8“But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham my friend,
9You whom I have taken hold of from the ends of the earth, and called from its corners, and said to you, ‘You are my servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you away.’
8 “But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham my friend,
9 You whom I have taken hold of from the ends of the earth, and called from its corners, and said to you, ‘You are my servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you away.’
KJVKing James Version
8 But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend.
9 Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called thee from the chief men thereof, and said unto thee, Thou art my servant; I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away.
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JPSJPS Tanakh (1917)
8 But thou, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham My friend;
9 Thou whom I have taken hold of from the ends of the earth, and called thee from the uttermost parts thereof, and said unto thee: 'Thou art My servant, I have chosen thee and not cast thee away';
1 Samuel 12:22(v9)For Yahweh will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased Yahweh to make you a people for himself.
James 2:23(v8)So the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness,” and he was called the…
Exodus 19:5-6(v8)Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice, and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession from among all peoples; for all…
Deuteronomy 14:2(v8)For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God, and Yahweh has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who are on…
2 Chronicles 20:7(v8)Didn’t you, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it to the offspring of Abraham your friend…
Show all 42 cross-references
Psalms 94:14(v9)For Yahweh won’t reject his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance.
John 15:14-15(v8)You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn’t know what his lord does.…
Isaiah 44:21(v8)Remember these things, Jacob and Israel; for you are my servant. I have formed you. You are my servant. Israel, you will not be forgotten…
Isaiah 51:2(v8)Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you; for when he was but one I called him, I blessed him, and made him many.
Deuteronomy 7:6-7(v9)For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God. Yahweh your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who…
Psalms 33:12(v8)Blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh, the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance.
Isaiah 29:22(v8)Therefore Yahweh, who redeemed Abraham, says concerning the house of Jacob: “Jacob shall no longer be ashamed, neither shall his face grow…
Isaiah 44:1-2(v8)Yet listen now, Jacob my servant, and Israel, whom I have chosen. This is what Yahweh who made you, and formed you from the womb, who will…
Joshua 24:2-4(v9)Joshua said to all the people, “Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, ‘Your fathers lived of old time beyond the River, even Terah, the father…
Psalms 135:4(v8)For Yah has chosen Jacob for himself, Israel for his own possession.
Isaiah 43:1(v8)But now Yahweh who created you, Jacob, and he who formed you, Israel, says: “Don’t be afraid, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by…
James 2:5(v9)Listen, my beloved brothers. Didn’t God choose those who are poor in this world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the Kingdom which he…
Isaiah 48:12(v8)“Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel my called: I am he. I am the first. I am also the last.
Jeremiah 33:24(v8)“Don’t consider what this people has spoken, saying, ‘Has Yahweh cast off the two families which he chose?’ Thus they despise my people,…
Romans 11:1-2(v9)I ask then, did God reject his people? May it never be! For I also am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God…
1 Corinthians 1:26-29(v9)For you see your calling, brothers, that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, and not many noble; but God chose the…
Galatians 4:22-31(v8)For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the servant, and one by the free woman. However, the son by the servant was born…
Leviticus 25:42(v8)For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be sold as slaves.
Deuteronomy 10:15(v8)Only Yahweh had a delight in your fathers to love them, and he chose their offspring after them, even you above all peoples, as it is today.
Isaiah 41:2(v9)Who has raised up one from the east? Who called him to his foot in righteousness? He hands over nations to him and makes him rule over…
Isaiah 41:8(v9)“But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham my friend,
Isaiah 43:5-6(v9)Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. I will bring your offspring from the east, and gather you from the west. I will tell the north, ‘Give…
Isaiah 49:3(v8)He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
Isaiah 63:16(v8)For you are our Father, though Abraham doesn’t know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us. You, Yahweh, are our Father. Our Redeemer from…
Matthew 3:9(v8)Don’t think to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I tell you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these…
John 8:33-44(v8)They answered him, “We are Abraham’s offspring, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How do you say, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus…
Revelation 5:9(v9)They sang a new song, saying, “You are worthy to take the book and to open its seals: for you were killed, and bought us for God with your…
Nehemiah 9:7-38(v9)You are Yahweh, the God who chose Abram, brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees, gave him the name of Abraham, found his heart faithful…
Psalms 107:2-3(v9)Let the redeemed by Yahweh say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the adversary, And gathered out of the lands, from the east and…
Jeremiah 33:25-26(v9)Yahweh says: “If my covenant of day and night fails, if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; then I will also cast away…
Luke 13:29(v9)They will come from the east, west, north, and south, and will sit down in God’s Kingdom.
Romans 9:4-8(v8)who are Israelites; whose is the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service, and the promises; of whom are the…
Deuteronomy 7:6-8(v8)For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God. Yahweh your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who…
Psalms 105:6(v8)you offspring of Abraham, his servant, you children of Jacob, his chosen ones.
Psalms 105:42-45(v8)For he remembered his holy word, and Abraham, his servant. He brought his people out with joy, his chosen with singing. He gave them the…
Romans 4:12-13(v8)He is the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father…
Galatians 3:19(v8)Then why is there the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise has been made. It…
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (20 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn v8And therefore oughtest not to pollute thyself with the…
And therefore oughtest not to pollute thyself with the superstition of the Gentiles.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv8–9Isa 41:8 But thou, Israel, [art] my servant, Jacob…
Isa 41:8 But thou, Israel, [art] my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend.
Ver. 8. But thou, Israel, art my servant.] And it was for thy sake, and for thy settlement, that I have dealt so long with those odious idolaters, whom else I would not once look toward nor commune with, as he said, 2Ki 3:14.
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The seed of Abraham, my friend.] This style was a higher honour to Abraham than if God had engraven his name in the orbs of heaven. {See Trapp on "Jas 2:23"} Hushai was David’s "friend," and Augustus vouchsafed to give Virgil the name of "Amicus." This was a special favour, but not like that in the text.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv8–9But thou, Israel, art my servant: thus the Gentiles…
But thou, Israel, art my servant: thus the Gentiles show themselves to be the servants of their idols, and own them for their god; but thou art my people, and I am and will be thy God.
Whom I have chosen, out of the heap of the idolatrous nations, to be my peculiar people.
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Abraham my friend; with whom I made a strict league of perpetual friendship; of which see Gen 12:2,3; 15:1,18.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv8–9But thou, Israel, art my servant,.... As the great…
But thou, Israel, art my servant,.... As the great spread and success of the Gospel could not fail of drawing the resentment of the idolatrous Heathens on those who embraced and professed it, and by whom they were grievously persecuted under the Roman emperors; wherefore, to support them under these trials, the Lord speaks these and the following comfortable words unto them; for not carnal, but spiritual Israel are here meant; such who by the power of divine grace were turned from idols to serve the living God, who were made willing to become his servants, and whose honour it was to be so called and accounted; and being so, they might be assured their Lord and Master would protect and defend them, bless and reward them:
Jacob whom I have chosen; Israelites indeed, Jacob like, plain hearted men, wrestling and prevailing ones in prayer with God, whom he chose to be his people, and peculiar treasure; who, though disallowed of men, were like their Lord and Saviour, chosen of God, and precious:
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the seed of Abraham my friend: the spiritual seed of Abraham, being believers in Christ, and friends of his, as Abraham was; and whom he uses and shows to be such, by disclosing his secrets to them, Joh 15:15.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn v9Thou - Thou Israel, whom I took to myself,…
Thou - Thou Israel, whom I took to myself, and brought hither in the loins of thy father Abraham, from a remote country. Called thee - From the midst of many great persons among whom he lived in Chaldea. Chosen - I have chosen thee and thy seed through all generations.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn v9Verse 9. And called thee from the chief men…
Verse 9. And called thee from the chief men thereof - "And called from the extremities thereof"] אציל מאציליה atsil meatsileyha, signifies the arm, ascilla, ala; and is used like כנף canaph, "the wing," for any thing extended from the extremity of another, or joined on to it. It is here parallel with and synonymous to מקצות mikkatsoth, "from the ends," in the preceding member.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn v8Isa 41:8-13. But thou, Israel, art my servant —…
Isa 41:8-13. But thou, Israel, art my servant — Thus the Gentiles show themselves to be the servants of their idols, and own them for their gods: but thou art my people, and I am and will be thy God. Jacob, whom I have chosen — Out of the multitude of idolatrous nations, to be my peculiar people. The seed of Abraham my friend — With whom I made a strict league of perpetual friendship: see Gen 12:2-3; Gen 15:1; Gen 15:8. “The expressions are very endearing: it is honourable to be God’s servant, still more so to be his chosen servant, and to be descended from one to whom he vouchsafed the title of friend, as God did to Abraham, (2Ch 20:7,) the greatest honour that any man is capable of: which glorious privilege Christ was pleased to communicate to his disciples, Joh 15:13. Thou whom I have taken, &c. — Thou Israel, whom I took to myself, and brought hither in the loins of thy father Abraham, from a remote country, namely, from Chaldea; or, whom I brought out of Babylon into thine own land: which, though yet to come, he may speak of as of a thing past, according to the usual custom of the prophets when foretelling future events. But the former interpretation seems better to agree with the foregoing verse. And called thee from the chief men thereof — From the midst of many great and noble persons, among whom he lived in Chaldea. But the Hebrew, מאציליה, is rendered by Vitringa and Dr. Waterland, from the sides thereof, and by Bishop Lowth, from the extremities thereof, which is probably the prophet’s meaning. I have chosen, and not cast thee away — Or, and will not reject thee: I have chosen thee and thy seed through all generations. They that were incensed against thee shall be confounded — Both because their hopes and designs shall be utterly disappointed, and because the mischief which they contrived against thee shall fall on themselves. They shall be as nothing — Shall come to nothing, or perish. Thou shalt not find them — They shall be so totally consumed, that although thou search for them, thou shalt not be able to find them anywhere in the world. “The powerful monarchies that have been incensed against the church, and have contended with her, have been put to shame, and brought to nothing: and this prediction hath already been fulfilled in the ruin of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Chaldean, Macedonian, and Roman empires, which we now may seek for in vain; for no vestiges of the four former, and scarcely any of the last, can be found; while the church still subsists! In like manner all that now do, or hereafter shall contend with her, shall perish.” — Scott. I the Lord will hold thy hand — Or, will strengthen it, as מחזיקsignifies: I will assist and enable thee to vanquish all thine enemies.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv8–9But thou, Israel, art my servant - This is…
But thou, Israel, art my servant - This is an address directly to the Jews, and is designed to show them, in view of the truths which had just been urged, that God was their protector and friend. Those who relied on idols were trusting to that which could not aid them. But those who trusted in him were safe. For their protection he had raised up Cyrus, for this purpose he had subdued the nations before him. God now expresses to them the assurance that though the nations should be destroyed, yet that he had chosen them, and would remember them, and his promise made to Abraham, their illustrious ancestor. The word ‘servant’ here is used in a mild and gentle sense, not to denote bondage or slavery, but to denote that they had been engaged in his service, and that he regarded them as subject to his laws, and as under his protection.
Jacob whom I have chosen - The descendants of Jacob, whom I have selected to be my people. Abraham my friend. Hebrew, ‘Loving me,’ my lover. Abraham was regarded as the friend of God (see 2Ch 20:7). ‘And he was called the Friend of God’ Jam 2:23. This most honorable appellation he deserved by a life of devoted piety, and by habitually submitting himself to the will of God. The idea in this verse is, that as they were the descendants of his friend, God deemed himself bound to protect and deliver them according to his gracious promises; and this is one of the many instances where the divine favor is manifested to descendants in consequence of the piety and prayers of their ancestors.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures1864 · Public DomainOn v88 But thou, Israel, 14art my servant,
2. THE SECOND CHIEF FIGURE: THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH ISRAEL CHOSEN IN ABRAHAM AND CALLED IN GLORIOUS VICTORY
Isa_41:8-13
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8 But thou, Israel, 14art my servant,
Jacob whom I have chosen,
The seed of Abraham my friend.
9 Thou whom I have 15taken from the ends of the earth,
And called thee from the 16chief men thereof,
And said unto thee, Thou art my servant;
I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away
10 Fear thou not; for I am with thee:
17Be not dismayed; for I am thy God:
I 18will strengthen thee; yea, I 19will help thee;
Yea, I fwill uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
11 Behold, all they that were incensed against thee
Shall be ashamed and confounded
20They shall be as nothing;
And 21they that strive with thee shall perish.
12 Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them,
Even 22them that contended with thee:
23They that war against thee
Shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought.
13 For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand,
Saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
See List for the recurrence of the words: Isa_41:8. אֹהֵב—בָּחַר Isa_41:9. אָצִיל. Isa_41:10. אָמַץ—שָׁעָה. Isa_41:11 כָּלַם. Isa_41:12. אֶפֶם.
Isa_41:9. On קצות הארץ see Isa_40:28.
Isa_41:10. תשׁתע, Hithp. from שָׁעָה stands here in the sense of “to look anxiously about.”—כי אני אלהיד occurs only here; see Isa_41:13; Isa_51:15.—On עָזַר see. Isa_41:6.
Isa_41:11. נחרים again only Isa_45:24.—אַנְשֵׁי רִיב only here in Isaiah; comp. Jdg_12:2; Job_31:35; Jer_15:10.
Isa_41:12. מַצּוּת jurgium, ἅπ. λεγ.; comp. Isa_58:4, and נצה rixari, Isa_37:26.—אנשׁי מלִח׳ only here in Isa. comp. Isa_42:13; Jer_50:30; Eze_27:10.
Isa_41:13. מחזיק ימינד only here; comp. Isa_45:1; Isa_51:18.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. But thou Israel——away.
Isa_41:8-9. In the preceding section (Isa_41:1-7) the Prophet has introduced the principal figure of the prophetic cycle, chaps. 40–48. With this is immediately connected another: the Servant of Jehovah in a national sense.
But thou Israel is evidently contrasted with “islands and people,” Isa_41:1. The Prophet turns to Israel with well-founded and glorious consolation. The Lord calls His people Israel my servant. We encounter here for the first time this significant notion of the עֶבֶד יהוה. Yet not the subjective, but the objective side of the notion is made prominent. The nation is not so named because it has chosen the Lord for its God out of the great mass of gods that, according to heathen ideas, are in existence, therefore not because “Jehovah was its national god in contrast with other nations, the servants of Baal, Moloch,” etc. (Hitzig). On the contrary, they are so named because the Lord has chosen Israel for His possession, His instrument, His servant. For a servant is the property of his lord, and Israel is the “peculiar people” (Exo_19:5; Deu_7:6; Deu_14:2; Psa_135:4; Mal_3:17). But Israel is chosen in its ancestor Abraham, whom, already, the Lord calls “my servant” Gen_26:24, which passage easily comes to mind, since Isa_41:10 is evidently a citation from it. Thus Abraham was not only chosen for his person, though what he was personally by God’s grace, fitted him to be for all times a pattern of the right sort of “servant of Jehovah,” even in subjective respects. Hence he is called My friend. For love is the fulfilling of the law, and involves faith (Gen_15:6; Deu_6:5). In 2Ch_22:7 Abraham has the same title; also in Jam_2:23. In Arabic his regular surname is Chalil-Allah, i.e., “confidant of God.” Abraham was chosen that by his seed all the nations of the earth might be blessed. And after Isaac and Jacob, this seed was to be the “great nation” that the Lord would make of Abraham (Gen_12:2), and to which He would give the land of his pilgrimage (ibid. Gen_41:7; Gen_13:15; Gen_15:18, etc). Accordingly Israel is the servant of Jehovah primarily as the seed of Abraham. This is purely an objective honor and dignity, belonging to the nation by reason of the election of their ancestor, but of which, of course, it must make itself worthy by worshipping Jehovah alone as its God, and serving Him with its entire being and possessions. On the parallelism of Israel and Jacob see Isa_40:27.
With great emphasis the Prophet repeats in various forms the thought that Israel is Jehovah’s chosen servant. Whom I have taken, [or “grasped”] החזקתי (see Isa_41:6-7) expresses that the Lord stretched out His hand after Israel to seize it (comp. Isa_41:13; Isa_42:6; Isa_45:1; Isa_51:18) and bring it to Him; thus that He alone was active in this, while Israel was passive. By the ends of the earth the Prophet, whose viewpoint is Palestine, means the distant lands of the Euphrates. Concerning the situation of Ur Kasdim see Schrader, D. Keilinschr. u. d. A. T. p. 383. The monuments prove that the present ruin of Mugheir (on the right bank of the Euphrates south-east from Babylon) was Ur. אציל is probably related both to אצילExo_24:11, nobilis, princeps—properly the extremest, extremus, thus in some sense also summus, comp. יַרְכְּתֵי הארץ, and also to אֵצֶלlotus, juxta. It occurs only here. Yet twice again, Isa_41:9, it is affirmed that in choosing Israel Jehovah alone was active. Once by I have called thee, and then by I have chosen thee. Finally the thought is confirmed by the negative expression I have not cast thee away. Evidently underlying this last is the thought that the Lord might indeed have rejected Israel, in fact that He was near doing it (comp. Deu_7:7 sq.), but that He did not do it. Therefore, spite of considerations that existed, He has still on reflection and on purpose chosen Israel.
2. Fear thou not——I will help thee.
Isa_41:10-13. Having set forth the election of Israel in Abraham as emphatically the basis of the relation between Himself and His people, the Lord now infers the consequences. These are positive and negative: Israel need not fear, the Lord helps them; their enemies must be destroyed. The words fear not for I am with thee are quoted from Gen_26:24 with only עִמְּךָ for אִתְּדָ. On “fear not” comp. Isa_40:9. The context shows that אמצתי is used here as in Isa_44:14; Psa_80:18 with the meaning “to make firm, sure, viz., the choice of one object out of several.” The idea is not an invigoration imparted to Israel, but the election made sure (comp. 2Pe_1:10, βεβαίαν ποιεῖθαι τὴν ἐκλογήν). תָּמַדְ is also used in a similar sense. Comp. Isa_42:1 and Mat_12:18, where תמך is rendered αἱρετίζειν, The expression ימין עדקי occurs only here. It can only mean the right hand that does right in the Old Testament sense, on which comp. Isa_41:2. The relation of the three verbs of the second clause of Isa_41:10 seems to me to be the following: אמץ signifies the sure election, from which follows, on the one hand, the helping, on the other, the not letting go again. The correlative of this promise is the threat (Isa_41:11) of destruction to their enemies. This thought is presented in various forms in what follows (Isa_41:11-12). Isa_41:11 a it appears as a theme, and Isa_41:11 b–12b give it a three-fold amplification: first the opponents are called אנִשי ריב (contestants, opponents in general), and it is said “they shall be nothing and shall perish;” then they are called אנשׁי מצות (rixatores, objurgatores) that one shall seek and not find; finally they are called א׳ מלחמה (enemies in war, hostes), and it is said of them that, not only they are not to be found, but that they shall absolutely no more exist. In conclusion, Isa_41:13, the protecting and helping presence already promised Isa_41:10 is repeated to the nation as the ground of its expecting victory. That Isa_41:13 has the character of a confirmatory repetition appears from הָאֹמֵר וגו׳. For האמר expressly refers to the comforting words “fear not,” “I have helped thee,” as having been used by the Lord (Isa_41:10).
Footnotes:
[14]omit art.
[15]seized.
[16]their borders.
[17]Look not around.
[18]have made thee (i. e thine election) sure.
[19]omit will.
[20]They shall be as nothing and destroyed thy adversaries.
[21]Heb. the men of thy strife.
[22]Heb. the men of thy contention.
[23]Heb. the men of thy war.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn vv8–9Contrast between the idolatrous nations whom God will destroy…
Contrast between the idolatrous nations whom God will destroy by Cyrus, and Israel whom God will deliver by the same man for their forefathers' sake.
servant--so termed as being chosen by God to worship Him themselves, and to lead other peoples to do the same (Isa 45:4).
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Jacob . . . chosen-- (Psa 135:4).
my friend--literally, "loving me."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn v88-10. The sarcasm is now that of silence; the…
8-10. The sarcasm is now that of silence; the idol does not speak. There is therefore no farce of waiting for a reply, but Jehovah turns his address at once to Israel, who recognises the sole invisible deity in his own Lord Jehovah of Israel.
Thou, Israel, art my servant — The Lord’s address is in terms of affection. The collective body of Israel is God’s servant, chosen servant, in the person of their ancestor Abraham, Jehovah’s friend, or the one (literally) loving Jehovah. Special protection and care over Israel along his whole history is here asserted. Selected first from Mesopotamia, then rescued from base slavery in Egypt, now to be delivered from exile in Babylon, the people may well be said to be taken from the ends of the earth, the sides or corners thereof — not from chief men, as in our version. From all the places where the lot of Israel has been cast, God has hitherto rescued them, and there can now be no reason for fear, for the right hand — the power, in other words, of omnipotence — is underneath to uphold.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv8–98–10. Israel is bidden “Fear not,” because of its…
8–10. Israel is bidden “Fear not,” because of its peculiar relation to Jehovah.
But thou, Israel] In opposition to the other peoples (Isa_41:1). Omit “art” with R.V.
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my servant] Cf. Jer_30:10 f., Jer_46:27 f.; Eze_28:25; Eze_37:25,—the only older passages (if those in Jeremiah be really older) where the name is applied to Israel. The title is used in its simplest and widest sense, being applied to the nation as a whole, although of course in its ideal aspect, as it exists in the mind of Jehovah. The idea, however, is already a complex one, although the writer does not as yet analyse it into its different elements. (See Introduction, p. xxxi.) The one fact emphasized in this passage is the irrevocable choice or election of God, by which Israel was from its origin in Abraham constituted His servant. Cf. ch. Isa_43:10, Isa_44:1 f., Isa_49:7.
seed of Abraham my friend] (cf. 2Ch_20:7) lit. “my lover”: but as Duhm remarks Heb. has no single word to express the reciprocal relation of friendship as distinct from companionship. Cf. Jas_2:23, φίλος θεοῦ ἐκλήθη. So among the Mohammedans, Abraham is designated chalîl ullah, “Friend of God.” Note that Abraham is called “my servant” in Gen_26:24.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv8–9(8) But thou, Israel, art my servant . .…
(8) But thou, Israel, art my servant . . .—The verse is important as the first introduction of the servant of the Lord who is so conspicuous throughout the rest of the book. The idea embodied in the term is that of a calling and election, manifested now in Israel according to the flesh, now in the true Israel of God, realising its ideal, now, as in the innermost of the three concentric circles, in a person who gathers up that ideal in all its intensity into himself. The three phrases find their parallel in St. Paul’s language as to (1) the seed of Abraham according to the flesh; (2) the true seed who are heirs of the faith of Abraham; (3) the seed, which is none other than the Christ Himself (Rom_9:7; Gal_3:7; Gal_3:16). Here we have the national aspect, Israel as he is in the idea of God. So in the later language of Christian thought we have (1) the visible Church falling short of the ideal; (2) the spiritual Church approximating to the ideal; (3) Christ Himself, as identified with His people.
The seed of Abraham my friend.—The word for “friend” implies loving as well as being loved. Of all the names of Abraham, it has had the widest currency (comp. 2Ch_20:7; Jas_2:23). For the Arabs of the present time Abraham is still Khalil Allah—the friend of God, or simply, el Khalil, the friend.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv8–9Vers. 8-20. A PROMISE TO ISRAEL OF GOD"S PROTECTION…
Vers. 8-20. A PROMISE TO ISRAEL OF GOD"S PROTECTION AND SUPPORT THROUGH THE TROUBLOUS PERIOD THAT IS APPROACHING. Israel is assured
(1) of God"s faithfulness (vers. 8, 9);
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(2) of special divinely infused strength (ver. 10);
(3) of the infusion of weakness into their enemies (vers. 11, 12);
(4) of external Divine aid (vers. 13, 14);
(5) of an aggressive vigour that shall enable them to scatter their foes (vers. 15, 16); and
(6) of spiritual refreshment even amidst their worst sufferings (vers. 1719). The eye of the prophet travels perhaps, in part, beyond the period of the Captivity; but he is mainly bent on giving the people grounds of comfort and trust during that trying time.
Israel... my servant. (comp. Isa_44:1, Isa_44:2, 21 45:4 48:20 49:3-6, etc.) The title characterizes these later chapters, and, while standing no doubt in some special relation to the "Servant of Jehovah" who is the subject of Isa_42:1-5 Isa_49:5-7, etc., is perhaps mainly selected, and dwelt on, to console Israel in captivity, when servants of the King of Babylon, (2Ch_36:20) by the thought that their true Master was God himself, and that to him, and him only, did they really belong.
Jacob whom I have chosen. (comp. Isa_44:1) (On this "choice," and the love which it implied, see Deu_7:6-8 Deu_10:15) Abraham my friend; or, Abraham that loved me. It was the special privilege of Abraham to be known as God"s friend (see 2Ch_20:7 Jam_2:23) among the Hebrews, even as he is among the Arabs to this day. The "friendship" intended comprised, no doubt, both an active and a passive element, but it is the active element which the word principally enforces. Abraham loved God, and showed his love by his obedience.
Vers. 8-13. The blessed condition of Israel.
I ISRAEL IS THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH. There can be no higher title of honour, privilege, affection, than son. Though the designation reminds us of the infinite distance between God and man, in another way it reminds us of his nearness. The Master and Lord is here the loving and protecting Patron and Friend; the servant, one who reciprocates his affection. They are the descendants of Abraham, who "loved God." The title "reminds the Jews that they had come very far short of their ideal, but at the same time inspires a well-grounded hope that Abraham"s "love" will call forth the Divine mercy towards his seed.
