Isa 52:13 | KD | STEP | Victor F. Oehler has recently attempted to establish an opinion, to which no one had given expression before, viz. that the transition from the collective idea of the servant of God to the “Servant of God” as an individual takes place in ver. 14, where Israel is addressed in the first clause, and the Messiah referred to in the second. But our view is a totally different one. In every case, thus far, in which another than Jehovah has spoken, it has been the one “Servant of Jehovah” who was the centre of the circle, the heart and head of the body of Israel. And after having heard him speaking himself in , , , and Jehovah speaking concerning him in Isa 1. 10-11, , , it does not come upon us at all unexpectedly, that Jehovah begins to speak of him again here. Nor does it surprise us, that the prophet should pass in so abrupt a manner, from the exaltation of the church to the exaltation of the servant of Jehovah. If we look back, we find that he has not omitted anything, that could preclude the possibility of our confounding this servant of Jehovah with Israel itself. For although Israel itself, in its relation to Jehovah, is spoken of frequently enough as “my servant” and “his servant ;” yet the passage before us is preceded by the same representation of Israel the community as a female, which has been sustained from onwards; and although in Isa. 51:1-16 the national idea of the "servant of Jehovah" is expressed in the most definite manner possible (more especially in ), the name employed is not that which the personal “Servant,” whom no one can possibly mistake in , already bears in Isa 1:10. It is this personal Servant who is spoken of here. It is his portrait that is here filled out and completed, and that as a side-piece to the liberation and restoration of Zion-Jerusalem as depicted just before. It is the servant of Jehovah who conducts His people through suffering to glory. It is in his heart, as we now most clearly discern, that the changing of Jehovah's wrath into love takes place. He suffers with his people, suffers for them, suffers in their stead ; because he has not brought the suffering upon himself, like the great mass of the people, through sin, but has voluntarily submitted to it as the guiltless and righteous one, in order that he might entirely remove it, even to its roots, i.e. the guilt and the sin which occasioned it, by his own sacrifice of himself. Thus is Israel's glory concentrated in him like a sun. The glory of Israel has his glory for a focus. He is the seed-corn, which is buried in the earth, to bring forth much fruit ; and this “much fruit” is the glory of Israel and the salvation of the nations. “Christian scholars,” says Abravanel, “interpret this prophecy as referring to that man who was crucified in Jerusalem about the end of the second temple, and who, according to their view, was the Son of God, who became man in the womb of the Virgin. , But Jonathan ben Uziel explains it as relating to the Messiah who has yet to come ; and this is the opinion of the ancients in many of their Midrashim.” So that even the synagogue could not help acknowledging that the passage of the Messiah through death to glory is predicted here. And what interest could we have in understanding by the “servant of Jehovah,” in this section, the nation of Israel generally, as many Rabbis, both circumcised and uncircumcised, have done ; whereas he is that One Israelite in whom Jehovah has effected the redemption of both Israel and the heathen, even through the medium of Israel itself ? Or what interest could we have in persuading ourselves that Jeremiah, or some unknown martyr-prophet, is intended, as Grotius, Bunsen, and Ewald suppose ; whereas it is rather the great unknown and misinterpreted One, whom Jewish and Judaizing exegesis still continues to misinterpret in its exposition of the figure before us, just as His contemporaries misinterpreted Him when He actually appeared among them. How many are there whose eyes have been opened when reading this “ golden passional of the Old Testament evangelist,” as Polycarp the Lysian calls it ! In how