol, to' 7iai /jutoc 
 avo/MUv iXoyiadrj, %a} yap ra -zspi sfMOu r'sXog iX^'y Compare Matt. XXvi. 
 5 4, where the Lord strengthens His disciples against the offence 
 of His being taken a prisoner, by saying, with a view to the pas- 
 sage before us : tSs obv rrXripudSjeiv at ypafal, on ourOJ hsT ykviodai ; 
 ver. 56, where, after having reproached the guards for having 
 numbered Him with criminals : ws i^/ Xtjsttiv i^riXOsn /usTd 
 /j,ax«.ipuv x.ai ^vXciJV dvXXafSsTv fjt^s, He says to them: touto di oXoi) 
 yeyoviv ha 'TrXj^puSuiSiv a) ypafai ruiv '7rpo(prjTuiv. Mark, in chap. XV. 
 28, designates the fact that two robbers were crucified with 
 Christ, as the most perfect fulfilment of our prophecy. It was 
 in this fact that it came out most palpably, that Christ had 
 been made like criminals. The rulei-s of the people caused 
 two common criminals to be crucified with Him, just that they 
 might declare that they put Him altogether among their num- 
 ber. — ."And He beareth the sin of many, and for the trans- 
 gressors He shall make intercession." By i^ini, it is indicated 
 that the subsequent words are no more to be viewed as de- 
 pending on "irx nnn- — J?"'Ja'' must not, as is done by the LXX., 
 be referred to the state of humiliation ; for the Future in the 
 preceding verses has reference to the exaltation. The parallel 
 ^?B^ must therefore be viewed as a Praeteriturii lyropheiicum. 
 It corresponds with ^ao'' in ver. 11, and, like it, does not de- 
 signate something done but once by the Servant of God, but 
 something which He does constantly. The intercession is 
 
mo MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 here broufjlit into close connection with the bearinjj; of the sin, 
 by which Christ represents himself as being the true ain-ofer- 
 iiig (comp. ver. 10, where He was designated as the true 
 tresjKtM-o faring), and hence it is equivalent to : He will make 
 intercession for sinners, by taking upon himself their sin, — of 
 which the thief on the cross was the first instance. This 
 close connection, and the deep meaning suggested by it, are 
 overlooked and lost by those expositors who, in the interces- 
 sion, think of prayer only. TJie servant of God, on the con- 
 trary, makes intercession, by pleading hefoi'e God His merit, 
 as the ground of the acceptance of the transgressors, and of 
 the jKtrdon of their sins. This is evident from the connection 
 also in which : " For the transgressors He shall make interces- 
 sion," stands with : " He was numbered with the transgressors." 
 The vicarious suffering is thereby pointed out as the ground of 
 the intercession. Calvin says: "Under the Old Testament 
 dispensation, the High-priest, who never went in without 
 blood, made intercession for the peo[)le. What was there 
 foreshadowed has been fulfilled in Christ. For, in the first 
 place. He offered up the sacrifice of His body, and shed His 
 blood, and thus suffered the punishment due to us. And, in 
 the second place, in order that the expiation might profit us. 
 He undertakes the oflice of an advocate, and makes interces- 
 sion for all who, by faith, lay hold of this sacrifice." Comp. 
 Rom. viii. 3-i : og xa/ svTvy^dvn uTsp r./Muiv ; Hebr. ix. 24, accord- 
 ing to which passage Christ is entered into the holy places v^iv 
 ifjb(paviff&rjvai rj> Tf offwTw roZ Qiou i^Tip rtiJ^uv ; 1 John ii. 1 : rrapd- 
 xXtjtoi/ syjafLiv rrpog rov Tarspa, Irisovv Xpifirov bi-/.ixiov. 
 
 We have hitherto expounded the passage before us without 
 any regard to the difterence of the interpretation as to the 
 whole, and have supposed the reference to Christ to be the 
 correct one. But it is still incumbent upon us : I. to give the 
 history of the interpretation ; II. to refute the arguments 
 against the Messianic interpretation ; III. to stiite the argu- 
 ments in favour of it ; and IV. to show that the non-Messi- 
 aiiie interpretation is untenable. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIU. 12. 311 
 
 I. HISTORY OF THE INTERPRETATION. 
 
 A. WITH THE JEWS. 
 
 1. There cannot beany doubt that, in those earlier times, 
 when the Jews were still more firmly attached to the tradition 
 of their Fathers, — when the carnal disposition had not yet 
 become so entirely prevalent among them, — and when contro- 
 verey with the Christians had not made them so narrow- 
 minded in their Exegesis, the Messianic explanation was pretty 
 generally received, at least by the better portion of the people. 
 This is admitted even by those later interpreters who pervert 
 the prophecy, e.g., Abenezra, Jarchi, Abarbanel, Moses Nacli- 
 manides. Oesenius also says : " It was only the later Jews 
 who abandoned this interpretation, — no doubt, in consequence 
 of their controversies with the Christians." We shall here 
 collect, from the existing Jewish writings, the principal pas- 
 sages in which this interpretation occurs. The whole transla- 
 tion of the Chaldee Paraphrast, Jonaihan, notwithstanding 
 the many perversions in wliich he indulges, refers the pro- 
 phecy to Christ. He paraphrases the very first clause: sn^ti'D 
 nny rh'^ an " behold my Servant Messiah shall prosper." The 
 Mtdrash Tanchuma, an old commentary on the Pentateuch 
 (ed. Cracov. f. 53, c. 3, 1. 7), remarks on the words : ^"^^y ^''3b'^ 
 n3n (ed. Cracov. f 5 3, c. 3, 1. 7) : n''ni nixo a^y\ nnji DiT" n^K'on 
 1^0 HT mtrn •'3t«^o p n23i nt^DJo a^:^^ Dmax p (" this is the 
 King Messiah who is high and lifted up, and very exalted, 
 more exalted than Abraham, elevated above Moses, higher 
 than the ministering angels"). This passage is remarkable 
 for this reason also, that it contains the doctrine of the exal- 
 tation of the Messiah above all created beings, and even above 
 the angels themselves, and, hence, the doctrine of His divinity, 
 — a doctrine contested by the later Jews. Still more remark- 
 able is a passage from the very old book Pesikta, cited in the 
 treatise A bJcath RoJcJiel (Ssn nplH, printed separately at Venice 
 in 1597, and reprinted in Hulsil Theologia Judaica, where 
 
812 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 tliis passage occurs p. 309) : "When God created His world 
 He stretched out His hand under the throne of His glory, and 
 brought forth the soul of tlie Messiah. He said to Him : 
 ' Wilt thou heal and redeem my sons after 0000 years V He 
 answered Him : ' I will.' Then God said to Him : ' Wilt thou 
 then also bear the punishment in order to blot out their sins, as it 
 is written : ' But he hove our diseases' (chap. liii. 4) ? And He 
 answered Him : I will joyfully bear them." In this passage, 
 as well as in several others which will be afterwards cited, the 
 doctrine of the vicarious suffei'ings of the Messiah is contained, 
 and derived from Is. liii., although the later Jews rejected this 
 doctrine. In a similar manner, Rabbi Moses Haddarshan 
 expresses himself on Gen. i. 3 (Latin in Galatinus, De Arcunis 
 Calk. ver. p. 329 ; in tlie original in Raimund Martini Pug. 
 Fid. fol. 333 ; comp. Wolf, Blhl. Hchr. i. p. 818) : "Jehovah 
 said : Messiah, thou my righteous One, those who are con- 
 cealed with thee will be such that their sins will brinsf a 
 heavy yoke upon thee. — The Messiah answered : Lord of 
 the universe, I cheerfully take upon myself all those plagues 
 and sufferings ; and immediately the Messiah, out of love, 
 took upon himself all those plagues and sufferings, as is 
 written in Is. liii. : He was abused and oppressed." Com- 
 pare another passag^e, in which ver. 5 is referred to the 
 Messiah, in Raim. Martin, fol. iv. 30. In the Talmud 
 (Gemara, tract. Sanhedrim, chap, xi.), it is said of the 
 Messiah : " He sits before the gates of the city of Rome 
 among the sick and the leprous" (according to ver. 3). To 
 the question: What is the name of the Messiah, it is answered : 
 He is called N"iivn " the leper," and, in proof, ver. 4 is quoted 
 according to the erroneous interpretation of jnw by lepi^osus, — 
 an interpretation which is met with in Jerome also. — In the 
 work Rahhoth (a commentary on the Pentateuch and the five 
 Megilloth, which, as to its principal portions, is very old, 
 although much interpolated at later periods, and which, ac- 
 cording to the statements of the Jews, was composed about 
 the year of our Lord 300, comp. Wolf, I. c. II., p. 1423, sqq. 
 in commentary on Ruth ii. 14 [p. 40, ed. Cixicovi\), the fifth 
 verse is quoted, and referred to the sufierings of the Messiah. 
 — In the Medrash Tillini (an allegorical commentary on the 
 Psalms, printed at Venice in 1540;, it is said in Ps. ii. 7, (fol. 
 4) : " The things of King Messiah and His mysteries are an- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 31$ 
 
 nounced in the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa. In 
 the Prophets, e.g., in the passage Is. Hi. 1 3, and xlii. 1 ; in 
 the Hagiographa, e.g., Ps. ex. and Dan. vii. 13." In the book 
 Chasidim (a collection of moral tales, printed at Venice and 
 Basle in 1581) p. 60, the following story is to be found: 
 "There was, among the Jews, a pious man, who in summer 
 made his bed among fleas, and in winter put his feet into 
 cold water ; and when it froze, his feet froze at the same time. 
 When asked why he did so, he answered, that he too must 
 make some little expiation, since the Messiah bears the sin of 
 Israel (?i(,-\^'< niJiy biD n''^d)." The ancient explanation is, 
 from among the later interpreters, assented to by Rabbi 
 Alschech (his commentary on Is. liii. is given entire in Hidsii 
 Theologia Judaica, p. 321 sqq). He says: "Upon the 
 testimony of tradition, our old Eabbins have unanimously 
 admitted that King Messiah is here the subject of dis- 
 course. For the same reason, we, in harmony with them, 
 conclude that King David, i.e., the Messiah, must be 
 considered as the subject of this prophecy, — a view which is 
 indeed quite obvious." We shall see, however, subsequently, 
 that he adheres to the right explanation only in the first three 
 verses, and afterwards abandons it. But passages especially 
 remarkable are found in the cabbalistic book Sohar. It is 
 true that the age of the book is very uncertain ; but it cannot 
 be proved to have been composed under Christian influence. 
 We shall here quote only some of the principal passages. 
 (Sohar, ed. Amstelod. p. ii. fol. 212; ed. Solisbac. p. ii. f. 85; 
 Sonimeri theol. Sohar p. 94.) "When the Messiah is told of 
 the misery of Israel in their captivity, and that they are 
 themselves the cause of it, because they had not cared for, 
 nor sought after the knowledge of their Lord, He weeps aloud 
 over their sins; and for this reason it is wi'itten in Scripture 
 (Isa. liii. 5): He was wounded for our transgi'essions, He was 
 smitten for our iniquities." — " In the garden of Eden there is 
 an apartment which is called the sick chamber. The Messiah 
 goes into this apartment, and summons all the diseases, all 
 the pains, and all the chastisements of Israel to come upon 
 Him, and they all come upon Him. And unless He would 
 take them away from Israel, and lay them upon himself, no 
 man would be able to bear the chastisements of Israel, which 
 are inflicted upon them on account of the Law, as it is 
 
314 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 written: But He took upon himself our sicknesses," kc. In 
 another passage {Sohar, ed. Ariiaidod p. iii. f. 218; SoUsIxic. 
 iii. f. 88; Sommeri theol. Sohar p. 89; Auszilge aus dem 
 BiLche Sohar, rait Dcvtschcr Uebersetsimg, Berlin 52, S. 32), 
 it is said: "When God wishes to give to the world a means 
 of healing. He smites one of the pious among them, and for 
 his sake He gives healing to the whole world. Where, in 
 Scripture, do we find this confirmed ? In Isa. liii. 5, where 
 it is said: He was wounded for our transgi-essions. He was 
 crushed for our sins." 
 
 What has been said will be a sufficient proof that the 
 ancient Jews, following tradition, referred the passage to the 
 Messiah; and, as it a))pears from the majority of the passages 
 quoted, referred it indeed to the suffering Messiah. But it 
 would really have been a strange phenomenon, if this inter- 
 pretation had remained the prevailing one among the Jews. 
 According to the declaration of the Apostle, the Cross of 
 Christ is to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks 
 foohshness. The idea of a sufifering and expiating Messiah 
 was repugnant to the carnally minded Jews. And the reason 
 why it was repugnant to them is, that they did not possess 
 that which alone makes that doctrine acceptable, viz., the 
 knmvledge of sin, and the consciousness of the need of salva- 
 tion, — because, not knowing the holiness of God, and being 
 ignorant of the import of the Law, they imagined that through 
 tlieir own strength, by the works of the Law, they could be 
 justified before God. What they wished for was only an out- 
 ward deliverance from their misery and their oppressore, not 
 an internal deliverance from sin. For this reason, they looked 
 exclusively to those passages of the Old Testament in which 
 the Messiah in glory is announced; and those passages they 
 interpreted in a carnal manner. In addition to this, there 
 were other reasons which could not fail to render them averse 
 to refer tliis passage to the sufifering Messiah. As they could 
 not compare the prophecy with the fulfilment, — the deep 
 abasement of the Messiah which is here announced, the con- 
 tempt which He endures, His violent death, appeared to them 
 irreconcileable with those passages in which nothing of the 
 kind is mentioned, but, on the contrary, the glorified Messiah 
 only is foretold. They had too little Icnowledge of the nature 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 815 
 
 of prophetic vision to enable them to perceive that the pro- 
 phecies are connected with the circumstances of the time, and, 
 therefore, exhibit a one-sided character, — that they consist of 
 separate fragments which must be put together in order that 
 a complete representation of the subject may be obtained. 
 They imagined that because, in some passages, the Messiah is 
 at once brought before us in glory, just because He, in this 
 way, represented Himself to the prophets. He must also appear 
 at once in glory. And, lastly, by their controversy with 
 Christians, they were led to seek for other explanations. As 
 long as they understood the passage as referring to a suffering 
 Messiah, they could not deny that there existed the closest 
 agreement between the prophecy and the history of Christ. 
 Now since the Christians, in their controversies with the Jews, 
 always proceeded from the passages, which by Hulsius is 
 pertinently called a carnificina Judaeorum, and always re- 
 turned to it, — since they saw what impression was, in numer- 
 ous cases,produced by the controversy of the Christians 
 founded upon this passage, nothing was more natural, than 
 that they should endeavour to discover an expedient for 
 remedying this evil. And the discovery of such an expedient 
 was the more easy to them, the more that, in general, they 
 were destitute of a sense of truth, and especially of exegetical 
 skill, so that they could not see any reason for rejecting an 
 interpretation on the ground of its being forced and unnatural. 
 In proof of what we have said, we here briefly present the 
 arguments with which Aharhanel opposes the explanation of 
 a suffering and expiating divine Messiah. In the first place, 
 by the absurd remark that the ancient teachers did not intend 
 to give a literal, but an allegorical explanation, he seeks to 
 invalidate the authority of the tradition on which the later 
 Jewish interpreters laid so great a stress, whensoever and 
 wheresoever it agrees with their own inclination; and, at the 
 same time, he advances the assertion that they referred the 
 first four verses only to the Messiah, — an assertion which the 
 passages quoted by us show to be utterly erroneous. Then, 
 after having combatted the doctrine of original sin, he con- 
 tinues : " Suppose even that there exists such a thing as 
 original sin, — when God, whose power is infinite, was willing 
 to pardon, was His hand too short to redeem (Isa. 1. 2), so 
 
316 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS tN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 that, on this account, He w.vs obliged to take flesli, and to 
 impose chastisements upon himself? And even although I 
 were to grant that it was necessary that a single individual 
 of the human race should bear this punishment, in order to 
 make satisfaction for all, it would, at all events, have been at 
 least more appropriate that some one from among ourselves, 
 S(nne wise man or projihet, had taken upon him the punish- 
 ment, than that God himself should have done so. For, sup- 
 posing even that He became incarnate, He would not be like 
 one of us. — It is altogether impossible and self-contradictory 
 that God should assume a body; for God is the first cause, 
 infinite, and omnipotent. He cannot, therefore, assume flesh, 
 and subsist as a finite being, and take upon himself man's 
 punishment, of which nothing whatsoever is written in Scrip- 
 ture. — If the prophecy referred to the Messiah, it must refer 
 either to the Messiah ben Joseph, or the Messiah ben David 
 (compare the Treatises at the close of this work). The former 
 will perish in the beginning of his wars; neither that which 
 is said of the exaltation, nor that which is said of the humilia- 
 tion of the Servant of God applies to him ; much less can the 
 latter be intended." (There then follows a quotation of several 
 passages treating of the exalted Messiah.) 
 
 That it was nevertheless difficult for the carnally-minded 
 among the Jews to reject the tradition, is seen from the para- 
 phrase of Joiudlaui. This forms a middle link between the 
 ancient interpretation — which was retained, even at a later 
 period, by the better portion of the nation — and the recent 
 interpretation. Jonathan (see his paraphrase, among others, 
 in LotvtJis comment, edited by Koppe, on the passage ; and in 
 Hulsii Tlieol. Judaica) acknowledges the tradition, in so far, 
 that he refers the whole prophecy to the Messiah. On the 
 other hand, he endeavours to satisfy his repugnance to the 
 doctrine of a sufiering and expiating Messiah, by referring, 
 through the most violent perversions and most arbitrary in- 
 terpolations, to the state of glory, every thing which is here 
 said of the state of humiliation. A trace of the right inter- 
 pretation may yet perhaps be found in ver. 12, where Jona- 
 than says that the Messiah will give His soul unto death; 
 but it may be that thereby he understands merely the intrepid 
 courage with which the Messiah will expose himself to all 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 817 
 
 dangers, in the conflict with the enemies of the covenant- 
 people. 
 
 This mode of dealing with the text, however, could satisfy 
 only a few. They, therefore, went farther, and sought for an 
 entirely different subject of the prophecy. How very little 
 they were themselves convinced of the soundness of their in- 
 terpretation, and satisfied with its results, may be seen fi^om 
 the example of Abarbanel, who advances two explanations 
 which differ totally, viz., one referring it to the Jewish people, 
 and the other to king Josiah, and then allows his readers to 
 make their choice betwixt the two. It is in truth only, that 
 there is unanimity and certainty ; error is always accompanied 
 b}^ disagreement and uncertainty. This will appear from the 
 following enumeration of the various interpretations of this 
 passage, which, at a subsequent period, were current among 
 the Jews. (The principal non-Messianic interpretations of 
 this passage are found in the E-abbinical Bibles, and also in 
 Hulsius, I.e., p. 339, both in the original and translation.) 
 The interpreters may be divided into two main classes: 
 1. Those who by niiT" 12V understand some collective body; 
 and, 2. Those who refer the prophecy to a single individual. 
 The first class again falls into two subdivisions, («), those who 
 make the whole Jewish people the subject, in contrast to the 
 Gentiles; and (6) those who make the better portion of the 
 Jewish people the subject, in contrast to the ungodly portion. 
 These views, and their supporters, we shall now proceed to 
 submit to a closer examination. 
 
 1 . (a.) Among the non-Messianic interpreters, the most pre- 
 valent opinion is, that the Jewish people are the subject of 
 the prophecy. This opinion is found at an early period. At 
 this we need not be surprised, as the cause which produced 
 the deviation from the Messianic interpretation existed at a 
 period equally early. When Origen was making use of this 
 passage against some learned Jews, they answered : that " that 
 which here was prophesied of one, referred to the whole people, 
 and was fulfilled by their dispersion." This explanation is 
 followed by R. Salomo JarcJd, A benezra, Kimchi, A barbanel, 
 Lipmann (priVJ "ISD, fol. 131). The main features of this view 
 are the following : The prophecy is supposed to describe the 
 misery of the people in their present exile, the firmness witli 
 
3 is MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 which they bear it for the glory of God, and resist every temp- 
 tation to forsake His law and worship ; and the prosperity, 
 power, and glory which shall be bestowed upon them at the 
 time of the redemption. In vers. 1-10, the Gentiles are sup- 
 j)osed to be introduced as speaking, and making a humble and 
 penitent confession that hitherto they had adopted an errone- 
 ous opinion of the people of God, and had unjustly despised 
 them on account of their sufferings, inasmuch as their gloiy 
 now shows, that it was not for the punishment of their sins 
 that these sufferings were inflicted upon them. Some of these 
 interpreters, e.g., Abenezra and Rabbi Lipmann, understand, 
 indeed, by the nin'' nny, the pious portion only of the people 
 who remained faithful to Jehovah ; but this makes no material 
 difference, inasmuch as they, too, contrast the mn^ 12]! with the 
 heathen nations, and not with the ungodly, or less righteous 
 portion of the nation, as is done by the interpreters of the 
 following class. 
 
 (6). Others consider the appellation mn" nay as a collective 
 designation of the pious, and find in this section the idea of a 
 kind of vicarious satisfaction made by them for the ungodly. 
 Those interpreters come nearer the true explanation, in so far 
 as they do not, like those of the preceding class, set aside the 
 doctrine of vicarious satisfaction, either by a figurative expla- 
 nation, or, like Kimchi, by the absurd remark, that this doc- 
 trine is an error put into the mouth of the Gentiles. On the 
 other hand, they depart from the true explanation, in so far 
 that they generalize that which belongs to a definite subject, 
 and that, flattering the pride of the natural man, they ascribe to 
 mere man what belongs only to the God-man. Most distinctly was 
 this view expressed by the Commentator on the book apy py or 
 bir\^'' ]"]}, which has been very frequentl}' printed, and which 
 contains all sorts of tales from the Talmud. He says : " It is 
 rio-ht to suppose that the whole section contains a prophecy 
 rejT-arding the righteous ones who are visited by sufferings." 
 He then makes two classes of righteous men : — those who in 
 general must endure many suffarings and much misery : and 
 those who are publicly executed, as Rabbi Alc'iba and others. 
 He supposes that the Prophet shows the dignity of both of these 
 chusses of righteous men, to both of which the name of a Ser- 
 vant of God is justly due. A similar opinion is held by Rabbi 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 3 ] 9 
 
 Alshecli. As we have already seen, he refers only chap. Hi. 
 13-15 to the Messiah, and to His great glory acquired by His 
 great sufferings. Then the Prophet speaks, as he supposes, in 
 the name of all Israel, approves of what God had said, and 
 confesses that, by this declaration of God regarding the suffer- 
 ings of the Messiah, they have received light regarding the 
 sufferings of the godly in general. They perceive it to be 
 erroneous and rash to infer guilt from suffering ; and, hence- 
 forth, when they see a righteous man suffering, they will 
 think of no other reason, than that he bears their diseases, 
 and that his chastisements are for their salvation. The Ser- 
 vant of God is thus supposed to be as it were, a personification 
 of the righteous ones. — A similar view probably lies at the 
 foundation of those passages of the Talmud, where some por- 
 tions of the prophecy under consideration are referred to Mosesy 
 and others to Rabbi Alciba, who is revered as a martyr by the 
 Jews. It does not appear that the prophecy was coniSned to 
 Moses or Akiba ; but it was referred to them, only in so far 
 as they belonged to the collective body which is supposed to 
 be the subject of it. 
 
 2. That view which makes a single individual other than 
 the Messiah the subject of the prophecy, has found, with the 
 Jews, comparatively the fewest defenders. We have already 
 seen, that, besides the explanation which makes the Jewish 
 people the subject, Abarbanel advances still another, which 
 refers it to king Josiah. Rabbi Saadias Haggaon explained 
 the whole section of Jeremiah, 
 
 Notwithstanding all these efforts, however, the Rabbins have 
 not succeeded in entirely supplanting the right explanation, 
 and in thus divesting the passage of all that is dangerous to 
 their system. Among the Cabbalistical Jews, it is even still 
 the prevailing one. In numerous cases, it was just this chap- 
 ter which formed, to proselytes from Judaism, the first founda- 
 tion of their conviction of the truth of Christianity. 
 
 B. HISTORY OF THE INTERPRETATION WITH THE CHRISTIANS, 
 
 Among Christians, the interpretation has taken nearly the 
 same course as among the Jews. Similar causes have pro- 
 
S20 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 duced similar effects in both csises. By both, the true ex})]ana^ 
 tiori was relinquished, when the prevailing tendencies had 
 become opposed to its results. And if we descend to particu- 
 lars, we shall find a grreat resemblance even between the modes 
 of interpretation proposed by both. 
 
 1 . Even, a priori, we could not but suppose otherwise than 
 that the Christian Church, as long as she possessed Christ, 
 found Him here also, where He is so clearly and distinctly set 
 before our eyes, — that as long as she in general still acknow- 
 ledged the authority of Christ, and of the Apostles, she could not 
 but, here too, follow their distinct, often-repeated testimony. And 
 so, indeed, do we find it to be. With the exception of a certain 
 Silesian, called Scidel — who, given up to total unbelief, asserted 
 that the Messiah had never yet come, nor would ever come, 
 (comp. Jiic. Martini I. 3, de trihus Elohim, p. 592) — and of 
 Grotius, both of whom supposed Jei'emiah to be the subject, 
 no one in the Christian Church has, for seventeen centuries, 
 ventured to call in question the Messianic interpretation. On 
 the contraiy, this passage was always considered to be the 
 most distinct and glorious of all the Messianic prophecies. Out 
 of the great mass of testimonies, we shall quote a fe^v. Aiju- 
 gvistine, De Civltate Dei, i. 18, c. 29, says: "Isaiah has not 
 only reproved the people for their iniquity, and instructed 
 them in righteousness, and foretold to the people calamities 
 impending over them in the Future ; but he has also a greater 
 number of predictions, than the other prophets, concerning 
 Christ and the Church, i.e., concerning the King, and the 
 Kingdom established by Him ; so that some interpreters would 
 rather call him an Ev^angelist than a Prophet." In proof of 
 this assertion, he then quotes the passage under consideration, 
 and closes with the words : " Surely that may sufiice ! There 
 are in those words some things too which require explanation; 
 but I think that things which are so clear should compel even 
 enemies, against their will, to understand them." In a similar 
 manner he expresses himself in : De consensu Evancjelistarwm 
 1. i. c. 31. Tkeodoret remarks on this passage {opp. ed. Hal. 
 t. ii. p. 358) : "The Prophet represents to us, in this passage, 
 the whole course of His (Christ's) humiliation unto death. 
 Most wonderful is the power of the Holy Spirit. For that 
 which was to take place after many generations. He showed 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIU. 321 
 
 to the boly prophets in such a manner that they did not merely 
 hear Him declare these things, but saw them." In a similar 
 manner, Justin, Irenaeus, Cyril of Alexandria, and Jerome, 
 express themselves. From the Churches of the Reformation, 
 we shall here quote the testimonies of two of their founders 
 only. Ziuingle, in Annot. ad h. I. (opp. t. iii. Tur. 15 4? 4, fol. 
 292) says : " That which now follows is so clear a testimon}- 
 of Christ, that I do not know whether, anywhere in Scripture, 
 there could be found anything more consistent, or that any- 
 thing could be more distinctly said. For it is quite in vain 
 that the obstinacy and perversity of the Jews have tried it 
 from all sides." Luther remarks on the passage : " And, no 
 doubt, there is not, in all the Old Testament Scriptures, a 
 clearer text or prophecy, both of the suffering and the resur- 
 rection of Christ, thaa in this chapter. Wherefore it is but 
 right that it should be well known to all Christians, yea should 
 be committed to memory, that thereby we may strengthen our 
 taith, and defend it, chiefly against the stiflT-necked Jews who 
 deny their only promised Christ, solely on account of the 
 offence of His cross." 
 
 It was reserved to the last quarter of the last century to be 
 the first to reject the Messianic interpretation. At a time when 
 Naturalis'ni exercised its sway, it could no longer he retained} 
 For, if this passage contains a Messianic prophecy at all, its 
 contents offer so striking an agreement with the history of 
 Christ, that its origin cannot at all be accounted for in the 
 natural way. Expedients were, therefore, sought for; and 
 these were so much the more easily found, that the Jews had, 
 in this matter, already opened up the way. AJl that was 
 necessary, was only to appropriate their arguments and counter- 
 arguments, and to invest them with the semblance of solidity 
 by means of a learned apparatus. 
 
 The non-Messianic interpretation among Christians, like 
 those among the Jews, may be divided into two main classes : 
 1. Those which are founded upon the supposition that a col- 
 
 ' The author of the article: Ueher die Hhss. Zeiten in Eichlwrn'x Biblio- 
 thek d. hibl. Literatur^ Bd. 6, p. 655, confesses quite candidly, that the Mes- 
 sianic interpretation would soon find general approbation among Bible 
 expositors, had they not, in recent times, obtained the conviction, " that the 
 prophets do not foretel any thing of future things, except what they know 
 and anticipate without special divine inspiration." 
 
 VOL. IL X 
 
322 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 lective body is the subject of the prophecy; and 2, those 
 which, by the Servant of God, understand any other single 
 individual except the Messiah. The first class, again, falls 
 into several sub-divisions: (a.), those interpretations which 
 refer the prophecy to the whole Jewish people; (6.), those 
 which refer it to the Jewish people in the abstract; (c), those 
 which refer it to the pious portion of the Jewish people; (d), 
 those which refer it to the order of the priests; {e.), those 
 which refer it to the order of the prophets. 
 
 1. (a.) Comparatively the gi-eatest number of non-Messianic 
 interpreters make the whole Jewish people the subject of the 
 prophecy. This hypothesis is adopted, among others, by 
 Doederhin, (in the preface and annotations, in the third 
 edition of Isaiah, but in such a manner that he still wavers 
 betwixt this and the Messianic interpretation, which formerly 
 he had defended with great zeal); by Schuster (in a special 
 treatise, Gottingen 1794); by Stephani (Gedanken uher die 
 JEntstehung u. Ausbildung der Idee von inem Messms, Kilrn- 
 berg 1787); by the author of the letters on Isaiah liii., in the 
 6th vol. of Eichhorn's Bihliothek; by Eichhorn (in his ex- 
 position of the Prophets); by Rosenmuller (in the second 
 edition of his Commentary, learning to others the interpreta- 
 tion which refeiTed the prophecy to the prophetic order, 
 although he himself had first recommended it), and many 
 others. The last who defend it are Hitzig, Hendewerk, and 
 Koster (de Sew. Jeh. Kiel, 38). Substantially, it has remained 
 the same as we have seen it among the Jews. The only dif- 
 ference is, that these expositors understand, by the sufferings 
 of the Servant of God, the sufferings of the Jewish people in 
 the Babylonish captivity; while the Jewish interpreters un- 
 derstand thereby the sufferings of the Jewish people in their 
 present exile. They, too, suppose that, from vers. 1 to 10, 
 the Gentile nations are introduced as speaking, and make the 
 penitent confession that they have formed an erroneous opinion 
 of Israel, and now see that its suffering's are not the punish- 
 ment of its own sins, but that it had suffered as a substitute 
 for their sins. 
 
 (b.) The hypothesis which makes the Jewish people in the 
 abstract — in antithesis to its single members — the subject of 
 tdls prophecy, was discovered by Eckermann, theol. Beitrdge, 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 323 
 
 Bd. i. H. i. S. 192 ff According to Eivald, the prophecy 
 refers to " Israel according to its true idea." According to 
 Bleek, the Servant of God is a "designation of the whole 
 people, but not of the people in its actual reality, but as it 
 existed in the imagination of the author, — the ideal of the 
 people." 
 
 (c.) The hypothesis, that the pious portion of the Jewish 
 people — in contrast to the ungodly — are the subject, has been 
 defended especially by Paulus {Memorabilien, Bd. 3, S. 
 175-192, and Clavis on Isaiah). His view was adopted by 
 AniTnon {Christologie, S. 108 ff). The principal features of 
 this view are the following: — It was not on account of their 
 own sins that the godly portion of the nation were punished 
 and carried into captivity along with the ungodly, but on 
 account of the ungodly who, however, by apostatising from 
 the religion of Jehovah, knew how to obtain a better fate. 
 The ungodly drew from it the inference that the hope of the 
 godly, that Jehovah would come to their help, had been in 
 vain. But when the captivity came to an end, and the godly 
 returned, they saw that they had been mistaken, and that 
 the hope of the godly was well founded. They, therefore, 
 full of repentance, deeply lament that they had not long ago 
 repented of their sins. This view is adopted also by Von 
 Colin in his BihUsche Theologie; by Thenius in Wieners 
 Zeitschrift, ii. 1 ; by Maurer and Knohel. The latter says : 
 " Those who were zealous adherents of the Theocracy had a 
 difficult position among their own people, and had to suffer 
 most from foreign tyrants." The true worshippers of Jehovah 
 were given up to mockery and scorn, to persecution and the 
 grossest abuse, and were in a miserable and horrible condition, 
 unworthy of men and almost inhuman. The punishments 
 for sin had to be endured chiefly by those who did not deserve 
 them. Thus the view easily arose that the godly suffered in 
 substitution for the whole people. 
 
 {d.) The hypothesis which makes the priestly order the 
 subject, has been defended by the author of: Ausfilhrliche 
 Erkldriing der sdmmtUchen Weissagungen des A. T. 1801. 
 
 {e.) The hypothesis which makes the collective body of the 
 prophets the subject, was jSrst advanced by Rosenmilller in 
 the treatise : Leiden und Hoffnivngen der Propheten Jehovas, 
 
324 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 in Gahlers Neuestes iheol. Journal, vol. ii. S. 4, p. 333 ff From 
 him it came as a legacy to De Wette {de morte Jes. Chr. ex- 
 piatoria, p. 28 sqq), and to Gesenius. According to ScJienkel 
 {Studien und Krit'iken 30) "the prophetic order was the 
 ([uiet, hidden blossom, which early storms broke." According 
 to Umhreit the Servant of God is the collective body of the 
 prophets, or the prophetic order, which is here plainly repre- 
 sented as the sacrificial beast (!) taking upon itself the sins 
 of the people. He finds it " rather strange that the Prophet 
 who, in chap. Ixvi. 3 (of course according to a false interpre- 
 tation), plainly rejects sacrifice altogether, should speak of the 
 shedding of the blood of a man, and, moreover, of a pure, 
 sinless man, in the room of the guilty." The manner in which 
 Utiibreit seeks to gain a transition to the Messianic interpreta- 
 tion, although not in the sense held by the Christian Church, 
 has been pointed out by us on a former occasion, in the re- 
 marks on chap. xlii. Hofmann (Schriftheiueis, ii. 1 S. 89 ff!) 
 has got up a mixture composed of these explanations which 
 refer the prophecy to the people, to the godly, to the prophetic 
 order, and, if one will, of that also which refers it to the 
 Messiah. He says : " The people as a people are called to be 
 the servant of God; but they do not fulfil their vocation as a 
 contjrerjation of the faithful; and it is, therefore, the work of 
 the prophets to restore that congTegation, and hence also the 
 fulfilment of its vocation. — Prophetism itself is represented 
 not in its present condition only, when it exists in a number 
 of messengers and witnesses of Jehovah, in the first instance in 
 Isaiah himself, but also in the final result, into which the ful- 
 filment of its vocation will lead, when the Servant of Jehovali 
 unites in His person the offices of a proclaimer of the im- 
 pending work of salvation, and of its Mediator, and, from the 
 shame and suffering attached to His vocation as a witness, 
 ])asses over into the glory of the salvation realised in Him." 
 In order to render such a mixture possible, everything is tried 
 in order to remove the vicarious character of the sufferings of 
 the Servant of God, since that character is peculiar to Christ, 
 and excludes every comparison. " Of a priestly self-sacrifice 
 of the Servant of God" — says Hofmann, S. 101, 2 — " I can- 
 not find anything. The assertion that the words u>)i ntV 
 denote a priestly work, no longer requires a refutation. His 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 325 
 
 vocation is to be the mediator of a revelation of God in words ; 
 and although the fulfilment of this vocation brings death upon 
 Him, without His endeavouring to escape, this is not a proof 
 nor a part of His priestly vocation. In just the same case is 
 the assertion that the Messiah appears* here as a King also." 
 As long as we proceed from the supposition that the Prophet 
 predicts truth, we are, by that very supposition, forbidden to 
 distribute the property of the one among the many; but that 
 is thus violently set aside. The Rationalistic interpreters 
 have in this respect an easier task. They allow the substitu- 
 tion to stand; but they consider it as a vain fancy. The 
 fact that Hofmann does not recoil from even the most violent 
 interpretations, in order to remove the exclusive reference to 
 Christ, appears, e.g., from his remark, S. 132, that "the chas- 
 tisement of our peace" designates an actual chastisement, 
 which convinces them of their sin, and of the earnestness of 
 divine holiness, and thus serves for their salvation. Surely 
 Gesenius and Hitzig's explanations are far more unbiassed. 
 
 2. Among the interpretations which refer the prophecy to 
 a single individual other than the Messiah, scarcely any one 
 has found another defender than its own author. They are 
 of importance only in so far, as they show that most decidedly 
 does the prophecy make the impression, that its subject is a 
 real person, not a personification ; and, farther, that it could 
 not by any means be an exegetical interest which induced 
 rationalism to reject the interpretation which referred it to 
 Christ. The persons that have been guessed at are the fol- 
 lowing: King Uzziah, {Augusti), King Hezekiab, {Konynen- 
 burg and Bahrdt), the Prophet Isaiah himself, (Sfdudlin), an 
 unknown prophet supposed to have been killed by the Jews 
 in the captivity (an anonymous author in Henkes llagazin, 
 Bd. i. H. 2), the royal house of David, which suffered inno- 
 cently when the children of the unhappy king Zodekiah were 
 killed at the command of Nebuchadnezzar (Bolten on Acts 
 viii. 33), the Maccabees (an anonymous writer in the Theolo- 
 gische Nachrickten, 1821, S. 79 fF.) Even at this present 
 time, this kind of explanation is not altogether obsolete. 
 Schenkel thinks that " the chapter under consideration may, 
 perhaps, belong to the period of the real Isaiah, whose language 
 equals that of the description of the Servant of God now 
 
326 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 under consideration, in conciseness and harshness, and may 
 have been originally a Psahn of consolation in sufferings, 
 which was composed with a view to the hopeful progeny of 
 some pious man or prophet innocently killed, and which was 
 rewritten and inteiiireted by the author of the book, and 
 embodied in it." Eivald (Pi'oph. ii. S. 407) says: "Farther, 
 the description of the Servant of God is here altogether very 
 strange, especially v. 8 f , inasmuch as, notwithstanding all 
 the liveliness with which the author of the book conceives of 
 Him, He is nowhere else so much and so obviously viewed as 
 an historical person, as a single individual of the Past. How 
 little soever the author may have intended it, it was very ob- 
 vious that the later generations imagined that they would 
 here find the historical Messiah. We are therefore of opinion, 
 that the author here inserted a passage, which appeared to 
 him to be suitable, from an older book where really a single 
 martjT was spoken of — It is not likely that the modern con- 
 troversy on chap. liii. will ever cease as long as this truth is 
 not acknowledged ; — a truth which quite spontaneously sug- 
 gested itself, and impressed itself more and more strongly 
 upon my mind." These are, no doubt, assertions which can- 
 not be maintained, and are yet of interest, in so far as they 
 show, how much even those who refuse to acknowledge it are 
 annoyed by a two-fold truth, viz., that Isaiah is the author of 
 the prophecy, and that it refers to a personal Messiah. 
 
 At all times, however, that explanation which refers the 
 prophecy to Christ has found able defenders ; and at no period 
 has the anti-Messianic explanation obtained absolute sway. 
 Among the authors of complete Commentaries on Isaiah, the 
 Messianic explanation was defended by Bathe, Doederlein 
 (who, however, wavers in the last edition of his translation), 
 Hensler, Louih, Koclier, Koppe., J. D. Michaelis, v. d. Pal'ni, 
 Schmieder. In addition to these we may mention : Storr, 
 dissertatio qua Jes. liii. illuatndur, Tiibingen, 1790 ; Hansi 
 Go7)i7nent. in Jes. liii., Rostock 1791 (this work has consider- 
 ably promoted the interpretation, although its author often 
 sh'ows himself to be biassed by the views of the time, and 
 especially, in the interest of Neology, seeks to do away with 
 the doctrine of satisfaction) ; Kriir/er, Comment, de Jes. liii., 
 interpret ; Jahn, Append, ad Hermen. fasc ii. ; Steudel, 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 327 
 
 Observ. ad Jes. liii., Tilbigen 1825, 26 ; Sack, in the Apolo- 
 getik ; Reinke, exegesis in Jes. liii., Mlinster 1836 ; Tholuck, 
 in his work : Das A. T. irn N. T.; Hdvernick, in the lectures 
 on the Theology of the Old Testament ; Stier, in the Com- 
 ment, on the second part of Isaiah. 
 
 II. THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE MESSIANIC 
 INTEEPEETATION, 
 
 The arguments against the Messianic interpretation cannot 
 be designated in any other way than as insignijicant. There 
 is not one among them which could be of any weight to him 
 who is able to judge. It is asserted that the Messiah is 
 nowhere else designated as the Servant of God. Even if this 
 were the fact, it would not prove anything. But this name 
 is assigned to the Messiah in Zech. iii. 8 — a passage which 
 interpreters are unanimous in i-eferring to the Messiah — where 
 the Lord calls the Messiah His Servant Zeinach, and which 
 the Chaldee Paraphrast explains by '•^JIT'I NIT'syo " Messiam et 
 revelabitur ; " farther, in Ezek. xxxiv. 23, 24, not to mention 
 Is. xlii. 1 , xlix. 3, 6, 1. 1 0. — It is farther asserted that in the 
 Messianic interpretation everything is viewed as future ; but 
 that this is inadmissible for grammatical and philological rea- 
 sons. The suffering, contempt, and death of the Servant of 
 God are here, throughout, represented as past, since in cha]). 
 liii. 1-10, all the verbs are in the Preterite. It is the glorifi- 
 cation only which appears as future, and is expressed in the 
 Future tense. The writer, therefore, occupies a position be- 
 tween the sufferings and the glorification, and the latter is 
 still impending. But the stand-point of the Prophet is not 
 an actual, but a supposed one, — not a real, but an ideal one. 
 In order to distinguish between condition and consequence, — 
 in order to put sufferings and glorification in the proper rela- 
 tion, he takes his stand between the sufferings and the glori- 
 fication of the Servant of God, and from that position, that 
 appears to him as being already past which, in reality, was 
 
:V2S MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 still future. It is only an interpreter so thoroughly prosaic 
 as Knohel who can advance the assertion : " No prophet oc- 
 cupies, in prophecy, another stand-point than tliat which in 
 7-eality he occupies." In this, e.g., H'dzirj does not by any 
 means assent to him ; for he {HUzi(j) remarks on chap. lii. 7 : 
 " Proceeding from the certainty of tlie salvation, the Prophet 
 sees, in the Spirit, that already coming to pass which, in chap, 
 xl. 9, he called upon them to do." And the same expositor 
 farther remarks on Jer. vi. 24-2G : "This is a statement of 
 how people would then speak, and, thereby, a description of 
 the circumstances of that time." But in our remarks on chap. 
 xi. and in the introdviction to the second part, we have already 
 proved that the prophets very frequently occupy an ideal 
 stand-point, and that such is the case here, the Prophet has 
 himself expressly intimated. In some places, he has passed 
 from the prophetical stand-point to the historical, and uses 
 the Future even when he speaks of the sufferings, — a thing 
 which appears to have been done involuntarily, but which, 
 in reality, is done intentionally. Thus there occurs nna"" in 
 ver. 7, D'^irn in ver. 1 0, and, according to the explanations of 
 Gesenius and others, also yjs'' in ver. 1 2 while, on the other 
 hand, he sometimes speaks of the glorification in the Preterite.^ 
 Compare npb in ver. 8, n::'3 in ver. 12. This affords a sure 
 proof that we are here altogether on an ideal territoiy. The 
 ancient translators too have not understood the Preterites as 
 a designation of the real Past, and frequently render them by 
 Futures. Thus the LXX. ver. 14 : ixorriaovrai — a.do^r,a£i ; Aqui 
 and Theod., ver. 2, dmlSriasrai. — It is farther asserted, that the 
 idea of a suffering and expiating Messiah is foreign to the 
 Old Testament, and stands in contradiction even to its pre- 
 vailing views of the Messiah. But this objection cannot be 
 of any weight ; nor can it prove anything, as long as, in the 
 Church of Christ, the authority of Christ is still acknowledged, 
 wlio Himself declares that His whole suffering had been fore- 
 told in the books of the Old Testament, and explained to His 
 ilisciples the prophecies concerning it. Even the fact, that at 
 
 ' Tlie same thing occurs also in tJie parallel passages, chap. xlix. 9, on 
 which (rcsi'iihts wa.s constraine<l to remark: ''As the deliverance was still 
 inipentling, the Preterites cannot well be undci-stooil in any othei" way tluui 
 as Futures.'" 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 829 
 
 the time when Christ appeared the knowledge of a suffering 
 Messiah was undeniably possessed by the more enlightened, 
 proves that the matter stands differently. This knowledge is 
 shown not only by the Baptist, but also by Simeon, Luke ii. 
 34, 35. An assertion to the contrary can proceed only from 
 the erroneous opinion, that every single Messianic prophecy 
 exhibits the whole view of the Messiah, whereas, indeed, the 
 Messianic announcements bear throughout a fragmentary, in- 
 cidental character, — a mode of representation which is gene- 
 rally prevalent in Scripture, and by which Scripture is distin- 
 guished from a system of doctrines. But even if there had 
 existed an appearance of such a contradiction, it would long 
 ago have been removed by the fulfilment. But even the 
 appearance of a contradiction is here inadmissible, inasmuch 
 as the Servant of God is here not only represented as suf- 
 fering and expiating, but, at the same time, as an ob- 
 ject of reverence to the whole Gentile world ; and the 
 ground of this reA^'erence is His suffering and expiation. As 
 regards the other passages of the Old Testament where a 
 suffering Messiah is mentioned, we must distinguish between 
 the Messiah simply suffering, and the Messiah suffering as 
 a substitute. The latter, indeed, we meet with in this passage 
 only. But to make up for this isolated mention, the represen- 
 tation here is so full and exhaustive, so entirely excludes all 
 misunderstanding, except that which is bent upon misunder- 
 standing, or which is the result of evil disposition, is so affect- 
 ing and so indelibly impressive, is indeed so exactly in the 
 tone of doctrinal theology, and therefore different from the 
 ordinary treatment, which is always incidental, and requires 
 to be supplemented from other passages, that this single iso- 
 lated representation, which sounds through the whole of the 
 New Testament, is quite sufficient for the Church. The suffer- 
 ing and dying Messiah, on the other hand, we meet with fre- 
 quently in other passages of the Old Testament also, although, 
 indeed, not so frequently as the Messiah in glory. In this 
 light He is brought before us, e.g., in chap. xlix. 50 ; in Dan. 
 ix. ; in Zech. ix. 9, 10, xi. 12, 13. The fact that the humi- 
 liation of Christ would precede His exaltation is distinctly 
 pointed out in the first part of Isaiah also, in chap. xi. 1, — a 
 passage which contains, in a germ, all that, in the second part, 
 
330 MESSTANTC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 is more fully stated regarding the suffering Messiah, and which 
 has many striking points of contact specially with chap. liii. 
 And just so it is with Isaiah's contemporary, Micah, who, in 
 chap. V. 1 (2), makes the Messiah proceed, not from Jerusalem, 
 tlie seat of the Davidic family after it was raised to the royal 
 dignity, but from Bethlehem, where Jesse, the ancestor, lived 
 as a peasant, — as a proof that the Messiah would proceed from 
 the family of David sank back into the obscurity of private 
 life. This knowledge, that the Messiah should proceed from 
 the altogether abased house of David, — a knowledge which 
 appeai-s as early as in Amos, and which pervades the whole of 
 prophecy — touches very closely upon the knowledge of His 
 sufferings. Lowliness of origin, and exaltation of destination, 
 can hardly be reconciled without severe conflicts. But it is 
 a priori impossible, that the idea of the suffering Messiah 
 should be wanting in the Old Testament. Since, in the Old 
 Testament, throughout, righteousness and suffering in this 
 world of sin are represented as being indissolubly connected, 
 the Messiah, being xar' ll^oxh^ the Righteous One, must necessarily 
 appear also as He who suffers in the highest degree. If that 
 were not the case, the Messiah would be totally disconnected 
 from aU His types, especially from David, who, thi'ough the 
 severest sufferings, attained to glory, and who in his Psalms, 
 everywhere considers this course as the normal one, both in 
 the Psalms which refer to the suffering righteous in general, 
 and in those which especially refer to his family reaching their 
 highest elevation in the Messiah ; compare my Commentary 
 on the Psalms, Vol iv., p. Ixxx. ff. 
 