II THE PEOPLE IS CHOSEN OF GOD. And the choice of God is irretractable. (Rom_2:29) And the election was made manifest in a wondrous history. They had been fetched from the ends of the earth. The patriarch from Ur of the Chaldees in Mesopotamia; Israel from Egypt. And what are the consequences of this Divine choice? All that is most dear and precious in the relation of marriage or in that of friendship may be called to mind. The nation is wedded to an all-powerful Husband, is linked to a faithful Protector and Friend. Then she may enjoy fearless freedom from fear; the just hand will uphold her. And all her enemies will be thrown into shame and confusion; those that strove with her be brought to nought. Held fast in the right hand of God, Israel may ever hear the assuring word, "Fear not; I do help thee." He is One "who gives salvation to kings;" with one hand giving the Law, with the other defending the obedient. Omniscience watches over the chosen, and omnipotence supports them. Among other "gifts and graces" let us recognize courage and resolution. Timidity, faint-heartedness, is a universal weakness, and the higher or sacred courage one of the rarest possessions of the soul. Perhaps, next to wisdom, it is Heaven"s greatest gift. It "gives and obtains kingdoms, turns swords into sceptres, crowns the valiant with victory, and the victorious often with a diadem." Presence of mind: what can impart it like the feeling that God is ever with us, that our feeble hand is enclosed in his? "It is a kind of ecstasy and inspiration, a beam of Divine light darting in upon reason, and exalting it to a pitch of operation beyond its natural and accustomed measures. Perhaps there was never any person in the world remarkably and heroically great, without some such kind of enthusiasm a mighty principle which at certain times raised him up to strange, unaccountable heights of wisdom and courage. He who in the strength of such a spirit can look the most menacing dangers in the face, and, when the state of all things about him seems desperate, can yet bear his great heart above despair such a one for the most part makes fortune itself bend and lull down to him, difficulties vanish, and dangers fly before him; so much is victory the claim of the valiant, and success the birthright of the bold. J.
Vers. 8, 9. His grace and our heritage.
We are reminded here of
I THE SENSE IN WHICH GOD HAS CHOSEN US. "Jacob, whom I have chosen... I have chosen thee." The way in which God"s ancient people were chosen of God is familiar biblical history. Abraham was called out of Chaldea, Israel (the people) out of Egypt, the Jews out of Babylonia, in order that they might receive, retain, and reflect the truth of the living God; in other words, this nation was the recipient of those distinguishing mercies which could alone account for their national redemption and their spiritual condition. We are now the subjects of God"s electing, his distinguishing grace in these respects; in ways which are not common to the whole of our race, perhaps not even to the generality of our fellow-men, we have been
(1) acquainted with his redeeming truth, made to know and to understand it in its purity and fulness;
(2) wrought upon by kindly, helpful, winning influences, in the home or in the Church;
(3) affected by the direct and immediate influences of his Divine Spirit. Thus has God chosen and called us to himself
II THE LIFE TO WHICH WE HAVE BEEN CALLED. A life of holy service. Thou, Israel, art my servant." We are not called merely to enjoyment or to privilege; we are summoned to God"s presence and kingdom to his foot" (ver. 2), in order that we may serve. Our Christian life is that most honourable, most elevating, most useful, one of service. It is the life
(1) of sacred worship;
(2) of cheerful obedience;
(3) of active helpfulness.
III THE INTIMATE AND HONOURABLE RELATIONSHIP IN WHICH WE ARE INVITED TO STAND. "The seed of Abraham my friend. " Behold, what manner of love and of condescension is this, that we should be called the friends of God! All that Abraham was to God it is certain that we may be, we who are brought nigh by Jesus Christ. And what his disciples were to him, we also are invited to be. (see Joh_15:14, Joh_15:15) We are God"s friends, inasmuch as:
1. We have a profound sympathy with him in the principles he holds and in the work in which he is engaged.
2. We are trusted by him to do what is right and worthy, and are entrusted by him with that which is high and, arduous.
3. We are admitted to his near presence, and are invited to constant fellowship with him.
4. We are the objects of his love and his good pleasure. C.
The Divine choices are wise selections.
Abraham and Jacob are God"s chosen ones as founders, and first fathers, of the Israelite race. By this we are to understand that they were selected, in the Divine wisdom, as having just the qualities which, developed in a race, would make a people precisely fitted to carry out ibis purposes. We are not to understand that, in a way of accident, or in a way of mere sovereignty, these first fathers were picked out. God"s choices are never arbitrary; they are always judicious selections. "The race is described as God"s servant and his elect, or, combining the two characters, his chosen servant, chosen to be his servant." This special relation to Jehovah is the thing which distinguishes the people of Israel from the heathen nations around them. "What advantage then hath the Jew?... Much every way" chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God". (Rom_3:1, Rom_3:2) The truth that the Divine choices are selections, on the ground of recognized fitness, may gain illustration from three distinct spheres.
I FROM THE SPHERE OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES, These cover long spaces of the earth"s history, and the most marked feature of them is the way in which individuals are set forth prominently; we are shown the precise work they did, and then it is impressed on us that these are the Lord"s chosen ones. In the light of that view we read again their story, appraise their qualities and gifts, set their endowments alongside their life-mission; and then we can see clearly that they were selected because they were precisely fitted for their particular work. If we think that subtle laws of heredity have gone to the making and endowing of men, we may also think of God as watching the fitnesses of men, and taking them out for the doing of certain parts of his work. Illustration may be taken from Moses, who was characteristically patriotic and disinterested; or David, whose poetical genius sanctified song for Divine worship; or Paul, whose natural impetuosity adapted him for his service as the first Christian missionary.
II FROM THE SPHERE OF COMMON LIFE. For Scripture is but. the illustration "in the small" of what God is ever doing "in the large." The mistake is so often made of thinking that God exhausted himself, or limited himself, to the spheres dealt with in Scripture. The true view is that God illustrated himself there. Cyrus is the man in common life of whom God says, "I girded thee, though thou hast not known me." We see God"s selections in the fitting of men to places, men of genius and common men, the Tennysons and ourselves.
III FROM THE SPHERE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Here too there are evidently elect men and women; but we need to see that God has no "pets," only "servants men whose fitnesses are recognized, and who are consequently selected for office to praise, to preach, to pray, or variously to minister to the Church"s needs. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn v8But thou, Israel, art My servant
Isa_41:8
But thou, Israel, art My servant
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The servant of Jehovah
It is reasonable to seek the origin of the idea in the first passage in which the term occurs (Isa_41:8).
Here there can be no doubt as to what the term denotes. It denotes the Israelitish nation, treated, however, not as the mere aggregate of the members composing it, but as a unity, developing historically, and maintaining its continuity and essential character through successive generations. (S. R. Driver.)
The seed of Abraham, My friend
God blessing for the sake of another
God turns the eyes of Israel to the past. He reminds them that they are the children of His friend Abraham. You may find a man in distress, and may be tempted to turn away from him; but as he talks to you about himself and his antecedents, you find that he is the son of an old friend of yours. That alters the case. There is another motive operating on you now--the desire to be faithful to your friend. Israel was the seed of Gods friend Abraham. God would be faithful to them for His friends sake. For Jesus Christs sake is the highest expression and application of this principle. (J. A. Davies, B. D.)
The seed of Abraham
(with Mat_3:9):--There is between these two passages an ascertainable relation. In the passage which we have read from the Book of Isaiah is exhibited the greatest element in the Israelitish national consciousness. Apparently these people never forgot their vocation as the children of Abraham. Sometimes they attributed more importance to it, sometimes less. When the nation was at its best they spiritualised the ideal; when it was at its worst they materialised it; but they never wholly ignored it. Here is a prophet speaking in a stern time with the purpose of heartening the people who were listening to him. See how he does it. In the chapter which precedes the one whence our text is taken the opening sentences are: Comfort ye, comfort ye, My people, saith your God, etc. The last verse of the chapter is more beautiful still: They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. We see the mood in which Isaiah speaks and the tenderness which is evident in his message. It is as though he would say to Israel: You have passed through a stern testing time, but you have not ceased to be the people of God. Indeed, the testing time was permitted because you are never to be anything else than the chosen ones, Gods Israel. You have Abraham for your father, and the covenant which God made with Abraham He will keep with you. Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. In the light of this Old Testament consciousness let us now look at the passage which we have chosen from the New. Isaiah and John are both heralds; there is at least this similarity between them, that they both come as the bearers of good tidings concerning a better day. But they are different in this: while Isaiah speaks with the gorgeous magnificence of Oriental symbolism, and his message is one full of comfort and tenderness, the words of St. John are utterly unadorned; rugged and grim is the speech of this child of the desert. He comes less with a message of comfort than with one of rebuke; and yet, like Isaiah, he is the herald of a glorious day. But the people are not ready for his message nor for the blessing which he announces. And so his words to them are words of warning, especially, shall I say, to the Pharisees. The people and their leaders had been too much inclined to content themselves with making much of the tradition of the covenant of God with Abraham, and they thought comparatively, little of what was required from them in the keeping of it. O generation of vipers! who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth, therefore, fruits meet for repentance. The Pharisees were conspicuous for two particular vices; and may I say, in parenthesis, that Pharisees were by no means in their entirety pact men. There were many sincere men in their ranks, and yet Jesus, like John, had more difficulty with the Pharisees than with any other class in the community. Their chief sin was that of spiritual pride; but another was, they believed in the externals of religion rather than in change of heart. They insisted much upon their lineage: here we are the chosen people, the descendants of Abraham--would not God keep His word to us? What part or lot has the race of mankind in this which is a special privilege of Israel? Johns reply to them is this: Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father. Why should God trouble to show His favour to men like you, for you are very different from Abraham? God is able to raise up from these stones children unto Abraham. Shall we spend a little more time in discovering what John the Baptist means by saying, God is able of the stones to raise up children unto Abraham? I have heard an exegesis of this kind, and it is not a modern one only: Oh, it is obvious that St. John meant that the hearts around him might be changed by his glorious message, that God would give to these men a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone, and then they would be children of Abraham indeed. Well, the inference is not unjustifiable, but I do not think it is correct. I believe that St. John meant exactly and literally what he said: God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. To believe that he meant it literally adds force to the warning and the appeal. What he meant, then, was something like this: It is in the power of God to breathe the breath of life into these rocks of the desert, and they should become living souls; and if so it is conceivable they would be better men than you and worthier successors of Abraham, the friend of God. For who was, what was, this Abraham? If you turn to Heb_11:1-40. you will read a Christian description of the man and his character: By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went, etc. Momentous results followed that far-off choice. It was the dawning of a great hour in which Israel was born, and with Israel the Messiah, and with the Messiah the gospel under which you and I live our lives to-day. Here, then, is the Abraham of whose seed these Pharisees claimed to be. They had not his moral courage, nor his noble spirit; these were not of the kind who would have gone out in pursuit of a spiritual ideal. These were men who had hardened into insensibility, who by their lives denied the spiritual idea Abraham had bequeathed to them, and therefore the Baptists remonstrance was apt indeed. Think not to say, we have Abraham to our father. You are not of the spiritual lineage of Abraham; you would never dare for God; you are content with the grovelling things, your gaze is never lifted to the eternal. God could raise up another Abraham, yea, of these stones he could raise up children worthier than you. As an illustration of what the fiery, indomitable prophet of the desert meant, let me remind you of something, perhaps, that may have crossed your lips but yesterday. Looking upon the degenerate son of a noble sire, what was it you remarked to your companion? His only recommendation is that he is his fathers son. Any worthless profligate who soils a noble name and brings degradation upon the record of a noble race receives and deserves the reprobation of honest men. The question whether England is Israel is not worth discussing, believe me. If you could prove it to-morrow, some John the Baptist might rise and tell you you are out of the spiritual succession altogether. This is merely the negative side of the question. The seed of Abraham in spirit and in truth are those who hear the Word of God speaking within their own hearts, and rise and go forth and obey. Hear what Jesus has to say on this theme in Joh_8:39. If Jesus is correctly reported by one who at any rate knew Him well, as addressing the indignant Jews, He says: I speak that which I have seen with My Father; and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. They answered and said unto Him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abrahams children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill Me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. We can classify easily the men that are of the quality of Abraham. Did these pharisaic time-servers, these bigoted Jews, who were questioning Jesus with the object of destroying Him, really think that they stood in the succession of him who was the friend of God? Verily they did; but the consciousness of humanity since has put them right. An Ambrose, in the early years of Christianity, a rough soldier, is chosen by the people, who know him and his character, to be their bishop; and now as prelate of Milan it is the duty of this erstwhile soldier to turn from the church door the bloodstained emperor who had been his commander. He dare not do otherwise, for he is serving a greater than the emperor. Here speaks the seed of Abraham. And who knows? God knows, maybe, that in this church this morning there are some of the lineage of Abraham of whom the world will never hear. The rest of us, perhaps, in the gaze of heaven, may have to be put in another category--the category of those who have not dared for justice and right and truth. There is one more thought suggested in our second text. There is something contained in the very phrase these stones, which I think was not merely accidental. The prophet knew well what he meant: the stones are unpromising material Con version is a turning from sin and a turning towards God. Get firm hold of that fact. Feelings are an endowment which may or may not accompany it; but the man whose heart is right with holiness and truth, whose faith is turned that way, is of the seed of Abraham and the friend of God. I want you to recognise, what is the very truth, that Abraham had far less to guide him than you. He heard the same voice as you, but it had not told the world as much then as it has told it since. When you take up this Old Testament again and read of the wonders achieved by the heroes of old, remember that the voice that spake to them spake within their own hearts, and not without, just as it speaks now to you. This Abraham heard a voice, and he said he would obey it; he could trust it; he established his covenant with God, and it never failed him. How shall I know I am of the seed of Abraham? Is my face turned the way his was? How shall I know I belong to the Lord Christ? Here is my charter: Whosoever shall do the will of God (even seek to do it), the same is My brother and sister and mother. Jesus will never turn away from His own spiritual kindred. Yet there may be one more experience here to which I ought to speak. There is, perhaps, a man who says, Ah yes; but I have made shipwreck of my career. Such lives as these may look back upon their life and say, I have done the best I could with my manhood. But I have failed; my road is strewn with the dust and ashes of vain regrets. The stones are the rubbish of the desert. They only serve to accentuate its desolation. Just so; I am the stones. Well, I want you to hear a voice that I am fond of listening to--with deepest reverence be it spoken--One that spoke with authority;and I think you will agree with me it has power in it still:-- Joh_8:56 :Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad. Picture the astonishment of those Jews. Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham? Poor literalists! Abraham in his lonely desert vigil never saw Jesus; he had no foregleam of the day when Jesus should speak such words as these; but what he did have was the vision by which he saw the Sun of Righteousness arising in his own heart. That was Jesus day. The Abraham who spent his early days in a guilty household, in the midst of men who never thought of the unworthiness of serving God by lascivious rites and brutal deeds, one day said to himself, This life has to be left behind. So soon as he had seen that, he had seen Jesus day, and he rose up and went out to meet it. And that is just what we have to do. For the same voice that spake to Abraham is speaking to the world to-day, is speaking through Jesus: Before Abraham was I am. Children of Abraham, friends of Jesus, is not that voice speaking to you even now? (R. J. Campbell, M. A.)
Scripture characters
1. There is in Scripture a hidden truth which we gradually become acquainted with, and which we may not thoroughly know for years. God has attached certain names and titles to men in the Bible which seem to have some great hidden meaning, as showing what character God approves. There are certain men to whose characters He has attached a distinct approval which is most striking. Abraham is called the friend of God; David, the man after Gods own heart; St. John, the beloved disciple. There is some deep meaning in each of these titles not to be passed by casually.
2. The characters of Holy Scripture are so various that we are impressed with the view that the Old Testament is a volume of character, written to show the application of religious privileges to the varieties of men. Look at Abraham. What is our first feeling in thinking of him? that is, in what did his character seem peculiar? In faith and unworldliness. In what Davids? A tender love of God. In what St. Johns? Love. Now how do they assimilate essentially with each other? Who else was especially faithful? Not so strikingly, Jacob or Isaac or Solomon. Abrahams faithfulness bore the great fruit of faithfulness, unworldliness. Samuel, Elijah, and Ezekiel were characters who seemed especially to have lived by faith, to have lived free of the world. How did Abraham differ from them? In having a tender disposition, a deeper well.spring of human feeling. He was a man of much strong and domestic affection, really attached to earthly ties, and mentioned in close connection with them throughout his history. The three characters, then, which are thus distinguished by especial names of Gods favour, all agree in this respect, a deep and tender love in their dispositions; yet prevented from so ruling them as to draw off their faith from God, which faith was shown by a life of freedom from the world.
3. Let this, then, be the lesson and comfort we draw, that however little we may be living a life of public usefulness, yet a retired one may be the life God has placed us in. (E. Monte.)
The friend of God
(with Jam_2:23):--Abraham was called the friendof God because he was so. The name does not occur in his life as given in the Book of Genesis, and it has been questioned whether it occurs anywhere else in Holy Scripture; for many have preferred to translate the word in Isaiah, and in 2Ch_20:7, as lover, or beloved, rather than friend. However this may be, it is quite certain that among the Jewish people Abraham was frequently spoken of as the friend of God. At this present moment, among the Arabs and other Mohammedans, the name of Abraham is not often mentioned, but they speak of him as Khalil Allah, or the friend of God, or more briefly as of Khalil, the friend. Those tribes which boast of their descent from him through Ishmael, or through the sons of Keturah, greatly reverence the patriarch, and are wont to speak of him under the name which the Holy Spirit here ascribes to him. It is a noble title, not to be equalled by all the names of greatness which have been bestowed by princes, even if they should all meet in one. Patents of nobility are mere vanity when laid side by side with this transcendent honour. I think I hear you say, Yes, it was indeed a high degree to which Abraham reached: so high that we cannot attain unto it. Think not so. We also may be called friends of God (Joh_15:14).
I. A TITLE TO BE WONDERED AT.
1. Admire and adore the condescending God, who thus makes of a man, like ourselves, His friend. In this case the august Friend displays His pure love, since He has nothing to gain. Surely God does not need friends. How sweet it is to mingle the current of our life with that of some choice bosom friend! Can God have a friend? Friend ship cannot all be on one side. In this particular instance it is intended that we should know that while God was Abrahams Friend, this was not all; but Abraham was Gods friend. He received and returned the friendship of God. Friendship creates a measure of equality between the persons concerned. I say not that absolute equality is at all necessary to friendship, for a great king may have a firm friend in one of the least of his subjects; but the tendency is towards an equalising of the two friends: the one comes down gladly, and the other rises up in sympathy. Friendship begets fellowship, and this bridges over the dividing gulf. We must keep our place, or we shall not be friends.
2. Note the singular excellence of Abraham. How could he have been Gods friend had not grace wrought wonderfully in him? Although a plain man, dwelling in tents, the father of the faithful is always a right royal personage. A calm dignity surrounds him, and the sons of Heth and the kings of Egypt feel its power. His character is well balanced.
3. Note some of the points in which this Divine friendship showed itself.
(1) The Lord often visited Abraham.
(2) Secrets were disclosed.
(3) Compacts were entered into. On certain grand occasions we read: The Lord made a covenant with Abram.
(4) This friendship resulted in the bestowal of innumerable benefits. The life of Abraham was rich with mercies.
(5) Since Abraham was Gods friend, God accepted his pleadings, and was moved by his influence.
(6) There was also between these friends a mutual love and delight. Abraham rejoiced in Jehovah! He was his shield, and his exceeding great reward, and the Lord Himself delighted to commune with Abraham. The serenity of the patriarchs life was caused by his constant joy in God.
(7) This friendship was maintained with great constancy. The Lord never forsook Abraham: even when the patriarch erred, the Lord remembered and rescued him. He did not cast him off in old age. Constancy is also seen on the human side of this renowned friendship. Abraham did not turn aside to worship any false god.
(8) The Lord kept His friendship to Abraham by favouring his posterity. That is what our text,, tells us. The Lord styled rebellious Israel, the seed of Abraham, My friend.
II. THE TITLE VINDICATED. Abraham was the friend of God in a truthful sense. There was great propriety and fulness of meaning in the name as applied to him.
1. Abrahams trust in God was implicit. He staggered not at the promise through unbelief, for he knew that what the Lord had promised He was able also to perform.
2. There was joined to this implicit trust a practical confidence as to the accomplishment of everything that God had promised.
3. Abrahams obedience to God was unquestioning.
4. Abrahams desire for Gods glory was uppermost at all times.
5. Abrahams communion with God was constant.
III. Regard this name as THE TITLE TO BE SOUGHT AFTER. Oh, that we may get to ourselves this good degree, this diploma, friend of God!
1. You must be fully reconciled to Him.
2. We must exercise a mutual choice. The God who has chosen you must be chosen by you.
3. There must be a conformity of heart, and will, and design, and character to God.
4. There must be a continual intercourse. The friend of God must not spend a day without God, and he must undertake no work apart from his God.
5. If we are to be friends of God, we must be co partners with Him.
6. Friendship, if it exists, will breed mutual delight.
IV. THE TITLE TO BE UTILISED for practical purposes.
1. Here is a great encouragement to the people of God. See what possibilities lie before you!
2. Here is a solemn thought for those who would be friends of God. A mans friend must show himself friendly, and behave with tender care for his friend. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible1887 · Public DomainOn v8Isa_41:8-20; Isaiah 42, 43
CHAPTER XV
ONE GOD, ONE PEOPLE
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Isa_41:8-20; Isaiah 42, 43
WE have been listening to the proclamation of a monotheism so absolute, that, as we have seen, modern critical philosophy, in surveying the history of religion, can find for it no rival among the faiths of the world. God has been exalted before us, in character so perfect, in dominion so universal, that neither the conscience nor the imagination of man can add to the general scope of the vision. Jesus and His Cross shall lead the worlds heart farther into the secrets of Gods love; Gods Spirit in science shall more richly instruct us in the secrets of His laws. But these shall thereby only increase the contents and illustrate the details of this revelation of our prophet. They shall in no way enlarge its sweep and outline, for it is already as lofty an idea of the unity and sovereignty of God, as the thoughts of man can follow.
Across this pure light of God, however, a phenomenon thrusts itself, which seems for the moment to affect the absoluteness of the vision and to detract from its sublimity. This is the prominence given before God to a single people, Israel. In these chapters the uniqueness of Israel is as much urged upon us as the unity of God. Is He the One God in heaven? They are His only people on earth, "His elect, His own, His witnesses to the end of the earth." His guidance of them is matched with His guidance of the stars, as if, like the stars shining against the night, their tribes alone moved to His hand through an otherwise dark and empty space. His revelation to humanity is given through their little language; the restoration of their petty capital, that hill fort in the barren land of Judah, is exhibited as the end of His processes, which sweep down through history and affect the surface of the whole inhabited world. And His very righteousness turns out to be for the most part His faithfulness to His covenant with Israel.
Now to many in our day it has been a great offence to have "the curved nose of the Jew" thus thrust in between their eyes and the pure light of God. They ask, Can the Judge of all the earth have been thus partial to one people? Did God confine His revelation to men to the literature of a small, unpolished tribe? Even most uncritical souls have trouble to understand why "salvation is of the Jews."
The chief point to know is that the election of Israel was an election, not to salvation, but. to service. To understand this is to get rid of by far the greater part of the difficulty that attaches to the subject. Israel was a means, and not an end; God chose in him a minister, not a favourite. No prophet in Israel failed to say this; but our prophet makes it the burden of his message to the exiles. "Ye are My witnesses, My Servant whom I have chosen. Ye are My witnesses, and I am God. I will also give thee for a light to the nations, to be My salvation to the end of the earth." {Isa_43:10} Numbers of other verses might be quoted to the same effect, that "there is no God but God, and Israel is His prophet." But if the election of Israel is thus an election to service, it is surely in harmony with Gods usual method, whether in nature or history. So far from such a specialisation as Israels being derogatory to the Divine unity, it is but part of that order and division of labour which the Divine unity demands as its consequence throughout the whole range of Being. The universe is diverse. "To every man his own work" is the proper corollary of "God over all," and Israels prerogative was but the specialisation of Israels function for God in the world. In choosing Israel to be His mediator with mankind, God did but do for religion what in the exercise of the same practical discipline He did for philosophy, when He dowered Greece with her gifts of subtle thought and speech, or with Rome when He trained her people to become the legislators of mankind. And how else should work succeed but by specialisation, -the secret as it is of fidelity and expertness? Of fidelity-for the constraint of my duty surely lies in this, that it is due from me and no other; of expertness-for he drives best and deepest who drives along one line: In lighting a fire you begin with a kindled faggot; and in lighting, a world it was in harmony with all His law, physical and moral, for God to begin with a particular portion of mankind.
The next question is, Why should this particular portion of mankind be a nation, and not a single prophet, or a school of philosophers, or a church universal? The answer is found in the condition of the ancient world. Amid its diversities of language and of racial feeling, a missionary prophet travelling like Paul from people to people is inconceivable; and almost as inconceivable is the kind of Church which Paul founded among various nations, in no other bonds than the consciousness of a common faith. Of all possible combinations of men the nation was the only form which in the ancient world stood a chance of surviving in the struggle for existence. The nation furnished the necessary shelter and fellowship for personal religion; it gave to the spiritual a habitation upon earth, enlisted in its behalf the force of heredity, and secured the continuity of its traditions. But the service of the nation to religion was not only conservative, it was missionary as well. It was only through a people that a God became visible and accredited to the world. Their history supplied the drama in which He played the heros part. At a time when it was impossible to spread a religion, by means of literature, or by the example of personal holiness, the achievements of a considerable nation, their progress and prestige, furnished a universally understood language, through which the God could publish to mankind His power and will; and in choosing, therefore, a single nation to reveal Himself by, God was but employing the means best adapted for His purpose. The nation was the unit of religious progress in the ancient world. In the nation God chose as His witness, not only the most solid and permanent, but the most widely intelligible and impressive.
