of the second part are much more characteristic than those concerning Cyrus. He who cannot, by the help of history, supplement and illustrate the prophecy, receives only an incomplete and defective image of the latter. And, indeed, a sufficiently long time elapsed before even Exegesis recognised with certainty and unanimity that it was Cyrus who was meant. Doubts and differences of opinion on this point meet us even down to last century. The Medes and Persians are not at all mentioned as the conquerors of Babylon, and all which refers to the person of Cyrus has an altogether ideal character; while the Messiah is, especially in chap. liii., so distinctly drawn, that scarcely any essential feature in His image is omitted. And it is altogether a matter of course that here, in the antitypical deliverance, a much greater clearness and distinctness should prevail; for it stands in a far closer relation to the idea, so that form and substance do far less disagree.

It would be inappropriate were we here to take up and refute all the arguments against the genuineness of the second part, which rationalistic criticism has brought together. Besides those which we have already refuted, we shall bring into view only this argument, which, at first sight indeed, may dazzle and startle even the well-disposed, viz., the difference between the first and second parts, as regards language and mode of representation. The chief error of those who have adduced this argument is, that they judge altogether without reference to person,

-a matter, however, quite legitimate in this case-that they simply apply the same rule to the productions of Isaiah which, in the productions of less richly endowed persons, has indeed a certain right, e.g., on the prophetical territory of Jeremiah, who, notwithstanding the difference of subject, yet does not understand so to change his voice, that it should not soon be recognized by the skilled. More than of all the prophets that holds true of Isaiah, which Fichte, in a letter to a Königsberg friend, writes of himself (in his Life, by his son, i. S. 196): "I have properly no style at all, for I have them all." "Just as the subject demands," says Ewald, without assigning to the circumstance any weight in judging of the second part, "just as the subject demands, every kind of speech, and every change of style are easily at his command; and it is just this in which here his greatness, as, in general, one of his most prominent perfections, consists." The

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chief peculiarities of style in the second part stand in close relation to the subject, and the disposition of mind thereby called forth. The Prophet, as a rule, does not address the mass of the people, but the election (exλoyń); nor the sinful congregation of the Lord in the present time, but that of the future, purified by the judgments of the Lord, the seed and germ of which were the election of the Present. It is to the congregation of brethren that he addresses Comfort. The beginning: "Comfort ye, Comfort ye, Zion," contains the key-note and principal subject. It is from this that the gentle, tender, soft character of the style is to be accounted for, as well as the frequent repetitions;-the comforting love follows, step by step, the grief which is indefatigable in its repetitions. From this circumstance is to be explained the habit of adding several epithets to the name of God; these are as many shields which are held up against despair, as many bulwarks against the things in sight, by which every thought of redemption was cut off. Where God is the sole help, every thing must be tried to make the Congregation feel what they have in Him. A series of single phrases which several times recur verbatim, e.g., "I am the Lord, and none else, I do not give mine honour to any other, I am the first and the last," are easily accounted for by the Prophet's endeavour and anxiety to impress upon the desponding minds truths, which they were only too apt to forget. If other linguistic peculiarities occur, which cannot be explained from the subject, it must be considered that the second part is not by any means a collection of single prophecies, but a closely connected whole, which, as such, must necessarily have its own peculiar usus loquendi, a number of constantly recurring characteristic peculiarities. The character of unity must necessarily be expressed in language and style also. The fact, however, that, notwithstanding the difference of style betwixt the first and second parts, the second part has a great number of characteristic peculiarities of language and style in common with the first part (a fact which cannot be otherwise, if Isaiah was the author of both), was first very thoroughly demonstrated by Kleinert, while Küper and Caspari have been the first conclusively to prove, that the second part was known and made use of by those prophets who prophesied between the time of Isaiah and that of "the great unknown."

The close connection of the second part with the first is, among other things, proved also by the circumstance that both are equally strongly pervaded with the Messianic announcement. Chap. i.-xii. especially have, in this respect, a remarkable parallel in the second book of the second part. The fact, moreover, that the single Messianic prophecies of the second part agree, in the finest and most concealed features, with those of the first part, will be shown in the exposition.

CHAP. XLII. 1-9.

The 40th chapter has an introductory character. It comforts the people of the Lord by pointing, in general, to a Future rich in salvation. In chap. xli. the Prophet describes the appearance of the conqueror from the East for the destruction of Babylon, an event from which he derives, as from a rich source, ample consolations for his poor wretched people, while, at the same time, he represents idolatry as being thereby put to shame. It is on purpose that, immediately after the first announcement of this conqueror from the East, his antitype is, in chap. xlii. 1-9, contrasted with him. In the preceding chapter, the Prophet had shown how, by the influence of the king from the East, the Lord would put idolatry to shame, and work out deliverance for His Church. In the section now before us, he describes how, by the mission of His servant, the Lord would effect, definitely and absolutely, that which the former had done only in a preliminary, limited, and imperfect manner. In the subsequent section, the Prophet then first farther carries out the image of the conqueror from the East; and from chap. xlix. he turns to a more minute representation of the image of the true Saviour. In chaps. xlii. 10-xliii. 7, the discourse turns, from a general description of God's instruments of salvation, to a general description of the salvation in its whole extent; just as it is the manner of this second part ever again to return from the particular to the general.

