All this very natural process--this passing from the historical Israel, the nation originally designed by God to be His Servant, to the conscious and effective Israel, that uncertain quantity within the present and every future generation--takes place in the chapters before us; and it will be sufficiently easy for us to follow if we only remember that our prophet is not a dogmatic theologian, careful to make clear each logical distinction, but a dramatic poet, who delivers his ideas in groups, tableaux, dialogues, interrupted by choruses; and who writes in a language incapable of expressing such delicate differences, except by dramatic contrasts, and by the one other figure of which he is so fond--paradox. Perhaps the first traces of distinction between the real Servant and the whole nation are to be found in the Programme of his Mission in ch. xlii. 1-7. There it is said that the Servant is to be for a _covenant of the people_ (ver. 6). I have explained below why we are to understand _people_ as here meaning Israel.[151] And in ver. 7 it is said of the Servant that he is _to open blind eyes_, _bring forth from prison the captive_, _from the house of bondage dwellers in darkness_: phrases that are descriptive, of course, of the captive Israel. Already, then, in ch. xlii. the Servant is something distinct from the whole nation, whose Covenant and Redeemer he is to be. The next references to the Servant are a couple of paradoxes, which are evidently the prophet's attempt to show _why_ it was necessary to draw in the Servant of Jehovah from the whole to a part of the people. The first of these paradoxes is in ch. xlii. ver. 18. _Ye deaf, hearken! and ye blind, look ye to see! Who is blind but My Servant, and deaf as My Messenger_ whom _I send? Who is blind as Meshullam, and blind as the Servant of Jehovah? Vision of many things--and thou dost not observe, Opening of ears and he hears not!_