The next question is, Why Israel should have been this singular and indispensable nation. When God selected Israel to serve His purpose, He did so, we are told, of His sovereign grace. But this strong thought, which forms the foundation of our prophets assurance about his people, does not prevent him from dwelling also on Israels natural capacity for religious service. This, too, was of God. Over and over again Israel hears Jehovah say: "I have created thee, I have formed thee, I have prepared thee." One passage describes the nations equipment for the office of a prophet; another their discipline for the life of a saint; and every now and then our prophet shows how far back he feels this preparation to have begun, even when the nation, as he puts it, was "still in the womb." How easily these well-worn phrases slip over our lips! Yet they are not mere formulas. Modern research has put a new meaning into them, and taught us that Israels creation, forming, election, polishing, carriage, and defence were processes as real and measurable as any in natural or political history. For instance, when our prophet says that Israels preparation began "from the womb, -I am thy moulder, saith Jehovah, from the womb,"-history takes us back to the pre-natal circumstance of the nation, and there exhibits it to us as already being tempered to a religious disposition and propensity. The Hebrews were of the Semitic stock. The "womb" from which Israel sprang was a race of wandering shepherds, upon the hungry deserts of Arabia, where mans home is the flitting tent, hunger is his discipline for many months of the year, his only arts are those of speech and war, and in the long irremediable starvation there is nothing to do but to be patient and dream. Born in these deserts, the youth of the Semitic race, like the probation of their greatest prophets, was spent in a long fast, which lent their spirit a wonderful ease of detachment from the world and of religious imagination, and tempered their will to long suffering-though it touched their blood, too, with a rancorous heat that breaks out through the prevailing calm of every Semitic literature. They were trained also in the deserts august style of eloquence. "He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me." {Isa_49:2} A "natural prophecy," as it has been called, is found in all the branches of the Semitic stock. No wonder that from this race there came forth the three great universal religions of mankind-that Moses and the prophets, John, Jesus Himself and Paul, and Mohammed were all of the seed of Shem.
This racial disposition the Hebrew carried with him into his calling as a nation. The ancestor, who gave the people the double name by which they are addressed throughout our prophecy, "Jacob-Israel," inherited with all his defects the two great marks of the religious temper. Jacob could dream and he could wait. Remember him by the side of the brother, who could so little think of the future that he was willing to sell its promise for a mess of pottage; who, though God was as near to him as to Jacob, never saw visions or wrestled with angels; who seemed to have no power of growth about him, but carrying the same character, unchanged through the discipline of life, finally transmitted it in stereotype to his posterity; -remember Jacob by the side of such a brother, and you have a great part of the secret of the emergence of his descendants from the life of wandering cattle-breeders to be Gods chief ministers of religion in the world. Their habits, like their fathers, might be bad, but they had the tough and malleable constitution, which it was possible to mould to something better. Like their father, they were false, unchivalrous, selfish, "with the herdsmans grossness in their blood," and much of the rancour and cruelty of their ancestors, the desert-warriors, but with it all they had the two most potential of habits-they could dream and they could wait. In his love and hope for promised Rachel, that were not quenched or soured by the substitution, after seven years service for her, of her ill-favoured sister, but began another seven years effort for herself, Jacob was a type of his strange, tenacious people, who, when they were brought face to face with some Leah of a fulfilment of their fondest ideals, as they frequently were in their history, took up again with undiminished ardour the pursuit of their first unforgetable love. It is the wonder of history, how this people passed through the countless disappointments of the prophecies to which they had given their hearts, yet with only a strengthening expectation of the arrival of the promised King and His kingdom. If other peoples have felt a gain in character from such miscarriages of belief, it has generally been at the expense of their faith. But Israels experience did not take faith away or even impair faiths elasticity. We see their appreciation of Gods promises growing only more spiritual with each postponement, and patience performing her perfect work upon their character; yet this never happens at the cost of the original buoyancy and ardour. The glory of it we ascribe, as is most due, to the power of the Word of God; but the people who could stand the strain of the discipline of such a word, its alternate glow and frost, must have been a people of extraordinary fibre and frame. When we think of how they wore for those two thousand years of postponed promise, and how they wear still, after two thousand years more of disillusion and suffering, we cease to wonder why God chose this small tribe to be His instrument on earth. Where we see their bad habits their Creator knew their sound constitution, and the constitution of Israel is a thing unique among mankind.
From the racial temper of the elect nation we pass to their history, on the singularity of which our prophet dwells with emphasis. Israels political origin had no other reason than a call to Gods service. Other peoples grew, as it were, from the soil; they were the product of a fatherland, a climate, certain physical environments: root them out of these, and, as nations, they ceased to be. But Israel had not been so nursed into nationality on the lap of nature. The captive children of Jacob had sprung into unity and independence as a nation at the special call of God, and to serve His will in the world, -His will that so lay athwart the natural tendencies of the peoples. All down their history it is wonderful to see how it was the conscience of this service, which in periods of progress was the real national genius in Israel, and in times of decay or of political dissolution upheld the assurance of the nations survival. Whenever a ruler like Ahaz forgot that Israels imperishableness was bound up with their faithfulness to Gods service, and sought to preserve his throne by alliances with the world-powers, then it was that Israel were most in danger of absorption into the world. And, conversely, when disaster came down, and there was no hope in the sky, it was upon the inward sense of their election to the service of God that the prophets rallied the peoples faith and assured them of their survival as a nation. They brought to Israel that sovereign message which renders all who hear it immortal: "God has a service for you to serve upon earth." In the Exile especially, the wonderful survival of the nation, with the subservience of all history to that end, is made to turn on this, -that Israel has a unique purpose to serve. When Jeremiah and Ezekiel seek to assure the captives of their return to the land and of the restoration of the people, they commend so unlikely a promise by reminding them that the nation is the Servant of God. This name, applied by them for the first time to the nation as a whole, they bind up with the national existence. "Fear thou not, O My Servant Jacob, saith Jehovah; neither be dismayed. O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity." These words plainly say, that Israel as a nation cannot die, for God has a use for them to serve. The singularity of Israels redemption from Babylon is due to the singularity of the service that God has for the nation to perform. Our prophet speaks in the same strain: "Thou, Israel, My Servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham My lover, whom I took hold of from the ends of the earth and its corners. I have called thee and said unto thee, My Servant art thou, I have chosen thee and have not cast thee away". {Isa_41:8 ff} No one can miss the force of these words. They are the assurance of Israels miraculous survival, not because he is Gods favourite, but because he is Gods servant, with a unique work in the world. Many other verses repeat the same truth. They call "Israel the Servant," and "Jacob the chosen," of God, in order to persuade the people that they are not forgotten of Him, and that their seed shall live and be blessed. Israel survives because he serves "Servus servatur."
Now for this service, -which had been the purpose of the nations election at first, the mainstay of its unique preservation since, and the reason of all its singular pre-eminence before God, -Israel was equipped by two great experiences. These were Redemption and Revelation.
On the former redemptions of Israel from the power of other nations our prophet does not dwell much. You feel that they are present to his mind, for he sometimes describes the coming redemption from Babylon in terms of them. And once, in an appeal to the "Arm of Jehovah," he calls out: "Awake like the days of old, ancient generations! Art thou not it that hewed Rahab in pieces, that pierced the Dragon? Art thou not it which dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; that made the depths of the sea a way of passage for the redeemed?" There is, too, that beautiful passage in chapter 63, which "makes mention of the loving-kindnesses of Jehovah, according to all that He hath bestowed upon us"; which describes the "carriage of the people all the days of old," how "He brought them out of the sea, caused His glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses, divided the water before them, led them through the deeps as a horse on the meadow, that they stumbled not." But, on the whole, our prophet is too much engrossed with the immediate prospect of release from Babylon, to remember that past, of which it has been truly said, "He hath not dealt so with any people." It is the new glory that is upon him. He counts the deliverance from Babylon as already come; to his rapt eye it is its marvellous power and costliness, which already clothe the people in their unique brilliance and honour. "Thus saith Jehovah, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake have I sent to Babylon, and I will bring down their nobles, all of them, and the Chaldeans, in the ships of their exulting.": But it is more than Babylon that is balanced against them. "I am Jehovah, thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour. I am giving as thy ransom, Egypt, Cush and Seba in exchange for thee, because thou art precious in mine eyes, and hast made thyself valuable" (lit., "of weight"); "and I have loved thee, therefore do I give mankind for thee, and peoples for thy life. Mankind for thee, and peoples for thy life,"-all the world for this little people? It is intelligible only because this little people are to be for all the world. "Ye are My witnesses that I am God. I will also give thee for a light to nations, to be My salvation to the end of the earth."
But more than on the Redemption, which Israel experienced, our prophet dwells on the Revelation, that has equipped them for their destiny. In a passage, in chapter 43, to which we shall return, the present stupid and unready character of the mass of the people is contrasted with the "instruction" which God has lavished upon them. "Thou hast seen many things, and wilt not observe: there is opening of the ears, but he heareth not. Jehovah was pleased for His righteousness sake to magnify the instruction and make it glorious, -but that"-the result and the precipitate of it all-"is a people robbed and spoiled." The word "Instruction" or "Revelation" is that same technical term, which we have met with before, for Jehovahs special training and illumination of Israel. How special these were, how distinct from the highest doctrine and practice of any other nation in that world to which Israel belonged, is a historical fact that the results of recent research enable us to state in a few sentences.
Recent exploration in the East, and the progress of Semitic philology, have proved that the system of religion which prevailed among the Hebrews had a very great deal in common with the systems of the neighbouring and related heathen nations. This common element included not only such things as ritual and temple-furniture, or the details of priestly organisation, but even the titles and many of the attributes of God, and especially the forms of the covenant in which He drew near to men. But the discovery of this common element has only thrown into more striking relief the presence at work in the Hebrew religion of an independent and original principle. In the Hebrew religion historians observe a principle of selection operating upon the common Semitic materials for worship, -ignoring some of them, giving prominence to others, and with others again changing the reference and application. Grossly immoral practices are forbidden; forbidden, too, are those superstitions, which, like augury and divination, draw men away from single-minded attention to the moral issues of life; and even religious customs are omitted, such as the employment of women in the sanctuary, which, however innocent in themselves, might lead men into temptations not desirable in connection with the professional pursuit of religion. In short, a stern and inexorable conscience was at work in the Hebrew religion, which was not at work in any of the religions most akin to it. In our previous volume we saw the same conscience inspiring the prophets. Prophecy was not confined to the Hebrews; it was a general Semitic institution; but no one doubts the absolutely distinct character of the prophecy, which was conscious of having the Spirit of Jehovah. Its religious ideas were original, and in it we have, as all admit, a moral phenomenon unique in history. When we turn to ask the secret of this distinction, we find the answer in the character of God, whom Israel served. The God explains the people; Israel is the response to Jehovah. Each of the laws of the nation is enforced by the reason, "For I am holy." Each of the prophets brings his message from a God, "exalted in righteousness." In short, look where you will in the Old Testament, -come to it as a critic or as a worshipper, -you discover the revealed character of Jehovah to be the effective principle at work. It is this Divine character which draws Israel from among the nations to their destiny, which selects and builds the law to be a wall around them, and which by each revelation of itself discovers to the people both the measure of their delinquency and the new ideals of their services to humanity. Like the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, we see it in front of Israel at every stage of their marvellous progress down the ages.
So that when Jehovah says that "He has magnified the Revelation and made it glorious," He speaks of a magnitude of a real, historical kind, that can be tested by exact methods of observation. Israels election by Jehovah, their formation, their unique preparation for service, are not the mere boasts of an overweening patriotism, but sober names for historical processes as real and evident as any that history contains.
To sum up, then. If Jehovahs sovereignty be absolute, so also is the uniqueness of Israels calling and equipment for His Service. For, to begin with, Israel had the essential religious temper; they enjoyed a unique moral instruction and discipline: and by the side of this they were conscious of a series of miraculous deliverances from servitude and from dissolution. So singular an experience and career were not, as we have seen, bestowed from any arbitrary motive, which exhausted itself upon Israel, but in accordance with Gods universal method of specialisation of function were granted to fit the nation as an instrument for a practical end. The sovereign unity of God does not mean equality in His creation. The universe is diverse. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; and even so in the moral kingdom of Him, who is Lord of the Hosts of both earth and heaven, each nation has its own destiny and function. Israels was religion; Israel was Gods specialist in religion.
For confirmation of this we turn to the supreme witness. Jesus was born a Jew, He confined His ministry to Judaea, and He has told us why. By various passing allusions, as well as by deliberate statements, He revealed His sense of a great religious difference between Jew and Gentile. "Use not vain repetitions as the Gentiles do. For after all these things do the nations of the world seek; but your Father knoweth that you have need of these things." He refused to work except upon Jewish hearts: "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And He charged His disciples, saying, Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans; but go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel." And again He said to the woman of Samaria: "Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews."
These sayings of our Lord have created as much question as the preeminence given in the Old Testament to a single people by a God who is described as the one God of Heaven and earth. Was He narrower of heart than Paul, His servant, who was debtor to Greek and Barbarian? Or was He ignorant of the universal character of His mission till it was forced upon His reluctant sympathies by the importunity of such heathen as the Syrophenician woman? A little common-sense dispels the perplexity, and leaves the problem, over which volumes have been written, no problem at all. Our Lord limited Himself to Israel, not because He was narrow, but because He was practical; not from ignorance, but from wisdom. He came from heaven to sow the seed of Divine truth; and where in all humanity should He find the soil so ready as within the long-chosen people? He knew of that discipline of the centuries. In the words of His own parable, the Son when He came to earth directed His attention not to a piece of desert, but to "the vineyard" which His Fathers servants had so long cultivated, and where the soil was open. Jesus came to Israel because He expected "faith in Israel." That this practical end was the deliberate intention of His will, is proved by the fact that when He found faith elsewhere, either in Syrian or Greek or Roman hearts, He did not hesitate to let His love and power go forth to them.
In short, we shall have no difficulty about these Divine methods with a single, elect people, if we only remember that to be Divine is to be practical. "Yet God also is wise," said Isaiah to the Jews when they preferred their own clever policies to Jehovahs guidance. And we need to be told the same, who murmur that to confine Himself to a single nation was not the ideal thing for the One God to do; or who imagine that it was left to one of our Lords own creatures to suggest to Him the policy of His mission upon earth. We are shortsighted: and the Almighty is past finding out. But this at least it is possible for us to see, that in choosing one nation to be His agent among men, God chose the type of instrument best fitted at the time for the work for which He designed it, and that in choosing Israel to be that nation, He chose a people of temper singularly suitable to His end.
Israels election as a nation, therefore, was to Service. To be a nation and to be Gods Servant was pretty much one and the same thing for Israel. Israel were to survive the Exile, because they were to serve the world. Let us carry this over to the study of our next chapter-The Servant of Jehovah.
With chapter 42, we reach a distinct stage in our prophecy. The preceding chapters have been occupied with the declaration of the great, basal truth, that Jehovah is the One Sovereign God. This has been declared to two classes of hearers in succession-to Gods own people, Israel, in chapter 40, and to the heathen in chapter 41. Having established His sovereignty, God now publishes His will, again addressing these two classes according to the purpose which He has for each. Has He vindicated Himself to Israel, the Almighty and Righteous God, Who will give His people freedom and strength: He will now define to them the mission for which that strength and freedom are required. Has He proved to the Gentiles that He is the one true God: He will declare to them now what truth He has for them to learn. In short, to use modern terms, the apologetic of chapters 40-41 is succeeded by the missionary programme of chapter 42. And although, from the necessities of the case, we are frequently brought back, in the course of the prophecy, to its fundamental claims for the Godhead of Jehovah, we are nevertheless sensible that with ver. 1 of chapter 42 (Isa_42:1) we make a distinct advance. It is one of those logical steps which, along with a certain chronological progress that we have already felt, assures us that Isaiah, whether originally by one or more authors, is in its present form a unity, with a distinct order and principle of development.
The Purpose of God is identified with a Minister or Servant, whom He commissions to carry it out in the world. This Servant is brought before us with all the urgency with which Jehovah has presented Himself, and next to Jehovah he turns out to be the most important figure of the prophecy. Does the prophet insist that God is the only source and sufficiency of His peoples salvation: it is with equal emphasis that He introduces the Servant as Gods indispensable agent in the work. Cyrus is also acknowledged as an elect instrument. But neither in closeness to God, nor in effect upon the world, is Cyrus to be compared for an instant to the Servant. Cyrus is subservient and incidental: with the overthrow of Babylon, for which he was raised up, he will disappear from the stage of our prophecy. But Gods purpose, which uses the gates opened by Cyrus, only to pass through them with the redeemed people to the regeneration of the whole world, is to be carried to this Divine consummation by the Servant: its universal and glorious progress is identified with his career. Cyrus flashes through these pages a well-polished sword: it is only his swift and brilliant usefulness that is allowed to catch our eye. But the Servant is a Character, to delineate whose immortal beauty and example the prophet devotes as much space as he does to Jehovah Himself. As he turns again and again to speak of Gods omnipotence and faithfulness and agonising love for His own, so with equal frequency and fondness does he linger on every feature of the Servants conduct and aspect: His gentleness, His patience, His courage, His purity, His meekness; His daily wakefulness to Gods voice, the swiftness and brilliance of His speech for others, His silence under His own torments; His resorts-among the bruised, the prisoners, the forwandered of Israel, the weary, and them that sit in darkness, the far-off heathen; His warfare with the world, His face set like a flint; His unworldly beauty, which men call ugliness; His unnoticed presence in His own generation, yet the effect of His face upon kings; His habit of woe, a man of sorrows and acquainted with sickness: His sore stripes and bruises, His judicial murder, His felons grave; His exaltation and eternal glory-till we may reverently say that these pictures, by their vividness and charm, have drawn our eyes away from our prophets visions of God, and have caused the chapters in which they occur to be oftener read among us, and learned by heart, than the chapters in which God Himself is lifted up and adored. Jehovah and Jehovahs Servant-these are the two heroes of the drama.
Now we might naturally expect that so indispensable and fondly imagined a figure would also be defined past all ambiguity, whether as to His time or person or name. But the opposite is the case. About Scripture there are few more intricate questions than those on the Servant of the Lord. Is He a Person or Personification? If the latter, is He a Personification of all Israel? Or of a part of Israel? Or of the ideal Israel? Or of the Order of the Prophets? Or if a Person-is he the prophet himself? Or a martyr who has already lived and suffered, like Jeremiah? Or One still to come, like the promised Messiah? Each of these suggestions has not only been made about the Servant, but derives considerable support from one or another of our prophets dissolving views of his person and work. A final answer to them can be given only after a comparative study of all the relevant passages; but as these are scattered over the prophecy, and our detailed exposition of them must necessarily be interrupted, it will be of advantage to take here a prospect of them all, and see to what they combine to develop this sublime character and mission. And after we have seen what the prophecies themselves teach concerning the Servant, we shall inquire how they were understood and fulfilled by the New Testament; and that will show us how to expound and apply them with regard to ourselves.
1.
The Hebrew word for "Servant" means a person at the disposal of another-to carry out his will, do his work, represent his interests. It was thus applied to the representatives of a king or the worshippers of a god. All Israelites were thus in a sense the "servants of Jehovah"; though in the singular the title was reserved for persons of extraordinary character and usefulness.
But we have seen, as clearly as possible, that God set apart for His chief service upon earth, not an individual nor a group of individuals, but a whole nation in its national capacity. We have seen Israels political origin and preservation bound up with that service; we have heard the whole nation plainly called, by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the Servant of Jehovah. Nothing could be more clear than this, that in the earlier years of the Exile the Servant of Jehovah was Israel as a whole, Israel as a body politic.
It is also in this sense that our prophet first uses the title in a passage we have already quoted; {Isa_51:8} "Thou Israel, My Servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham My lover, whom I took hold of from the ends of the earth and its corners! I called thee and said unto thee, My Servant art thou. I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away." Here the "Servant" is plainly the historical nation, descended from Abraham, and the subject of those national experiences which are traced in the previous chapter. It is the same in the following verses:- Isa_44:1 ff: "Yet now hear, O Jacob My Servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen: thus saith Jehovah thy Maker, and thy Moulder from the womb, He wilt help thee. Fear not, My servant Jacob; and Jeshurun, whom I have chosen I will pour My spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring." Isa_44:21 : "Remember these things, O Jacob; and Israel, for My servant art thou: I have formed thee; a servant for Myself art thou; O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of Me." Isa_48:20 : "Go ye forth from Babylon; say ye, Jehovah hath redeemed His servant Jacob." In all these verses, which bind up the nations restoration from exile with the fact that God called it to be His Servant, the title "Servant" is plainly equivalent to the national name "Israel" or "Jacob" But "Israel" or "Jacob" is not a label for the mere national idea, or the bare political framework, without regard to the living individuals included in it. To the eye and heart of Him, "Who counts the number of the stars," Israel means no mere outline, but all the individuals of the living generation of the people-"thy seed," that is, every born Israelite, however fallen or forwandered. This is made clear in a very beautiful passage in chapter 43 (Isa_43:1-7): "Thus saith Jehovah, thy Creator, O Jacob; thy Moulder, O Israel Fear not, for I am with thee; from the sunrise I will bring thy seed, and from the sunset will I gather thee; My sons from far, and My daughters from the end of the earth; every one who is called by My name, and whom for My glory I have created, formed, yea, I have made him." To this Israel-Israel as a whole, yet no mere abstraction or outline of the nation, but the people in mass and bulk-every individual of whom is dear to Jehovah, and in some sense shares His calling and equipment-to this Israel the title "Servant of Jehovah" is at first applied by our prophet.
2.
We say "at first," for very soon the prophet has to make a distinction, and to sketch the Servant as something less than the actual nation. The distinction is obscure; it has given rise to a very great deal of controversy. But it is so natural, where a nation is the subject, and of such frequent occurrence in other literatures, that we may almost state it as a general law.
In all the passages quoted above, Israel has been spoken of in the passive mood, as the object of some affection or action on the part of God: "loved," "formed," "chosen," "called," and "about to be redeemed by Him." Now, so long as a people thus lie passive, their prophet will naturally think of them as a whole. In their shadow his eye can see them only in the outline of their mass; in their common suffering and servitude his heart will go out to all their individuals, as equally dear and equally in need of redemption. But when the hour comes for the people to work out their own salvation, and they emerge into action, it must needs be different. When they are no more the object of their prophets affection only, but pass under the test of his experience and judgment, then distinctions naturally appear upon them. Lifted to the light of their destiny, their inequality becomes apparent; tried by its strain, part of them break away. And so, though the prophet continues still to call on the nation by its name to fulfil its calling, what he means by that name is no longer the bulk and the body of the citizenship. A certain ideal of the people fills his minds eye - an ideal, however, which is no mere spectre floating above his own generation, but is realised in their noble and aspiring portion-although his ignorance as to the exact size of this portion must always leave his image of them more or less ideal to his eyes. It will be their quality rather than their quantity that is clear to him. In modern history we have two familiar illustrations of this process of winnowing and idealising a people in the light of their destiny, which may prepare us for the more obscure instance of it in our prophecy.
In a well-known passage in the "Areopagitica," Milton exclaims, "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle renewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means." In this passage the "nation" is no longer what Milton meant by the term in the earlier part of his treatise, where "England" stands simply for the outline of the whole English people; but the "nation" is the true genius of England realised in her enlightened and aspiring sons, and breaking away from the hindering and debasing members of the body politic-"the timorous and flocking birds with those also that love the twilight"-who are indeed Englishmen after the flesh, but form no part of the nations better self.
Or, recall Mazzinis bitter experience. To no man was his Italy more really one than to this ardent son of hers, who loved every born Italian because he was an Italian, and counted none of the fragments of his unhappy country too petty or too corrupt to be included in the hope of her restoration. To Mazzinis earliest imagination, it was the whole Italian seed, who were ready for redemption, and would rise to achieve it at his summons. But when his summons came, how few responded, and after the first struggles how fewer still remained, -Mazzini himself has told us with breaking heart. The real Italy was but a handful of born Italians; at times it seemed to shrink to the prophet alone. From such a core the conscience indeed spread again, till the entire people was delivered from tyranny and from schism, and now every peasant and burgher from the Alps to Sicily understands what Italy means, and is proud to be an Italian. But for a time Mazzini and his few comrades stood alone. Others of their blood and speech were Piedmontese, Popes men, Neapolitans, -merchants, lawyers, scholars, -or merely selfish and sensual. They alone were Italians; they alone were Italy.
