e great fact of Isaiah 53 is vicarious suffering.
(3) Whom Did the Prophet Mean by the Servant?
(a) Obviously not all of Israel always, for the Servant is distinguished from Israel. (b) Not the godly remnant, for he is distinguished from them. Then the godly remnant does not attain to any such proportions as to fit the description of Isaiah 53. (c) And one cannot accept theory that the prophetic order is intended. The whole order is not great enough to exhaust the meaning of one of a half-dozen of the greatest lines in chapter 53.
Professor A. B. Davidson's Old Testament Prophecy contains a brilliant and exceedingly able discussion of the question which he approaches from the stand-point of Biblical rather than simply exegetical theology. His fundamental position is that in the prophet's outlook the restoration is the consummation. In his mind the Servant and his work cannot come after the restoration. The Servant, if a real person, must be one whose work lies in the past or the present, as there is not room in the future for him, for the restoration which is at the door brings felicity, and after that no sufferings of the Servant are conceivable. But there is no actual person in the past and none in the present who could be the Servant. Hence, the Servant cannot be to the prophet's mind a real person.
Of course Davidson relates the result to his larger conception of prophecy in such a way as to secure the Messianic significance of the passages in relation to their fulfillment in our Lord. The ideas they contain are realized in Him.
But coming back to the prophet's mind-if the Servant was not a person to him, what significance did he have? The answer according to Davidson is, He is a great personification of the ideal Israel. "He is Israel according to its idea." To quote more fully, "The prophet has created out of the divine determinations imposed on Israel, election, creation and forming, endowment with the word or spirit of Yahweh, and the divine purpose in these operations, an ideal Being, an inner Israel in the heart of the phenomenal or actual Israel, an indestructible Being having these divine attributes or endowments, present in the outward Israel in all ages, powerful and effectual because really composed, if I can say so, of divine forces, who cannot fail in God's purpose, and who as an inner power within Israel by his operation causes all Israel to become a true servant" (compare Davidson, Old Testament Prophecy, 435-36).
Now it seems to me that Davidson is more effective in his destructive than in his constructive work. One must confess that he presents real difficulties in the way of holding to a personal Servant as the prophet's conception. But on the other hand when he tries to replace that by a more adequate conception, I do not think he conspicuously succeeds.
The greatest of the Servant-passages (it seems to me) presents more than can be successfully dealt with under the conception of the Servant as the ideal Israel. The very great emphasis on vicarious suffering in Isaiah 53 simply is not answered by theory. Words would not leap with such a flame of reality in describing the suffering of a personification. The sense of sin back of the passage is not a thing whose problem could be solved by a glittering figure of speech. There it surges-the movement of an aroused conscience-and the answer to it could never be anything less than a real deed by a real person. My own feeling is that if language can express anything it expresses the fact that the prophet had a real personal Servant in view.
But what of the difficulties Davidson suggests? Even if the answer were not easy to find, one could rest on the total impression the passages make. One cannot vaporize a passage for the sake of placing it in an environment in which one believes it belongs. As Cheyne in other days said, "In the sublimest descriptions of the Servant I am unable to resist the impression that we have the presentment of an individual, and venture to think that our general view of the Servant ought to be ruled by those passages in which the en