 III. THE ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF THE MESSIANIC 
 INTERPRETATION. 
 
 Even the ffict that this is among the Jews the original in- 
 terpretation, which was given up from their evil disposition 
 only, makes us favourably inclined towards it. The authority 
 of traxlition is here of so much the greater consequence, the 
 more that the Messianic interpretation was opposed to the dis- 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 331 
 
 position of the people. How deeply rooted was this interpre- 
 tation, appears even from the declaration of John the Baptist, 
 John i. 29 : /'5s 6 a/a.foj rov Qiou 6 a'/puv rrjv a/jjuprlav rou xoff/xou. 
 There cannot be any doubt that, in this declaration, he points 
 to the prophecy under consideration, inasmuch as this passage 
 is the first in Holy Scripture in which the sin-bearing lamb is 
 spoken of in a spiritual sense. Bengel, following the example 
 of Erasmus, remarks, in reference to the article before a/i^o's : 
 " The article looks back to the prophecy which was given 
 concerning Him under this figure, in Is. liii. 7. As regards 
 0soD, compare ver. 10: "It pleased the Lord painfully to crush 
 Him," and ver. 2 : " Before Him ;" as regards o a'lpm, &c. comp. 
 ver. 4, rendered by the LXX. : olrog rag aiMapriag tj/muv ppil; 
 comp. ver. 1 1 . 
 
 An external argument of still greater weight is the testimony 
 of the New Testament. Above all, it is the declarations of 
 our Lord himself which here come into consideration. In 
 Luke xxii. 37, He says that the prophecies concerning Him 
 were drawing near their perfect fulfilment (ra mpl ifiou riXog 
 ijC^i), comp. Matt. xxvi. 51, and that therefore the declaration : 
 " And He was reckoned among the transgressors" must be 
 fulfilled in Him. In Mark ix. 1 2, the Lord asks : -rojg ysypaTrrai 
 sTi rhii v'ldv rov didpuTov, ha ToXXd Tocdr] -/.al s^oudsvudfj, with a refer- 
 ence to " from man," and " from the sons of man" in lii. 1 4, — 
 to " He had no form nor comeliness" in ver. 2, — to " despised," 
 nraj, which, by S ymmachv. s Sbnd Theodotian is rendered by Ifou- 
 divu/j,ivog, in ver. 3. In the Gospel of John, the Lord empha- 
 tically and repeatedly points out, that the words : " When His 
 soul hath given restitution," are written concerning Him ; 
 compare remarks on ver. 10. After these distinct quotations 
 and references, we shall be obliged to think chiefly of our 
 passage, in Luke xxiv. 25-27, 44-46 also. The opponents 
 themselves grant that, if in any passage of the Old Testament 
 the doctrine of a suft'ering and atoning Messiah is contained, 
 it is in the passage under review. The circumstance also, that 
 the disciples of the Lord refer, on every occasion, and with 
 such confidence, the passage to the Lord, likewise proves that 
 Christ especially interpreted it of His sufferings and exalta- 
 tion. Of Matt. viii. 17, and Mark 'xv. 28, we have already 
 spoken. John, in chap. xii. 37, 38, and Paul in Rom. x. 10, 
 
332 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 find a fulfilment of chap. liii. I in the unbelief of the Jews. 
 In Acts viii. 28-35, Philip, on the question of the eunuch from 
 Ethiopia, as to whom the prophecy referred, explained it of 
 Christ. After the example of De Wette, Gesenius lays special 
 stress on the circumstance, that the passage was never quoted 
 in reference to the atoning death of Christ. But Peter, 
 when speaking of the vicarious satisfiiction of Christ, makes 
 a literal use of the principal passages of the prophecy under 
 consideration, 1 Pet. ii. 21-25 ; and it is, in general, quite the 
 usual way of the New Testament to support its statements by 
 our passage, whensoever the discourse falls upon this subject ; 
 comp. e.g., besides the texts quoted at ver. 1 0, Mark ix. 12; 
 Hom. iv. 25 ; J Cor. xv. 3 ; 2 Cor. v. 21 ; 1 Jolm iii. 5 ; 
 Pet. i. 19 ; Rev. v, 6, xiii. 8. Even Gesenius himself acknow- 
 ledsres elsewhere, that we have here the text for the w^hole 
 Apostolic preaching on the atoning death of Jesus. " Most 
 Hebrew readers" — so he says, Th. iii. S. 191 — "who were so 
 familiar with the ideas of sacrifice and substitution, could not 
 by any means understand the passage in any other way ; and 
 there is no doubt that the whole a})03tolic notion of the aton- 
 ing death of Christ is chiefly based upon this passage." The 
 circumstance, that the reference to this passage appears com- 
 monly only in the form of an allusion, and not of express 
 (juotation, ])rovesonly so much the more clearly, that its refer- 
 ence to the atoning death of Christ was a point absolutely 
 settled in the ancient Church. 
 
 In favour of the Messianic interpretation are not only the 
 passages from the second part, chap, xlii., kc, but also, from 
 the first part, the passage chap. xi. 1, which so remarkably 
 agrees with chap. liii. 2, that both must be referred to the 
 same subject. 
 
 To these external reasons, the internal must be added. Tlie 
 Christian Church — the best judge — has at all times recognised 
 in this prophecy the faithful and wonderfully accurate image 
 of her Lord and Saviour in His atoning sufferings and the 
 glory following upon them, in His innocence and nghteous- 
 ness, in His meekness and silent patience (the New Testament, 
 in speaking of them, frequently points back to our passage), 
 and in the burial with a rich man, ver. 9. The most charac- 
 teristic feature is the atoning character of the suffering of the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIU. SS3 
 
 Servant of God, and of the shedding of His blood. Several 
 interpreters have endeavoured to explain away this feature 
 which they dislike. Kirnchi says : " One must not imagine 
 that the case really stands thus, that in Israel the captivity 
 actually bears the sins and diseases of the heathens (for that 
 would be opposed to the justice of God), but that the Gentiles at 
 that time, when seeing the glorious deliverance of Israel, would 
 thus judge concerning it." A futile evasion ! It is not the 
 Gentiles who speak in chap. liii. 1-10, but the believing Church. 
 Every sincere reader will at once feel, that it is not the foolish 
 fancies of others which the Prophet communicates in these 
 verses, but the divine truth made known to him. The doctrine 
 of the substitution, the Prophet, moreover, states in his own 
 name, by saying, " He shall sprinkle many nations ;" and so 
 likewise in the name of God, in chap. liii. 11, 12. Accord- 
 ing to Marlini, De Wette, and others, the expressions are to be 
 understood figuiutively, and the contents and substance to be 
 this only, that those severe calamities which that divine minis- 
 ter would have to sustain would be useful and salutary to 
 His compatriots. But the fact that the .same doctrine con- 
 stantly returns under the most varied expressions, is decidedly 
 in favour of the literal interpretation. Thus, it is said in chap, 
 lii. 1 5, that the Servant of God should sprinkle many nations ; 
 in liii. 4, that He bore our diseases and took upon Him our 
 pains ; in ver. 5, that He was pierced for our transgi-essions ; 
 in ver. 8, that He bore the jjunishment which the people 
 ought to have borne ; in ver. 1 0, that He offered his soul as 
 a sin-offering ; in ver. 1 1 , that by His righteousness many 
 should be justified ; in ver. ] 2, that He bore the sins of many, 
 and poured out His soul unto death, and that He could make 
 intercession for transgressors, because He was numbered with 
 them. To this it may still be added that in chap. lii. 1 5 {r\V), 
 liii. 1 (DCX), and ver. 12: "He bears the sins of many," 
 (compare Levit. xvi. 21, 22 ; Michaelis : " Ut typice liircus 
 2)vo Israelitis") the Servant of God appears as the antitype of 
 the Old Testament sin-offerings in which, as has been proved 
 (compare my pamphlet : Die Opfer der heil. Schrift, S. 12 ff), 
 the idea of substitution in the doctrine of the Old Testament 
 finds its foundation. There cannot be the least doubt, that 
 the Prophet could not express himself more clearly, strongly, 
 
334 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS 
 
 and distinctly, if his intention was to state the doctrine of sub- 
 stitution ; and those who undertake to explain it away, would 
 not, by so doing, leave any thing firm and certain in Scripture. 
 Rosenmuller {Gahh'rs Journal, ii. S. 3G5), Genenius, Hitzig 
 have indeed candidly confessed that the passage contained the 
 doctrine of vicarious satisfaction, after Ahlcech had, among the 
 Jews, given the honour to truth. 
 
 IV. EXAMIXATION OF THE NON-MESSIANIC 
 INTERPEETATIONS. 
 
 Passing over mere whims, three explanations present them- 
 selves which require a closer examination, viz. — (1), that which 
 makes the whole Jewish people the subject ; (2), that which 
 refers it to the godly portion of the Jewish people ; and (3), 
 that which refers it to the collective body of the Prophets. 
 The following reasons militate against all the three interpre- 
 tations simultaneously. 
 
 1. According to them, the contents of the section in ques- 
 tion present themselves as a mere fancy ; and its principal 
 thought, the vicarious suffering of the Servant of God is an 
 absurdity. According to them, the prophets can no longer be 
 considered as godly inen who spake as they were moved by 
 the Holy Spirit ; and their name s'sj, by which they claimed 
 divine inspiration, is a mere pretence. And this reflection is, 
 at the same time, cast upon the Lord, who, throughout, treats 
 these visionaries as organs of immediate divine communications. 
 
 2. According to all the three explanations, the subject is 
 not a real person, but an ideal one, a personified collective. 
 But not one sure analogous instance can be quoted in favour 
 of a personification carried on through a whole section, with- 
 out the slicditest intimation, that it is not a single individual 
 who is spoken of In vcr. 3, the subject is called C'N ; in 
 vers. ] and 12a soul is ascribed to Him ; grave and death 
 are used so as to imply a subject in the Singular. Scripture 
 never leaves any thing to be guessed. If we had an allegory 
 before us, distinct hints as to the interpretation would certainly 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 835 
 
 noc be wanting. It is, e.g., quite different in those passages 
 where the Prophet designates Israel by the name of the Ser- 
 vant of the Lord. In them, all uncertainty is prevented by 
 the addition of the names of Jacob and Israel, xli. 8, 9 ; xliv. 
 1, 2, 21 ; xlv. 4; xlviii. 20; and in them, moreover, the 
 Prophet uses the Plural by the side of the Singular, to inti- 
 mate that the Servant of the Lord is an ideal peison, a collec- 
 tive, e.g., xlii. 24, 25 ; xlviii. 20, 2] ; xliii. 10-14. 
 
 3. The first condition of the vicarious satisfaction which, 
 according to our prophecy, is to be performed by the Servant of 
 God, is, according to ver. 9 (" Because He had done no violence, 
 neither was any deceit in His mouth"), but more especially 
 still, according to ver. 1 1 (" He, the righteous one, my Ser- 
 vant, shall justify the many") the absolute righteousness of 
 the suffering subject. He who is himself sinful cannot undergo 
 punishment for the sins of others. He is, on the contrary, 
 visited for his own sins, both as a righteous retribution, and 
 for sanctification. Of such an one that would indeed be true 
 which, according to the second clause of ver. 4, was only 
 erroneously supposed in reference to the Servant of God. All 
 the three interpretations, however, are unable to prove that 
 this condition existed. All the three interpretations move on 
 the purely human territory ; but on that, absolute righteous- 
 ness is not to be found. At the very threshold of Holy Writ, 
 in Gen. ii. and 3, compare v. 3, the doctrine of the universal sin- 
 fulness of mankind meets us ; and how deep a knowledge of 
 sin pervades the Old Testament, is proved by passages such as 
 Gen. vi. 5, viii. 21 ; Job xiv. 4, xv. 14-16; Ps. xiv., li. 7; 
 Prov. XX. 9. That is not a soil on which ideas of substitution 
 could thrive. — The doctrine of a substitution by men is indeed 
 nowhere else found in the Old Testament ; and Gesenius, who 
 (1. c, S. 189) endeavoured to prove that " it is very general" 
 has not adduced any arguments which are tenable or even 
 plausible. The guilt of the fathers is visited upon the chil- 
 dren, only when the latter walk in the steps of their fathers, 
 and the latter are first punished ; comp. Genuineness and 
 Authenticity of the Pentateuch, Vol. ii. p. 446 ff. The same 
 holds true in reference to 2 Sam. xxi. 1-14, The evil spirit 
 which filled Saul, pervaded his family, at the same time, as we 
 here see in the instance of Michal. It was probably in the 
 
.*K3G MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 interest of his family, and witli their eoncuiTence, that the 
 wicked deed had been peipetrated. {Michadis says : " In 
 order that he might appropriate their goods to himself and to 
 his family, under the j)retext of a pious zeal for Judah and 
 Israel.") As Saul himself was already overtaken by the divine 
 judgment, the crime wiis punished in the family who were 
 accomplices. In 2 Sam. xxiv. the people do not suffer as sub- 
 stitutes for the sin, which David had committed in numbering 
 the people ; but the spirit of pride which had incited the king 
 to number the people, was widely spread among them. But 
 the fact, that the king himself was punished in his subjects, 
 is brought out by his beseeching the Lord, in 2 Sam. xxiv. 
 1 7, that He might rather visit the sin directly upon himself 
 The sin of David and Bathsheba is not atoned for by the death 
 of the child (2 Sam. xii. 15-18), for David had already ob- 
 tained pardon, ver. 1 3. It is not the child which suffers, but 
 David, whose repentance was to be deepened by this visitation. 
 In the fact, that the whole army must suffer for what Achan 
 has committed (Josh. vii. 1), a distinct intimation is implied, 
 that the criminal does not stand alone, but that, to a certain 
 degi'ee, the whole community was implicated in his guilt. 
 Substitution is quite out of the question, inasmuch as Achan 
 himself, with his whole fjimily and posterity, was burnt. 
 Least of all, finally, can Dan. xi. 3 5 come into consideration. 
 According to GeseniuH, it is there said : " And they of under- 
 standing shall fall, in order to purge, purify, and make white 
 those (the others)." But ona refers rather to the C^OC'D them- 
 selves. Thus, nowhere in the Old Testament, is even the 
 slightest trace found of a satisfaction to be accomplished by 
 man for man ; nor can it be found there, because, from its very 
 commencement. Scripture most emphatically declares : rrdvrag 
 ij(p' afjuapTtav thai, liom. iii. 9. 
 
 The .explanation, which makes the Jewish i^^ople the sub- 
 ject, has already been overthrown by the parallel passages, 
 before arriving: at the section under consideration. " Even so 
 far back as chap. xlii. 1, difiiculties are met with," remarks 
 Beck. " How is it possible that the people who, in ver. 1 9 of 
 that chapter, are described as blind and deaf, should here 
 appear as being altogether penetrated by the Spirit, so as to 
 become the teachers of the Gentiles ?" " Chap. xlix. is a true 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 337 
 
 cross for the interpreters." " Finally, the section, chap. I, Hitzig 
 himself is obliged to explain as referring to the Prophet ; and 
 thus this interpretation forfeits the boast of most strictly hold- 
 ing fast the unity of this notion." 
 
 But still more decisively is the interpretation overthrown 
 by the contents of the section under discussion. The Servant 
 of God has, according to it, voluntarily taken upon Himself 
 His sufferings (according to ver. 10, He ofiE'ers himself as a 
 sacrifice for sin ; according to ver. 1 2, He is crowned with 
 gloiy because He has poured out His soul unto death). Him- 
 self sinless, He bears the sins of others, vers. 4-6, 9. His 
 sufferings are the means by which the justification of many 
 is effected. He suffers quietly and patiently, ver. 7. Not 
 one of these four signs can be vindicated for the people of 
 Israel, (a). The Jews did not go voluntarily into the Baby- 
 lonish exile, but were dragged into it by force. (b). The 
 Jewish people were not without sin in suffering ; but they 
 suffered, in the captivity, the punishment of their own sins. 
 Their being carried away had been foretold by Moses as a pu- 
 nitive judgment. Lev. xxvi. 14 ff ; Deut. xxviii. 15 ff, xxix. 
 19 fE, and as such it is announced by all the prophets also. 
 In the second part, Isaiah frequently reminds Judah that 
 they shall be cast into captivity by divine justice, and be 
 delivered from it by divine mercy only ; comp. chaps. Ivi.-lix., 
 especially chap. lix. 2 : " Your iniquities separate between you 
 and your God, and your sins hide His face from you that He 
 doth not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and 
 your fingers with iniquity, your lips speak lies, and your 
 tongue meditates perverseness. Their feet run to evil, and 
 they make haste to shed innocent blood, their thoughts are 
 thoughts of iniquity, wasting and destruction are in their 
 paths. The way of peace they know not, and there is no 
 right in their paths ; they pervert their paths ; whosoever 
 goeth therein doth not know peace. Apostacy and denying 
 the Lord, and departing away from our God, speaking oppres- 
 sion and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words 
 of falsehood." Comp. chap. xlii. 24 : "Who gave Jacob for a 
 spoil, and Israel to the robbers ? Did not the Lord, He against 
 whom we have sinned, and in whose ways they would not 
 walk, neither were they obedient unto His law." Farther, 
 
 VOL. II. y 
 
 I 
 
338 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 chap, xliii. 20, 27, where the detailed proof that Israel's merits 
 could not be the cause of their deliverance, inasmuch as they 
 did not exist at all, is, by the Prophet, wound up by the words : 
 " Put me in remembrance, let us plead together, declare then 
 that thou mayest be justified. Thy first father hath sinned, 
 and thy mediators have transgressed against me. Therefore I 
 profane the princes of the sanctuary, and give Jacob to the 
 destruction, and Israel to reproaches." It is solely to the 
 mercy of God that, according to chap, xlviii. 11, Israel owes 
 deliverance from the severe suffering into which they fell in 
 the way of their sins. One may confidently assert there is 
 not a single page in the whole book, which does not offer a 
 striking refutation of this view. And most miserable are the 
 expedients to which, in the face of such facts, the defenders of 
 this view betake themselves. Rosenrauller was of opinion, 
 that the Prophet introduced those Gentiles only as speaking, 
 who, by this flattery, wished to gain the favour of the Jews, 
 — without considering that it is just in the words of the Lord, 
 in ver. 11, that the absolute righteousness of the Servant of 
 God is most strongly expressed. Hifzig is of opinion, that 
 the people had indeed suffered for their sins ; but that the 
 punishment had been greater than their sins, and that by this 
 surplus the Gentiles were benefited. But the Prophet ex- 
 pressly contradicts such a gross view. He repeatedly declares 
 that the punishment was still mitigated by mercy ; that, in 
 the way of their works, Israel would have found total destruc- 
 tion. Thus, e.g., chap, xlviii. 9 : " For my name's sake will I 
 be long-suffering, and for my praise will I moderate mine anger 
 unto tlice, that I cut thee not ofi';" chap. i. 9 : " Except the 
 Lord of Hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should 
 have been as Sodom ; we should ha"ve been like unto Go- 
 morrah." In order to be fully convinced how much this view 
 of Israel, enforced upon the godly men of the Old Testament, 
 is in contradiction to their own view, the prayer of Ezi-a may 
 stiU be compared in Neh. ix., especially ver. 20 ff — (c.) The 
 sufferings of the Jewish people cannot be vicarious, because 
 they are destitute of the very first condition of substitution, viz., 
 sinlessness and righteousness. That even Hifzig does not 
 venture to claim for them. But how can an ungodly man, 
 even supposing that his punishment is too severe, justify others 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LIII. 3S9 
 
 by a righteousness of his which does not exist ? Finally — 
 The fourth sign, patience, so little belongs to the Jewish 
 people, that it is one of the main tasks of our Prophet himself 
 to oppose their murmuring impatience ; comp. e.g., chap. xlv. 
 9 ff. 
 
 Against the hypothesis that the people are the subject of 
 the prophecy, there is the circumstance that it carries along 
 with it the unnatural supposition that, in chap. liii. 1-10, the 
 heathens are introduced as speaking. Decisive against this 
 supposition are specially the designation '•oj; in ver. 8, and the 
 most forced explanation to which it compels us, in some verses, 
 especially ver. 2. 
 
 The interpretation which considers the godly portion of the 
 people to be the subject of the prophecy, is overthrown by the 
 fact that, according to the view of Scripture, even those who, 
 in the ordinary sense, are righteous, are unable to render a 
 vicarious satisfaction for others. For such, absolute righteous- 
 ness is required. But the " righteous ones" are begotten by 
 sinful seed (Ps. li.), and they have need daily to pray that God 
 would pardon their secret sins, Ps. xix. 13 ; they themselves 
 live only by the pardoning mercy of God, and cannot think of 
 atoning for others, Ps. xxxii. Even for believers, the captivity 
 is, according to chap, xlii., the merited punishment of their 
 sins. In that passage, the greatness of the mercy of God is 
 pointed out, who grants a twofold salvation for sins, while 
 infinite punishment should be their natural consequence. It 
 is not to a single portion of the people, but to the whole, that, 
 in the passages formerly quoted, every share in effecting de- 
 liverance and salvation is denied. How little an absolute 
 righteousness existed in the elect, sufficiently appears from the 
 fact, that, in the second part, it forms a main object of the Pro- 
 phet to oppose their want of courage, their despair and distrust 
 of God. Farther — The ungodly could not by any means con- 
 sider the sufferings of the righteous ones as vicarious, because 
 they themselves suffered as much ; and as little could they 
 despise the godly on account of their sufferings. It is a mere 
 invention, destitute of every historical foundation, to assert 
 that it was especially the God-fearing who had to suffer so 
 grievously in the captivity. On the contrary, their fear of 
 God gained for them the respect of tlie Gentiles ; and among 
 
3 M) MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 their own people also, whose sinful disposition was broken b}'- 
 the punishment, they occupied an honourable position. Ezekiel 
 we commonly find surrounded by the elders of the people, lis- 
 tening to his words ; and Daniel, Esther, and Mordecai, Ezra, 
 and Nehemiah, richly furnished with the goods of this world, 
 enjoyed high esteem in the Gentile world. The fact that the 
 supportei-s of this hypothesis are compelled to have recouree 
 to such an unhistorical fiction, which has been carried to the 
 extreme, especially by Knohel, sufficiently proves it to be un- 
 tenable. 
 
 In opposition to the interpretation which refers the prophecy 
 to the collective body of the Prophets, Hitzig very justly re- 
 marks : " The supposition that, by the Servant of God, the 
 prophetic order is to be understood, is destitute of all founda- 
 tion and probability." In commenting on chap. xlii. we re- 
 marked, that there are no analogous cases at all in favour of 
 such a personification of the prophetic order. Moreover, the 
 defenders of this view commonly deny, at the same time, the 
 genuineness of the second part. From this stand-point it 
 becomes still more evident, how untenable this hypothesis is. 
 A prophetic order can, least of all, be spoken of during the time 
 of the Babylonish captivity. With the captivity, Prophetism 
 began to die out. Jeremiah in Jerusalem, and Ezekiel among 
 the exiled, already stood very much isolated. Jeremiah, during 
 the last days of the Jewish state, stands out everywhere as a 
 single individual, opposed to the whole mass of the false pro- 
 phets. " There is no more any prophet," is, at the time of 
 the destruction by the Chaldeans, the lamentation of the author 
 of Ps. Ixxiv. in ver. 9. According to an unanimous tradition 
 (comp. 1 Maccab. ix. 27, iv. 46, xiv. 41, and the passages from 
 the Talnuid and other Jewish writings in Knihhes history of 
 the Prophets, S. 347 flf!, and in Joh. Smithi DisseH. de Pro- 
 ]>hetis, in the Appendix to Clericus Commentaiy on the Pro- 
 phets, chap, xii.), Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi were the 
 last of the prophets, and according to the historical books and 
 their own prophecies, the only prophets of their time. How, 
 now, were it possible that the Prophet should speak of a great 
 corporation of the prophets, who become not only the founders 
 and rulers of the new state, but who are to enlighten all the 
 other nations of the earth with the light of the time religion, 
 
ISATAH, CHAP. LIII, 341 
 
 and incorporate them into the church of God ? Of all that is 
 characteristic of the vocation of the prophets, nothing is found 
 here ; while, on the other hand, almost everything which is 
 said of the Servant of God is in opposition to the vocation 
 and destination of the prophets. That which here, above 
 everything, comes into consideration is the vicarious satisfac- 
 tion. Chap, vi., where the Prophet when, after having admi- 
 nistered the prophetic office for several years, he beheld the 
 Lord, exclaims : " Woe is unto me for I am undone, because I 
 am a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people 
 of unclean lips," is sufficient to show how far the thoughts of 
 such a vicarious satisfaction were from the prophets. Such is 
 surely not the ground from which the delusion of being sub- 
 stitutes for others can grow up. All those who entertained 
 such a delusion, such as Oichtel, Bourignon, Guyon, were 
 misled into it by proudly shutting their eyes to their own sin- 
 fulness. It would surely be abasing the prophets without any 
 cause, if we were to assign to them that delusion. Moreover, 
 the hopes which here, according to these interpreters, are 
 uttered in reference to the prophetic order, contradict its idea, 
 and institution. A prophetic pride would here come out, such 
 as is not equalled by priestly pride in all history. Schenkel, 
 no doubt, is right in remarking against the interpretation 
 which makes the Jewish people the subject of the prophecy, — 
 an interpretation of which Hitzig is the representative : " Is 
 it to believed that the prophets, whose object all along it was 
 to suppress the moral pride of the people, should wantonly 
 have awakened it by such a thought ?" But Hitzig is equally 
 in the right when, in opposition to Schenkel and others who 
 refer this prediction to the prophetic order, he remarks : " It 
 is quite obvious, how very unsuitable it would be to limit the 
 hitherto wretched condition and the future glory of the people 
 to the prophets, as if they alone, as true xaraxvpnuovTsg ruv 
 zXnpuv, constituted the people." According to this hypothesis, 
 the prophets are supposed to flatter themselves with the hope 
 that they would be the rulers of the state again flourishing, 
 and would celebrate worldly triumphs. Altogether apart from 
 the folly of this hope, it was entirely opposed to the destiny 
 of the prophetic order. By divine institution, the dominion 
 in the Kingdom of God had for ever been given over to David 
 
842 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 and his family. By u.suiping it, the prophets would have 
 rebelled against God, whose lights they were called to uphold. 
 — FaHher, As the principal sphere of the ministry of the Ser- 
 vant of God, the heathen world here appears. But with it, 
 the prophets have, nowhere else, any thing to do ; their mis- 
 sion is everywhere to Israel only. — ^The sufferings which the pro- 
 phets had to endure during the captivity, were not different from 
 those of the people. Every proof, yea, even every probability, 
 is wanting that, during the time of the captivity, the prophets 
 — and history mentions and knows only Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 
 and Daniel — were pre-eminently afflicted. On the contrary, 
 they occupy an honourable position. Jeremiah receives, after 
 the capture of Jerusalem, proofs of esteem from Nebuchad- 
 nezzar. Daniel is entrusted with the highest public offices. 
 Ezekiel is held in honour by his compatriots. How then 
 could the people despise the prophets on account of their suf- 
 ferings ? How could they imagine that they had been smitten 
 by God ? How could they afterwards conceive the idea that 
 the sufferings of the prophets had a vicarious character ? — To 
 what quarter soever we look, impossibilities present them- 
 selves ; and if, moreover, we also look at the parallel passages, 
 we must indeed wonder, that a hypothesis altogether so un- 
 tenable should ever have been listened to. 
 
 CHAPTER LV. 1-5. 
 
 The Lord exhorts those who are anxious to be saved, to 
 appropriate the blessings of salvation which are so liberally 
 offered, and which, although bestowed without money and 
 price, can alone truly satisfy the soul, vers. 1 and 2. For He 
 is to make with them a covenant of everlasting duration, in 
 whicli the eternal mercy promised to the fjimily of David is 
 to be realized, ver. 3. David — such is the salvation in store 
 for the Church — is to be a witness, prince, and lawgiver of all 
 the Gentiles who, with joyful readiness, shall unite themselves 
 to Israel 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LV. 1. 343 
 
 Ver. 1. " Ho, all ye that thirst, come ye to the ivater, and ye 
 that have no silver, come ye, buy and eat ; yea, come, buy luine 
 and Tuilk without silver and without price" 
 
 The discouree is addressed to the members of the Church 
 piring away in misery. By the water, salvation is denoted, 
 as is not unfrequently the ease, comp. chap. xii. 3 : " And with 
 joy ye shall draw water out of the wells of salvation," xliv. 3 ; 
 Ps. IxxxviL 7, Ixxxiv. 7, cvii. 85. The thirsty one is he who 
 stands in need of salvation. To the words : " Ho, all ye that 
 thirst, come ye to the water," the Lord refers in John vii. 37 : 
 sdv Tig bi'^a \^y\(s^oi Trpoc, ^.i %a] vivstu, where the Tpo'g /is had been 
 added from ver. 3. It is to be observed that Christ there 
 appropriates to himself what Jehovah is here speaking. Mi~ 
 chaelis says : " Christ, in consequence of the highest identity, 
 makes the words of the Father His own." There is an evi- 
 dent reference to the same words in Rev. xxi. 6 also : J/w rw 
 di-^ut^ri du)(fc>j SK r^g Tr,yrjg roH vdarog ryjg X^(jyf\g dc^psdv. Similarly in 
 Rev. xxii. 17 : x.cci o di-^oov ep^es&u, ^BXatv XujSsrci) vSup ^w^e dupidv. 
 In a somewhat more distant relation to the words before us, 
 but yet undeniably depending upon them, is John iv. 10: av 
 av riT'/jSag avrov -/.al sdoi/iiv av dot vhup Zfiv. Vers. 13, 14: ra? 6 
 'xhuv h/. Toil vhaTog touto'j di-^^eii TdXiv ogd'avTiTj s% tou v^aTog, 
 ob syoj 8w(TCD auTuJ oii fj^ri bi-^T^dri sig t6v aluva. And SO does, 
 in another aspect. Matt. xi. 28 : dsvT- irpog n,i o'l zo^iuvng xat 'Tticpop- 
 TKTfjbsnoi xdyu dmTravsoj u/^ag, which, however, has still nearer points 
 of resemblance to ver. 3 ; for dsvn Tpog /jls corresponds to •'7S 127 
 in that verse ; the words xayu dva'xaheu vfiag, to : " Your soul 
 shall live" there, but yet in such a way that there is, at the 
 same time, a reference to Jer. vi. 1 6 ; the xo'jriuvTsg xai 'TrnpopTia- 
 /xsvoi are the thirsty ones in the verse before us. It is remark- 
 able to see how important this unassuming declaration was to 
 our Lord, and how much He had it at heart. We are thereby 
 urgently called upon, by means of deep and earnest study and 
 meditation, to arrive at the full meaning of the Old Testament, 
 which is everywhere connected with the New Testament, not 
 only by the strong and firm ties of express quotations, but 
 also by the nicest and most tender threads of gentle allusions. 
 Even Matt. v. 6 : /J^azapioi oi ts/cwi/t-sc Kai di-^^vTsg Trjv bixaioauvriv 
 comes into a close relation to our passage, as soon as it is re- 
 cognized that bixaios'jvTjv is not the subjective righteousness 
 
344 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 wliich is excluded from that context, but rather righteousness 
 as a gift of God, the actual justification, such as takes place in 
 the bestowal of salvation ; so that, hence, the righteousness 
 there corresponds with the water here. The subsequent " eat" 
 furnishes the foundation for the fiict, that the need of and 
 desire for salvation, is desigTiated by hunger also, — " Come ye, 
 buy and eat" "^2^ " to break," is used of tlie appeasing of 
 thii-st (comp. Ps. civ. 11), and hunger (comp. Gen. xlii. 19); 
 and corn is called "*3^ for this reason that it breaks the hunger. 
 The verb never means " to buy" in general, but only such a 
 buying as affords the means of appeasing hunger and thiret. 
 Nor does it, in itself, stand in any relation to corn, except in 
 so far only as the latter is a chief moans of appeasing hunger. 
 This we see not only from Ps. civ. 1 1 , but also fi'om that which 
 here immediately follows, where it is used of the bu3ang of 
 wine and milk. The buying of necessary provisions is com- 
 monly designated by the Kal; the selling by the HipMl. In 
 Gen. xli. 26, the selling too is designated by the Kal. He 
 who causes that one can break or appease, may himself also be 
 designated as he who breaks or appeases. This verb, so very 
 peculiar, and the noun ">3£^, occur in a certain accumulation, in 
 the histoiy of Joseph only ; elsewhere, their occurrence is spo- 
 radic only. It is then to the hunger of Israel in ancient 
 times, and to its being appeased by Joseph, that the double 
 naB' alludes ; and from this circumstance also the fact is to be 
 explained, that it is first used in reference to food ; comp. 
 ibxi r\2Z* in our verse, with ^3X 13^' in Gen. xlii. 7-10. Christ 
 is the true Joseph, who puts an end to the hunger and thirst 
 of the people of God, by offering true food and true drink. — 
 The word " eat" sufjgrests substantial food, bread in contrast to 
 the drink by which it is surrounded on both sides ; compare 
 John vi. 35 : syu i!/jt,i 6 clfrog rrn ^w^j* 6 spy^6/j,ivog "^pog fj,s ou 
 /XJ5 T£iKZff>] (nnti') xa/ 6 T/ffrs-jwi/ lig s/u,s ou firi di-^rjarj 'T'Jj'tots. Ver. 
 55 : ri yaf ffdp^ fiou dXjjfJws sffTi ^pusig, y.al ro ai/Mci. /zoiy d/.i^^ug ken 
 rroaig. From the sequel (comp. vers. G, 7), it appears that the 
 thrice repeated coraiiig and the buying are accomplished by true 
 repentance, the [urdvota, which is the indispensable condition 
 of the participation in the salvation. In John vi. 35, the 
 words : 6 lpyJ,iJ.i\og Tpog fit are explained by : o Tiersvcov ilg ifMs. 
 Faith is the soul of repentance. — The circumstance that the 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LV. 2. 345 
 
 buying is done without money, intimates that the blessings of 
 salvation are a pure gift of divine grace. These blessings of 
 salvation are first designated by water ; afterwards, by wine 
 and rtiilk, — thus approximating to those passages in which 
 the blessings of the Kingdom of Christ appear under the image 
 of a rich repast, to which the members of the Kingdom are 
 invited as guests, Ps. xxii. 26-30; Matt. viii. 11, xxii. 2; 
 Luke xiv. 16 ; Rev. xix. 9. — Some Rationalistic interpreters 
 understand, by the offered blessings, the salutary admonitions 
 of the Prophet ; but decisive against these are vers. 3 and 1 1 , 
 according to which it is not present, but future blessings, not 
 words, but real things which are spoken of, viz., the salvation 
 which is to be brought through Christ. Wliat that is which 
 constitutes the substance of this salvation, we leai-n from chap, 
 liii. It is the redemption and reconciliation by the Servant 
 of God. Yet we must not, after the manner of several ancient 
 interpreters, limit ourselves to the " evangelical righteousness." 
 On the contrary, the whole fulness of the salvation in Christ 
 is comprehended in it ; and according to vers. 4 and 5, this 
 includes the dominion over the world by the Kingdom of God, 
 — its dominion over the Gentile world, and the investiture of 
 its members with the full liberty and glory of the children of 
 God. 
 
 Ver. 2. " Wheirfore do ye weigh Tnoney for that tvhich is 
 not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not ? 
 Hearken, hearken unto me, and eat ye that ivhich is good, and 
 let your soul delight itself in fatness." 
 
 From ver. 3, we see that it is not the Prophet, but the 
 Lord who speaks. " That which is not bread," and " that 
 which satisfieth not," is something which outwardly has the 
 appearance of good and nutritious food, and to obtain which 
 the hungry ones therefore strive, and exert themselves with 
 all their might, but which afterwards shows itself to be food 
 in appearance only, and which has not the power of satisfying. 
 "That which is not bread," is, in the first instance, the ima- 
 gined salvation which they sought to obtain from idols for 
 much money. This appears from the intentional literal refer- 
 ence to chap. xlvi. 6, where the Prophet reproves the folly of 
 those who, in the face of the living God, " lavish gold out of 
 the bag, and lueigh silver in the balance, and hire a goldsmith, 
 
34-6 MESSfANIC PREDICTIONS IX THE PROPHETS. 
 
 that he make it a god, work also and fall down." With per- 
 fect justice St lev remarks : " Notwithstanding the connection 
 with, and allusion to, the circumstances of that time, the word 
 of the Prophet is to be understood in a general, spiritual way, 
 as a melancholy, bitter lamentation over the general misery, 
 and man's deep-rooted perverseness in running with effort and 
 exertion, after that which is pernicious to the soul, and in 
 servincf some Baal better than Jehovah. " Fatness" occurs as 
 a figurative designation of the glorious gifts of God, in Ps. 
 xxxvi. 9 also. 
 
 Ver. 3. " Iiwline your ears and come unto me, hear and 
 your soul shall live, and I will grant to you an everlasting 
 covenant, the constant mercies of David." 
 
 The introductory words allude, in a gi'aceful manner, to two 
 Messianic psalms, and remind us of the fact, that the prophecy 
 before us moves on the same ground as these psalms. On 
 " incline your ear, and come unto me, hear," comp. Ps. xlv. 1 1 : 
 " Hear, daughter, and see, and incline thine ear (from the 
 fundamental passage, the Singular is here retained), and forget 
 thy people and thy father's house." On " your soul shall live," 
 comp. Ps. xxii. 27 : "Tlie meek shall eat and be satisfied, they 
 shall praise the Lord that seek Him, your heart shall live for 
 ever." Analogous are the references to Ps. Ixxii. in chap. xi. 
 The soul dies in care and grief In the words : " I will grant 
 to you," ifcc, there follow the glad tidings which are to heal the 
 dying hearts. n^i3 mn is used of God, even where no reci- 
 procal agreement takes place, but where He simply confers 
 grace ; because every grace which He bestows imposes, at the 
 same time, an obligation, and may hence be considered as a co- 
 venant. The onesidedness is, in such a case, indicated by the 
 construction with ^, comp. chap. Ixi. 8 : " And I give them 
 their reward in truth, and I make (gi'ant) to them an ever- 
 lasting covenant," Jer. xxxii. 40 ; Ezek. xxxiv. 25 ; Ps. Ixxxix. 
 4. Since to make a covenant is here identical with granting 
 TYiercy, nmax may also be connected with the subsequent " the 
 constant mercies of David," and there is no necessity for sup- 
 posing a Zeugma. The everlasting covenant here, is the new 
 covenant in Jer. xxxi. 31-34 ; for the words "I ivill make" 
 show that, here too, a new covenant is spoken of. The sub- 
 stance of the covenant to be made is expressed in the words : 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LV. 3. 347 
 
 " The constant mercies of David," &c. By " David," many- 
 interpreters here understand the descendant of David, the 
 Messiah, who, in other passages also, e.g., Jer. xxx. 9, bears the 
 name of His type. Even Ahenezra refers to the fact that, in 
 ver. 4, the Messiah is necessarily required as the subject. The 
 constant mercies of David are, according to this view — in 
 parallelism with the " everlasting covenant" — the mercies 
 constantly continuing, in contrast to the merely transitory 
 mercies, such as had been those of the first David. According 
 to the opinion of other interpreters, David designates here, as 
 in Hos. iii. 5, the family of David who, in Ps. xviii., and in a 
 series of other psalms, speaks in the name of his whole family. 
 As regards the sense, this explanation arrives at the same 
 result. For, according to it, the Messiah is He in whom the 
 Davidic house attains to its fall destiny, the channel through 
 which the mercies of David flow in upon the Church. For 
 the latter interpretation, however, is decisive the evident 
 reference to the divine promise to David, in 2 Sam. vii., espe- 
 cially vers. 15, 16 : "And my mercy shall not depart from 
 him (thy race) .... and constant (pS3) is thine house, and 
 thy kingdom for ever before thee, thy throne shall be firm for 
 ever; compare Ps. Ixxxix. 29: " My mercy will I keep for 
 him for evermore, and my covenant is constant in him." Ps. 
 Ixxxix. 2, 50 : "Lord, where are thy former mercies which 
 thou swarest unto David in thy truth V likewise suggest that, 
 by David, not simply Christ is to be understood, but the 
 Davidic family. The constant mercies of David are, accord- 
 ingly, the mercies which have been sworn to the Davidic 
 house as constant, which, therefore, can never rest until Christ 
 has appeared with His everlasting Kingdom, in which they 
 find their true and full realization. In the expectation of the 
 Messiah from the house of David, the prophecy under consi- 
 deration goes hand in hand with chap. xi. 1, where the Mes- 
 siah appears as a twig which proceeds from the cut-down tree 
 of Jesse ; and with chap. ix. 6, according to which He sits on 
 the throne of David. This passage alone is fully sufficient 
 against those {Eivald, Umbreit, and others) who advance the 
 strange assertion, that the Prophet had altogether given up 
 the idea of a Messiah from the house of David, and had dis- 
 tributed His property between Cyrus and the prophetic order, 
 
348 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS, 
 
 or the pious portion of the people. It is of the greatest im- 
 portance for the exphination of those passages which treat of 
 the Servant of God, and forms a point of union for the Mes- 
 sianic passages of the first and second part. The passage before 
 us is quoted in Acts xiii. 34- : on d's dvsg-rtgiJ aiirdv Jx vixpuvy 
 /i7)xsri [liXkovra UTOffTp's^eiv iig hiapdopav djrug, I'ipriy.ir on duxfu bfj^Tv ra 
 Off/a Aa/3M TO, TisTri. " Osia AalSiB, scuicta DaviiUs, are the sacred, 
 inviolable, inalienably guaranteed mercies and blessings which 
 liave been promised to the house of David. As certainly as 
 these must be granted, so certainly Christ, who was to bring 
 them, could not remain in the power of death. 
 
 Ver. 4. " Behold, I give him for a witness to the people, for 
 a p)i'ince and laivfjiver of the people!' 
 
 Here, and in ver. 5, we have the expansion of the mercies 
 of David. Their greatness and glory appear from the circum- 
 stance that, around his scion, the whole heathen world, which 
 hitherto was hostile and pernicious to the Church of God, will 
 gather. The Suffix in vnnj can refer only to David, or the 
 family of David. From the connection with chap, liii., it 
 appears that it is in his descendant, the righteous One, to 
 whom the heathen and their kings do homage, that David 
 will attain to the dignity here announced. "W has no other 
 signification than " witness." Every true doctrine bears the 
 character of a witness. The teacher sent by God does not 
 teach on his own authority, a iin supaxiv s/MSan-juv, but only 
 witnesses what he has seen and heard. With a reference to, 
 and in ex[)lanation of the passage before us, Christ says to 
 Pilate, in John xviii. 37 : "For this end was I born, and for 
 this cause I came into the world, that I should bear witness 
 unto the truth." And the passages, Rev. i. 5 : " And from 
 Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness," and Rev. iii. 1 4 : 
 " These things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness," 
 likewise point back to the passage before us ; compare farther, 
 John iii. 11, 32, 33. In John xviii. 37, Rev. i. 5, His beingr 
 
 7 7 ' ' O 
 
 a witness is, just as in the passage before us, connected with 
 His being a King ; so that the reference to this passage cannot 
 be at all doubtful. It is intentionally that "ty is put at the 
 head. It is intended to intimate that the future dominion of 
 the Davidic dynasty over the heathen world shall be essen- 
 tially different from that wiiich, in former times, it exercised 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LV. 4. 849 
 
 over some neighbouring people. It is not based upon the 
 power of arms, but upon the power of truth. He in whom 
 the Davidic dynasty is to centre shall connect the prophetic 
 with the regal office ; just as already, in the prophecy of the 
 Shiloh, in Gen. xlix. 1 0, the prophetic office is concealed behind 
 the royal. The contrast to the first David can the less be 
 doubtful, that, while IV is never applied to him, it is just the 
 subsequent T'JJ which, in a series of passages, is ascribed to 
 him. In 2 Sam. vi. 21, David himself says that the Lord 
 appointed him to be rulei' over the people of the Lord, over 
 Israel ; in 2 Sam. vii. 8, Nathan says : " I took thee from the 
 sheep-cot to be ruler over my people, over Israel ;" comp. 1 
 Sam. XXV. 30 ; 2 Sam. v. 5. In those passages, however, 
 David is always spoken of as a ruler over Israel ; so that even 
 as regards the T'33, the second David, the prince of the people, 
 is not only placed on a level with the first David, but is ele- 
 vated above him. For the dominion by force which David 
 exercised over some heathen nations, l''i2 was the less appro- 
 priate designation, inasmuch as it designates the ruler as the 
 chief of his people. 
 
 Ver. 5. " Behold, thou shall call a nation that thou hnowest 
 not, and nations that knetv not thee shall run unto thee, be- 
 cause of the Lord thy God, and of the Holy One of Israel, for 
 He adorneth thee." 
 
 The words here are addressed to the true Israel, to the exclu- 
 sion of those souls who are cut off" from among their people, 
 compare Ps. Ixxiii. 1 , where Israel and those that are of a clean 
 heart go hand in hand, — and, in substance, they also were ad- 
 dressed in vers. 1 and 2. For the thirsty ones, who are thei-e 
 called upon to partake of the blessings so hberally offered by 
 the Lord, are just the members of the Church. In connection 
 with that glorification of David, the Church shall invite 
 nations from a great distance, who were hithei-to unknown to 
 it, to its communion; and those nations who hitherto scarcely 
 knew by name the Church of God shall joyfully and willingly 
 comply with the invitation; comp. chap. ii. 2. This great 
 change proceeds from the Lord, the Almighty and Holy One, 
 who, as the protector and Covenant-God of His Church, has 
 resolved to glorify it; for He adorneth thee. This glorifica- 
 tion consists, according to chap. iv. 2, in the appearance of 
 
350 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Christ, the immediate consequence of which is the conversion 
 of the heathen world. 
 