It is a similar winnowing process, through which we see our prophets thoughts pass with regard to Israel. Him, too, experience teaches that "the many are called, but the few chosen." So long as his people lie in the shadow of captivity, so long as he has to speak of them in the passive mood, the object of Gods call and preparation, it is "their seed," the born people in bulk and mass, whom he names Israel, and entitles "the Servant of Jehovah." But the moment that he lifts them to their mission in the world, and to the light of their destiny, a difference becomes apparent upon them, and the Servant of Jehovah, though still called Israel, shrinks to something less than the living generation, draws off to something finer than the mass of the people. How, indeed, could it be otherwise with this strange people, than which no nation on earth had a loftier ideal identified with its history, or more frequently turned upon its better self, with a sword in its hand. Israel, though created a nation by God for His service, was always what Paul found it, divided into an "Israel after the flesh," and an "Israel after the spirit." But it was in the Exile that this distinction gaped most broad. With the fall of Jerusalem, the political framework, which kept the different elements of the nation together, was shattered, and these were left loose to the action of moral forces. The baser elements were quickly absorbed by heathendom; the nobler, that remained loyal to the divine call, were free to assume a new and ideal form. Every year spent in Babylonia made it more apparent that the true and effective Israel of the future would not coincide with all the "seed of Jacob," who went into exile. Numbers of the latter were as contented with their Babylonian circumstance as numbers of Mazzinis "Italians" were satisfied to live on as Austrian and Papal subjects. Many, as we have seen, became idolaters; many more settled down into the prosperous habits of Babylonian commerce, while a large multitude besides were scattered far out of sight across the world. It required little insight to perceive that the true, effective Israel-the real "Servant of Jehovah"-must needs be a much smaller body than the sum of all these: a loyal kernel within Israel, who were still conscious of the national calling, and capable of carrying it out; who stood sensible of their duty to the whole world, but whose first conscience was for their lapsed and lost countrymen. This Israel within Israel was the real "Servant of the Lord"; to personify it in that character-however vague might be the actual proportion it would assume in his own or in any other generation-would be as natural to our dramatic prophet as to personify the nation as a whole.
All this very natural process-this passing from the historical Israel, the nation originally designed by God to be His Servant, to the conscious and effective Israel, that uncertain quantity within the present and every future generation-takes place in the chapters before us; and it will be sufficiently easy for us to follow if we only remember that our prophet is not a dogmatic theologian, careful to make clear each logical distinction, but a dramatic poet, who delivers his ideas in groups, tableaux, dialogues, interrupted by choruses; and who writes in a language incapable of expressing such delicate differences, except by dramatic contrasts, and by the one other figure of which he is so fond-paradox.
Perhaps the first traces of distinction between the real Servant and the whole nation are to be found in the Programme of his Mission in Isa_42:1-7. There it is said that the Servant is to be for a "covenant of the people" (Isa_42:6). I have explained below why we are to understand "people" as here meaning Israel. And in Isa_42:7 it is said of the Servant that he is "to open blind eyes, bring forth from prison the captive, from the house of bondage dwellers in darkness": phrases that are descriptive, of course, of the captive Israel. Already, then, in chapter 42 the Servant is something distinct from the whole nation, whose Covenant and Redeemer he is to be.
The next references to the Servant are a couple of paradoxes, which are evidently the prophets attempt to show why it was necessary to draw in the Servant of Jehovah from the whole to a part of the people. The first of these paradoxes is in Isa_42:18.
Ye deaf, hearken! and ye blind, look ye to see!
Who is blind but My Servant, and deaf as My Messenger whom I send?
Who is blind as Meshullam, and blind as the Servant of Jehovah?
Vision of many things-and thou dost not observe,
Opening of ears and he hears not.
The context shows that the Servant here-or Meshullam, as he is called, the "devoted" or "submissive one," from the same root, and of much the same form as the Arabic Muslim-is the whole people; but they are entitled "Servant" only in order to show how unfit they are for the task to which they have been designated, and what a paradox their title is beside their real character. God had given them every opportunity by "making great His instruction" (Isa_42:21), and, when that failed, by His sore discipline in exile (Isa_42:24-25). "For who gave Jacob for spoil and Israel to the robbers? Did not Jehovah? He against whom we sinned, and they would not walk in His ways, neither were obedient to His instruction. So He poured upon him the fury of His anger and the force of war." But even this did not awake the dull nation. "Though it set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it kindled upon him, yet he laid it not to heart." The nation as a whole had been favoured with Gods revelation; as a whole they had been brought into His purifying furnace of the Exile. But as they have benefited by neither the one nor the other, the natural conclusion is that as a whole they are no more fit to be Gods Servant. Such is the hint which this paradox is intended to give us.
But a little further on there is an obverse paradox, which plainly says, that although the people are blind and deaf as a whole, still the capacity for service is found among them alone. {Isa_43:8; Isa_43:10}
Bring forth the blind people-yet eyes are there!
And the deaf, yet ears have they!
Ye are My witnesses, saith Jehovah, and My Servant whom I have chosen.
The preceding verses (Isa_43:1-7) show us that it is again the whole people, in their bulk and scattered fragments, who are referred to. Blind though they be, "yet are there eyes" among them; deaf though they be, yet "they have ears." And so Jehovah addresses them all, in contradistinction to the heathen peoples (Isa_43:9), as His Servant.
These two complementary paradoxes together show this: that while Israel as a whole is unfit to be the Servant, it is nevertheless within Israel, alone of all the worlds nations, that the true capacities for service are found-"eyes are there, ears have they." They prepare us for the Servants testimony about himself, in which, while he owns himself to be distinct from Israel as a whole, he is nevertheless still called Israel. This is given in chapter 49. And He said unto me, "My Servant art thou; Israel, in whom I will glorify Myself. And now saith Jehovah, my moulder from the womb to be a Servant unto Him, to turn again Jacob to Him, and that Israel might not be destroyed; and I am of value in the eyes of Jehovah, and my God is my strength. And He said, It is too light for thy being My Servant, merely to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will also set thee for a light of nations, to be My salvation to the end of the earth". {Isa_49:3-6} Here the Servant, though still called Israel, is clearly distinct from the nation as a whole, for part of his work is to raise the nation up again. And, moreover, he tells us this as his own testimony about himself. He is no longer spoken of in the third person, he speaks for himself in the first. This is significant. It is more than a mere artistic figure, the effect of our prophets dramatic style-as if the Servant now stood opposite him, so vivid and near that he heard him speak, and quoted him in the direct form of speech. It is more probably the result of moral sympathy: the prophet speaks out of the heart of the Servant, in the name of that better portion of Israel which was already conscious of the Divine call, and of its distinction in this respect from the mass of the people.
It is futile to inquire what this better portion of Israel actually was, for whom the prophet speaks in the first person. Some have argued, from the stress which the speaker lays upon his gifts of speech and office of preaching, that what is now signified by the Servant is the order of the prophets; but such forget that in these chapters the proclamation of the Kingdom of God is the ideal, not of prophets only, but of the whole people. Zion as a whole is to be "heraldess of good news". {Isa_40:9} It is, therefore, not the official function of the prophet-order which the Servant here owns, but the ideal of the prophet-nation. Others have argued from the direct form of speech, that the prophet puts himself forward as the Servant. But no individual would call himself Israel. And as Professor Cheyne remarks, the passage is altogether too self-assertive to be spoken by any man of himself as an individual; although, of course, our prophet could not have spoken of the true Israel with such sympathy, unless he had himself been part of it. The writer of these verses may have been, for the time, as virtually the real Israel as Mazzini was the real Italy. But still he does not speak as an individual. The passage is manifestly a piece of personification. The Servant is Israel- not now the nation as a whole, not the body and bulk of the Israelites, for they are to be the object of his first efforts, but the loyal, conscious, and effective Israel, realised in some of her members, and here personified by our prophet, who himself speaks for her out of his heart, in the first person.
By chapter 49, then, the Servant of Jehovah is a personification of the true, effective Israel as distinguished from the mass of the nation-a Personification, but not yet a Person. Something within Israel has wakened up to find itself conscious of being the Servant of Jehovah, and distinct from the mass of the nation-something that is not yet a Person. And this definition of the Servant may stand (with some modifications) for his next appearance in Isa_50:4-9. In this passage the Servant, still speaking in the first person, continues to illustrate his experience as a prophet, and carries it to its consequence in martyrdom. But let us notice that he now no longer calls himself Israel, and that if it were not for the previous passages it would be natural to suppose that an individual was speaking. This supposition is confirmed by a verse that follows the Servants speech, and is spoken, as chorus, by the prophet himself. "Who among you is a fearer of Jehovah, obedient to the voice of His Servant, who walketh in darkness, and hath no light. Let him trust in the name of Jehovah, and stay himself upon his God." In this too much neglected verse, which forms a real transition to Isa_52:13-53, the prophet is addressing any individual Israelite, on behalf of a personal God. It is very difficult to refrain from concluding that therefore the Servant also is a Person. Let us, however, not go beyond what we have evidence for; and note only that in chapter 1 the Servant is no more called Israel, and is represented not as if he were one part of the nation, over against the mass of it, but as if he were one individual over against other individuals; that in fine the Personification of chapter 49 has become much more difficult to distinguish from an actual Person.
3.
This brings us to the culminating passage- Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12. Is the Servant still a Personification here, or at last and unmistakably a Person?
It may relieve the air of that electricity, which is apt to charge it at the discussion of so classic a passage as this, and secure us calm weather in which to examine exegetical details, if we at once assert, what none but prejudiced Jews have ever denied, that this great prophecy, known as the fifty-third of Isaiah, was fulfilled in One Person, Jesus of Nazareth, and achieved in all its details by Him alone. But, on the other hand, it requires also to be pointed out that Christs personal fulfilment of it does not necessarily imply that our prophet wrote it of a Person. The present expositor hopes, indeed, to be able to give strong reasons for the theory usual among us, that the Personification of previous passages is at last in chapter 53 presented as a Person. But he fails to understand, why critics should be regarded as unorthodox or at variance with New Testament teaching on the subject, who, while they acknowledge that only Christ fulfilled chapter 53, are yet unable to believe that the prophet looked upon the Servant as an individual, and who regard chapter 53 as simply a sublimer form of the prophets previous pictures of the ideal people of God. Surely Christ could and did fulfil prophecies other than personal ones. The types of Him, which the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament, are not exclusively individuals. Christ is sometimes represented as realising in His Person and work statements, which, as they were first spoken, could only refer to Israel, the nation. Matthew, for instance, applies to Jesus a text which Hosea wrote primarily of the whole Jewish people: "Out of Egypt have I called My Son." {Hos_11:1; Mat_2:15} Or, to take an instance from our own prophet-who but Jesus fulfilled chapter 49, in which, as we have seen, it is not an individual, but the ideal of the prophet people, that is figured? So that, even if it were proved past all doubt-proved from grammar, context, and every prophetical analogy-that in writing chapter 53 our prophet had still in view that aspect of the nation which he has personified in chapter 49, such a conclusion would not weaken the connection between the prophecy and its unquestioned fulfilment by Jesus Christ, nor render the two less evidently part of one Divine design.
But we are by no means compelled to adopt the impersonal view of chapter 53. On the contrary, while the question is one to which all experts know the difficulty of finding an absolutely conclusive answer one way or the other, it seems to me that reasons prevail which make for the personal interpretation.
Let us see what exactly are the objections to taking Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12 in a personal sense. First, it is very important to observe that they do not rise out of the grammar or language of the passage. The reference of both of these is consistently individual. Throughout, the Servant is spoken of in the singular. The name Israel is not once applied to him: nothing-except that the nation has also suffered-suggests that he is playing a national role; there is no reflection in his fate of the features of the Exile. The antithesis, which was evident in previous passages, between a better Israel and the mass of the people has disappeared. The Servant is contrasted, not with the nation as a whole, but with His people as individuals. "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." As far as grammar can, this surely distinguishes a single person. It is true, that one or two phrases suggest so colossal a figure-"he shall startle many nations, and kings shall shut their mouths at him"-that for a moment we think of the spectacle of a people rather than of a solitary human presence. But even such descriptions are not incompatible with a single person. On the other hand, there are phrases which we can scarcely think are used of any but a historical individual; such as that he was taken from "oppression and judgment," that is from a process of law which was tyranny, from a judicial murder, and that he belonged to a particular generation-"As for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living." Surely a historical individual is the natural meaning of these words. And, in fact, critics like Ewald and Wellhausen, who interpret the passage, in its present context, of the ideal Israel, find themselves forced to argue that it has been borrowed for this use from the older story of some actual martyr-so individual do its references seem to them throughout.
If, then, the grammar and language of the passage thus conspire to convey the impression of an individual, what are the objections to supposing that an individual is meant? Critics have felt, in the main, three objections to the discovery of a historical individual in Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12.
The first of these that we take is chronological, and arises from the late date to which we have found it necessary to assign the prophecy. Our prophet, it is averred, associates the work of the Servant with the restoration of the people; but he sees that restoration too close to him to be able to think of the appearance, ministry, and martyrdom of a real historic life happening before it. (Our prophet, it will be remembered, wrote about 546, and the Restoration came in 538.) "There is no room for a history like that of the suffering Servant between the prophets place and the Restoration."
Now, this objection might be turned, even if it were true that the prophet identified the suffering Servants career with so immediate and so short a process as the political deliverance from Babylon. For, in that case, the prophet would not be leaving less room for the Servant, than, in chapter 9, Isaiah himself leaves for the birth, the growth to manhood, and the victories of the Prince-of-the-Four-Names, before that immediate relief from the Assyrian which he expects the Prince to effect. But does our prophet identify the suffering Servants career with the redemption from Babylon and the Return? It is plain that he does not-at least in those portraits of the Servant, which are most personal. Our prophet has really two prospects for Israel-one, the actual deliverance from Babylon; the other, a spiritual redemption and restoration. If, like his fellow prophets, he sometimes runs these two together, and talks of the latter in the terms of the former, he keeps them on the whole distinct, and assigns them to different agents. The burden of the first he lays on Cyrus, though he also connects it with the Servant, while the Servant is still to him an aspect of the nation (see Isa_49:8-9). It is temporary, and soon passes from his thoughts, Cyrus being dropped with it. But the other, the spiritual redemption, is confined to no limits of time; and it is with its process-indefinite in date and in length of period-that he associates the most personal portraits of the Servant (chapter 1 and Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12). In these the Servant, now spoken of as an individual, has nothing to do with that temporary work of freeing the people from Babylon, which was over in a year or two, and which seems to be now behind the prophets standpoint. His is the enduring office of prophecy, sympathy, and expiation- an office in which there is all possible "room" for such a historical career as is sketched for him. His relation to Cyrus, before whose departure from connection with Israels fate the Servant does not appear as a person, is thus most interesting. Perhaps we may best convey it in a homely figure. On the ship of Israels fortunes-as on every ship and on every voyage-the prophet sees two personages. One is the Pilot through the shallows, Cyrus, who is dropped as soon as the shallows are past; and the other is the Captain of the ship, who remains always identified with it - the Servant. The Captain does not come to the front till the Pilot has gone: but, both alongside the Pilot, and after the Pilot has been dropped, there is every room for his office.
The second main objection to identifying an individual in Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12, is. that an individual with such features has no analogy in Hebrew prophecy. It is said that, neither in his humiliation nor in the kind of exaltation which is ascribed to him, is there his like in any other individual in the Old Testament, and certainly not in the Messiah. Elsewhere in Scripture (it is averred) the Messiah reigns, and is glorious; it is the people who suffer, and come through suffering to power. Nor is the Messiahs royal splendour at all the same as the very vague influence, evidently of a spiritual kind, which is attributed to the Servant in the end of chapter 53. The Messiah is endowed with the military and political virtues. He is a warrior, a king, a judge. He "sits on the throne of David, He establishes Davids kingdom. He smites the land with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He slays the wicked." But very different phrases are used of the Servant. He is not called king, though kings shut their mouths at him, -he is a prophet and a martyr, and an expiation; and the phrases, "I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong," are simply metaphors of the immense spiritual success and influence with which His self-sacrifice shall be rewarded; as a spiritual power He shall take His place among the dominions and forces of the world. This is a true prophecy of what Israel, that "worm of a people," should be lifted to; but it is quite different from the political throne, from which Isaiah had promised that the Messiah should sway the destinies of Israel and mankind.
But in answer to this objection to finding the Messiah, or any other influential individual, in chapter 53, we may remember that there were already traces in Hebrew prophecy of a suffering Messiah: we come across them in chapter 7. There Isaiah presents Immanuel, whom we identified with the Prince-of-the-Four-Names in chapter 9, as at first nothing but a sufferer - a sufferer from the sins of His predecessors. (Isaiah 1-39) And, even though we are wrong in taking the suffering Immanuel from the Messiah, and though Isaiah meant him only as a personification of Israel suffering for the error of Ahaz, had not the two hundred years, which elapsed between Isaiahs prophecy of Israels glorious Deliverer, been full of room enough, and, what is more, of experience enough, for the ideal champion of the people to be changed to something more spiritual in character and in work? Had the nation been baptised, for most of those two centuries, in vain, in the meaning of suffering, and in vain had they seen exemplified in their noblest spirits the fruits and glory of self-sacrifice? The type of Hero had changed in Israel since Isaiah wrote of his Prince-of-the-Four-Names. The king had been replaced by the prophet; the conqueror by the martyr; the judge who smote the land by the rod of his mouth, and slew the wicked by the breath of his lips, -by the patriot who took his countrys sins upon his own conscience. The monarchy had perished; men knew that, even if Israel were set upon their own land again, it would not be under an independent king of their own; nor was a Jewish champion of the martial kind, such as Isaiah had promised for deliverance from the Assyrian, any more required. Cyrus, the Gentile, should do all the campaigning required against Israels enemies, and Israels native Saviour be relieved for gentler methods and more spiritual aims. It is all this experience, of nearly two centuries, which explains the omission of the features of warrior and judge from chapter 53, and their replacement by those of a suffering patriot, prophet, and priest. The reason of the change is, not because the prophet who wrote the chapter had not, as much as Isaiah, an individual in his view, but because, in the historical circumstance of the Exile, such an individual as Isaiah had promised seemed no longer probable or required.
So far, then, from the difference between chapter 53 and previous prophecies of the Messiah affording evidence that in chapter 53 it is not the Messiah who is presented, this very change that has taken place, explicable as it is from the history of the intervening centuries, goes powerfully to prove that it is the Messiah, and therefore an individual, whom the prophet so vividly describes.
The third main objection to our recognising an individual in chapter 53 is concerned only with our prophet himself. Is it not impossible, say some-or at least improbably inconsistent-for the same prophet first to have identified the Servant with the nation, and then to present him to us as an individual? We can understand the transference by the same writer of the name from the whole people to a part of the people; it is a natural transference, and the prophet sufficiently explains it. But how does he get from a part of the nation to a single individual? If in chapter 49 he personifies, under the name Servant, some aspect of the nation, we are surely bound to understand the game personification when the Servant is again introduced-unless we have an explanation to the contrary. But we have none.. The prophet gives no hint, except by dropping the name Israel, that the focus of his vision is altered, -no more paradoxes such as marked his passage from the people as a whole to a portion of them, -no consciousness that any explanation whatever is required. Therefore, however much finer the personification is drawn in chapter 53 than in chapter 49, it is surely a personification still.
To which objection an obvious answer is, that our prophet is not a systematic theologian, but a dramatic poet, who allows his characters to disclose themselves and their relation without himself intervening to define or relate them. And any one who is familiar with the literature of Israel knows, that no less than the habit of drawing in from the whole people upon a portion of them, was the habit of drawing in from a portion of the people upon one individual. The royal Messiah Himself is a case in point. The original promise to David was of a seed; but soon prophecy concentrated the seed in one glorious Prince. The promise of Israel had always culminated in an individual. Then, again, in the nations awful sufferings, it had been one man-the prophet Jeremiah-who had stood forth singly and alone, at once the incarnation of Jehovahs word, and the illustration in his own person of all the penalty that Jehovah laid upon the sinful people. With this tendency of his school to focus Israels hope on a single individual, and especially with the example of Jeremiah before him, it is almost inconceivable that our prophet could have thought of any but an individual when he drew his portrait of the suffering Servant. No doubt the national sufferings were in his heart as he wrote; it was probably a personal share in them that taught him to write so sympathetically about the Man of pains, who was familiar with ailing. But to gather and concentrate all these sufferings upon one noble figure, to describe this figure as thoroughly conscious of their moral meaning, and capable of turning them to his peoples salvation, was a process absolutely in harmony with the genius of Israels prophecy, as well as with the trend of their recent experience; and there is, besides, no word in that great chapter, in which the process culminates, but is in thorough accordance with it. So far, therefore, from its being an impossible or an unlikely thing for our prophet to have at last reached his conception of an individual, it is almost impossible to conceive of him executing so personal a portrait as Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12, without thinking of a definite historical personage, such as Hebrew prophecy had ever associated with the redemption of his people.
4.
We have now exhausted the passages in Isa 40-66 which deal with the Servant of the Lord. We have found that our prophet identifies him at first with the whole nation, and then with some indefinite portion of the nation-indefinite in quantity, but most marked in character; that this personification grows more and more difficult to distinguish from a person; and that in Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12 there are very strong reasons, both in the text itself and in the analogy of other prophecy, to suppose that the portrait of an individual is intended. To complete our study of this development of the substance of the Servant, it is necessary to notice that it runs almost stage for stage with a development of his office. Up to chapter 49, that is to say, while he is still some aspect of the people, the Servant is a prophet. In chapter 1, where he is no longer called Israel, and approaches more nearly to an individual, his prophecy passes into martyrdom. And in chapter 53, where at last we recognise him as intended for an actual personage, his martyrdom becomes an expiation for the sins of the people. Is there a natural connection between these two developments? We have seen that it was by a very common process that our prophet transferred the national calling from the mass of the nation to a select few of the people. Is it by any equally natural tendency that he shrinks from the many to the few, as he passes from prophecy to martyrdom, or from the few to the one, as he passes from martyrdom to expiation? It is a possibility for all Gods people to be prophets: few are needed as martyrs. Is it by any moral law equally clear, that only one man should die for the people? These are questions worth thinking about. In Israels history we have already found the following facts with which to answer them. The whole living generation of Israel felt themselves to be sinbearers: "Our fathers have sinned, and we bear their iniquities." This conscience and penalty were more painfully felt by the righteous in Israel. But the keenest and heaviest sense of them was conspicuously that experienced by one man-the prophet Jeremiah. And yet all these cases from the past of Israels history do not furnish more than an approximation to the figure presented to us in chapter 53. Let us turn, therefore, to the future to see if we can find in it motive or fulfilment for this marvellous prophecy.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
C. I. Scofield1917 · Public DomainOn v8Three servants of Jehovah are mentioned in Isaiah:
servant
Three servants of Jehovah are mentioned in Isaiah:
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(1) David Isa 37:35
(2) Israel the nation Isa 41:8-16; Isa 43:1-10; Isa 44:1-8; Isa 44:21; Isa 45:4; Isa 48:20
(3) Messiah Isa 42:1-12, Isaiah 49, entire chapter, but note especially Isa 49:5-7, where the Servant Christ restores the servant nation; Isa 50:4-6; Isa 52:13-15; Isa 53:1-12. Israel the nation was a faithless servant, but restored and converted will yet thresh mountains. Against the Servant Christ no charge of unfaithfulness or failure is brought. (See Scofield "Isa 42:1").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann1924 · Public DomainOn v8The Lord’s Promise of a Future Victory
The Lord’s Promise of a Future Victory
v. 8. But thou, Israel, art My servant, as Jehovah, in a section replete with love and consolation, assures His children, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham, My friend, His servants, the people of His covenant, of old, especially the spiritual descendants of him who had the honor of being known as the friend of God.
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v. 9. Thou, whom I have taken from the ends of the earth and called thee from the chief men thereof, from its most remote corners, and said unto thee, Thou art My servant; I have chosen thee and not cast thee away. Note how excellently this description fits the believers of the New Testament, and how fully the glory of our calling into His kingdom is given to Jehovah alone. Therefore the Lord’s encouraging words gain in beauty with every new reading; every word, in fact, as one commentator puts it, breathes the most fervent love.
v. 10. Fear thou not, for I am with thee, with His merciful power; be not dismayed, filled with anxiety, for I am thy God, who freely gives His heart, His grace, His salvation, to His children; I will strengthen thee, so that no one can overthrow him; yea, I will help thee, upholding him who is in himself too weak to withstand the enemy; yea. I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness, for the righteousness of God, which is imputed to men by faith, is the element which sustains him in the midst of all dangers and enemies of this world and keeps him safe for the final deliverance from every evil.
v. 11. Behold, all they that were incensed against thee, who gave expression to their wrath, shall be ashamed and confounded, by the defeat and destruction which would strike them; they shall be as nothing, and they that strive with thee shall perish, since the Lord Himself would do battle for His people.
v. 12. Thou shalt seek them and shalt not find them, even them that contended with thee, daring to attack the Lord’s people; they that war against thee shall be as nothing and as a thing of naught, so utterly exterminated that not a trace of them could be found.
v. 13. For I, the Lord, thy God, will hold thy right hand, thereby imparting His almighty strength, saying unto thee, Fear not, I will help thee. Cf Deu 33:26-29. The encouragement now increases in fervency.
v. 14. Fear not, thou worm Jacob, trodden under foot as he now seems, and ye men of Israel, the poor small crew who hold to the Lord: I will help thee, saith the Lord, that is His majestic saying, and thy Redeemer (is) the Holy One of Israel, the mighty Deliverer and Vindicator of His people at all times, He who is zealous for His own honor and for the safety of His children.
v. 15. Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth, the sledge used in the Orient to cut up the straw for fodder and to separate the grain from the hull, sometimes used to put captives to death; thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff, the very world-powers being compelled to yield to the army of the Lord.
v. 16. Thou shalt fan them, as the husbandman winnows his grain, and the wind shall carry them away, like useless chaff, and the whirlwind, the strong tempest, shall scatter them; and thou, seeing this marvelous victory over the mighty enemies, shalt rejoice in the Lord and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel, properly giving all honor to Him who is the zealous Deliverer of His people. Not only will the enemies be overthrown, however, but the Church of God will find divine refreshment in the midst of the tribulation of this world.
v. 17. When the poor and needy seek water, spiritual comfort and strength, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, their heart parched, exhausted with the heat of the affliction, I, the Lord, will hear them, their sighs and their prayers; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them, not permit them to perish in their misery.
v. 18. I will open rivers in high places, in dry rocks, as He did in the wilderness, and fountains in the midst of the valleys, so that the headsprings will yield abundantly. I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water. In the midst of Israel’s great spiritual trouble the Lord Himself would send refreshment for their souls in the Word of His grace.
v. 19. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah-tree, the acacia, or Egyptian thorn, and the myrtle, and the oil-tree, the wild olive, valued as an ornamental tree; I will set in the desert the fir-tree, the cypress, and the pine, the Oriental elm, and the box-tree together, the pine, the former desert becoming a garden of the Lord,
v. 20. that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, become thoroughly saturated with the knowledge, that the hand of the Lord hath done this and the Holy One of Israel hath created it. In this manner the copious spiritual refreshment which would fall to the lot of those sighing for comfort would serve for the glory of Jehovah, just as it is His mercy, and His mercy alone, which to this day is the cause of our salvation and of all spiritual blessings which we enjoy.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On v8General Information:
General Information:
Yahweh continues speaking.