Here, where the Servant of God is first to be introduced, He is at first spoken of; it is in ver. 5 that the Lord first speaks

to His servant. In chap. xlix., on the contrary, the Servant of God, being already known from chap. xlii., is, without farther remark, introduced as speaking.

In the whole section, the Lord is speaking. It falls into three divisions-First, the Lord speaks of His servant, vers. 1—4; then he speaks to His servant, vers. 5-7; finally, He addresses some closing words to the Church, vers. 8, 9. The representation, in harmony with the nature of the prophetic vision, bears a dramatic character.

In vers. 1-4, the Lord, as it were, points to His servant, introduces Him to His Church, and commends Him to the world : "Behold my Servant," &c. He, the beloved and elect One, upheld by God, and endowed with the fulness of the Spirit of God, shall establish righteousness upon the whole earth, and bring into submission to himself the whole Gentile world, by showing himself meek and lowly in heart, an helper of the poor aud afflicted, and combining with it never-failing power. The aim: He shall bring forth right to the Gentiles, is at once expressed at the close of ver. 1. In vers. 2-4, the means by which He attains this aim are then stated. The bringing forth, or the establishing of right, recurs again in vers. 3 and 4, in order to point out this relation of vers. 2-4 to vers. 1.

In vers. 6 and 7, after having pointed to His Omnipotence as affording a guarantee for the fulfilment of a prophecy so. great that it might appear almost incredible, the Lord turns to His Servant and addresses Him. He announces to Him that it should be His glorious destination, partly to bring, in His person, the covenant with Israel to its full truth, partly to be the light for the Gentile world,-to be, in general, the Saviour of the whole human race.

In the closing verses, 8, 9, the Lord addresses the Church, and directs its attention to the object which the announcement of the mission of His Servant, declared in the preceding context, serves: God, because He is God, is anxious for the promotion of His glory. In order, therefore, that it may be known that He alone is God, He grants to His people disclosures as regards the distant Future, as yet fully wrapped up in obscurity.

There is no doubt, and it is now generally admitted, that the Servant of the Lord, here described, is the same as He who is

brought before us in chap. xlix. 4, liii., lxi. It is, hence, not sufficient to point out an individual to whom, apparently, the attributes contained in this prophecy belong; but we must add and combine all the signs and attributes which are contained in the parallel passages.

The Chaldean Paraphrast who, in so many instances, has faithfully preserved the exegetical tradition, understands the Messiah by the Servant of God; and so, from among the later Jewish expositors, do Dav. Kimchi and Abarbanel, the latter of whom says of the non-Messianic interpretation,

that all these expositors were struck * החכמים הכו בסנורים

with blindness." That this exposition was the current one among the Jews at the time of Christ, appears from Luke ii. 32, where Simeon designates the Saviour as the light to be revealed to the Gentiles, φῶς εἰς ἀποκάλυψιν ἐθνῶν, with a reference to Is. xlii. 6, xlix. 6. It is especially the latter passage which Simeon has in view, as also St Paul in Acts xiii. 46, 47, as appears from the words immediately preceding ὅτι εἶδον οἱ ὀφθαλ μοί μου τὸ σωτήριόν σου ὃ ἡτοίμασας κατὰ πρόςωπον πάντων Tŵv λaŵv, which evidently refer to chap. xlix. But chap. xlix. is, as regards the point which here comes into consideration, a mere repetition and confirmation of chap. xlii.

By the New Testament, this exposition has been introduced and established in the Church of Christ. The words which, at the baptism of Christ, resounded from heaven: oûtós éσti ó viós μου ὁ ἀγαπητὸς, ἐν ᾧ εὐδόκησα, Matth. iii. 17 (comp. Mark i. 11) evidently refer to ver. 1 of the chapter before us, and point out that He who had now appeared, was none other than He who had, centuries ago, been predicted by the prophets. And so do likewise the words which, according to Matt. xvii. 5 (compare Mark ix. 7; Luke ix. 35; 2 Pet. i. 17), at the transfiguration of Christ, towards the close of His ministry, resounded from heaven in order to strengthen the Apostles: οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητὸς, ἐν ᾧ εὐδόκησα· αὐτοῦ ἀκούετε. These voices at the beginning and the close of Christ's ministry have not been sufficiently attended to by those who have raised doubts against the Messianic interpretation; for a doubt in this must necessarily shake also the belief in the reality of those voices. In both of the passages, the place of the Servant of God in chap. xlii. 1