 We must now review that exposition by which Rationalism 
 has endeavoured to deprive our passage of its Messianic im- 
 port, — an attempt in which Grotius led the way. Gesenius, 
 whom Hitzig, Maurer, Ewald, and Kifiohel follow, translates 
 in vers. 3 and 4 : " That I may make with you an everlasting 
 covenant, may show to you constant mercies, as once to 
 David. Behold, I have made him a ruler of the nations, a 
 prince and lawgiver of the nations," and refers both of the 
 verses to the first David. In ver. 5, then, the mercy is to 
 follow which, in some future time, God will bestow upon the 
 whole people, as gloriously as once upon the single David. 
 But this explanation proves itself to be, in every aspect, un- 
 tenable.^ 
 
 We are the less entitled to put " mercies like David's" 
 instead of "the mercies of David," that these mercies are, 
 elsewhere also, mentioned in reference to the eternal dominion 
 promised to David for his family; comp. Ps. Ixxxix. 2, 50. 
 With the epithet, " constant," these interpreters do not know 
 what to do. Apart from the promise of the eternal dominion 
 of his house, no constant mercies can, in the case of DaAad, 
 be pointed out which would be equally bestowed upon the 
 people, and upon him. Moreover, CJOW distinctly points back 
 to 2 Sam. vii. Ver. 4 forms, according to this explanation, 
 " a historical reminiscence, most unsuitable in the flow of a 
 prophetic discourse" (Umbreit). But what in itself is quite 
 conclusive is the circumstance, that the first David could not 
 by any possibility be designated as the tvitne^s of the Gentile 
 nations. It indeed sounds rather naive that Knohel, after 
 having endeavoured to explain "ly of the " opening up of the 
 law," feels himself obliged to add: "The word does not, how- 
 ever, occur anywhere else in this signification." Nor could 
 David, without farther limitation, be designated as " the prince 
 and lawgiver of the peoples;" and that so much the more 
 
 • Vitriiifia already remarked iii o]iposition to it : " This exposition is rather 
 far fetched, and is the weakest of all that can be advanced. I add, that the 
 eon.stancy of the promises given to David does not appear, if we exclnde the 
 Kingdom of the Messiah. Hut are any other promises of constant and 
 eternal blessings, such as are here promised, to be thought of?'' 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LXI. 1. 351 
 
 that, in ver. 5, there is an invitation to the Gentile world, 
 and that, in ver. 4, too, the Gentile world, in the widest sense, 
 is to be thought of. 
 
 After the promise, there follows, in vers. 6-13, the admoni- 
 tion to repentance based upon it. Repent ye, for the Kingdom 
 of heaven is at hand, vers. 6, 7. Do not doubt that the 
 Kingdom of heaven is at hand, because it does not seem pro- 
 bable to you. For the counsels of God go beyond all the 
 thoughts of men; and, therefore. He and His work must not 
 be judged by a human measure, vers. 8, 9. With Him, word 
 and deed are inseparably connected, vers. 10, 11. This will 
 be manifested in your redemption and glorification, vers. 
 12, 13. 
 
 THE PEOPHECY-CHAP. LXI. 1-3. 
 
 As in chaps, xhx. and 1., so here, the Servant of God is in- 
 troduced as speaking, and announces to the Church what a 
 glorious office the Lord had bestowed upon Him, namely, to 
 deliver them from the misery in which they had hitherto been 
 lying, and to work a wonderful change in their condition. In 
 vers. 4-9, the Prophet takes the word, and describes the sal- 
 vation to be bestowed by the Servant of God. In vers. 10 
 and 11, the Church appears, and expresses her joy and 
 gratitude. 
 
 According to the Jewish and Rationalistic interpreters, the 
 Prophet himself is supposed to be speaking in vers. 1-3. That 
 opinion was last expressed by Knohel: "The author places 
 before his promises a remembrance of his vocation as a 
 preacher of consolation." In favour of the Messianic inter- 
 pretation, in which our Lord himself preceded His Church 
 (Luke iv. 17-19), are conclusive, not only the parallel passages, 
 but also the contents of the prophecy itself, which go far 
 beyond the prophetic territory, and the human territory 
 generally. The speaker designates himself as He who is called, 
 not merely to announce the highest blessings to the Church, 
 
352 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 but actually to grant them. He doe.s not represent himself 
 as a mere Evangelist, but rather as a Saviour. 
 
 Ver. 1 . " The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon we, be- 
 cause the Lord hath anointed me to preach glad tidings unto 
 the meek; He hath sent me to hind up the hrokeiv-lcearted, to 
 jyroclaim liberty to the captives, and opening to them, tJud are 
 bound." 
 
 On the words: "The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon 
 me," compare chap. xi. 2, xlii. ] . IV always means " because 
 of" The whole succeeding clause stands instead of a noun, 
 so that, in substance, " because of" is equivalent to " because;" 
 but it never can mean "therefore." Nor would the latter 
 signification afford a good sense. The verb n'k:^ must, in that 
 case, be subjected to arbitrary explanations. The anointing, 
 whether it occurs as a symbolical action really carried out, or 
 as a mere figure, is always a designation of the gifts of the 
 Holy Spirit; compare 1 Sam. x. 1, xvi. 13, 14, and remarks 
 on Dan. ix. 24. Since, then, the anointing is identical with 
 the bestowal of the Spirit, the words : " because the Lord 
 hath anointed me" must not be isolated, but must be under- 
 stood in close connection with the subsequent words ; so that 
 the sense is: And He hath, for this reason, endowed me with 
 His Spirit, in order that I may preach good tidings, &c. The 
 D^Wj; are the T^as/g in Matt. v. 5 ; '•jy and \iV are never con- 
 founded with one another. The LXX., whom Luke follows, 
 have 'XTiM'/or,. This rendering does not differ so much from 
 the original text as to make it appear expedient to give up 
 the version at that time received. In the world of sin, the 
 meek are, at the same time, those who are suffering; and the 
 glad tidings which imply a contrast to their misery, show 
 that, here especially, the meek are to be conceived of as suf- 
 ferers. The Q''i:y, in contrast to the wicked, appear, in chap, 
 xi. also, as the people of the Messiah. — " The binding up" — 
 Stiev remarks — " already passes over into the actual bestowal 
 of that which is announced." The term "im Kip is taken 
 from the Jubilee year, which was a year of general deliverance 
 for all those who, on account of debts, had become slaves; 
 compare Lev. xxv. 10: "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth 
 year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land for all the in- 
 habitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee year unto you, and ye 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LXI. 2. 353 
 
 shall return every man unto Ins possession, and ye shall return 
 every man unto his family." Such a great year of liberty is 
 both to be proclaimed and to be brought about by the Servant 
 of God. For He does not announce any thing which He does 
 not, at the same time, grant, as is clearly shown by ver. 3. 
 His saying is based upon His being and nature; He delivers 
 from the service of the world, and brings into the glorious 
 liberty of the children of God. — Most of the modern inter- 
 preters agree with the ancient versions in declaring it to be 
 wrong to divide the word nipnpS, although this writing is 
 found in most of the manuscripts. The word is, " by its form 
 of reduphcation, the most emphatic term for the most com- 
 plete opening," and designates, "opening, unclosing of every 
 kind, of the eyes, ears, and heart, of every barrier and tie 
 from within, or from without." The LXX., proceeding upon 
 the fact that nps occurs, with especial frequency, of the open- 
 ing of the eyes, translate : Kal rupXaTg dvdl3Xs-^iv. Luke does 
 not wish to set aside this version, because it gives one feature 
 of the sense ; and partly also because of the close resemblance 
 to the parallel passage, chap. xlii. 7, which, in this way, was 
 brought in and connected with the passage under considera- 
 tion. But since outward deliverance and redemption are, in 
 the first instance, to be thought of, when opening to the cap- 
 tives is spoken of, he, in order to complete the sense, adds: 
 d'TToGTiTkai TsdpavafLsvovi sv a(psaii, borrowing the expression from 
 the Alexand. Vers, itself in chap. Iviii. 6. 
 
 Ver. 2. " To proclawi a year of acceptance to the Lord, and 
 a day of vengeance to our God, to comfort all that mourn." 
 
 " A year ... to the Lord" is a year when the Lord 
 shows himself gracious and merciful to His people; compare 
 chap. xlix. 8. The words farther still allude to the Jubilee 
 year; and it is in consequence of this allusion, that we can 
 account for its being a year instead of a time, indefinitely. In 
 that year, a complete restitutio in integrum took place. It 
 was, for all in misery, a year of mercy, a type of the times of 
 refreshing (Acts iii. 1 9) which the Lord grants to His Church, 
 after it has been exercised by the Cross. Hand in hand with 
 the year of mercy goes the day of vengeance. When the Lord 
 shows mercy to the meek, and to them that mourn, this shall, 
 at the same time, be accompanied by a manifestation of anger 
 VOL. II. z 
 
 I 
 
3.") i MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PEOPHETS. 
 
 against the enemies of God, and of His Church. The one 
 cannot be thought of without the other. The mercy of the 
 Lord towards His people is, among other things also, mani- 
 fested in His sitting- in judgment upon His and their enemies, 
 upon the proud world which attiicts and oppresses them. It 
 is only in this respect that the vengeance here comes into 
 (;onsideration ; and it is for this reason also, that the first 
 feature at once reappears in the third verse. The Lord, in 
 ([uoting the verse, limits himself to the fii'st clause, " His first 
 condntT: into the world was in the form of meekness," and, 
 therefore, in the meantime, the bright side only is brought out. 
 Ver. 3. " To put upon them that mourn in Zion, — to give 
 litem a crown for as:hes, oil of joy for mournimj, fjarment of 
 praise for a spirit of heaviness; and they shall he called 
 terebinths of Hghteousness, planting of the Lord for glori- 
 
 It is in this verse that it comes clearly out, that the speaker 
 is not merely to announce the mercy of God, but, at the same 
 time, to bestow it; that the announcement is not an empty 
 one, but one which brings along with it that which is pro- 
 mised ; that it is not a Prophet or Evangelist who speaks, but 
 the Saviour. Such a change cannot be effected by merely 
 announcing it. Everywhere, in the second part, it is brought 
 about, not by words, but by deeds. How were it possible 
 that by mere words, as long as the reality stood in glaring 
 contrast to them, the believers could become terebinths of 
 righteousness, a glorious planting of the Lord? — The con- 
 nection of the two verbs Dlu' and in: is to be accounted for 
 from the circumstance, that the pronoun suited the first noun 
 only — the ornament for the head. It is only when DIB' is 
 understood in the sense, " to put u})on," or, " to put on," that 
 there is a sufiicient reason for adding jriJ ; but that is not the 
 case when it is taken in the signification " to grant," " to 
 a])point." "ISD " crown," and "iSS " ashes," are connected with 
 one another, because mourners were accustomed to strew ashes 
 on their heads. The expression " oil of joy," which is to be 
 explained from the custom of people anointing themselves 
 with oil in cases of joy, is taken from Ps. xlv. 8. As the 
 Messiah there appears as the possessor of the oil of joy, so, 
 here, He aj)pcars as the bestower. In chap. Iv. 3, there is 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. LXI. 3. 355 
 
 likewise an allusion to Ps. xlv., and along with it, to Ps. xxii. 
 The "spirit of heaviness" refers to chap. xlii. 3. The fact 
 that, instead of it, they receive "garments of praise," inti- 
 mates that they shall be altogether clothed with praise, songs 
 of praise for the divine goodness which manifested itself in 
 them; on the garments as symbols of the condition, compare 
 remarks on Rev. vii. 14. The "righteousness" which is 
 appropriate to the spiritual terebinths, is the actual justifica- 
 tion, which the Lord gi-ants to His people at the appearance 
 of the Messiah. There is in it an allusion to the planting of 
 paradise; God now prepares for himself a new paradisaical 
 plantation, consisting of living trees. 
 
( 356 ) 
 
 THE PROPHET ZEPHAXIAH. 
 
 By the inscription, tlie Prophet's origin is, in a way ratlier 
 uncommon, traced back to his fourth ancestor, Hezekiah, — no 
 doubt the king. He appeared as a prophet under the reign 
 of Josiah — before the time, however, at which the refonns of 
 that king had attained their completion, which took place in 
 the 18th year of his reign — and, hence, prophesied, like his 
 predecessor Habakkuk, in the view of the Chaldean catas- 
 trophe. Tlie prophecy begins with threatening judgment 
 upon the sinners, and closes with announcing salvation to the 
 believers, — a circumstance which proves that it forms one 
 whole. The threatenincr is distinguished from that of Ha- 
 bakkuk by the circumstance, that it has more of a general 
 comprehensive character, and does not, as is done in Habakkuk, 
 view the Chaldean catastrophe as a particular historical event. 
 It is not an incidental circumstance, that the Chaldeans are 
 not expressly mentioned by Zephaniah, as is done by Ha^ 
 bakkuk, and was done by Isaiah. The Prophet can, therefore, 
 have had them in view as being, in tlie first instance onl}% 
 the instruments of Divine punishment. 
 
 The prophecy begins, in chap. i. 2, 3, with announcing the 
 judgment impending over the whole world. Then, the Pro- 
 phet shows how it manifests itself in Judah; fii'st, in general 
 outlines, vers. 4-7; then, in detail, vers. 8-18. In close con- 
 nection, this is followed by a call to repent, in chap. ii. 1-3. 
 This call is founded on tlie fearful character of the impending 
 judgment which, accoixling to vers. 4-15, will be intlicted not 
 only upon Judah, but also upon the world, and will especially 
 bring destruction upon all the neighbouring nations: in the 
 
ZEPHANTAH, III, 8-13. 357 
 
 West, upon the Pliilistines ; in the East, upon Ammon and 
 Moab; in the South, on Cush; in the North, upon Nineveh, 
 upon whose destruction the Prophet especially dwells, since, 
 up to that time, it had been the bearer of the world's power. 
 
 In chap, iii., in the first instance, the threatening against 
 Judah is resumed. Apostate Jerusalem, corrupt in its head 
 and members, irresistibly hastens on towards judgment. But, 
 notwithstanding, "the afflicted and poor people of the land" 
 shall not despair. On the contrary, as salvation cannot pro- 
 ceed from the midst of the people, they are to put their trust 
 in the Lord. By His judgments (viz., those declared in chap, 
 ii., which at last shall bring forth the peaceable fruits of 
 righteousness, compare Isa. xxvi. 9 : " For when thy judgments 
 are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteous- 
 ness") will He break the pride of the Gentile world, and bring 
 about their convei-sion, — and the converted Gentile world 
 will bring back to Jerusalem the scattered Congregation. 
 Being purified and justified, it will then enjoy the full mercy 
 of the Lord. 
 
 The principal passage is chap. iii. 8-13. 
 
 Ver. 8. " Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the Lo7'd, until 
 the day that I rise up to the prey ; for my right is {i.e., the 
 exercise of my right consists in this) to gather the nations, 
 and to assemble the Jcingdoms, to pour out upon them Tnine 
 indignation, all the heat of mine anger; for all the earth 
 shall he devoured by the Jire of my jealousy. Ver. 9. For then 
 will I turn unto the natioTis a clean lip, that they 'may all 
 call tipon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one shoulder. 
 Ver. 1 0. From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia shall they bring 
 ray suppliants, the daughter of m.y dispersed for a meat- 
 offering to me. Ver. 11. In tliat day shall thou not be 
 ashamed for all thy doings wherein thou hast transgressed 
 against me; for then will I take away out of the midst of 
 thee them that jjroudly rejoice in thee, and thou shall no more 
 be Itaughty on mine holy mountain. Ver. 12. And I leave 
 in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they 
 trust in the name of the Lord. Ver. ] 3. The remnant of 
 Israel shall 7iot do iniquity nor speak lies; neither shall a 
 deceitful tongue be found in their mouth; for they sJiall feed 
 and lie doivn, and none shall make them afraid" 
 
358 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Zephaniali, who opens the series of the prophets who are pre- 
 eminently dependent upon other prophets, just as Habakkuk 
 closes the series of those pre-eminently independent, leans, in 
 this section, chiefly upon Isaiah; and it is from this circum- 
 stance that it appears, that the person of the Messiah, although 
 not appearing here, stands in the background and forms the 
 invisible centre. 
 
 " Therefore" ver. 8 : Since the salvation cannot proceed 
 from the midst of the people, inasmuch as, in the way of their 
 Avorks, they receive nothing but destructive punishment. On 
 the words : " Wait ye upon me," compare Hab. ii. 3. " The 
 day that the Lord rises up to the prey" is the time when He 
 will begin His great triumphal march against the Gentile 
 world. With the words : " For my right," &c., a new argu- 
 ment for the call " Wait ye upon me," commences. But this 
 does not by any means close with the 8th verse, but goes on 
 to the end of ver. 1 0. First : Wait, for I will judge the na- 
 tions. It is not without meaning that, as regards your hope, 
 I I'efer you to the judgment upon the Gentiles ; for, in conse- 
 quence of this judgment, their conversion will take place, and 
 a consequence of their conversion is, that they bring back to 
 Zion her scattered members. In the thought, that the judg- 
 ments upon the Gentile world will break their hardness of 
 heart, and prepare them for their conversion, Zephaniah follows 
 Isaiah, who, e.g. in chap, xix., exemplifies it in the case of 
 Egypt, and in chap, xxiii. in that of Tyre. The biniised reed 
 and the faintly burning wick is not merely a designation of 
 the sino-le individuals who have been endowed with the riafht 
 disposition for the kingdom of God, but of whole nations. 
 " The clean lip" in ver. 9 forms the contrast to the unclean 
 lips in Is. vi. With unclean lips they had, in the time of the 
 long-suffering of God, invoked their idols, Ps. xvi. 4. On the 
 words : " To serve Him with one shoulder," comp. Is. xix. 23 : 
 " And Egj'pt serves with Asshur." The words : " From beyond 
 the rivers of Ethiopia," in ver. 10, rest on Is. xviii. 1. In 
 both of the passages, Ethiopia is the type of the whole Gen- 
 tile world to be converted in future. In Is. xviii. Ethiopia 
 offers itself and all which it has to the Lord ; here it brings 
 the scattered members of the community of the Israeli tish 
 people to the Kingdom of God. "inj? always means " to sup- 
 
ZEPHANIAH, III. 8 13. 359 
 
 plicate," never " to burn incense." Ezek. viii. 1 1 must thus 
 be translated : " Eveiy man, his censer in his hand, and the 
 supplication of the cloud of incense went up ; compare remarks 
 on Rev. v. 8. The dispersed members of the Church suppli- 
 cate that the Lord would again receive them into His com- 
 munion (compare Hos. xiv. 3; Jer. xxxi. 9, 18 ; Zech. xii. 
 1 0); and these supplications cannot remain without an answer, 
 since they from whom they proceed stand in a close relation 
 to the Lord. " Tiie daughter of my dispersed" is the daughter 
 or communion, consisting of the dispersed of the Lord, just as 
 in the phrase " the daughter of the Chaldeans," the Chaldeans 
 themselves are the daughter or virgin. The designation, in 
 itself, plainly suggests the dispersed members of the old Con- 
 gregation, inasmuch as they only can be designated as the 
 dispersed of the Lord. To this, moreover, must be added the 
 reference to Deut. iv. 27 : " And the Lord disperses you among 
 the nations ;" xxviii. 6 -i : " And the Lord disperses thee among 
 all the nations from the one end of the earth even unto the 
 other," — an announcement which, at the time of Zephaniah, 
 had already been fulfilled upon the ten tribes, and the fulfil- 
 ment of which was soon to commence upon Judah. It is only 
 when the members of the old Cono-regation are understood 
 by the suppliants and dispersed, that the call, " Wait ye upon 
 me" is here established and confirmed. The offering of the 
 meat-offering signifies, in the symbolism of the Mosaic lav/, 
 diligence in good works, such as is to be peculiar to the re- 
 deemed. A single manifestation of it is the missionary zeal 
 which is here shown by the converted Gentiles. 
 
 In harmony with the Song of Solomon, Isaiah announces in 
 several passages, that the converted Gentiles shall, at some 
 future period, labour for the restoration of Israel ; compare the 
 remarks on Is. xi. 12. Zephaniah here specially refers to the 
 remarkable passage, Is. Ixvi. 1 8-21 , which we must here subject 
 to a somewhat closer examination : Ver. 1 8. " And I . . . . 
 their works and their thoughts ; the time cometh to gather all 
 Gentiles and tongues, and they come and see ray glory." The 
 first hemistich still belongs to the threatening. The holy God 
 and unholy men, the unholy members of the Church to which 
 the Lord spake : " Ye shall be holy, for I am holy," and their 
 sinful thoughts and words are simply placed beside one an- 
 
'M){) MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 other, and it is left to every one to draw from it the inference 
 as to the fate awaitinfj them. " I and their works" — what an 
 inmiense contrast, a contrast which must be adjusted by tlie 
 judgment! With the threatening, the Prophet then connects, 
 by a suital)le contrast to the rejection of a great part of the 
 covenant-people, the calling of the Gentiles. The glory of the 
 Lord, which the Gentiles see, is His glory which, up to that 
 time, was concealed, but is now manifested ; compare Is. xl. 5, 
 Ix. 2, Hi. 10, liii. 1. Ver. 19. "And I set a sign among them, 
 and send from among them escaped ones unto the nations, to 
 Tarshish, &;c., to the isles afar off that have not heard my fame, 
 neither have seen my glory, and they declare my glory among 
 the Gentiles," — The suffix in Dna can refer to those only from 
 amoncr the nations and tonirues who have come and seen the 
 glory of God. They are sent out to bring the message of the 
 living God, the message of salvation to those also who hitherto 
 have not come. By the demonstration of the Spirit and 
 power, they are marked out as blessed of the Lord, as His 
 servants, separated from the world given up to destruction. 
 Just as the wicked, the servants of the prince of this world, 
 have their mark, Gen. iv. 50, so have the servants of God 
 theirs also, which may be recognised by all who are well dis- 
 posed. It is only by one's own fault, and at one's own risk, 
 that the sign is not understood. The fact that " unto the 
 nations" forms the beginning, and the " isles afar off" — isles 
 in the sea of the world, kingdoms — the close, shows that the 
 single names, Tarshish, kc, are only individualizations. In 
 the following verse, too, all the heathens are spoken of Ver. 
 20 : " And they bring, out of all nations, your brethren for a 
 meat-offering unto the Lord, upon horses, kc, to my holy 
 mountain to Jervisalem, as the children of Israel bring the 
 meat-offering in a clean vessel unto the house of the Lord." 
 It is in this verse that it clearly appears, that Zephaniah de- 
 pends upon it ; and it is by the offering of the spiritual meat- 
 offering that his dependence is recognized. The subject in 
 " they bring" is the Gentiles, to whom the message of salvation 
 has been brought. Tliey, having themselves attained salva- 
 tion, offer to the Lord, as a meat-offering, the former members 
 of His Kingdom who were separated from it. It is they, not 
 the Gentiles who have become believei-s, who in the second 
 
ZEPHANIAH, III. 8 13. 361 
 
 part of Isaiah, are throughout designated as the hrethren. 
 Salvation is first to pass from Israel to the Gentiles, and shall 
 then, from them, return to Israel. The two verses before ua 
 thus contain a sanction for the mission among the heathens 
 and among Israel. Vers. 18 and 19 divide the conversion of 
 the Gentiles into two main stations ; it is only when the 
 Church has arrived at the second, that the missionary work 
 among Israel will fully thrive and prosper. To the deem 
 vessel in which the outward sacrifice was offered, correspond 
 the faith and love with which they, who were formerly hea- 
 thens, offer the spiritual meat-offering. Ver. 21 : "And of 
 them also will I take for Levitical priests, saith the Lord." 
 Of them, i.e., of those who formerly were heathens ; for it is 
 to them that, in the words preceding, a priestly function, viz., 
 the offering of the meat-offering, is assigned. Of them also ; 
 not merely from among the old covenant-people, to whom, 
 under the former dispensation, the priestly office was limited. 
 The fact that the priests are designated as Levitical priests, is 
 intended to keep out the thought that the point in question 
 related only to priests in a lower sense, beside whom the Le- 
 vitical priesthood, attached to natural descent, would continue 
 to exist in full vigour. Priests with full dignities and rights 
 are here so much the more required, that, according to what 
 precedes, the point in question does not refer merely to a per- 
 sonal relation to the Lord, to immediate access to the throne 
 of grace, but to the priestly office proper. 
 
 Vers. 11-13 describe the internal condition of the redeemed 
 Church of the future, — a condition so different from the present 
 one. The expression, " they that proudly rejoice in them," is 
 from Is. xiii. 3. '•3 in ver. 1 3 is to be accounted for from the 
 fact, that wherever there exists the blessing promised by the 
 Law of God (Lev. xxvi. 6) to faithfulness, faithfulness itself 
 must exist. 
 
 In ver. 1 4 ff , the Jerusalem of the future is addressed ; 
 compare the expression, "at that time," ver. 20. 
 
 I 
 
( 3G2 ) 
 
 THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. 
 
 GKNERAL PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 
 
 In Malachi iii. 1, the Lord promises that He would send 
 His messenger who should prepare the way before Him, who 
 was to come to His temple, judging and punishing ; vers. 2.S, 
 2-t (iv. 5, 0) : that before the coming of His great and dread- 
 ful day, before He smites the land with a curse, He would 
 send another Elijah, who should bring back the heart of the 
 fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their 
 fathers. Even before this prophecy was expressed in words, 
 it had adualhj been given in the existence of Jeremiah, who, 
 during the whole long period of forty-one years, before the 
 destruction, announced the judgments of the Lord, — who, with 
 burning zeal and ardent love to the people, preached repent- 
 ance, — and who, even after the destruction, sought the small 
 remnant that had been left, and was anxious to secure it 
 against the new day of the Lord, which, by its obstinate im- 
 penitence, it wivs drawing down upon itself It is this typical 
 relation of Jeremiah to John the Baptist and Christ, of which 
 the Jewish tradition had an anticipation, although it misun- 
 dei'stood and expi'essed it in a gross, outward manner, by 
 teaching that, at the end of days, Jeremiah would again appear 
 on earth, — it is this, which invests with a peculiar charm the 
 contemplation of his ministry, and the study of his prophecies. 
 
 The name of the Prophet is to be explained from Exod. xv. 
 1 , from which it is probably taken. It signifies " The Lonl 
 throws." He who bore it was consecrated to that God who 
 with an almighty hand throws to the ground all His enemies. 
 From chap. i. 1 : " See, I set thee to-daj? over the nations 
 
THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. 363 
 
 and over the kingdoms, to root out and to pull down, to destroy 
 and to throw down, to build and to plant," it appears that it 
 was by a dispensation of divine providence, that the Prophet 
 bore this name with full right, and that the character of his 
 mission is thereby designated. The judging and destructive 
 activity which the Prophet, as an instrument of God, is to 
 exercise, is here not only placed at the commencement, but four 
 appellations are also devoted to it, whilst only two are devoted 
 to his healing and planting activity. As the object of tlie 
 throtuing, we have to conceive, not of the unfaithful covenant- 
 people only. This appears from the mention of the nations 
 and kingdoms here, and fai'ther, from ver. 1 4, where the Lord 
 says to the Prophet : " Out of the North the evil breaks forth 
 upon all the inhabitants of the earth." To be the herald of 
 the judgment to be executed upon the whole world by the 
 Chaldeans, was so much the destiny of the Prophet, that, in 
 chap. i. 3, the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in which this judg- 
 ment was brought to a close, as far as Judah was concerned, 
 is mentioned as the closing point of his ministry. The Pro- 
 phet, as is reported by the book itself, still continued his 
 ministry even among the remnant of the people ; but that is 
 lost sight of The " carrying away of Jenisalem" is treated as 
 the great closing point ; just as, in a manner altogether similar, 
 it is, in the case of Daniel, in chap. i. 21, the year of Israel's 
 deliverance, although, according to chap. x. 1, his prophetic 
 ministry extended beyond that period. 
 
 Jeremiah was called to his office when still a youth, in the 
 13th year of king Josiah, and hence one year after the first 
 reformation of this king, who, as early as in the 16th year of 
 his life, and the 8th of his reign, which lasted 31 years, began 
 to seek the Lord. A king such as he, unto whom no king 
 before him was like, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, 
 and with all his soul, and with all his might, (2 Kings xxiii. 
 25), in the midst of an evil and adulterous generation, is a 
 remarkable phenomenon, as little conceivable from natural 
 causes as the existence of Melchizedec without father, without 
 descent — isolated from all natural development — in the midst 
 of the Canaanites who, with rapid strides and irresistibly, 
 hastened on to the completion of their sin. His existence has 
 the same root as that of Jeremiah, — a fact which becomes the 
 
3<U MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 more evident when we take into consideration the connection 
 of the Regal and Prophetical ottices in Christ for the salvation 
 of the people hastening anew to its destruction, and the faith- 
 fulness of the Covenant-God, and His long-suffering which 
 makes every effort to lead the apostate children to repentance. 
 The zeal of both, of Josiah and Jeremiah, — although supported 
 by manifold assistance from other (quarters, as e.g by the pro- 
 phetess Huldah and the prophet Zephauiah — was unable to 
 stem the tide of prevailing corruption, and, hence, to stop the 
 tide of the di\dne judgments. The corruption was so deeply 
 rooted, that only single individuals could be saved, hke brands 
 from the burning. It had made fearful progress under the 
 protracted reign of Manasseh, whose disposition must be re- 
 garded as a product of the spirit of the time then prevailing, 
 of which he must not be considered as the creator, but as the 
 representative only, 2 Kings xxiii. 26, 27, xxiv. 3, 4. The 
 scanty fruits of his late conversion had been again entirely 
 consumed under the short reign of his wicked son Amon ; it 
 had indeed so little of a comprehensive or lasting influence, 
 that the author of the Book of Kings thought himself entitled 
 altogether to pass it over. It was even difficult to put limits 
 to outward idolatry ; and how imperfectly he succeeded in this, 
 is seen from the prophecies of Jeremiah uttered after the refor- 
 mation. And even where he was successful in his efibrts ; 
 even where an emotion was manifested, a wish to return to 
 the living fountain which they had forsaken, even there, the 
 corruption soon broke forth again, only in a different form. 
 With deep grief, Jeremiah reprovingly reminds the people of 
 this, wJiose righteousness was like the morning dew, in chap. 
 iii. 4, 5 : " Hast thou not but lately called me : My Father, 
 friend of my youth, thou ? Will He reserve His anger for 
 ever, will He keep it to the end ? Behold, thus thou spakest, 
 and soon thou didst the evil, didst accomplish" — an accom- 
 jdishment quite different from that of the ancestor. Gen. xxxii. 
 29. Since the disease had not been healed, but had only been 
 driven out from one part of the diseased organism, the foolish 
 incUnation to idolatry was followed by as foolish a confidence 
 in the miserable righteousness by works, in tlie divine election, 
 — the offering up of sacrifices, &c., being considered as the sole 
 condition of its validity. "Trust ye not in lying words" — so 
 
THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. 365 
 
 the Prophet is obliged to admonish them in chap. vii. 4 — 
 " saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the 
 temple of the Lord are they" (the people imagined that they 
 could not be destroj^ed, because the Lord had, according to 
 their opinion, for ever established His residence among them ; 
 compare 1 Cor. iii. 17 ; 1 Tim. iii. 15). "Thou sayest, I am 
 innocent ; His anger hath entirely turned from me ; behold I 
 plead with thee, because thou sayest : I have not sinned," 
 chap. ii. 35. " To what purpose shall there come for me in- 
 cense from Sheba, and sweet cane, the goodly, from a far 
 country ? Your burnt-ofterings are not acceptable, nor your 
 sacrifices pleasant unto me," chap. vi. 20. Towards the end 
 of Josiah's reign, the approaching judgment of God upon Judah 
 became more perceptible. The former Asiatic dominion of tlie 
 Assyrians passed over entirely to the Chaldeans, whose fresh 
 and youthful strength so much the more threatened Judah 
 with destruction, that from the Assyrians they had inherited 
 the enmity to Egjrpt, on account of which Judah obtained 
 great importance in their eyes. According to the announce- 
 ment of the prophets generally, and of Jeremiah especially, who, 
 at his verjT" vocation, had it assigned to him as his main task 
 to announce the calamity from the North, it was by the Chal- 
 deans that the deadly stroke should be inflicted upon the 
 people implicated in the conflicts of these hostile powers ; but 
 it was the Egyptians who inflicted upon them the first severe 
 wound. Josiah fell in the battle with Pharaoh Necho. The 
 people, conscious of guilt, were, by his death, filled with a fear- 
 ful expectation of the things that were to come. They had fore- 
 bodings that they were now standing at the boundary line where 
 grace and anger separate (compare remarks on Zech. xii. 11); 
 and these forebodings were soon converted into bitter certainty 
 by experience. Jehoiakim ascended the throne, after Jehoahaz 
 or Shall um, had, after a short reign, been carried away by the 
 Egyptians. He stood to his father Josiah in just the same rela- 
 tion as did the people to God, in reference to the mercy which 
 He had oflfered to them in Josiah. A more glaring contrast (see 
 its exhibition in chap, xxii.) can hardly be imagined. Through- 
 out, Jehoiakim shows himself to be entirely destitute not only 
 of love to God, but also of the fear of God ; he furnishes the 
 complete image of a king whom God had given in anger. He 
 
80G MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 is a blood-thii-sty tyrant, an exasperated enemy to truth. At 
 the beginning of his reign, some influence of Josiah's spuit is 
 still seen. The priests and false prophets, rightly under- 
 standinjj the signs of the time, came forward with tlie mani- 
 festation of their long restrained hatred against Jeremiah, in 
 whom they hate their own conscience. They bring against 
 him a charge of life and death, because he had prophesied 
 destruction to the city and temple; but the rulers of the 
 people acquit him, cha]). xxvi. This influence, however, soon 
 ceased. The king became the centre around whom gathered 
 all that was ungodly, which, under Josiah, had timorously 
 withdrawn into concealment. Soon it became a power, a 
 torrent ovei'flowing the whole country; and that the more 
 easily, the weaker were the dams which still existed from the 
 time of Josiah. One of the first victims for truth who fell, 
 was the prophet Urijah. The king, imagining that he was 
 able to kill truth itself in those who pi-oclaimed it, could not 
 bear the thought that he was still living, although it was in 
 distant Egypt, and caused him to be brought thence (see 1. c). 
 The fact that Jeremiah escaped every danger of death during 
 the eleven years of this king's reign, although he ever anew 
 threatened death to the king and destruction to the people, 
 was a constant miracle, a glorious fulfilment of the divine 
 promise given to him when he was called (i. 1 9) : " They shall 
 fight against thee, and they shall not prevail against thee; for 
 I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee." The threat- 
 ened divine punishment advanced, under Jehoiakim, several 
 steps towards its completion. In the fourth year of his reign, 
 Jerusalem was, for the fii"st time, taken by the Chaldeans (com- 
 pare "Dissertations on the Genuineness of Daniel" p. 45 ff.), 
 after the power of the Egyptian Empire had been for ever 
 broken by the battle at Carchemish on the Euphrates. The 
 victor this time acted with tolerable mildness; the sin of the 
 people was to appear in its full light by the circumstance, 
 that God gave them time for repentance, and did not at once 
 proceed to the utmost rigour, but advanced, step by step, in 
 His judgments. But lierc too it was seen that crime, in its 
 highest degree, becomes madness ; the more nearly that people 
 and king approached the abyss, the greater became the speed 
 with which they hastened towards it. It is true that they 
 
THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. 867 
 
 did not remain altogether insensible when the threatenino-s of 
 the Prophet began to be fulfilled. This is seen from the day 
 of fasting and repentance which was appointed in remem- 
 brance of the first capture by the Chaldeans (compare "Dis- 
 sertations on the Genuineness of Daniel^' p. 49); but fleeting 
 emotions cannot stop the course of sin. Soon it became worse 
 than it had been before; and therefore the divine judgments 
 also reached a new station. Even political wisdom advised 
 the king quietly to submit to dependence on the Chaldeans, 
 which was, comparatively, little oppressive. It was obvious 
 that, unsupported, he could effect nothing against the Chal- 
 dean power; and, to the unprejudiced eye, it was as obvious 
 that the Egyptians could not help him ; and even had it been 
 possible, he would only have changed masters. But, according 
 to the counsel of God, who takes away the understanding of 
 the wise, these political reasons, obvious though they were, 
 should not exercise any influence upon him, because his ob- 
 durate heart prevented him from listening to the religious 
 arguments which Jeremiah brought before him. Melandhon 
 (opp. ii., p. 407 ff.) points it out as a remarkable circumstance 
 that, while other prophets, e.g., Samuel, Elisha, Isaiah, exhort 
 to a vigorous opposition to the enemies, and, in tbat case, 
 promise divine assistance, yea that, to some extent, they even 
 took an active part in the deliverance, Jeremiah, on the other 
 hand, always preaches unconditional submission. The issue, 
 which is as different as the advice, shows that this difference 
 has not, by any means, its foundation in the persons, but in 
 the state of things. The seventy years of Chaldean servitude 
 were irrevocably decreed upon Judah; even the exact state- 
 ment of years, which else is so uncommon in reference to the 
 fate of the covenant-people, shows how firm and determined 
 was that decree. They had altogether, and more fuUy than 
 at any other time, given themselves over to the internal power 
 of heathenism; according to a divine necessit};^, they must 
 therefore also be given over to the external power of the 
 heathen, both for punishment and reform. God himself could 
 not change that decree, for it rested on His nature. Hence, 
 it would be in vain though even the greatest intercessors, 
 Moses and Samuel, should stand before Him, Jer. xv. 1 ff. 
 Intercessory prayer can be effectual, only if it be offered in 
 
3G8 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the name of God. But if such were the ca.se, how foolish was 
 it to rebel against the Chaldean power; to attempt to remove 
 the effect, while they allowed the cause to remain; to stop 
 the brook, while the source still continued to send forth its 
 waters. It would have been foolish, even if the relative 
 power of the Jews and Chaldeans had been altogether reversed. 
 For when the Jjord sells a people, one can chase a thousand, 
 and two can put ten thousand to flight (Deut. xxxii. 30). 
 But the shepherd of the people had become a fool, and did 
 not enquire after the Lord. He could not, therefore, act 
 wisely; and the whole flock was scattered, Jer. x. 21. Je- 
 hoiakim rebelled against the Chaldeans, and for some years he 
 was allowed to continue in the delusion of having acted very 
 wisely, for Nebuchadnezzar had more important things to 
 mind and to settle. But then he went up against Jerusalem, 
 and put an end to his reign and life, Jer. xxii. 1-12; 2 Kings 
 xxiv. 2; "Dissertations on the Genuineness of Da) del," -p. 'l-O. 
 As yet, the long-suffering of God, and, hence, the patience of 
 the Chaldeans, were not at an end. Jehoiachin or Jeconiah 
 was raised to the throne of his father. Even the short reign 
 of three months gave to the youth sufficient occasion to mani- 
 fest the wickedness of his heart, and his enmity to God. 
 Suspicions against his fidelity arose; a Chaldean army anew 
 entered the city, and carried away the king, and, along with 
 him, the great mass of the people. Tliis was the fir.st great 
 deportation. In the providence of God it was so arranged 
 that, among those who were carried away, there was the very 
 flower of the nation. The apparent suffeinng was to them a 
 blessing. They were, for their good, sent away from the 
 place over which the storms of God's anger were soon to dis- 
 charge themselves, into the land of the Chaldeans, and formed 
 there the nucleus for the Kingdom of God, in its impending 
 new form, Jer. xxiv. Nothing now seemed to stand in the 
 way of the divine judgment upon the wicked mass that had 
 been left behind, like bad figs that no one can eat for bad- 
 ness, — they whom the Lord had threatened that He would 
 give them over to hurt and calamity in all the kingdoms of 
 the earth, to reproach, and a proverb, and a taunt, and a 
 curse, in all places whither He would drive them, Jer. xxiv. 9. 
 And still the Lord was waitini; before He carried out this 
 
THE PROPHET JEREMTAH. 8t)9 
 
 threatening, and smote the laud to cursing. Mattaniah or 
 Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, the uncle of Jehoiachin, who was 
 given to them for a king, might, at least partially, have averted 
 the evil. But he too had to learn that the fear of the Lord 
 is the beginning of wisdom. From various quarters, attempts 
 have been made to exculpate him, on the plea that his fault 
 was only weakness, which made him the tool of a corrupt 
 party; but Scripture forms a different estimate of him, and 
 he who looks deeper will find its judgment to be correct, — 
 will be able to grant to him that preference only over Je- 
 hoiakim which C. B. Michaelis assigned to him in the words: 
 " Jehoiakim was of an obdurate and wild disposition ; Zede- 
 kiah had some fear of God, although it was a servile, hypo- 
 critical fear, but Jehoiakim had none at all." And even this 
 preference, when more narrowly examined, amounts to nothing, 
 for it belongs to nature, and not to grace. Whether corruption 
 manifests itself as weakness, or as a carnal, powerful opposi- 
 tion to divine truth, is accidental, and depends upon the ' 
 diversity of mental and bodily organization. The f;ict that 
 Zedekiah did not altogether put away from himself the truth 
 and its messengers {Dakler remarks: "He respected the Pro- 
 phet, without having the power of following his advice; he 
 even protected his life against his persecutors, but he did not 
 venture to secure him against their vexation") cannot be put 
 down to his credit; he ivas, against his will, forced to do so; 
 and indeed he could not resist a powerful impression of any 
 kind. In a man of Jehoiakirn's character, the same measure 
 of the fear of God would induce us to mitigate our opinion ; 
 for in such a one it could not exist without some support from 
 within. Confiding in the help of the neighbouring nations, 
 especially the Egyptians ; persuaded by the false prophets and 
 the nobles ; himself seized by that spirit of giddiness and intoxi- 
 cation which, with irresistible jiower, carried away the people to 
 the abyss, Zedekiah broke the holy oath which he had sworn to 
 the Chaldeans, and, after an obstinate resistance, J erusalem was 
 taken and destroyed. As yet, the long suffering of God, and, 
 hence, also that of man, was not altogether at an end. The con- 
 querors left a comparatively small portion of the inhabitants in 
 the land. The e-race of God 2;ave them Gedaliah, an excellent 
 man, foi- their civil superior, and Jeremiah for their ecclesiastical 
 VOL. II. a a 
 
 I 
 
f^TO MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 superior. The latter preferred to remain in the smoking ruins, 
 rather than follow the brilliant promises of the Chaldeans, and 
 was willing to persevere to the last in the discharge of his 
 duty, althougli he was by this time far advanced in life, and 
 oppressed with deep grief But it appears as if the people 
 had been bent upon emptying, to the last drop, the cup of 
 divine wrath. Gedaliali is ass;vssinated. Even those who did 
 not partake in the crime fled to Egypt, disregarding the word 
 of the Lord through the Prophet, who announced a curse upon 
 them if they fled, but a blessing if they remained. 
 
 What the Prophet had to sufler under such circumstances, 
 one may easily imagine even without consulting history. 
 Even although he had remained free from all personal vexa- 
 tions and attacks, it could not but be an immeasurable giTcf 
 to him to dwell in the midst of such a generation, to see their 
 corruption increasing more and more, to see the abyss coming 
 nearer and nearer, to find all his faithful warnings unheeded, 
 and his whole ministry in vain, at least as far as the mass of 
 the people were concerned. " O that they would give me in 
 the wilderness a lodging-place for wayfai-ing men" — so he 
 speaks as early as under Josiah, chap. ix. 1 (2) — " and I woidd 
 leave my people and go from them ; for they are all adulterer, 
 an assembly of treacherous men." But from these personal 
 vexations and attacks, he neither was, nor could be exempted. 
 Mockery, hatred, calumny, ignominy, curses, imprisonment, 
 bonds were his portion. To bear such a burden would have 
 been difiicult to any man, but most of all to a man of his dis- 
 position. " The more tender the heart, the deeper the smart." 
 He was not a second Elijah ; he had a soft disposition, a lively 
 sensibility ; his eyes were easily filled with tears. And he 
 who would have liked so much to live in peace and love with 
 all, having entered into the service of tiTith, was obliged to 
 become a second Ishmael, his hand against every man, and 
 every man's hand against him. He who so ardently loved 
 his people, must see this love misconstrued and rejected ; must 
 see himself branded as a traitor to the people, by those men 
 who were themselves traitors. All these things were to him 
 the cause of violent struggles and conflicts, which he candidly 
 lays before us in various piissages, especially in chap, xii. and 
 
THE PROPHET JEREJIIAH. 37l 
 
 XX., because, by the victory, the Lord, who alone could give 
 it, was glorified. 
 
 He was sustained by inward consolations, by wonderful 
 deliverances, by the remarkable fulfilment of his prophecies 
 which he himself lived to witness ; but especially by the cir- 
 cumstance that the Lord caused him to behold His futvire sal- 
 vation with the same clearness as His judgments ; so that he 
 could consider the latter only as transient, and, even by the 
 most glaring contrast between the appearance and the idea, 
 never lost the firm hope of the final victory of the former. 
 This hope formed the centre of his whole life. For a long- 
 series of years, he is somewhat cautious in giving utterance to 
 it ; for, just as Hosea in the kingdom of the ten tribes, so he 
 too has to do with secure and gross sinners, who must be ter- 
 rified by the preaching of the Law, and the message of wrath. 
 But, even here, single sunbeams everywhere constantly break 
 through the dark clouds. But towards the close, when the total 
 destruction is already at hand, and his commission to root out 
 and destroy draws to an end, because now the Lord himself is 
 to speak by deeds, he can, to the full desire of his heart, carry 
 out the second part of his calling, viz., to plant and to build 
 (compare chap, i.) ; and it is now, that his mouth is overflow- 
 ing, that it is seen how full of it his heart had always been. 
 The whole vocation of the Prophet, Calvin strikingly expresses 
 in these words : " I say simply that Jeremias was sent by 
 God to announce to the people the last defeat, and, farther, to 
 proclaim the future redemption, but in such a manner, that he 
 always puts in the seventy years' exile." That, according to 
 him, this redemption is not destined for Israel only, but that 
 the Gentiles also partake in it, appears not incidentally only 
 in the prophecies to his own people ; but it is also prominently 
 brought out in the prophecies against the foreign nations 
 themselves, e.g., in the prophecy against Egypt, chap. xlvi. 
 26; against Moab, chap, xlviii. 47 ; against Amnion, xlix. 6. 
 
 In announcing the Messiah from the house of David (chap, 
 xxii. 5, xxx. 9, xxxiii. 15), Jeremiah agrees with the former 
 prophets. The Messianic features peculiar to him are the fol- 
 lowing : — The announcement of a revelation of God, which by 
 far outshines the former one from above the Ark of the Co- 
 venant, and by which the Ark of the Covenant, with every 
 
.*?72 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 thing attached to it, shall become antiquated, chap. iii. 14-17 ; 
 the announcement of a new covenant, distinguished from the 
 former by greater richness in the forgiveness of sins, and the 
 outpouring of the Holy S})irit : " I give my law in their inward 
 parts, and I will write it in their hearts," chap. xxxi. 31-34 ; 
 tlie intimation of the impending realization of the promise of 
 Moses : " Ye sliall be to me a kingdom of priests," with which 
 the abolition of the poor form of the priesthood hitherto is 
 connected, chap, xxxiii. 14-2G. 
 
 As regards the style of Jeremiah, Cunaeus (de repuh. Hebr. 
 i. 8, c. 7) pertinently remarks : " The whole majesty of Jere- 
 miali lies in his nco-lioent lanfjuacje ; that rouo'h diction becomes 
 him exceedingly well." It is certainly very superficial in Jerome 
 to seek the cause of that hwmilitas dictionis of the Prophet, 
 whom he, at the same time, calls in majcstate sensuum pro- 
 firndissiriium, in his origin fi"om the vicuhis Anathoth. It 
 would be unnatural if it were otherwise. The style of Jere- 
 miah stands on the same ground as the hairy garment and 
 leather girdle of Elijah. He who is sorrowful and afflicted in 
 his heart, whose eyes fail with tears (Lament, ii. 11), cannot 
 adorn and decorate himself in his dress or speech. 
 
 From chap. xi. 21, xii. 5, 6, several interpreters have in- 
 ferred, that the Prophet first came forward in hie native place 
 Anathoth, and that, because they there said to him : " Thou 
 shalt not prophecy in the name of the Lord, else thou shalt 
 die by our hand," he then went to Jerusalem. But those pas- 
 sages rather refer to an experience which the Prophet made at 
 an incidental visit in his native place, quite similar to what 
 our Saviour experienced at Nazareth, according to Luke iv. 
 24. For in chap. xxv. 3, Jeremiah says to "all the iidiabit- 
 ants of Jerusalem," that he had spoken to tiunn since the thir- 
 teenth year of Josiah. As early as in chap. ii. 2, at the be- 
 ginning of a discoinse which bears a general introductory cha- 
 racter, and which immediately follows, and is connected with 
 his vocation in chap, i., he receives the command : " Go, and 
 ciy into the ears of Jerusalem." The opening speech itself 
 cannot, according to its contents, have been spoken in some 
 corner of the countiy, but in the metropohs only, in the temple 
 more specially, the centre of the nation and its spiritual dwell- 
 ing place. It was there that that mnst be delivered which 
 was to be told to the whole people as such. 
 
