DAVID BARON -
A SELECTION FROM HIS MANY WRITINGS
-------
1
THE SERVANT OF
JEHOVAH:
[Page III]
THE SUFFERINGS OF THE MESSIAH AND
THE GLORY THAT SHOULD FOLLOW*
[* See 1
PETER 1: 3-11,
R.V. The “glories that should follow,” is a reference to
the “time” (yet future), when
Messiah’s Millennial and
Messianic Kingdom will be established upon and over this sin-cursed
Earth: (Gen.
3: 17ff.). Cf.
Isa. 53:
10b with Psa.
2: 8; 110: 1-3; Psa. 72.; Rom. 8: 18-22, R.V.]
AN EXPOSITON OF ISAIAH 53
BY DAVID BARON
MARSHALL, MORGAN & SCOTT
-------
[Page IV]
MARSHALL, MORGAN AND SCOTT, LTD.
33 LUDGATE HILL,
ZONDERVAN PUBLISHING HOUSE
MADE AND PRINTED IN
MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED<
[Page V]
INTRODUCTION TO NEW EDITION
No
greater service has been rendered to the Christian public during the past few years
than the republishing of David Baron’s works. David Baron was not only an unusually
able and consecrated missionary to his people - the Jews - but he was a
spiritual giant, mighty in the Scriptures.
He brought to his task the rare and happy combination of keen spiritual
insight and sane and sanctified scholarship.
In these days when Jewish leaders, as a defence against
Christianity, are trying to eliminate from the pages of the Old Testament the doctrine
of a personal Messiah, and so, in reality, undermining the very foundations of
true Judaism, and “liberal” writers
within the “Church” are devoted to the same purpose, it is
a source of genuine satisfaction and strength to the cause of Christ in general
and to Jewish Evangelism in particular that such a work as The Servant of Jehovah should again be
made available to the public.
Thoroughly steeped in Rabbinic lore and literature and the
polemics of Judaism, no one was better able to expose the fallacies of the more
modern Jewish interpretation of this great and sublime portion of the Old
Testament, Isaiah 53., which has
been aptly referred to as “the bad conscience of
the Synagogue.”
[Page VI]
But David Baron’s purpose in the
writing of this book was not only the critical and controversial but the
continuous exposition of this greatest of all prophetic utterances, to convince
of its truth and to strengthen faith, so that like Philip of old when one came
to him concerning this passage asking “of whom
speaketh the prophet this?” we may be better able to preach unto
them Jesus (Acts 8: 34). And the reader will realize
a spiritual exaltation through the reading of this rich exposition, and a
fuller comprehension of the meaning of the glorious atonement accomplished by
“The
Servant of Jehovah,”
-------
[Page VII]
PREFACE
It is, I
can sincerely say, with unfeigned diffidence that I send forth this little work
on its mission, for I am deeply conscious of the greatness and sublimity of the
theme and of the inadequate way in which I have been able to deal with it. I felt inwardly impelled to write it,
and have gladly devoted to it what days and hours could possibly be spared in a
life of strain and pressure on account of many other tasks and
responsibilities.
But though sensible of the shortcoming and imperfection of my
effort, I have the heart assurance that there is a blessing in it, and if the
reader receives only a fraction of the spiritual help and enjoyment which the
writer found in the course of his meditation and exposition of this truly
wonderful Scripture he will be amply rewarded. It has confirmed his faith in the
supernatural character of prophecy and made him feel as never before that Holy
Scripture has upon it “the stamp of its Divine
Author - the mark of heaven - the impress of eternity.”
