us, _e.g._, in chap. xlix. 50; in Dan. ix.; in Zech. ix. 9, 10, xi. 12, 13. The fact that the humiliation of Christ would precede His exaltation is distinctly pointed out in the first part of Isaiah also, in chap. xi. 1,--a passage which contains, in a germ, all that, in the second part, [Pg 330] is more fully stated regarding the suffering Messiah, and which has many striking points of contact specially with chap. liii. And just so it is with Isaiah's contemporary, Micah, who, in chap. v. 1 (2), makes the Messiah proceed, not from Jerusalem, the seat of the Davidic family after it was raised to the royal dignity, but from Bethlehem, where Jesse, the ancestor, lived as a peasant,--as a proof that the Messiah would proceed from the family of David sank back into the obscurity of private life. This knowledge, that the Messiah should proceed from the altogether abased house of David,--a knowledge which appears as early as in Amos, and which pervades the whole of prophecy--touches very closely upon the knowledge of His sufferings. Lowliness of origin, and exaltation of destination, can hardly be reconciled without severe conflicts. But it is _a priori_ impossible, that the idea of the suffering Messiah should be wanting in the Old Testament. Since, in the Old Testament, throughout, righteousness and suffering in this world of sin are represented as being indissolubly connected, the Messiah, being κατʼ ἐξοχήν the Righteous One, must necessarily appear also as He who suffers in the highest degree. If that were not the case, the Messiah would be totally disconnected from all His types, especially from David, who, through the severest sufferings, attained to glory, and who in his Psalms, everywhere considers this course as the normal one, both in the Psalms which refer to the suffering righteous in general, and in those which especially refer to his family reaching their highest elevation in the Messiah; compare my Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. iv., p. lxxx. ff. [Footnote 1: The same thing occurs also in the parallel passages, chap. xlix. 9, on which _Gesenius_ was constrained to remark: "As the deliverance was still impending, the Preterites cannot well be understood in any other way than as Futures."] * * * * * * * * * * III. THE ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF THE MESSIANIC INTERPRETATION.