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you whom I am bringing back from the ends of the earth, and whom I called from the far away places
These two lines mean basically the same thing and emphasize that Yahweh is bringing the people of Israel back to their land from distant countries. (See: Parallelism)
the ends of the earth
The places on the earth that are very far away are spoken of as if they were the places where the earth ends. See how you translated this in Isaiah 41:5. AT "the farthest places of the earth" (See: Metaphor)
I have chosen you and not rejected you
These two phrases mean basically the same thing. The second states in negative terms what the first states in positive terms. (See: Parallelism and Litotes)
Tyndale Open Study Notes2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv8–941:8-16 These two prophecies of salvation for God’s servant…
41:8-16 These two prophecies of salvation for God’s servant Israel (41:8-13, 14-16) prepare for the first of the suffering servant songs (see study note on 42:1-4).
41:8 The servant—here the nation of Israel—was God’s chosen one, whose calling was grounded in God’s purposes. • Abraham my friend: The phrase in Hebrew could mean Abraham who loves me or Abraham whom I love. See also Jas 2:23.
GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On v8 And therefore oughtest not to pollute thyself with the…
And therefore oughtest not to pollute thyself with the superstition of the Gentiles.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv8–9 Isa 41:8 But thou, Israel, [art] my servant, Jacob…
Isa 41:8 But thou, Israel, [art] my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend.
Ver. 8. But thou, Israel, art my servant.] And it was for thy sake, and for thy settlement, that I have dealt so long with those odious idolaters, whom else I would not once look toward nor commune with, as he said, 2Ki 3:14.
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The seed of Abraham, my friend.] This style was a higher honour to Abraham than if God had engraven his name in the orbs of heaven. {See Trapp on "Jas 2:23"} Hushai was David’s "friend," and Augustus vouchsafed to give Virgil the name of "Amicus." This was a special favour, but not like that in the text.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv8–9 But thou, Israel, art my servant: thus the Gentiles…
But thou, Israel, art my servant: thus the Gentiles show themselves to be the servants of their idols, and own them for their god; but thou art my people, and I am and will be thy God.
Whom I have chosen, out of the heap of the idolatrous nations, to be my peculiar people.
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Abraham my friend; with whom I made a strict league of perpetual friendship; of which see Gen 12:2,3; 15:1,18.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv8–9 But thou, Israel, art my servant,.... As the great…
But thou, Israel, art my servant,.... As the great spread and success of the Gospel could not fail of drawing the resentment of the idolatrous Heathens on those who embraced and professed it, and by whom they were grievously persecuted under the Roman emperors; wherefore, to support them under these trials, the Lord speaks these and the following comfortable words unto them; for not carnal, but spiritual Israel are here meant; such who by the power of divine grace were turned from idols to serve the living God, who were made willing to become his servants, and whose honour it was to be so called and accounted; and being so, they might be assured their Lord and Master would protect and defend them, bless and reward them:
Jacob whom I have chosen; Israelites indeed, Jacob like, plain hearted men, wrestling and prevailing ones in prayer with God, whom he chose to be his people, and peculiar treasure; who, though disallowed of men, were like their Lord and Saviour, chosen of God, and precious:
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the seed of Abraham my friend: the spiritual seed of Abraham, being believers in Christ, and friends of his, as Abraham was; and whom he uses and shows to be such, by disclosing his secrets to them, Joh 15:15.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On v9 Thou - Thou Israel, whom I took to myself,…
Thou - Thou Israel, whom I took to myself, and brought hither in the loins of thy father Abraham, from a remote country. Called thee - From the midst of many great persons among whom he lived in Chaldea. Chosen - I have chosen thee and thy seed through all generations.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On v9 Verse 9. And called thee from the chief men…
Verse 9. And called thee from the chief men thereof - "And called from the extremities thereof"] אציל מאציליה atsil meatsileyha, signifies the arm, ascilla, ala; and is used like כנף canaph, "the wing," for any thing extended from the extremity of another, or joined on to it. It is here parallel with and synonymous to מקצות mikkatsoth, "from the ends," in the preceding member.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v8 Isa 41:8-13. But thou, Israel, art my servant —…
Isa 41:8-13. But thou, Israel, art my servant — Thus the Gentiles show themselves to be the servants of their idols, and own them for their gods: but thou art my people, and I am and will be thy God. Jacob, whom I have chosen — Out of the multitude of idolatrous nations, to be my peculiar people. The seed of Abraham my friend — With whom I made a strict league of perpetual friendship: see Gen 12:2-3; Gen 15:1; Gen 15:8. “The expressions are very endearing: it is honourable to be God’s servant, still more so to be his chosen servant, and to be descended from one to whom he vouchsafed the title of friend, as God did to Abraham, (2Ch 20:7,) the greatest honour that any man is capable of: which glorious privilege Christ was pleased to communicate to his disciples, Joh 15:13. Thou whom I have taken, &c. — Thou Israel, whom I took to myself, and brought hither in the loins of thy father Abraham, from a remote country, namely, from Chaldea; or, whom I brought out of Babylon into thine own land: which, though yet to come, he may speak of as of a thing past, according to the usual custom of the prophets when foretelling future events. But the former interpretation seems better to agree with the foregoing verse. And called thee from the chief men thereof — From the midst of many great and noble persons, among whom he lived in Chaldea. But the Hebrew, מאציליה, is rendered by Vitringa and Dr. Waterland, from the sides thereof, and by Bishop Lowth, from the extremities thereof, which is probably the prophet’s meaning. I have chosen, and not cast thee away — Or, and will not reject thee: I have chosen thee and thy seed through all generations. They that were incensed against thee shall be confounded — Both because their hopes and designs shall be utterly disappointed, and because the mischief which they contrived against thee shall fall on themselves. They shall be as nothing — Shall come to nothing, or perish. Thou shalt not find them — They shall be so totally consumed, that although thou search for them, thou shalt not be able to find them anywhere in the world. “The powerful monarchies that have been incensed against the church, and have contended with her, have been put to shame, and brought to nothing: and this prediction hath already been fulfilled in the ruin of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Chaldean, Macedonian, and Roman empires, which we now may seek for in vain; for no vestiges of the four former, and scarcely any of the last, can be found; while the church still subsists! In like manner all that now do, or hereafter shall contend with her, shall perish.” — Scott. I the Lord will hold thy hand — Or, will strengthen it, as מחזיקsignifies: I will assist and enable thee to vanquish all thine enemies.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv8–9 But thou, Israel, art my servant - This is…
But thou, Israel, art my servant - This is an address directly to the Jews, and is designed to show them, in view of the truths which had just been urged, that God was their protector and friend. Those who relied on idols were trusting to that which could not aid them. But those who trusted in him were safe. For their protection he had raised up Cyrus, for this purpose he had subdued the nations before him. God now expresses to them the assurance that though the nations should be destroyed, yet that he had chosen them, and would remember them, and his promise made to Abraham, their illustrious ancestor. The word ‘servant’ here is used in a mild and gentle sense, not to denote bondage or slavery, but to denote that they had been engaged in his service, and that he regarded them as subject to his laws, and as under his protection.
Jacob whom I have chosen - The descendants of Jacob, whom I have selected to be my people. Abraham my friend. Hebrew, ‘Loving me,’ my lover. Abraham was regarded as the friend of God (see 2Ch 20:7). ‘And he was called the Friend of God’ Jam 2:23. This most honorable appellation he deserved by a life of devoted piety, and by habitually submitting himself to the will of God. The idea in this verse is, that as they were the descendants of his friend, God deemed himself bound to protect and deliver them according to his gracious promises; and this is one of the many instances where the divine favor is manifested to descendants in consequence of the piety and prayers of their ancestors.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v8 8 But thou, Israel, 14art my servant,
2. THE SECOND CHIEF FIGURE: THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH ISRAEL CHOSEN IN ABRAHAM AND CALLED IN GLORIOUS VICTORY
Isa_41:8-13
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8 But thou, Israel, 14art my servant,
Jacob whom I have chosen,
The seed of Abraham my friend.
9 Thou whom I have 15taken from the ends of the earth,
And called thee from the 16chief men thereof,
And said unto thee, Thou art my servant;
I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away
10 Fear thou not; for I am with thee:
17Be not dismayed; for I am thy God:
I 18will strengthen thee; yea, I 19will help thee;
Yea, I fwill uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
11 Behold, all they that were incensed against thee
Shall be ashamed and confounded
20They shall be as nothing;
And 21they that strive with thee shall perish.
12 Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them,
Even 22them that contended with thee:
23They that war against thee
Shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought.
13 For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand,
Saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
See List for the recurrence of the words: Isa_41:8. אֹהֵב—בָּחַר Isa_41:9. אָצִיל. Isa_41:10. אָמַץ—שָׁעָה. Isa_41:11 כָּלַם. Isa_41:12. אֶפֶם.
Isa_41:9. On קצות הארץ see Isa_40:28.
Isa_41:10. תשׁתע, Hithp. from שָׁעָה stands here in the sense of “to look anxiously about.”—כי אני אלהיד occurs only here; see Isa_41:13; Isa_51:15.—On עָזַר see. Isa_41:6.
Isa_41:11. נחרים again only Isa_45:24.—אַנְשֵׁי רִיב only here in Isaiah; comp. Jdg_12:2; Job_31:35; Jer_15:10.
Isa_41:12. מַצּוּת jurgium, ἅπ. λεγ.; comp. Isa_58:4, and נצה rixari, Isa_37:26.—אנשׁי מלִח׳ only here in Isa. comp. Isa_42:13; Jer_50:30; Eze_27:10.
Isa_41:13. מחזיק ימינד only here; comp. Isa_45:1; Isa_51:18.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. But thou Israel——away.
Isa_41:8-9. In the preceding section (Isa_41:1-7) the Prophet has introduced the principal figure of the prophetic cycle, chaps. 40–48. With this is immediately connected another: the Servant of Jehovah in a national sense.
But thou Israel is evidently contrasted with “islands and people,” Isa_41:1. The Prophet turns to Israel with well-founded and glorious consolation. The Lord calls His people Israel my servant. We encounter here for the first time this significant notion of the עֶבֶד יהוה. Yet not the subjective, but the objective side of the notion is made prominent. The nation is not so named because it has chosen the Lord for its God out of the great mass of gods that, according to heathen ideas, are in existence, therefore not because “Jehovah was its national god in contrast with other nations, the servants of Baal, Moloch,” etc. (Hitzig). On the contrary, they are so named because the Lord has chosen Israel for His possession, His instrument, His servant. For a servant is the property of his lord, and Israel is the “peculiar people” (Exo_19:5; Deu_7:6; Deu_14:2; Psa_135:4; Mal_3:17). But Israel is chosen in its ancestor Abraham, whom, already, the Lord calls “my servant” Gen_26:24, which passage easily comes to mind, since Isa_41:10 is evidently a citation from it. Thus Abraham was not only chosen for his person, though what he was personally by God’s grace, fitted him to be for all times a pattern of the right sort of “servant of Jehovah,” even in subjective respects. Hence he is called My friend. For love is the fulfilling of the law, and involves faith (Gen_15:6; Deu_6:5). In 2Ch_22:7 Abraham has the same title; also in Jam_2:23. In Arabic his regular surname is Chalil-Allah, i.e., “confidant of God.” Abraham was chosen that by his seed all the nations of the earth might be blessed. And after Isaac and Jacob, this seed was to be the “great nation” that the Lord would make of Abraham (Gen_12:2), and to which He would give the land of his pilgrimage (ibid. Gen_41:7; Gen_13:15; Gen_15:18, etc). Accordingly Israel is the servant of Jehovah primarily as the seed of Abraham. This is purely an objective honor and dignity, belonging to the nation by reason of the election of their ancestor, but of which, of course, it must make itself worthy by worshipping Jehovah alone as its God, and serving Him with its entire being and possessions. On the parallelism of Israel and Jacob see Isa_40:27.
With great emphasis the Prophet repeats in various forms the thought that Israel is Jehovah’s chosen servant. Whom I have taken, [or “grasped”] החזקתי (see Isa_41:6-7) expresses that the Lord stretched out His hand after Israel to seize it (comp. Isa_41:13; Isa_42:6; Isa_45:1; Isa_51:18) and bring it to Him; thus that He alone was active in this, while Israel was passive. By the ends of the earth the Prophet, whose viewpoint is Palestine, means the distant lands of the Euphrates. Concerning the situation of Ur Kasdim see Schrader, D. Keilinschr. u. d. A. T. p. 383. The monuments prove that the present ruin of Mugheir (on the right bank of the Euphrates south-east from Babylon) was Ur. אציל is probably related both to אצילExo_24:11, nobilis, princeps—properly the extremest, extremus, thus in some sense also summus, comp. יַרְכְּתֵי הארץ, and also to אֵצֶלlotus, juxta. It occurs only here. Yet twice again, Isa_41:9, it is affirmed that in choosing Israel Jehovah alone was active. Once by I have called thee, and then by I have chosen thee. Finally the thought is confirmed by the negative expression I have not cast thee away. Evidently underlying this last is the thought that the Lord might indeed have rejected Israel, in fact that He was near doing it (comp. Deu_7:7 sq.), but that He did not do it. Therefore, spite of considerations that existed, He has still on reflection and on purpose chosen Israel.
2. Fear thou not——I will help thee.
Isa_41:10-13. Having set forth the election of Israel in Abraham as emphatically the basis of the relation between Himself and His people, the Lord now infers the consequences. These are positive and negative: Israel need not fear, the Lord helps them; their enemies must be destroyed. The words fear not for I am with thee are quoted from Gen_26:24 with only עִמְּךָ for אִתְּדָ. On “fear not” comp. Isa_40:9. The context shows that אמצתי is used here as in Isa_44:14; Psa_80:18 with the meaning “to make firm, sure, viz., the choice of one object out of several.” The idea is not an invigoration imparted to Israel, but the election made sure (comp. 2Pe_1:10, βεβαίαν ποιεῖθαι τὴν ἐκλογήν). תָּמַדְ is also used in a similar sense. Comp. Isa_42:1 and Mat_12:18, where תמך is rendered αἱρετίζειν, The expression ימין עדקי occurs only here. It can only mean the right hand that does right in the Old Testament sense, on which comp. Isa_41:2. The relation of the three verbs of the second clause of Isa_41:10 seems to me to be the following: אמץ signifies the sure election, from which follows, on the one hand, the helping, on the other, the not letting go again. The correlative of this promise is the threat (Isa_41:11) of destruction to their enemies. This thought is presented in various forms in what follows (Isa_41:11-12). Isa_41:11 a it appears as a theme, and Isa_41:11 b–12b give it a three-fold amplification: first the opponents are called אנִשי ריב (contestants, opponents in general), and it is said “they shall be nothing and shall perish;” then they are called אנשׁי מצות (rixatores, objurgatores) that one shall seek and not find; finally they are called א׳ מלחמה (enemies in war, hostes), and it is said of them that, not only they are not to be found, but that they shall absolutely no more exist. In conclusion, Isa_41:13, the protecting and helping presence already promised Isa_41:10 is repeated to the nation as the ground of its expecting victory. That Isa_41:13 has the character of a confirmatory repetition appears from הָאֹמֵר וגו׳. For האמר expressly refers to the comforting words “fear not,” “I have helped thee,” as having been used by the Lord (Isa_41:10).
Footnotes:
[14]omit art.
[15]seized.
[16]their borders.
[17]Look not around.
[18]have made thee (i. e thine election) sure.
[19]omit will.
[20]They shall be as nothing and destroyed thy adversaries.
[21]Heb. the men of thy strife.
[22]Heb. the men of thy contention.
[23]Heb. the men of thy war.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv8–9 Contrast between the idolatrous nations whom God will destroy…
Contrast between the idolatrous nations whom God will destroy by Cyrus, and Israel whom God will deliver by the same man for their forefathers' sake.
servant--so termed as being chosen by God to worship Him themselves, and to lead other peoples to do the same (Isa 45:4).
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Jacob . . . chosen-- (Psa 135:4).
my friend--literally, "loving me."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On v8 8-10. The sarcasm is now that of silence; the…
8-10. The sarcasm is now that of silence; the idol does not speak. There is therefore no farce of waiting for a reply, but Jehovah turns his address at once to Israel, who recognises the sole invisible deity in his own Lord Jehovah of Israel.
Thou, Israel, art my servant — The Lord’s address is in terms of affection. The collective body of Israel is God’s servant, chosen servant, in the person of their ancestor Abraham, Jehovah’s friend, or the one (literally) loving Jehovah. Special protection and care over Israel along his whole history is here asserted. Selected first from Mesopotamia, then rescued from base slavery in Egypt, now to be delivered from exile in Babylon, the people may well be said to be taken from the ends of the earth, the sides or corners thereof — not from chief men, as in our version. From all the places where the lot of Israel has been cast, God has hitherto rescued them, and there can now be no reason for fear, for the right hand — the power, in other words, of omnipotence — is underneath to uphold.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv8–9 8–10. Israel is bidden “Fear not,” because of its…
8–10. Israel is bidden “Fear not,” because of its peculiar relation to Jehovah.
But thou, Israel] In opposition to the other peoples (Isa_41:1). Omit “art” with R.V.
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my servant] Cf. Jer_30:10 f., Jer_46:27 f.; Eze_28:25; Eze_37:25,—the only older passages (if those in Jeremiah be really older) where the name is applied to Israel. The title is used in its simplest and widest sense, being applied to the nation as a whole, although of course in its ideal aspect, as it exists in the mind of Jehovah. The idea, however, is already a complex one, although the writer does not as yet analyse it into its different elements. (See Introduction, p. xxxi.) The one fact emphasized in this passage is the irrevocable choice or election of God, by which Israel was from its origin in Abraham constituted His servant. Cf. ch. Isa_43:10, Isa_44:1 f., Isa_49:7.
seed of Abraham my friend] (cf. 2Ch_20:7) lit. “my lover”: but as Duhm remarks Heb. has no single word to express the reciprocal relation of friendship as distinct from companionship. Cf. Jas_2:23, φίλος θεοῦ ἐκλήθη. So among the Mohammedans, Abraham is designated chalîl ullah, “Friend of God.” Note that Abraham is called “my servant” in Gen_26:24.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv8–9 (8) But thou, Israel, art my servant . .…
(8) But thou, Israel, art my servant . . .—The verse is important as the first introduction of the servant of the Lord who is so conspicuous throughout the rest of the book. The idea embodied in the term is that of a calling and election, manifested now in Israel according to the flesh, now in the true Israel of God, realising its ideal, now, as in the innermost of the three concentric circles, in a person who gathers up that ideal in all its intensity into himself. The three phrases find their parallel in St. Paul’s language as to (1) the seed of Abraham according to the flesh; (2) the true seed who are heirs of the faith of Abraham; (3) the seed, which is none other than the Christ Himself (Rom_9:7; Gal_3:7; Gal_3:16). Here we have the national aspect, Israel as he is in the idea of God. So in the later language of Christian thought we have (1) the visible Church falling short of the ideal; (2) the spiritual Church approximating to the ideal; (3) Christ Himself, as identified with His people.
The seed of Abraham my friend.—The word for “friend” implies loving as well as being loved. Of all the names of Abraham, it has had the widest currency (comp. 2Ch_20:7; Jas_2:23). For the Arabs of the present time Abraham is still Khalil Allah—the friend of God, or simply, el Khalil, the friend.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv8–9 Vers. 8-20. A PROMISE TO ISRAEL OF GOD"S PROTECTION…
Vers. 8-20. A PROMISE TO ISRAEL OF GOD"S PROTECTION AND SUPPORT THROUGH THE TROUBLOUS PERIOD THAT IS APPROACHING. Israel is assured
(1) of God"s faithfulness (vers. 8, 9);
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(2) of special divinely infused strength (ver. 10);
(3) of the infusion of weakness into their enemies (vers. 11, 12);
(4) of external Divine aid (vers. 13, 14);
(5) of an aggressive vigour that shall enable them to scatter their foes (vers. 15, 16); and
(6) of spiritual refreshment even amidst their worst sufferings (vers. 1719). The eye of the prophet travels perhaps, in part, beyond the period of the Captivity; but he is mainly bent on giving the people grounds of comfort and trust during that trying time.
Israel... my servant. (comp. Isa_44:1, Isa_44:2, 21 45:4 48:20 49:3-6, etc.) The title characterizes these later chapters, and, while standing no doubt in some special relation to the "Servant of Jehovah" who is the subject of Isa_42:1-5 Isa_49:5-7, etc., is perhaps mainly selected, and dwelt on, to console Israel in captivity, when servants of the King of Babylon, (2Ch_36:20) by the thought that their true Master was God himself, and that to him, and him only, did they really belong.
Jacob whom I have chosen. (comp. Isa_44:1) (On this "choice," and the love which it implied, see Deu_7:6-8 Deu_10:15) Abraham my friend; or, Abraham that loved me. It was the special privilege of Abraham to be known as God"s friend (see 2Ch_20:7 Jam_2:23) among the Hebrews, even as he is among the Arabs to this day. The "friendship" intended comprised, no doubt, both an active and a passive element, but it is the active element which the word principally enforces. Abraham loved God, and showed his love by his obedience.
Vers. 8-13. The blessed condition of Israel.
I ISRAEL IS THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH. There can be no higher title of honour, privilege, affection, than son. Though the designation reminds us of the infinite distance between God and man, in another way it reminds us of his nearness. The Master and Lord is here the loving and protecting Patron and Friend; the servant, one who reciprocates his affection. They are the descendants of Abraham, who "loved God." The title "reminds the Jews that they had come very far short of their ideal, but at the same time inspires a well-grounded hope that Abraham"s "love" will call forth the Divine mercy towards his seed.
II THE PEOPLE IS CHOSEN OF GOD. And the choice of God is irretractable. (Rom_2:29) And the election was made manifest in a wondrous history. They had been fetched from the ends of the earth. The patriarch from Ur of the Chaldees in Mesopotamia; Israel from Egypt. And what are the consequences of this Divine choice? All that is most dear and precious in the relation of marriage or in that of friendship may be called to mind. The nation is wedded to an all-powerful Husband, is linked to a faithful Protector and Friend. Then she may enjoy fearless freedom from fear; the just hand will uphold her. And all her enemies will be thrown into shame and confusion; those that strove with her be brought to nought. Held fast in the right hand of God, Israel may ever hear the assuring word, "Fear not; I do help thee." He is One "who gives salvation to kings;" with one hand giving the Law, with the other defending the obedient. Omniscience watches over the chosen, and omnipotence supports them. Among other "gifts and graces" let us recognize courage and resolution. Timidity, faint-heartedness, is a universal weakness, and the higher or sacred courage one of the rarest possessions of the soul. Perhaps, next to wisdom, it is Heaven"s greatest gift. It "gives and obtains kingdoms, turns swords into sceptres, crowns the valiant with victory, and the victorious often with a diadem." Presence of mind: what can impart it like the feeling that God is ever with us, that our feeble hand is enclosed in his? "It is a kind of ecstasy and inspiration, a beam of Divine light darting in upon reason, and exalting it to a pitch of operation beyond its natural and accustomed measures. Perhaps there was never any person in the world remarkably and heroically great, without some such kind of enthusiasm a mighty principle which at certain times raised him up to strange, unaccountable heights of wisdom and courage. He who in the strength of such a spirit can look the most menacing dangers in the face, and, when the state of all things about him seems desperate, can yet bear his great heart above despair such a one for the most part makes fortune itself bend and lull down to him, difficulties vanish, and dangers fly before him; so much is victory the claim of the valiant, and success the birthright of the bold. J.
Vers. 8, 9. His grace and our heritage.