many an Israelite has it melted the crust of his heart ! It looks as if it had been written beneath the cross upon Golgotha, and was illuminated by the heavenly brightness of the full שֵׁ֥ב לִֽימִינִ֑י. It is the unravelling of Ps. 22:1. and Ps. 110:1. It forms the outer centre of this wonderful book of consolation (Isa 40-66.), and is the most central, the deepest, and the loftiest thing that the Old Testament prophecy, outstripping itself, has ever achieved. And yet it does not belie its Old Testament origin. For the prophet sees the advent of “the servant of Jehovah,” and His rejection by His own people, bound up as it were with the duration of the captivity. It is at the close of the captivity that he beholds the exaltation of the Servant of Jehovah, who has died and been buried, and yet lives for ever ; and with His exaltation the inward and outward return of Israel, and the restoration of Jerusalem in its renewed and final glory ; and with this restoration of the people of God, the conversion of the nations and the salvation of mankind. In this sense there follows here, immediately after the cry. “Go ye out from Babylon,” an index pointing from the suffering of the Servant to His reward in glory. “Behold, my servant will act wisely; he will come forth, and arise, and be very high.” Even apart from , hinnēh ( hēn ) is a favourite commencement with Isaiah; and this very first v. contains, according to Isaiah’s custom, a brief, condensed explanation of the theme. The exaltation of the Servant of Jehovah is the theme of the prophecy which follows. In v. 13 a the way is shown, by which He reaches His greatness; in v. 13 b the increasing greatness itself. השׂכּיל by itself means simply to gain, prove, or act with intelligence (lxx συνήσει); and then, since intelligent action, as a rule, is also effective, it is used as synonymous with הצליח, הכשׁהיר, to act with result, i.e., so as to be successful. Hence it is only by way of sequence that the idea of “prosperously” is connected with that of “prudently” (e.g., ; ). The word is never applied to such prosperity as a man enjoys without any effort of his own, but only to such as he attains by successful action, i.e., by such action as is appropriate to the desired and desirable result. In , where hiskı̄l is one feature in the picture of the dominion exercised by the Messiah, the idea of intelligent action is quite sufficient, without any further subordinate meaning. But here, where the exaltation is derived from ישׂכיל as the immediate consequence, without any intervening על־כן, there is naturally associated with the idea of wise action, i.e., of action suited to the great object of his call, that of effective execution or abundant success, which has as its natural sequel an ever-increasing exaltation. Rosenmüller observes, in , “There is no need to discuss, or even to inquire, what precise difference there is in the meaning of the separate words;” but this is a very superficial remark. If we consider that rūm signifies not only to be high, but to rise up ( ) and become exalted, and also to become manifest as exalted (Ps. 21:14), and that נשּׂא, according to the immediate and original reflective meaning of the niphal , signifies to raise one’s self, whereas gâbhah expresses merely the condition, without the subordinate idea of activity, we obtain this chain of thought: he will rise up, he will raise himself still higher, he will stand on high. The three verbs (of which the two perfects are defined by the previous future) consequently denote the commencement, the continuation, and the result or climax of the exaltation; and Stier is not wrong in recalling to mind the three principal steps of the exaltatio in the historical fulfilment, viz., the resurrection, the ascension, and the sitting down at the right hand of God. The addition of the word מאד shows very clearly that וגבהּ is intended to be taken as the final result: the servant of Jehovah, rising from stage to stage, reaches at last an immeasurable height, that towers above everything besides (comp. ὑπερύψωσε in , with ὑψωθείς in , and for the nature of the ὑπερύψωσε, ).

