Eastern monarchs have always been addressed with high-sounding titles, and Isaiah's language may have been coloured by foreign court customs; but still it would remain that the titles lead us to expect an unexampled figure who possesses attributes that mark him out as specially equipped by God. Once more Isaiah returns to this figure (xi. 1-12), and now definitely asserts that he shall spring from David's line; only now the majesty of his person is conceived as due to his seven-fold possession of the Spirit of Jehovah, and his character fits him rather for administrative and prophetic work. Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, has much the same figure (v. 2-5) of a mighty prince of Davidic lineage and of mysterious birth (Bethlehem simply stands here for David's line, and "whose outgoings have been from eternity" probably means nothing more than that his descent shall spring from this ancient ancestor). There is an inexplicable element in these predictions, but they have been found elsewhere, outside Israel, in times of great national danger or expectation. In Israel, the idealisation of David, the personal element in her history, and the increased possibilities discovered in human personality when under the complete dominion of the Spirit of Jehovah, have contributed to the creation of this figure. It cannot be said that it was a mental vision of the person of Jesus that shaped the prophecy, for it must not be forgotten that it was an immediate fulfilment that they expected; and indeed their picture so utterly misled the Jews, that, when Christ claimed to be the Messiah, they treated His claim as blasphemous. While we can see that Christ was indeed a King, it is only by a spiritual conception of kingship, and only after the verdict of history has crowned Him as a true ruler of men; not by any actual resemblance to the external magnificence of the Messianic King. When the Messianic call came to Jesus He found in these passages a difficulty, for they outlined a programme He could only reject; but it was other and indirect allusions of the old Testament, some of which had never been considered as Messianic, that Jesus took for His pattern. This meant a reading of prophecy very different from that of the Jews of His time, and it is surely here that the views we have found ourselves forced to accept in regard to Old Testament prophecy can claim the support of Jesus Himself. It is important to grasp this point: the argument from predictions definitely fulfilled in Jesus has failed to convince the Jews, who ought to understand their own Scriptures best, and we must recognise that it is only a spiritual interpretation of prophecy and a valuation of Jesus which owes nothing to flesh and blood that can see in Him One of whom all the Prophets bore witness. It is to these other conceptions, to which the spiritual intuition of Jesus led Him in His search for support for His Messianic ideals, that we must now turn.