thusiasm of the author is at its height."
The first thing we need to remember in dealing with the difficulties Davidson has brought forth is the timelessness of prophecy, and the resulting fact that every prophet saw the future as if lying just on the horizon of his own time. As prophets saw the day of Yahweh as if at hand, so it seems to me Deutero-Isaiah saw the Servant: each really afar off, yet each really seen in the colors of the present. Then we must remember that the prophets did not relate all their conceptions. They stated truths whose meaning and articulation they did not understand. They were not philosophers with a Hegelian hunger for a total view of life, and when we try to read them from this standpoint we misjudge them. Then we must remember that the prophet may here have been lifted to a height of prophetic receptivehess where he received and uttered what went beyond the limits of his own understanding. To be sure there was a point of contact, but I see no objection to the thought that in a place of unique significance and importance like this, God might use a man to utter words which reached far beyond the limits of his own understanding. In this connection some words of Professor Hermann Schultz are worth quoting: "If it is true anywhere in the history of poetry and prophecy, it is true here that the writer being full of the spirit has said more than he himself meant to say and more than he himself understood."
(4) The Psychology of the Prophecy.
This does not mean that something may. not be said about the connection of the Servant-passages with the prophet's own thought. Using Delitzsch's illustration, we can see how from regarding all Israel as the servant the prophet could narrow down to the godly part of Israel as experience taught him the faithlessness of many, and it ought not to be impossible for us to see how all that Israel really meant at its best could have focused itself in his thought upon one person. Despite Davidson's objection, I can see nothing artificial about this movement in the prophet's mind. There was probably more progression in his thought than Professor Davidson is willing to allow. If it is asked, Where was the person to whom the prophet could ascribe such greatness, conceiving as he did that he was to come at once? surely a similar question would be fair in relation to Isaiah's Messiah. The truth is that even on the threshold of the restoration there was time for a great one suddenly to arise. As John the Baptist on the Jordan watched for the coming One whom he knew not, yet who was alive, so the great prophet of the exile may have watched even day by day for the coming Servant whose work had been revealed to him.
But deep in the psychology of the prophecy is the sense of sin out of which these passages came and indications of which I think are found in the latter part of the book. The great guilt-laden past lay terribly behind the prophet, and as he mused over the sufferings of the righteous, perhaps especially drawn to tim heart-rent Jeremiah, the thought of redemptive suffering may have dawned upon him. And if in its light, and with a personal sense of sin drawn from what experiences we know not, he grapples with the problem, can we not understand, can we not see that God might flash upon him the great conception of a sin-bearer?
7. Place of the Servant-Passages in Old Testament Prophecy:
At last the idea of vicarious suffering had been connected with the deep things of the nation's life, and henceforward was a part of its heritage. To the profoundest souls it would be a part of the nation's forward look. The priestly idea had been deepened and filled with new moral meaning. The Servant was a prophet too-so priest and prophet met in one. And I think Cheyne was right when he suggested that in the Servant's exaltation in Isaiah 53, the idea of the Servant is brought nearer to that of king than we sometimes think. So in suggestion, at least, prophet, priest and king meet in the great figure of the suffering Servant.
A new rich stream had entered into prophecy, full of power 