The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah, Volume 2 (of 2)Smith, George Adam
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah, Volume 2 (of 2)
Smith, George Adam
Bible. Isaiah -- Commentaries
These two complementary paradoxes together show this: that while
Israel as a whole is unfit to be the Servant, it is nevertheless
within Israel, alone of all the world's nations, that the true
capacities for service are found--_eyes are there, ears have they_.
They prepare us for the Servant's testimony about himself, in which,
while he owns himself to be distinct from Israel as a whole, he is
nevertheless still called Israel. This is given in ch. xlix. _And He
said unto me, My Servant art thou; Israel, in whom I will glorify
Myself. And now saith Jehovah, my moulder from the womb to be a
Servant unto Him, to turn again Jacob to Him, and that Israel might
not be destroyed; and I am of value in the eyes of Jehovah, and my
God is my strength. And He said, It is too light for thy being My
Servant,_ merely _to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the
preserved of Israel; I will also set thee for a light of nations,
to be My salvation to the end of the earth_ (xlix. 3-6). Here the
Servant, though still called Israel, is clearly distinct from the
nation as a whole, for part of his work is to raise the nation up
again. And, moreover, he tells us this as his own testimony about
himself. He is no longer spoken of in the third person, he speaks
for himself in the first. This is significant. It is more than a
mere artistic figure, the effect of our prophet's dramatic style--as
if the Servant now stood opposite him, so vivid and near that he
heard him speak, and quoted him in the direct form of speech. It is
more probably the result of moral sympathy: the prophet speaks out
of the heart of the Servant, in the name of that better portion of
Israel which was already conscious of the Divine call, and of its
distinction in this respect from the mass of the people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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