THE PKOPHET JEREMIAH. S73 
 
 THE SECTION, CHAP, III , 14-lT. 
 
 The whole Section, from chap. iii. 6, to the end of chap, vi., 
 forms one connected discourse, separated from the preceding 
 context by the inscription in chap. iii. C, and from the subse- 
 quent context, by the inscription in chap. vii. 1. This sepa- 
 ration, however, is more external than internal. The contents 
 and tone remain the same through the whole series of chap- 
 ters which open the collection of the prophecies of Jeremiah, 
 and that to such a degree, that we are compelled to doubt the 
 correctness of the proceeding of those interpreters, who would 
 determine the chronological order of the single portions, and 
 fix the exact period in the reign of Josiah to which every 
 single portion belongs. If such a proceeding were admissible, 
 why should the Prophet have expressed himself, in the inscrip- 
 tion of the Section before us, in terms so general as : " And 
 the Lord said unto me in the days of Josiah the king?" 
 Every thing on which these interpreters endeavour to found 
 more accurate determinations in regard to the single Sections, 
 disappears upon a closer consideration. Thus, e.g., the twofold 
 reference to the seeking of help from Egypt, in chap. ii. 1 ff, 
 xxxvi., xxxvii., on which Eichlwrn and DaJder lay so much 
 stress. We are not entitled here to suppose a reference to a 
 definite historical event, which, moreover, cannot be histori- 
 cally pointed out in the whole time of Josiah, but can only 
 be supposed on unsafe and unfounded conjectures. In both of 
 the passages something future is spoken of, as is evident from 
 vers. 16 and 19. The thought is this: — that Asshur, i.e., the 
 power on the Euphrates (compare 2 Kings xxiii. 29), which had. 
 for a long time opened its mouth to swallow up Judah, just as it 
 had already swallowed up the kingdom of the ten tribes, would 
 not be conciliated, and that Egypt could not grant help against 
 him. This thought refers to historical circumstances which 
 had already existed, and continued to exist for some centuries, 
 and which, in reference to Israel, is given utterance to as 
 early as by Hosea, compare Vol i. p. 164, f. Our view is this : 
 We have here before us, not so much a series of prophecies, 
 each of which had literally been so uttered at some particular 
 
374 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 period in the rcigni of Josiali, as rather a resume of the wliole 
 prophetic ministry of Jeremiah under Josiah ; a collection of 
 all which, being independent of particular circumstances of that 
 time, had, in general, the destiny to give an inward support to 
 the outward reforming activity of Josiah, a specimen of the 
 manner in which the Prophet discharged the divine commis- 
 sion which ho had received a year after the first reformation 
 of Josiah. Even the manner in which chap ii. is connected 
 with chap. i. places this relation to his call beyond any 
 doubt. We have thus before us hei'e the same phenomenon 
 which we have already perceived in several of the minor pro- 
 phets ; comp. e.g., the introduction to Micah. 
 
 In the section before us, the Prophet is engaged with a two- 
 fold object, — tirst, with the proclamation of salvation for Israel, 
 chap. iii. 6 — iv. 2 ; secondly, with the threatening for Judah, 
 chap. iv. 3, to the end of chap. vi. It is only incidentally, in 
 chap. iii. ] 8, that it is intimated that Judah also, after the 
 threatening has been fulfilled upon them, shall partake in the 
 salvation. It is self-evident that these two objects must not 
 be considered as lying beside one another. According to the 
 whole context, the announcement of salvation for Israel caimot 
 have any other object than that of wounding Judah. This 
 object even comes out distinctly in ver. 6-11, and the import 
 of the discourse may, therefore, be thus stated : Israel does 
 not continue to be rejected as pharisaical Judah imagined ; 
 Judah does not continue to be spared. — When the Prophet 
 entered upon his ministry, ninety-four years had already elapsed 
 since the divine judgment had broken in upon Isi-ael ; every 
 hope of restoration seemed to have vanished. Judah, instead 
 of being thereby warned ; instead of beholding, in the sin of 
 others, the imag-e of its own ; instead of perceiving, in the 
 destruction of the kingdom of its brethren, a prophecy of its 
 own destruction, was, on the contrary, strengthened in its 
 obduracy. The fact that it still existed, after Israel had, long 
 ago, hopelessly perished, as they imagined, appeared to them 
 as a seal which God impressed upon their ways. They rejoiced 
 at Israel's calamity, because, in it, they thought that they saw 
 a proof of their own excellency, just as, at the time of Christ, 
 the blindness of the Jews was increased by the circumstance 
 that they still considered themselves as the sole members of 
 
JEREMIAH CHAP. III. 14. 375 
 
 the Kingdom of God, and imagined the Gentiles to be excluded 
 from it. The Saviour's announcement of the calling of the 
 Gentiles stands in the same relation as the Prophet's announce- 
 ment of the restoration of Israel. 
 
 Ver. 1 4. " Turn, aiwstate children, saith the Lord, for I 
 inarry myself unto you, and I take one of a city, and two of 
 a family, and bring you to Zion." 
 
 The question here is : — To whom is the discourse here ad- 
 dressed, — to the members of Israel, i.e., the kingdom of the 
 ten tribes, as most of the interpreters suppose (Abarbanel, 
 Calvin, Schmid, and others), or, as others assume, to the inha- 
 bitants of Judea ? The decision has considerable influence 
 upon the exposition of the whole passage ; but it must unhesi- 
 tatingly and unconditionally be given in favour of the first 
 view. There is not one word to indicate a transition ; the very 
 same phrase, "turn, apostate children," occurs, in ver. 22, 
 of Israel. Apostate Israel is, in the preceding verses (G, 8, 11,) 
 the standing expression, while Judah is designated as treacher- 
 ous, ver. 8-11. The measure of guilt is determined by the 
 measure of gTace. The relation of the Lord to Judah was 
 closer, and hence, her apostacy was so much the more culpable. 
 Farther — A detailed announcement of salvation for Judah 
 would here not be suitable, inasmuch as no threatening pre- 
 ceded ; and ver. 18 (" In those days, the house of Judah shall 
 come by the side of [literally, " over"] the house of Israel," 
 accordino- to which the return of Judah is, in the meantime, a 
 subordinate point which has here been mentioned incidentally) 
 clearly shows that that announcement of salvation, contained 
 in vers. 14-17, refers to Israel. To Israel the Prophet imme- 
 diately returns in ver. 1 9 ; for, from the contrast to the house 
 of Judah in ver. 1 8, and to Judah and Jerusalem in chap. iv. 
 3, it is evident that by the house of Israel in ver. 20, and by 
 the sons of Israel in ver. 21, Israel, in the stricter sense, is to 
 be understood. Finally — It will be seen from the exposition, 
 that it is only on the supposition that Israel is addressed, that 
 the contents of ver. 16, 17, become intelligible. — In our ex- 
 planation of the words n^ns Tii'ya ""aJS ''3, we follow the prece- 
 dent of the Vulgate {quia ego vir vester), of Luther (" I will 
 
:^7<) MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 inany you to me"), of Cdlvin, ScJimld, and others. On the 
 other hand, others, especially PococJce, ad P.M. p. 2, Schidie'iis 
 on Prov. XXX. 22, Venenia, Schnurrer, Gesernus, Winer, BleeJc, 
 have made every endeavour to prove that bya is used sensu 
 vialo here, as well as in chap. xxxi. 32, where it occurs in a 
 connection altogether similar ; so that the decision must be 
 valid for both of the passages at the same time. This signifi- 
 cation thoy seek to make out in a twofold way. Some alto- 
 gether give up the derivation from the Hebrew usus loquendi, 
 and refer solely to the Arabic, where hv2 means fantidire. 
 Others derive from the Hebrew signification, " to rule," that 
 of a tyrannical dominion, and support their right in so doing, 
 by refciTing, with Geseniv^, to other verbs in which the sig- 
 nification, to subdue, to he distincjuished, to rule, has been 
 changed into that of looking down, despising, and contemning. 
 As regards the first derivation, even if the Arabic usus loquendi 
 wei^e proved, we could not from it make any certain inference 
 as regards the Hebrew usiis loquendi. But wath respect to 
 this Arabic usus loquendi, it is far from being proved and 
 established. It is true that such would not be the case if 
 there indeed occurred in Arabic the expression Ji=^jll J.*> 
 ji^^^li fastidivit vlr midiereni eanique exjndit, s.repudiavit ; 
 but it is only by a strange quid 'pro quo that interpreters, 
 even Schultens among them, following the example of Kimchi, 
 have saddled this expression upon the Arabic. The error lies 
 in a hasty view of Adul ^¥alid, who, instead of it, has i^-<li 
 J,=.-^ll jjju any one is embarrassed in his affair. The signi- 
 fication fasiidire, rejicere, is, in general, quite foreign to 
 the Arabic. The verb Ja^ denotes only : niente turhatus, 
 attonitus fuit, i.e., to be possessed, depHved of the use of one's 
 strength, to be enibarrassed, not to knoiv hovj to help one's self: 
 compare the Camus in Schultens and Freytag. As soon as 
 tlie plain connection of this signification with the ordinary one 
 is perceived, it is seen at once, that it is here out of the ques- 
 tion. As regards the second derivation, we must bring this 
 objection against it, that the fundamental signification of 
 ruling, from which that of riding tyrannically is said to have 
 arisen, is entirel}'' foreign to the Hebrew. More clearly than 
 ])y modem Lexicographers it was seen by Cocceius, that the 
 fundamental, yea the only signification of i>j;n, is that of pas' 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. III. 14. 377 
 
 sessi'}}g, occiipyrng. It may, indeed, be used also of rulers, as, e.g. 
 Isa. xxvi. 1 3, and 1 Cliron. iv. 22 ; but not in so far as they rule, 
 but in so far as they possess. On the former passage : " Jehovah 
 our God, yrhw Q"'3nx lil^ya, Lords beside thee have dominion over 
 us," Schultens, it is true, remarks : " Every one here easily recog- 
 nizes a severe and tyrannical dominion ;" but it is rather the 
 circumstance that the land of the Lord has at all foreign pos- 
 sessors, v^hich is the real sting of the grief of those lamenting, 
 and which so much occupies them, that they scarcely think of 
 the way and manner of the possessing. — Passages such as Is. 
 liv. 1,^ Ixii. 4, compare Job i. 8, where a relation is spoken of, 
 founded on most cordial love, show that the signification " to 
 iriavry'' does not by any means proceed ft-om that of ruling, 
 and is not to be explained from the absolute, slavish depend- 
 ence of the wife in the East, but rather from the signification 
 " to possess." And this is farther proved by passages such as 
 Deut. xxi. 10-13, xxvi. 1, where the copula carnalis is pointed 
 out as that by which the ^yn is completed. And, finally, it 
 is seen from the Arabic, where the wife is also called, rh]}2, 
 i\t.i, just as the husband is called ^j?3, ijni.- — It is farther 
 obvious that, in the frequent compositions of 7^3 with other 
 nouns, in order, by way of paraphrasis, to form adjectives, the 
 signification " lord" is far less suitable than that of " possessor," 
 eg., ni^iri hl^l, the dreamer, pj^ isya, the angry one, ^q^ isyn, the 
 covetous one, DTOfD bv2, the deceitful one, Tty ""^ya oppidani, 
 n''"i3 ""^yn, tJie memfihers of the covenant, etc. We arrive at the 
 same conclusion, if we look to the dialects. Here, too, the 
 signification "to possess" appears as' the proper and original 
 signification. In the Ethiopic, the verb signifies midtum pos- 
 sedit, dives fiiit. In Arabic, the significations are more varied ; 
 but they may all be traced back to one root. Thus, e.g. Jj-xi, 
 ^yi, according to the Camus, " a high and elevated land which 
 requires only one annual rain ; farther, a palm-tree, or any 
 other tree or plant which is not watered, or which the sk}^ 
 alone irrigates;" i.e., a land, a tree, a plant which themselves 
 possess, which do not require to borrow from others. This 
 reason of the appellation clearly appears in Dsheuhari (com- 
 
 ' Vitringa very correctly remarks on this passage : "py3, properly 6 ^x'^'^i 
 he who has any thing in his possession is, by an ellijjsis, applied to the hus- 
 band who, in Exod. xxi. 3, is rightly called n^'H, pys one who has a ?f(/t'." 
 
378 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 pare Schultens 1. c.) : " It is used of the palm-tree, which, by 
 its roots, provides for itself drink and sap, so that there is no 
 need for watering it. In favour of the signification "to rule" 
 in this verb, the following gloss from the Camus only can be 
 quoted: "Both (the 1st and 10th conjugations) when con- 
 strued with Tvhv auper ilium, denote : he has taken possession 
 of a thing, and behaved himself proudly towards it." But the 
 latter clause must be struck out ; for it has flowed only from 
 the false reading J 1 in Schultens, for which (compare Freytag) 
 (^1 noluit must be read, ^ya with ^y accordingly signifies 
 " to be the possessor of a thing, and, as such, not to be willing 
 to give it up to another." And thus every ground has been 
 taken from those who, from the Hebrew usus loqvendi, would 
 interpret ^ya in a bad sense, — The same result, however, which 
 we have reached upon philological grounds, we shall obtain 
 also, when we look to the context. From it, they are most 
 easily refuted, who, like Schultens, understand the whole verse 
 as a threatening. That which precedes, as well as that which 
 follows, breathes nothing but pure love to poor Israel. She is 
 not terrified by threatenings, like Judah who has not yet 
 drunk of the cup of God's wrath, but allured by the call : 
 " Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, for I 
 will give you rest." But they also lal)0ur under great difii- 
 culties who, after the example of Kimchi (" ego fastidivi vos, 
 eo sell, quod 'praetevlit tempore, ac jam colligam vos'), refer 
 the ^3 not so much to Ti^ya, as rather to »nnp^ : " For I have, 
 it is true, rejected you formerly, but now I take,"&c. This is the 
 only shape in which this interpretation can still appear; for it is 
 altogether arbitrary to explain '•a by " although," an interpre- 
 tation still found in Be Wette. If it had been the intention 
 of the Prophet to express this sense, nothing surely was less 
 admissible, than to omit just those words, upon which every- 
 thing depended — the words formerly and noio. Tinp^ and 
 "rhv^ evidently stand here in the same I'clation ; both together 
 form the ground for the return to the Lord. To these reasons 
 we may still add the circumstance that, according to our ex- 
 planation, we obtain the l»oautiful parallelism with ver. 12: 
 " Return thou, apostate Israel, saitli the Lord ; I will not cause 
 mine anger to fall upon you ; for I am merciful ; I do not 
 keep anger for ever," — a circumstance which has already been 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. IIL 14. 379 
 
 pointed out by Calvin. Israel's haughtiness is broken ; but 
 despondency now keeps them from returning to the Lord. He, 
 therefore, ever anew repeats His invitation, ever anew founds 
 it upon the fact, that He delights in showing mercy and love 
 to those who have forsaken Him. The rejection of Israel had, 
 in ver. 8, been represented under the image of divorce : " Be- 
 cause apostate Israel had committed adultery, I had put her 
 away, and given her the bill of divorce." What, therefore, is 
 more natural, than that her being received again, which was 
 offered to her out of pure mercy, should appear under the 
 image of a new marriage ; and that so much the more, that 
 the apostacy had, even in the preceding verse, been represented 
 as adultery and whoredom ? (" Thou hast scattered thy tvays," 
 i.e., thou hast been running about to various places after the 
 manner of an impudent whore seeking lovers" — Schmid ; 
 compare ver. 6.) Farther to be compared is ver. 22 : " Return 
 ye apostate children, (for) I will heal your apostacy. Behold 
 we come unto thee, for thou art the Lord our God." The ob- 
 jection that 55j;2, in the signification "to take in marriage" is 
 construed with the Accusative only, is of no weight. In a 
 manner altogether similar, lat, which else is connected with the 
 simple Accusative, is, in ver. 1 6, followed by the Preposition 3. 
 ^yn with a altogether coiTesponds to our " to join onesself in 
 marriage ;" and the construction has perhaps a certain emphasis, 
 and indicates the close and indissoluble connection. Of still 
 less weight is another objection, viz., that, in that case, the 
 Suffix Plur. is inadmissible. It is just the Israelites who are 
 the wife ; and this is so much the more evident that, in the 
 preceding verses, and even still in ver. 1 3, they had been treated 
 as such. Hence nothing remains but to determine the sense of 
 our passage, as was done by Calvin : " Because despair might 
 take hold of them, in such a manner that they might be afraid 
 
 of approaching Him He saith that He would 
 
 marry himself to them, and that He had not yet forgotten 
 that union which He once had bestowed upon them." This 
 is the only correct view; and by thus determining the sense, 
 we at the same time obtain the sure foundation for the expo- 
 sition of chap. xxxi. 32; just as, vice versa, the sense which 
 will result from an independent consideration of that passage. 
 
380 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 will serve to confirm that which was here established.^ In 
 the right determination of the sense of the subsequent words, 
 too, Calvin distinguishes himself advantageously from the 
 earlier, and mo.st of the later interpreters: "God shows that 
 there was no reason why some should wait for others; and 
 farther, although the very body of the people might be utterly 
 corrupted in their sins, yet, if even a few were to return. He 
 would show himself merciful to them. The covenant had been 
 entered into with the ivhole people. The single individual 
 might, therefore, have been disposed to imagine that his re- 
 pentance was in vain. Bvit in opposition to such fears, the 
 Prophet says: 'Although only one of a town should come to 
 me, he shall find an open door; although only two of one 
 tribe come to me, I will admit even them.' " After him Los- 
 canus too (in his Dissertation on this passage, Frankf. 1720) 
 has thus correctly stated the sense: "The small number shall 
 not prevent God from carrying out His counsel." Thus it is 
 seen — and this is alone suitable in this context — that the 
 apparent limitation of the promise is, in truth, an extension 
 of it. How gi'eat must God's love and mercy be to Israel, in 
 how wide an extent must the declaration be true: a/xsra/xsXjjra 
 ra yjxp'KsiiaTci %a] rj xXl^ffig rou &sou, Rom. xi. 29, if even a single 
 righteous Lot is by God delivered from the Sodom of Israel; 
 if Joshua and Caleb, untouched by the punishment of the sins 
 of the thousands, reach the Holy Land; if every penitent 
 heart at once finds a gracious God! Thus it ap})ears that this 
 passage is not by any means in contradiction to other passages 
 by which a complete restoration of Israel is promised. On 
 the contrary, the iTirvy^dvsiv of the h.XoyTi (Rom. xi. 7) an- 
 nounced here, is a pledge and guarantee for the more compre- 
 hensive and general mercy. — Expositors are at variance as to 
 the historical reference of the prophecy. Some, e.g. Theodoret, 
 Grotius, think exclusively of the return from the Babylonish 
 captivity. Othere (after the example of Jerome and the 
 Jewish interpreters) think of the Messianic time. It need 
 
 ' Afrain.st the explanation of Mniircr: " For I am your Lord ;" and that 
 i)f Eiriild : " I take you under n)y protection," it is decisive that ~>y2 never 
 nieau.s " to be Lord," far less '' to take under protection." 7y2, which pro- 
 I)erly means " to possess," is very conunonly used of marriage ; — as early as 
 in the Decalogue, the wife ap])ears as the noblest posseasion of the husband — 
 so that a priori this siguiiication is suggested and demanded. 
 
JEKEMIAH, CHAP. III. 14. 881 
 
 scarcely be remarked, that here, as in so many other passages, 
 this alternative is out of place. The prophecy has just the 
 very same extent as the matter itself, and, hence, refers to all 
 eternity. It was a commencement, that, at the time of Cyrus, 
 many from among the ten tribes, induced by true love to the 
 God of Israel, joined themselves to the returning Judeans, 
 and were hence again engrafted by God into the olive-tree. 
 It was a continuation of the fulfilment that, in later times, 
 especially those of the Maccabees, this took place more and 
 more frequently. It was a preparation and prelude of the 
 complete fulfilment, although not the complete fulfilment itself, 
 that, at the time of Christ, the blessings of God were poured 
 upon the whole doj8i-/.dfvXov, Acts xxvi. 7. The words: "I 
 bring you to Zion," in the verse under consideration, and: 
 " They shall come out of the land of the North to the land 
 that I have given for an inheritance unto their fathers," in 
 ver. 18, do not at all oblige us to limit ourselves to those 
 feeble beginnings; the idea appears here only in that form, 
 in which it must be realised, in so far as its realisation be- 
 longed to the time of the Old Testament. Zion and the Hoty 
 Land were, at that time, the seat of the Kingdom of God; so 
 that the return to the latter was inseparable from the return 
 to the former. Tliose from among Israel who were converted 
 to the true God, either returned altogether to Judea, or, at 
 least, there ofiered up their sacrifices. But Zion and the Holy 
 Land likewise come into consideration, as the seat of the King- 
 dom of God only; and, for that very reason, the course of 
 the fulfilment goes on incessantly, even in those times when 
 even the North has become Zion and Holy Land. — The cir- 
 cumstance that two are assigned to a family, while only one 
 is assigned to a town, shows that we must here think of a 
 larger family which occupied several towns; and the circum- 
 stance that the town is put together with the family, shows 
 that it is cities of the land of Israel which are here spoken of, 
 and not those which the exiled ones inhabited. 
 
 Ver. 1 5. And I give you shepherds according to mAne heart, 
 and they feed you tvith hwivledge and understanding" 
 
 The question is : — Who are here to be understood by the 
 shepherds ? Calvin thinks that it is especially the prophets 
 and priests, inasmuch as it was just the bad condition of these 
 
382 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 whicli had been the principal cause of the ruin of the people ; 
 and that it is the greatest hlessing for the Church, when God 
 raises up true and sincere teachers. Similar is the opinion of 
 Vitvuifja (phs. lib. vi., p. 417), who, in a lower sense, refers it 
 to Ezra and the learned men of that time, and, in a higher 
 sense, to Christ. Among the Fathers of the Church, Jerome 
 remarked : " These are the apostolical men who did not feed 
 the multitude of the believers with Jewish ceremonies, but 
 with knowledge and doctrine." Oothers refer it to leaders of 
 every kind ; thus Venevia : Pastores sunt rectores, dudores. 
 Others, finally, limit themselves to rulers ; thus Kimchi (gu- 
 bernafores Israelis cum rege Messio), Grotius, and Clericus. 
 The latter interpretation is, for the following reasons, to be 
 unconditionally preferred. 1. The image of the shepherd and 
 of feeding occurs sometimes, indeed, in a wider sense, but 
 ordinarily of the ruler specially. Thus, in the fundamental 
 passage, 2 Sam. v. 2, it occurs of David, compare Micah v. 3. 
 Thus also in Jeremiah ii. 8 : " The priests said not. Where is 
 the Lord, and they that handle the law knew me not, and the 
 shepherds transgressed against me, and the prophets prophe- 
 sied in the name of Baal ;" comp. ver. 26 : " They, their kings, 
 their princes, and their priests, and their prophets." 2. The 
 word "2^3 contains an evident allusion to 1 Sam. xiii. 1 4, where 
 it is said of David : " The Lord hath sought him, a man after 
 His own heart, and the Lord hath appointed him to be a prince 
 over Hls people." 3. All doubt is removed by the parallel 
 passage, chap, xxiii. 4 : " And I raise shepherds over them, 
 and they feed them, and they fear no more, nor are dismayed." 
 That, by the shepherds, in this verse, only the rulers can be 
 understood, is evident from the contrast to the bad rulers of 
 the present, who were spoken of in chap, xxii., no less than 
 from the connection with ver. 5, where that which, in ver. 4, 
 was expressed in general, is circumscribed within narrow 
 limits, and the concentration of the fulfilment of the preced- 
 ing promise is placed in the Messiah : " Behold, days come, 
 saith the Lord, and I raise unto David a righteous Branch, 
 and He reigneth as a king and acteth wisely, and setteth up 
 judgment and justice in the land." This parallel passage is, 
 in so far also, of importance, as it shews that the prophecy 
 under consideration likewise had its final reference to tiie 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. III. 15. 383 
 
 Messiah. The kingdom of the ten tribes was punished by bad 
 kings for its apostacy from the Lord, and from His visible repre- 
 sentative. In the whole long series of Israelitish kings, we do not 
 jQnd any one like Jehoshaphat, or Hezekiah, or Josiah. And that 
 is very natural, for the foundation of the Israelitish throne 
 was rebellion. But, with the cessation of sin, punishment too 
 shall cease. Israel again turns to that family which is the 
 medium and channel through which all the divine mercies flow 
 upon the Church of the Lord ; and so they receive again a 
 share in them, and particularly in their richest fulness in the 
 exalted scion of David, the Messiah. The passage under con- 
 sideration is thus completely parallel to Hosea iii. 5 : " And 
 they seek Jehovah their God, and David their king ;" and 
 that which we remarked on that passage is here more parti- 
 cularly applicable ; compare also Ezek. xxxiv. 23: "And I 
 raise over them one Shepherd, and He feedeth them, my ser- 
 vant David, he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd." 
 The antithesis to the words : " According to mine heart," is 
 formed by the words in Hos. viii. 4 : " They have set up 
 kings not by me, princes whom I knew not," — words which 
 refer to the past history of Israel. Formerly, the rebellious 
 chose for themselves kinsjs accordina; to the desires of their own 
 hearts. Now, they choose Him whom God hath chosen, and 
 who, according to the same necessity, must be an instrument 
 of blessing, as the former were of cursing. — nj;^ and ''''S^'H 
 stand adverbially. ^"^^^V " to act wisely" is, in appearance 
 only, intransitive in Hiphil. The foundation of wisdom and 
 knowledge is the living communion with the Lord, being 
 according to His heart, walking after Him. The foolish coun- 
 sels of the former rulers of Israel, by which they brought ruin 
 upon their people, were a consequence of their apostacy from 
 the Lord. The two fundamental passages are, Deut. iv. 6 : 
 " And ye shall keep and do (the law) ; for this is your wis- 
 dom and understanding ; xxix. 8 (9) : " Ye shaU keep the 
 words of this covenant and do them, that ye may act wisety." 
 Besides the passage under consideration, the passages Josh. i. 
 7 ; ] Sam. xviii. 1 4, 1 5 ; 1 Kings ii. 3 ; Is. Iii. 1 3 ; Jer. x. 
 21, xxiii. 5, are founded upon these two passages. If all these 
 passages are compared with one another, and with the funda- 
 mental passages, one cannot but wonder at the arbitrariness 
 
384" MKSSrANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPIIETS. 
 
 of iuterpretei's and lexicographers who, severing several of these 
 passages from the others, have forced upon the verb ^"'Dt^'^ the 
 signification " to prosper," — a signification altogether fanciful 
 Gods servants act wisely, because they look up to God ; and 
 he who acts wisely finds prosperity for himself and his people. 
 Hence, it is a proof of the greatest mercy of God towards His 
 people, when He gives them His servants for kings. 
 
 Ver. IG. "And it cometh to 'pass, ivhen ye he multiplied 
 and fruitjul in the land, in those days, saith the Lord, they 
 shall say no more: The Ai'k of the Covenant of the Lord! 
 Arid it IV ill not come into the heart, neither shall they remem- 
 ber it, nor miss it, 7wr shall it he made again." 
 
 First, we shall explain some particulars. The words : 
 " When ye be," &c. refer to Gen. i. 28, As it is God's general 
 providence which brings about the fruitfulness of all creatures, 
 so it is His special providence which brings about the increase 
 of His Church whose ranks have been thinned by His judg- 
 ments ; and it is thus that His promise to the patriarchs is 
 carried on towards its fulfilment ; compare remarks on Hos, 
 ii. 1. God's future activity in this respect, has an analogy in 
 His former activity in Egypt, Exod. i. 1 2. The words : " The 
 Ark of the Covenant" must be viewed as an exclamation, in 
 which an ellipsis, in consequence of the emotion, must be sup- 
 posed, q.d. it is the aim of all our desires, the object of all our 
 longings. The mere mention of the object with which the 
 whole heart is filled, is sufficient for the lively emotion. Ve- 
 ncTna's exposition ; Area fmderis Jehovae sc. est, and that of 
 Be Wette : " They shall no more speak of the Ark of the Co- 
 venant of Jehovah," are both feeble and un philological. How 
 were it possible that "los with the Accusative should mean " to 
 speak of something?" — ^b'bv rih]} is, in a similar context, just 
 as it is here, connected with I3r in Is. Ixv. 17 : "For behold 
 I create a new heaven and a new earth, and the former shall 
 not be remembered nor come into the heart," comp. also Jer. 
 li. 50, vii. 31 ; 1 Cor. ii. 0. "laj with n does not simply stand 
 instead of the usual connection with the Accusative ; it signi- 
 fies a remembering connected with affection, a recollection 
 joined with ardent longings, ^p^ is, by many interpretei"s, 
 understood in the sense of " to visit," but the signification " to 
 miss" (Is. xxxiv. IG; 1 Sam. xx. G-18, xxv. 15; 1 Kings 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. III. 16. 385 
 
 XX. 39) is recommended by the connection with the following 
 clause : " Nor shall it be made again." This supposes that 
 there shall come a time when the Ark of the Covenant shall 
 no more exist, the time of the destruction of the temple, which 
 was so frequently and emphatically announced by the pro- 
 phets.^ God, however, will grant so rich a compensation for 
 that which is lost, that men will neither long for it, nor, urged 
 on by this longing, make any attempt at again procuring it 
 for themselves by their own efforts. The main question now 
 arises : — In what respect does the Ark of the Covenant here 
 come into consideration ? The answer is suggested by ver. 1 7. 
 The Ark of the Covenant is no more remembered, because 
 Jerusalem has now, in a perfect sense, become the throne of 
 God. The Ark of the Covenant comes into consideration, 
 therefore, as the throne of God, in an imperfect sense. It can 
 easily be proved that it was so, although there have been dis- 
 putes as to the manner in which it was so. The current view 
 was this, that God, as the Covenant God, had constantly mani- 
 fested himself above the Cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant, 
 in a visible symbol, in a cloud. The first important opposi- 
 tion to this view proceeded from Vitrlnga who, in the Ohs. sac. 
 t. i. p. 169, advances, among other arguments, the following : 
 " It is not by any means necessary to maintain that, in the holy 
 of holies, in the tabernacle or the temple of Solomon, there 
 was constantly a cloud over the Ark ; but it may be sufficient 
 to say, that the Ark was the symbol of the divine habitation, 
 and it was for this reason said that God was present in the 
 place between the Cherubim, because from thence proceeded 
 the revelation of His will, and He thus proved to the Jews 
 that He was present." But this view of Vitringa, that it was 
 
 • It is from the circumstance that modern Exegesis is unable to compre- 
 hend the prophetic anticipation of the Future, that the assertion has pro- 
 ceeded (]\Iovers, Hitzi;/) that, even before 'the Chaldean destruction, the Ark 
 " must have disappeared in a mysterious manner." In the view of the Chal- 
 dean destruction the Lord is, in Ps. xcix. 1 (comp. Ps. Ixxx. 2), designated as 
 He who sitteth over the Cherubim. In 2 Chron. xxxv. 3, we have a distinct 
 historical witness for the existence of the Ark, so late as the 18th year of 
 Josiah. The fable in 2 Maccab. ii. 4, if., supposes that the Ark was at its 
 ordinary place, down to the time of the breaking in of the Chaldean catas- 
 tiophe. One might as well infer from chap. iii. 18, that, at the time when 
 these words were spoken, Judah must already, " in a mysterious manner," 
 have come into the land of the North. 
 
 VOL. II. bh 
 
3<S() MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 merely in an invisible manner that God was present over tlie 
 Ark of the Covenant, met with strong opposition ; and a note 
 to the second edition shows, that he himself afterwards enter- 
 tained doubts regarding it. By Tlutlemann, a pupil of Ernesti, 
 it was afterwards advanced far more decidedly, and evidently 
 with the intention of carrying it through, whether it was true 
 or not, in the Dissertatio de nuhe super arcani foederis (Leip- 
 zig, 175G). He, too, declared, however, that he did not deny 
 the matter, but only disputed the sign. He found a learned 
 o])ponent in John Eherhard Ran, Professor at Herborn 
 {Rurius, de iiiihe super arcam foederis, Utrecht, 17G0 ; it is 
 a whole book, in which Thakmaniis Treatise is reprinted). 
 The matter is, indeed, very simple ; both parties are right and 
 wrong, and the truth lies between the two. From the prin- 
 cipal passage, in Lev. xvi. 2, it is evident that, at the annual 
 entry of the High Priest into the holy of holies, the invisible 
 presence of God embodied itself in a cloud, as formerly it also 
 did, on extraordinary occasions, during the journey through 
 the wilderness, and at the dedication of the tabernacle and 
 temple. In that passage, Aaron is exhorted not to enter the 
 holy of holies at all times, for that would prove a want of 
 reverence, but only once a year, " for in the cloud I shall 
 appear over the lid of expiation," (this is the right explanation 
 of niss, compare Genuineness of the Pentateuch, p. 525 f) 
 The place where God manifests himself in so visible a manner 
 when the High Priest enters into it, cannot fail to be a most 
 holy place to him. It is true that Vitringa (S. 171), and 
 still more Thaleniann (S. 39 in Ran), have endeavoured to 
 remove this objection by their interpretation ; but with so 
 plain a violation of all the laws of interpretation, that it is 
 scarcely worth while to enter farther upon this exposition, 
 (compare the refutation in Rau, S. 40 ff.), although J. D. 
 Michaelis, Vafer, RosonivalJcr, and Bdhr, {Symhol. des Mas. 
 Cultus, i. S. 31)5), have approved of it.^ On the other hand, 
 
 ' /jfV///- advances the assertion, "In a (the) cloud" is equivalent to: "in 
 daikiu'ss." IJut the parallel })as?ages, Exod. xl. 34 ff., Nmnb. ix. 15, U!, 
 (iMdted by ./. //. Mirhnelis, are (juite sufficient to overthrow this assertion. 
 And these ]iar;dlel jiassapos are so much the more to the point, th.at by the 
 article the elond is designated as lH'i:ig already known; coni])are I/o/iiifinn, 
 Schri/'tl)enri.< ii. 1, S. 'M. The elond in ver. 13 is not identical with that in 
 ver, 2, but is its necessary })anillel. The cloud in ver. 2 symbolises the truth 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. III. 16. 387 
 
 there is nothing to favour the supposition of an ordinary and 
 constant presence of the cloud in the holy of liolies. With 
 such a view, questions at once arise, such as : Whether it 
 came also to the Philistines ? All that Rau advances in favour 
 of it, merely proves the invisible presence of God, which surely 
 cannot be considei'ed and called a merely imaginary thing, as 
 is done by him, p. 35. For what, in that case, would be the 
 Lord's presence in the hearts of believers, and in the Lord's 
 supper? It is true that Ezekiel, in chap. xi. 22, beholds the 
 glory of the Lord over the cherubim as being lifted up, and 
 foi-saking the temple before its destruction ; but how can we 
 draw any reference, as to the actual state of things, from 
 visions which, according to their nature, surround with a body 
 all that is invisible ? Still, as we already remarked, this 
 whole controversy has reference to the manner only, and not 
 to the fact of God's presence over the Ark of the Covenant ; 
 and the Ark of the Covenant stands here in a wider sense, 
 and comprehends the cherubim, and " the glory of the Lord 
 dwelling over them." From a vast number of passages, it can 
 be proved that this glory of the Lord was constantly and really 
 present over the Ark of the Covenant, although it was in 
 extraordinary cases only that it manifested itself in an out- 
 ward, visible form ; compare, besides Lev. xvi. 2, Lev. ix. 24, 
 where, after Aaron's consecration to the priesthood, the glorj^ 
 of the Lord appeared to the whole people in confirmation of 
 his office. To these passages belong all those in which God 
 is designated as dwelling over the cherubim, such as ] Chron. 
 xiii. 6 ; Ps. Ixxx. 2 ; 1 Sam. iv. 4.- To it refers the designa- 
 tion of the ark of the covenant, in a narrower sense, as the 
 footstool of God ; comp. 1 Chron. xxviii. 2, where David says : 
 " I had in mine heart to build an house of rest for the Ark of 
 the Covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God ;" 
 Ps. xcix. 5, cxxxii. 7 ; Lam. ii. 1. From this circumstance 
 the fact is explained, that the prayer in distress, as well as 
 the thanks for deliverance, were ofiered up before, or towards 
 
 that the Lord is a consuming tire (compare my remarks on Eev. i. 7) ; that 
 in ver. 13 is an embodied Ki/rie elcisoii, compare remaiks on Rev. v. 8. 
 Cloud with cloud, — that is a noble advice for the Church when she is threat- 
 ened by the judgments of God. A thorough refutation of Biihr has been 
 given by W. Neumann: Beitrdye zur Sijmholik des Mos. Cultus, Zeitschr. f. 
 Luth. Theol, 1851, i. 
 
3 88 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN TUE PROPHETS. 
 
 tlie Ark of the Covenant. After the defeat before Ai (Josli. 
 vii. 5 ff), Joshua " rent liis clothes, and fell to the earth upon 
 his face, before the Ark of the CV)vcnant of the Lord, until the 
 eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their 
 heads, and Joshua said : Alas, O Lord God, wherefore hast 
 thou at all brought this people over Jordan ?" After the Lord 
 had appeared to Solomon at Gibeah, and had given him the 
 promise, he went before the Ai-k of the Covenant of the Lord, 
 and offered burnt-offerings, and thank -oflTerings, 1 Kings iii. 
 15. In 2 Sam. xv. 32, we are told that David went up the 
 Mount of Olives very sorrowfully, and when he was come to 
 the place, ivhere jjeo'ple lucre accustc/nied to worship God, Hushai 
 met him. According to that passage, it was the custom of the 
 people, when on the top of the Mount of Olives, they gained, 
 for the first or last time, a view of the sanctuary, to prostrate 
 themselves before the God of Israel who dwelt there. To the 
 Ark of the Covenant, all those passages refer in which it is 
 said that God dwelleth in the midst of Israel ; that He dwelleth 
 in the temple ; that He dwelleth at Zion or Jerusalem, com- 
 pare e.g., the promise in Exodus xxix. 45 : "I dwell in the 
 midst of the children of Israel, and farther, Ps. ix. 1 2, cxxxii. 
 13, ] 4 ; 1 Kings vi. 12, 13, where God promises to Solomon 
 that if he should only walk in His commandments, and exe- 
 cute His judgments, then would He dwell among the children 
 of Israel ; and afterwards fulfils this promise by solemnly 
 entering into his tem])le. Indissolubly connected w'ith this, 
 was the deep reverence in which the Ark of the Covenant was 
 held in Israel. It was considered as the most precious jewel 
 of the people, as the centre of their whole existence. Being 
 the place where the glory of God dwelt (Ps. xxvi. 8), where 
 He manifested himself in His most glorious revelation, it was 
 called ilte glory of Israel, compare 1 Sam. iv. 21, 22 ; Ps. 
 Ixxviii. G 1 . The High Priest Eli patiently and quietly heard 
 all the other melancholy tidings — the defeat of Israel, and the 
 death of his sons. But when he who had escaped added : 
 " And the Ark of God is taken," he fell from off" the seat back- 
 ward by the side of the gate ; and his neck brake, and he 
 died. When his dau<:jhter-in-law heard the tidinos that the 
 Ark of the Covenant was taken, she bowed herself and tra- 
 viuled ; for her pains came upon her. And about the time of 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. III. 16. 389 
 
 her death, the women that stood by her said unto her : Fear 
 not, for thou hast borne a son. But she answered not, neither 
 did she take it to heart, and she named the child Ichabod, and 
 said. The glory is departed from Israel, because the Ark of the 
 Covenant was taken, and said again : " The glory is departed 
 fi'om Israel, for the Ark of God is taken." But in what man- 
 ner may this dwelling of God over the Ark of the Covenant 
 be conceived of? Should the Most High God, whom all the 
 heavens, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain (1 Kings 
 viii. 27), whose throne is the heaven, and whose footstool is 
 the earth (Is. Ixvi. ]), dwell in a temple made by the hands of 
 men? (Acts vii. 48, ff.) Evidently not in the manner in 
 which men dwell in a place, who are in it only, not out of it. 
 Nor in such a manner as the carnally minded suppose, who, to 
 the warnings of the prophets, opposed their word : " Is not the 
 Lord among us? none evil can come upon us" (Micah iii. 11), 
 or : " Here is the temple of the Loixl, here is the temple of 
 the Lord, here is the temple of the Lord" (Jer. vii. 4), 
 imagining that God could not forsake the place which he 
 had chosen, could not take away the free gift of His grace. 
 The matter rather stands thus : That which constitutes the 
 substance and centre of the whole relation of Israel to God, 
 is, that the God of the heavens and the earth became the God 
 of Israel ; that the Creator of heaven and earth became the 
 Covenant-God, that His general providence in blessing and 
 punishing became a special one. In order to make the rela- 
 tion familiar to the people, and thus to make it the object 
 of their lo^"e and fear, God gave them a praesens nunien in 
 His sanctuary, as a prefiguration, and, at the same time, a 
 prelude of the condescension with which He whom the whole 
 universe cannot contain, rested in the womb of Mary. And in 
 so doing, He gave them not a symbolical representation merely, 
 but an embodiment of the idea, so that they who wished to 
 seek Him as the God of Israel, could find Him in the temple, 
 and over the Ark of the Covenant only. The circumstance 
 that it was just there that He took His seat, shows the differ- 
 ence between this truly praesens mi'iiien, and that merely 
 iraaginery one of the Gentiles. There was in this no partial 
 favour for Israel, nothing from which careless sinners could 
 derive any comfort, God's dwelling among Israel rested on 
 
390 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 His lioly Law. According a.s the Covenant is kept or not, 
 and the Law is observed or not, it manifests itself by increased 
 blessing, or by severer punisliment. If the Covenant be en- 
 tirely broken, the conse(|uence is that God leaves His dwelling, 
 and it is only the curse which remains, and which is greater 
 than the curse inflicted upon those among whom He never 
 dwelt, and which, by its greatness, indicates the greatness of 
 the former fjrace. — Now, if this be the case with the Ark of 
 the Covenant ; if it be the substance and centre of the whole 
 former dispensation, what, and how much would not fall along 
 with it, if it fell; and how infinitely gi-eat must the compen- 
 sation be which was to be gi-anted for it, if, in consequence of 
 it, no desire and lono-incf after it was to lise at all, if it was 
 to be regarded as belonging to the rrrMyJt, eroiyjTa, and was to 
 be forgotten as a mere imaore and shadow! The fact that the 
 Ark of the Covenant was made before any thing else, suffi- 
 ciently shows that every thing sacred under the Old Testa- 
 ment dispensation depended upon it. Witsius Misc. t. i. p. 
 439, very pertinently remarks: "The Ark of the Covenant 
 beino:, as it were, the heart of the whole Israelitish religion, 
 was made first of all." Without Ark of the Covenant — no 
 temple; for it became a sanctuary by the Ark of the Cove- 
 nant only; for holy, so Solomon says in 2 Chron. viii. 11, is 
 the place whereunto the Ark of the Covenant hath come. 
 Without Ark of the Covenant, no priesthood; for what is the 
 use of servants when there is no Lord present? Without temple 
 and priesthood, no sacrifice. We have thus before us the an- 
 novmcement of the entire destruction of the previous form of 
 the Kingdom of God, but such a destruction of the form as 
 brings about, at the same time, the highest completion of the 
 substance, — a perishing like that of the seed-corn, which dies 
 only, in order to bring forth much fruit; like that of the 
 body, which is sown in corruption, in order to be raised in 
 incorruption. Dahler remarks: "Because a more sublime 
 religion, a more glorious state of things will take the place of 
 the Mosaic dispensation, there will be no cause for regretting 
 the loss of the symbol of the preceding dispensation, and people 
 will no more remember it." — It is quite natural that the pro- 
 phecy should give great offence, and prove a stumbling-block 
 to Jewish interpreters. Its subject, its high dignity, just 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. III. 16. 391 
 
 consists in the announcement that, at some future period, the 
 shadow should give way to the substance; but it is just the 
 confounding of the shadow with the substance, the rigid 
 adherence to the former, which characterises Judaism, which 
 considers even the Messiah as a minister of the old dispensa- 
 tion only, and ^dews the great changes to be effected by Him, 
 mainly as external ones. The embarrassment arising from 
 this, is very clearly expressed in the following words of Ahav- 
 banel: "This promise is, then, bad, and uproots the whole 
 Law. How is it then that Scripture mentions it as good?" 
 E-abbi Ara'ma, in his commentary on the Pentateuch, fol. 101, 
 says, in reference to this prophecy, D"'t^iSon ^d "iduj " all inter- 
 preters have been perplexed by it." The interpretations by 
 means of which they endeavour to rid themselves of this em- 
 barrassment (see the collection of them in Frischmuth's dis- 
 sertation on this passage, Jena; reprinted in the Thes. Ant.) 
 are only calculated plainly to manifest it. Kimchi gives this 
 explanation : " Although ye shall increase and be multiplied 
 on the earth, yet the nations shall not envy you, nor wage 
 war against you; and it shall no more be necessary for you 
 to go to war with the Ark of the Covenant, as was usual in 
 former times, when they took the Ark of the Covenant out to 
 war. In that time, there will be no necessity for so doing, as 
 they shall not have any war." The weak points of this ex- 
 planation are at once obvious. That which, in the verse under 
 consideration, is, in a general way, said of the Ark of the 
 Covenant, is, by it, referred to an altogether special use of it, 
 a regard to which is excluded by the evident antithesis iu 
 ver. 17. AharhoMel rejects this explanation. He says: "For 
 there is, in the text, no mention at all of war; and therefore 
 I cannot approve of this exposition, although Jonathan, too, 
 inclines towards it." He himself brings out this sense: The 
 Ark of the Covenant would then, indeed, still continue to 
 exist, and be the seat of the Lord ; but no more the exclusive 
 one, no longer the sole sanctuary. " The whole of Jerusalem 
 shall, as regards holiness and glory, equal the Ark of the 
 Covenant. For there shall cease with them every evil thing, 
 and eveiy evil imagination; and there shall be such holiness 
 in the land, that in the same manner as formerly the Ark was 
 the holiest of all things, so at that time, Jerusalem shall be 
 
.so 2 MESSIANIC TREDICTIOXS IX THE PROPHETS. 
 
 tlie throne of the Lord " But, by this explanation, justice is 
 not done to the text. For it is an entire doing away with 
 the Ark of the Covenant which is spoken of in it, not a mere 
 diniiniition of its dignity, produced by the circumstance, that 
 that which formerly was low shall be exalted. This is par- 
 ticularly evident from the words: "They will not miss it, 
 neither shall it be made again." To this argument we may 
 still add that, by this exposition, not even the object is gained 
 for the sake of which it was advanced. The nature and sub- 
 stance of the Ark of the Covenant is destroyed, as soon as it 
 is put on a level with anything else. It is then no more the 
 throne of the Lord; and for this reason, the previous form 
 x;an no longer continue to exist, and, along with it, the temple 
 and priesthood too must fall. If every place in Jerusalem, if 
 every inhabitant of it, be equally holy, how then can institu- 
 tions still continue, which arc based on the difference between 
 holy and unholy?— Here a question still arises. There was 
 no Ark of the Covenant in the second temple. In what rela- 
 tion to the prophecy under consideration stands this absence 
 of the Ark of the Covenant, the restoration of which the Jews 
 expect at the end of the days? There cannot be any doubt 
 that it was really wanting. Every proof of its existence is 
 wanting. JosepJius, in enumerating the catalogue of the 
 Npolla Judaica, borne before in the triumph, does not mention 
 it. He says expressly (de Bell. Jud. v. 5, § 5), that the holy 
 of holies had been altogether empty. Some of the Jewish 
 writers assert that it had been carried awaj'- to Bab3don; 
 while most of them, following the account given in 2 Macca- 
 bees, tell us that Josiah or Jeremiah had concealed it; com- 
 pare the Treatise by Calmet, Th. 6, S. 224-258, Mask In 
 asking ivhy such was the case, other analogous phenomena, 
 the absence of the Uriin and Thwnwiim, the cessation of 
 prophetism soon after the return from the captivity, must not 
 be lost sight of Eveiy thing was intended to impress upon 
 the people the conviction that their condition was provisional 
 only. It was necessary that the Theocracy should sink be- 
 neath its former glory, in order that the future glory, which 
 was far to outshine it, should so much the more be longed for. 
 After having thus determined why it was that the Ark of the 
 Covenant was wanting, at the second temple, it is easy to 
 
JEEEMIAH, CHAP. III. 16. 393 
 
 determine the relation of this absence to the prophecy under 
 consideration. It was the beginning of its fulfihnent. In the 
 Kingdom of God, nothing perishes, without something new 
 arising out of this decay. The extinction of the old was the 
 guarantee, that something new was approaching. On the 
 other hand, the absence of the Ark of the Covenant was, it is 
 true, at the same time, a matter-of-fact prophecy of a sad 
 character. To those who clung to the form, w^ithout having 
 in a living manner laid hold of the substance, and who, there- 
 fore, were not able to partake in the more glorious display of 
 the substance,— to these it announced that the time was ap- 
 proaching when the form, to which they had attached them- 
 selves with their whole existence, was to be broken. Since 
 already one of the great privileges of the covenant-people, the 
 5ofa (Rom. ix. 4), had disappeared, surely all that might and 
 would soon share the same fate, which existed only for the 
 sake of it, and in it only had its significance. In this respect, 
 the non-restoration of the Ark of the Covenant showed that 
 the Chaldean destruction and that by the Romans were con- 
 nected as commencement and completion; while, in the other 
 aspect, it declared that, with the return from the captivity, 
 the realization of God's great plan of salvation was being pre- 
 pared. Inasmuch as the most complete fuga ixicui is peculiar 
 to the Covenant-God, the emptiness in that place where 
 formerly the glory of God dwelt, proclaimed aloud the future 
 fulness. — Finally, we have still to determine the special 
 reference of our verse to Israel, i.e., the former kingdom of 
 the ten tribes. This reference is, by most interprets s, entirely 
 lost sight of, and is very superficially and erroneously deter- 
 mined by those who, like Calvin, pay attention to it. In the 
 preceding verse, it had been promised to Israel, that those 
 blessings should again be bestowed upon them, which they 
 had forfeited by their rebellion against the Davidic house, 
 and that they should be restored to them with abundant 
 interest. For David's house is to attain to its comple- 
 tion in its righteous Sprout. This Shepherd, who is, in 
 the fullest sense, what His ancestor had only imperfectly 
 been — a man according to the heart of God — shall feed 
 them with knowledge and understanding. Here, a compensa- 
 tion is promised for the second, infinitely greater loss, which 
 
394 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 liad, at all times, been acknowledged as such by the faithful 
 in the kingdom of the ten tribes. The revelation of the Lord 
 over the Ark of the Covenant was the magnet which constantly 
 drew tliera to Jerusalem. Many sacrificed all their earthly 
 possessions, and took up their abode in Judea. Others went 
 on a pilgrimage from their natural to their spiritual home, to 
 the " throne of the glory exalted from the beginning," Jer. 
 xvii. J 2. In vain was every thing which the kings of Israel 
 did in order to stifle their indestructible longing. Every new 
 event by which " the glory of Israel" manifested itself as such, 
 kindled their ardour anew. But here also the great blessing 
 and privilege, which the believers missed with sorrow, the 
 unbelievers without it, is to the returningr ones given back, 
 not in its previous form, but in a glorious completion. The 
 whole people have now received eyes to recognise the value of 
 the matter in its previous form ; and yet this previous form 
 is now looked upon by them as nothing, because the new, 
 infinitely more glorious form of the same matter occupied their 
 attention. 
 
