indeed quite obvious." We shall see, however, subsequently, that he adheres to the right explanation only in the first three verses, and afterwards abandons it. But passages especially remarkable are found in the cabbalistic book Sohar. It is true that the age of the book is very uncertain; but it cannot be proved to have been composed under Christian influence. We shall here quote only some of the principal passages. (Sohar, ed. Amstelod. p. ii. fol. 212; ed. Solisbac. p. ii. f. 85; Sommeri theol. Sohar p. 94.) "When the Messiah is told of the misery of Israel in their captivity, and that they are themselves the cause of it, because they had not cared for, nor sought after the knowledge of their Lord, He weeps aloud over their sins; and for this reason it is written in Scripture (Is. liii. 5): He was wounded for our transgressions, He was smitten for our iniquities."—" In the garden of Eden there is an apartment which is called the sick chamber. The Messiah goes into this apartment, and summons all the diseases, all the pains, and all the chastisements of Israel to come upon Him, and they all come upon Him. And unless He would take them away from Israel, and lay them upon himself, no man would be able to bear the chastisements of Israel, which are inflicted upon them on account of the Law, as it is written: But He took upon himself our sicknesses," &c. In another passage (Sohar, ed. Amstelod p. iii. f. 218; Solisbac. iii. f. 88; Sommeri theol. Sohar p.89; Auszüge aus dem Buche Sohar, mit Deutscher Uebersetzung, Berlin 52, S. 32), it is said: "When God wishes to give to the world a means of healing, He smites one of the pious among them, and for his sake He gives healing to the whole world. Where, in Scripture, do we find this confirmed? In Is. liii. 5, where it is said: He was wounded for our transgressions, He was crushed for our sins."

What has been said will be a sufficient proof that the ancient Jews, following tradition, referred the passage to the Messiah; and, as it appears from the majority of the passages quoted, referred it indeed to the suffering Messiah. But it would really have been a strange phenomenon, if this interpretation had remained the prevailing one among the Jews. According to the declaration of the Apostle, the Cross of Christ is to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness. The idea of a suffering and expiating Messiah was repugnant to the carnally

minded Jews. And the reason why it was repugnant to them, is that they did not possess that which alone makes that doctrine acceptable, viz., the knowledge of sin, and the consciousness of the need of salvation,-because, not knowing the holiness of God, and being ignorant of the import of the Law, they imagined that through their own strength, by the works of the Law, they could be justified before God. What they wished for was only an outward deliverance from their misery and their oppressors, not an internal deliverance from sin. For this reason, they looked exclusively to those passages of the Old Testament in which the Messiah in glory is announced; and those passages they interpreted in a carnal manner. In addition to this, there were other reasons which could not fail to render them averse to refer this passage to the suffering Messiah. As they could not compare the prophecy with the fulfilment,-the deep abasement of the Messiah which is here announced, the contempt which He endures, His violent death, appeared to them irreconcileable with those passages in which nothing of the kind is mentioned, but, on the contrary, the glorified Messiah only is foretold. They had too little knowledge of the nature of prophetic vision to enable them to perceive that the prophecies are connected with the circumstances of the time, and, therefore, exhibit a one-sided character, -that they consist of separate fragments which must be put together in order that a complete representation of the subject may be obtained. They imagined that because, in some passages, the Messiah is at once brought before us in glory, just because He, in this way, presented Himself to the prophets, He must also appear at once in glory. And, lastly, by their controversy with Christians, they were led to seek for other explanations. As long as they understood the passage as referring to a suffering Messiah, they could not deny that there existed the closest agreement between the prophecy and the history of Christ. Now since the Christians, in their controversies with the Jews, always proceeded from the passages, which by Hulsius is pertinently called a carnificina Judaeorum, and always returned to it, since they saw what impression was, in numerous cases, produced by the controversy of the Christians founded upon this passage, nothing was more natural, than that they should endeavour to discover an expedient for remedying

this evil. And the discovery of such an expedient was the more casy to them, the more that, in general, they were destitute of a sense of truth, and, especially of exegetical skill, so that they could not see any reason for rejecting an interpretation on the ground of its being forced and unnatural.

