"My Servant" stands here as an honorary _designation_; to be the Servant of God appears here as the highest privilege, as is evident not only from the analogy of the parallel passages, which treat of the Servant of God (comp. remarks on chap. xlii. 1), but also from the parallel second clause. In it, the Servant of God is called _Israel_ as the concentration and consummation of the covenant-people, as He in whom it is to attain to its destination, in whom its idea is to be realized. (It is evident from ver. 5, and from those passages in the second part in which the people of Israel is spoken of as the Servant of God [comp. remarks on chap. xlii.], that Israel must here be understood as the name of the people, not as the name of the ancestor only.) _Hävernick_ rightly remarks that the Messiah is here called Israel, "in contrast to the people to whom this name does not properly belong." Analogous is Matt. ii. 15, where that which, in the Old Testament, is written of Israel, is referred to Christ. As the true Israel, Christ himself also represents himself in John i. 52; with a reference to that which in Gen. xxviii. 12 is written, not of Jacob as [Pg 236] an individual, but as the representative of the whole race, it is said there: ἀπ᾽ ἄρτι ὄψεσθε τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀνεῳγότα, καὶ τοὺς ἀγγέλους του̂ θεου̂ ἀναβαίνοντας καὶ καταβαίνοντας ἐπὶ τὸν υἱὸν του̂ ἀνθρώπου All those declarations of the Old Testament, in which the name of Jacob or Israel is used to designate the _election_, to the exclusion of the false seed, the true Israelites in whom there is no guile,--all those passages prepare the way for, and come near to the one before us. Thus Ps. lxiii. 1: "Truly good is God to Israel, to such as are of a clean heart;" and then Ps. xxiv. 6: "They that seek thy face are Jacob," _i.e._, those only who, with zeal and energy in sanctification, seek for the favour of God. In the passage before us, the same principle is farther carried out. The true Israel is designated as he in whom God glorifies, or will glorify himself, inasmuch as his glorification will bear testimony to God's mercy and faithfulness; comp. John xii. 23: ἐλήλυθεν ἡ ὥρα ἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου; xvii. 5: καὶ νῦν δοξασόν με σύ πάτερ. The verb פאר means in _Piel_, "to adorn," in _Hithp._ "to adorn one's self," "to glorify one's self." Thus it occurs in Judg. vii. 2; Is. x. 15; lx. 21: "Work of my hands for glorifying," _i.e._, in which I glorify myself; lxi. 3: "Planting of the Lord for glorifying." There is no reason for abandoning this well-supported signification either here or in chap. xliv. 23: "The Lord hath redeemed Israel and glorified himself in Israel." If God glorifies himself in His Servant, He just thereby gets occasion to glory in Him as a monument of His goodness and faithfulness. Our Saviour prays in John xii. 28: Πάτερ δόξασόν σου τὸ ὄνομα. The Father, by glorifying the Son, glorifies at the same time His name. Those who explain אתפאר by: _per