Taking her stand partly on these authorities, partly on the natural sense of the passage, the Christian Church has all along referred the passage to Christ; and even expositors such as _Clericus_, who, everywhere else, whensoever it is possible, seek to set aside the Messianic interpretation, are here found among its most decided defenders. In our century, with the awakening faith, this explanation has again obtained general dominion; and wherever expositors of evangelical disposition do not yet profess it, this is to be accounted for from the still continuing influence of rationalistic tradition. We are led to the Messianic interpretation by the circumstance that the servant of God appears here as the antitype of Cyrus. A real person can be contrasted with a real person only, but not with a personification, as is assumed by the other explanations. We are compelled to explain it of Christ by this circumstance also, that it is in Him only that the signs of the Servant of God are to be found,--that in Him only the covenant of God with Israel has become a truth,--that He only is the light of the Gentiles,--that He only, without external force, by His gentleness, meekness, and love, has founded a Kingdom, the boundaries of which are conterminous with those of the earth. The connection, also, with the other Messianic announcements, especially those of the first part, compels us to refer it to Christ. The reasons against the Messianic interpretation are of little weight. The assertion that nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus appear as the Servant of Jehovah (_Hendewerk_), is at once overthrown by Matt. xii. 18, as well as by the other [Pg 200] passages already quoted, in which Christ appears as παῖς Θεοῦ. Phil. ii. 7, μορφὴν δούλου λαβών comes as near the עבד יהוה, as it was possible, considering the low notion attached to the Greek δοῦλος. The passages which treat of the obedience of Christ, such as Rom, v. 19; Phil. ii. 8; Heb. v. 8; John xvii. 4: τὸν ἔργον ἐτελειώσα, ὃ δέδωκάς μοι ἵνα ποιήσω, give only a paraphrase of the notion of the Servant of the Lord. With perfect soundness _Dr Nitzsch_ has remarked, that it was required by the typical connection of the two Testaments, that Christ should somehow, according to His ὑπακοὴ, ὑποταγή, be represented as the perfect manifestation of the עבד--The assertion: "The Messiah is excluded by the circumstance that the subject is not only to be a teacher of the Gentiles, who is endowed with the Spirit of God, but is also to announce deliverance to Israel" (_Gesenius_), rests only on an erroneous, falsely literal interpretation of ver. 7, which is not a whit better than if, in ver. 3, we were to think of a natural bruised reed, a natural wick dimly burning.--The objection that this Servant of the Lord is not foretold as a future person, but is spoken of as one present, forgets that we are here on the territory of prophetic vision, that the prophets had not in vain the name of _seers_, and puts the