It has, if possible, wrought deeper conviction in his heart
that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Christ, the promised Redeemer of Israel -
He “of
whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write”; for it is beyond [Page VIII] even the wildest credulity to believe that the resemblance in
every feature and minutest detail between this prophetic portraiture drawn centuries
before His advent and the story of His life, and death, and glorious
resurrection as narrated in the Gospels, can be mere accident or fortuitous
coincidence. It has also
strengthened my hope for the future blessing of the nation from which I have sprung,
and for which I have not ceased to yearn with the yearnings of Him who wept
over Jerusalem, and even on the Cross prayed for them: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”; for, in the
words of Franz Delitzsch, “we must not overlook
the fact that this golden passional is also one of the greatest prophecies of
the future conversion of the nation which has rejected the Servant of God, and
allowed the Gentiles to be the first to recognize Him. At last, though very late, it will feel
remorse. And when this shall once
take place, then, and not till then, will this chapter - which, to use an old
epithet, will ever be carnificina
Rabbinorum - receive its complete
historical fulfilment.”
As will be seen, the book consists of two parts. In the first part it has been impossible
to avoid controversy and criticism in order to clear the ground, and to
demonstrate the firm foundation on which the Messianic interpretation of the
prophecies concerning the Servant of Jehovah in the Book of Isaiah is based; while in the second part, which
is a continuous exposition of the great Scripture which forms the subject of
the whole, [Page IX] I have tried as much as possible to avoid controversy and criticism, but
to make it spiritually helpful to believers.
There is nothing in these pages which should be too difficult
or abstruse for the ordinary intelligent reader who knows no other language
than English; the Hebrew words and phrases where they occur being all
transliterated as well as translated.
To those, however, who have no interest in the history of
interpretation, and do not care to
follow Jewish and rationalistic misinterpretations, I would recommend to read the exposition first, or to pass over Chapters
2. and 3. of the first part.
DAVID BARON.
[Page X]
FIRST EDITION . . . . . . . January 1922
SECOND EDITION . . . . . . . October 1922
NEW EDITION . . . . . . . Spring 1954
[Page XI]
CONTENTS
PART I
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE NON-MESSIANIC
INTERPRETATIONS OF ISAIAH 53
CHAPTER I.
THE PROPHETIC GEM AND ITS SETTING Page 3
CHAPTER II.
THE ANCIENT JEWISH INTERPRETATION OF ISAIAH 53 Page 10
CHAPTER III. THE MODERN JEWISH AND
RATIONALISTIC
CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION Page16
CHAPTER IV.
THE UNTENABLENESS OF THE MODERN INTERPRET1ON Page 33
* * * * * * *
PART II
THE EXPOSITION
CHAPTER I.
JEHOVAH’S INTRODUCTION OF HIS SERVANT:
A SUMMARY OF THE WHOLE PROPHECY Page 51
CHAPTER II.
THE STORY OF THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH UNFOLDED Page 67
(1)The Early
Years and Unobtrusive Character of the Servant of Jehovah. Page 69
[Page XII]
(2)
The Despised and Rejected of Men Page 73
(3)
The Vicarious Character of His Sufferings Page 83
(4)
The Moral Necessity of His Sufferings Page 93
(5)
The Voluntary Character of His Sufferings Page 98
(6)
The Unjust Trial and Violent Death of the Servant of Jehovah Page 101
(7)
God’s Special Interposition in the Burial of His Servant Page 109
CHAPTER III. THE RESURRECTION AND
FUTURE GLORY OF
THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH Page 117
(1)
The Life which is Conditioned upon His Death Page 119
(2)
His Spiritual Seed Page 121
(3)
The Prolongation of His Days Page 123
(4)
The Pleasure of Jehovah which Prospers in His Hands Page 124
CHAPTER IV. JEHOVAH’S
FINAL WORD CONCERNING HIS SERVANT:
THE GLORIOUS AWARD FOR HIS SUFFERINGS Page 127
APPENDIX
THE SUFFERING MESSIAH OF THE SYNAGOGUE Page 143
-------
[Page XIII]
THE SCRIPTURE
Behold, My Servant shall deal wisely, He shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very
high.
Like as many
were astonished at Thee: (His
visage was so marred more than any man, and His
form more than the sons of men),
So shall He
sprinkle many nations; kings shall
shut their mouths at Him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which
they had not heard shall they understand.
Who hath
believed our message? and to whom hath
the arm of Jehovah been revealed?
For He grew up
before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground. He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we see
Him,
there is no beauty that we should desire Him.
