ly it is all of a piece and ought to stand together in one chapter.
In Isaiah 52:13-15 Yahweh speaks of the humiliation and later of the exaltation of the Servant. He shall deal wisely-the idea here including the success resulting from wisdom-and shall be exalted. Words are piled upon each other here to express his exaltation. But the appearance of the Servant is such as to suggest the very opposite of his dignity, which will astonish nations and kings when they come, to understand it.
Entering upon Isaiah 53 we find the people of Israel speaking confessing their former unbelief, and giving as a reason the repulsive aspect of the Servant-despised, sad, sick with a visage to make men turn from him. He is described as though he had been a leper. They thought all this had come upon him as a stroke from God, but they now see how he went even to death, not for his own transgression but for theirs. Their peace and healing came through his suffering and death. They have been sinful and erring; the result of it all God has caused to light upon him.
They look back in wonder at the way he bore his sufferings-like a lamb led to the slaughter; with a false judicial procedure he was led away, no one considering his death, or its relation to them. His grave even was an evidence of ignominy.
Beginning at Isaiah 53:10 the people cease speaking, according to Delitzsch, and the prophecy becomes the organ of God who acknowledges His Servant. The reference to a trespass offering in 53:10 is remarkable. Nowhere else is prophecy so connected with the sacrificial system (A. B. Davidson). It pleased God to bruise the Servant-his soul having been made a trespass offering; the time of humiliation over, the time of exaltation will come.
By his knowledge we are told-here a momentary reversion to the time of humiliation taking place-by his knowledge he shall justify many and bear their iniquities. Then comes the exaltation-dividing of spoils and greatness-the phrases suggesting kingly glory: all this is to be his because of his suffering. The 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 