 Ver. 17. "At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne 
 of the Lord ; and all the nations shall he gathered into it, 
 because the name of the Lord is at Jerusalen ; neither shall 
 they wcdk any more after the wickedness of their evil heart" 
 
 Many interpreters, proceeding upon the supposition that the 
 emphasis rests upon Jerusalem, liave been led to give an alto- 
 gether erroneous explanation. It is no more the Ark of the 
 Covenant which will then be the throne of the Lord, but all 
 Jerusalem. Thus, e.g., after the example of Jarchi and Abar- 
 banel, Manasseh hen Israel, Conciliator, p. 196 : "Ifwekeej) 
 in mind that, in the tabernacle or temple, the Ark was the 
 place where the Lord dwelt (hence Ex. xxv. 22 : ' I will speak 
 with thee from above the mercy-seat, from between the two 
 cherubim'), we shall find that the Lord here says, that the 
 Ark indeed had formerly been the dwelling-place of the God- 
 head, but that, at the time of Messiah, not some one part of 
 the temple only would be filled with the Godhead, but that 
 this glory should be given to all Jerusalem ; so that whosoever 
 would be in her would have the prophetic spirit." If it had 
 been the intention of the Prophet to convey this meaning, the 
 word all could not have been omitted. The throne of the 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. III. 17. 395 
 
 Lord, Jerusalem had been even formerly, in so far as she pos- 
 sessed in her midst the Ark of the Covenant, and hence was 
 the residence of Jehovah, the city of the great King, Ps. xlviii. 
 3. The words in the parallel member : " Because the name of 
 the Lord is at Jerusalem," show that Jerusalem is called the 
 throne of the Lord, because there is now in her the true 
 throne of the Lord, just as, formerly, the Ark of the Co- 
 venant. The antithesis to what precedes leads us to expect a 
 gradation, not in point of quantity, but of quality. The 
 emphasis rests rather on : " The throne of the Lord ;" and 
 these words receive from the antithesis the more definite qua- 
 lification : the true throne of the Lord. Quite similarly, those 
 who boasted that over the Cherubim was the throne of God, 
 and that the Ark of the Covenant was His footstool, are told 
 in Is. Ixvi. 1 : " The heaven is my (true) throne, and the earth 
 my (true) footstool ;" comp. the passages according to which 
 the Ark of the Covenant is designated as the footstool of God, 
 and, hence, the place over the Cherubim of the Ark of the 
 Covenant as the throne of the Lord, p. 387 ; and farther. Is. 
 Ix. 13 ; Ezra i. 26. — ^I'he highest prerogative of the covenant- 
 people, their highest privilege over the world, is to have 
 God in the midst of them ; and this prerogative, this pri- 
 vilege, is now to be bestowed upon them in the most per- 
 fect manner ; so that idea and reality shall coincide. Per- 
 fectly parallel in substance are such passages as Ezek. xliii., in 
 which the Shechinah which, at the destruction of the temple 
 had withdrawn, returns to the new temple, the Kingdom 
 of God in its new and more glorious form. Ver. 2. "And 
 behold the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of 
 the East ; and its voice was like the voice of great waters, and 
 the earth shone with its splendour." Ver. 7. " And He said 
 unto me, son of man, behold the place of miy throne, and the 
 place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of 
 the children of Israel for ever, and the house of Israel shall no 
 more defile my holy place." Zech. ii. 1 4 (1 0) : " Sing and rejoice, 
 O daughter of Zion ; for, lo, I come and dwell in the midst of 
 thee," with an allusion to Exod. xxix. 45 : " And I dwell 
 among the children of Israel, and will be their God." The 
 Prophet declares that the full realization of this promise is 
 reserved for the future ; but it could not be so, unless it had 
 already been realised, throughout all past history, in God's 
 
396 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 dwelling over the Ark of the Covenant ; compare Zech. 
 viii. 3 : " Thus saith the Lord, I return unto Zion, and dwell 
 in the midst of Jerusalem." — If we enquire after the ful- 
 filment, we are at once met hy the words in John i. 14: 
 r.ai 6 Ao'yog odf>^ tyiviro xai iS7<.r;vusiv sv riiJ^h^ xal edsaadfuOa rriv 
 hot,nv auroO, 6i'i':^av w; lUjvoyivovg rrapa 'zar^ig ; and that SO much 
 the more that these words contain an evident allusion to the 
 former dwelling- of God in the temple, of which the incarna- 
 tion of the Logos is looked upon as the high.est consummation. 
 It is true that the dwelling of God among His people by means 
 of the rrv£u,'j,a XpidroZ must not be separated from the jiersonal 
 manifestation of God in Christ, in whom dwelt the fulness of 
 the Godhead bodily, (rw/^ar/xSj. The former stands to the latter 
 in the same relation, as does the river to the fountain ; it is 
 the river of living water flowing forth from the body of Christ. 
 Both together form the true tabernacle of God among men, 
 the new true Ark of the Covenant ; for the old things are the 
 ffx/a rujv /xsAArJiTWt', to hi aojiia XpiSroZ, Col. ii. 17", COmp. Rev. 
 XXI. 22 : xai valjv oh-/, ubov sv olvt^' 6 yap Kvpio:, o Q':og 6 Tuvroy.pd- 
 rup vaog ahrr^g £<sti, jtal to dpvlov. The typical import of the Ai-k 
 of the Covenant is expressly declared in Heb. ix. 4, 5, and 
 that which was typified thereby is intimated in chap. iv. 16: 
 Tpoaip^oJ/iiOa ds (i,iTd ^apprtS'iag tuj dpoi/u) Trig y^dpiTog, where Christ 
 is designated as the true mercy-seat, as the true Ark of the 
 Covenant. Just as, formerly, God could be found over the 
 Ark of the Covenant only, by those from among his people 
 who souoht Him ; so we have now, through Christ, boldness 
 and access with confidence in God (Eph. iii. 1 2) ; and it is 
 only when ofiered in His name, in living union with Hijn, 
 that our prayers are acceptable, Johnxvi. 23. A consequence 
 of that highest realization of the idea of the kingdom of God, 
 and, at the same time, a sign that it has taken place, and a 
 measure of the blessings which Israel has to expect from its 
 re-union with the Church of God, is the gathering of the Gen- 
 tiles into it, such as, by way of type and prelude, took place 
 even at the lower manifestations of the presence of God among 
 the people ; compare, e.g., Josh. ix. : " And they (the Gi- 
 beonites) said unto him : From a very far country thy servants 
 are come, becAuse of the name {ash) of Jehovah thy God, for 
 we have heard the fame of Him, and all that He did in Egypt, 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. III. 17. 897 
 
 and all that He did to the two kings of the Amorites," &c. 
 In a manner quite similar it is, in Zech. ii. 15 (11) also, con- 
 nected with the Lord's dwelling in Jerusalem : " And many- 
 nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day ; and they 
 shall be my people ; and I dwell in the midst of thee." — 
 n^^t^lT'^ nin^ U^h must be literally translated : " On account of 
 the name of the Lord (belonging) to Jerusalem," for : because 
 the name of the Lord beloncrs to Jerusalem — is there atjhome 
 The name of the Lord is the Lord himself, in so far as He 
 reveals His invisible nature, manifests himself In the name, 
 His deeds are comprehended ; and hence it forms a bridge 
 betwixt existing and knowing. A God without a name is a 
 kog ayvjiGTog, Acts xviii. 28. There is an allusion to Deut. xii. 
 5 : " But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose 
 out of all your tribes to imt His name there, to dwell in it, 
 unto it ye shall seek, and thither ye shall come." Formerly, 
 when God put His name in an imperfect manner only, Israel 
 only assembled themselves ; but now, all the Gentiles. — The 
 last words : " Neither shall they walk any more," Szc, are not 
 by any means to refer to the Gentiles, but to the members of 
 the kingdom of Israel, or also to the whole of the inhabitants 
 of Jerusalem, to all the members of the Kingdom of God, in- 
 cluding the subjects of the kingdom of Israel. This appears 
 from a comparison of the fundamental passage of the Penta- 
 teuch, as well as of the parallel passages in Jeremia,h. Where- 
 ever niT'iJ;' occurs, the covenant-people are spoken of; every- 
 where the walking after niT'lC' of the heart is opposed to the 
 walking after the revealed law of Jehovah, which Israel alone 
 possessed. n'il''"iK', which properly means " firmness," is then 
 used of hardness in sin, of wickedness.^ 
 
 ' In a certain sense, one may say that 2? DIT'll^ is a dira^ '\e'y6,uevov. It 
 occurs independently in one single passage only, in Deut. xxix. IS ; in the 
 other passages (eight times in Jeremiah, and besides, in Ps. Ixxxi. 13), it 
 was evidently not taken from the Uving usus loquendi^ from which it had dis- 
 appeared, but from the fundamental passage in the written code of law. 
 This fact will, o priori, apjiear probable, when we keep in mind that, among 
 all the books of the Pentateuch, Jeremiah has chiefly Deuteronomy before 
 his eyes ; and among all the chapters of Deuteronomy, none more than the 
 29th ; and that Ps. Ixxxi. is pervaded by literal allusions to the Pentateuch. 
 But it is i3ut beyond all doubt, when we enter upon a comparison of the 
 passage in Deuteronomy with the parallel passages. Here we must begin with 
 Jer. xxiii. 17, where the verbal agi'eemeut comes out most strongly, and then 
 we shall, in the other passages also (vii. 24, ix. lo, xi. 8, xvi. 12, xviii. 12, 
 
398 MESSIANIC PIIEDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXllI. 1-8. 
 
 These verses form a j)ortion only of a greater whole, to which, 
 besides the whole of cliap. xxii., cliap. xxiii. 9-40 also belongs. 
 For these verses contain a prophecy against the false prophets, 
 and by the way also, against the degenerated priesthood (comp. 
 ver. 11) ; and this prophecy easily unites itself with the pre- 
 ceding prophecy against the kings, so as to form one propliecy 
 against the corrupt leaders of the people of God. But, for the 
 exposition of the verses before us, it is only the connection 
 with chap. xxii. which is of importance, and that so much so 
 that, without carefully attending to it, they cannot at all be 
 thoroughly understood. For this reason, we shall confine our- 
 selves to bring it out more clearly. 
 
 The Prophet reproves and warns the kings of Judah, first, 
 in general, announcing to them the judgments of the Lord 
 upon them and their people, — the fulfilment of the threaten- 
 ings, Deut. xxix. 22 K — if they are to continue in their hitherto 
 ungodly course, chap. xxii. 1-9. In order to make a stronger 
 impression, he then particularizes the general threatening, 
 showing how God's recompensing justice manifests itself in the 
 fate of the individual apostate kings. First, Jehoahaz is 
 brought forward, the son and the immediate successor of Josiah, 
 whom Pharaoh-Necho dethroned and carried with him to Egypt, 
 vers. 10-12. The declaration concerning him forms a com- 
 mentary on the name Shallum, i.e., the recompensed one, he 
 whom the Lord recompenses according to his deeds, — which 
 name the Prophet gives to him instead of the meaningless 
 name Jehoahaz, i.e., God holds. His father, who met his 
 death in the battle against the Egyptians, may be called happy 
 when compared with him ; for he never returns to his native 
 
 and the pas.<?agc under consideration), easily perceive that the word has been 
 bori'owod. l-'roni a conijiarison -witli the fundamental passatie, it appeal's 
 tJiat it is the intention of the Prophet to convey here the pi'oniise of an eter- 
 nal duration of the regained bles.sing, and to keep off the thought that pos- 
 sibly the ])eo]ile might again, as formerly, fall from grace. Of him who walks 
 after the niini^' of his licart, it is said in Dent. xxix. 10 {'20): "The Lord 
 will not be willing to forgive him ; for then the anger of the Lord and His 
 jealou.sy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in 
 tliis book sliall lie upon him, and the Lord blots out his name from under 
 heaven." 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 1 8. 899 
 
 land ; he lives and dies in a foreign land. The next whom 
 he brings forward is Jehoiakim, vers. 13-19. He is a despot 
 who does every thing to rnin the people committed to him. 
 There is, therefore, the most glaring contrast between his 
 beautiful name and his miserable fate. The Lord, instead of 
 raising him up, will cast him down to the lowest depth ; not 
 even an honourable burial is to be bestowed upon him. No 
 one weeps or laments over him ; like a trodden down carcass, 
 he lies outside the gates of Jerusalem, the city of the great 
 King, which he attempted to wrest from him, and make his 
 own. Then follows a parenthetical digression, vers. 20-23. 
 Apostate Judah is addressed. The judgment upon her kings 
 is not one with which she has nothing to do, as little as their 
 guilt belongs to them as individuals only. It is, at the same 
 time a judgment upon the people which, by the Lord's anger 
 which they have called forth by their wickedness, is thrown 
 down into the depth, from the height on which the Lord's 
 mercy had raised them. — Next follows Jehoiachin, vers. 24-30. 
 In his name " The Lord wiU establish," the word vj'dl has no 
 foundation ; the Lord ivill reject him, cast him away, and 
 break him in pieces like a worthless vessel. With his mother, 
 he shall be carried away from his native land, and die in 
 exile and captivity. Irrevocable is the Lord's decree, that 
 none of his sons shall ascend the throne of David, so that he, 
 having begotten children in vain, is to be esteemed as one 
 who is childless. 
 
 At the commencement of the section under consideration 
 (vers. 1 and 2), the contents of chap. xxii. are comprehended 
 into one sentence. " Woe to the shepherds that destroy and 
 scatter the flock of the Lord." Woe, then, to those shepherds 
 who have done so. With this is then, in vers. 3-8, connected 
 the announcement of salvation for the poor scattered flock. 
 For the same reason, that the Lord visits upon those who have 
 hitherto been their shepherds, the wickedness of their doings- — 
 viz., because of His being the chief Shepherd, or because of 
 His covenant-faithfulness, He will in mercy remember them 
 also, gather them from their dispersion, give, instead of the 
 bad shepherds, a good one, viz., the long promised and longed 
 for great descendant of David, who, being a righteous King, 
 shall diffuse justice and righteousness in the land, and thus 
 
400 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 acquire for it righteousness and salvation from the Lord. So 
 great shall the mercy of the Future be, that thereby the greatest 
 mercy in the people's past history — their deliverance out of 
 Egypt — shall be altogether cast into the shade. 
 
 There cannot be any doubt that the whole prophecy belongs 
 to the reign of JelKjiakim ; for the end of Jehoiakim and the 
 fate of Jehoiachin are announced as future events. 
 
 Eichhorn asserts that this section was composed under 
 Zedckiah ; but he could do so only by proceeding from his 
 erroneous fundamental view, that the prophecies are veiled 
 descriptions of historical events. "When Jeremiah" — so he 
 says — "delivered this discourse, Jehoiakim had not only already 
 met his ignominious end (xxii. 19), but Jeconiah also was, 
 with his mother, already carried away captive to Babylon." 
 It is matter of astonishment that Dahhn', without holdiug the 
 same fundamental view, could yet adopt its result. He spe- 
 cially refers to the circumstance that, in ver. 24-, Jehoiachin is 
 addressed as king, — a circumstance by which Bert/told also 
 supports his view, who, cutting the knot, advances the posi- 
 tion that vers. 1-19 belong to the reign of Jehoiakim, but vers. 
 20 — xxxii. 8 to the time when Jehoiachin was carried away 
 to Babylon. {Maurer and Hitzig too suppose that vers. 20 ff. 
 were added at a later period, under the reign of Jehoiachin). 
 But what difficulty is there in supposing that the Prophet 
 transfers himself into the time, when he who is now a heredi- 
 tary prince will be king, — of which the address is then a simple 
 consequence ? It is undeniable that a connection with chap, 
 xxi. takes place, in which chapter Jeremiah announces to 
 Zedckiah, threatened by the Chaldeans, the f;ill of the Davidic 
 house, and the capture and destruction of the city. And this 
 connection is to be accounted for by the fact that Jeremiah 
 here connects with this announcement a former prophecy, in 
 which, under the reign of Jehoiakim, he had foretold the fall 
 of the Davidic house. Tlie fate of the house of David is the 
 subject common to both the discourses. Kilper {Jeremias, 
 libi'or. Saevor. interpres, p. 58), supposes that, in the message 
 to Zedckiah, Jeremiah had, at tliat time, repeated his former 
 announcement ; but this supposition is opposed by the circum- 
 stance that, in cha])S. xxii., xxiii., there is no trace of a refer- 
 ence to Zedelviah and his embassy. Eivald asserts that Jere- 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 1 8. 401 
 
 miah here only puts together what "perhaps" he had formerly 
 spoken regarding the three kings ; but the words in chap, 
 xxii. 1 : "Go down into the house of the king of Judah and 
 speak there this word," is conclusive against this assertion. 
 For, according to these words, we have here not something put 
 together, but a discourse which was delivered at a distinct, 
 definite time ; although nothing prevents us from supposing 
 that the going down was done in the Spirit only. 
 
 We have here still to make an investigation concerning the 
 names of the three king-s occurring in chap, xxii., the result 
 of which is of importance for the exposition of ver. 5. — It 
 cannot but appear strange that the same king who, in the 
 Book of the Kings, is called Jehoaha^, is here called Shallum 
 only ; that the same who is there called Jehoiachin, has here 
 the name of Jeconias, which is abbreviated into Conias. The 
 current supposition is, that the two kings had two names each. 
 But this supposition is unsatisfactory, because, by the context 
 in which they stand,' the names employed by Jeremiah too 
 clearly appear as nominee realia, as new names given to them 
 by which the contrast between the name and thing was to be 
 removed, and hence are evidently of the same nature with 
 the nonien reale of the good Shepherd in chap, xxiii. 6, which, 
 with quite the same right, could have been changed into a 
 nomen proprium in the proper sense, as has, indeed, been 
 done by the LXX. The numerous passages in the prophets, 
 where the name occurs as a designation of the nature and 
 character, e.g., Is. ix. 5, Ixii. 4 ; Jer. xxxiii. 10 ; Ezek. xlviii. 
 85, plainly show that a name which has merely a prophetical 
 warrant (and such an one alone takes place here, although 
 the name Shallum occurs also in 1 Chron. iii. 15 [in the 
 historical representation itself, however, Jehoahaz is used in 
 the Book of Kings, and 2 Chron. xxxvi. 1], and the name 
 Jeconias likewise in 1 Chron. iii. 1 6, while Jehoiakim is found 
 not only in the Book of Kings, but also in Ezek. i. 2 ; for it^ is 
 quite possible that those later writers may have drawn from 
 Jeremiah), cannot simply be considered as a nomen propmum; 
 but, on the contrary, that there is a strong jirobability that it 
 is not so. And this probability becomes certainty when that 
 name occurs, either alone, as e.g., Shallum, or first, as Jeconiah, 
 (which occurs again in chap. xxiv. 1, xxvii. 20 ; the abbre- 
 
 VOL. II. c c 
 
402 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 viated Coniah in xxxvii. 1 , while, which is well to be observed, 
 we have in the historical account, chap. lii. 31, Jehoiachin) in 
 a context, such as that under consideration; especially when 
 this phenomenon occurs in a prophet such as Jeremiah, in 
 whom, elsewhere also, many traces of holy wit, and even 
 punning, can be pointed out. — With reference to the calamity 
 which more and more threatened Judah, pious Josiah had 
 given to his sons names, which announced salvation. Accord- 
 ing to his wish, these names should be as many actual pro- 
 phecies, and would, indeed, have proved themselves to be such, 
 unless they who bore them had made thom of no avail by 
 their apostaey from the Lord, and had thus brought about 
 the most glaring contrast between idea and reality. That 
 comes out iirst in the case of Jehoahaz. He whom the Lord 
 should liold, was violently and iiTesistibly carried away to 
 Egypt. The Prophet, therefore, calls him Shallum, i.e., the 
 recompensed, — not retribution, as Hiller, Simonis, and Roe- 
 dirjer think, nor retributor according to Filrst (corap. Ewald 
 § J54d); the same who, in 1 Chron. v. 38, is called Shallum, 
 is in 1 Chron. ix. 11, called Meshullam — he upon whom the 
 Lord has visited the wickedness of his deeds. — As regards 
 the name Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin, we must, above all things, 
 keep in view the relation of these names to the promise given 
 to David. In 2 Sam. vii. 1 2 it is said : " And I cause to rise 
 up ("'n?3"'pni) thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy 
 bowels, and I will establish (''nj''Dni) his kingdom." This pas- 
 sage contains the ground of both names; and this is the more 
 easily explained, since both of them have one author, Jehoia- 
 kim. Even his former name Eliakim had probably been given 
 to him by his father Josiah with a view to the promise. 
 When Pharaoh, however, desired him to change his name — 
 as the name itself shows, we cannot but supply, in 2 Kings 
 xxiii. 31, such a request to a proposal which was afterwards 
 approved of by Pharaoh — he performed that change in such 
 a manner as to bring it into a still nearer relation to the pro- 
 mise, in which, not El, but Jehovah, is expressly mentioned 
 as He who promised; and indeed the matter proceeded from 
 Jehovah, the God of Israel. As, however, from the whole 
 character of Jehoiakim, we cannot suppose that the twofold 
 naming proceeded from true piety, nothing is more natural 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 1 8. 40 S 
 
 than to account for it from an opposition to the prophets. 
 The centre of their announcements was formed by the im- 
 pending calamity from the North, and the decline of the 
 Davidic family. The promise given to David shall indeed be 
 fulfilled in the Messiah; but not till after a previous deep 
 abasement. Jehoiakim mocking at these threatenings, means 
 to transfer the salvation from the future into the present. In 
 his own name, and that of his son, he presented a standing 
 protest to the prophetic announcement ; and this protest could 
 not but call forth a counter-protest, which we find expressed 
 in the prophecy under consideration. The Prophet first over- 
 throws the false interpretation: Jehoiakim is not Jehoiakim, 
 and Jehoiachin is not Jehoiachin, chap, xxii.; he then restores 
 the right interpretation : the true Jehoiakim is, and remains, 
 the Messiah, chap, xxiii. 5. As regards the first point, he. in 
 the case of Jehoiakim, contents himself with the actual con- 
 trast, and omits to substitute a truly significant name for the 
 usurped one, which may most easily be accounted for from 
 the circumstance, that he thought it to be unsuitable to exer- 
 cise any kind of wit, even holy wit, against the then reigning 
 kino;. But tlie case is difierent with regard to Jehoiachin. 
 The first change of the name into Jeconiah has its cause not 
 in itself; the two names have quite the same meaning; it 
 had respect to the second change into Coniah only. In Jeco- 
 niah we have the Future; and this is put first, in order that, 
 by cutting off the \ the sign of the Future, he might cut off 
 hope ; a Jeconiah without the '• says only God establishes, but 
 not that He vnll establish. In reference to these names, 
 Grot ills came near the truth; but he erred in the nearer de- 
 termination, because he did not see the true state of the 
 matter ; so that, according to him, it amounts to a mere play : 
 " The Jod," he says, " with which the name begins, is taken 
 away, to intimate that his head shall be diminished; and a 
 Vav is added at the end as a sign of contempt, q.d. that 
 Coniah!" Light foot comes nearer to the truth; yet even he 
 was not able to gain assent to it (compare against him Hitler 
 and Simonia who thought his views scarcely worth refuting), 
 because he took an one-sided view. He remarks (Harmon. 
 p. 275): "By taking away the first syllable, God intimated 
 that He would not establish to the progeny of Solomon the 
 
404 mess:anic predictions in the prophets. 
 
 uninterrupted government and royal dignity, as Jehoiakim, 
 
 liy giving that name to his son, seems to have expected." 
 Besides these two, compare fartlier, Alting, de Cahhala sacra 
 
 In conclusion, we must still direct attention to chap. xx. 3. 
 Who, indeed, could infer from that passage, that, by way of 
 change, Paahur was called also Magor-Missabib? 
 
 Chap, xxiii. 1. " Woe to shepherds that destroy and scatter 
 tltp sheep of my pasture, saith tlie Lord!' 
 
 It must be well observed that D-Jp is here without the 
 article, but, in ver. 2, with it. Venemoj remarks on this: "A 
 general woe upon bad shepherds is premised, which is soon 
 applied to the shepherds of Judah, q.d., since Jehovah has 
 denounced a woe upon all bad shepherds, therefore jq bad 
 shei»herds," &c. By the " shepherds," several intei"preters 
 would understand only the false prophets and priests. Others 
 would at least have them thoutrht of, alonf^ with the king's. 
 This view has exercised an injurious influence upon the under- 
 standing of the subsequent Messianic announcement, inasmuch 
 as it occasioned the introduction into it of features which are 
 altogether foreign to it. It is only when it is perceived, that 
 the bad shepherds refer to the kings exclusively, that it is 
 seen that, in the description of the good Shepherd, that only 
 is applicable which has reference to Him as a King. But the 
 very circumstance that, according to a correct interpretation, 
 nothing else is found in this description, is a sufficient proof 
 that, by the bad shepherds, the kings only can be understood. 
 But all doubt is removed when we consider the close connec- 
 tion of the verses Tinder consideration with chap. xxii. In 
 connnenting upon chap. iii. 15, we saw that, ordinarily, rulers 
 only are designated by the shepherds ; compare, farther, chap. 
 XXV. 34-3(i, and the imitation and first interpretation of the 
 ]>assage under review by Ezekiel, in chap, xxxiv. Ps. Ixxviii. 
 70, 71 : "He chose David his servant, and took him from the 
 sheep-folds. He took him from behind the ewes to feed Jacob, 
 His people, and Israel, His inheritance," shows that a typical 
 interpretation of the former circumstances of David lies at 
 the foundation of this nsns loqueiidi; compare Ezek. xxxiv. 
 :i3, 1^4: " And I raise over them one Shepherd, and he feedeth 
 them, my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 1. 40') 
 
 their shepherd." — What is to be understood by the destroyii;o- 
 and scattering, must be determined partly from ver. 3 and 
 vers. ] 3 ff of tlie preceding chapter ; partly from ver. 3 of the 
 chapter before us. The former passages show that the acts of 
 violence of the kings, their oppressions and extortions, come 
 here into consideration (compare Ezek. xxxiv. 2,3: " Woe be 
 to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! Should 
 not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye 
 clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed, &;c., and 
 with force and with cruelty ye rule them"), while the latter 
 passage shows that it is chiefly the heaviest guilt of the kings 
 which comes into consideration, viz., all that by which the}^ 
 became the cause of the people's being carried away into cap- 
 tivity. To this belonged, besides their foolish political counsels, 
 which were based upon ungodliness (comp. chap. x. 21), the 
 negative {Venema: "It was their duty to takfe care that the 
 true religion, the spiritual food of the people, was rightl}^ and 
 properly exercised'!), and positive promotion of ungodliness, 
 and of immorality proceeding from it, by which the divine 
 judgments were forcibly drawn down. It is in this contrast of 
 idea and reality {Calvin: " It is a contradiction that the shep- 
 herd should be a destroyer"), that the woe has its foundation, 
 and that the more, that it is pointed out that the flock, which 
 they destroy and scatter, is God's flock. (Calvin: "God inti- 
 mates that, by the unworthy scattering of the flock, an atrocious 
 injury had been committed against himself") ''n''i;"i» fSV must 
 not be explained by: "the flock of my feeding," i.e., which I 
 feed. For, wherever D'^yiO occurs by itself, it always has the 
 signification "pasture," but never the signification padio, patitus 
 commonly assigned to it. This signification, which is quite in 
 agreement with the form of the word, must therefore be retained 
 in those passages also where it occurs in connection with JKV, 
 when it always denotes the relation of Israel to God. Israel is 
 called the flock of God's pasture, because He has given to them 
 the fertile Canaan as their possession, compare my remarks on 
 Ps. Ixxiv. 1 . It is, at first sight, strange that a guilt of the rulers 
 only is spoken of, and not a guilt of the people ; for every 
 more searching consideration shows that both are inseparable 
 from one another ; that bad rulers proceed from the develop- 
 ment of the nation, and are, at the same time, a punishment 
 
400 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 of its wickedness sent by God. But the fact is ea.slly accounted 
 for, if onl}' we keep in mind that the Prophet had here to do 
 with the kings only, and not with the people. To them 
 it could not serve for an excuse that their wickedness was 
 naturally connected with that of the people. This natural 
 connection was not by any means a necessary one, as appears 
 from the example of a Josiah, in whose case it was broken 
 through by divine grace. Nor were they justified by the cir- 
 cumstance, that they were rods of chastisement in the hand of 
 God. To this the Prophet himself alludes, by .substituting, in 
 ver. 3 : " I have driven away," for " you have driven away," 
 in ver. 2. All which they had to do, was to attend to their 
 vocation and duty ; the carrying out of God's counsels belonged 
 to Him alone. From what we have remarked, it plainly fol- 
 lows that we would altogether misunderstand the expression 
 " flock of my pasture," if we were to infer from it a contrast 
 of the innocent people with the guilty kings. Calvin remarks : 
 " In short, when God calls the Jews the flock of His pasture, 
 He has no respect to their condition, or to what they have de- 
 served, but rather commends His grace which He has bestowed 
 upon the seed of Abraham." The kings have nothing to do 
 with the moral condition of the people ; they have to look 
 only to God's covenant with them, which is for them a source 
 of obli<rations so much the jneater and more binding than the 
 obligations of heathen king-s, as Jehovah is more glorious than 
 Elohim. The moral condition of the people does, to a certain 
 degree, not even concern God ; how bad soever it is, He looks 
 to His covenant ; and when more deepl}'" viev.-ed, even the 
 outward scattering of the flock is a gathering. 
 
 Ver. 2. " Therefore ilms saith the Lord the God of Israel, 
 against the shepherds thctt feed ray people : Ye have scattered 
 my flock and driven them aivay, and have not visited them ; 
 behold, I visit iqwn you the 'wickedness of your doings, saith 
 the Lord." 
 
 In the desijxnation of God as Jehovah the God of Israel, 
 there is already implied that which afterwards is expres.sly said. 
 Because God is Jehovah, the God of Israel, the crime of the 
 kings is, at the same time, a sacrilegium; they have dese- 
 crated God. It was just here that it was necessary promi- 
 nently to point out the fact, that the people still continued to 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 407 
 
 be God's people. In another very important aspect, they were 
 indeed called Lo-Am7ni (Hos. i. 9) ; but that aspect did not 
 here come into consideration. Calvin : " They had estranged 
 themselves from God ; and He too had, in His decree, already 
 renounced them. But, in one respect, God might consider 
 them as aliens, while, in respect to His covenant, He still 
 acknowledged them as His, and hence He calls them His 
 people." — The words " that feed my people," render the idea 
 still more prominent and emphatic than the simple " the shep- 
 herds" would have done, and hence serve to make more glar- 
 ing the contrast presented by the reality. The words " you 
 have not visited them," seem, at first sight, since graver charges 
 have been mentioned before, to be feeble. But that which 
 they did, appears in its whole heinousness only by that which 
 they did not, but which, according to their vocation, they 
 ought to have done. This reference to their destination im- 
 parts the greatest severity to the apparently mild reproof 
 Similar is Ezek. xxxiv. 8 : "Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you 
 with the wool, ye kill them that are fed, and ye feed not the 
 flock." The visiting forms the general foundation of every 
 single activity of the shepherd, so that the DrnpS K^ compre- 
 hends within itself all that which Ezekiel particularly men- 
 tions in chap, xxxiv. 4 : " The weak ye strengthen not, and 
 the sick ye heal not, and the wounded ye bind not up, and 
 the scattered ye bring not back, and the perishing ye seek not." 
 — The words : " the wickedness of your doings," look back to 
 Deut. xxviii. 20 : " The Lord shall send upon thee curse, 
 ten'or, and ruin in all thy undertakings, until thou be destroyed, 
 and until thou perish <][uickly, because of tlie wickedness of thy 
 doings, that thou hast forsaken me." The gentle allusion to 
 that fearful threatening in that portion of the Pentateuch, 
 which was the best known of all, was sufficient to make every 
 one supplement from it that, which was there actually and 
 expre&sly uttered. Such an allusion to that passage of Deu- 
 teronomy can be traced out, wherever the phrase D"'P7i;D jn 
 occurs, which, in later times, had become obsolete ; compare 
 chap. iv. 4 and xxi. 1 2 (in both of these passages ^320, too, is 
 introduced) ; Is. i. 16 ; Ps. xxviii. 4 ; Hos. ix. 15. 
 
 Ver. 3. " And 1 vjill gather tlie remnant of my flock out of 
 all the countries whither I have driven them away, and I 
 
408 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 hi^ng them hack again to their folds, and they are fruitful 
 and increase." 
 
 Compare chap. xxix. 14, xxxi. 8, 10 ; Ezek. xxxiv. 12, 13: 
 " As a shepherd lookcth after his flock in the day that he is 
 in the midst of his flock, the scattered, so will I look after my 
 flock, and I deliver them out of all the places, where they 
 have been scattered in the day of clouds and of darkness. 
 And I bring them out from the nations, and gather them from 
 the countries, and bring them to their land, and feed them 
 upon the mountains of Israel, in the valleys, and in all the 
 dwelling places of the land." — A spiritless clinging to the letter 
 hcos, here too, led several interpreters to suppose, that the 
 Pi'ophet had here in view merely the return from the Baby- 
 lonish captivity, and perhaps, also, the blessings of the times 
 of the Maccabees, besides and in addition to it. Altogether 
 apart from the consideration that, in that case, the fulfilment 
 would very little correspond to the promise, — for, to the re- 
 turninor ones, Canaan was too little the land of God to allow 
 of our seeing, in this return, the whole fulfilment of God's 
 promise — we can, from the context, easily demonstrate the 
 opposite. With the gathering and bringing back appears, in 
 ver. 4, closely connected the raising of the good shepherds ; 
 and according to ver. 5, that promise is to find, if not its sole 
 fulfilment, at all events its substance and centre, in the raising 
 of David's righteous Branch, the Messiah. And from vers. 7, 
 8, it appears that it is here altogether inadmissible to suppose 
 that these events will take place, one after the other. The 
 particle p^ with which these verses begin, and which refers 
 to the whole sum and substance of the preceding promises, 
 shows that the bringing back from the captivity, and the rais- 
 ing of the Messiah, cannot, by any means, be separated from 
 one another ; and to the same result we are led by the contents 
 of the two verses also. How indeed could it be said of the 
 bodily bringing back from the captivity, that it would far out- 
 shine tlie Ibrmer deliverance from Egypt, and would cause it 
 to be altogether forgotten ? The correct view was stated as 
 early as by Calvin, who says : " There is no doubt that the 
 Prophet has in view, in the first instance, the free return of 
 the people ; but Christ must not be separated from this bless- 
 ing of the deliverance, for, otherwise, it would be difficult to 
 
JEEEMIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 3. 409 
 
 show the fulfilment of this prophecy." The right of thus 
 assuming a concurrent reference to Christ is afforded to us by 
 the circumstance, that Canaan had such a high value for Israel, 
 not because it was its fatherland in the lower sense, but be- 
 cause it was the land of God, the place where His glory dwelt. 
 From this it follows that a bodily return was to the covenant- 
 people of value, in so far only as God manifested himself as 
 the God of the land. And since, before Christ, this was done 
 in a manner very imperfect, as compared with what was im- 
 plied in the idea, the value of such a return could not be 
 otherwise than very subordinate. And in like manner, it 
 follows from it, that the gathering and bringing back by Christ 
 is included in the promise. For wherever God is, there is 
 Canaan. Whether it be the old fold, or a new one, is surely 
 of very little consequence, if only the good Shepherd be in the 
 midst of His sheep. As a rule, such externalities lie without 
 the compass of prophecy, which, having in view the substance, 
 refers, as to the way of its manifestation, to history. Into 
 what ridiculous assertions a false clinging to the letter may 
 lead, appears from remarks such as those of Groiius on the 
 second hemistich of the following verse : " They shaU live in se- 
 curity under the powerful protection of the Persian kings. Pro- 
 tection by the world, and oppression by the world, differed very 
 slightly only, in the case of the covenant-people. The circum- 
 stance that Gentiles ruled over them at all, was just that which 
 grieved them ; and this grief must therefore continue (com- 
 pare Nell. ix. 36, 37), although, by the grace of God, a mild 
 rule had taken the place of the former severe one ; for this 
 grace of God had its proper value only as a prophecy and 
 pledge of a future greater one. The circumstance that it is to 
 -the remnant only that the gathering is promised (compare Is. 
 X. 22 ; Rom. ix, 27), points to the truth, that the divine mercy 
 will be accompanied with justice. Calvin remarks on this 
 point : " The Prophet again confirms what I formerly said, 
 viz., mercy shall not be exercised until He has cleansed His 
 Church of filthiness, so great and so horrid, in which she at 
 that time abounded." One must beware of exchanging the 
 Scriptural hope of a conversion of Israel on a large scale, in 
 contrast to the small sxXoyyj at the time of Christ and the 
 Apostles, for the hope of a general conversion in the strict sense. 
 
410 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 When considering the relation of God to the free human 
 nature, the latter is absolutely iinj)ossible. When consistently 
 carried out, it necessarily leads to the doctrine of universal 
 restoration. It is beyond doubt, that God tvills that all men 
 should be saved; and it would necessarily follow that all men 
 could be saved, if all the members of one nation could be 
 saved. There is no word of Scripture in favour of it, except 
 the crag in Paul, which must just be interpreted and qualified 
 by the contrast to the small ixXoyri, while there are opposed 
 to it a number of declarations of Scripture, — especially all 
 those passages of the prophets where, to the remnant, to the 
 escaped ones of Israel only, salvation is promised. And, be- 
 sides the Word of God, there are opposed to it His deeds 
 also, — especially the great typical prefiguration of things 
 spiritual by things external at the delivei'auce of the people 
 from Egypt, when the remnant only came to Canaan, while 
 the bodies of thousands fell in the wilderness; and no less at 
 the deliverance from Babylon, when by far the greatest number 
 preferred the temporary delight in sin to delight in the Lord 
 in His land. 
 
 Ver. 4. "And I raise shepherds over them, and they feed 
 them; and they shall fear no more, nor he terHfied, neither 
 be lost, saith the Lord." 
 
 Even here, the reference to 2 Sam. vii. ] 2, and to the name 
 of Jehoiakim, is manifest, although, in the subsequent verse, 
 it appears still more distinctly, compare p. 401. This refer- 
 ence also is a proof in favour of this prophecy's having been 
 written under Jehoiakim. The reference was, at that time, 
 easily understood by every one ; even the slightest allusion 
 was sufficient. This reference farther shows that Veneona, and 
 several others who preceded him in this view, are wrong in 
 here thinking of the Maccabees. These are here quite out of 
 the question, inasmuch as they were not descended from David. 
 Besides the contrast between the people's apostacy and God's 
 covenant-faithfulness, the Prophet evidently has still another 
 in view, viz., that between the apostacy of the Davidic house, 
 and God's faithfulness in the fultilment of the promise given 
 to David. The single apostate members of this family are 
 destroyed, although, appropriating to themselves the promise, 
 they, in their names, promise deliverance and salvation to 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 4. 411 
 
 themselves. But from the family itself, God's grace cannot 
 depart; just because Jehovah is God, a true Jehoiakim and 
 Jehoiachin must rise out of it. It thus appears that the Mac- 
 cabees are here as little referred to as Ezra and Nehemiah, of 
 whom Grotius thinks. Much stronger ground is there for 
 thinking of Zerubbabel, for his appearance had really some 
 reference to the promise to David, although as a weak type 
 and prelude only of the true fulfilment, to which he occupies 
 the same relation, as does the gathering from the Babylonish 
 captivity to the gathering by Christ. If, after all, we wish to 
 urge the Plural, we must not, by any means, sever our verse 
 from ver. 5, and declare this to be the sense: first will I raise 
 up to you shepherds; then, the Messiah. We must, in that 
 case, following G. B. Michaelis, rather supplement: specially 
 one, the Messiah. In none of Jeremiah's prophecies are there 
 different stages and degrees in the salvation; everywhere he 
 has in his view the whole in its completion. Where this is 
 overlooked, the whole interpretation must necessarily take a 
 wrong direction, as is most clearly seen in the case of Venema. 
 But there is no reason at all for laying so much stress on the 
 Plural. Every Plural may be used for designating the idea 
 of the whole species; and this kind of designation was here 
 so much the more obvious, that the bad species, with which 
 the good is here contrasted, consisted of a series of individuals. 
 With the bad pastoral office, the Prophet here first contrasts 
 the good one; then he gives, in ver. 5, a more detailed descrip- 
 tion of the individual who is to represent the species, in whom 
 the idea of the species is to be completely realised. The cor- 
 rectness of this interpretation is confirmed by the comparison 
 of the parallel passage in chap, xxxiii. 15, which, almost ver- 
 batim, agrees with that under consideration, and in which 
 only one descendant of David, viz., the Messiah, is spoken of 
 And that is quite natural; for, in that passage, there is no 
 antithesis to the bad shepherds, which was the cause that here, 
 at first, the species was made prominent. And another con- 
 firmation is afforded by Ezek. xxxiv. With him, too, one 
 good shepherd is mentioned in contrast with the bad shep- 
 herds. — The words: "And they feed them" stand in contrast 
 to " Who feed my people," in ver. 2. The shepherds men- 
 tioned in ver. 2 ought to feed the flock ; but, instead of doing 
 
412 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 that, they feed themselves (compare Ezck. xxxiv. 2) ; the shep- 
 herds, however, mentioned in our verse, really feed. The 
 former are shepherds in name only, but, in reality, wolves; 
 the latter are shepherds, both in name and reality. IpQ must 
 be taken in the signification " to be missing," " lacking." 
 (Compare the Remarks on chap. iii. IG.) There is an allusion 
 to DmpD i(h in ver. 2. Because the bad shepherd does not 
 visit, the sheep are not sought, q.d., they are lost; but those 
 who did not visit, are now, in a very disagreeable manner, 
 visited by God (dd''!'!; npa); the good shepherd visits, and, 
 therefore, the sheep need not be sought. The clause: "They 
 shall fear no more, nor be terrified," receives its explanation 
 from Ezek. xxxiv. 8 : " Because my flock are a prey, and meat 
 to every beast of the field, because they have no shepherd, 
 and because my sheplierds do not concern themselves with 
 the flock." 
 
 Ver. 5. " Behold the days cortie, saith the Lord, and I raise 
 unto David a righteous Branch, and He ruleth as a King, 
 and acteth wisely, and luorketh justice and righteousness in 
 the land." 
 