He was
despised, and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted
with grief: and as one from whom men hide their face He was despised and
we esteemed Him not.
Surely He hath
borne our griefs, and carried our
sorrows yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
But He was
wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for
our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His
stripes we are healed.
All we like
sheep have gone astray; we have
turned every one to his own way, and Jehovah hath laid on Him the iniquity of us
all.
[Page XIV]
He was oppressed, yet when He was afflicted He opened not His mouth;
as a lamb that
is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so He opened not
His mouth.
By oppression
and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who
among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the
transgression of My people to whom the stroke was due?
And they made
His grave with the wicked, and with a
rich man in His death; although He had done no violence neither was any deceit in
His mouth.
Yet it pleased
Jehovah to bruise Him; He hath
put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His
seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hands.
He shall see
of the travail of His soul, and shall
be satisfied: by the knowledge of Himself shall My righteous Servant
justify many; and He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore will
I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He poured
out His soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet He bare the
sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
[Translation of the American “Standard Edition.”]
* * *
[Page 1]
PART I
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE
NON-MESSIANIC INTERPRETATIONS OF ISAIAH 53
“I pray thee, of
whom speaketh the prophet this?
of himself, or of some other?” – Acts 8: 38
[Page 2 blank: Page 3]
CHAPTER I
THE PROPHETIC GEM
AND ITS SETTING
The
great Scripture we are about to consider has sometimes been called “the fifth Gospel” “Methinks,”
said Augustine, “Isaiah writes not a prophecy
but a gospel.” This he
said of the whole book, but it is especially true of this chapter. Polycarp, the disciple of John, called
it “the golden Passional of the Old Testament”;
and a great German scholar writes: “It looks as
if it had been written beneath the cross of
“It is prelude to much that is
most distinctive in New Testament doctrine, and is the root from which not a
little of the thinking of Christian ages has grown. Its phraseology has entered largely into
Christian speech, [Page 4] and it has supplied more
texts to the gospel preacher than any other portion of the Old Testament. There
are individual phrases in it resembling peaks, from which we faintly descry
vast realms of truth which we cannot yet explore, but which shine with a mystic
light whose source is Divine.
Beyond question, this chapter is the heart of the Hebrew prophetic writings. It embraces and harmonizes the ideas contained
in such seemingly discordant predictions as Psalms 2., 22., 72., and 110.; and from the standpoint
which it furnishes we are enabled to see the consistency of Messianic prophecy
throughout.
“Elsewhere, indeed, we find
greater splendour of language, force of passion, wealth of imagery, and
imaginative elevation, but nowhere so full, minute, and vivid forth-showing of
God’s purpose. Truths
elsewhere seen in twilight and transitory glimpses here stand forth for calm
inspection in the light of day. Elsewhere we find line or touch or feature in
keeping with what is here; but nowhere so finished and complete
portraiture. It is as if the
prophet had shaded and filled up with colours the outlines elsewhere given. The hints of One passing through shame and
suffering to victory, which elsewhere appear as ‘dark sayings,’ here
kindle into a great life-filled picture, in which we see not only His
surpassing sorrow, but also the mystery of its meaning, and the glory which
finally comes of it. Not merely is
there broad outline, but those more delicate lines and contours which give
perfect individuality to the portrait.
“The
chapter holds much the same place in Old [Page 5] Testament prophecy that the narrative of
Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection holds in New Testament history;
and with this chapter all Hebrew prophecy as a Divine thing stands or falls.”*
* The Man of Sorrows and the Hoy that was Set before
Him - a very excellent booklet by the late James Culross, D.D., published by the
Drummond Tract Depository, to which I shall have occasion to make many
references in the exposition.
But most precious and beautiful as this Old Testament
prophetic gem is in itself, its lustre is greatly intensified by its setting.
The second half of the Book of Isaiah,
consisting of the last twenty-seven chapters, is the sublimest and richest
portion of Old Testament revelation.