We are reminded here of
I THE SENSE IN WHICH GOD HAS CHOSEN US. "Jacob, whom I have chosen... I have chosen thee." The way in which God"s ancient people were chosen of God is familiar biblical history. Abraham was called out of Chaldea, Israel (the people) out of Egypt, the Jews out of Babylonia, in order that they might receive, retain, and reflect the truth of the living God; in other words, this nation was the recipient of those distinguishing mercies which could alone account for their national redemption and their spiritual condition. We are now the subjects of God"s electing, his distinguishing grace in these respects; in ways which are not common to the whole of our race, perhaps not even to the generality of our fellow-men, we have been
(1) acquainted with his redeeming truth, made to know and to understand it in its purity and fulness;
(2) wrought upon by kindly, helpful, winning influences, in the home or in the Church;
(3) affected by the direct and immediate influences of his Divine Spirit. Thus has God chosen and called us to himself
II THE LIFE TO WHICH WE HAVE BEEN CALLED. A life of holy service. Thou, Israel, art my servant." We are not called merely to enjoyment or to privilege; we are summoned to God"s presence and kingdom to his foot" (ver. 2), in order that we may serve. Our Christian life is that most honourable, most elevating, most useful, one of service. It is the life
(1) of sacred worship;
(2) of cheerful obedience;
(3) of active helpfulness.
III THE INTIMATE AND HONOURABLE RELATIONSHIP IN WHICH WE ARE INVITED TO STAND. "The seed of Abraham my friend. " Behold, what manner of love and of condescension is this, that we should be called the friends of God! All that Abraham was to God it is certain that we may be, we who are brought nigh by Jesus Christ. And what his disciples were to him, we also are invited to be. (see Joh_15:14, Joh_15:15) We are God"s friends, inasmuch as:
1. We have a profound sympathy with him in the principles he holds and in the work in which he is engaged.
2. We are trusted by him to do what is right and worthy, and are entrusted by him with that which is high and, arduous.
3. We are admitted to his near presence, and are invited to constant fellowship with him.
4. We are the objects of his love and his good pleasure. C.
The Divine choices are wise selections.
Abraham and Jacob are God"s chosen ones as founders, and first fathers, of the Israelite race. By this we are to understand that they were selected, in the Divine wisdom, as having just the qualities which, developed in a race, would make a people precisely fitted to carry out ibis purposes. We are not to understand that, in a way of accident, or in a way of mere sovereignty, these first fathers were picked out. God"s choices are never arbitrary; they are always judicious selections. "The race is described as God"s servant and his elect, or, combining the two characters, his chosen servant, chosen to be his servant." This special relation to Jehovah is the thing which distinguishes the people of Israel from the heathen nations around them. "What advantage then hath the Jew?... Much every way" chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God". (Rom_3:1, Rom_3:2) The truth that the Divine choices are selections, on the ground of recognized fitness, may gain illustration from three distinct spheres.
I FROM THE SPHERE OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES, These cover long spaces of the earth"s history, and the most marked feature of them is the way in which individuals are set forth prominently; we are shown the precise work they did, and then it is impressed on us that these are the Lord"s chosen ones. In the light of that view we read again their story, appraise their qualities and gifts, set their endowments alongside their life-mission; and then we can see clearly that they were selected because they were precisely fitted for their particular work. If we think that subtle laws of heredity have gone to the making and endowing of men, we may also think of God as watching the fitnesses of men, and taking them out for the doing of certain parts of his work. Illustration may be taken from Moses, who was characteristically patriotic and disinterested; or David, whose poetical genius sanctified song for Divine worship; or Paul, whose natural impetuosity adapted him for his service as the first Christian missionary.
II FROM THE SPHERE OF COMMON LIFE. For Scripture is but. the illustration "in the small" of what God is ever doing "in the large." The mistake is so often made of thinking that God exhausted himself, or limited himself, to the spheres dealt with in Scripture. The true view is that God illustrated himself there. Cyrus is the man in common life of whom God says, "I girded thee, though thou hast not known me." We see God"s selections in the fitting of men to places, men of genius and common men, the Tennysons and ourselves.
III FROM THE SPHERE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Here too there are evidently elect men and women; but we need to see that God has no "pets," only "servants men whose fitnesses are recognized, and who are consequently selected for office to praise, to preach, to pray, or variously to minister to the Church"s needs. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v8 But thou, Israel, art My servant
Isa_41:8
But thou, Israel, art My servant
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The servant of Jehovah
It is reasonable to seek the origin of the idea in the first passage in which the term occurs (Isa_41:8).
Here there can be no doubt as to what the term denotes. It denotes the Israelitish nation, treated, however, not as the mere aggregate of the members composing it, but as a unity, developing historically, and maintaining its continuity and essential character through successive generations. (S. R. Driver.)
The seed of Abraham, My friend
God blessing for the sake of another
God turns the eyes of Israel to the past. He reminds them that they are the children of His friend Abraham. You may find a man in distress, and may be tempted to turn away from him; but as he talks to you about himself and his antecedents, you find that he is the son of an old friend of yours. That alters the case. There is another motive operating on you now--the desire to be faithful to your friend. Israel was the seed of Gods friend Abraham. God would be faithful to them for His friends sake. For Jesus Christs sake is the highest expression and application of this principle. (J. A. Davies, B. D.)
The seed of Abraham
(with Mat_3:9):--There is between these two passages an ascertainable relation. In the passage which we have read from the Book of Isaiah is exhibited the greatest element in the Israelitish national consciousness. Apparently these people never forgot their vocation as the children of Abraham. Sometimes they attributed more importance to it, sometimes less. When the nation was at its best they spiritualised the ideal; when it was at its worst they materialised it; but they never wholly ignored it. Here is a prophet speaking in a stern time with the purpose of heartening the people who were listening to him. See how he does it. In the chapter which precedes the one whence our text is taken the opening sentences are: Comfort ye, comfort ye, My people, saith your God, etc. The last verse of the chapter is more beautiful still: They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. We see the mood in which Isaiah speaks and the tenderness which is evident in his message. It is as though he would say to Israel: You have passed through a stern testing time, but you have not ceased to be the people of God. Indeed, the testing time was permitted because you are never to be anything else than the chosen ones, Gods Israel. You have Abraham for your father, and the covenant which God made with Abraham He will keep with you. Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. In the light of this Old Testament consciousness let us now look at the passage which we have chosen from the New. Isaiah and John are both heralds; there is at least this similarity between them, that they both come as the bearers of good tidings concerning a better day. But they are different in this: while Isaiah speaks with the gorgeous magnificence of Oriental symbolism, and his message is one full of comfort and tenderness, the words of St. John are utterly unadorned; rugged and grim is the speech of this child of the desert. He comes less with a message of comfort than with one of rebuke; and yet, like Isaiah, he is the herald of a glorious day. But the people are not ready for his message nor for the blessing which he announces. And so his words to them are words of warning, especially, shall I say, to the Pharisees. The people and their leaders had been too much inclined to content themselves with making much of the tradition of the covenant of God with Abraham, and they thought comparatively, little of what was required from them in the keeping of it. O generation of vipers! who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth, therefore, fruits meet for repentance. The Pharisees were conspicuous for two particular vices; and may I say, in parenthesis, that Pharisees were by no means in their entirety pact men. There were many sincere men in their ranks, and yet Jesus, like John, had more difficulty with the Pharisees than with any other class in the community. Their chief sin was that of spiritual pride; but another was, they believed in the externals of religion rather than in change of heart. They insisted much upon their lineage: here we are the chosen people, the descendants of Abraham--would not God keep His word to us? What part or lot has the race of mankind in this which is a special privilege of Israel? Johns reply to them is this: Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father. Why should God trouble to show His favour to men like you, for you are very different from Abraham? God is able to raise up from these stones children unto Abraham. Shall we spend a little more time in discovering what John the Baptist means by saying, God is able of the stones to raise up children unto Abraham? I have heard an exegesis of this kind, and it is not a modern one only: Oh, it is obvious that St. John meant that the hearts around him might be changed by his glorious message, that God would give to these men a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone, and then they would be children of Abraham indeed. Well, the inference is not unjustifiable, but I do not think it is correct. I believe that St. John meant exactly and literally what he said: God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. To believe that he meant it literally adds force to the warning and the appeal. What he meant, then, was something like this: It is in the power of God to breathe the breath of life into these rocks of the desert, and they should become living souls; and if so it is conceivable they would be better men than you and worthier successors of Abraham, the friend of God. For who was, what was, this Abraham? If you turn to Heb_11:1-40. you will read a Christian description of the man and his character: By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went, etc. Momentous results followed that far-off choice. It was the dawning of a great hour in which Israel was born, and with Israel the Messiah, and with the Messiah the gospel under which you and I live our lives to-day. Here, then, is the Abraham of whose seed these Pharisees claimed to be. They had not his moral courage, nor his noble spirit; these were not of the kind who would have gone out in pursuit of a spiritual ideal. These were men who had hardened into insensibility, who by their lives denied the spiritual idea Abraham had bequeathed to them, and therefore the Baptists remonstrance was apt indeed. Think not to say, we have Abraham to our father. You are not of the spiritual lineage of Abraham; you would never dare for God; you are content with the grovelling things, your gaze is never lifted to the eternal. God could raise up another Abraham, yea, of these stones he could raise up children worthier than you. As an illustration of what the fiery, indomitable prophet of the desert meant, let me remind you of something, perhaps, that may have crossed your lips but yesterday. Looking upon the degenerate son of a noble sire, what was it you remarked to your companion? His only recommendation is that he is his fathers son. Any worthless profligate who soils a noble name and brings degradation upon the record of a noble race receives and deserves the reprobation of honest men. The question whether England is Israel is not worth discussing, believe me. If you could prove it to-morrow, some John the Baptist might rise and tell you you are out of the spiritual succession altogether. This is merely the negative side of the question. The seed of Abraham in spirit and in truth are those who hear the Word of God speaking within their own hearts, and rise and go forth and obey. Hear what Jesus has to say on this theme in Joh_8:39. If Jesus is correctly reported by one who at any rate knew Him well, as addressing the indignant Jews, He says: I speak that which I have seen with My Father; and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. They answered and said unto Him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abrahams children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill Me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. We can classify easily the men that are of the quality of Abraham. Did these pharisaic time-servers, these bigoted Jews, who were questioning Jesus with the object of destroying Him, really think that they stood in the succession of him who was the friend of God? Verily they did; but the consciousness of humanity since has put them right. An Ambrose, in the early years of Christianity, a rough soldier, is chosen by the people, who know him and his character, to be their bishop; and now as prelate of Milan it is the duty of this erstwhile soldier to turn from the church door the bloodstained emperor who had been his commander. He dare not do otherwise, for he is serving a greater than the emperor. Here speaks the seed of Abraham. And who knows? God knows, maybe, that in this church this morning there are some of the lineage of Abraham of whom the world will never hear. The rest of us, perhaps, in the gaze of heaven, may have to be put in another category--the category of those who have not dared for justice and right and truth. There is one more thought suggested in our second text. There is something contained in the very phrase these stones, which I think was not merely accidental. The prophet knew well what he meant: the stones are unpromising material Con version is a turning from sin and a turning towards God. Get firm hold of that fact. Feelings are an endowment which may or may not accompany it; but the man whose heart is right with holiness and truth, whose faith is turned that way, is of the seed of Abraham and the friend of God. I want you to recognise, what is the very truth, that Abraham had far less to guide him than you. He heard the same voice as you, but it had not told the world as much then as it has told it since. When you take up this Old Testament again and read of the wonders achieved by the heroes of old, remember that the voice that spake to them spake within their own hearts, and not without, just as it speaks now to you. This Abraham heard a voice, and he said he would obey it; he could trust it; he established his covenant with God, and it never failed him. How shall I know I am of the seed of Abraham? Is my face turned the way his was? How shall I know I belong to the Lord Christ? Here is my charter: Whosoever shall do the will of God (even seek to do it), the same is My brother and sister and mother. Jesus will never turn away from His own spiritual kindred. Yet there may be one more experience here to which I ought to speak. There is, perhaps, a man who says, Ah yes; but I have made shipwreck of my career. Such lives as these may look back upon their life and say, I have done the best I could with my manhood. But I have failed; my road is strewn with the dust and ashes of vain regrets. The stones are the rubbish of the desert. They only serve to accentuate its desolation. Just so; I am the stones. Well, I want you to hear a voice that I am fond of listening to--with deepest reverence be it spoken--One that spoke with authority;and I think you will agree with me it has power in it still:-- Joh_8:56 :Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad. Picture the astonishment of those Jews. Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham? Poor literalists! Abraham in his lonely desert vigil never saw Jesus; he had no foregleam of the day when Jesus should speak such words as these; but what he did have was the vision by which he saw the Sun of Righteousness arising in his own heart. That was Jesus day. The Abraham who spent his early days in a guilty household, in the midst of men who never thought of the unworthiness of serving God by lascivious rites and brutal deeds, one day said to himself, This life has to be left behind. So soon as he had seen that, he had seen Jesus day, and he rose up and went out to meet it. And that is just what we have to do. For the same voice that spake to Abraham is speaking to the world to-day, is speaking through Jesus: Before Abraham was I am. Children of Abraham, friends of Jesus, is not that voice speaking to you even now? (R. J. Campbell, M. A.)
Scripture characters
1. There is in Scripture a hidden truth which we gradually become acquainted with, and which we may not thoroughly know for years. God has attached certain names and titles to men in the Bible which seem to have some great hidden meaning, as showing what character God approves. There are certain men to whose characters He has attached a distinct approval which is most striking. Abraham is called the friend of God; David, the man after Gods own heart; St. John, the beloved disciple. There is some deep meaning in each of these titles not to be passed by casually.
2. The characters of Holy Scripture are so various that we are impressed with the view that the Old Testament is a volume of character, written to show the application of religious privileges to the varieties of men. Look at Abraham. What is our first feeling in thinking of him? that is, in what did his character seem peculiar? In faith and unworldliness. In what Davids? A tender love of God. In what St. Johns? Love. Now how do they assimilate essentially with each other? Who else was especially faithful? Not so strikingly, Jacob or Isaac or Solomon. Abrahams faithfulness bore the great fruit of faithfulness, unworldliness. Samuel, Elijah, and Ezekiel were characters who seemed especially to have lived by faith, to have lived free of the world. How did Abraham differ from them? In having a tender disposition, a deeper well.spring of human feeling. He was a man of much strong and domestic affection, really attached to earthly ties, and mentioned in close connection with them throughout his history. The three characters, then, which are thus distinguished by especial names of Gods favour, all agree in this respect, a deep and tender love in their dispositions; yet prevented from so ruling them as to draw off their faith from God, which faith was shown by a life of freedom from the world.
3. Let this, then, be the lesson and comfort we draw, that however little we may be living a life of public usefulness, yet a retired one may be the life God has placed us in. (E. Monte.)
The friend of God
(with Jam_2:23):--Abraham was called the friendof God because he was so. The name does not occur in his life as given in the Book of Genesis, and it has been questioned whether it occurs anywhere else in Holy Scripture; for many have preferred to translate the word in Isaiah, and in 2Ch_20:7, as lover, or beloved, rather than friend. However this may be, it is quite certain that among the Jewish people Abraham was frequently spoken of as the friend of God. At this present moment, among the Arabs and other Mohammedans, the name of Abraham is not often mentioned, but they speak of him as Khalil Allah, or the friend of God, or more briefly as of Khalil, the friend. Those tribes which boast of their descent from him through Ishmael, or through the sons of Keturah, greatly reverence the patriarch, and are wont to speak of him under the name which the Holy Spirit here ascribes to him. It is a noble title, not to be equalled by all the names of greatness which have been bestowed by princes, even if they should all meet in one. Patents of nobility are mere vanity when laid side by side with this transcendent honour. I think I hear you say, Yes, it was indeed a high degree to which Abraham reached: so high that we cannot attain unto it. Think not so. We also may be called friends of God (Joh_15:14).
I. A TITLE TO BE WONDERED AT.
1. Admire and adore the condescending God, who thus makes of a man, like ourselves, His friend. In this case the august Friend displays His pure love, since He has nothing to gain. Surely God does not need friends. How sweet it is to mingle the current of our life with that of some choice bosom friend! Can God have a friend? Friend ship cannot all be on one side. In this particular instance it is intended that we should know that while God was Abrahams Friend, this was not all; but Abraham was Gods friend. He received and returned the friendship of God. Friendship creates a measure of equality between the persons concerned. I say not that absolute equality is at all necessary to friendship, for a great king may have a firm friend in one of the least of his subjects; but the tendency is towards an equalising of the two friends: the one comes down gladly, and the other rises up in sympathy. Friendship begets fellowship, and this bridges over the dividing gulf. We must keep our place, or we shall not be friends.
2. Note the singular excellence of Abraham. How could he have been Gods friend had not grace wrought wonderfully in him? Although a plain man, dwelling in tents, the father of the faithful is always a right royal personage. A calm dignity surrounds him, and the sons of Heth and the kings of Egypt feel its power. His character is well balanced.
3. Note some of the points in which this Divine friendship showed itself.
(1) The Lord often visited Abraham.
(2) Secrets were disclosed.
(3) Compacts were entered into. On certain grand occasions we read: The Lord made a covenant with Abram.
(4) This friendship resulted in the bestowal of innumerable benefits. The life of Abraham was rich with mercies.
(5) Since Abraham was Gods friend, God accepted his pleadings, and was moved by his influence.
(6) There was also between these friends a mutual love and delight. Abraham rejoiced in Jehovah! He was his shield, and his exceeding great reward, and the Lord Himself delighted to commune with Abraham. The serenity of the patriarchs life was caused by his constant joy in God.
(7) This friendship was maintained with great constancy. The Lord never forsook Abraham: even when the patriarch erred, the Lord remembered and rescued him. He did not cast him off in old age. Constancy is also seen on the human side of this renowned friendship. Abraham did not turn aside to worship any false god.
(8) The Lord kept His friendship to Abraham by favouring his posterity. That is what our text,, tells us. The Lord styled rebellious Israel, the seed of Abraham, My friend.
II. THE TITLE VINDICATED. Abraham was the friend of God in a truthful sense. There was great propriety and fulness of meaning in the name as applied to him.
1. Abrahams trust in God was implicit. He staggered not at the promise through unbelief, for he knew that what the Lord had promised He was able also to perform.
2. There was joined to this implicit trust a practical confidence as to the accomplishment of everything that God had promised.
3. Abrahams obedience to God was unquestioning.
4. Abrahams desire for Gods glory was uppermost at all times.
5. Abrahams communion with God was constant.
III. Regard this name as THE TITLE TO BE SOUGHT AFTER. Oh, that we may get to ourselves this good degree, this diploma, friend of God!
1. You must be fully reconciled to Him.
2. We must exercise a mutual choice. The God who has chosen you must be chosen by you.
3. There must be a conformity of heart, and will, and design, and character to God.
4. There must be a continual intercourse. The friend of God must not spend a day without God, and he must undertake no work apart from his God.
5. If we are to be friends of God, we must be co partners with Him.
6. Friendship, if it exists, will breed mutual delight.
IV. THE TITLE TO BE UTILISED for practical purposes.
1. Here is a great encouragement to the people of God. See what possibilities lie before you!
2. Here is a solemn thought for those who would be friends of God. A mans friend must show himself friendly, and behave with tender care for his friend. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v8 Isa_41:8-20; Isaiah 42, 43
CHAPTER XV
ONE GOD, ONE PEOPLE
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Isa_41:8-20; Isaiah 42, 43
WE have been listening to the proclamation of a monotheism so absolute, that, as we have seen, modern critical philosophy, in surveying the history of religion, can find for it no rival among the faiths of the world. God has been exalted before us, in character so perfect, in dominion so universal, that neither the conscience nor the imagination of man can add to the general scope of the vision. Jesus and His Cross shall lead the worlds heart farther into the secrets of Gods love; Gods Spirit in science shall more richly instruct us in the secrets of His laws. But these shall thereby only increase the contents and illustrate the details of this revelation of our prophet. They shall in no way enlarge its sweep and outline, for it is already as lofty an idea of the unity and sovereignty of God, as the thoughts of man can follow.
Across this pure light of God, however, a phenomenon thrusts itself, which seems for the moment to affect the absoluteness of the vision and to detract from its sublimity. This is the prominence given before God to a single people, Israel. In these chapters the uniqueness of Israel is as much urged upon us as the unity of God. Is He the One God in heaven? They are His only people on earth, "His elect, His own, His witnesses to the end of the earth." His guidance of them is matched with His guidance of the stars, as if, like the stars shining against the night, their tribes alone moved to His hand through an otherwise dark and empty space. His revelation to humanity is given through their little language; the restoration of their petty capital, that hill fort in the barren land of Judah, is exhibited as the end of His processes, which sweep down through history and affect the surface of the whole inhabited world. And His very righteousness turns out to be for the most part His faithfulness to His covenant with Israel.
Now to many in our day it has been a great offence to have "the curved nose of the Jew" thus thrust in between their eyes and the pure light of God. They ask, Can the Judge of all the earth have been thus partial to one people? Did God confine His revelation to men to the literature of a small, unpolished tribe? Even most uncritical souls have trouble to understand why "salvation is of the Jews."
The chief point to know is that the election of Israel was an election, not to salvation, but. to service. To understand this is to get rid of by far the greater part of the difficulty that attaches to the subject. Israel was a means, and not an end; God chose in him a minister, not a favourite. No prophet in Israel failed to say this; but our prophet makes it the burden of his message to the exiles. "Ye are My witnesses, My Servant whom I have chosen. Ye are My witnesses, and I am God. I will also give thee for a light to the nations, to be My salvation to the end of the earth." {Isa_43:10} Numbers of other verses might be quoted to the same effect, that "there is no God but God, and Israel is His prophet." But if the election of Israel is thus an election to service, it is surely in harmony with Gods usual method, whether in nature or history. So far from such a specialisation as Israels being derogatory to the Divine unity, it is but part of that order and division of labour which the Divine unity demands as its consequence throughout the whole range of Being. The universe is diverse. "To every man his own work" is the proper corollary of "God over all," and Israels prerogative was but the specialisation of Israels function for God in the world. In choosing Israel to be His mediator with mankind, God did but do for religion what in the exercise of the same practical discipline He did for philosophy, when He dowered Greece with her gifts of subtle thought and speech, or with Rome when He trained her people to become the legislators of mankind. And how else should work succeed but by specialisation, -the secret as it is of fidelity and expertness? Of fidelity-for the constraint of my duty surely lies in this, that it is due from me and no other; of expertness-for he drives best and deepest who drives along one line: In lighting a fire you begin with a kindled faggot; and in lighting, a world it was in harmony with all His law, physical and moral, for God to begin with a particular portion of mankind.
The next question is, Why should this particular portion of mankind be a nation, and not a single prophet, or a school of philosophers, or a church universal? The answer is found in the condition of the ancient world. Amid its diversities of language and of racial feeling, a missionary prophet travelling like Paul from people to people is inconceivable; and almost as inconceivable is the kind of Church which Paul founded among various nations, in no other bonds than the consciousness of a common faith. Of all possible combinations of men the nation was the only form which in the ancient world stood a chance of surviving in the struggle for existence. The nation furnished the necessary shelter and fellowship for personal religion; it gave to the spiritual a habitation upon earth, enlisted in its behalf the force of heredity, and secured the continuity of its traditions. But the service of the nation to religion was not only conservative, it was missionary as well. It was only through a people that a God became visible and accredited to the world. Their history supplied the drama in which He played the heros part. At a time when it was impossible to spread a religion, by means of literature, or by the example of personal holiness, the achievements of a considerable nation, their progress and prestige, furnished a universally understood language, through which the God could publish to mankind His power and will; and in choosing, therefore, a single nation to reveal Himself by, God was but employing the means best adapted for His purpose. The nation was the unit of religious progress in the ancient world. In the nation God chose as His witness, not only the most solid and permanent, but the most widely intelligible and impressive.
The next question is, Why Israel should have been this singular and indispensable nation. When God selected Israel to serve His purpose, He did so, we are told, of His sovereign grace. But this strong thought, which forms the foundation of our prophets assurance about his people, does not prevent him from dwelling also on Israels natural capacity for religious service. This, too, was of God. Over and over again Israel hears Jehovah say: "I have created thee, I have formed thee, I have prepared thee." One passage describes the nations equipment for the office of a prophet; another their discipline for the life of a saint; and every now and then our prophet shows how far back he feels this preparation to have begun, even when the nation, as he puts it, was "still in the womb." How easily these well-worn phrases slip over our lips! Yet they are not mere formulas. Modern research has put a new meaning into them, and taught us that Israels creation, forming, election, polishing, carriage, and defence were processes as real and measurable as any in natural or political history. For instance, when our prophet says that Israels preparation began "from the womb, -I am thy moulder, saith Jehovah, from the womb,"-history takes us back to the pre-natal circumstance of the nation, and there exhibits it to us as already being tempered to a religious disposition and propensity. The Hebrews were of the Semitic stock. The "womb" from which Israel sprang was a race of wandering shepherds, upon the hungry deserts of Arabia, where mans home is the flitting tent, hunger is his discipline for many months of the year, his only arts are those of speech and war, and in the long irremediable starvation there is nothing to do but to be patient and dream. Born in these deserts, the youth of the Semitic race, like the probation of their greatest prophets, was spent in a long fast, which lent their spirit a wonderful ease of detachment from the world and of religious imagination, and tempered their will to long suffering-though it touched their blood, too, with a rancorous heat that breaks out through the prevailing calm of every Semitic literature. They were trained also in the deserts august style of eloquence. "He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me." {Isa_49:2} A "natural prophecy," as it has been called, is found in all the branches of the Semitic stock. No wonder that from this race there came forth the three great universal religions of mankind-that Moses and the prophets, John, Jesus Himself and Paul, and Mohammed were all of the seed of Shem.
