The non-Messianic interpretation among Christians, like those among the Jews, may be divided into two main classes: 1. Those which are founded upon the supposition that a collective [Pg 322] body is the subject of the prophecy; and 2, those which, by the Servant of God, understand any other single individual except the Messiah. The first class, again, falls into several sub-divisions: (_a._), those interpretations which refer the prophecy to the whole Jewish people; (_b._), those which refer it to the Jewish people in the abstract; (_c._), those which refer it to the pious portion of the Jewish people; (_d._), those which refer it to the order of the priests; (_e._), those which refer it to the order of the prophets. 1. (_a._) Comparatively the greatest number of non-Messianic interpreters make the whole Jewish people the subject of the prophecy. This hypothesis is adopted, among others, by _Doederlein_, (in the preface and annotations, in the third edition of Isaiah, but in such a manner that he still wavers betwixt this and the Messianic interpretation, which formerly he had defended with great zeal); by _Schuster_ (in a special treatise, Göttingen 1794); by _Stephani_ (_Gedanken über die Entstehung u. Ausbildung der Idee von inem Messias_, _Nürnberg_ 1787); by the author of the letters on Isaiah liii., in the 6th vol. of _Eichhorn's Bibliothek_; by _Eichhorn_ (in his exposition of the Prophets); by _Rosenmüller_ (in the second edition of his Commentary, leaving to others the interpretation which referred the prophecy to the prophetic order, although he himself had first recommended it), and many others. The last who defend it are _Hitzig_, _Hendewerk_, and _Köster_ (_de Serv. Jeh._ Kiel, 38). Substantially, it has remained the same as we have seen it among the Jews. The only difference is, that these expositors understand, by the sufferings of the Servant of God, the sufferings of the Jewish people in the Babylonish captivity; while the Jewish interpreters understand thereby the sufferings of the Jewish people in their present exile. They, too, suppose that, from vers. 1 to 10, the Gentile nations are introduced as speaking, and make the penitent confession that they have formed an erroneous opinion of Israel, and now see that its suffering's are not the punishment of its own sins, but that it had suffered as a substitute for their sins. (_b._) The hypothesis which makes the Jewish people in the abstract--in antithesis to its single members--the subject of this prophecy, was discovered by _Eckermann_, _theol. Beiträge_, [Pg 323] Bd. i. H. i. S. 192 ff. According to _Ewald_, the prophecy refers to "Israel according to its true idea." According to _Bleek_, the Servant of God is a "designation of the whole people, but not of the people in its actual reality, but as it existed in the imagination of the author,--the ideal of the people."