It forms a single continuous prophecy which occupies the same position
in the prophetic Scriptures as the Book of Deuteronomy
in the Pentateuch, and the Gospel of John in
relation to the Synoptic Gospels.
It is true that “it does not flow on in
even current like a history,” and to the superficial reader it may
have a desultory appearance, but “after patient
study the first sense of confusedness is got over, and we perceive its
magnificent and harmonious completeness as it rounds itself into one glorious
vision.”
It may be called the prophetic Messianic epic of the Old
Testament. It is sublime in its very
style and language, and wonderful in its comprehensiveness - anticipating, as
it does, the whole order of the New Testament. It begins, where the New Testament
begins, with the ministry of John the Baptist - “the voice of [Page 6] him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” and it ends, where the New Testament
ends, with the new heavens and a new earth, wherein shall dwell righteousness.*
* Chapters 65: 17-20, 66: 22.
On examining the glorious prophecy closely, we find that the
twenty-seven chapters range themselves into three equal divisions of nine
chapters each, all ending with nearly the same solemn refrain, “There is no peace, saith my God,
to the wicked.”*
* Chapters 48: 22, 57: 21, 66: 24.
One great line of thought unfolded in the whole prophecy is
the development of evil and the final
overthrow of the wicked, who are excluded from the blessings of Messiah’s
[coming millennial] Kingdom; and the sufferings but final
glory of the righteous remnant, who are the subjects of that Kingdom, and whose
King is described as leading the way along the same path of suffering into [the manifested]* glory.
[* Habakkuk
2: 44. cf. 1 Peter 1: 11,
R.V.]
This subject becomes developed and intensified as we go on,
until it reaches its climax in the last chapter.
The first section is brought to a close at the end of chapter 48., where the blessedness of the
righteous who are “redeemed” (verse
20), and peacefully led and satisfied even in the desert, is contrasted
with the state of the wicked to whom “there is no
peace.”
In the second division the same subject becomes intensified; there
is development of both evil and good, righteousness and wickedness, and it ends
with chapter
57., where “Peace! Peace!” is announced to the [Page 7] righteous, but the wicked have not only “no
peace,” but have become “like the
troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.”
In the last division the destiny of both is brought to a
climax and becomes fixed for ever.
“Therefore thus saith Jehovah
God, Behold, My servants shall
eat, but
ye shall be hungry; behold, My servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty; behold, My servants shall
rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed; behold, My servants shall sing for joy, but ye shall cry
for sorrow of heart and shall howl for vexation of spirit. And ye shall leave your name for a curse
unto My chosen, for the Lord God shall slay thee, and call His
servants by another name.” This
contrast is continued until finally we find the righteous dwelling for ever in
the new heavens and the new earth, wherein shall dwell righteousness; while as
to the wicked who have transgressed against God, “their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be
an abhorring to all flesh.”
In the first section (chapters 40. - 48.) the
restoration from Babylon (which, however, is portrayed in terms which far
exceeded what actually took place at that restoration, and which will only be
exhaustively fulfilled in the greater restoration of Israel (“from the four corners of the earth”) is the starting-point, and
the appointed instrument in God’s hand to bring about that restoration,
Cyrus, is the central figure.
In the second or central section (chapters 49. - 57.) the grand redemption to be
accomplished by One [Page 8] greater than Cyrus - even by Him, who in this series of chapters is
pre-eminently the Ebhed Yehovah - the
“Servant of Jehovah,” who is sent not only to raise
up “the tribes of Jacob,” and to restore “the preserved of Israel,” but to be “a light also
to the Gentiles,”
and God’s salvation “unto the end of the earth,” is the theme with which the prophet’s
heart overflows; and in the third or last section the blessed condition of restored and converted Israel, who shall
then be the channel and active propagators of the blessings of Messiah’s
gospel among all nations, is the outstanding subject.
The heart and climax of the whole prophecy is to be found in
the brief section which forms its inmost centre (chapters 52: 13 to 53:
12), which, instead of a prophecy uttered centuries
in advance, reads like an historic summary of the Gospel narrative of the sufferings of the Christ and the [promised manifested] glory [throughout this restored earth]* that should follow.