‏ Isaiah 52:13

FIFTH PROPHECY.— Chap. 52:13-53.

GOLGOTHA AND SHEBLIMINI, ^{▼▼שֵׁ֥ב לִֽימִינִ֑י: “sit thou at my right hand.” — Tr.} OR THE EXALTATION OP THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH OUT OF PEEP DEGRADATION.

Victor F. Oehler has recently attempted to establish an opinion, to which no one had given expression before, viz. that the transition from the collective idea of the servant of God to the “Servant of God” as an individual takes place in ver. 14, where Israel is addressed in the first clause, and the Messiah referred to in the second. But our view is a totally different one. In every case, thus far, in which another than Jehovah has spoken, it has been the one “Servant of Jehovah” who was the centre of the circle, the heart and head of the body of Israel. And after having heard him speaking himself in Isa 1:4-9, Isa 49:1-6, Isa 48:16b, and Jehovah speaking concerning him in Isa 1. 10-11, Isa 49:7-9, Isa 42:1-7, it does not come upon us at all unexpectedly, that Jehovah begins to speak of him again here. Nor does it surprise us, that the prophet should pass in so abrupt a manner, from the exaltation of the church to the exaltation of the servant of Jehovah. If we look back, we find that he has not omitted anything, that could preclude the possibility of our confounding this servant of Jehovah with Israel itself. For although Israel itself, in its relation to Jehovah, is spoken of frequently enough as “my servant” and “his servant ;” yet the passage before us is preceded by the same representation of Israel the community as a female, which has been sustained from Isa 51:17 onwards; and although in Isa. 51:1-16 the national idea of the "servant of Jehovah" is expressed in the most definite manner possible (more especially in Isa 51:7), the name employed is not that which the personal “Servant,” whom no one can possibly mistake in Isa 1:4-9, already bears in Isa 1:10. It is this personal Servant who is spoken of here. It is his portrait that is here filled out and completed, and that as a side-piece to the liberation and restoration of Zion-Jerusalem as depicted just before. It is the servant of Jehovah who conducts His people through suffering to glory. It is in his heart, as we now most clearly discern, that the changing of Jehovah's wrath into love takes place. He suffers with his people, suffers for them, suffers in their stead ; because he has not brought the suffering upon himself, like the great mass of the people, through sin, but has voluntarily submitted to it as the guiltless and righteous one, in order that he might entirely remove it, even to its roots, i.e. the guilt and the sin which occasioned it, by his own sacrifice of himself. Thus is Israel's glory concentrated in him like a sun. The glory of Israel has his glory for a focus. He is the seed-corn, which is buried in the earth, to bring forth much fruit ; and this “much fruit” is the glory of Israel and the salvation of the nations. “Christian scholars,” says Abravanel, “interpret this prophecy as referring to that man who was crucified in Jerusalem about the end of the second temple, and who, according to their view, was the Son of God, who became man in the womb of the Virgin. , But Jonathan ben Uziel explains it as relating to the Messiah who has yet to come ; and this is the opinion of the ancients in many of their Midrashim.” So that even the synagogue could not help acknowledging that the passage of the Messiah through death to glory is predicted here. ^{▼▼See A. M. M‘Caul’s tract on Isa. liii., and the " Old Jewish Midrash of the Suffering Redeemer" in our Mag. Saat auf Hoffnung, i. 3, pp. 87-39.} And what interest could we have in understanding by the “servant of Jehovah,” in this section, the nation of Israel generally, as many Rabbis, both circumcised and uncircumcised, have done ; whereas he is that One Israelite in whom Jehovah has effected the redemption of both Israel and the heathen, even through the medium of Israel itself ? Or what interest could we have in persuading ourselves that Jeremiah, or some unknown martyr-prophet, is intended, as Grotius, Bunsen, and Ewald suppose ; whereas it is rather the great unknown and misinterpreted One, whom Jewish and Judaizing exegesis still continues to misinterpret in its exposition of the figure before us, just as His contemporaries misinterpreted Him when He actually appeared among them. How many are there whose eyes have been opened when reading this “ golden passional of the Old Testament evangelist,” as Polycarp the Lysian calls it ! In how many an Israelite has it melted the crust of his heart ! It looks as if it had been written beneath the cross upon Golgotha, and was illuminated by the heavenly brightness of the full שֵׁ֥ב לִֽימִינִ֑י. It is the unravelling of Ps. 22:1. and Ps. 110:1. It forms the outer centre of this wonderful book of consolation (Isa 40-66.), and is the most central, the deepest, and the loftiest thing that the Old Testament prophecy, outstripping itself, has ever achieved. And yet it does not belie its Old Testament origin. For the prophet sees the advent of “the servant of Jehovah,” and His rejection by His own people, bound up as it were with the duration of the captivity. It is at the close of the captivity that he beholds the exaltation of the Servant of Jehovah, who has died and been buried, and yet lives for ever ; and with His exaltation the inward and outward return of Israel, and the restoration of Jerusalem in its renewed and final glory ; and with this restoration of the people of God, the conversion of the nations and the salvation of mankind. ^{▼▼I cannot refrain from repeating here a passage taken from my closing remarks on Drechsler (iii. 376), simply because I cannot find any better way of expressing what I have to say upon this point: “When Isaiah sang his dying song on the border line of the reigns of Hezekiah and Manasseh, all the coming sufferings of his people appeared to be concentrated in the one view of the captivity in Babylon. And it was in the midst of this period of suffering, which formed the extreme limit of his range of vision, that he saw the redemption of Israel beginning to appear. He saw the servant of Jehovah working among the captives, just as at His coming He actually did appear in the midst of His people, when they were in bondage to the imperial power of the world ; he also saw the Servant of Jehovah passing through death to glory, and Israel ascending with Him, as in fact the ascension of Jesus was the completion of the redemption of Israel ; and it was only the unbelief of the great mass of Israel which occasioned the fact, that this redemption was at first merely the spiritual redemption of believers out of the nation, and not the spiritual and physical redemption of the nation as a whole. So far, therefore, a broad gap was made in point of time between the exaltation of the servant of Jehovah and the glorious restoration of Israel which is still in the future ; and this gap was hidden from the prophet's view. It is only the coming of Christ in glory which will fully realize what was not yet realized when He entered into glory after the sufferings of death, on account of Israel’s unbelief.”}

