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
In Antioch of Pisidia, Paul and Barnabas said of themselves to the
Jews: _For so hath the Lord_ commanded us saying, _I have set thee to
be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation to the
ends of the earth._[174] Again, in the eighth of Romans, Paul takes the
Servant's confident words, and speaks them of all God's true people.
_He is near that justifieth me, who is he that condemneth me?_ cried
the Servant in our prophecy, and Paul echoes for all believers: _It is
God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth?_[175] And again, in his
second letter to Timothy, he says, speaking of that pastor's work, _For
the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle towards all_;
words which were borrowed from, or suggested by, Isa. xlii. 1-3.[176]
In these instances, as well as in his constant use of the terms
_slave_, _servant_, _minister_, with their cognates, Paul fulfils the
intention of Jesus, who so continually, by example, parable, and direct
commission, enforced the life of His people as a Service to the Lord.
5. Such, then, is the New Testament reflection of the Prophecy of the
Servant of the Lord, both as People and Person. Like all physical
reflections, this moral one may be said, on the whole, to stand
reverse to its original. In Isa. xl.-lxvi. the Servant is People
first, Person second. But in the New Testament--except for a faint
and scarcely articulate application to Israel in the beginning of
the gospels--the Servant is Person first and People afterwards. The
Divine Ideal which our prophet saw narrowing down from the Nation
to an Individual, was owned and realised by Christ. But in Him it
was not exhausted. With added warmth and light, with a new power of
expansion, it passed through Him to fire the hearts and enlist the
wills of an infinitely greater people than the Israel for whom it
was originally designed. With this witness, then, of history to the
prophecies of the Servant, our way in expounding and applying them is
clear. Jesus Christ is their perfect fulfilment and illustration. But
we who are His Church are to find in them our ideal and duty,--our
duty to God and to the world. In this, as in so many other matters,
the unfulfilled prophecy of Israel is the conscience of Christianity.
FOOTNOTES:
[160] _Cf._ _The Jewish Interpreters on Isa. liii._, Driver and
Neubauer, Oxford, 1877. Abravanel, who himself takes ch. liii. in a
national sense, admits, after giving the Christian interpretation,
that "in fact Jonathan ben Uziel, 'the Targumist,' applied it to the
Messiah, who was still to come, and this is likewise the opinion of
the wise in many of their Midrashim." And R. Moscheh al Shech, of
the sixteenth century, says: "See, our masters have with one voice
held as established and handed down, that here it is King Messiah
who is spoken of." (Both these passages quoted by Bredenkamp in his
commentary, p. 307.)
[161] Isa. lix. 5.
[162] _Id._ vi. 13; ix. 18; x. 17, 34; xlvii. 14.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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