[* Romans 8: 19-21. cf. Hosea 5:
15 - 6:
1-2, R.V.]
Taking our position at this central point, we are almost
overwhelmed with the evidence of design in the very structure of this prophecy,
for on closer examination we find that each book is subdivided into three
sections of three chapters each, nearly corresponding to the divisions in the
Authorized Version. Thus the middle
book is chapters 49. - 67.
The middle section of the middle book is chapters
52., 53., 54.,
and chapter 53. is the middle chapter of the
middle section of the middle book - forming, as it were, the heart and centre
of this wonderful Messianic poem, as well as the heart and centre [Page 9] of all Old Testament prophecy. The central verse of this central
paragraph, which begins properly with chapter 52: 13,
is: “He was wounded
for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement with a view to our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.”
The doctrine it enshrines, namely, substitution, is one of the
leading truths unfolded in Old and New Testaments, and it forms the central
thought in this great prophecy. It
is, moreover, the essence of the message of comfort with which the prophet
begins (40: 1,
2), solving the problem as to how “her iniquity is pardoned.”
* * *
[Page 10]
CHAPTER II
THE ANCIENT JEWISH
INTERPRETATION OF ISAIAH 53
There is
truth in the observation of a scholarly writer that this great prophecy was
“an enigma which could not be fully understood in
the days before Christ, but which has been solved by the sufferings, death,
resurrection, and exaltation of Him who was both Son of Man and Son of God.”
*
* Dr. C. H. H. Wright, The Servant of Jehovah.
It is therefore not surprising to find that in the Talmud and
Rabbinic Midrashim there is much confusion and contradiction in the various
interpretations advanced by the Rabbis.
But though it may be true, as Professor Dalman observes,* that the Messianic interpretation was
not the general one, or the one officially recognized in Israel (any more than
any of the other interpretations can be said to have been either generally or
officially recognized), yet from most ancient times there have not been wanting
authoritative teachers who interpreted the chapter of the Messiah - in spite of
the fact that the picture of the Redeemer which is here drawn is utterly [Page 11] opposed to the disposition and to the
perverted hopes and expectations in reference to the Messiah which have
developed in Rabbinic Judaism.
* Jesaja Iiii., Das Prophetenwort.
vom Suhnleiden des Heilmittlers.
In proof of this, the following few brief extracts from
ancient Jewish interpretations will interest the Christian reader:
First, let me quote Jonathan ben Uzziel (first century A.D.),
who begins his Targum with, “Behold, my Servant
Messiah shall prosper; He shall be high and increase, and be exceeding strong.”
And then, to reconcile the interpretation of this scripture of the Messiah with
his reluctance to recognize that the promised Deliverer must suffer and die for
the sins of the nation, he proceeds to juggle with the scripture in a most
extraordinary manner, making all the
references to exaltation and glory in the chapter to apply to the Messiah,
but the references to tribulation and
sufferings to Israel. In
illustration of the method by which this is accomplished I need quote only his
paraphrase of the very next verse (52: 14), which
reads: “As the House of Israel looked to Him
during many days, because their countenance was darkened among the peoples, and
their complexion beyond the sons of men.”
In the Talmud Babylon,*
among other opinions, we find the following: “The
Messiah - what is His name? ... The Rabbis say
the ‘leprous one’;* (those) of
the [Page 12] house of Rabbi (say), ‘the sick one,’ as it is said, ‘Surely He hath borne our
sicknesses.’”***
* Sanhedrin, fol. 98b.
** This is based on a wrong interpretation of the word …, nagua – “stricken” or “plagued,”
as meaning “leprous.”
*** The other names of the Messiah
mentioned in this passage are: “Shiloh,”
with reference to Gen. 49: 10, “until Shiloh come”; “Yinnon,” with
reference to Ps. 72:
17, “His name
shall endure for ever; before the sun (was created) his name was “Yinnon”;
“Haninah,” in reference to Jer. 16: 13, “where no Haninah (favour) will be given to you” ; “Wnahem,” son of Hezekiah, in reference to Lam. 1: 16, “the Comforter (M'nahem) that should restore my soul is far from me.”
