hesis. See also ESCHATOLOGY (OF THE OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW TESTAMENT).
Henry E. Dosker
SERVANT OF JEHOVAH; SERVANT OF THE LORD; SERVANT OF YAHWEH
" 1. Historical Situation
2. The Authorship of Isaiah, Chapters 40-66
3. The Prophet of the Exile
4. The Unity of Isaiah 40-66
5. Principal Ideas of Isaiah 40-66
6. The Servant-Passages
(1) Date of the Servant-Passages
(2) Discussion of the Passages
(3) Whom Did the Prophet Mean by the Servant?
(4) The Psychology of the Prophecy
7. Place of the Servant-Passages in Old Testament Prophecy
8. Large Messianic Significance of the Servant-Passages
1. Historical Situation:
A century and a half had passed since the great days of Isaiah in Jerusalem. The world had vastly changed during those long decades when politicians had planned, armies surged back and forth, and tribes and nations had lost or won in the struggle for existence, place and power. The center of the world had changed-for Assyria had gone to its long home, and the city claiming preeminence was not Nineveh but Babylon.
Nowhere perhaps had time laid a heavier hand than on the city of Jerusalem and the country of Judah. For city and land had come to desolation, and the inhabitants of the country had become familiar with the strange sights and sounds of Babylonia, whither they had been carried by their conquerors. Many had found graves in the land of the exile, and new generations had arisen who had no memory of the hill country of their fathers. It is the situation of these captive Jews in Babylonia which is reflected and they who are addressed at the waning of the long night of captivity by the stirring message recorded in Isaiah 40-66 (leaving out of account here disputed passages in Isaiah 40-66).
2. The Authorship of Isaiah, Chapters 40-66:
The more one studies the problem of the authorship of these chapters, the more unlikely does it seem that their author penned them 150 years before the time with which they are vitally connected. It is obviously impossible to treat that problem in a detailed way here, but one may sum up the arguments by saying that in theological ideas, in style, and use of words they show such differences from the assured productions of Isaiah's pen as to point to a different authorship. And the great argument, the argument which carries the most weight to the author of this article, is that these late chapters are written from the standpoint of the exile. The exile is assumed in what is said. These chapters do not prophesy the exile, do not say it is to come; they all the time speak as though it had come. The message is not that an exile is to be, but beginning with the fact that the exile already is, it foretells deliverance. Now of course it is conceivable that God might inspire a man to put himself forward 150 years, and with a message to people who were to live then, assuming their circumstances as a background of what he said, but it is improbable to the last degree. To put it in plain, almost gruff, English, it is not the way God did things. The prophet's message was always primarily a message to his own age. Then there is no claim in the chapters themselves that Isaiah was their author. And having once been placed so that it was supposed they were by Isaiah-placed so through causes we do not know-the fact that in speaking of passages from these chapters New Testament authors referred to them by a name the people would recognize, is not a valid argument that they meant to teach anything as to their authorship. The problem had not arisen in New Testament times. Isaiah 40-66, as Professor Davidson has suggested, has a parallel in the Book of Job, each the production of a great mind, each from an author we do not know.
3. The Prophet of the Exile:
Out of the deep gloom of the exile-when the Jew was a man without a country, when it seemed as if the nation's sins had murdered hope-out of this time comes the voice most full of gladness and abounding hope of all the voices from the Old Testament life. In the midst of the proud, confident civilization of Babylonia, with its teeming wealth and exhaustl