 The expression: "Behold the days come," according to the 
 constant usus loquendi of Jeremiah, does not designate a pro- 
 gress in time, in reference to what precedes, but only directs 
 attention to the o-reatness of that which is to be announced. 
 It contains, at the same time, an allusion to the contrast pre- 
 sented by the visible state of things, which aff"ords no ground 
 for such a thing. How dark soever the present state of things 
 may be, the time is still coming; although the heart may 
 loudly say. No, the word of God must be more certain. Con- 
 cerning nov, compare Isa. iv. 2, and the passages of Zechariah 
 there quoted, pnv stands here in the same signification as in 
 Zech. ix. 9, — diflerent from that which it hjvs in Isa. liii. 11. 
 In the latter passage, where the Servant of God is described 
 as the High Priest and sin-offering. His righteousness comes 
 into consideration as the fundamental condition of justification ; 
 here, where He appears as King only, — as the cause of the 
 diffiision of justice and righteousness in the land. That there 
 is implied in this a contrast to the former kings, was pointed 
 out as early as by Abarbanel: "He shall not be an un- 
 righteous seed, such as Jehoiakim and his son, but a righteous 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 5. 413 
 
 one." Calvin also points out " the obvious antithesis between 
 Christ and so many false, and, as it were, adulterous sons. 
 For we know for certain that He alone was the righteous seed 
 of David ; for although Hezekiah and Josiah were legitimate 
 successors, yet, when we look to others, they were, as it were, 
 monsters. Except three or four, all the rest were degenerate 
 and covenant-breakers." The words : " I raise unto David a 
 righteous Branch" are here, as well as in chap, xxxiii. 15, not 
 by any means equivalent to: a righteous Branch of David. 
 On the contrary, David is designated as he to whom the act 
 of raising belongs, for whose sake it is undertaken. God has 
 promised to him the eternal dominion of his house. How 
 much soever, therefore, the members of this family may sin 
 against the Lord, — how unworthy soever the people may be 
 to be governed by a righteous Branch of David, God, as surely 
 as He is God, must raise Him for the sake of David. The 
 word ^?0 must not be overlooked. It shows that "^d^^, which, 
 standing by itself, may designate also another government 
 than by a king, such as, e.g., that of Zerubbabel, is to be 
 taken in its full sense. And this qualification was so much 
 the more necessary, that the deepest abasement of the house 
 of David, announced by the Prophet in chap, xxii., compare 
 especially ver. 30, was approaching, and that thereby every 
 hope of its rising to com^jlete prosperity seemed to be set 
 aside. Since, therefore, the faith in this event rested merelj' 
 on the word, it was necessary that the word should be as 
 distinct as possible, in order that no one might pervert, or ex- 
 plain it away. Calvin remarks: "He shall rule as a King, 
 i.e., He shall rule gloriously; so that there do not merely 
 appear some relics of former glory, but that He flourish and 
 be powerful as a King, and attain to a perfection, such as 
 existed under David and Solomon; and even much more ex- 
 cellent." — As regards ^"'3t^'^, we have already, in our remarks 
 on chap. iii. 15, proved that it never and nowhere means "to 
 prosper," " to be prosperous," but always " to act wisely." It 
 has been shown by Calvin that even the context here 
 requires the latter signification. He says : " The Prophet 
 seems here rather to speak of right judgment than of pro- 
 sperity and success; for we must read this in connexion with 
 one another: He shaU act wisely, and then work justice and 
 
414 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 righteousness. He shall be endowed with the spirit of wisdom, 
 as well as of justice and righteousness ; so that he shall per- 
 foi-m all the offices and duties of a king." Yet Calvin has 
 not exhausted tlie arguments which may be derived from the 
 context. The ivhole verse before us treats of the endowments 
 of the King ; the whole succeeding one, of the prosperity 
 which, by these endowments, is imparted to the people. To 
 this may still be added the evident contrast to the folly of the 
 former shepherds, which was the consequence of their wicked- 
 ness, and which, in the preceding chapter, had been described 
 as the cause of their own, and the people's destruction ; com- 
 pare chap. X. 2 1 : " For the shepherds are become brutish, and 
 do not seek the Lord ; therefore they do not act wisely, and 
 their whole flock is scattered." But if here the signification 
 " to act wisely" be established, then it is also in all those pas- 
 sages wliere ^'•d^M is used of David ; compare remarks on chap, 
 iii. For the fact, that the Prophet has in view these passages, 
 and that, according to him, the reign of David is, in a more 
 glorious manner, to be revived in his righteous Branch, appears 
 from the circumstance that every thing else has its foundation 
 in the description of David's reign, in the books of Samuel. 
 Thus the words : " And he ruleth as a king, and worketh jus- 
 tice and righteousness in the land," refer back to 2 Sam. viii. 
 15: " And David reig-ned over all Israel, and David wrought 
 justice and righteousness unto all his people." The foundation 
 of tlie announcement of ver. G is formed by 2 Sam. viii. 1 4 
 (compare ver. 6) : " And the Lord gave prosperity (yc'T'i) to 
 David in all his ways." But if h''y\^T\, wherever it occui-s of 
 David, must be taken in this sense, then the LXX. are right 
 also in translating Is. Iii. 1 3 by evvrtau : for, in that passage, 
 just as in the verse under consideration, David is referred to 
 as the type of the Messiah. The phrase npnvi D3C'D r\^'V is by 
 De Wetfe commonly translated : " to exercise justice and right- 
 eousness." But the circumstance that, in Ps. cxlvi. 7, he is 
 obliged to give up this translation, proves that it is wrong. 
 n'C'V must rather be explained by " to work," " to establish." 
 DDU'O is here, as everywhere else, the objective right and jus- 
 tice ; npi'i, the subjective righteousness. The ivork'ing of 
 justice is the means by which righteousness is wrought. The 
 forced dominion of justice is necessarily followed by the volun- 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 5. 415 
 
 taiy, just as the judgments of God, by means of wliich He is 
 sanctified upon mankind, are, at the same time, the means by 
 which He is sanctified in them. The high vocation of the 
 King to work justice and righteousness rests upon His dignity, 
 as the bearer of God's image ; comp. Ps. cxlvi. 7 ; chap. ix. 23 : 
 " For I the Lord work love, justice, and righteousness in the 
 land." Chap. xxii. 15 is, moreover, to be compared, where it 
 is said of Josiah, the true descendant of David, " he wrought 
 justice and righteousness," and chap. xxii. 3, where his spurious 
 descendants are admonished : " Work justice and righteous- 
 ness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, 
 and do not oppress the stranger ; the fatherless and the widow 
 do not wrong, neither shed innocent blood in this place." 
 Farther, still, is the progTess to be observed : the King is 
 righteous, his righteousness passeth over from him to the sub- 
 jects ; then follows salvation and righteousness from the Lord. 
 — To explanations, such as th?d>oi Grotius, who, by the righteous 
 Branch, understands Zerubbabel, we here need the less to pay 
 any attention, that the fact of his being in this without pre- 
 decessors or followers palpably proves it to be erroneous. If, 
 indeed, we could rely on Theodoret's statement (" The blinded 
 Jews endeavour, with gTeat impudence, to refer this to Zerub- 
 babel" — then follows the refutation), the older Jews must have 
 led the way to this perverted interpretation. But we cannot 
 implicitly rely on Theodorefs statements of this kind. In the 
 Jewish writino's themselves, not the slightest tiuce of such an 
 interpretation is to be found. The Chaldean Paraphrast is de- 
 cidedly in favour of the Messianic interpretation : D''pNl ''"' "ici^ |nx 
 npn^n w:y'0 in^ X'^oi^ xn " Behold the days shaU come, and I will 
 raise up to David the righteous Messiah, (not NV^^I " the 
 Messiah of the righteous," as many absurdly read), saith the 
 Lord." JEusebins (compare Le Moyne, de Jehova justitia 
 nostra, p. 23), it is true, refutes the interpretation wliich refers 
 it to Joshua, the son of Josedech ; but we are not entitled to 
 infer from this circumstance, that this view found supporters 
 in his time. His intention is merely to guard against the 
 erroneous interpretation of ^lojdidsx. of the following verse in 
 the Alexandrian version (-/.ai touto to ovoijm ahroZ, o xaXsasi ahrh 
 Kxjping, 'lojaidiz). It can scarcely be imagined that the trans- 
 lators themselves proceeded from this erroneous view. For 
 
416 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Josedecb, the father of Joshua the higli-priest, is a person alto- 
 gether obscure. All which they intended, by their retaining 
 the Hebrew form, was certainly only the wish, to express that 
 it was a noraen j^roprium which occurred here ; and they 
 were specially induced to act thus by the circumstance, that 
 this name was, in their time, generally current, as one of the 
 proper names of the Messiah. 
 
 Ver. G. ''And in His days Judah is endowed with salva- 
 tion, and Israel dwelleth safely; and this is the name whereby 
 they shall call him : The Lord our rir/Jdeousness" 
 
 It has already been pointed out that the first words here 
 look back to David. That which Jeremiah here expresses by 
 several words, Zechariah expresses more briefly, by calling the 
 Sprout of David yc'lJI pnv "righteous, and protected by God." It 
 makes no difterence that, in that passage, the salvation, the inse- 
 parable concomitant of righteousness, is ascribed to the King, its 
 possessor ; while, here, it is ascribed to the people. For, in that 
 passage, too, it is for his subjects that salvation is attributed 
 to the King who comes for Zion, just as he is righteous for 
 Zion also. Isiuel must here be taken either in the restricted 
 sense, or in the widest, either as the ten tribes alone, or as the 
 ten tribes along with Judah. It is a favourite thought of 
 Jeremiah, M-hich recurs in all his Messianic prophecies, that 
 the ten tiibes are to partake in the future prosperity and sal- 
 vation. He has a true tenderness for Israel ; his bowels roar 
 when he remembers them, who were already, for so long a 
 time, forsaken and rejected. His lively hope for Israel is a 
 gi'eat testimony of his lively faith. For, in the case of Israel, 
 the visible state of things afforded still less ground for hope 
 than in the case of Judah. There is here an allusion to Deut. 
 xxxiii. 28 : (" And He thrusteth out thine enemy from before 
 thee, and saith : Destroy") " And Israel dwelleth in safety 
 {ni22 ^KiD"" pC'l), alone, Jacob looketh u])on a land of corn and 
 wine, and his heavens drop dew." There can be the less 
 doubt of the existence of this allusion, that this expression 
 occurs, besides in Deuteronomy, and in the verse under consi- 
 deration, only once more in chap, xxxiii. 1 G, — that a reference 
 to the majestic close of the blessing of Moses, which certainly 
 was in the hearts and mouths of all the pious, was very natural, 
 and that the word yc'in has there its analogy in ver. 21) : 
 
JEREMTAH, CHAP. XXIII. 6. 417 
 
 " Happy art thou, O Israel, who is like unto thee, a people 
 saved (V^^i) by the Lord, the shield of thy help, thy proud 
 sword ; and thine enemies flatter thee, and thou treadest upon 
 their high places." This glorious destination of the covenant- 
 people, which, hitherto, had been so imperfectly only realized 
 (most perfectly under David, compare 2 Sam. viii. 6, 14), 
 shall, under the reign of the Messiah, be carried out in such a 
 manner that idea and reality shall fully coincide. The cove- 
 nant-people is to appear in its full dignity. — In the second 
 hemistich of the verse, the reading requires first to be esta- 
 blished. Instead of the reading it«"iip^ which is found in the 
 text, and which is the third pers. Sing, with the Suffix, several 
 MSS. (compare Be Rossi), have the third pers. Plur. ^X")i?^ Se- 
 veral controversial writers, such as Raim. Martini, Pug. Fid. 
 p. 517, and Galatimts, iii. 9, p. 126, (The Jews of our time 
 assert that here Jeremiah did not say "they shall call," ^^"^Pl, 
 as we read it, but " he shall call him," ii^li?) ; and they declare 
 this to be the sense : " This is the name of Him who shall call 
 him, viz., the Messiah : Our righteous God,") declare the latter 
 to be unconditionally correct, and assert that the other had 
 originated from an intentional Jewish corruption, got up for 
 the purpose of setting aside the divinity of the Messiah, which, 
 to them, was so offensive. This allegation, however, is cer- 
 tainly unfounded. It is true, that some Jewish interpreters 
 availed themselves of the reading "l^5"!i?'; for the purpose stated. 
 Thus Rahhi Saadias Haggaon, according to Abe^iezra and 
 Manasseh Ben Israel, who explain : " And this is the name 
 by which the Lord will call him : Our righteousness." But it 
 by no means follows from this, that they invented the reading ; 
 it may have existed, and they only connected their perver- 
 sion with it. That the latter was indeed the case, appears 
 from the circumstance that by far the greater number of 
 Jewish interpreters and controversialists rejected this perver- 
 sion, because it was in opposition to the accents (compaie 
 especially J. ie^esrcfc and iVor^^ion the passage), and acknow- 
 ledged ijpnv nin'' to be the name of the Messiah. The reading 
 '^'iX^^>\ must be unconditionally rejected, because it has by far the 
 smallest external authority in its favour. It is true, that its sup- 
 porters (comp. especially Scliulze, vollst. Critik der geiuohnlichen 
 VOL. II. d d 
 
4 I 8 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Bibelausgaben, S. 321) have endeavoured to make up for its 
 deficiency in manuscript authority, by appealing to the autho- 
 rity of the ancient translators, all of whom, with the sole ex- 
 ception of the Alexandrian version, according to them, express 
 it. But this assertion is entirely without foundation. The 
 vocahiint euin of Joiudhan and the Vulgate is the coirect 
 translation of "iX'?p\ And when Jerome, in opposition to the 
 Alex., remarks that, according to the Hebrew, the translation 
 ought to be : Noriien ejus vocabunt, he does not contend 
 against their use of the Singular per se, but only against their 
 arbitrarily supplying " Jehovah" as the subject ; against their 
 explaining "The Lord shall call," instead of "one" shall call. 
 The manner in which the false reading ^t*")!?^ first arose, is 
 clearly seen from the reasons by which its later defenders en- 
 deavour to support it ; compare especially Schulze 1. c. The 
 chief argument is the erroneous supposition that the third 
 Plur. only could be used impersonally. To this was farther 
 added the use of the rarer Sufiix "i instead of the common 
 ^'^~- But from internal reasons, too, the reading ^i^']\^\ is ob- 
 jectionable ; the designation of the object of calling cannot be 
 omitted. — There cannot be any doubt that we are not allowed 
 to refer the Suffix in ii<^p^ to Israel, (Euulcl: "And this is 
 their name by which they call them,") but to the Messiah. 
 For it is only in this case, that those who call, viz., Judah or 
 Israel, the Members of the Church, are indirectly mentioned 
 in the preceding words ; and the Messiah is, in both verses, 
 the chief person to whom all the other clauses refer. At all 
 events, the then could not, in that case, have been omitted, as 
 in this context every thing depends u})on the connection of 
 the salvation with the person of the King ; and this connec- 
 tion must be clearly and distinctly expressed. We now come 
 to upnv nin\ Great difference of opinion prevails as to the 
 explanation of these words. The better portion of the Jewish 
 interpreters, indeed, likewise consider them as names of the 
 Messiah, but not in such a manner that He is called " Jehovah," 
 and then, in apposition to it, " Our righteousness," but rather 
 in such a manner that ijpiv mn'' is an abbreviation of the whole 
 sentence. Thus the Chaldean, who thus paraphrases : " And 
 this is the nane by whicii they shall call him : Righteousness 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 6. 419 
 
 will be bestowed upon us from the face of the Lord ;" Klmchi, 
 " Israel shall call the Messiah by this name : The Lord our 
 righteousness, because at His time, the righteousness of the 
 Lord will be to us firm, continuous, everlasting ;" the D'^ipy "iDD 
 (in Le Moyne, p. 20) : " Scripture calls the name of the Mes- 
 siah : The Lord our righteousness, because He is the Mediator 
 of God, and we obtain the righteousness of God by His minis- 
 try." Besides to chap, xxxiii. 1 6, they refer to passages such 
 as Exod. xvii. 1 5, where Moses calls the altar " Jehovah my 
 banner ;" to Gen. xxxiii. 20, where Jacob calls it hitniy^ "'rha ha. 
 Grotius follows these expositors, only that he dilutes the sense 
 still more. The other Christian expositors, (the Vulgate ex- 
 cludes every other interpretation, even by its translation : 
 Bominus Justus noster) on the contrary, contend with all their 
 might for the opinion, that the Messiah is here called Jeho- 
 vah, and hence must be truly God. That which Dassov i. h. 
 1. remarks : " Since then the Messiah is called Jehovah, we 
 have firm ground for inferring, that He is truly God, inasmuch 
 as that name is peculiar and essential to the true God," is the 
 argument common to all of them. Le Mpyne wrote in defence 
 of this explanation a whole book, which we have already 
 quoted, but from which little is to be learned. Even Calvin, 
 who elsewhere sometimes erred from an exaggerated dread of 
 doctrinal prejudice, decidedly adopts it. He remarks : " Thos-e 
 who judge without prejudice and bitterness, easily see that 
 that name belongs to Christ, in so far as He is God, just as 
 the name of the Son of David is assigned to Him in reference 
 to His human nature. To all those who are just and unpre- 
 judiced, it will be clear that Christ is here distinguished by a 
 twofold attribute ; so that the Prophet commends Him to us, 
 both as regards the glory of His deity, and his true human 
 nature." By righteousness he, too, understands justification 
 throuffh the merits of Christ, " for Christ is not righteous for 
 himself, but received righteousness in order to communicate it 
 to us" (1 Cor. i. 30). We have the following observations to 
 make in reference to this exposition. 1. The principal mis- 
 take in it is this, that it has been overlooked that the Prophet 
 here expresses the nature of the Messiah and of His time in 
 the form of a nomen loropriurfi. If the words were thus : 
 " And this is Jehovah our righteousness," we should be fully 
 
4l'<) MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 entitled to take Jehovah as a personal designation of the 
 Messiah. But in reference to a name, it is as common, as it 
 is natural, to take from a whole sentence the principal words 
 only, and to leave it to the reader or hearer to supply the rest. 
 In the case of all naming, brevity is unavoidable, as is proved 
 V)y the usual abbreviation of even those proper names which 
 consist of one word only. The two cases mentioned by 
 " Kimchi will sei-ve as instances. " Jehovah my Banner" is a 
 concise expression for : " This altar is consecrated to Jehovah 
 my Banner;" ^S"iC*^ \n^S ^S for: "This altar belongs to the 
 xllmighty, the God of Israel." A number of other instances 
 might easily be quoted ; one need only compare, in Hillers 
 and S'nnonis Onomastica, the names which are compounded 
 with Jehovah. Thus, e.g., Jehoshua, i.e., Jehovah salvation, is 
 a concise expression for : Jehovah will grant me salvation ; 
 Jehoram, i.e., Jehovah altus, for : I am consecrated to the 
 exalted God of Israel. Most perfectly analogous, however, is 
 the name Zedekiah, i.e., the righteousness of the Lord, for : 
 He under whose reign the Lord will oTant ricrhteousuess to 
 His people. This n^ame, moreover, seems to refer dii'ectly to 
 the prophecy before us. Just as Eliakim, by changing his 
 name into Jehoiakim, intended to represent himself as he in 
 whom the prophecy in 2 Sam. vii. would be fulfilled ; so he 
 who was formerly called Mattaniah changed, at the instance of 
 Nebuchadnezzar (who had, indeed, no other object in view than 
 that, as a sign of his supremacy, his name should be different 
 from that by which he was formerly called, and who left the 
 choice of the name to Mattaniah himself), his name into Zede- 
 kiah, imagining that in a manner so easy, he would become 
 the Jehovah Zidkenu announced by Jeremiah, and longed for 
 by the people. 2. The preceding argument only showed that 
 there is nothing opposed to the exposition : He by whom and 
 imder whom Jehovah will be our righteousness. A positive 
 proof, however, in favom- of it is offered by the parallel pas-' 
 .sage, chap, xxxiii. 15, 16: "In those days and at that time 
 will I cause a righteous Branch to grow up unto David ; and 
 He worketh justice and nghteousne.ss in the land. In those 
 <lays shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely, 
 and this is the name which they shall give to her: Jehovah 
 our righteousness." Here Jehovah Zidkenu by no means 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 6. i21 
 
 appears as the name of the Messiah, but as that of Jerusalem 
 in the Messianic time. In vain are all the attempts which 
 have been made to set aside this troublesome argument. They 
 only serve to show, that it cannot be invalidated. Le Moyne, 
 " in order that no way of escape may be left to the enemies," 
 brings forward, p. 298 ff, five different expedients among 
 which the reader may choose. But their very difference is a 
 plain sign of arbitrariness ; and that appears still more clearly, 
 when we begin to examine them individually. Sevei*al inter- 
 preters assume an enallage generis Th='h, " and thus shall 
 they call hhn." Le Moyne thinks that we need have no dif- 
 ficulty in assuming such an enallage. Others explain : " And 
 he who shall call, i.e., invite her, is Jehovah our righteousness." 
 A simple reference to the passage before us is decisive against 
 it ; the parallelism of the two passages is too close to admit oi 
 Kip"! in the second passage being understood in a sense alto- 
 gether different. By the same argument, the explanations by 
 Hoftinger (Thesaur. Philolog. p. \7l),a.nd Dassov: "This shall 
 come to pass when the Lord, the Lord our righteousness, shall 
 call her," are also refuted, quite apart from the consideratiors, 
 that ~\^^ cannot by any means signify when. The most recent 
 defender of the old orthodox view, Schmieder, cuts the knot 
 by simply severing our passage from chap. xxxiiL IG-S. 
 The ancient explanation, which refers IJplV, " our righteous- 
 ness," to the remission of sins, does not even correctly under- 
 stand this word. It is true that the remission of sins is often 
 represented as one of the chief blessings of the Messianic time ; 
 but here it is out of place. According to the context, it is 
 actual justification, i.e., salvation according to another mode 
 of viewing it, which is here spoken of (compare remarks o:i 
 Mai. iii. 20). Righteousness in this sense implies, of course, 
 the forgiveness of sins ; but, besides, the righteousness of lif^ 
 is comprehended in it. Righteousness stands here in paral- 
 lelism with salvation, and the order and progress is this : 
 I'ighteousness of the king, righteousness of the subjects, then 
 salvation and rio-hteousness as a reward from God, To this 
 argument may still be added the contrast to the former time. 
 Connected with the unrighteousness of the kings was that of 
 the people ; and hence it was that the country was deprived 
 of salvation, and smitten by the divine judgments. Tliat 
 
422 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 which Jeremiah comprehends in the name Jehovah Zldhenu, 
 Ezekiel, in the parallel passage, chap, xxxiv. 25-31, farther 
 carries out and expands. The Lord enters into a covenant of 
 peace with them ; rich blessing is bestowed upon them ; He 
 breaks their yoke and delivers them from servitude ; they do 
 not become a prey to the Gentiles. — Schmieder hiis objected, 
 tliat the name would be without meaning for the promised 
 Kint;, unless the name Jehovah belonged to him. But the 
 King, by being called Jehovah Zidkeiiu, is designated as the 
 channel, through which the divine blessings flow upon the 
 Chui'ch, as the Mediator of Salvation, as the Saviour. We 
 must not, however, omit to remark that this ancient explana- 
 tion was wrong only in endeavouring to draw out from the 
 word that which, no doubt, is contained in the matter itself 
 No one born of a woman is rigldeous, in the full sense of the 
 word ; and if there be anything wanting in the personal 
 7-ighteousness of the King, the working of justice and righteous- 
 ness, too, will at once be deficient ; and salvation and righteous- 
 ness are not gi-anted in their full extent from above. To no 
 one among all the former kings did the attribute pnv belong 
 in a higher degree than to David ; and yet in how imperfect 
 a degi-ee did even he possess it ! The calamity which, by this 
 imperfection, was inflicted upon the people, is, e.g., seen in the 
 numl)ering of the people. And it was not only the ^vill to 
 work justice and righteousness which was imperfect, but the 
 power also was imperfect, and the knowledge limited. He 
 only who truly rules as a king, and is truly wise (compare the 
 words '"35?''"'^ ^?^ ^?ty() can come up to, and realize the idea, after 
 which David was striving in vain. All the three ofiices of 
 Christ, the royal no less than the prophetic and priestly, imply 
 His divinity ; and the conviction that, in the way hitherto 
 pursued, nothing was to be effected ; that it was only by the 
 divine entering into the earthly, that such splendid promises 
 could be fulfilled, — this conviction surely must have been plain 
 to a Jeremiah, whose fundamental sentiment is, "all flesh is 
 grass," and who lived at a time which, more than any other, 
 was fitted to cure that Pelagianism which always seeks to 
 gather grapes from thorns. If then, farther, we keep in mind 
 that Jeremiah had before him the clear announcements of the 
 former prophets, as regards the divinity of the Messiah (com- 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXIII. 7. 423 
 
 pave remarks on Mic. v. 1 ; Is. ix. 5), we can account for the 
 fact, that he does not expressly speak of it, only because it was 
 not suitable in this context, in which only the fact itself comes 
 into consideration, but not the particular way. 
 
 Ver. 7. " Wlterefore, behold days come, saith the Lord, that 
 they shall no more say : As the Lord liveth ivho brought up 
 the children of Israel out of the land of Egyj)t ; ver. 8, but: 
 As the Lord liveth, who brought up, and who led the seed of 
 the house of Isi^ael out of the North country, and from all 
 the countries whither I have driven them ; and they dwell in 
 their land." 
 
 The sense is this : The future prosperity and salvation shall 
 by far outshine the greatest delivei-ance and salvation of the 
 Past. Calvin remarks : " If the first deliverance be valued 
 by itself, it will be worthy of everlasting remembrance ; but 
 if it be compared with the second deliverance, it will almost 
 vanish ;" compare, besides chap. xvi. 14, 15, where the verses 
 now under consideration already occurred almost verbatim 
 (Jeremiah is fond of such repetitions, which are any thing but 
 vain repetitions ; and this fondness forms one of his peculiari- 
 ties) ; chap. iii. 16, where, in the same sense, it is said of the 
 Ark of the Covenant that it shall be forgotten in future ; Is. 
 xliii. 18, 19, Ixv. 17. — nin''-"'n "living (is) Jehovah," for: "As 
 Jehovah liveth." It is quite natural that, when God is invoked 
 as a witness and judge, He should be designated as the living 
 one ; and it is as natural that, on such an occasion, the 2Ti*eatest 
 sign of life which He gave should be pointed to. But that, 
 under the Old Testament dispensation, was the deliverance 
 from Egypt, the strongest and most impressive of all those 
 deeds by which the delusion was dissipated, that God was walk- 
 ing upon the vault of heaven, and did not judge through the 
 clouds. In future, a still stronger manifestation of life is to 
 take place. Hence the formula of the oath is altogether gene- 
 ral ; the deliverance from Egypt comes into consideration as a 
 manifestation of life, and not as an act of grace. This was 
 overlooked by Calvin when he remarked : " Whensoever they 
 saw themselves so oppressed, that they did not see any other 
 end to their evils than in the grace of God, they said that the 
 same God, who, in former times, had been the deliverer of His 
 people, was still living, and His power undiminished." 
 
•424 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 CHAP. XXXI. 31-40. 
 
 Tlie 30th and 31st chapters may rightly be called the 
 grand hymn of Israel's deliverance. They are connected into 
 one whole, not oijl^ l>y a material, but also by a formal unity ; 
 so that we must indeed wonder at views such as those of 
 Veiuma and Rosenmiiller, who assume that the section is 
 composed of fragments loosely connected, and written at dif- 
 ferent times ; but still more at the views of Movers and Hit- 
 zig, wlio assert that a whole number of strange interpolations 
 had been introduced into the text ; compare Ki'qiev, Jerem. 
 S. 170 tf. 
 
 With respect to the time of the composition, we must not 
 allow ourselves to be deceived by the circumstance that, as a 
 rule, Judah appears no less that Israel, already far away from 
 the land of the Lord, in captivity. The Prophet, taking his 
 stand in the time when the catastrophe has already taken 
 place, speaks from an ideal Present. The fact that the destruc-' 
 tion of Jerusalem was indeed imminent, and immediately in 
 view, but had not yet taken place, becomes probable even from 
 the inscriptions in chap, xxxii. and xxxiii., according to which 
 these two chapters, which are so closely related to the two 
 before us, belong to the tenth year of Zedekiah, when Jerusa- 
 lem was besieged by the Chaldeans. This is rendered certain 
 by chap. xxx. 5-7, where the final catastrophe upon the cove- 
 nant-people, which belongs to the time of Jeremiah, is repre- 
 sented as still impending. Hitherto the threatening had pre- 
 vailed in the predictions of the Prophet ; but now, in the view 
 of their fulfilment, when the thunders of the judgment were 
 already heard from the heavens, the promise flows in full 
 streams. The false prophets had prophesied prosperitj'' and 
 salvation, at a time when, to the human eye, there was no. 
 cause for fear ; but Jeremiah just steps forth to announce sal- 
 vation, at a time when all human hope luid vanished. 
 
 The Prophet begins, in chap, xxx., with the promise of sal 
 vation for (dl Israel ; and after a detailed descri})tion, he com- 
 prehends and sums it up, in ver. 22, in the words, brief bu- 
 infinitely rich and comprehensive : " And ye shall be my people 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXI. SI 40. 425 
 
 and I will be your God."^ The majestic close of the promise 
 for the true Israel is, in vers. 23, 24, formed by the threaten- 
 ing against those who are Israel in appearance only, — analogous 
 to the words of Isaiah : " There is no peace to the wicked." 
 Let them not, in their foolish delusion, seize the promise for 
 themselves. The time of the highest blessing for the godly, 
 and for those who are willing to become godly, the D''0''n rT'iriKr 
 will be for them, at the same time, a time of the highest curse. 
 The climax of the manifestation of grace has the climax of the 
 manifestation of justice as its inseparable companion. " Behold 
 the storm of the Lord, glowing fire, goeth forth, a continuing^ 
 storm, on the head of the wicked it shall remain. The fierce 
 anger of the Lord shall not return, until He have done, and 
 until He have per-formed the intents of His heart ; at the end 
 of days ye shall consider it." Formerly, in chap, xxiii. 19, 20, 
 in a threatening prophecy which referred to the exile, the 
 Prophet had uttered the same words. By their verbal repeti- 
 tion, he intimates that the matter was not by any means 
 settled with the exile ; that tlie latter must not be considered 
 as the absolute and final punishment for the sins of the whole 
 nation, but that, as truly as God is Jehovah, so surely His 
 words will revive, as often as the circumstances again exist, 
 to which they originally referred. 
 
 1 The person of the Messiah meets us as the living centre of the salvation 
 in ver. 9 : " And they serve the Lord their God, and David their King, whom 
 I will raise up unto them;" on which words Jonathan remarks: "And the 
 Messiah the Son of David;" a,m\ Aharbanel : "This is King Messiah, who 
 Ls of the house of David, and is therefore called by his name." From the 
 Ijarallel passages, Hos. iii. 5 ; Is. Iv. 3, our passage differs in this, that David 
 here does not, as in those passages, designate the family of David which 
 centres in Christ, but the person of tlie Messiah. The commentary is fur- 
 nished by chap, xxiii. 5 : " I raise UiUto David a righteous Sprout." The 
 circumstance, that it is not the Sprout of David, but David, that is spoken 
 of here, is explained from a reference to the words which the ten tribes spoke 
 at their rebellion, 1 Kings xii. 16 : " We have no portion in David, neither 
 have we inheritance in the Son of Jesse. To your tents, Israel." To the 
 person of the ]\fessiah the Prophet reverts once more towards the close also : 
 " And their glorious one shall be oiit of themselves, and their governor shaU 
 proceed from the midst of them (compare Mic. v. 1, 2, [2, 3]), and I cause 
 him to draw near, and he apprcacheth unto me ; for who is surety for his 
 heart to approach unto me, saith the Lord ?" God himself receives the Kiug 
 of the Future into the closest communion Avith Him, — " I and the Father ai-e 
 one" — a communion which no one can usurp by his own power, and which, 
 in the case of the former kings, even in that of David, was frec[uently dis- 
 turbed by their sinful weakness. 
 
426 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Tlie more specific the consolntion is, the more impressive is 
 it, and the more does it reach the heart. After having an- 
 iiounced salvation, therefore, to all Israel, the Prophet now 
 proceeds to the consolation for the two divisions of Israel. He 
 begins with Israel in the restricted sense — the ten tribes 
 (chap. xxxi. 1-22), and with tliem he continues longest, be- 
 cause, when looking to the outward appearance, they seemed 
 to be lost beyond all hope of recovery, to be for ever rejected 
 by the Lord. The thought, that we have here an original and 
 independent announcement of salvation for Israel, is set aside 
 even by the relation of ver. 1 to ver. 22 of the preceding 
 chapter. For it is to this verse that the Prophet immediately 
 connects his discourse; vers. 23 and 24 are only a parenthe- 
 tical remark, an Odi iwofanv/ni vulgus et arceo, addressed to 
 those to whom the promise did not belong. Upon the words: 
 " You shall be my people, and I will be your God," follow in 
 an inverted oi'der, the words: "At that time, saith the Lord, 
 I will (specially) be the God of all the families of Israel, and 
 they shall be my people." Rachel, the mother of Joseph and 
 Benjamin, weeping over her sons, vers. 15-17, is so much the 
 more suited to represent Israel, that the tribe of Benjamin 
 also, as to its principal portion, belonged to the kingdom of 
 the ten tribes; compare my commentary on Ps. Ixxx. Upon 
 Israel there follows, in vers. 23-26, Judah. The announce- 
 ment closes in ver. 26 with the words so often misunderstood: 
 " LTpon this I awaked, and I beheld, and my sleep was sweet 
 unto me." The Prophet has lost sight of the Present; like a 
 sleeping man, he is not susceptible of its impressions, compare 
 remarks on Zech. iv. 1. Then he awakes for a moment from 
 his sweet dream (an allusion to Prov. iii. 24), which, however, 
 is not, like ordinary dreams, without foundation. He looks 
 around; eveiy thing is dark, di'eaiy, and cold; nowhere is 
 there consolation for the weary soul. "Ah," he exclaims, "I 
 have sweetly dreamed," — and immediately the hand of the 
 Lord again seizes him, and can-ies him away from the scenes 
 of the Present. 
 
 There is not by any means a different salvation destined 
 for Israel and Judah ; it is one salvation to be partaken of by 
 both, who are in future to be re-united into one covenant- 
 people, into a nation of brethren. From the parts, therefore. 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXI. 22. 427 
 
 the description returns, in vers. 27-40, to the whole from 
 which it had proceeded, and is thus completely rounded oft", 
 especially by the circumstance that, just in this close, there is 
 contained the crown of the promises, the substance and centre 
 of the declaration recurring here in ver. 33: "And I will be 
 their God, and they shall be my people." 
 
 The whole description in both chapters is Messianic; and 
 after what we have already had frequent occasion to remark, 
 no farther proof is necessary to show how inadmissible is a 
 proceeding like that of Venema, who cuts it all up into small 
 pieces, and here assumes an exclusive reference to the return 
 from the captivity; there, to the Maccabees, whom he almost 
 raises to Saviours; in another place, to Christ and His King- 
 dom. We ought therefore, indeed, to give an exposition of 
 the whole section; but, for external reasons, we are obliged to 
 limit ourselves to an exposition of the principal portion, chap, 
 xxxi. 31-40. 
 
 It is chap. xxxi. 22 only which we shall briefly explain, 
 because that passage was, in former times, understood by 
 many interpreters to contain a personal Messianic prophecy. 
 " How long ivilt thou turn aside, thou aj)ostate daughter ? 
 for the Lord createth a new thing in the land, woman shall 
 corYii^ass about num." The last words of the verse are, by the 
 ancient interpreters, commonly explained as referring to Christ's 
 birth by a virgin. Thus, e.g., Cocceius: "It could not be 
 said more distinctly, at least not without ceasing to be enig- 
 matical, unless he had said that a virgin has born Christ the 
 Son of God." But quite apart from other arguments, this ex- 
 planation is opposed by the obvious consideration, in that 
 case, just that would here be stated which, in the birth of 
 Christ by a virgin, is not peculiar. For laj and nipi are a 
 designation of the sex ; the fact that the woman brings forth 
 the man (since ~\2i is asserted to designate proles mascula), is 
 something altogether common; but the important feature is 
 wanting, that the woman is to be a virgin, and the man, the 
 Son of God. But certainly not a whit better than this ex- 
 planation is that which modern interpreters (Schnurrer, Gese- 
 nius, Hosenniilller, Maurer), have advanced in its stead: 
 " The woman shall protect the man, shall perform for him the 
 munus excubitoris circumeuntis." This, surely, is a " ridi- 
 
428 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 cuius miis" — an argument quite unique. We must fully 
 agree with Sohnurrer, who remarks: "This, surely, is some- 
 thing new, uncommon, unheard of;" but not every thing new 
 is, for that reason, suitable for furnishing an etl'ectual motive 
 for conversion. The sense at which Ewald arrives: "A woman 
 transforming herself into a man," is surely not worthy of being 
 entertained at the expense of a change in the reading. Tlie 
 correct view is the following: — The Prophet founds his ex- 
 hortation to return to the Lord upon the most effectual argu- 
 ment possible, viz., upon the fact that the Lord was to return 
 to them, that the time of wrath was now over, that they 
 might hasten back into the open arms of God's love. Without 
 hope of mercy, there cannot be a conversion. The perverse 
 and desponding heart of man must, by His preventing love, 
 be allured to come to God. How important and valuable the 
 " new thing" is which the Lord is to create, the Prophet shows 
 by the terms which he has selected. It is just the nominn 
 sexiLS which here are suitable ; the omission of the article also 
 is intentional. The relation is represented in its general 
 aspect; and thereby the look is more steadily directed to its 
 fundamental nature and substance. " Woman shall compass 
 about (Ps. xxxii. 7, 10) man;" the strong will again take the 
 weak and tender into His intimate communion, under His 
 protection and loving care. The woman art thou, O Israel, 
 who liitherto hast sufficiently experienced, v/hat a woman is 
 without the man, how she is a reed exposed to, and a sport 
 of, all winds. The man is the Lord. How foolish would it 
 be on thy part, if thou wert to persevere any longer in thine 
 independence and dissoluteness, and if thou didst refuse to 
 return into the sweet relation of dependence and uncon- 
 ditional sun-ender, which alone, being the only natural rela- 
 tion, can be productive of happiness ! In favour of this 
 explanation is also the clear reference of ailDD to ppDnnn, and 
 to n33icn, which, in the case of the latter word, is even out- 
 wardly expressed by the alliteration. Hoav foolish would it 
 be still farther to depart, as now the time is at hand when 
 the Lord is approaching. — It is obvious that, even according 
 to our interpretation, the prophecy retains its Messianic 
 character. 
 
ISAIAH, CHAP. XXXI. 31, 32. 429 
 
 The contents of the section, vers. 31-40, are as follows : — 
 The Lord is far from punishing with entire rejection the con- 
 tempt of His former gifts and blessings. On the contrary, 
 by increased gTace, He will renew the bond between Him and 
 the people, and render it for ever indissoluble. The founda- 
 tion of this is formed by the remission of sins, of which the 
 richer outpouring of the Spirit is a consequence; and it is 
 now, when the Law no more comes to Israel as an outward 
 letter, but is written in their hearts, that Israel attain their 
 destination; they will truly be the people of God, and God 
 will be truly their God, vers. 31-34. To the people conscious 
 of their gniilt, and still groaning under the judgments of God, 
 such a manifestation of God's continuous grace appears in- 
 credible; but God most emphatically assures them, that this 
 election is still in force, and must continue for ever, as truly 
 as He is God, vers. 31-37. The city of God shall gloriously 
 arise out of its ashes. While formerlj^ the unholy abomina- 
 tion entered into her, the holy one, even into her innermost 
 parts, she now shall extend her boundaries beyond the terri- 
 tory of the imhoiy; and the Lord, who is sanctified uifhin 
 her, will sanctify himself upon her also. There shall be no 
 more destruction. 
 
 Ver. 31. "Behold, days come, saith the Lord, and I make 
 a new covenant tuith the house of Israel, and with the house 
 of Judah. 
 
 Ver. 32. "Not as the covenant that I made with their 
 fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them 
 out of the land of Egypt, ivhich my covenant they brake; but 
 J marry them to me, saith the Lord." 
 
 The first question which we have here to examine is: What 
 is to be understood by the making of a covenant? We cannot 
 here think of a formal transaction, of a mutual contract, such as 
 the covenant made on Sinai. This appears from ver, 32, accord- 
 ing to which the old covenant was concluded on the day when 
 the Lord took Israel by the hand, in order to bring them out 
 of Egypt ; but at that time a covenant-transaction proper was 
 not yet mentioned. Most interpreters erroneously suppose 
 that by the words : " In the day," «Src., tlie abode at Sinai is 
 
430 MESSIAXIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 designated. But since the (hiy of the deliverance from Egypt 
 is commonly thus spoken of (comp. Exod. xii. 51 If.) ; since 
 this (iay was, <as such, marked out by the annually returning 
 feast of the Passover, we must, here also, take DV, " day," in 
 its proper sense. And there is the less reason for abandoning 
 this most obvious sense that, in Exod. vi. 4 ; Ezek. xvi. 8 ; 
 Hag. ii. 5, a covenant with Israel is spoken of, which was not 
 first concluded on Sinai, but was already concluded when they 
 went out from Egypt. Fartlier — No obligation is spoken of 
 in reference to the new covenant ; blessing and gifts are men- 
 tioned, and nothing but these. But are we to adopt the opinion 
 of Frischrnvih (de foedere iiov. in the Tltes. Ant. i. p. 857), 
 and of many other iuterprcters and lexicographers, and say 
 that n^i3 " does not only signify a covenant entered upon by two 
 or several parties, but also 'Kplkaiv, proposituni Dei, sirayyiXla;, 
 His gratuitous and unconditional promises, as well as His 
 constant ordinances 1" That might after all be objectionable, 
 nnn mn cannot signify any thing but to make a covenant.^ 
 But tiie question is, whether the making of a covenant cannot 
 be spoken of in passages, where there is no mention of trans- 
 actions of a mutual agreement between two parties. The sub- 
 stance of the covenant evidently precedes the outward conclu- 
 sion of the covenant, and forms the foundation of it. The con- 
 clusion of the covenant does not first form the relation, but is 
 merely a solemn acknowledgment of the relation already exist- 
 ing. Thus it is ever in human relations ; the contract, as a 
 rule, only fixes and settles outwardly, a relation already exist- 
 ing. And that is still more the case in the relation between 
 God and man. By every benefit from God, an obligation is 
 imposed upon him who receives it, whether it may, in express 
 words, have been stated by God, and have been outwardly 
 acknowledged by the recipient or not. This is clearly 
 seen in the case under consideration. At the giving of the 
 Law on Sinai, the obligatory power of the commandments of 
 
 ' Ilofmann (^Weiss. u. Erf. 1 S. 138) assigns to the phrase the meaning: 
 " to make an arrangement." But decisive against this is not onlj^ tlie deriv- 
 ation, (conip. G'cseniiis Thcsdiinis), but tlie circumstance also, that it is 
 ahnost exclusively and quite manifestly used of a relation resting on recipro- 
 city, of the making of a covenant in the ordinary sense ; and that the few 
 instances where there is apparently a reference to one party, form an excep- 
 tion only to the rule. 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXI. 31, 32. 431 
 
 God is founded upon the fact, that God brought Israel out of 
 the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. Hence, it appears 
 that the Sinaitic covenant existed, in substance, from the 
 moment that the Lord led Israel out of Egypt. By aposta- 
 tizing from the Lord, the people would have broken the cove- 
 nant, even if it had not been solemnly confirmed on Sinai ; 
 just as their apostacy, in the time between their going out 
 and the transactions on Sinai, was treated as a violation of 
 the covenant. It would have been a breach of the covenant, 
 if the people had answered, in the negative, the solemn ques- 
 tions of God, whether they would enter into a covenant with 
 Him. This appears so much the more clearly, when we keep 
 in mind, that the New Covenant was not at all sanctioned by 
 such an external solemn act. But if, nevertheless, it is a 
 covenant in the strictest sense ; if, here, the relation is inde- 
 ])endent upon its acknowledgment, — then, under the Old Tes- 
 tament too, this acknowledgment must be a secondary element. 
 The same is the case with all the other passages commonly 
 quoted in proof, that n''"i2 ma may also be used of mere bless- 
 ings and promises. Thus, e.g., Gen. ix. 9 : " Behold, I esta- 
 blish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you." 
 That which is here designated as a covenant is not the promise 
 'per se, that in future the course of nature should, on the whole, 
 remain undisturbed, but in so far only, as it imposes upon them 
 who receive it, the obligation to glorify, by their walk, the 
 Lord of the order of nature. In part, this obligation is after- 
 wards outwardly fixed in the commandments concerning mur- 
 der, eating of blood, »fec. Gen. xv. 18: "In the same day 
 God made a covenant with Abraham, saying : Unto thy seed 
 I give this land." In what precedes, a promise only is con- 
 tained ; but this promise itself is, at the same time, an obli- 
 gation ; and this obligation existed even then, although it was 
 at a later period only, solemnly undertaken by receiving tlie 
 sign of the covenant, circumcision. Exod. xxxiv. 10:" And 
 He said : Behold I make a covenant ; before all thy people I 
 will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth, nor 
 in any nation ; and all the people among whom thou art, 
 shall see the work of the Lord ; for it is a terrible thing that 
 I will do with thee." The covenant on Sinai is here already 
 made ; the making of the new covenant here spoken of con- 
 
432 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 sists in the mercies by which God will manifest himself to 
 His people as their God. Every one of these mercies in- 
 volves a new obligation for the people ; every one is a ques- 
 tion in deeds : This I do to thee, what doest thou to me ? — 
 It will now be possible to determine in what sense the Old 
 Covenant is here contrasted with the New, The pointi in 
 question cannot be a new and more perfect revelation of the 
 Law of God ; for that is common to both the dispensations. 
 No jot or tittle of it can be lost under the New Testament, 
 and as little can a jot or tittle be added. God's law is based 
 on His nature, and that is eternal and unchangeable, compare 
 Mai. iii. 22 (iv. 4). The revelation of the Law does not belong- 
 to the going out from Egypt, to which the making of the for- 
 mer covenant is here attributed, but to Sinai. As little can 
 the discourse be of the introduction of an entirely new relation, 
 which is not founded at all upon the former one. On this 
 subject, David Kimcltis remark is quite pertinent : " It will 
 not be the newness of the covenant, but its stability." The 
 covenant with Israel is an everlasting covenant. Jehovah 
 would not be Jehovah, if an entirely new commencement could 
 take place ; "kiyu h — so the Apostle writes in Rom. xv. 8 — 
 'JjjffoDi/ Xf/Crdv biiiyj)vov yiyivriO^ai 'ZifiTOiJjYig bcrlp aXrjdn'ag dsou iic to 
 ^iSaiudai rag s'^ayyiXiag ruv Taripuv ra d; idvrj v'^r'sp iXsoug dot,oi'(fci,i 
 rbv diov. The sending of Christ with His gifts and blessings, 
 the making of the New Covenant, is thus the consequence of 
 the covenant- faithfulness of God. If then the Old and New 
 Covenants are here contrasted, the former cannot designate 
 the relation of God to Israel per se, and in its whole extent, 
 but it must rather designate the former mode only, in which 
 this relation was manifested, — that whereby the Loi'd had, 
 up to the time of the Prophet, manifested himself as the God 
 of Israel. With this former imperfect form, the future more 
 perfect form is here contrasted, under the name of the New 
 Covenant. The New Covenant whifch is to take the place of 
 the Old, when looking to the form (comp, Heb. viii. 13: h tZ 
 V.'-yitv Ka/vr/f, rrtTaXaiuxi rrjv rrpuTriv to bs rraXaioj/j^SfOv xai yrtpd- 
 6-/.0V, lyyug a.<pan<siJ.oZ), is, in substance, the realization of the Old. 
 These remarks are in perfect hai-mony with that which Mas 
 formerly said concerning the meaning of n^^3 ma. We saw 
 that this expression does not designate an act only once done. 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXT. 31, 82. 433 
 
 by wliich a covenant is solemnly sanctioned, but rather that 
 it is used of every action, by which a covenant-relation is 
 instituted or confirmed. — If, then, the Old Covenant is the 
 former form of the covenant with Israel ; and the New Co- 
 venant the future form of it, another question is : — Which 
 among the manifold differences of those two forms are here 
 specially regarded by the Prophet ? The answer to this ques- 
 tion is supplied by that which the Prophet declares concerning 
 the New Covenant. For since it is not to be like the former 
 covenant, the excellences of the New must be as many defects 
 of the Old. These excellences, liov^ever, are all of a spiritual 
 nature, — firet, the forgiveness of sins, and then the writing of 
 the Law in the heart. It follows from this, that the blessings 
 of the Old Covenant were pre-einiineiitly (for we shall afterwards 
 see that an entire absence of these spiritual blessings cannot be 
 spoken of, and that the difference between the Old and the 
 New Covenant is, in this respect, a relative one only, not an 
 absolute one) of an external nature ; and this is also suggested 
 by the circumstance, that it is represented as being concluded 
 when the people were led out of Egypt ; in which fact, all the 
 later similar deliverances and blessings are comprehended. The 
 Prophet, if any one, had learned that, in the way hitherto 
 pursued, they could not successfully continue. The sinfulness 
 of the people had, at his time, manifested itself in such fearful 
 outbreaks, that, even when looking at the matter from a 
 human point of view, he could not but feel most deeply that, 
 with outward blessings and gifts, with an outward deliverance 
 from servitude, the people were very little benefited. What 
 is the use of a mercy which, accoixling to divine necessity, 
 must be immediately followed by a punishment so much the 
 more severe ? The necessary condition for the true and lasting- 
 bestowal of outward salvation, is the bestowal of the internal 
 salvation ; without the latter the former is only a mockery. 
 It is this internal salvation, therefore, which is the highest 
 aim of the Prophet's longings ; to it he here points as the 
 highest blessing of the Future ; compare also chap, xxxii. 40 : 
 " And I make an everlasting covenant with them, and I will no 
 more turn away from them to do them good, and I will put 
 my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me." — 
 The closing words of ver. 32 are frequently misunderstood. 
 VOL. II. ee 
 
4-34! MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPlfETR. 
 