That the generally received older Jewish interpretation of
this prophecy was the Messianic is admitted by Abrabanel, who himself proceeds
in a long polemic against the Nazarenes to interpret it of the Jewish nation.
He begins: “The first question is to ascertain
to whom (this scripture) refers: for the learned among the Nazarenes expound it
of the man who was crucified in Jerusalem at the end of the second Temple, and
who according to them was the Son of God and took flesh in the virgin’s
womb, as is stated in their writings. Jonathan ben Uzziel interprets it in the
Targurn of the future Messiah; and this is also the opinion of our learned men in the majority of their Midrashim.”
Similarly, another (Rabbi Mosheli el Sheikh, commonly known as
Alshech, second half of the sixteenth century), who also himself follows the
older interpretation, at any rate of the first three verses (53: 13-15, which, however, as we shall see when we come
to the interpretation, contain a summary of the whole prophecy), testifies that
our [Page 13] Rabbis with one voice accept and
affirm the opinion that the prophet is speaking of the King Messiah.
In fact, until Rashi*
(Rabbi Solomon Yizchaki) applied it to the Jewish nation, the Messianic
interpretation of this chapter was almost universally adopted by Jews, and his
view, which we shall examine presently, although received by Aben Ezra, Kimchi,
and others, was rejected as unsatisfactory by Maimonides, who is regarded by
the Jews as of highest authority, by Alshech (as stated above), and many
others, one of whom** says the
interpretation adopted by Rashi “distorts the
passage from its natural meaning,” and that in truth “it was given of God as a description of the Messiah,
whereby, when any should claim to be the Messiah, to judge by the resemblance
or non-resemblance to it whether he were the Messiah or no.” And another*** says: “The meaning of ‘He was wounded for our transgressions, ... bruised for our
iniquities,’ is that since the Messiah
bears our iniquities, which produce the effect of His being bruised, it follows
that whoso will not admit that the Messiah thus suffers for our iniquities must
endure and suffer for them himself.”
* Rashi, 1040-1105.
** R. Moshch Kohen Iben Crispin, of Cordova, and afterwards of
*** R. Eliyya, de Vidas, 1575 A.D.
[Page 14]
Before proceeding to an examination of the modern Jewish interpretation
of this chapter, let me add two further striking testimonies to its more
ancient Messianic interpretation - taken this time, not from any Targum, or
Midrash, or Rabbinical Commentary, which might be said to express the
individual opinion of this or that Rabbi, but from the Jewish liturgy, which
may be said to bear upon it the seal of the authority and usage of the whole
Synagogue.
The first is taken from the Liturgy for the Day of Atonement -
the most solemn day in the Jewish year - and reads as follows: “We are shrunk up in our misery even until now! Our Rock hath not come nigh to us;
Messiah our righteousness (or ‘our Righteous Messiah’) has departed
from us: Horror hath seized upon us, and we have none to justify us. He hath borne the yoke of our iniquities
and our transgressions, and is wounded because of our transgression. He beareth our sins on His shoulder,
that He may find pardon for our iniquities. We shall be healed by His wound at the
time the Eternal will create Him (Messiah) as a new creature. O bring Him up from the circle of the
earth, raise Him up from Seir to assemble us the second time on
*This prayer or hymn forms part of the
Musaph Service for the Day of Atonement. The author, according to Zuriz (Literatur
geschte der Syn. Poesie, p. 56, etc.), was Eleazer ben Kalir, who lived
in the ninth century. Yinnon, as
will be seen from the quotation from Talmud Sanhedrin on p. 12, was one of the
names given by the Rabbis to the Messiah, and is derived from Psalm 72: 17,
which the Talmud renders, “Before the sun was,
His name”- a rendering and explanation which implies a belief in
the pre-existence of the Messiah.
[Page 15]
The other passage is also from the Machsor (Liturgy for the Festival Services) and will be found among
the prayers on the Feast of Passover.
