the, has nothing in common with the expage which, in John vii. 28, 37, is said of Christ. With the passionate restlessness, with which the conqueror from the East seeks to carry through his human plans, and to place himself in the centre of the world's history, is here contrasted the inward composure and deportment of the Servant of God, His equanimity, His freedom from excitement,—all of which are based upon the clear consciousness of His dignity and mission, upon the conviction of the power of the truth which is of God, of the power of the Spirit which opens up the minds and hearts for it, and which has its source in the declaration: "I put my Spirit upon Him," by which the great wall of separation between Him and the conqueror from the East is set up. It is just because of His not being bent upon carrying through any thing, because of His great confidence, that the Servant of God gains everything, and obtains His object of bringing right to the nations.—Matt., in chap. xii. 15-21, finds the confirmation of the character here assigned to Christ in two circumstances :— first, in His not entering into a violent dispute with the Pharisees opposing Him (οἱ δὲ φαρισαῖοι συμβούλιον ἔλαβον κατ ̓ αὐτοῦ ἐξελθόντες, ὅπως αὐτὸν ἀπολέσωσιν), in His not exciting against them the masses who were devoted to Him, but in withdrawing from them (ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς γνοὺς ἀνεχώρησεν ἐκεῖθεν, ver. 15), being convinced that the cause was not His but God's, and that there was no reason for getting angry with those who were contending against God; just as David said of Shimei: "Let him curse, because the Lord has said unto him, Curse David."--Secondly, in the circumstance that instead of availing himself of the excitement of the aroused masses, He charged them that they should not make known His miraculous deeds (καὶ ἐπετίμησεν αὐτοῖς ἵνα μὴ φανηρὸν αὐτὸν ποιήσωσιν, ver. 16), being convinced that He did not need to seek to draw attention to himself, but that, by the secret and hidden power of God, His work would be accomplished. Ver. 3: "The bent reed shall He not break, and the dimly burning wick shall He not quench; in truth shall He bring forth right." Here, too, the antithesis to the worldly conqueror who, without mercy "Cometh upon princes as mortar, and as a potter קנה רצוץ treadeth the clay" (chap. xli. 25), whose mind is bent only upon destroying and cutting off nations not a few (chap. x. 7), who does not give rest until he has fully cast down to the ground the broken power. The Servant of God, far from breaking the bent reed, shall, on the contrary--this is the positive opposed to the negative care for, and assist the wretched with tender love. Just thereby does He accomplish the object of His efforts. The confirmation of the character here assigned to Christ is, by Matthew, found in His healing the sick (καὶ ἐθεράπευσεν αὐτοὺς πάντας, ver. 15), as prefiguring all that which He, who has declared the object of His coming to be to seek all that which was lost, did and accomplished, in general, for the misery of the human race. There cannot be any doubt that the bent reed and the dimly burning wick are figurative designations of those who, beaten. down by sufferings, feel themselves to be poor and miserable. These, the weary and heavy laden, the Servant of God will not drive to despair by severity, but comfort and refresh by tender love. His conduct towards them is that of a Saviour. As a bent reed, Pharaoh appears on account of his broken power, in chap. xxxvi. 6, and in chap. lviii. 6, they are the oppressed. The fact, that the wick dimly burning and near to being extinguished is an image of exhausted strength, is shown by chap. xliii. 17, where, in reference to the Egyptians carried away by the judgment, it is said: "They are extinct, they are quenched like a wick." In the parallel passages which treat of the Servant of God, the weary in chap. 1. 4, and the brokenhearted in chap. lxi. 1, correspond to it. Elsewhere, too, the wretched appear as objects of the loving providence of the Saviour. Thus in chap. xi. 4: "And He judges in righteousness the low;" in Ps. lxxii. 4: "He shall judge the poor of the people; He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor;" and in vers. 12-14: "For He delivereth the needy when he crieth, and the miserable, and him that hath no deliverer. From oppression and violence He delivereth their soul, and precious is their blood in His sight." Just as, in the passage before us, the bringing forth of right appears as a consequence of the loving providence for the bent reed, and the dimly burning wick, so in that Psalm, the great fact: "And all the kings worship Him, and all the nations serve Him," is traced back to the tender love with which He cares for and helps the poor and needy. In the Sermon on the Mount, the beatitude of the Twуoi, Matt. v. 3, of the πEVОoÛVтes, ver. 4, and in Matth. xi. 28, the invitation of the κοπιῶντες καὶ πεφορτισμένοι, exactly correspond. The wicked and ungodly, upon whom the judgments of God have been inflicted, are not included, because they are not wretched in the full sense; for they harden themselves against the suffering, or seek to divert themselves in it; they do not take it fully to heart. The T πVEÚμаTI, "in their consciousness," which in Matthew is added to the simple πTwxoi, which alone we find in Luke, must be understood as a matter of course. He only is poor in the full sense, who feels and takes to heart his poverty. According to an interpretation widely spread, repenting sinners are designated by the bent reed, and dimly burning wick. Thus Luther writes: "That means that the wounded conscience, those who are terrified at the sight of their sins, the weak in life and faith are not cast away by Him, are not oppressed and condemned, but that He cares for them, tends and nurses them, makes them whole and embraces them with love." But repenting sinners do not here come into consideration per se, but only as one species of the wretched, inasmuch as, according to Luther's expression, truly to feel sin is a torment beyond all torments.