Chapters xlix.-liii. are, as we have seen, a series of more or less closely joined passages, in which the prophet, having already made the political redemption of Israel certain through Cyrus, and having dismissed Cyrus from his thoughts, addresses himself to various difficulties in the way of restoration, chiefly moral and spiritual, and rising from Israel's own feelings and character; exhorts the people in face of them by Jehovah's faithfulness and power; but finds the chief solution of them in the Servant and his prophetic and expiatory work. We have already studied such of these passages as present the Servant to us, and we now take up those others, which meet the doubts and difficulties in the way of restoration by means of general considerations drawn from God's character and power. Let it be noticed that, with one exception (ch. l. 11),[238] these passages are meant for earnest and pious minds in Israel,--for those Israelites, whose desires are towards Zion, but chill and heavy with doubts. The form and the terms of these passages are in harmony with their purpose. They are a series of short, high-pitched exhortations, apostrophes and lyrics. One, ch. lii. 9-12, calls upon the arm of Jehovah, but all the rest address Zion,--that is, the ideal people in the person of their mother, with whom they ever so fondly identified themselves; or _Zion's children_; or _them that follow righteousness_, or ye _that know righteousness_; or _my people_, _my nation_; or again Zion herself. This personification of the people under the name of their city, and under the aspect of a woman, whose children are the individual members of the people, will be before us till the end of our prophecy. It is, of course, a personification of Israel, which is complementary to Israel's other personification under the name of the Servant. The Servant is Israel active, comforting, serving his own members and the nations; Zion, the Mother-City, is Israel passive, to be comforted, to be served by her own sons and by the kings of the peoples. We may divide the passages into two groups. _First_, the songs of return, which rise out of the picture of the Servant and his redemption of the people in ch. xlix. 9_b_, with the long promise and exhortation to Zion and her children, that lasts till the second picture of the Servant in ch. lii. 4; and _second_, the short pieces which lie between the second picture of the Servant and the third, or from the beginning of ch. li. to ch. lii. 12. I.