This racial disposition the Hebrew carried with him into his calling as a nation. The ancestor, who gave the people the double name by which they are addressed throughout our prophecy, "Jacob-Israel," inherited with all his defects the two great marks of the religious temper. Jacob could dream and he could wait. Remember him by the side of the brother, who could so little think of the future that he was willing to sell its promise for a mess of pottage; who, though God was as near to him as to Jacob, never saw visions or wrestled with angels; who seemed to have no power of growth about him, but carrying the same character, unchanged through the discipline of life, finally transmitted it in stereotype to his posterity; -remember Jacob by the side of such a brother, and you have a great part of the secret of the emergence of his descendants from the life of wandering cattle-breeders to be Gods chief ministers of religion in the world. Their habits, like their fathers, might be bad, but they had the tough and malleable constitution, which it was possible to mould to something better. Like their father, they were false, unchivalrous, selfish, "with the herdsmans grossness in their blood," and much of the rancour and cruelty of their ancestors, the desert-warriors, but with it all they had the two most potential of habits-they could dream and they could wait. In his love and hope for promised Rachel, that were not quenched or soured by the substitution, after seven years service for her, of her ill-favoured sister, but began another seven years effort for herself, Jacob was a type of his strange, tenacious people, who, when they were brought face to face with some Leah of a fulfilment of their fondest ideals, as they frequently were in their history, took up again with undiminished ardour the pursuit of their first unforgetable love. It is the wonder of history, how this people passed through the countless disappointments of the prophecies to which they had given their hearts, yet with only a strengthening expectation of the arrival of the promised King and His kingdom. If other peoples have felt a gain in character from such miscarriages of belief, it has generally been at the expense of their faith. But Israels experience did not take faith away or even impair faiths elasticity. We see their appreciation of Gods promises growing only more spiritual with each postponement, and patience performing her perfect work upon their character; yet this never happens at the cost of the original buoyancy and ardour. The glory of it we ascribe, as is most due, to the power of the Word of God; but the people who could stand the strain of the discipline of such a word, its alternate glow and frost, must have been a people of extraordinary fibre and frame. When we think of how they wore for those two thousand years of postponed promise, and how they wear still, after two thousand years more of disillusion and suffering, we cease to wonder why God chose this small tribe to be His instrument on earth. Where we see their bad habits their Creator knew their sound constitution, and the constitution of Israel is a thing unique among mankind.
From the racial temper of the elect nation we pass to their history, on the singularity of which our prophet dwells with emphasis. Israels political origin had no other reason than a call to Gods service. Other peoples grew, as it were, from the soil; they were the product of a fatherland, a climate, certain physical environments: root them out of these, and, as nations, they ceased to be. But Israel had not been so nursed into nationality on the lap of nature. The captive children of Jacob had sprung into unity and independence as a nation at the special call of God, and to serve His will in the world, -His will that so lay athwart the natural tendencies of the peoples. All down their history it is wonderful to see how it was the conscience of this service, which in periods of progress was the real national genius in Israel, and in times of decay or of political dissolution upheld the assurance of the nations survival. Whenever a ruler like Ahaz forgot that Israels imperishableness was bound up with their faithfulness to Gods service, and sought to preserve his throne by alliances with the world-powers, then it was that Israel were most in danger of absorption into the world. And, conversely, when disaster came down, and there was no hope in the sky, it was upon the inward sense of their election to the service of God that the prophets rallied the peoples faith and assured them of their survival as a nation. They brought to Israel that sovereign message which renders all who hear it immortal: "God has a service for you to serve upon earth." In the Exile especially, the wonderful survival of the nation, with the subservience of all history to that end, is made to turn on this, -that Israel has a unique purpose to serve. When Jeremiah and Ezekiel seek to assure the captives of their return to the land and of the restoration of the people, they commend so unlikely a promise by reminding them that the nation is the Servant of God. This name, applied by them for the first time to the nation as a whole, they bind up with the national existence. "Fear thou not, O My Servant Jacob, saith Jehovah; neither be dismayed. O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity." These words plainly say, that Israel as a nation cannot die, for God has a use for them to serve. The singularity of Israels redemption from Babylon is due to the singularity of the service that God has for the nation to perform. Our prophet speaks in the same strain: "Thou, Israel, My Servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham My lover, whom I took hold of from the ends of the earth and its corners. I have called thee and said unto thee, My Servant art thou, I have chosen thee and have not cast thee away". {Isa_41:8 ff} No one can miss the force of these words. They are the assurance of Israels miraculous survival, not because he is Gods favourite, but because he is Gods servant, with a unique work in the world. Many other verses repeat the same truth. They call "Israel the Servant," and "Jacob the chosen," of God, in order to persuade the people that they are not forgotten of Him, and that their seed shall live and be blessed. Israel survives because he serves "Servus servatur."
Now for this service, -which had been the purpose of the nations election at first, the mainstay of its unique preservation since, and the reason of all its singular pre-eminence before God, -Israel was equipped by two great experiences. These were Redemption and Revelation.
On the former redemptions of Israel from the power of other nations our prophet does not dwell much. You feel that they are present to his mind, for he sometimes describes the coming redemption from Babylon in terms of them. And once, in an appeal to the "Arm of Jehovah," he calls out: "Awake like the days of old, ancient generations! Art thou not it that hewed Rahab in pieces, that pierced the Dragon? Art thou not it which dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; that made the depths of the sea a way of passage for the redeemed?" There is, too, that beautiful passage in chapter 63, which "makes mention of the loving-kindnesses of Jehovah, according to all that He hath bestowed upon us"; which describes the "carriage of the people all the days of old," how "He brought them out of the sea, caused His glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses, divided the water before them, led them through the deeps as a horse on the meadow, that they stumbled not." But, on the whole, our prophet is too much engrossed with the immediate prospect of release from Babylon, to remember that past, of which it has been truly said, "He hath not dealt so with any people." It is the new glory that is upon him. He counts the deliverance from Babylon as already come; to his rapt eye it is its marvellous power and costliness, which already clothe the people in their unique brilliance and honour. "Thus saith Jehovah, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake have I sent to Babylon, and I will bring down their nobles, all of them, and the Chaldeans, in the ships of their exulting.": But it is more than Babylon that is balanced against them. "I am Jehovah, thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour. I am giving as thy ransom, Egypt, Cush and Seba in exchange for thee, because thou art precious in mine eyes, and hast made thyself valuable" (lit., "of weight"); "and I have loved thee, therefore do I give mankind for thee, and peoples for thy life. Mankind for thee, and peoples for thy life,"-all the world for this little people? It is intelligible only because this little people are to be for all the world. "Ye are My witnesses that I am God. I will also give thee for a light to nations, to be My salvation to the end of the earth."
But more than on the Redemption, which Israel experienced, our prophet dwells on the Revelation, that has equipped them for their destiny. In a passage, in chapter 43, to which we shall return, the present stupid and unready character of the mass of the people is contrasted with the "instruction" which God has lavished upon them. "Thou hast seen many things, and wilt not observe: there is opening of the ears, but he heareth not. Jehovah was pleased for His righteousness sake to magnify the instruction and make it glorious, -but that"-the result and the precipitate of it all-"is a people robbed and spoiled." The word "Instruction" or "Revelation" is that same technical term, which we have met with before, for Jehovahs special training and illumination of Israel. How special these were, how distinct from the highest doctrine and practice of any other nation in that world to which Israel belonged, is a historical fact that the results of recent research enable us to state in a few sentences.
Recent exploration in the East, and the progress of Semitic philology, have proved that the system of religion which prevailed among the Hebrews had a very great deal in common with the systems of the neighbouring and related heathen nations. This common element included not only such things as ritual and temple-furniture, or the details of priestly organisation, but even the titles and many of the attributes of God, and especially the forms of the covenant in which He drew near to men. But the discovery of this common element has only thrown into more striking relief the presence at work in the Hebrew religion of an independent and original principle. In the Hebrew religion historians observe a principle of selection operating upon the common Semitic materials for worship, -ignoring some of them, giving prominence to others, and with others again changing the reference and application. Grossly immoral practices are forbidden; forbidden, too, are those superstitions, which, like augury and divination, draw men away from single-minded attention to the moral issues of life; and even religious customs are omitted, such as the employment of women in the sanctuary, which, however innocent in themselves, might lead men into temptations not desirable in connection with the professional pursuit of religion. In short, a stern and inexorable conscience was at work in the Hebrew religion, which was not at work in any of the religions most akin to it. In our previous volume we saw the same conscience inspiring the prophets. Prophecy was not confined to the Hebrews; it was a general Semitic institution; but no one doubts the absolutely distinct character of the prophecy, which was conscious of having the Spirit of Jehovah. Its religious ideas were original, and in it we have, as all admit, a moral phenomenon unique in history. When we turn to ask the secret of this distinction, we find the answer in the character of God, whom Israel served. The God explains the people; Israel is the response to Jehovah. Each of the laws of the nation is enforced by the reason, "For I am holy." Each of the prophets brings his message from a God, "exalted in righteousness." In short, look where you will in the Old Testament, -come to it as a critic or as a worshipper, -you discover the revealed character of Jehovah to be the effective principle at work. It is this Divine character which draws Israel from among the nations to their destiny, which selects and builds the law to be a wall around them, and which by each revelation of itself discovers to the people both the measure of their delinquency and the new ideals of their services to humanity. Like the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, we see it in front of Israel at every stage of their marvellous progress down the ages.
So that when Jehovah says that "He has magnified the Revelation and made it glorious," He speaks of a magnitude of a real, historical kind, that can be tested by exact methods of observation. Israels election by Jehovah, their formation, their unique preparation for service, are not the mere boasts of an overweening patriotism, but sober names for historical processes as real and evident as any that history contains.
To sum up, then. If Jehovahs sovereignty be absolute, so also is the uniqueness of Israels calling and equipment for His Service. For, to begin with, Israel had the essential religious temper; they enjoyed a unique moral instruction and discipline: and by the side of this they were conscious of a series of miraculous deliverances from servitude and from dissolution. So singular an experience and career were not, as we have seen, bestowed from any arbitrary motive, which exhausted itself upon Israel, but in accordance with Gods universal method of specialisation of function were granted to fit the nation as an instrument for a practical end. The sovereign unity of God does not mean equality in His creation. The universe is diverse. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; and even so in the moral kingdom of Him, who is Lord of the Hosts of both earth and heaven, each nation has its own destiny and function. Israels was religion; Israel was Gods specialist in religion.
For confirmation of this we turn to the supreme witness. Jesus was born a Jew, He confined His ministry to Judaea, and He has told us why. By various passing allusions, as well as by deliberate statements, He revealed His sense of a great religious difference between Jew and Gentile. "Use not vain repetitions as the Gentiles do. For after all these things do the nations of the world seek; but your Father knoweth that you have need of these things." He refused to work except upon Jewish hearts: "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And He charged His disciples, saying, Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans; but go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel." And again He said to the woman of Samaria: "Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews."
These sayings of our Lord have created as much question as the preeminence given in the Old Testament to a single people by a God who is described as the one God of Heaven and earth. Was He narrower of heart than Paul, His servant, who was debtor to Greek and Barbarian? Or was He ignorant of the universal character of His mission till it was forced upon His reluctant sympathies by the importunity of such heathen as the Syrophenician woman? A little common-sense dispels the perplexity, and leaves the problem, over which volumes have been written, no problem at all. Our Lord limited Himself to Israel, not because He was narrow, but because He was practical; not from ignorance, but from wisdom. He came from heaven to sow the seed of Divine truth; and where in all humanity should He find the soil so ready as within the long-chosen people? He knew of that discipline of the centuries. In the words of His own parable, the Son when He came to earth directed His attention not to a piece of desert, but to "the vineyard" which His Fathers servants had so long cultivated, and where the soil was open. Jesus came to Israel because He expected "faith in Israel." That this practical end was the deliberate intention of His will, is proved by the fact that when He found faith elsewhere, either in Syrian or Greek or Roman hearts, He did not hesitate to let His love and power go forth to them.
In short, we shall have no difficulty about these Divine methods with a single, elect people, if we only remember that to be Divine is to be practical. "Yet God also is wise," said Isaiah to the Jews when they preferred their own clever policies to Jehovahs guidance. And we need to be told the same, who murmur that to confine Himself to a single nation was not the ideal thing for the One God to do; or who imagine that it was left to one of our Lords own creatures to suggest to Him the policy of His mission upon earth. We are shortsighted: and the Almighty is past finding out. But this at least it is possible for us to see, that in choosing one nation to be His agent among men, God chose the type of instrument best fitted at the time for the work for which He designed it, and that in choosing Israel to be that nation, He chose a people of temper singularly suitable to His end.
Israels election as a nation, therefore, was to Service. To be a nation and to be Gods Servant was pretty much one and the same thing for Israel. Israel were to survive the Exile, because they were to serve the world. Let us carry this over to the study of our next chapter-The Servant of Jehovah.
CHAPTER XVI
THE SERVANT OF THE LORD
Isa_41:8-20; Isa_42:1-7; Isa_42:18; Isa_43:5-10; Isa_49:1-9; Isa_1:4-10; Isa_52:13-15
With chapter 42, we reach a distinct stage in our prophecy. The preceding chapters have been occupied with the declaration of the great, basal truth, that Jehovah is the One Sovereign God. This has been declared to two classes of hearers in succession-to Gods own people, Israel, in chapter 40, and to the heathen in chapter 41. Having established His sovereignty, God now publishes His will, again addressing these two classes according to the purpose which He has for each. Has He vindicated Himself to Israel, the Almighty and Righteous God, Who will give His people freedom and strength: He will now define to them the mission for which that strength and freedom are required. Has He proved to the Gentiles that He is the one true God: He will declare to them now what truth He has for them to learn. In short, to use modern terms, the apologetic of chapters 40-41 is succeeded by the missionary programme of chapter 42. And although, from the necessities of the case, we are frequently brought back, in the course of the prophecy, to its fundamental claims for the Godhead of Jehovah, we are nevertheless sensible that with ver. 1 of chapter 42 (Isa_42:1) we make a distinct advance. It is one of those logical steps which, along with a certain chronological progress that we have already felt, assures us that Isaiah, whether originally by one or more authors, is in its present form a unity, with a distinct order and principle of development.
The Purpose of God is identified with a Minister or Servant, whom He commissions to carry it out in the world. This Servant is brought before us with all the urgency with which Jehovah has presented Himself, and next to Jehovah he turns out to be the most important figure of the prophecy. Does the prophet insist that God is the only source and sufficiency of His peoples salvation: it is with equal emphasis that He introduces the Servant as Gods indispensable agent in the work. Cyrus is also acknowledged as an elect instrument. But neither in closeness to God, nor in effect upon the world, is Cyrus to be compared for an instant to the Servant. Cyrus is subservient and incidental: with the overthrow of Babylon, for which he was raised up, he will disappear from the stage of our prophecy. But Gods purpose, which uses the gates opened by Cyrus, only to pass through them with the redeemed people to the regeneration of the whole world, is to be carried to this Divine consummation by the Servant: its universal and glorious progress is identified with his career. Cyrus flashes through these pages a well-polished sword: it is only his swift and brilliant usefulness that is allowed to catch our eye. But the Servant is a Character, to delineate whose immortal beauty and example the prophet devotes as much space as he does to Jehovah Himself. As he turns again and again to speak of Gods omnipotence and faithfulness and agonising love for His own, so with equal frequency and fondness does he linger on every feature of the Servants conduct and aspect: His gentleness, His patience, His courage, His purity, His meekness; His daily wakefulness to Gods voice, the swiftness and brilliance of His speech for others, His silence under His own torments; His resorts-among the bruised, the prisoners, the forwandered of Israel, the weary, and them that sit in darkness, the far-off heathen; His warfare with the world, His face set like a flint; His unworldly beauty, which men call ugliness; His unnoticed presence in His own generation, yet the effect of His face upon kings; His habit of woe, a man of sorrows and acquainted with sickness: His sore stripes and bruises, His judicial murder, His felons grave; His exaltation and eternal glory-till we may reverently say that these pictures, by their vividness and charm, have drawn our eyes away from our prophets visions of God, and have caused the chapters in which they occur to be oftener read among us, and learned by heart, than the chapters in which God Himself is lifted up and adored. Jehovah and Jehovahs Servant-these are the two heroes of the drama.
Now we might naturally expect that so indispensable and fondly imagined a figure would also be defined past all ambiguity, whether as to His time or person or name. But the opposite is the case. About Scripture there are few more intricate questions than those on the Servant of the Lord. Is He a Person or Personification? If the latter, is He a Personification of all Israel? Or of a part of Israel? Or of the ideal Israel? Or of the Order of the Prophets? Or if a Person-is he the prophet himself? Or a martyr who has already lived and suffered, like Jeremiah? Or One still to come, like the promised Messiah? Each of these suggestions has not only been made about the Servant, but derives considerable support from one or another of our prophets dissolving views of his person and work. A final answer to them can be given only after a comparative study of all the relevant passages; but as these are scattered over the prophecy, and our detailed exposition of them must necessarily be interrupted, it will be of advantage to take here a prospect of them all, and see to what they combine to develop this sublime character and mission. And after we have seen what the prophecies themselves teach concerning the Servant, we shall inquire how they were understood and fulfilled by the New Testament; and that will show us how to expound and apply them with regard to ourselves.
1.
The Hebrew word for "Servant" means a person at the disposal of another-to carry out his will, do his work, represent his interests. It was thus applied to the representatives of a king or the worshippers of a god. All Israelites were thus in a sense the "servants of Jehovah"; though in the singular the title was reserved for persons of extraordinary character and usefulness.
But we have seen, as clearly as possible, that God set apart for His chief service upon earth, not an individual nor a group of individuals, but a whole nation in its national capacity. We have seen Israels political origin and preservation bound up with that service; we have heard the whole nation plainly called, by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the Servant of Jehovah. Nothing could be more clear than this, that in the earlier years of the Exile the Servant of Jehovah was Israel as a whole, Israel as a body politic.
It is also in this sense that our prophet first uses the title in a passage we have already quoted; {Isa_51:8} "Thou Israel, My Servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham My lover, whom I took hold of from the ends of the earth and its corners! I called thee and said unto thee, My Servant art thou. I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away." Here the "Servant" is plainly the historical nation, descended from Abraham, and the subject of those national experiences which are traced in the previous chapter. It is the same in the following verses:- Isa_44:1 ff: "Yet now hear, O Jacob My Servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen: thus saith Jehovah thy Maker, and thy Moulder from the womb, He wilt help thee. Fear not, My servant Jacob; and Jeshurun, whom I have chosen I will pour My spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring." Isa_44:21 : "Remember these things, O Jacob; and Israel, for My servant art thou: I have formed thee; a servant for Myself art thou; O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of Me." Isa_48:20 : "Go ye forth from Babylon; say ye, Jehovah hath redeemed His servant Jacob." In all these verses, which bind up the nations restoration from exile with the fact that God called it to be His Servant, the title "Servant" is plainly equivalent to the national name "Israel" or "Jacob" But "Israel" or "Jacob" is not a label for the mere national idea, or the bare political framework, without regard to the living individuals included in it. To the eye and heart of Him, "Who counts the number of the stars," Israel means no mere outline, but all the individuals of the living generation of the people-"thy seed," that is, every born Israelite, however fallen or forwandered. This is made clear in a very beautiful passage in chapter 43 (Isa_43:1-7): "Thus saith Jehovah, thy Creator, O Jacob; thy Moulder, O Israel Fear not, for I am with thee; from the sunrise I will bring thy seed, and from the sunset will I gather thee; My sons from far, and My daughters from the end of the earth; every one who is called by My name, and whom for My glory I have created, formed, yea, I have made him." To this Israel-Israel as a whole, yet no mere abstraction or outline of the nation, but the people in mass and bulk-every individual of whom is dear to Jehovah, and in some sense shares His calling and equipment-to this Israel the title "Servant of Jehovah" is at first applied by our prophet.
2.
We say "at first," for very soon the prophet has to make a distinction, and to sketch the Servant as something less than the actual nation. The distinction is obscure; it has given rise to a very great deal of controversy. But it is so natural, where a nation is the subject, and of such frequent occurrence in other literatures, that we may almost state it as a general law.
In all the passages quoted above, Israel has been spoken of in the passive mood, as the object of some affection or action on the part of God: "loved," "formed," "chosen," "called," and "about to be redeemed by Him." Now, so long as a people thus lie passive, their prophet will naturally think of them as a whole. In their shadow his eye can see them only in the outline of their mass; in their common suffering and servitude his heart will go out to all their individuals, as equally dear and equally in need of redemption. But when the hour comes for the people to work out their own salvation, and they emerge into action, it must needs be different. When they are no more the object of their prophets affection only, but pass under the test of his experience and judgment, then distinctions naturally appear upon them. Lifted to the light of their destiny, their inequality becomes apparent; tried by its strain, part of them break away. And so, though the prophet continues still to call on the nation by its name to fulfil its calling, what he means by that name is no longer the bulk and the body of the citizenship. A certain ideal of the people fills his minds eye - an ideal, however, which is no mere spectre floating above his own generation, but is realised in their noble and aspiring portion-although his ignorance as to the exact size of this portion must always leave his image of them more or less ideal to his eyes. It will be their quality rather than their quantity that is clear to him. In modern history we have two familiar illustrations of this process of winnowing and idealising a people in the light of their destiny, which may prepare us for the more obscure instance of it in our prophecy.
In a well-known passage in the "Areopagitica," Milton exclaims, "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle renewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means." In this passage the "nation" is no longer what Milton meant by the term in the earlier part of his treatise, where "England" stands simply for the outline of the whole English people; but the "nation" is the true genius of England realised in her enlightened and aspiring sons, and breaking away from the hindering and debasing members of the body politic-"the timorous and flocking birds with those also that love the twilight"-who are indeed Englishmen after the flesh, but form no part of the nations better self.
Or, recall Mazzinis bitter experience. To no man was his Italy more really one than to this ardent son of hers, who loved every born Italian because he was an Italian, and counted none of the fragments of his unhappy country too petty or too corrupt to be included in the hope of her restoration. To Mazzinis earliest imagination, it was the whole Italian seed, who were ready for redemption, and would rise to achieve it at his summons. But when his summons came, how few responded, and after the first struggles how fewer still remained, -Mazzini himself has told us with breaking heart. The real Italy was but a handful of born Italians; at times it seemed to shrink to the prophet alone. From such a core the conscience indeed spread again, till the entire people was delivered from tyranny and from schism, and now every peasant and burgher from the Alps to Sicily understands what Italy means, and is proud to be an Italian. But for a time Mazzini and his few comrades stood alone. Others of their blood and speech were Piedmontese, Popes men, Neapolitans, -merchants, lawyers, scholars, -or merely selfish and sensual. They alone were Italians; they alone were Italy.
It is a similar winnowing process, through which we see our prophets thoughts pass with regard to Israel. Him, too, experience teaches that "the many are called, but the few chosen." So long as his people lie in the shadow of captivity, so long as he has to speak of them in the passive mood, the object of Gods call and preparation, it is "their seed," the born people in bulk and mass, whom he names Israel, and entitles "the Servant of Jehovah." But the moment that he lifts them to their mission in the world, and to the light of their destiny, a difference becomes apparent upon them, and the Servant of Jehovah, though still called Israel, shrinks to something less than the living generation, draws off to something finer than the mass of the people. How, indeed, could it be otherwise with this strange people, than which no nation on earth had a loftier ideal identified with its history, or more frequently turned upon its better self, with a sword in its hand. Israel, though created a nation by God for His service, was always what Paul found it, divided into an "Israel after the flesh," and an "Israel after the spirit." But it was in the Exile that this distinction gaped most broad. With the fall of Jerusalem, the political framework, which kept the different elements of the nation together, was shattered, and these were left loose to the action of moral forces. The baser elements were quickly absorbed by heathendom; the nobler, that remained loyal to the divine call, were free to assume a new and ideal form. Every year spent in Babylonia made it more apparent that the true and effective Israel of the future would not coincide with all the "seed of Jacob," who went into exile. Numbers of the latter were as contented with their Babylonian circumstance as numbers of Mazzinis "Italians" were satisfied to live on as Austrian and Papal subjects. Many, as we have seen, became idolaters; many more settled down into the prosperous habits of Babylonian commerce, while a large multitude besides were scattered far out of sight across the world. It required little insight to perceive that the true, effective Israel-the real "Servant of Jehovah"-must needs be a much smaller body than the sum of all these: a loyal kernel within Israel, who were still conscious of the national calling, and capable of carrying it out; who stood sensible of their duty to the whole world, but whose first conscience was for their lapsed and lost countrymen. This Israel within Israel was the real "Servant of the Lord"; to personify it in that character-however vague might be the actual proportion it would assume in his own or in any other generation-would be as natural to our dramatic prophet as to personify the nation as a whole.
All this very natural process-this passing from the historical Israel, the nation originally designed by God to be His Servant, to the conscious and effective Israel, that uncertain quantity within the present and every future generation-takes place in the chapters before us; and it will be sufficiently easy for us to follow if we only remember that our prophet is not a dogmatic theologian, careful to make clear each logical distinction, but a dramatic poet, who delivers his ideas in groups, tableaux, dialogues, interrupted by choruses; and who writes in a language incapable of expressing such delicate differences, except by dramatic contrasts, and by the one other figure of which he is so fond-paradox.
Perhaps the first traces of distinction between the real Servant and the whole nation are to be found in the Programme of his Mission in Isa_42:1-7. There it is said that the Servant is to be for a "covenant of the people" (Isa_42:6). I have explained below why we are to understand "people" as here meaning Israel. And in Isa_42:7 it is said of the Servant that he is "to open blind eyes, bring forth from prison the captive, from the house of bondage dwellers in darkness": phrases that are descriptive, of course, of the captive Israel. Already, then, in chapter 42 the Servant is something distinct from the whole nation, whose Covenant and Redeemer he is to be.