It is as follows: “Flee, my beloved,
until the end of the vision shall speak; hasten, and the shadows shall take
their flight hence: high and exalted and lofty shall be the despised one; he
shall be prudent in judgment, and shall sprinkle many! Lay bare thine arm! cry out, and say:
‘The voice of my beloved; behold he cometh!’”*
* David Levi, the English translator of the Mathsor, a Jew, says in a
note that this verse referred to “the true
Messiah.”
* * *
[Page 16]
CHAPTER III
THE MODERN JEWISH AND RATIONALISTIC
CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION OF ISAIAH 53
On
examining the different non-Messianic and controversial interpretations of this
great prophecy, given by Jewish and unbelieving Christian Rabbis, it is an
important fact to be borne in mind, as Pusey points out, that next to nothing
turns upon renderings of the Hebrew.
“The objections raised by Jewish
controversialists (and I may add by the non-Messianic Christian interpreters)
in only four, or at most five, words turn on the language.” It is not then a question of knowledge
of Hebrew Grammar, or Philology; and ordinary intelligent English readers, with
the Authorized or Revised Version of the Scriptures in their hands, are well
able to judge of the merits of the different interpretations which are
advanced.
“The characteristics in which
all agree are, that there would be a prevailing unbelief as to the subject of
the prophecy, lowly beginnings, among circumstances outwardly unfavourable, but
before God, and protected by Him; sorrows, injustice, contempt, death, which
were the portion of the sufferer; that he was accounted a [Page 17] transgressor, yet that his sufferings were, in some way,
vicarious, the just for the unjust; his meek silence; his willing acceptance of
his death; his being with the rich in his death; his soul being (in some way)
an offering for sin, and God’s acceptance of it; his prolonged life; his
making many righteous; his continued intercession for transgressors; the
greatness of his exaltation, in proportion to the depth of his humiliation; the
submission of kings to him; his abiding reign.”*
* Pusey in his Introduction to The
Jewish Interpreters of Isaiah 53.
Now these characteristics stand out in all literal
translations (as distinguished from mere paraphrases) whether made by Jews or
Christians, in the east or in the west.
“The question,” as the
writer whom I have just quoted observes, “is
not, ‘What is the picture?’ - in this all are agreed - but ‘Whose image or likeness does it bear?’”
It is not necessary for us to examine those Jewish
interpretations which apply this chapter to Jeremiah, Isaiah himself, Hezekiah,
Josiah, or Job, etc., for they have been sufficiently refuted by Jewish writers
themselves, but I may quote Hengstenberg’s observation in reference to
those Christian writers who have followed in the same lines.
“Among the interpretations
which refer the prophecy to a single individual other than the Messiah,”
he says, “scarcely any one has found another
defender than its own author. They
are of importance only in so far as [Page 18] they show that the prophecy does most decidedly
make the impression that its subject is a real person, not a personification;
and further, that it could not by any means be an exegetical interest which
induced rationalism to reject the interpretation which referred it to Christ.”
The most generally accepted modern Jewish interpretation of
this prophecy is that which makes it
apply to the Jewish nation.
The first mention we have of this explanation is by Origen,* who, in his work against Celsus,
says, “I remember once having used these
prophecies in disquisition with those called wise among the Jews, whereon the Jews
said that these things were prophesied of the whole people as one which was
both dispersed abroad and smitten.” But this may then have been the opinion
of that particular Rabbi, or the counter-explanation may have been advanced by
him (as has been done by later Rabbis and Jewish commentators) as a device,
“in order to answer heretics” who
were pressing them with the remarkable resemblance between the prophecy and its
fulfilment in Jesus of Nazareth.
* Born,
185 or 186 A. D. ; died, 253.
