He is entitled to use the first person in that case only, when he is a perfect manifestation of prophetism.--4. According to _Gesenius_, the Servant of the Lord is to be _the collective body of the prophets_, the prophetic order. In opposition to this view, _Stier_ remarks: "We maintain that, according to history, there did not at that time (the time of the exile, in which _Gesenius_ places this prophecy) exist any prophetic order, or any distinguished blossom of it; that hence it was impossible for any reasonable man to entertain this hope, when viewed in this way, without looking farther and higher." Ver. 1 is decisive against a mere personification. The name of Israel, too, in ver. 3, is very little applicable to the whole prophetic order. This is sufficiently evident from the fact that _Gesenius_, in his Commentary, declared this word to be spurious; and it was at a later period only, when he had become bolder, that he endeavoured to adapt it to his self-chosen subject. Nowhere in the Old Testament do the prophets appear like the Servant of God here--as the Covenant of the people, ver. 8, as the Light of the Gentiles, ver. 6. * * * * * * * * * * Ver. 1. "_Listen, O isles, unto me, and hearken ye people from far; the Lord hath called me from the womb, from the bowels of my mother hath He made mention of my name._" As the stand-point which the Messiah occupies in the vision of the Prophet, we have to conceive of the time, at which He had already entered upon His office, and had already experienced many proofs of the Jews' unbelief and hardness of heart,--an event of the Future, the foresight of which was, even in a human point of view, very readily suggested to the Prophet after the painful experience acquired during his own long ministry; comp. chap. vi. For the fruitlessness of His ministry among the mass of the covenant-people, ver. 4, as well as the great contempt which the Servant of God found among them, ver. 7, are represented as having already taken place; [Pg 232] while the enlightenment of the Gentiles, the worship of the kings, &c., which are to be expected by Him, are represented as being still future. In the same manner, in chap. liii., the humiliation of the Servant of God appears as past; the glorification, as future, the reason why the _isles_ are addressed (comp. remarks on chap. xlii. 4) appears in ver. 6 only, at the close of the discourse of the Servant of God, for all that precedes serves as a preparation. In that verse, the Servant of the Lord announces that the Lord had appointed Him to be the Light of the Gentiles; that He should be His salvation unto the ends of the earth. It is very significant that the second book at once begins with an address to the Gentiles, inasmuch us, thus, we are here introduced into the sphere of a redemption which does not refer to a single nation, like that with which the _first_ book is engaged, but to the ends of the earth.