-The last words: "In truth shall He bring forth right" again take up the close of ver. 1, after the means have been stated, in the intervening words, by which He is to bring about the result. The must not be translated: "For truth" (LXX.: eis åλý@erav); for there is a thorough difference between and ; the former does not, like the latter, designate the motion towards some object, but is rather, here also, a preposition signifying "belonging to;" hence s means 66 belonging to truth," "in a true manner," "in truth." By every other mode of dealing, right would be established in appearance and outwardly only. Matthew renders it: ἕως ἂν ἐκβάλῃ εἰς vîKos Tǹv Kρlow, "until He has led right to victory." By the addition of ews he intimates, that the last words state the result which is brought about by the conduct of the Servant of God described in the preceding words. Eis viños is a free translation of ons; kpious is "right," as in chap. xxiii. 23.-How objectionable and untenable all the non-Messianic explanations are, appears very clearly in this verse. If Israel were the Servant of God, then the Gentile world must be represented by the bent reed, and dimly burning wick. But in that case, we must have recourse to such arbitrary interpretations as, e.g., that given by Köster: "The weak faith and imperfect knowledge of the Gentiles." No weak faith, no imperfect knowledge, however, is spoken of; but the Servant of God appears as a Saviour of the poor and afflicted, of those broken by sufferings. Those who, by the Servant of God, understand the better portion of the people, or the prophetic order, speak of "the meek spirit of the mode of teaching, which does not by any means altogether crush the sinner already brought low, but, in a gentle, affectionate manner, raises him up" (Umbreit); or say with Knobel: "These poor and afflicted He does not humble still more by hard, depressing words, but speaks to them in a comforting and encouraging way, raising them up and strengthening them." But in this explanation everything is, without reason, drawn into the territory of speech, while Matthew rightly sees, in the healing of the sick by Christ, a confirmation by deeds of the prophecy before us. In chap. Ixi., also, the Servant of God does not only bring glad tidings, but creates, at the same time, the blessings announced. According to chap. lxi. 3, He gives to them that mourn in Zion beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, garment of praise for a weak (1) spirit. Verse 6 of the chapter before us most clearly indicates how little we are allowed to limit ourselves to mere speaking; for, according to that verse, the Servant of God is himself the covenant of the people, and the light of the Gentiles, and according to ver. 7, He opens the eyes of the blind, &c. Ver. 4. "He shall not fail nor run away until He shall have founded right in the earth, and for His law the isles shall wait." On: "He shall not fail," properly, "He shall not become dim," comp. Deut. xxxiv. 7, where it is said of Moses, the servant of God: "His eye had not become dim, nor had his strength fled." The "He shall not run away" (properly, "He shall not run ") is qualified and fixed by the parallelism with "He shall not fail." in other passages also, several times receives, by the context, the qualified signification "to run away," "to take to flight," "to flee;" comp. Judges viii. 21; Jer. xlix. 19. The words: "He shall not fail לא ירוץ לא יכהה ריץ ירוץ לא nor run away" imply that, in the carrying out of His vocation, the Servant of God shall meet with powerful obstacles, with obstinate enemies, and shall have to endure severe sufferings. That which is here merely hinted at, is carried out and detailed in chaps. xlix., 1., liii. How near He was to failing and running away (David, too, was obliged to say; "Oh! that I had wings like a dove, then would I fly away and be at rest”) is seen from His utterance in Matt. xvii. 17: & yeveà ǎTIOтos kai διεστραμμένη, ἕως πότε ἔσομαι μεθ ̓ ὑμῶν; ἕως πότε ἀνέξομαι iμv.-According to the current opinion, is here assumed to be the Future of, for, and that in the appropiate signification: “He shall not be broken." (Thus it was probably viewed by the Chaldean Paraphrast who renders as non laborabit; by the LXX., who translate où @pavonσeraι, while Aquila and Symmachus, according to the account of Jerome, render, non curret, thus following the derivation from .) As points back to in the preceding verse, so, in that case would point back to "He shall not break that which is bent, nor quench that which is dimly burning; but neither shall He himself be broken or quenched." But this explanation is opposed by the circumstance that we must make up our minds to admit a double anomaly. The territories of the two verbs and are everywhere else kept distinct, and the former everywhere else means "to break," and not "to be broken." In the only passage, Eccl. xii. 6, brought forward in support of this irregularity, "to run," "to flee away," being in parallelism "to be removed," is quite appropriate; just as in the second clause of that verse "to be crushed" is in parallelism with "to be broken." ירוץ with רוץ רוץ נרחק רצוץ ברץ רצץ are, in the usus loquendi of Isaiah, not so much the real islands, as rather the islands in the sea of the world, the countries and kingdoms; compare remarks on Rev. vi. 14, and Ps. xcvii. 1 (second Edition). The law for which the islands wait is not so much a ready-made code of laws, as the single decisions of the living Lawgiver, which the Gentiles, with anxious desire, shall receive as their rule in all circumstances, after they have spontaneously submitted to the dominion of the Servant of God, having been attracted by His loving dispensations. |