The confidence which the Servant of the Lord has placed in Him has not been put to shame by the result, but rather has been gloriously justified by Him. He who was, in the first instance, sent to Israel, is appointed to be the Saviour of the Gentiles, in order to compensate Him for the unbelief of those to whom His mission was in the first instance directed. _And now_, _i.e._, since the matter stands thus (Gen. xlv. 8),--since Israel, to whom my mission is, in the first instance, directed, reject me. _Saith the Lord_--That which the Lord spoke follows in ver. 6 only, which, on account of the long interruption, again begins with: "And He saith," equivalent to: I say. He hath spoken. The declaration of the Lord has reference to the destination of His Servant to be the Saviour of the Gentiles. This declaration is, in ver. 5, based upon two reasons:--_first_, the frustration of the original mission of the Servant of the Lord to the Jews; and _secondly_, on the intimate relation in which He stands to the Lord, who cannot withhold from Him the reward which He deserves for His work. In the New Testament, also, the mission of Christ appears as being at first directed to the Jews only. The Lord says, in Matt. xv. 24: οὐκ ἀπεστάλην εἰ μὴ εἰς τὰ πρόβατα τὰ ἀπολωλότα οἴκου Ἰσραήλ. He says, in Matt. x. 6, to the Apostles, after having forbidden them to go to the heathens, and to the Samaritans, who were nothing but disguised heathens: πορεύεσθε δὲ μᾶλλον πρὸς τὰ προβατα τὰ ἀπολωλότα οἴκου Ἰσραήλ. Paul and Barnabas say, in Acts xiii. 46: ὑμῖν ἦν ἀναγκαῖον πρῶτον λαληθῆναι τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ• ἐπειδὴ δε ἀπωθεῖσθε αὐτὸν καὶ οὐκ ἀξίους κρίνετε ἑαυτοὺς τῆς αἰωνίου ζωῆς, ἰδοὺ στρεφόμεθα εἰς τὰ ἔθνη. It is rather an idle question to ask what would have happened, if the Jews as a nation had accepted the offered salvation. But so much is certain that here, in the prediction, as well as in history, the rejection of Christ, on the part of the Jews, appears to have been a necessary condition of His entering upon His vocation as the Saviour of the Gentiles. Those who understood the people by the Servant of the Lord refer לשיבב to Jehovah, and consider it as a Gerund. [Pg 240] _reducendo_, or _qui reducit ad se Jacobum_. In the same way they explain also the Infinit. with ל in the following verse, as also in chap. li. 16. But although the Infinit. with ל is sometimes, indeed, used for the Gerund., yet this is neither the original nor the ordinary use; and nowhere does it occur in such accumulation. Moreover, by this explanation, this verse, as well as the following ones, are altogether broken up, and the words לשובב יעקב אליו must indicate the destination for which He was formed. And it is not possible that Jehovah's bringing Jacob back to himself should be a display of Israel's being formed from the womb to be the Servant, inasmuch as the bringing back would not, like the formation, belong to the first stage of the existence of the