In proof of what we have said, we here briefly present the arguments with which Abarbanel opposes the explanation of a suffering and expiating divine Messiah. In the first place, by the absurd remark that the ancient teachers did not intend to give a literal, but an allegorical explanation, he seeks to invalidate the authority of the tradition on which the later Jewish interpreters laid so great a stress, whensoever and wheresoever it agrees with their own inclination; and, at the same time, he advances the assertion that they referred the first four verses only to the Messiah,-an assertion which the passages quoted by us shew to be utterly erroneous. Then, after having combatted the doctrine of original sin, he continues: "Suppose even that there exists such a thing as original sin,-when God, whose power is infinite, was willing to pardon, was His hand too short to redeem (Is. 1. 2), so that, on this account, He was obliged to take flesh, and to impose chastisements upon himself? And even although I were to grant that it was necessary that a single individual of the human race should bear this punishment, in order to make satisfaction for all, it would, at all events, have been at least more appropriate that some one from among ourselves, some wise man or prophet, had taken upon him the punishment, than that God himself should have done so. For, supposing even that He became incarnate, He would not be like one of us. It is altogether impossible and self-contradictory that God should assume a body; for God is the first cause, infinite, and omnipotent. He cannot, therefore, assume flesh, and subsist as a finite being, and take upon himself man's punishment, of which nothing whatsoever is written in Scripture.-If the prophecy referred to the Messiah, it must refer either to the Messiah ben Joseph, or the Messiah ben David (compare the Treatises at the close of this work). The former will perish in the beginning of his wars; neither that which is said of the exaltation, nor that which is said of the humiliation of the Servant of God applies to him; much less can the latter be intended."

(There then follows a quotation of several passages treating of the exalted Messiah.)

That it was nevertheless difficult for the carnally-minded among the Jews to reject the tradition, is seen from the paraphrase of Jonathan. This forms a middle link between the ancient interpretation-which was retained, even at a later period, by the better portion of the nation—and the recent interpretation. Jonathan (see his paraphrase, among others, in Lowth's comment. edited by Koppe, on the passage; and in Hulsii Theol. Judaica) acknowledges the tradition, in so far, that he refers the whole prophecy to the Messiah. On the other hand, he endeavours to satisfy his repugnance to the doctrine of a suffering and expiating Messiah, by referring, through the most violent perversions and most arbitrary interpolations, to the state of glory, every thing which is here said of the state of humiliation. A trace of the right interpretation may yet perhaps be found in ver. 12, where Jonathan says that the Messiah will give His soul unto death; but it may be that thereby he understands merely the intrepid courage with which the Messiah will expose himself to all dangers, in the conflict with the enemies of the covenant-people.

This mode of dealing with the text, however, could satisfy only a few. They, therefore, went farther, and sought for an entirely different subject of the prophecy. How very little they were themselves convinced of the soundness of their interpretation, and satisfied with its results, may be seen from the example of Abarbanel, who advances two explanations which differ totally, viz., one referring it to the Jewish people, and the other to king Josiah, and then allows his readers to make their choice betwixt the two. It is in truth only, that there is unanimity and certainty; error is always accompanied by disagreement and uncertainty. This will appear from the following enumeration of the various interpretations of this passage, which, at a subsequent period, were current among the Jews. (The principal non-Messianic interpretations of this passage are found in the Rabbinical Bibles, and also in Hulsius, l.c., p. 339 both in the original, and translation.) The interpreters may be divided into two main classes: 1. Those who by understand some collective body; and, 2. Those who refer the prophecy to a single individual.

The first class again falls into two subdivisions, (a), those who make the whole Jewish people the subject, in contrast to the Gentiles; and (b) those who make the better portion of the Jewish people the subject, in contrast to the ungodly portion. These views, and their supporters, we shall now proceed to submit to a closer examination.

1. (a.) Among the non-Messianic interpreters, the most prevalent opinion is, that the Jewish people are the subject of the prophecy. This opinion is found at an early period. At this we need not be surprised, as the cause which produced the deviation from the Messianic interpretation existed at a period equally early. When Origen was making use of this passage against some learned Jews, they answered: that "that which here was prophesied of one, referred to the whole people, and was fulfilled by their dispersion." This explanation is followed by R. Salomo Jarchi, Abenezra, Kimchi, Abarbanel, Lipmann (, fol. 131). The main features of this view are the following: The prophecy is supposed to describe the misery of the people in their present exile, the firmness with which they bear it for the glory of God, and resist every temptation to forsake His law and worship; and the prosperity, power, and glory which shall be bestowed upon them at the time of the redemption. In vers. 1-10, the Gentiles are supposed to be introduced as speaking, and making a humble and penitent confession that hitherto they had adopted an erroneous opinion of the people of God, and had unjustly despised them on account of their sufferings, inasmuch as their glory now shows, that it was not for the punishment of their sins that these sufferings were inflicted upon them. Some of these interpreters, e.g., Abenezra and Rabbi Lipmann, understand, indeed, by they, the pious portion only of the people who remained faithful to Jehovah; but this makes no material difference, inasmuch as they, too, contrast the y

עבד

with the heathen nations, and not with the ungodly, or less righteous portion of the nation, as is done by the interpreters of the following class.

(b). Others consider the appellation as a collective designation of the pious, and find in this section the idea of a kind of vicarious satisfaction made by them for the ungodly. Those interpreters come nearer the true explanation, in so far as they