The next references to the Servant are a couple of paradoxes, which are evidently the prophets attempt to show why it was necessary to draw in the Servant of Jehovah from the whole to a part of the people. The first of these paradoxes is in Isa_42:18.
Ye deaf, hearken! and ye blind, look ye to see!
Who is blind but My Servant, and deaf as My Messenger whom I send?
Who is blind as Meshullam, and blind as the Servant of Jehovah?
Vision of many things-and thou dost not observe,
Opening of ears and he hears not.
The context shows that the Servant here-or Meshullam, as he is called, the "devoted" or "submissive one," from the same root, and of much the same form as the Arabic Muslim-is the whole people; but they are entitled "Servant" only in order to show how unfit they are for the task to which they have been designated, and what a paradox their title is beside their real character. God had given them every opportunity by "making great His instruction" (Isa_42:21), and, when that failed, by His sore discipline in exile (Isa_42:24-25). "For who gave Jacob for spoil and Israel to the robbers? Did not Jehovah? He against whom we sinned, and they would not walk in His ways, neither were obedient to His instruction. So He poured upon him the fury of His anger and the force of war." But even this did not awake the dull nation. "Though it set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it kindled upon him, yet he laid it not to heart." The nation as a whole had been favoured with Gods revelation; as a whole they had been brought into His purifying furnace of the Exile. But as they have benefited by neither the one nor the other, the natural conclusion is that as a whole they are no more fit to be Gods Servant. Such is the hint which this paradox is intended to give us.
But a little further on there is an obverse paradox, which plainly says, that although the people are blind and deaf as a whole, still the capacity for service is found among them alone. {Isa_43:8; Isa_43:10}
Bring forth the blind people-yet eyes are there!
And the deaf, yet ears have they!
Ye are My witnesses, saith Jehovah, and My Servant whom I have chosen.
The preceding verses (Isa_43:1-7) show us that it is again the whole people, in their bulk and scattered fragments, who are referred to. Blind though they be, "yet are there eyes" among them; deaf though they be, yet "they have ears." And so Jehovah addresses them all, in contradistinction to the heathen peoples (Isa_43:9), as His Servant.
These two complementary paradoxes together show this: that while Israel as a whole is unfit to be the Servant, it is nevertheless within Israel, alone of all the worlds nations, that the true capacities for service are found-"eyes are there, ears have they." They prepare us for the Servants testimony about himself, in which, while he owns himself to be distinct from Israel as a whole, he is nevertheless still called Israel. This is given in chapter 49. And He said unto me, "My Servant art thou; Israel, in whom I will glorify Myself. And now saith Jehovah, my moulder from the womb to be a Servant unto Him, to turn again Jacob to Him, and that Israel might not be destroyed; and I am of value in the eyes of Jehovah, and my God is my strength. And He said, It is too light for thy being My Servant, merely to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will also set thee for a light of nations, to be My salvation to the end of the earth". {Isa_49:3-6} Here the Servant, though still called Israel, is clearly distinct from the nation as a whole, for part of his work is to raise the nation up again. And, moreover, he tells us this as his own testimony about himself. He is no longer spoken of in the third person, he speaks for himself in the first. This is significant. It is more than a mere artistic figure, the effect of our prophets dramatic style-as if the Servant now stood opposite him, so vivid and near that he heard him speak, and quoted him in the direct form of speech. It is more probably the result of moral sympathy: the prophet speaks out of the heart of the Servant, in the name of that better portion of Israel which was already conscious of the Divine call, and of its distinction in this respect from the mass of the people.
It is futile to inquire what this better portion of Israel actually was, for whom the prophet speaks in the first person. Some have argued, from the stress which the speaker lays upon his gifts of speech and office of preaching, that what is now signified by the Servant is the order of the prophets; but such forget that in these chapters the proclamation of the Kingdom of God is the ideal, not of prophets only, but of the whole people. Zion as a whole is to be "heraldess of good news". {Isa_40:9} It is, therefore, not the official function of the prophet-order which the Servant here owns, but the ideal of the prophet-nation. Others have argued from the direct form of speech, that the prophet puts himself forward as the Servant. But no individual would call himself Israel. And as Professor Cheyne remarks, the passage is altogether too self-assertive to be spoken by any man of himself as an individual; although, of course, our prophet could not have spoken of the true Israel with such sympathy, unless he had himself been part of it. The writer of these verses may have been, for the time, as virtually the real Israel as Mazzini was the real Italy. But still he does not speak as an individual. The passage is manifestly a piece of personification. The Servant is Israel- not now the nation as a whole, not the body and bulk of the Israelites, for they are to be the object of his first efforts, but the loyal, conscious, and effective Israel, realised in some of her members, and here personified by our prophet, who himself speaks for her out of his heart, in the first person.
By chapter 49, then, the Servant of Jehovah is a personification of the true, effective Israel as distinguished from the mass of the nation-a Personification, but not yet a Person. Something within Israel has wakened up to find itself conscious of being the Servant of Jehovah, and distinct from the mass of the nation-something that is not yet a Person. And this definition of the Servant may stand (with some modifications) for his next appearance in Isa_50:4-9. In this passage the Servant, still speaking in the first person, continues to illustrate his experience as a prophet, and carries it to its consequence in martyrdom. But let us notice that he now no longer calls himself Israel, and that if it were not for the previous passages it would be natural to suppose that an individual was speaking. This supposition is confirmed by a verse that follows the Servants speech, and is spoken, as chorus, by the prophet himself. "Who among you is a fearer of Jehovah, obedient to the voice of His Servant, who walketh in darkness, and hath no light. Let him trust in the name of Jehovah, and stay himself upon his God." In this too much neglected verse, which forms a real transition to Isa_52:13-53, the prophet is addressing any individual Israelite, on behalf of a personal God. It is very difficult to refrain from concluding that therefore the Servant also is a Person. Let us, however, not go beyond what we have evidence for; and note only that in chapter 1 the Servant is no more called Israel, and is represented not as if he were one part of the nation, over against the mass of it, but as if he were one individual over against other individuals; that in fine the Personification of chapter 49 has become much more difficult to distinguish from an actual Person.
3.
This brings us to the culminating passage- Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12. Is the Servant still a Personification here, or at last and unmistakably a Person?
It may relieve the air of that electricity, which is apt to charge it at the discussion of so classic a passage as this, and secure us calm weather in which to examine exegetical details, if we at once assert, what none but prejudiced Jews have ever denied, that this great prophecy, known as the fifty-third of Isaiah, was fulfilled in One Person, Jesus of Nazareth, and achieved in all its details by Him alone. But, on the other hand, it requires also to be pointed out that Christs personal fulfilment of it does not necessarily imply that our prophet wrote it of a Person. The present expositor hopes, indeed, to be able to give strong reasons for the theory usual among us, that the Personification of previous passages is at last in chapter 53 presented as a Person. But he fails to understand, why critics should be regarded as unorthodox or at variance with New Testament teaching on the subject, who, while they acknowledge that only Christ fulfilled chapter 53, are yet unable to believe that the prophet looked upon the Servant as an individual, and who regard chapter 53 as simply a sublimer form of the prophets previous pictures of the ideal people of God. Surely Christ could and did fulfil prophecies other than personal ones. The types of Him, which the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament, are not exclusively individuals. Christ is sometimes represented as realising in His Person and work statements, which, as they were first spoken, could only refer to Israel, the nation. Matthew, for instance, applies to Jesus a text which Hosea wrote primarily of the whole Jewish people: "Out of Egypt have I called My Son." {Hos_11:1; Mat_2:15} Or, to take an instance from our own prophet-who but Jesus fulfilled chapter 49, in which, as we have seen, it is not an individual, but the ideal of the prophet people, that is figured? So that, even if it were proved past all doubt-proved from grammar, context, and every prophetical analogy-that in writing chapter 53 our prophet had still in view that aspect of the nation which he has personified in chapter 49, such a conclusion would not weaken the connection between the prophecy and its unquestioned fulfilment by Jesus Christ, nor render the two less evidently part of one Divine design.
But we are by no means compelled to adopt the impersonal view of chapter 53. On the contrary, while the question is one to which all experts know the difficulty of finding an absolutely conclusive answer one way or the other, it seems to me that reasons prevail which make for the personal interpretation.
Let us see what exactly are the objections to taking Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12 in a personal sense. First, it is very important to observe that they do not rise out of the grammar or language of the passage. The reference of both of these is consistently individual. Throughout, the Servant is spoken of in the singular. The name Israel is not once applied to him: nothing-except that the nation has also suffered-suggests that he is playing a national role; there is no reflection in his fate of the features of the Exile. The antithesis, which was evident in previous passages, between a better Israel and the mass of the people has disappeared. The Servant is contrasted, not with the nation as a whole, but with His people as individuals. "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." As far as grammar can, this surely distinguishes a single person. It is true, that one or two phrases suggest so colossal a figure-"he shall startle many nations, and kings shall shut their mouths at him"-that for a moment we think of the spectacle of a people rather than of a solitary human presence. But even such descriptions are not incompatible with a single person. On the other hand, there are phrases which we can scarcely think are used of any but a historical individual; such as that he was taken from "oppression and judgment," that is from a process of law which was tyranny, from a judicial murder, and that he belonged to a particular generation-"As for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living." Surely a historical individual is the natural meaning of these words. And, in fact, critics like Ewald and Wellhausen, who interpret the passage, in its present context, of the ideal Israel, find themselves forced to argue that it has been borrowed for this use from the older story of some actual martyr-so individual do its references seem to them throughout.
If, then, the grammar and language of the passage thus conspire to convey the impression of an individual, what are the objections to supposing that an individual is meant? Critics have felt, in the main, three objections to the discovery of a historical individual in Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12.
The first of these that we take is chronological, and arises from the late date to which we have found it necessary to assign the prophecy. Our prophet, it is averred, associates the work of the Servant with the restoration of the people; but he sees that restoration too close to him to be able to think of the appearance, ministry, and martyrdom of a real historic life happening before it. (Our prophet, it will be remembered, wrote about 546, and the Restoration came in 538.) "There is no room for a history like that of the suffering Servant between the prophets place and the Restoration."
Now, this objection might be turned, even if it were true that the prophet identified the suffering Servants career with so immediate and so short a process as the political deliverance from Babylon. For, in that case, the prophet would not be leaving less room for the Servant, than, in chapter 9, Isaiah himself leaves for the birth, the growth to manhood, and the victories of the Prince-of-the-Four-Names, before that immediate relief from the Assyrian which he expects the Prince to effect. But does our prophet identify the suffering Servants career with the redemption from Babylon and the Return? It is plain that he does not-at least in those portraits of the Servant, which are most personal. Our prophet has really two prospects for Israel-one, the actual deliverance from Babylon; the other, a spiritual redemption and restoration. If, like his fellow prophets, he sometimes runs these two together, and talks of the latter in the terms of the former, he keeps them on the whole distinct, and assigns them to different agents. The burden of the first he lays on Cyrus, though he also connects it with the Servant, while the Servant is still to him an aspect of the nation (see Isa_49:8-9). It is temporary, and soon passes from his thoughts, Cyrus being dropped with it. But the other, the spiritual redemption, is confined to no limits of time; and it is with its process-indefinite in date and in length of period-that he associates the most personal portraits of the Servant (chapter 1 and Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12). In these the Servant, now spoken of as an individual, has nothing to do with that temporary work of freeing the people from Babylon, which was over in a year or two, and which seems to be now behind the prophets standpoint. His is the enduring office of prophecy, sympathy, and expiation- an office in which there is all possible "room" for such a historical career as is sketched for him. His relation to Cyrus, before whose departure from connection with Israels fate the Servant does not appear as a person, is thus most interesting. Perhaps we may best convey it in a homely figure. On the ship of Israels fortunes-as on every ship and on every voyage-the prophet sees two personages. One is the Pilot through the shallows, Cyrus, who is dropped as soon as the shallows are past; and the other is the Captain of the ship, who remains always identified with it - the Servant. The Captain does not come to the front till the Pilot has gone: but, both alongside the Pilot, and after the Pilot has been dropped, there is every room for his office.
The second main objection to identifying an individual in Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12, is. that an individual with such features has no analogy in Hebrew prophecy. It is said that, neither in his humiliation nor in the kind of exaltation which is ascribed to him, is there his like in any other individual in the Old Testament, and certainly not in the Messiah. Elsewhere in Scripture (it is averred) the Messiah reigns, and is glorious; it is the people who suffer, and come through suffering to power. Nor is the Messiahs royal splendour at all the same as the very vague influence, evidently of a spiritual kind, which is attributed to the Servant in the end of chapter 53. The Messiah is endowed with the military and political virtues. He is a warrior, a king, a judge. He "sits on the throne of David, He establishes Davids kingdom. He smites the land with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He slays the wicked." But very different phrases are used of the Servant. He is not called king, though kings shut their mouths at him, -he is a prophet and a martyr, and an expiation; and the phrases, "I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong," are simply metaphors of the immense spiritual success and influence with which His self-sacrifice shall be rewarded; as a spiritual power He shall take His place among the dominions and forces of the world. This is a true prophecy of what Israel, that "worm of a people," should be lifted to; but it is quite different from the political throne, from which Isaiah had promised that the Messiah should sway the destinies of Israel and mankind.
But in answer to this objection to finding the Messiah, or any other influential individual, in chapter 53, we may remember that there were already traces in Hebrew prophecy of a suffering Messiah: we come across them in chapter 7. There Isaiah presents Immanuel, whom we identified with the Prince-of-the-Four-Names in chapter 9, as at first nothing but a sufferer - a sufferer from the sins of His predecessors. (Isaiah 1-39) And, even though we are wrong in taking the suffering Immanuel from the Messiah, and though Isaiah meant him only as a personification of Israel suffering for the error of Ahaz, had not the two hundred years, which elapsed between Isaiahs prophecy of Israels glorious Deliverer, been full of room enough, and, what is more, of experience enough, for the ideal champion of the people to be changed to something more spiritual in character and in work? Had the nation been baptised, for most of those two centuries, in vain, in the meaning of suffering, and in vain had they seen exemplified in their noblest spirits the fruits and glory of self-sacrifice? The type of Hero had changed in Israel since Isaiah wrote of his Prince-of-the-Four-Names. The king had been replaced by the prophet; the conqueror by the martyr; the judge who smote the land by the rod of his mouth, and slew the wicked by the breath of his lips, -by the patriot who took his countrys sins upon his own conscience. The monarchy had perished; men knew that, even if Israel were set upon their own land again, it would not be under an independent king of their own; nor was a Jewish champion of the martial kind, such as Isaiah had promised for deliverance from the Assyrian, any more required. Cyrus, the Gentile, should do all the campaigning required against Israels enemies, and Israels native Saviour be relieved for gentler methods and more spiritual aims. It is all this experience, of nearly two centuries, which explains the omission of the features of warrior and judge from chapter 53, and their replacement by those of a suffering patriot, prophet, and priest. The reason of the change is, not because the prophet who wrote the chapter had not, as much as Isaiah, an individual in his view, but because, in the historical circumstance of the Exile, such an individual as Isaiah had promised seemed no longer probable or required.
So far, then, from the difference between chapter 53 and previous prophecies of the Messiah affording evidence that in chapter 53 it is not the Messiah who is presented, this very change that has taken place, explicable as it is from the history of the intervening centuries, goes powerfully to prove that it is the Messiah, and therefore an individual, whom the prophet so vividly describes.
The third main objection to our recognising an individual in chapter 53 is concerned only with our prophet himself. Is it not impossible, say some-or at least improbably inconsistent-for the same prophet first to have identified the Servant with the nation, and then to present him to us as an individual? We can understand the transference by the same writer of the name from the whole people to a part of the people; it is a natural transference, and the prophet sufficiently explains it. But how does he get from a part of the nation to a single individual? If in chapter 49 he personifies, under the name Servant, some aspect of the nation, we are surely bound to understand the game personification when the Servant is again introduced-unless we have an explanation to the contrary. But we have none.. The prophet gives no hint, except by dropping the name Israel, that the focus of his vision is altered, -no more paradoxes such as marked his passage from the people as a whole to a portion of them, -no consciousness that any explanation whatever is required. Therefore, however much finer the personification is drawn in chapter 53 than in chapter 49, it is surely a personification still.
To which objection an obvious answer is, that our prophet is not a systematic theologian, but a dramatic poet, who allows his characters to disclose themselves and their relation without himself intervening to define or relate them. And any one who is familiar with the literature of Israel knows, that no less than the habit of drawing in from the whole people upon a portion of them, was the habit of drawing in from a portion of the people upon one individual. The royal Messiah Himself is a case in point. The original promise to David was of a seed; but soon prophecy concentrated the seed in one glorious Prince. The promise of Israel had always culminated in an individual. Then, again, in the nations awful sufferings, it had been one man-the prophet Jeremiah-who had stood forth singly and alone, at once the incarnation of Jehovahs word, and the illustration in his own person of all the penalty that Jehovah laid upon the sinful people. With this tendency of his school to focus Israels hope on a single individual, and especially with the example of Jeremiah before him, it is almost inconceivable that our prophet could have thought of any but an individual when he drew his portrait of the suffering Servant. No doubt the national sufferings were in his heart as he wrote; it was probably a personal share in them that taught him to write so sympathetically about the Man of pains, who was familiar with ailing. But to gather and concentrate all these sufferings upon one noble figure, to describe this figure as thoroughly conscious of their moral meaning, and capable of turning them to his peoples salvation, was a process absolutely in harmony with the genius of Israels prophecy, as well as with the trend of their recent experience; and there is, besides, no word in that great chapter, in which the process culminates, but is in thorough accordance with it. So far, therefore, from its being an impossible or an unlikely thing for our prophet to have at last reached his conception of an individual, it is almost impossible to conceive of him executing so personal a portrait as Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12, without thinking of a definite historical personage, such as Hebrew prophecy had ever associated with the redemption of his people.
4.
We have now exhausted the passages in Isa 40-66 which deal with the Servant of the Lord. We have found that our prophet identifies him at first with the whole nation, and then with some indefinite portion of the nation-indefinite in quantity, but most marked in character; that this personification grows more and more difficult to distinguish from a person; and that in Isa_52:13-15 through Isa_53:1-12 there are very strong reasons, both in the text itself and in the analogy of other prophecy, to suppose that the portrait of an individual is intended. To complete our study of this development of the substance of the Servant, it is necessary to notice that it runs almost stage for stage with a development of his office. Up to chapter 49, that is to say, while he is still some aspect of the people, the Servant is a prophet. In chapter 1, where he is no longer called Israel, and approaches more nearly to an individual, his prophecy passes into martyrdom. And in chapter 53, where at last we recognise him as intended for an actual personage, his martyrdom becomes an expiation for the sins of the people. Is there a natural connection between these two developments? We have seen that it was by a very common process that our prophet transferred the national calling from the mass of the nation to a select few of the people. Is it by any equally natural tendency that he shrinks from the many to the few, as he passes from prophecy to martyrdom, or from the few to the one, as he passes from martyrdom to expiation? It is a possibility for all Gods people to be prophets: few are needed as martyrs. Is it by any moral law equally clear, that only one man should die for the people? These are questions worth thinking about. In Israels history we have already found the following facts with which to answer them. The whole living generation of Israel felt themselves to be sinbearers: "Our fathers have sinned, and we bear their iniquities." This conscience and penalty were more painfully felt by the righteous in Israel. But the keenest and heaviest sense of them was conspicuously that experienced by one man-the prophet Jeremiah. And yet all these cases from the past of Israels history do not furnish more than an approximation to the figure presented to us in chapter 53. Let us turn, therefore, to the future to see if we can find in it motive or fulfilment for this marvellous prophecy.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v8 Three servants of Jehovah are mentioned in Isaiah:
servant
Three servants of Jehovah are mentioned in Isaiah:
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(1) David Isa 37:35
(2) Israel the nation Isa 41:8-16; Isa 43:1-10; Isa 44:1-8; Isa 44:21; Isa 45:4; Isa 48:20
(3) Messiah Isa 42:1-12, Isaiah 49, entire chapter, but note especially Isa 49:5-7, where the Servant Christ restores the servant nation; Isa 50:4-6; Isa 52:13-15; Isa 53:1-12. Israel the nation was a faithless servant, but restored and converted will yet thresh mountains. Against the Servant Christ no charge of unfaithfulness or failure is brought. (See Scofield "Isa 42:1").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v8 The Lord’s Promise of a Future Victory
The Lord’s Promise of a Future Victory
v. 8. But thou, Israel, art My servant, as Jehovah, in a section replete with love and consolation, assures His children, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham, My friend, His servants, the people of His covenant, of old, especially the spiritual descendants of him who had the honor of being known as the friend of God.
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v. 9. Thou, whom I have taken from the ends of the earth and called thee from the chief men thereof, from its most remote corners, and said unto thee, Thou art My servant; I have chosen thee and not cast thee away. Note how excellently this description fits the believers of the New Testament, and how fully the glory of our calling into His kingdom is given to Jehovah alone. Therefore the Lord’s encouraging words gain in beauty with every new reading; every word, in fact, as one commentator puts it, breathes the most fervent love.
v. 10. Fear thou not, for I am with thee, with His merciful power; be not dismayed, filled with anxiety, for I am thy God, who freely gives His heart, His grace, His salvation, to His children; I will strengthen thee, so that no one can overthrow him; yea, I will help thee, upholding him who is in himself too weak to withstand the enemy; yea. I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness, for the righteousness of God, which is imputed to men by faith, is the element which sustains him in the midst of all dangers and enemies of this world and keeps him safe for the final deliverance from every evil.
v. 11. Behold, all they that were incensed against thee, who gave expression to their wrath, shall be ashamed and confounded, by the defeat and destruction which would strike them; they shall be as nothing, and they that strive with thee shall perish, since the Lord Himself would do battle for His people.
v. 12. Thou shalt seek them and shalt not find them, even them that contended with thee, daring to attack the Lord’s people; they that war against thee shall be as nothing and as a thing of naught, so utterly exterminated that not a trace of them could be found.
v. 13. For I, the Lord, thy God, will hold thy right hand, thereby imparting His almighty strength, saying unto thee, Fear not, I will help thee. Cf Deu 33:26-29. The encouragement now increases in fervency.
v. 14. Fear not, thou worm Jacob, trodden under foot as he now seems, and ye men of Israel, the poor small crew who hold to the Lord: I will help thee, saith the Lord, that is His majestic saying, and thy Redeemer (is) the Holy One of Israel, the mighty Deliverer and Vindicator of His people at all times, He who is zealous for His own honor and for the safety of His children.
v. 15. Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth, the sledge used in the Orient to cut up the straw for fodder and to separate the grain from the hull, sometimes used to put captives to death; thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff, the very world-powers being compelled to yield to the army of the Lord.
v. 16. Thou shalt fan them, as the husbandman winnows his grain, and the wind shall carry them away, like useless chaff, and the whirlwind, the strong tempest, shall scatter them; and thou, seeing this marvelous victory over the mighty enemies, shalt rejoice in the Lord and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel, properly giving all honor to Him who is the zealous Deliverer of His people. Not only will the enemies be overthrown, however, but the Church of God will find divine refreshment in the midst of the tribulation of this world.
v. 17. When the poor and needy seek water, spiritual comfort and strength, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, their heart parched, exhausted with the heat of the affliction, I, the Lord, will hear them, their sighs and their prayers; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them, not permit them to perish in their misery.
v. 18. I will open rivers in high places, in dry rocks, as He did in the wilderness, and fountains in the midst of the valleys, so that the headsprings will yield abundantly. I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water. In the midst of Israel’s great spiritual trouble the Lord Himself would send refreshment for their souls in the Word of His grace.
v. 19. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah-tree, the acacia, or Egyptian thorn, and the myrtle, and the oil-tree, the wild olive, valued as an ornamental tree; I will set in the desert the fir-tree, the cypress, and the pine, the Oriental elm, and the box-tree together, the pine, the former desert becoming a garden of the Lord,
v. 20. that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, become thoroughly saturated with the knowledge, that the hand of the Lord hath done this and the Holy One of Israel hath created it. In this manner the copious spiritual refreshment which would fall to the lot of those sighing for comfort would serve for the glory of Jehovah, just as it is His mercy, and His mercy alone, which to this day is the cause of our salvation and of all spiritual blessings which we enjoy.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v8 General Information:
General Information:
Yahweh continues speaking.
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you whom I am bringing back from the ends of the earth, and whom I called from the far away places
These two lines mean basically the same thing and emphasize that Yahweh is bringing the people of Israel back to their land from distant countries. (See: Parallelism)
the ends of the earth
The places on the earth that are very far away are spoken of as if they were the places where the earth ends. See how you translated this in Isaiah 41:5. AT "the farthest places of the earth" (See: Metaphor)
I have chosen you and not rejected you
These two phrases mean basically the same thing. The second states in negative terms what the first states in positive terms. (See: Parallelism and Litotes)
translationWords
Israel
servant
Jacob
offspring
Abraham
earth
call
chosen one
reject
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv8–9 41:8-16 These two prophecies of salvation for God’s servant…
41:8-16 These two prophecies of salvation for God’s servant Israel (41:8-13, 14-16) prepare for the first of the suffering servant songs (see study note on 42:1-4).
41:8 The servant—here the nation of Israel—was God’s chosen one, whose calling was grounded in God’s purposes. • Abraham my friend: The phrase in Hebrew could mean Abraham who loves me or Abraham whom I love. See also Jas 2:23.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.