The context shows that the Servant here--or Meshullam, as he is called, the _devoted_ or _submissive one_, from the same root, and of much the same form as the Arabic Muslim[152]--is the whole people; but they are entitled _Servant_ only in order to show how unfit they are for the task to which they have been designated, and what a paradox their title is beside their real character. God had given them every opportunity by _making great His instruction_ (ver. 21, cf. p. 247), and, when that failed, by His sore discipline in exile (vers. 24, 25). _For who gave Jacob for spoil and Israel to the robbers? Did not Jehovah? He against whom we sinned, and they would not walk in His ways, neither were obedient to His instruction. So He poured upon him the fury of His anger and the force of war._ But even this did not awake the dull nation. _Though it set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it kindled upon him, yet he laid it not to heart._ The nation as a whole had been favoured with God's revelation; as a whole they had been brought into His purifying furnace of the Exile. But as they have benefited by neither the one nor the other, the natural conclusion is that as a whole they are no more fit to be God's Servant. Such is the hint which this paradox is intended to give us. But a little further on there is an obverse paradox, which plainly says, that although the people are blind and deaf as a whole, still the capacity for service is found among them alone (xliii. 8, 10). _Bring forth the blind people--yet eyes are there! And the deaf, yet ears have they!... Ye are My witnesses, saith Jehovah, and My Servant whom I have chosen._ The preceding verses (vv. 1-7) show us that it is again the whole people, in their bulk and scattered fragments, who are referred to. Blind though they be, _yet are there eyes_ among them; deaf though they be, yet _they have ears_. And so Jehovah addresses them all, in contradistinction to the heathen peoples (ver. 9), as His Servant.