Isa 52:13 In this sense there follows here, immediately after the cry. “Go ye out from Babylon,” an index pointing from the suffering of the Servant to His reward in glory. “Behold, my servant will act wisely; he will come forth, and arise, and be very high.” Even apart from Isa 42:1, hinnēh (hēn) is a favourite commencement with Isaiah; and this very first v. contains, according to Isaiah’s custom, a brief, condensed explanation of the theme. The exaltation of the Servant of Jehovah is the theme of the prophecy which follows. In v. 13 a the way is shown, by which He reaches His greatness; in v. 13 b the increasing greatness itself. השׂכּיל by itself means simply to gain, prove, or act with intelligence (lxx συνήσει); and then, since intelligent action, as a rule, is also effective, it is used as synonymous with הצליח, הכשׁהיר, to act with result, i.e., so as to be successful. Hence it is only by way of sequence that the idea of “prosperously” is connected with that of “prudently” (e.g., Jos 1:8; Jer 10:21). The word is never applied to such prosperity as a man enjoys without any effort of his own, but only to such as he attains by successful action, i.e., by such action as is appropriate to the desired and desirable result. In Jer 23:2, where hiskı̄l is one feature in the picture of the dominion exercised by the Messiah, the idea of intelligent action is quite sufficient, without any further subordinate meaning. But here, where the exaltation is derived from ישׂכיל as the immediate consequence, without any intervening על־כן, there is naturally associated with the idea of wise action, i.e., of action suited to the great object of his call, that of effective execution or abundant success, which has as its natural sequel an ever-increasing exaltation. Rosenmüller observes, in Isa 52:13, “There is no need to discuss, or even to inquire, what precise difference there is in the meaning of the separate words;” but this is a very superficial remark. If we consider that rūm signifies not only to be high, but to rise up (Pro 11:11) and become exalted, and also to become manifest as exalted (Ps. 21:14), and that נשּׂא, according to the immediate and original reflective meaning of the niphal, signifies to raise one’s self, whereas gâbhah expresses merely the condition, without the subordinate idea of activity, we obtain this chain of thought: he will rise up, he will raise himself still higher, he will stand on high. The three verbs (of which the two perfects are defined by the previous future) consequently denote the commencement, the continuation, and the result or climax of the exaltation; and Stier is not wrong in recalling to mind the three principal steps of the exaltatio in the historical fulfilment, viz., the resurrection, the ascension, and the sitting down at the right hand of God. The addition of the word מאד shows very clearly that וגבהּ is intended to be taken as the final result: the servant of Jehovah, rising from stage to stage, reaches at last an immeasurable height, that towers above everything besides (comp. ὑπερύψωσε in Phi 2:9, with ὑψωθείς in Act 2:33, and for the nature of the ὑπερύψωσε, Eph 1:20-23).

‏ Isaiah 52:13

FIFTH PROPHECY.— Chap. 52:13-53.

GOLGOTHA AND SHEBLIMINI, ▼▼שֵׁ֥ב לִֽימִינִ֑י: “sit thou at my right hand.” — Tr. OR THE EXALTATION OP THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH OUT OF PEEP DEGRADATION.

GOLGOTHA AND SHEBLIMINI, ^{▼▼שֵׁ֥ב לִֽימִינִ֑י: “sit thou at my right hand.” — Tr.} OR THE EXALTATION OP THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH OUT OF PEEP DEGRADATION.