 Tlie erroneous interpretation of TJ'X l»y "quia" which is found 
 with most expositors, is of less consequence, ncs indicates, 
 in general, the connection with wliat precedes. We may ex- 
 plain it either by : " which my covenant they brake," as is 
 done by Eivald ; or, "since (Deut. iii. 24) they brake my 
 covenant," in which latter case, ntJ'K refers at the same time 
 to " I marr}- them unto me." We have here farther carried 
 out and detailed that which previously was said of the making 
 of a new covenant ; and the sense is : Although they have 
 broken my former covenant, yet I marry them unto me, or 
 make a new covenant with them. Of greater importance is 
 the dift'erence in the interpretation of ^n^yn. By far the gi'eater 
 niunl:)er of interpreters understand this sensu malo ; the 
 ancient interpreters in doing so refer to the words xayw r^/MiXriaa. 
 auruv, (Heb. viii. 9) ; but these can scarcely prove anything. 
 For the author of that epistle, whose sole object it is to show 
 that the new covenant stands higher than the old — the insuffi- 
 ciency of the latter was, as the Prophet's expressions show, 
 sufficiently felt even by those who lived under it — has, in 
 these words, which do not stand in any relation to the object 
 which he has in view, followed the LXX. But it is a rather 
 doubtful and suspicious circumstance that, in determining 
 the sense, these interpreters greatly vary. Some, referring 
 to the Arabic, explain ^j;n by " fastidire ;'' others, as they 
 allege, from the Hebrew usus loquendi, by " to tjTannize." 
 Thus, e.g. Buddeus {de praerogat. fidelium X. T. in the 
 Miscell. p. 100) : " We may readily understand thereby every 
 severe chastisement by the neighbouring nations, such as 
 frequently happened : they did not remain in my covenant, 
 therefore I made them to bear the yoke of others, ^,«,sXj]ffa 
 auTuv, neglexi eos." But we have already seen (comp. remarks 
 on chap. iii. 1 4), that for neither of these significations is there 
 any foundation ; and this has been felt by those also who, in 
 order to bring out a bad signification, such as, according to 
 their view, the text requires, undertook to change the reading, 
 as e.g. Cttppellus, who would read Thvi, and Grotius, who 
 would read Ti^na.^ The signification " to betroth onesself," " to 
 
 ' Even the most recent iuterpretere, who take ^]}2 seit.'ni ninio, still greatly 
 differ, — a proof that this interpretation has a very in.suthcient foundation 
 on wliich to rest. Geseiiins, De Wetlc, JiUilc (on Ileb. viii. 9), retain the 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXI. 31, 32. 43 5 
 
 take in maniage," which in that passage we vindicated for ^]}2 
 with n, is, here too, quite applicable ; comp. Jer. ii. 1. This 
 signification the Chaldee Paraphrast too seems to have had in 
 view; for he translates Ti'^yins "' cupio vos" " deledor volm." 
 And is thei'e anything to indicate, that here the reason is to 
 be stated, why the old covenant is abolished ? That reason 
 can be brought in only by very forced explanations (comp. e.g. 
 Maurer and Hitzig) ; and it is, moreover, sufficiently expressed, 
 as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has shown. Even 
 in the announcement of a neiv covenant, the declaration is 
 implied that the old covenant was insufficient : u yap yj -Trp'Jjrrj 
 sxsi'vri rjv a/JjS,u,'7rroc, ovx av hivripag sZviTiTro ro-rrog (Heb. viii. 7), as 
 well as the reason why it was so, viz., on account of human 
 sinfulness and hardness of heart, which are not helped and 
 remedied by pre-eminently outward blessings and benefits, be 
 they never so great. This their former greatness is indicated 
 by the words : " When I took them by the hand," — -words 
 which imply the most tender love. To this subjective cause 
 of the insufficiency of the old covenant there is a reference 
 in the words : fis/M(p6,u.ivog yap avroTg X'sysi, in Heb. viii. 8, which 
 by De Wette and Bleek are erroneously translated : " For re- 
 provingly He says to them." The Dative abroTg belongs to 
 /-is/^fo/iSKos (comp. Mathiae, S. 705) ; if it were otherwise it 
 would be redundant, and would the less be in its place, that 
 the discoui'se is not addi'essed to the chikben of Israel. The 
 reason why a better covenant was required, such a one ring 
 h-ri TipsiTToffiv litayyzK'tatg vivo[Ji-o&irrirai, Heb. viii. G, appears suffi- 
 ciently from that which, in vers. 33, 34, is said of this new 
 covenant in contrast to the old. Here, however, it is rather 
 the infinite love of God, the greatness of His covenant-faith- 
 fulness which are pointed out ; and this thought is, from 
 amono- all others, best suited to the context. niDn and ''3JX 
 form an emphatic contrast. They, in wicked ingratitude, 
 have broken the former covenant, have shaken off the obliga- 
 
 explanation hj fastidire, rejlcere ; Maurer translates: dominarer, domini 
 partes sustinerem., contrasting tyrannical dominion with a relation of love ; 
 Ewcdd: "Seeing that I am her master and protector;" Hitzig: "And I 
 got possession of her." All these interpretations are opposed by the u.su.< 
 loquendi, according to which ^]}2 has only the two signiiications : " to pos- 
 sess," and "to take for a wife," the latter being the ordinary and prevail- 
 
l-oG MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 tioiis which God's former mercies imposed upon them. God 
 too — so it might be expected — ought now to annul the old 
 covenant, and for ever withdraw from them the old mercies. 
 But, instead of doing so, He grants the new covenant, the 
 greater mercy. He anew takes in marriage apostate Israel, 
 and in such a manner that now the bond of love becomes firm 
 and indestructible. BleeJc objects to our intei-pretation : " Tlie 
 object is not the city of Jerusalem, or even the Congi-egation 
 of Israel, but the single Israelites, who may indeed be desig- 
 nated as the children of Jehovah, but not as His spouse." 
 But, in such pei'sonifieations, it is quite a common thing that 
 the real plurality should take the place of the ideal unity. In 
 Exod. xxxiv. 1 5, for instance, it is said : " And they go a 
 whoring after their gods," — instead of the congi-egation, to 
 which the ivhoring properly belongs, (comp. Is. Ivii. 7), the 
 individual members are mentioned ; comp. Hos. ii. 1, 2 (i. 10, 
 ii. 19). 
 
 Ver. 33. "For tJds is the covenant that I vj'dl make loith 
 the house of Israel after these days, saith the Lord : I give my 
 law in their inward parts, and will ivHte it in their heaiis ; 
 and I ivill be their God, and they shall be my peoj^le" 
 
 "•3 is, by some interpreters, here supposed to mean " but ;" 
 so much, only, however, is correct that " but" might also have 
 been put ; for is here quite in its place. The words : " Not 
 as the covenant," &c., in the preceding verse, are here vindi- 
 cated, and expanded by a positive definition of the nature and 
 substance of the New Covenant. It is just because it is of 
 such a nature, that it is not like the former covenant. Dnn 
 does not, by any means, as is erroneously supposed by Venema 
 and Hitzig, refer to the days mentioned in ver. 31, in which 
 the New Covenant was to be made. " These days," on the 
 contraiy, are a designation of the Present ; " after these days," 
 e(|uivalent to wtrr^ nnnxa " at the end of days." The Prophet 
 so repeatedly and emphatically points to the Future, because 
 imbelief and weak faith imagined that, with the Present, the 
 history of the covenant-people was finished, and that no Future 
 was in store for them. Calvin pertinently remarks : "It is 
 just as if the Prophet had said, that the grace of which he was 
 prophesying could not be apprehended, unless they, believers, 
 kept theu' minds composed, and patiently waited until the 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXI. 83. 437 
 
 time of the promised salvation bad come." As regards the 
 following enumeration of the blessings, in and by the bestowal 
 of which the new covenant-relation is to be established, Venema 
 very correctly remarks : " The blessings are distinguished into 
 radical or causal ones, and subsequent or derived ones." The 
 second ''3, in ver. 34 : "For I will forgive their sin,'' proves 
 the correctness of this division, which is also pointed out by the 
 Athnach. — min is, by many interpreters, here understood to 
 signify " doctrine." Thus Buddeus : " By the word mm, the 
 whole New Testament doctrine is to be understood." This 
 interpretation, however, is objectionable, and destructive of the 
 sense, min never means " doctrine," but always " law ;" and 
 the fact that it is only the law of God, the eternal expression 
 of His nature, and common, therefore, to both the Old and New 
 Covenants, which can be here spoken of, and not a new constitu- 
 tion for the latter, is seen from the reference in which the giv- 
 ing in the inward parts and the writing on the heart (the tables 
 of the heart, 2 Cor. iii. 3), stands to the outward communica- 
 tion and the writing on the ta.bles of stone on Sinai. The la\A' 
 is the same ; the relation only is different in which God places 
 it to man, (" lex cum liomiine conciliatiir quasi" Michaelisj. 
 One might easily infer from the passage before us a confirma- 
 tion of the error, that the law under the Old Covenant was only 
 an outward dead letter. Against this error Buddeus already 
 contended, who, S. 117, acknowledges that it is a relative dif- 
 ference and contrast only, which are here spoken of He saj^s : 
 "This, of course, was the case with the Old Testament believers 
 also ; here, however, God promises a richer fulness and higher 
 degree of this blessing." Calvin declares the opinion that, under 
 the Old Testament dispensation, there did not exist any regene- 
 ration, to be absurd, and says : "we know that, under the Law, 
 the grace of God was rare and dark ; but that, under the 
 Gospel, the gifts of the Spirit were poured out, and that God 
 dealt much more liberally with His Church." The idea of a 
 purely outward giving of the Law is indeed one which is quite 
 inconceivable. God would, in that case, have done nothing 
 else towards Israel than He did to the traitor Judas, in whose 
 conscience He proclaimed His holy Law, without communi- 
 cating to him strength for repentance. But such a proceeding 
 can be conceived of, only where there is a subjective impos- 
 
438 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 .sibility of dvaxaivi^nv ug fUTdnoiav. Every outward manifesta- 
 tion of God must, according to the constitution of human 
 nature, be accompanied by the inward manifestation, since it 
 is inconceivable that He who knows our nature, should mock 
 us by the semblance of a l)lessing. As soon as we know the 
 outward fact of the deliverance from Egypt, we know, at the 
 same time, tiiat God has then powerfully touched the heart of 
 Israel. As soon as it is established that the Law on Sinai 
 was written on tables of stone by the finger of God, it is also 
 established that He, at the same time, wrote it on the tables 
 of Israel's heart. But that which is thus im])lied in the 
 matter itself, is confirmed by the testimony of history. In the 
 Law itself, circumcision is designated as the pledge and seal 
 of the l)estowal, not merely of outward l:)lessings, but of the 
 circumcision of the heart, of the removal of sin attaching to 
 every one by birth; so tliat man can love God with all his 
 heart, all his sold, and all his powers, Deut. xxx. G. This cir- 
 eumcision of the heart which, in the outwtird circumcision, 
 was at the same time required and promised by God (comp. 
 Deut. 1. c. with x. 1 G), is not substantially dififerent from the 
 writing of the Law on the heart. Fuiihcr — If the Law of 
 the Lord had, for Israel, been a mere outward letter, how 
 could the animated praise of it in the Holy Scriptures, e.g., in 
 Ps. xix., Vie accounted for? Surely, a bridge must already 
 have been formed betM^een the Law and him who can speak 
 of it as rejoicing the heart, as enlightening the eyes, as con- 
 verting the soul, as sweeter than honey and the honej'comb. 
 That is no more the Law in its isolation which worketh wrath, 
 but it is the Law in its connection with the Spirit, whose 
 commandments are not grievous; comp. my commentary on 
 Ps. xix. 8 ff A new heart was created under the Old Testa- 
 ment also, Ps. li. 12; and not to know the nature of this 
 creati(m was, for a teacher in Israel, the hio;hest disfn'ace, 
 John iii. ] 0. Yea, that which is here promised for the Future, 
 a pious member of the Old Covenant expresses, in Ps. xl. \), 
 in t/te same form, as being already granted to him as his 
 present spiritual condition : " I delight to do thy will, O my 
 (Jod, and thy Law is in the midst of my bowels, — words which 
 imply the same contrast to the Law as outward letter, as being- 
 written on tables of stone, comp. Prov. iii. 1-8: "My son, 
 
JEREMIAH, XXXI. 33. 439 
 
 forget not my law, and let thine heart keep my command- 
 ments .... bind them about thy neck, write them 
 upon the table of thine heart;" compare my commentary on 
 Psalms, Vol. iii. p. Ixvii.- — But how is it to be explained that 
 the contrariety which, in itself, is relative, appears here under 
 the form of the absolute contrariety, — the difference in degree, 
 as a difference in kind? Evidently in the same manner as 
 the same phenomenon must be explained elsewhere also, e.g. 
 John i. 1 7, where it is said that the Law was given by Moses, 
 but mercy and truth by Christ. By overlooking this fact, so 
 many errors have been called forth. The blessings of the Old 
 Covenant which, when considered in themselves, are so im- 
 portant and rich, appear, when compared with the much fuller 
 and more important blessings of the New Covenant, to be so 
 trifling that they vanish entirely out of sight. It is quite 
 similar when, in chap. iii. 16, the Prophet represents the 
 highest sanctuary of the Old Covenant, the Ark of the Cove- 
 nant, as sinking into entire oblivion in future; when, in chap, 
 xxiii. 7, 8, he describes the deliverance from Egypt as no 
 longer worthy of being mentioned. Parallel to the passage 
 under consideration is the promise of Joel of the pouring out 
 of the Spiiit, chap. iii. 1, 2 (ii. 28, 29); so that that which 
 we remarked on that passage, is applicable here also. But, in 
 that passage, the relative nature of the promise appears more 
 clearly than it does here, just because, in general, under the 
 New Covenant, in its relation to the Old, there is nowhere an 
 absolutely new beginning, but always a completion only (just 
 in the same manner as, on the other hand, under the New 
 Covenant itself, it is in the relation of the regnum gloriae to 
 the regmirti gratiae). Joel, in reference to the communica- 
 tion of the Spirit, puts the abundance in the place of the 
 scarcity ; the many in the place of the few. Compare, more- 
 over, chap. xxiv. 7 : " And I give them a heart to know me, 
 that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people, and I will 
 be their God;" xxxii. 89: "And I give them one heart and 
 one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them 
 and of their children after them;" but especially Ezek. xi. 
 19, 20, xxxvi. 26, 27. — The remarks of Jewish interpreters 
 on the passage under consideration, in which they cannot 
 avoid seeing that, in it, a purely moral revelation is prophe- 
 
4 to JIESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN TIIE PROPHETS. 
 
 Bietl, in contrast to a mere exteraal one, clearly show how 
 strongly the Old Testament is opposed to that carnal Jewish 
 delusion of the condition of the Messianic Kingdom (as it is 
 most glaringly expressed in the Talmudic passage Massechet 
 Sanhedriin, fol. 119: " There is no other difference between 
 the days of the Messiah and the present state of things, ex- 
 cepting only that the kingdoms shall be oiu' slaves)," — a delu- 
 sion which is quite analogous to the expectations which are 
 entertained by revolutionists concerning the Future, and 
 which flow from the same source. Thus Rtibbi BecJtai (see 
 Frischmuth) remarks: "This means that every evil concupis- 
 cence shall be taken away, and every desire to covet any 
 thing;" Moses Nachraanides {ibid. S. 861): "And this is 
 nothing else than that every evil concupiscence shall be taken 
 away, so that the heart, by an internal impulse, does what is 
 right. — In the days of Messiah there will not exist any evil 
 desire, but, from the impulse of his natiu-e, man will do what 
 is risfht. And there will, tlierefore, not be iimocence and 
 guilt, inasmuch as these depend upon concupiscence." But if 
 once bent upon it, pre-conceived opinions will overcome every, 
 even the strongest contradiction offered by the matter itself 
 This may be seen from the example of Grot ins, who here ex- 
 plains : " I will cause that all of them keep my Law in memory, 
 — in the first instance, by the multitude of synagogues which, 
 at that time, were built, and in which the Law was taught 
 thrice a-week." Thrice a- week! Surely that will produce 
 first-rate men, viz., such as are described in Isa. Iviii. 2. It 
 is not without meaning, that the words: " And I will be their 
 God," &c., follow upon: "And I give my Law in their inward 
 parts," &c. The Law is the expression of God's nature; it is 
 only by the Law being written in the heart that man can 
 become a partaker of God's nature; that His name can be 
 sanctified in him. And it is this participation in the nature 
 of God, this sanctification of God's name, which forms the 
 foundation of: " I will be their God, and they shall be my 
 people." Without this, the relation cannot exist at all, as 
 truly as God is not an idol, but the True and Holy One. 
 These words express, as Buddeus, S. 9-i, rightly remarks: 
 " That He will impart himself altogether to them." But how 
 were it possible that God, with His blessings and gifts, should 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXT. 34. 441 
 
 impart himself entirely and unconditionally to them who are 
 not of His nature ? Of all unnatural things, this would be 
 the most unnatural. Here, however, likewise the relative 
 character of the promise most clearly appears. As early as to 
 Abraham, God had promised that He would be a God to /lim, 
 and to his seed after him ; and this promise he had afterwards 
 repeated to the whole people, Lev. xxvi. 12, comp. Exod. 
 xxix. 45: " And I dwell in the midst of the children of Israel 
 and will be their God." In the consciousness that this pro- 
 mise was fulfilled in the time then present, David exclaims in 
 Ps. xxxiii. 12: " Blessed is tlie nation whose God is Jehovah, 
 the generation whom He hath chosen for His inheritance." 
 Hence, here too, thei'e is nothing absolutely new. If such 
 were the subject of discourse, then the whole Kingdom of 
 God under the Old Testament dispensation would be changed 
 into a mere semblance and illusion. But the small measure 
 of the condition — with which even God himself cannot dis- 
 pense, but of which He ma}- vouchsafe a larger measure, viz., 
 the Avriting of the Law in the heart, whereby man becomes a 
 copy of God, the personal Law — was necessarily accompanied 
 by the small measure of the consequence, Tlie perfect fulfil- 
 ment of God's promise to Abraham and Israel, to which the 
 prophet here alludes, could, therefore, be expected from the 
 future only. 
 
 Ver. 34. "And they shall teach no more a 'man his neigh- 
 bour, and a man his brother, saying: Know the Lord; for 
 they all shall hnoiv me, small and great, saith the Lord; for 
 L ivill forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin 
 no more" 
 
 Even from ancient times, the first hemistich of the verse has 
 created great embarrassment to interpreters, from which very 
 few of them, not excepting even Calvin, manage to extricate 
 themselves skilfully. The declaration that, because all will 
 be taught by God, human instruction in things divine is to 
 cease, has, at first sight, something fanatical in it, and, indeed, 
 was made use of by Anabaptists and other enthusiasts in vindi- 
 cation of their delusion.^ Many interpreters attempt an eva- 
 
 ' Not less than these, Hitzlg too has allowed himself to be carried away by 
 the appearance. He says : " Then, indeed, the office of religious instructors 
 must cease." 
 
442 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 sion, by referring the words to the future life ; thus Theodoref, 
 Augustine, {de Sjnrit. et lit c. 24) and Esfc, who, in a manner 
 almost naive, remarks: "Tiiis (liffieulty, it seems, is \ery 
 simply avoided by those who refer this promise to the future 
 world, where, no doubt, all care about teaching will cease." 
 But the matter is, indeed, not at all difficult. All that is 
 necessary is to keep in mind that human instruction is here 
 excluded, in so far only as it is opposed to divine instruction 
 concerning God himself; that hence, that which is here spoken 
 of, is mere human instruction, by whicli men are trained and 
 drilled in religion, just as in eveiy other branch of common 
 knowledge, — a result of which is, tliat they may learn for 
 ever without ever coming to the knowledge of the truth. Such 
 an instruction may be productive of historical faith, of belief 
 in huu)an authority ; but it is just by this, that the nature of 
 religion will be altogether destroyed. Even the tiue God 
 becomes an idol when He is not known through himself, when 
 He himself does not prepare the heart as a place to dwell in. 
 He is, and remains a mere idea that can impart no strength 
 in the struggle against sin which is a real power, and no com- 
 fort in affliction. Now, such a condition was very frequent 
 under the Old Testament dispensation. The mass of the people 
 possessed only a knowledge of God, which was chiefly, although 
 not exclusively, obtained through human instrumentality. By 
 the New Covenant, richer gifts of the Spirit were to be be- 
 stowed, and along with them, the number of those was to be 
 increased who were to partake in them, just as Isaiah, in chap, 
 vii. 1 6, represents believers under the Old Testament as being 
 taught by the Lord, while in chap. liv. 18, in reference to the 
 Messianic time, he announces : " And all thy children shall be 
 taught of the Lord." Under the New Covenant, the antithesis 
 of teaching by God, and teaching by man, is to cease. The 
 teachere do not teach in their own streno-th, but as servants 
 and in.struments of the Lord. It is not they who speak, Init 
 the Holy Spiiit in them. Those who are taught by them hear 
 the word that comes to them through men, not as man's word, 
 but as God's word ; and they receive it, not because it satisfies 
 their limited human reason, but because the Spirit testifies 
 that the Spirit is truth. How this antithesis is done away 
 with, and reconciled in a higher \niity, is, among other pas- 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXI. 34. 443 
 
 sages, shown by 2 Cor. iii. 8 : " You are an epistle of Christ 
 ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of 
 the living God." They are Ssodidaxroi, but through the minis- 
 try of the Apostle who, in so far as he performs this service, 
 is not different from God, but only a conductor of His power, 
 a channel through which the oil of the Holy Spirit flows 
 to the Church of God ; compare remarks on Zech. iv. The 
 same is taught in 1 John ii. 20 : Kal liMug %p/(r/Aa £%£« a'jrh rov 
 ayiov, xal o'lhan ita^ra. Ovk sypa-^a v/xiv, on oux. o/dari rriv aXriQiiav^ 
 dXX' OTI o'baTS avryjv. Ver. 2/ : Ka/ v/MiTc; to ^p/ff/xa, o sXtk^in ai: 
 avTou, h vfjjTv. fi'svn xai oh -^piiccv 'i^iTS, ha rig didaGzyj hfiag, aXX' ug 
 TO avTo y^plGfia diddazn bfj!,ag Tnp} 'TtdvTCuv x. t. X. The diddsxsiv here 
 signifies the human teaching in contrast to that which is 
 divine, such an one as undertfd\es by its own power to work 
 knowledffe in him who is taught. Such a teaching cannot 
 
 o o o 
 
 take place under the new covenant. A fundamental know- 
 ledge is already imparted to all its members ; tlie rrapdxXriTog, the 
 Holy Ghost, alone teaches them, John xiv. 26 ; He leads them 
 into all truth, John xvi. 13. But, just because this is the 
 case, the teaching by means of those whom God has given, in 
 His Church, as apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers (Eph. 
 iv. 1 1), to whom He has communicated His -/J^pkiLaTci., is quite 
 in its place. The apostle writes just becaiise they know tlie 
 truth. If it were otherwise, his efforts would be altogether 
 in vain. Of what use is it to give instruction about colours 
 to him who is blind ? In things divine, the truth becomes 
 truth to the single individual, only because his knowledge of 
 God is founded on his being in God ; and that can be accom- 
 plished only by his being connected to God throrgh God. 
 Being, life, and hence, also, real living knowledge, can proceed 
 only from the fountain of all being and life. But in the case 
 of those who are in God, who possess the fundamental know- 
 ledge, this knowledge must be developed, carried on, and 
 brought to full consciousness through the instrumentality of 
 those to whom God has granted the gifts for it. A glance 
 into the deep meaning of our passage was obtained by the 
 author of the book Jelamwedenu, which is quoted by Ahar- 
 hanel (in Frischnuth, S. 863) ; he says : " Under the present 
 dispensation, Israel learns the Law from mortal men, and 
 therefore forgets it ; for as flesh and blood pass away (comp. 
 
444! MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Matt. xvi. 1 7, where the antithesis existing between a know- 
 ledge of divine things which rests on human ground, and that 
 which rests on divine o-i'ound, is bi'ouoht before us in its strictest 
 form), so also its instruction passes away. But a time shall 
 come when a man shall not learn from the mouth of a man, 
 but from the inoutli of the blessed God, for it is written : 
 * All thy childi-en shall be taught by God.' In these words, it 
 is implied that hitherto the knowledge of the Law was an 
 artificial one obtained by mortal men. But for that reason, 
 it cannot stand long, for the effect stands in proportion to its 
 cause. At the time of the deliverance, however, the kncjw- 
 ledge of the Law will be obtained in a miraculous manner." 
 It is, however, quite obvious that this promise, too, must be 
 understood relatively only. All the pious men of the Old 
 Covenant were koblha-/.rot ; and under the New Covenant, the 
 number of those is infinitely great who, through their own 
 guilt, stand to truth in a relation which is entirely or pre- 
 eminently mediate. — Instead of the " small," by way of indi- 
 vidualization, servants and handmaids are mentioned in Joel 
 iii. 2 (ii. 29); compare remarks on Rev. xi. 18. — We have 
 already seen that in the last words of the verse, the funda- 
 mental blessing is promised. But whether ""a be referred only 
 to that which immediately precedes, or to every thing which 
 goes before {Venema : vocida ''3 non ad proxime praecedentia 
 referenda, sed ad totam pericopam, qua bona fosderis recen- 
 sita sunt, extendci), amounts to nearly the same thing ; for that 
 which immediately precedes includes all the rest. AVe have 
 before us nothing but designations of the same thing from 
 various aspects ; everything depends upon tlie richer bestowal 
 of the gifts of the Spirit. This has the forgiveness of sins fcir 
 its necessary foundation ; for, before God can give, He must 
 first take. The sins which separate the people and their God 
 from one another, must first be taken away ; it is then only 
 that the inward means can be bestowed, so that the people 
 may become truly God's people, and God's name may be sanc- 
 tified in them. It is obvious that, here too, a relative differ- 
 ence only between the Old and New Covenant can be spoken 
 of A covenant-people without forgiveness of sins is no cove- 
 nant-people ; a God with whom there is not forgiveness, in 
 oi'der that He may be feared, who does not heal the bones 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXI. 34. 445 
 
 which He has broken, who in this respect gives promises for 
 the Future only, is no God, and no blessing. For if He does 
 not grant this, He cannot grant any thing else, inasmuch as 
 every thing else implies this, and is of no value without it. 
 Forgiveness of sins is the essence of the Passover as the feast 
 of the covenant. On the Ark of the Covenant, it was repre- 
 sented by the Capporefh (see Genuineness of the Pentateuch, 
 Vol. ii., p. 525 f). Without it the sin-offerings appointed by 
 God are a lie ; without it, all that is untrue which God says 
 of himself as the covenant-God, that He is gracious and mer- 
 ciful, Exod. xxxiv. G. The holy Psalmists often acknowledge 
 with praise and thanks that God has forgiven sins ; comp. e.g. 
 Ps. Ixxxv. 3 : " Thou hast taken away the iniquities of thy 
 people, thou hast covered all their sins." In the same manner 
 they are loud in praising the high blessing bestowed upon the 
 individual by the forgiveness of sins; comp. Ps. xxxii. 51. 
 The consciousness that their sins are forgiven, forms the foun- 
 dation of the disposition of heart which we perceive in the 
 Psalmists ; see Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. iii. p. Ixv. £ 
 "What a 'rXi^pn^opia" — SO Budcleus remarks, p. 109 — "what a 
 confidence, what a joy of a tranquil and quiet conscience shines 
 forth in the psalms and prayers of David !" We have thus 
 before us merely a difference in degree. To the believers of 
 that time, the sin of the covenant-people appeared to be too 
 great to admit of its being forgiven. Driven away from the 
 face of the Lord, so they imagined, it would close its miserable 
 existence in the land of Nod ; never would the ytaipoi dm-^L^iug 
 return. But, in opposition to such fears, the Prophet declares, 
 in the name of the Lord, that they would not only return, 
 but come, for the first time, in the true and fidl sense ; that 
 where they imagined to behold the end to the forgiveness of 
 sins, there would be its real beginning ; that where sin 
 abounded, the grace of God should there so much t]ie more 
 abound. Only, they should not despair, and thus place a 
 barrier in the way of God's mercy. Your God is not a mere 
 hard task-master ; He himself will sow and then reap, as surely 
 as He is God, the gracious and merciful One. 
 
 Ver. 35. " Thus saith the Lord, giving the sun for a light 
 by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for 
 
446 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 a liylit by nigJtt, acjltaiimj the sea, and the waves thereof roar, 
 the Lord of hosts is His name." 
 
 Ver. 8G. "If these ordinances will cease before me, saith 
 the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a 
 nation before me foi' ever." 
 
 Interpreters commonly assume that, alrea<ly in ver. 35, the 
 discourse is of the firm and immutable divine laws which 
 every thing must obey. But opposed to this view are the 
 words: " Ai^itatinof the sea, and the waves thereof roar," in 
 which no definite perceptible rule, no uninterrupted return 
 takes place. To this argument may be added the comparisoTi 
 of the fundamental passage, Isa. li. 1 5, in which the omni- 
 potence only of God is to be brought out: "And I am the 
 Lord thy God, who agitates the sea, and its waves roar, the 
 Lord of hosts is His name;" com p. also Amos. ix. 5, 6. It 
 thus appears that, in ver. 35, God's omnipotence only is spoken 
 of, which establishes that He is God and not man; and this 
 forms the foundation for the declaration set forth in ver. 36, 
 which is so full of comfort for the despairing covenant-people, 
 — the proposition, namely, that, while all men are liars, He 
 does not lie; that He can never repent of His covenant and 
 promises. The "ordinances" (moon and stars are, in their 
 regular return, themselves, avS it were, embodied ordinances), 
 are mentioned already in ver. 35, because just the circum- 
 stance that, according to eternal and inviolable laws, sun and 
 moon must appear every da}'- at a fixed time, and have done 
 so for thousands and thousands of years, testifies more strongly 
 for His omnipotence and absolute power, never liable to any 
 foreign influence or interference, than if they at one time ap- 
 peared, and, at another, failed to appear. God's omnipotence, 
 as it is testified by a look to nature {Ccdvin: "The Prophet 
 contents himself with pointing out what even boys knew, 
 viz., that the sun makes his daily circuit round the whole 
 earth, that the moon does the same, and that the stars in 
 their turn succeed, so that, as it were, the moon with the 
 stars exercises dominion by night, and, afterwards, the sun 
 reigns by day"), results from the fact that He is the pure, absolute, 
 being (Jehovah His name, comp. remarks on Mai. iii. 6); and 
 it is just because He is this, that His counsels, which He 
 declared without any condition attached to them, must be 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXI. 87. 447 
 
 unchangeable. To believe that He has for ever rejected Israel, 
 is to degrade Him, to make Him an idol, a creature. — In ver. 
 36, the immutability of God's counsel of grace is put on a 
 level with the immutability of God's order of nature ; but this 
 is done with a view to the weakness of the people, who re- 
 ceive, for a pledge of their election, that which is most firm 
 among visible things; so that every rising of the sun and 
 moon is to them a guarantee of it; cojnpare Ps. Ixxxix. 37, 38. 
 But considered in itself, the counsels of God's grace are mitcA 
 Jirmer than the order of nature. The heavens wax old as a 
 garment, and as a vesture He changes them and they are 
 changed (Ps. cii. 27-29); heaven and earth shall pass away, 
 but the word of God shall not pass away. — From chap, xxxiii. 
 24: "They despise my people (VOJ?) that they should be stid 
 a nation (^ij) before them" it appears why it is that ^ij is here 
 used, and not oy. The covenant-people in their despair ima- 
 gined that their national existence, which, in the Present, was 
 destroyed, was gone for ever. If only their national existence 
 was sure, then also was their existence as a covenant-people. 
 For, just as their national existence had ceased, because tliey 
 had ceased to be the covenant-people, so they could ao-ain 
 obtain a national existence as the covenant-people only. 
 
 Ver. 37. "Thus saith the Lord: If the heavens above be 
 measured, and the foundations of the earth beneath be searched 
 out, I will also cast off cdl the seed of Israel, for all that they 
 have done, saith the Lord" 
 
 It is not without meaning that the Prophet so frequently 
 repeats: Thus saith the Lord. This formed the a and n; His 
 word was the sole ground of hope for Israel. Apart from it, 
 despair was as reasonable, as now it was unreasonable. The 
 measuring of heaven, and the searching out of the innermost 
 parts of the earth, come here into consideration as things im- 
 possible. The words: "All the seed of Israel," take from the 
 hypocrites that consolation which they might be disposed to 
 draw from these promises. It is as much in opposition to the 
 nature of God that He should permit all the seed of Israel, 
 the faithful with the unbelievers, to perish, as that He should 
 save all the seed of Israel, unbelievers as well as believers. 
 The promise, as well as the threatening, always leaves a rem- 
 nant. All that the covenant grants is, that the whole cannot 
 
4- 1-8 MKSSIAXIC PREDICTIONS IX THE PROPHETS. 
 
 perish (the discourse is here, of course, of definite rejection); 
 but it gives no security to the individual sinner. The words: 
 " For all that they have done," are added intentionally, because 
 the greatness of the sins of the people was the j^Jinic^um 
 saliens in the believers' despair of the mercy of God. Calvin 
 says: "The Prophet here intentionally brings forward the sins 
 of the people, in order that we may know that the graceof 
 God is greater still, and that the multitude of so many wicked 
 men would not be an obstacle to God's granting pardon." 
 
 Ver. 38. "Behold, days, salth the Lord, and the city is 
 built to the Lord from the tower of Hananeel unto the gate of 
 the corner. Ver. 39. And the measuring line goeth yet farther 
 over against it, over the hill Gareb (the leper), and turneth 
 toivards Goah (place of execution). Ver. 40. And the whole 
 valley of the carcasses and of the ashes, and all the fields unto 
 the brooh of Kidron, and from thence unto the horsegate, to- 
 wards the East, (all this is) holiness unto the Lord. No more 
 shall it be destroyed, nor shall it be laid waste for ever." 
 
 This prophecy embraces two features: first, the restoration 
 of the Kingdom of God, represented under the figure of a 
 restoration of Jerusalem, which, under the Old Covenant, was 
 its seat and centre (it is this aspect only which Zechariah, in 
 resuming this prophecy, has brought forward in chap. xiv. 1 0) ; 
 and, secondly, the gloi-ification of the Kingdom of God, which 
 now is so strengthened and increased, that it can undertake 
 to attack and assail the dark kingdom of evil, and subject it 
 to itself, while formerly it was attacked and assailed by it, 
 and often could not prevent the enemy from penetrating into 
 the innermost heart of its territory. This thought the Prophet 
 graphicall}^ clothes in a perceptible form, and in such a manner 
 that he describes how the unholy places, by which Jerusalem, 
 the holy city, was surrounded on all sides, are included in its 
 circumference, and become holiness unto the Lord. In former 
 times, the victory of the world over the Kingdom of God had 
 been embodied in the fact, that the abominations of sin and 
 idolatry had penetrated into the very temi)le; compai-e chap, 
 vii. 11: "Is then this house, which is called by the name of 
 the Lord, a den of robbers, saith the Lord?" Other passages 
 will be mentioned when we come to comment upon Dan. ix. 
 27. Tliis inward victory must, according to divine necessity, 
 
JEREMIAH, XXXI. 88-40. 449 
 
 be followed by the outward one. The covenant -people which, 
 inwardly, had submitted to the world, which, by its own guilt, 
 had profaned itself, was, outwardly also, given up to the world, 
 and was profaned in punishment. And this profanation, in- 
 flicted upon it as a punishment, again manifested itself just 
 at that place, where the profanation by the guilt had chiefly 
 manifested itself, viz., in the holy city, and in the holy temple. 
 It is with a view to the former manifestation of the victory 
 of the world over the Kingdom of God, that here the victory 
 of the Kingdom of God over the world is described ; and the 
 imagery is just simple imagery. To the outward holiness of 
 the city and of the temple, the outward unholiness of the 
 places around Jerusalem is opposed. While the victory of the 
 world over the Kingdom of God had been manifested by the 
 profanation of these places, the victory of the Kingdom of God 
 now appears under the image of the sanctification of these 
 formerly unholy places. By what means that great change 
 had been brought about; by what means the Kingdom of 
 God, which now lay so powerlessly })rostrate, should again 
 obtain powers which it had never before possessed; by what 
 means the servant was to be changed into a lord, it was un- 
 necessary for the Prophet here to point out; it had been 
 already mentioned in vers. 32-84. The diflei/ence consists in 
 this, that the New Covenant is not like the Old, but that it 
 first furnishes the right weapons by which sin and the world 
 can be overcome, viz., an infinitely richer measure of the for- 
 giveness of sins, of the graces of the Spirit. — We must still 
 premise a general remark concerning the determination of the 
 boundaries of the New Jerusalem here given, because this 
 must guide us in determining the single doubtful places 
 which are here mentioned. The correct view has been already 
 given by Vitringa in his Commentary on Isaiah xxx. 33: 
 "The Prophet promises to the returning ones the restoration 
 of the city of Jerusalem in its whole circumference; and he 
 describes it in this way, tliat he begins from the Eastern wall, 
 passes on thence, through the North side, to the West side, 
 and thence, by the South side, returns to the East." For 
 the Prophet begins with the tower of Hananeel which was 
 situated at the East side of the town, near the sheep-gate ; 
 compare remarks on Zech. xiv. 10. Thence he proceeds to 
 VOL. II. ff 
 
450 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 tlie corner-gate, which was situated in that corner where the 
 North and Eiist met (compare 1. c), and hence comprehends 
 the whole North side. He closes with the horse-gate, of which 
 he expressly states that it was situated towards the East, and 
 hence points out that he had again arrived at the place from 
 which he set out. We have thus gained a firm foundation 
 for determining those among the places mentioned, the situa- 
 tion of which is, in itself, doubtful. — Let us now proceed to 
 the consideration of particulars. After D'c, the Keri inserts 
 D''S3- It is true that this fuller expression is commonly used 
 by the Prophet ; but, for that very reason, the more concise 
 one is to be preferred, which alone has the authoi-ity of the 
 MSS. in its favour, while the Keri is nothing but a conjec- 
 ture, perhaps not even that. The full expression having already 
 occurred so frequently in the passage under consideration, the 
 Prophet here, at the close, and for a change, contents himself 
 with the mere intimation. The Prophet says intentionally : 
 " The city is built to the Lord," so that " to the Lord" mu.st 
 be connected with " is built ;" not " the city of the Lord." 
 The latter expression had become so much a nomen proprium 
 of Jerusalem, that the full depth of its meaning was no more 
 thought of. This new city is no more to be called simply the 
 city of the Lord ; it is truly to be built to the Lord, so that 
 it belongs to Him. — In the first two points of the boundary, 
 the tower of Hananeel and the Corner-gate, the second main 
 idea of the passage does not yet come out so prominently. 
 This is to be accounted for simply by the circumstance, that 
 on the whole North side of the town there was not any un- 
 holy places. The Suffix in nj: refers to the Corner-gate ; the 
 measuring line, nij5 according to the Kethihh, i^^'?!!' 1p, which is 
 the common form, according to the Keri, goes yet farther over 
 against it, &c. By the words " over against," it is intimated 
 that it now goes beyond the former dimensions of the town. 
 ^y " over" {Hitzig erroneously translates it " towards," or " by 
 the side of it"), shows that the hill Gareb is included within 
 the circumference of tlie new city. From the remarks for- 
 merly made, it appears that the hill Gareb, and Goah, places 
 which arc nowhere else mentioned, must have been situated 
 on the West side ; and, moreover, Gareb on the North-west 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXI. 40. 451 
 
 side/ and Goali on the South-west side, y^y has no other 
 signification than "the leper ;" and " the hill of the leper" can 
 be the hill only, where the lepers had their abode. For, as 
 early as in the second year after the Exodus from Egypt, 
 these lepere were obliged to remain without the camp (comp. 
 Numb. V. 3 : " Without the camp shall ye send them, and not 
 shall they defile their camp in the midst whereof I dwell") ; 
 and this law was so strictly enforced, that even Moses' sister 
 was removed out of the camp. When they had come to 
 Canaan, the provisions of the law in reference to the camp 
 were transferred to the towns ; comp. farther Lev. xiii. 46 : 
 " All the days that he has the leprosy, he shall be defiled ; he 
 shall dwell alone, without the camp shall his habitation be ;" 
 Lnke xvii. 1 2. Even Uzziah could not be released from it ; 
 he lived without the city in Beth Chofshith, 2 King-s xv. 5, 
 which is commonly translated " house of the sick," instead of 
 "house of emancipation," viz., place where they lived, whom 
 the Lord had manumitted, who no more belonged to His ser- 
 vants ; compare remarks on Psa. Ixxxviii. 6. Even in the 
 kingdom of Israel they were so strict in the execution of this 
 Mosaic ordinance (one from among the numberless proofs 
 which are opposed to the current views of the religious condi- 
 tion of this kingdom, and of its relation to the Law of Moses), 
 that, even during the siege of Samaria, the lepers were not 
 allowed to leave the place before the gate assigned to them, 
 2 Kings vii. 3. — In order more fully to understand the mean- 
 ing of our passage, it is indispensable that we should inquire 
 into the causes of that regulation. J. D. Michaelis (Mos. 
 Recht. iv. § 210) has his answer at once in readiness, and is 
 so fully convinced of its being right and to the point, that he 
 does not think it worth while to mention any other view. 
 Because to hion the temporal objects and aims are the highest, 
 he at once supposes them everywhere in the Law of the Holy 
 God also. The ordinance is to him nothing but a sanitary 
 measure intended to prevent contagion. But that would 
 surely be a degree of severity against the sick which could 
 the less be excused by a legard to the healthy, that leprosy, 
 
 ' According to Krafft (sur TopograpMe Jems. S. 158), it is only the hill 
 Bezetha which, by the third wall of Agrippa, was added to the town, that 
 can correspond to the situation of Gareb. 
 
452 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 if contagious at all, is so, at all events, very slightly only, and 
 is never propagated by a single touch. {Michaelis himself 
 remarks : " Except in the case of cohabitation, one may be 
 quite safe.") But this severity against the sick must appear 
 in a still more glaring light, and the concern for the healthy 
 becomes even ridiculous, when we take into consideration the 
 other regulations concerning the lepers. Tliey were obliged 
 to go about in torn clothes, bare-headed, and with covered 
 chin, and to cry out to every that came near them, that they 
 were unclean. Even Michaelis grants that those regulations 
 could not be designed to guard against infection. He remarks : 
 " But the leper should not cause disgust to any one by his 
 really shocking appearance, or teri'or by an accidental, unex- 
 pected touch." But such a sentimental, unmerciful regard to 
 the tender nerves is surely elsewhere not to be perceived in 
 the Law, which regulates all the relations of man to his neigh- 
 bour, by the principle : Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- 
 self. Farther — From mere sanitary or police considerations, 
 the law in reference to the leprosy of the clothes and houses, 
 which is closely connected with the law about the leprosy of 
 men, cannot be accounted foi\ The reason which Michaelis 
 advances for the law in reference to the clothes, is of such a 
 nature, that not even the most refined politicians have ever 
 yet thought of a similar one. The leprosy of the houses is, 
 according to him, the dry-rot, which, although not contagious, 
 was so hateful to Moses, that, out of concern for the health of 
 the possessor, and for the goods kept in tliem, he ordered them 
 to be altogether pulled down. If Moses had entertained the 
 views on the power of the magistrates which lie at the founda- 
 tion of this, he coidd not have been an ambassador of God, — 
 even apart altogether from the absurdity of the measure. But 
 the shallowness and untenableness of Michaelis view will ap- 
 pear still more strongly, when we state the positive argument 
 for our view. It is this : Leprosy is the outward image of 
 sin ; that, therefore, which is done upon the leper, is, in reality, 
 done upon the sinner. Every leper, therefore, was a living 
 sermon, a loud admonition to keep unspotted from the world. 
 The exclusion of the lepers from the camp, from the holy 
 city, conveyed figuratively (luite the same lesson, as is done in 
 Words by John, in Revel, xxi. '27 '■ Ka/ oj ,u,ri siaeXOt] si; aW^v 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXT. 40. 453 
 
 rruv xoivhv %a] toiovv ^d'sXv/fMa xai -^suboc, and by Paul, in Eplies. 
 
 V. 5 : toZto yap '/ots yivujffzovreg, on 'rrag 'Tropvog^ >) axadaprog, 7] 'ttXs- 
 oviXT7\g .... ou% i-^ii xXr^povoij^iav sv rfj jSaffiXsIa rou Xpicrou 
 
 xal Qsou ; comp. Gal. v. 19, 21. Now it is clearly seen what 
 is the Prophet's meaning in including the hill of the lepers in 
 the holy city. That wliich hitherto was unclean becomes 
 clean ; the Kingdom of God now does violence to the sinners, 
 while, hitherto, the sinners had done violence to the Kingdom 
 of God. It is only when we take this view of leprosy, that 
 ■we account for the fact, that just this disease so frequently 
 occurs as the theocratic punishment of sin. The image of sin 
 is best suited for reflecting it ; he who is a sinner before God, 
 is represented as a sinner in the eyes of man also, by the cir- 
 cumstance that he must exhibit before men the image of sin. 
 God took care that ordinarily the image and the thing itself 
 were perfectly coincident ; although, no doubt, there were ex- 
 ceptions, — cases where God, according to His wise and holy 
 purposes, allowed that one relatively innocent (in the case of 
 a perfectly innocent man, if such an one existed, that would 
 not be possible, except in the case of Christ who bore oiir dis- 
 eo.se), had to bear the image of sin, e.g., in the case of such as 
 were in danger of self-righteousness. As a theocratic punish- 
 ment, leprosy is found especially with such as had secretly 
 sinned, or had surrounded their sin with a good appearance, 
 which, in the eyes of men, prevents them from appearing as sin- 
 ners, e.g., in the case of Miriam, Uzziah, Gehazi, 2 Kings v. 27. 
 In the Law, there are many warnings against it, e.g., Deut. 
 xxiv. 8 ; and David wishes, 2 Sam. iii. 29, that the threatening 
 of the Law might be fulfilled upon the house of wicked Joab. 
 The leprosy of houses, too, comes into consideration only as an 
 image of spiritual leprosy, as is seen from the command in 
 Lev. xiv. 49 : "And he shall take to cleanse the house two 
 birds, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop ; ver. 53 : and 
 make an atonement for the house, and it shall be clean." The 
 procedure here is quite the same as that which was applied in 
 the case of sin and sinners ; and since the house cannot sin, it 
 follows that a symbolical action only can here be spoken of — 
 Goah, in this context, in the midst of unclean places, can hardly 
 be anything else than some unclean place ; and it is a very 
 obvious supposition that this nature is expressed in the very 
 
454 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 name. Tliis signification intei-j^reters usually endeavour to 
 obtain by deriving the word from nya " to roar," of which it is 
 properly the Partic. Fern., hence " the roaring one ;" but it is 
 more easily obtained by adopting the derivation from V^i, just 
 as yiE' is derived from jn^, a derivation which was fii-st pro- 
 posed by H'dler, S. 127. Vr\i is used of a violent death, no 
 less than of a natural death ; thus Numb. xvii. 27, 28, of a 
 death like that of the company of Korah, Datham, and Abiram ; 
 comp. Zech. xiii. 8. This derivation being assumed, Goah 
 would denote " expiring," " hilP of expiring," which would be 
 a very suitable name of the place for the execution of criminals. 
 Vitringa, in commenting upon Is. xxx. 33, already expressed 
 the conjecture that Goah, nnjnj hi might perhaps be identical 
 with Golgotha, but retracted it, because the Evangelists explain 
 Golgotha by -/.paviov ri-rog. But this is no sufficient and con- 
 clusive reason. When the Araraean became the prevailing 
 language, the name of the place ma}^ have received a new ety- 
 mology, just as the Fathers of the Church derive rtae-xa, from 
 nrd<rxji)/, ^iid many similar instances. It has already been ob- 
 served that the appellation, " place of skulls," is rather strange, 
 inasmuch as the skulls did not remain in the place of execu- 
 tion.^ The use of " skull" for " the place of skulls," as well as 
 the omission of the L, have been found strange. But all that 
 is easily accounted for, if the new signification, which substan- 
 tially agreed with the former, was merely transferred to the 
 word. The identity of Goah and Golgotha cannot be disputed, 
 — at least, not from the situation. From Heb. xiii. 1 2, it is 
 certain that Golgotha, as an unclean place, was situated out- 
 side the city ; that it was situated on the West side is, it is 
 
 ' Thelitis, in the appendix to the Comment.ory on the Books of Kings, S. 
 24, remarks: "pj does not, in any of the dialects, denote tlie natural hill of 
 rocks, but merely stones lieaped up." Hence, the hill would be an artiticiiil 
 hill for the execution of criminals. (Compare the German wokI Robeitsteiii, 
 lit. "raven -stone," for: place of execution.) 
 
 * This objection would be removed if, following Theniva and Kraft, S. 
 158, we were to explain the name from the form of the hill, which is that of 
 a skull. But uoiw of the Evangelists at leiusthave advanced this explanation. 
 The fact that three of tiiem add the Greek explanation to the name (Matt, 
 xxvii. ;3;} ; Mark xv. 22 ; John xix. 17), and one translated it into Greek (Luke 
 xxiii. 3:5) shows that it stood in connt'ction with the event in question. But 
 this circumstance is quite decisive, that three Evangelists explain it by Kpaviov 
 TiTTor, "place of a skull." 
 
JEREMTAH, CHAP. XXXI. 40. 45 5 
 
 true, testified by tradition only; com p. Krafft, S. 168 ff. ; 
 Ritter, Erdh. xvi. 1, S. 422 ff — We now come to the valley 
 of carcasses and of ashes. Even from the position, it becomes 
 probable that this is the valley of Hinuom. The North and 
 West sides are already done, and hence the South and East 
 sides only remain. But the valley of Hinnom was situated 
 towards the South, or South-east of Jerusalem, comp. Kraft. 
 S 2 ; V. Raumer, S. 269. The valley of the carcasses is hei-e 
 brought into immediate connection with all the fields {q. d., 
 all the other fields), unto the brook Kidron, and is hence de- 
 signated as a portion of the valley of Kidron. But the vallev 
 of Hinnom was the Southern, or South-eastern continuation 
 of the valley of Kidron, which extended on the East side. T(» 
 this it may be added that, in this context, we must necessarily 
 expect the mention of the valley of Hinnom, but that other- 
 wise it would be wanting. Among all the unclean places 
 around Jerusalem, this was the most unclean. There could 
 be no gTeater victory of the Kingdom of God over the world, 
 than if this strictest antithesis to the holy city, this image of 
 hell, was included within the Holy City. It is only witli 
 respect to the cause of the apy)ellation, that some doubt may 
 exist, njs, W^iQ is a common designation of dead bodies, of 
 carcasses. There is not one among the twenty-two passages 
 in which it occurs, where it refers to deceased righteous ones. 
 It is used of the dead bodies of animals, of idols, Lev. xxvi. 
 30 ; of the dead bodies of those whom the Lord has smitten ii! 
 His anger and wrath, Jer. xxxiii. 5 ; 1 Sain, xvii 46 ; Amos viii. 
 8 ; Nell. iii. 3 ; Is. Ixvi. 24; of such as are, after death, treated 
 like beasts, Jer. i. 49. Hence, opinions sucli as that of Venema. 
 fall to the ground, who supposes that the valley had that 
 name, because it was the public buiying-ground. But there 
 is, nevertheless, scope for difference of opinion. One may un- 
 derstand by D''">3a the carcasses of animals ; — the valley of 
 Hinnom would, in that case, be the public flaying-ground. It 
 is in itself probable, and it is generally lield^ that, after the 
 defilement by Josiah (2 Kings xxiii. 10), it received this de- 
 signation. But there are not wanting evident traces that. 
 
 ' Corapare the Book Kosri, p. 72. Buxtorjf seivs : " Gehenna was a well- 
 known place near Jerusalem, viz., a valley in which the fire was never extin- 
 guished, and where unclean bones, carcasses, and other unclean things, were 
 burned." 
 
456 MESSIANIC TEEDICTIOXS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 even in former times, the valley served this pui'pose. In Is. 
 XXX. 33, it is said in reference to the Assyrians: " For 
 Tophet Gesenius arbitrarily changes the nomen projyriwm 
 into an appellativum, and translates : the place for burning) 
 is ordained of old ; yea, for the king it is prepared, made deep 
 and large ; the pile thereof has fire and wood in abundance." 
 This passage supposes that, even at that time, the valley of 
 Hirmom, or Tophet (which properly is only a part of it, but is 
 sometimes, however, used for the whole), had tliat destination ; 
 that piles were constantly burning in it, on which the carcasses 
 of animals were bm-ned. Such a place of execution and burial 
 is already prepared for the carcasses of the Assyrians rebelling 
 against God. Even the existence of the name Tophet, i.e., 
 horror, ahomination, bears witness to the impure destination. 
 The second passage is Is. Ixvi. 24. Outside the Holy City, 
 the place where formerly the carcasses of the beasts were 
 lying, there now lie the dead bodies of the transgressors. As 
 the former were, in times past, food both for the worms and 
 fire, so they are now. It is true, that Vifringa's objection, 
 that it can scarcely be imagined that the idolators should have 
 chosen a place so unclean, is very plausible. But how plausible 
 soever such an argument may appear, it caimot invalidate 
 distinct historical testimonies ; and it might very well be set 
 aside, although it would lead us too far away from our purpose, 
 to do so here. But it may also be supposed that the Prophet 
 looks back to his own declarations, chap. vii. 31, and xix. 4 
 tt! ; and that by D''i5a here the corpses of transgi-essors are to 
 be understood, who are destined to destruction, and therefore 
 are to be buried in the flaying-ground. But this reference is, 
 after all, too far-fetched ; and it is more natural to say, that 
 the nature of Tophet, as the flaying-ground, forms the foundation, 
 which is common to those ])assages and that before us. — But, 
 besides the arguments already advanced, there is stiU a gram- 
 matical reason, which shows that it is really the valley of 
 Hinnom which is meant. The article in pr^Vi^ forbids us to 
 view it as beino; in the Stat, construct, and connected w^ith the 
 following words. We must translate : " And the whole valley, 
 (viz. the valley of) the carcasses and ashes." The ])lace is, 
 hence, first designated as " the valley," without any further 
 (pialificiition, and receives this qualification only afterwarda 
 But it is just the valley of Hinnom which, in Jer. ii. 23, is 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXI. 40. ' 457 
 
 designated as the valley xar' s^o^vv, and the gate leading to it, 
 as the gate of the valley, in Neh. ii. 13, 15; comp. remarks 
 on Zech. xi. 13. — In reference to jB^^, Gousset Lex. p. 368, 
 remarks : " The words ]f^, and ^^"^ are used only of the ashes 
 of the sacrificial animals, and their removal." This observation 
 is confirmed by every carefnl examination of the passages in 
 question. Never are 1^"^. and T^ used otherwise than of the 
 ashes of sacrificial animals; comp. Lev. i. 16 ; vi. 3, 4 ; 1 
 Kings xiii. 5 ; Numb. iv. 13; Exod. xxvii. 3. The deriva- 
 tion of the signification "ashes," from the fundamental signi- 
 fication " fat," as advanced by Winer and others {cinis=pin- 
 fjuefactio agroruon), is therefore wrong. On the contrary, 
 even the burnt fat was still considered as fat ; the ashes of the 
 fat are the n''"lN^!^^ the residuum of the fat. By this determina- 
 tion of the word, the explanation is very much facilitated. In 
 Lev. vi. 3, 11, it is said: "And he (the priest, after having 
 ofiered up the burnt-offering) shall put off his garments, and 
 put on other garments, and cany forth the ashes without the 
 camp into a clean place." According to this regulation, the 
 ashes of the sacrificial animals were considered as relatively 
 unclean. The priest had to put off" his holy garments, and 
 to put on common garments, and to carry the ashes without 
 the camp, — afterwards without the Holy City. Hence, in 
 contrast to the sacrifices themselves, the ashes were con- 
 sidered as the impure residuum which is found in every- 
 thing which men do in relation to God, as the image of 
 sinful contamination attaching to all, even the best works, 
 and to the holiest elevation of the heart. If, then, the 
 place where the ashes are deposited is to be included within 
 the boundaries of the Holy City ; is, in holiness, to be equal 
 to the place where the sacrifices themselves are ofiered, — 
 what else can be signified thereby, than that the unholy is 
 to be overpowered by the holy, the earthly by the divine, by 
 means of a more glorious communication of the Holy Spirit ? 
 It is quite analogous, when Zechariah represents the horses as 
 being in future adorned by the Lord with the symbol of holi- 
 ness, which formerly the High-priest only wore ; compare re- 
 marks on Zech. xiv. 20. This one argument might be brought 
 forward against the explanation which we have given, viz., 
 that we cannot well imagine that this was the destination of 
 
458 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the valley of Hiimom, because, according to the Law, the ashes 
 of the sacrifices were to be carried to a ckan place ; because 
 that which once stood in connection with that which is 
 most holy and pure, although, in itself, it may be unclean, 
 must not be mingled with that which is absolutely and con- 
 stantly unclean. But in opposition to this we remark, that it 
 was not this whole valley that was unclean, but only the place 
 Tophet in it ; and that if sometimes the whole is designated 
 as unclean, it is only because it included this most unclean 
 among all unclean places; corap. chap. vii. SI, xxxii. 35 ; 2 
 Kings xxiii. 10. — Tliere cannot be any doubt that "the nio^ip 
 unto the brook Kidron" are identical with the fields of Kidron, 
 fn"|p niDlC', mentioned in 2 Kings xxiii. ; but much to be 
 doubted is the correctness of the common supposition (after 
 the example of Katjpers, ad varia V. T. loca, in the S>jU. 
 Dissert, sub praes. Schultens, et Schroederi, t. 1. p. 537), that 
 nioitJ' is identical with rii^l'^. If that were the case, we could 
 not see why Jeremiah should have exchanged the common 
 "word for an uncommon one, which elsewhere does not occur. 
 Jeremiah is fond of exchano-inof words of similar sounds, and 
 especially words differing from one another merely by one 
 letter, and especially by T and "i ; but these exchanges are 
 always significant. (Compare Kiiper. Jerem. p. xiv. and 43, 
 and History of Balaam, p. 447 f ) Although we cannot, with 
 certainty, fix the meaning of niOlB', yet so much seems to be 
 sure, that this word was one which more accurately designated 
 the nature of those places than the current no'nien proprium, 
 inasmuch as it would be absurd to substitute for it another 
 name, if there had not been deeper reasons. One need only 
 compare the n^n:j'on "in itself which, in the simple historical 
 prose, is used of the Mount of Olives, 2 Kings xxiii. 13. The 
 most simple and natural supposition is the following. All the 
 significations of the verbs j^-i, ^^— , j^^ in Arabic run together 
 in that of cuttinr/ of. r\)D'}}^^ the Plural of the Feminine of 
 the Adjective ^"2^ are, accordingly, loca abscissa, places which 
 are cut off" and excluded [from the Holy City] outwardly (Aq.: 
 ■rpodsrsia), and, at the same time, inwardly. Thus we obtain 
 a striking contrast between their present nature and future 
 destination. Wliat is now distinctly separated from the holy, 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXT. 40. 459 
 
 then become holiness, tnp. From 2 Kings xxiii. it appears, 
 moreover, that the fields of Kidron were unclean. It was 
 thither as to an unclean place, that Josiah caused all the 
 abominations of idolatry to be carried, and to be burnt ; comp. 
 ver. 4 (Josiah commanded all the vessels which had been 
 made to Baal and Ashera to be brought forth out of the temple) : 
 " And he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of 
 Kidron." Ver. 6 : " And he brought out the Ashera out of 
 the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, unto the brook 
 
 Kidron, and he burned them in the valley of Kidron 
 
 And cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children 
 of the people." These last words (the children of the people = 
 the mob, high and low, who had polluted themselves by 
 idolatry, comp. 2 Chron. xxxiv. 4 : " And he strewed the dust 
 upon the graves of them that had sacrificed unto them)" enable 
 us perhaps to conjecture the cause of the uncleanness of these 
 fields. They served as a burpng ground to the adherents of 
 the worship of Moloch, who were anxious to rest in the 
 neighbourhood of their idol, which dwelt in the neighbourii)g 
 Tophet ; and tliis is the more easily accounted for, that it is 
 very probable that the sacrifices offered up to the idol were, 
 in a great measure, sacrifices offered for the dead. — tj^np 
 nin''^ refers to every thing mentioned in the verse before us. 
 As regards the last words, comp. Remarks on Zech. xiv. 11. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXIIT. U-26. 
 
 Still before the destruction, but in the view of it, the Pro- 
 phet, while in the outer court of the prison, was favoured with 
 the revelation contained in chap, xxxii., and with that revela- 
 tion of which our section forms a portion. It may appear 
 strange that, in the introduction, the revelation of great 
 things hitherto unknown to him is promised to the Prophet, 
 and which he is told to seek by calling unto the Lord ; while, 
 after all, the subsequent prophecy contains scarcely any pro- 
 minent, peculiar feature. But this is easily explained, when 
 we take into consideration that, throughout Scripture, dead 
 
460 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 knowledge is not regavtled as knowledge ; that the hope of 
 of restoration had, in the natural man, in the Prophet as well 
 as in all believers, an enemy that strove to darken and extin- 
 guish it ; that, therefore, the promise of restoration was ever 
 new, and the word of God always gi-eat and exalted. In the 
 first part of the revelation, after the destruction had been re- 
 presented as unavoidable, and all human hope had been cut 
 oft, the restoration is described more in general terms. In the 
 second part, the Lord meets a two-fold special grief of the 
 believers. The time was approaching when the house of David 
 was to be most dee})ly humbled, when eveiy trace of its for- 
 mer glory was to be d(me away with. With it, the hopes of 
 the people seem to be buried. God himself had declared this 
 house to be the medium, thiough which all the mercies were 
 to come, which He, as the King, had promised to bestow upon 
 His ])eople. But what was to become of the mercies, if the 
 channel was destroyed, through which they were to be bestowed 
 upon the people ? The temple which, through the guilt of the 
 people, had been changed into a den of robbers, was to be de- 
 stroyed. But, with the existence of the temple, the existence 
 of the Levitical priesthood was bound up, and if the latter 
 was done away with, how was to be obtained forgiveness 
 of sins, which, in the Law, had been connected with the media- 
 tion of the Levitical priesthood ? These fears and cares the 
 Lord now meets by declaring that, in both respects, the perish- 
 ing would be an arising, that life should arise from death. 
 
 The genuineness of this section has been assailed by John 
 (Vatichiia Mess. iii. p. 112, ft?), after the example of /. D. 
 Micliaelis, who, in the German translation of the Bible, in- 
 closed it within brackets. For the present, we mention only 
 the internal reason — deferring the refutation till Ave come to 
 the exposition of particulars — because we require it in order 
 to set aside the external reason. Jahn, p. 121, sums it up 
 in these words : " The matter stands in opposition to .all the 
 prophecies of Jeremiah and all the other Prcfphets. For all 
 of them limit themselves to the one David who was to come 
 
 ' Tlicy have been joined by iforcrs (de tttriusque reccns, Jerem. indole), 
 who declares ver. 18 and 21-24 to bo a later interpolation (comp. against 
 tliis view Kiijiir, S. 17.'^ and ]yichcllifuis, do Jerem. Vers. Alex., p. 17U), and 
 Uitzifj, according to whom the whole portion, vers. 1-4-2G, consists of "a 
 series of single additions from a later period." 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXIII. 14 26. 461 
 
 aftei- the captivity, and do not mention any successor to hiui, 
 far less . such a multitude of descendants of David and of 
 Levites, which is promised to the people under the name of 
 a blessing, but which would, in reality, have been a very 
 heavy burden to the people, at whose expense they were to 
 be splendidly maintained." The external reason is the omis- 
 sion of the section in the Alexandrian version. Proceeding 
 upon the altogether gratuitous assumption of a double recen- 
 sion of the prophecies of Jeremiah, people imagine that, by 
 the omission in the Alexandrian version, they are entitled to 
 suppose that, in that recension which the LXX. followed, this 
 section was not contained. But the arguments are most un- 
 satisfactory, by which the attempt is made to establish that 
 many portions, not translated by the LXX., were not found 
 by them in their manuscripts. Where there notoriously pre- 
 vail negligence, ignorance, arbitrariness, entire want of a clear 
 conception of the task of a translator, those inferences are 
 t)ut of place which suppose just the opposite of all these 
 (comp. e.g., the inferences in Jahn, S, 116 ffi) Although we 
 cannot sometimes discover and state the reason which induced 
 the LXX. to make any omission, in case that that which was 
 omitted was really in the text, what is it that is thereby 
 proved ? Could we, a priori, expect anything else, since we 
 are on the territory of accident and whim ? It is quite suffi- 
 cient that in a multitude of passages we can point out the 
 most insufficient reasons which induced them to make omis- 
 sions, alterations, transpositions ; for it is just these which 
 show that we are in the territory of accident and whim, where 
 it is unreasonable every where to expect reasons. Now, to 
 these passages, that before us likewise belongs ; so that, even 
 supposing that the ground of the deviation sometimes lies in 
 a different recension, our passage cannot be regarded as be- 
 longing to this class; and, hence, from its omission, nothing 
 can be inferred against its genuineness. A twofold reason 
 here presents itself, which may have induced them to the 
 omission: 1. Important elements of the prophecy under con- 
 sideration have already occurred, vers. 1 5, 1 6, almost verhatimi, 
 in chap, xxiii. 3, 6; vers. 20-25, as regards the thought, 
 altogether, and as regards the words, partly agree with chap, 
 xxxi. 35-37; and it is certain that the LXX. often omitted 
 
462 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 that which had occurred previously, because they were unable 
 to perceive the deeper meaning of the repetition, and trans- 
 ferred their own ignorance to the Prophet. 2. In that which 
 was peculiar to the passage before us, it was just the principal 
 thought — the same which /. D. Michaelis and Jakn advance 
 against the genuineness — which must have been most objec- 
 tionable to the LXX., who were incapable of perceiving the 
 deeper meaning. An increase of the Levites and of the family 
 of David as the stare of the heavens and the sand of the sea, 
 is a thought of which the Prophet must be freed, whether he 
 entertained it or not. The omission in the Alexandrian ver- 
 sion, therefore, does not prove any thing, except that even 
 2000 years before J. D. Michaelis, Jakn, Hitzig, and Clovers, 
 there were men who were as little able to understand the text 
 as these expositors. 
 
 Ver. 1 4. " Behold days come, saith the Lord, and I perform 
 the good word vjliich I leave spoken unto the house of Israel, 
 and concerning the house of Judah." 
 
 The " good word" may, in a more general way, be imder- 
 stood of all the gracious promises of God to Israel, in contrast 
 to the evil word, the threatenings which hitherto had been 
 fulfilled upon Israel; comp. 1 Kings viii. 56, where Solomon, 
 in the prayer at the consecration of the temple, says : " Blessed 
 be the Lord, that has given rest unto His people Israel, ac- 
 cording to all which He spoke; there has not failed (the 
 opposite of Dip) one word of all His good word which He 
 spoke through Moses His servant." In Deut. xxviii. the good 
 word and the evil word are placed beside one another; and 
 the former is blessed, from vers. 1-14; afterwards, the curse 
 is declared. The centre and substance of this good word was 
 the promise to David, tlirough whose righteous Sprout all the 
 promises to Israel should find their final fulfilment. But we 
 may also suppose that, by the "good word," the Prophet spe- 
 cially denotes this promise to David, which he had repeated 
 in chap, xxiii. 5, 6. This latter supposition is preferable, since, 
 in vers. 15, 16, that repetition of it is quoted, and ver. 17 
 contains an allusion to the fundamental promise. The change 
 of i)N and ^j? is significant; Judah is considered as the object 
 of the ])roclamation of salvation, because salvation cometh 
 from the Jews. The con-ectness of this view is proved by 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXITI. 15-17. 463 
 
 vers. 15, 16, where that only is spoken of, which, in the first 
 instance, belongs to Judah; so that Israel is only received 
 into the communion of the salvation, in the first instance, 
 destined for Judah. 
 
 Ver. 1 5, 1 6. " In those days and at that time will I cause 
 a righteous Sprout to grow up unto David, and he worketh 
 justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Ju'dah 
 is endowed with salvation, and Jerusalem dwelleth safely ; 
 and this is the name by tvhich she shall he called: The Lord 
 our righteousness" 
 
 It is intentionally that the promise is here repeated in the 
 former shape, in order to show that it still existed; that the 
 glaring contrast presented by the present state of things was 
 not able to annul it; that even in the view of the destruction, 
 of the deepest abasement of the house of David, it still re- 
 tained its right and power. Instead of ^niO''pn, the more suit- 
 able iT'Oi'S is here used, because the reference to Jehoiakim 
 does not take place in this passage, as it did in the previous 
 one. Instead of Israel, which is found there, we have here 
 Jerusalem, because it was just the restoration of Jerusalem, 
 which it was so difficult for the faithful to believe, after its 
 destruction had been described in ver. 4 fi. For the same 
 reason, the Prophet here assigns the same name to Jerusalem 
 which he did there to the Sprout of David. The same city, 
 which as yet is groaning under the wrath of God, shaU, in 
 future, be endowed with righteousness by the Lord. 
 
 Ver. 17. "For thus saith the Lord: There shall not be cut 
 of from David a man sitting upon the throne of the house of 
 Israel." 
 
 The connection with what precedes is pertinently brought 
 out by Ccdvin : " The Prophet had spoken of the restoration 
 of the Church; that doctrine he now confirms by promising, 
 that both the kingly and priestly office should be perpetual; 
 and it was just these two things which constituted the salva- 
 tion of the people. For, without a king, they were just like 
 a cut-ofi" tree, or a mutilated body ; without a priest they were 
 in a state of dispersion. For the priest was the mediator 
 between God and the people, but the king represented the 
 person of God." The expression Diy nhi " there shall not be 
 cut off," &c., is a simple repetition of the promise to David, in 
 
464 MESSIANIC PREDICTIOXS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 that forna in wliich it liad been quoted by David himself, 
 shortly before his death, in his address to Solomon, 1 Kings 
 ii. 4, and afterwards twice by Solomon, 1 Kings viii. 25, ix. 5. 
 It does not designate an uninterrupted succession, but forms 
 the contrast only to a breaking off for ever. This appears 
 even from the circumstance that, in the fundamental promise, 
 God reserves to himself the punishment of the apostate 
 members of the Davidic house, and that in Jeremiah the an- 
 nouncement of its utter abasement is so frequently repeated. 
 
 Ver. 18, " A7id to the Levitical priests there shall not be 
 cut off before me a rtian, offering burnt-offerings, and kindling 
 meat-oferings, and doing sacrifice all days." 
 
 In order rightly to understand these words, it is necessary 
 to go back to their cause; for it is from the grief only that 
 the comfort receives its explanation. The Prophet has here not 
 by any means to do with members of the tribe of Levi mourning 
 over the loss of the prerogatives of their tribe. If such were 
 the case, it would be necessaiy to hold fast by the letter, in- 
 asmuch as it is only when the letter is adhered to, that the 
 promise can afford consolation for such grief. The Prophet's 
 consolations, on the contrary, are destined for all the believers, 
 who were mourning over the destruction of the relation to 
 God, which hitherto had existed through the mediation of the 
 tribe of Levi. If only the relation remained, it was of little 
 importance whether it was realised by the tribe of Levi, as 
 heretofore, or in some other way. Just as the grief has 
 respect to the substance only, so has the consolation also. 
 Israel, in future too, shall retain free access to his reconciled 
 God, — that is the fundamental thought; and every thing by 
 which this thought was manifested and realised in history, in 
 what form soever it might be, must be viewed as compre- 
 hended in it. We thus obtain a threefold fulfilment : 1 . In 
 the time after the return from the captivity, the consolation 
 was realised in the form in which it is here expressed. The 
 ftict, that God admitted and promoted the rebuilding of the 
 temple, was an actual declaration that the Levitical priesthood 
 was reinstated in its mediatorial office. 2. In the highest 
 degree the idea of the Levitical priesthood was realised through 
 Christ, who, as a High-Priest and Mediator, bore the sins of 
 His people, and made intercession for the transgi'essors, and 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXIII. 18. 465 
 
 in whom the Levitical priesthood ceased, just as the seed-corn 
 disappears in the stalk. 3. Through Christ, the believers 
 themselves became priests, and obtained free access to the 
 Father. — Tlie following reasons show that we have a right to 
 maintain this independence of the thought upon the form: 
 ]. The Prophet is so penetrated with the thought of the 
 glory of the New Dispensation far outshining that of the Old, 
 that, even a priori, we could not suppose that, as regards the 
 priesthood, he expected an eternal duration of its form, hitherto 
 so poor. It is the substance only which, in his view, is per- 
 manent. One need only compare the section, chap. xxxi. 31 fi' 
 How intentionally does he here bring forward the idea that 
 the New Covenant would not be like the Old; how does he 
 point from the shadow to the substance! But it is especially 
 chap. iii. 1 6 which, in this respect, is to be regarded. In that 
 passage, the ceasing of the former dignity of the Ark of the 
 Covenant is announced repeatedly, and in the strongest terms ; 
 and we have already seen that, along with the Axk. of the 
 Covenant, the temple, the Levitical priesthood, the whole 
 sacrificial service stands in the closest and most indissoluble 
 connection; so that all this must fall along with it. 2. Avery 
 important proof is furnished by ver. 22, which must be re- 
 garded as a declaration, by the Prophet himself, as to the 
 manner in which he wishes to be understood. Now, in that 
 verse, it is promised that all the descendants of Abraham shall 
 be changed into Levites ; and this is declared to form a part of 
 the eternal acceptance of the tribe of Levi, promised in the verse 
 under consideration. This shows then, that, in the verse under 
 review, the Levites cannot come into consideration as descend- 
 ants of Levi after the flesh, but only as regards their destina- 
 tion and vocation. 3. As the most ancient and authentic in- 
 terpreter of Jeremiah, Zechariah must be considered. He was 
 most anxious to obviate the same fears which Jeremiah here 
 meets ; and, in him, the first two of the three features which 
 Jeremiah comprehends in the unity of the idea, appear sepa- 
 rated, but in such a manner that the connecting unity of the 
 idea is not lost sight of In Zech. iii., God assures the people 
 that, notwithstanding the greatness of their sins, He would 
 not only allow the office of High-priest to continue as hereto- 
 fore, and accept his mediation, but that, at some future period, 
 VOL. II. gg 
 
VCyG MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Ho would also send the true High- priest, who should make a 
 complete and everlasting atonement. In ver. 8, the High- 
 priest and his colleagues in the priestly oiRce are designated 
 as types of Christ who, putting most completely to shame 
 the people's despair in God's mercy, should fully accomplish 
 the expiation and atonement which the former had effected only 
 imperfectly. In chap. iv. the priestly is, along with the royal 
 order, designated as one of the two sons of the oil, the two 
 anointed ones of the Lord, whose anointing remaineth for 
 ever ; and from chap. vi. 1 3, where the Messiah appears as 
 the true High-priest and King at the same time, it appears 
 that, here too, the shadow only belongs to the Levitical priest- 
 hood, but the substance to Christ. 4. Elsewhere, too, plain 
 examples are not wanting, in which the idea of the priesthood 
 only is regarded, while the peculiar form of its manifestation 
 under the Old Testament is lost sight of Among those is 
 Is. Ixi. 6, where, in reference to all Israel, it is said : " And ye 
 shall be named priests of Jehovah, ministers of our God shall 
 they call you." Here the change of all Israel into the tribe 
 of Levi is announced ; and the objection which, perhaps, might 
 be brought forward, t^at here only priests in general are spoken 
 of, while Jeremiah speaks of Levitical priests, is met by the 
 second passage, chap. Ixvi. 21 : "And from them also will I 
 take for Levitical priests saith the Lord." It makes no differ- 
 ence for our purpose whether " from them" be referred to the 
 Gentiles (which is the correct view, compare p. 3 GO), as is 
 done by Vitrinrja and Geneniiis, or to tlie Israelites living in 
 exile. For, although the latter interpretation be received, yet 
 so much is certain, that such shall be taken for Levitical 
 priests as were not descendants of Levi : for, otherwise, no 
 taking, no special divine mercy would have taken place. Even 
 the Law already knows an ideal priesthood by the side of the 
 ordiuaiy one ; and such an one meets us also in Ps. xcix. 6 ; 
 compare my Commentary on that passage. — After having thus 
 fixed the sense of the promise referring to the Levitical priest- 
 hood, it will not be difficult to discover the right view in 
 reference to the family of David. Here, too, a threefold ful- 
 filment takes place. 1. It was realized in the times imme- 
 diately after the captivity, when Zerubbabel, a scion of the 
 Davidic house, became the mediator of the mercies which God 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXIH. 18. 467 
 
 as King, vouchsafed to His people. To a certain degree, that 
 mercy too comes in here which, at a later period, God, in His 
 capacity as King, bestowed upon the people by means of civil 
 rulers, who were not from the house of David. For, since 
 the dominion had been for ever transferred to the house of 
 David, these rulers can be considered only as being engiafted 
 into it, as representatives and vice-regents, — much in the same 
 way as the blessing, which was bestowed npon the people by 
 the priestly office of the non-priest Samuel, must be considered 
 as being included in the promise in reference to the Aaronic 
 priesthood. For all that God vouchsafed through those rulers, 
 was for the sake of the Davidic house only, which for ever had 
 been destined to be the channel of His regal blessings. If the 
 kingdom of David had really been at an end, He would not 
 have given to the people even those rulers, and the deliverance 
 and prosperity granted to them, — as is clearly seen from a 
 comparison of the times, after the great Hero of David's race 
 ascended the throne, when every trace of the regal grace of 
 God in raising other rulers ceased ; for now, that the race of 
 David itself rules again, and for ever, no representation of it 
 can any more take place. But, in the passage under consider- 
 ation, it would the less be suitable to separate everything 
 v/hich does not, in the strictest sense, belong to it, that here 
 the promise to David is not viewed with reference to him and 
 his house, but solely with reference to the people. Hence, the 
 manifestation of the regal grace of God forms the centre ; and 
 the house of David comes into consideration, only in so far as 
 it was destined to be the mediator of this grace. 2. It was 
 fulfilled in Christ ; and from vers. 15, 16, it appears that the 
 Prophet had this fulfilment chiefly in view. These two fulfil- 
 ments are connected with one another by Zechariah also, in 
 chap. iv. — 3. It was realized by the raising of the whole true 
 posterity of Abraham to the royal dignity, through Christ. 
 This most striking antithesis to the despair — the despair say- 
 ing : there is no king in Israel ; the consolation : all Israel are 
 kings — is expressly brought forward in ver, 22. — We still 
 remark that we must not, by any means, as is commonly done, 
 translate : " To the priests and Levites," but, as also in Is. 
 Ixvi. 2 1 : To the Levitical priests ; compare the arguments in 
 proof in Genuineness of the Pentateuch, p. 329 if. The epi- 
 
4GS MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 thet " Levitical," is added in order to prevent the thought 
 that, perhaps, priests in another than the literal sense are 
 spoken of, compare p. 360. It serves therefore the same pur- 
 pose as the expression : " He rulcth as a king," in chap, xxxiii. 
 5. — As regards the sacrifices, we must not by any means sup- 
 pose, as is done by the ancient interpreters, that spiritual sacri- 
 fices are here simply spoken of The con-ect view rather is, 
 that the Prophet represents the substance under its present 
 form, in and with which it would now soon be lost for a sea- 
 son ; and as he has to do with the substance only, he does not 
 say anything as to whether this substance would, in future, 
 rise again in the same form, and whether it was to continue 
 for ever in that form. History has answered the first in the 
 aflirmative, and the second in the negative ; and from chap, 
 iii. 1 G, it appears that the Prophet, too, would, upon inquiry, 
 have answered in the negative as regai'ds the last point. 
 Moreover, how well they knew, even under the Old Testament 
 dispensation, to distinguish, in reference to the sacrifices, between 
 the substance and the form, considering the latter as a thing 
 merely accidental, is seen from passages such as Hosea xiv. 3 (2) : 
 " Take with you words, and turn to the Lord and say unto 
 Him : Take all iniquity, and give good, and we will recom- 
 pense to thee bulls, our lips." Here the thanks are repre- 
 sented as the substance of the thank-oflfering, and, indeed, so 
 perfectly, that the thank-oflfering, the bullocks, is entirely 
 where only thanks, the lips, are. The outward saciifice is the 
 vessel only in which the gift is presented to God. Farther — 
 Ps. iv. 1 4, where, in contrast to the merely external sacrifices, 
 it is said : " Ofter unto God thanksgivings ;" Mai. ill, and 
 many other passages. 
 
 Vers. 19, 20. "And the ivord of the Lord came to Jei"^^ 
 miah, saying : Thus saith the Lord, If ye tvill make void iniy 
 covenant, the day, and my covenant, the night, so that there 
 shall be no more day and night in their season ; Ver. 21. 
 Then also shall be void my covenant ivith David, my servant, 
 that he shall not have one who reigns on his throne, and ivith 
 the Levitical priests, m,y servants." 
 
 The word nsn is very significant. Calvin says : " The 
 Prophet indirectly reproves the wickedness of the people, be- 
 cause, as much as lay with them, they destroyed the covenant 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXIII. 19, 20. 46.9 
 
 of God by their obstreperous cries This incredulity, 
 
 therefore, the Prophet blames, and it is as if he were saying : 
 To what are these complaints to lead ? It is just as if you 
 were trying to draw down sun and moon from heaven, and to 
 do away with the difference between day and night, and over- 
 turn all the laws of nature, because it is I, the same God, 
 whose will it was that the night should follow the day, who 
 have also promised, &c." — DVn and rh^^T] are appositions to : 
 My covenant. The day and night in their regular succession 
 are the covenant which is here spoken of The phrase n^'^^i DJov, 
 which signifies " by day and night," " daily and nightly," stands 
 here for : tempus diurnum et nocturnuno. " The covenant," 
 n''"i3, does not by any means stand here in the signification 
 stabilis ordinatio ; nor is it be considered as being entered 
 into with the day and night ; these, on the contrary, are the 
 covenant-blessings. God, who vouchsafed them, and all that 
 is connected with them, that the sun shines by day, and the 
 moon by night, enters thereby, according to the explana- 
 tion given on chap. xxxi. 32, into a covenant with man. By 
 the inviolable maintenance of the course of nature, He binds 
 himself to the inviolable maintenance of the moral order. This 
 clearly appears when we consider that, after the great flood, 
 the covenant with nature is anew entered into, and its invio- 
 lability anew established ; comp. Gen. ix. 9 : " Behold, I esta- 
 blish my covenant luith you, and with your seed after you ;" 
 viii. 22: " All the days of the earth, seed time and harvest, 
 and heat and cold, and summer and autumn, and day and 
 night shall not cease any more." With these covenant-pro- 
 mises, covenant-laws and obligations are connected, which the 
 covenant imposes. With this covenant of nature, which is 
 common to all men, and which, at Noah's time, was not made 
 for the fii'st time, but only renewed, the covenant of grace, 
 which is peculiar to Israel only, stands on a level. To assert 
 that the latter has become void, is nothing else than to attempt 
 to pull sun and moon down from heaven. For it is one and 
 the same God who ha.s made both covenants. 
 
 Ver. 22. "As the host of heaven is not numbered, and as 
 the sand of the sea is not 'measured, so will I increase the seed 
 of David, my sei^ant, and the Levites that minister unto m.e." 
 
 Even considered in itself, the literal fulfilment of this verse 
 
470 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 involves an absurdity. Sncli an increase of the bodily de- 
 scendants of David lies beyond the bounds of possibility ; and 
 even if this were not the case, yet this increase, just as the 
 similar increase of the Levites, would not have the nature of 
 a promise, but that of a threatening. At all events, the con- 
 solation would have no relation to, or connection with, the 
 grief For the latter did not refer to the number of the de- 
 scendants of David, and that of the Levites, but to their accept- 
 ance with God, and, in them, to the acceptance of the people; 
 but that acceptance has nothing to do with number. To this, 
 another reason is still to be added. It cannot be denied that 
 there is a verbal reference to the promise to Abraham in Gen. 
 XV, 5, xxii. 17. Since, then, these words, which originally 
 referred to all Israel, are here transferred to the family of 
 David, and to the Levites, it is thereby sufficiently intimated 
 that all Israel shall be changed into the family of David, and 
 into the tribe of Levi. This idea need not at all surprise us. 
 It has its foundation in the Law itself All that is announced 
 here is, that the vocation and destination of the covenant- 
 people, which is already expressed in the Law, but which 
 hitherto was realised only very imperfectly, is, at some future 
 period, to be perfectly realised. In Exod. xix. 6, God says of 
 Israel : " Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, D^jna n2^»0."^ 
 Hence, first a kingdom. The nature of a kingdom is, not to 
 have any power over it other than the Divine power, and to 
 have everything else under its authority. By this declaration, 
 the dominion of the world was secured to the people of God. 
 This high prerogative always remained with the covenant- 
 people so long as they had not, by their guilt, spontaneously 
 got under a moral servitude to the world. The outward ser- 
 vitude was always a reflection of the inward only. It never 
 was inflicted upon the covenant-people as such, but always 
 upon that covenant-people which had become like the world. 
 And even when this unnatural condition took place, this high 
 dignity was not forfeited by the single individuals who, know- 
 ing that they were purchased at a high price, had kept them- 
 selves inwardly free from the bondage of the world. Although 
 in fetters and bonds, they yet remained inwardl}^ free. World, 
 
 ' Compare the discussions on this passage in my Commentary on Rev. i. 6. 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXIII. 22. 471 
 
 sin, death, and hell, could do them no harm. Yea, notwith- 
 standing all outward appearance of victory, those enemies 
 were, in reality, ruled by them ; and even their outward servi- 
 tude was, when more deeply considered, a sign of their do- 
 minion. For the Law of the Lord of Hosts was in their 
 inward parts; it was the living principle of their existence. 
 It was according to this Law that the whole world was 
 governed; and it was according to it that the servitude of 
 their people also took place. They were thus co-regents with 
 God, and, as such, ruled over their rulers. — All the single 
 members of this kingdom, which consists entirely of kings, 
 were, at the same time, to be priests. In these words it was 
 already implied and declared, that the Levitical priesthood, 
 which was instituted at a later period, could not have that 
 importance which the priesthood had with other nations of 
 antiquity, where priests and people stood in an absolute anti- 
 thesis, which admitted of no mediation, and where it was the 
 priests only who stood in an immediate relation to God. It 
 was thereby implied and declared, that the priests, in one 
 aspect, (in other respects, they were types and foreshadowings 
 of Christ) possessed rights that were only transferred to 
 them; that they were representatives of Christ, and that, 
 hence, their mediation would, at some future period, disappear 
 altogetlier. And in order that the people might always re- 
 main fully conscious of this; in order that they might know 
 that they themselves were the real bearers of the priestly 
 dignity, they retained, even after the institution of the Levi- 
 tical priesthood, that priestly function which formed the root 
 and foundation of all others, viz., the slaying of the covenant- 
 sacrifice, of the paschal lamb, which formed the centre of all 
 other sacrifices, inasmuch as the latter served only as a sup- 
 plement to it. That, even under the Old Testament dis- 
 pensation, this importance of the paschal rite was duly recog- 
 nized, is seen from Philo, de vita Mos. (p. 686, Francf) : "In 
 offering up the paschal lamb, the office of the laymen is by no 
 means simply to bring the sacrificial animals to the altar, that 
 they majT- be slain and offered up by the priests ; but, accord- 
 ing to the regulations of the Law, the whole people exercise 
 priestly functions, inasmuch as every one in his own behalf 
 offers up the prescribed sacrifice." — We have thus here before 
 
172 MESSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 US the highest completion of the comfort for the mourning 
 covenant-people. They are not merely to receive back their 
 king, their priests ; nay, they are altogether to be clianged 
 into a kingly and priestly generation. It must not be over- 
 looked that, in substance, this was already contained in the 
 promise to Abraham. We have already proved in Vol. i. p. 
 211, ff, that this promise to Abraham does not refer to a great 
 number of bodily descendants, tales qiiales, but that, on the 
 contrary, it refers only to such sons of Abraham as are, at the 
 same time, sons of God ; hence, to a royal and priestly genera- 
 tion. — If now we look to the fulfilment, the passage which, 
 above all, presents itself, is 1 Pet. ii. 9 : v/xs/c ds yhog syJ.sxrhv, 
 ^affiXeiov 'npareu/Ma -/..r.x. Here that passage of Exodus is repre- 
 sented as a prophecy which, in the present only, was fulfilled. 
 Israel has now become that which, according to its destiny, it 
 ought always to have been, a host of royal priests, — priests 
 who at the same time have a royal nature and character. That 
 which now already exists perfectly in the germ, shall, at some 
 future period, come forth in full development, according to 
 Rev. V. 1 : xa/ irroiriffag avTou; rui dsQj rifMuv (SadO.iTg xa/ hpsTc, xa) 
 tSaffiAsuaova/v sti rvig yr^g. Believers, when sin has been extir- 
 pated in them, shall have the freest access to God. When His 
 will shall have become theirs, and when, at the same time, 
 His dominion over tlie whole world appears more visibly, they 
 shaU unconditionally rule with Him. How this dignity of 
 theirs has its foundation in Christ, is seen from Rev. i. 5, 6, 
 where the words : v.a.) STrolriaiv r^Mag jSaciXsiav, hf'iTg ruj 6sS) xal 
 ■rarpl abroij, stand in cloSC connection to 6 apy^uv tuv jSaaiXiuv r^i 
 7>iS, and to ^ai Xlxsavn ri/j,ag a':ro rujv kij,ap7iui\ rifj^m iv rw a'ifiari 
 aurov. 
 
 Ver. 23. " And the luord of the Lord came to Jeremiah, 
 saying : Ver. 24. Dost thou not see ivhat this people are 
 speaking, and say : The ttvo families which the Lord hath 
 chosen, He hath noiv rejected them, and my people they despise, 
 that they sJiould still he a 'people before them" 
 
 It is scarcely conceivable how modern interpreters can assert 
 that by " this people," not the Israelites, but Gentiles, the 
 Egyptians or Chaldeans, or the "neighbours of the. Jews on 
 the Chaboras," {Hiizig), or the Samaritans (Movers), are to be 
 understood. In advancing such assertions, it is overlooked 
 
JEREMIAH, CHAP. XXXIII. 23, 24. 473 
 
 that the Prophet has here quite the same persons in view as 
 in the whole remaining section, and as in these chapter's 
 throughout, viz., those among Israel — and to them more or 
 less all belonged, even those most faithful — who, because they 
 saw Israel prostrate, for ever despaired of its deliverance and 
 salvation ; and, indeed, for the most part, in such a manner as 
 to give to this despair a good aspect, viz., that of humility. 
 They imagined, and said that the people had sinned in such a 
 manner against God, that He was free from all his obligations, 
 and could not at all receive them again. To those the Prophet 
 shows that such a thought is, notwithstanding the fair appear- 
 ance, blasphemy. All despair abases God into an idol, into a 
 creature. Faith holds fast by the word, by the promise. It 
 says : Although sin abounds with us, the grace of God does 
 much more abound. As truly as God always remains God, 
 so surely His people will always remain His people. He in- 
 deed chastises them, but He does not give them over to death. 
 One need only consider the nsn in ver. 20. — The expression 
 "this people," is contemptuous, comp. Is. viii. 11. The Pro- 
 phet thereby intimates that those who use such language, cease 
 thereby to be members of the people of God. The "two 
 families" are Judah and Israel. These had, in the preceding 
 verses, likewise been, in substance, the subject of discourse ; 
 for the election and rejection of the tribe of Levi, and of the 
 house of David, had been treated of in so far only, as they 
 stood in relation to the election or rejection of the people ; so 
 that here only the same thing is repeated in a different form, 
 in consideration of the fact, that weak faith and despair are 
 so slow to hear. The words : " He hath now rejected them," 
 were, in a certain sense, true ; but not in the sense of the 
 speakers. They, on the contrary, maintained, in opposition 
 to the election, a rejection for ever, which was tantamount to : 
 Jehovah, the eternal and unchangeable One, is no more Jeho- 
 vah ; He is a man that He lieth, and a son of man that He 
 repenteth. As surely as God is Jehovah, so surely also afura- 
 fLsXrjra, to, ^dpiept,ara, xai r; zXyjaig rou dsou, Rom. xi. 29. The ex- 
 pression " miy people," directs attention to how God is now 
 despised in Israel. On the contrast between " my peoj)le" 
 and "a people," compare remarks on chap. xxxi. 36. 
 
 Ver. 25. " Thus saith the Lord : If not my covenant dally 
 
47 !• MKSSIANIC PREDICTIONS IN THE PROPHETS. 
 
 and niyldly, if I have not appointed the 07'dinances of heaven 
 and earth;" — 
 
 Compare ver. 20. The covenant daily and nightly, i.e., the 
 covenant which i-efers to the constant and regular alternation 
 of day and night. The ordinances of heaven and earth denott^ 
 the whole course of nature, — especially the relations of sun, 
 nioou, and stars, to the earth, comp. chap. xxxi. 35 — in so 
 far as it is regulated Ly God's ordinance, and is, therefore, a 
 lasting one. 
 
 Ver. 26. " So will I also cast aivay the seed of Jacob, and 
 of David, my se7'vant, that J do not taJce farther from- hi^ seed 
 Tillers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For I 
 will turn to their cap)tivity, and have mercy upon them." 
 
 The casting away of the seed of Jacob, and that of the seed 
 of David, are inseparably connected. For since, by the pro- 
 mise to David, the kingdom had been for ever bound together 
 with his race, Israel was no more the people of God, and no 
 more a people at all, if David was no more the servant of God. 
 The Plural d^^K'D is easily accounted for, from the circumstance 
 that it was not the number, but only the fact that was here 
 c*oncemed (comp. remarks on chap, xxiii. 4, and, at the same 
 time, those on ver. 1 8) ; but it is beyond any doubt, that the 
 Prophet has here in view the revival of the dominion of David 
 in the Messiah, — has it, at least, chiefly in view. The enu- 
 meration of the three Patriarchs recalls to mind the whole 
 series of the promises granted to them. The words : " I will 
 turn to their captivity" (not : " I will turn their captivity," 
 compare remarks on Ps. xiv. 7 ; captivity is an image of 
 misery), rest on Deut. xxx. 3. 
 
 END OF VOLUME SECOND. 
 
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