The first of the authoritative Jewish commentators who applied
this chapter to the Jewish nation was Rashi, and since his time it has become
more and more the “generally received”
interpretation among the Jews. And
that unbelieving Israel should have departed from the ancient interpretation
which applied this prophecy to the Messiah is really not to be wondered at, for
first [Page
19] the idea of a
suffering expiatory Messiah became more and more repugnant to Rabbinic Judaism,
which lost the knowledge of sin and the consciousness of the need of salvation,
such as alone could make the doctrine of a vicariously suffering Redeemer
acceptable. “Not knowing the holiness of God, and being ignorant of the
true import of the Law,” as Hengstenberg observes, “they imagine that in their own strength they can be
justified before God. What they
longed for was only an outward deliverance from their misery and oppressors,
not an inward deliverance from sin.
For this reason the Synagogue occupied itself exclusively with those
Scriptures which announce a Messiah in
glory, which passages also it misinterpreted.”
Secondly, lacking or rejecting the key to the true
understanding of this prophecy, namely, its fulfilment in Jesus of Nazareth,
Jewish commentators were encountered by great difficulties and
inexplicabilities in their attempts to expound it. This picture of a Messiah, which
represented Him as passing through the deepest humiliation and suffering, and
pouring out His soul unto death, appeared
to them irreconcilable with those prophecies which speak of the Messiah as
coming in power and glory.
And, thirdly, this explanation was not only “too flattering to the national feeling not to be extensively
adopted,”* as Pusey
observes, but it has really something [Page 20] plausible from their point of view as its basis. Is not
* “Every truly Christian
reader feels humbled as he reads this portion of Scripture, because he sees in
it a description of his Saviour, and the cost of his redemption; almost every
Jew is likely to feel lifted up, because he sees in it a description of the
value of Israel to the nations of the world, and of his own sufferings as a
means of peace and prosperity to Gentiles.
There is thus a fundamental difference in the two interpretations of the
chapter, answering to the fundamental difference that there is between Judaism
and Christianity - the one a religion which magnifies human efforts, the other
one which makes humiliation of soul necessary to true exaltation.” - Canon A. Lukyn Williams in Christian Evidence for Jewish People.
To give Christian readers a good idea of what this modern
Jewish interpretation involves and how consistently it is carried through, I
reproduce the exposition of Manasseh-ben-Israel,* which is an embodiment of practically all that Jewish
controversialists and rationalistic Christian writers who have followed on the
same lines, have to say on this subject.
He calls his Commentary the Reconciliation, or an answer to the question, “If this chapter is to be interpreted of the people of
Israel, how came Isaiah to say that it bore the sin of many, whereas every one,
according to the testimony of Ezekiel, 18: 20, pays only for his own guilt?” and proceeds:
* Born about 1604; died, 1657; Rabbi at
RECONCILIATION
“The
subject of this question demands long argument, and for our verses to be
perfectly understood it will be necessary to explain the whole of the chapter,
which we shall do with all possible brevity, without starting any objections
which may be made against other expositions, [Page 22] as our intention is solely to show
what our own opinion is. Accordingly, for greater clearness I shall set down the
literal text with a paraphrase of my own, and then illustrate it by notes.
“Isaiah prophesies: (1) The
extreme prosperity of
Literal Translation
Paraphrase
Behold, my servant
shall prosper; he shall be exalted, Behold, by servant
and shall be extolled, and shall be raised very high.
Exalted, extolled, and raised very high, at the
coming
of the Messiah.
As many were astonished at thee, his visage
was so
As many of the nations were astonished at thee,
marred more than any man, and his
form more than
O Israel, saying at the time of the captivity,
Truly
the sons of man:
he is disfigured above all mankind in his countenance
and form:
So will he cause many nations to speak; kings shall So at the time they shall speak of thy grandeur; even
shut their mouths at him; what had not been told
kings themselves shall shut their mouths in
astonish-
them they shall see; and what they had not heard ment: for what they had never been told they shall they shall understand.
see, and what they had not heard they shall
understand.
[Page 23]
Who will believe our report? and upon
whom hath
Who would have believed (the nations will say)
the arm of Adonai been manifested?
what we see, had
it been related to them? And look
upon what a vile nation the arm of the Lord has
manifested itself.
And he came up before him as a branch, and as a
root He came up miraculously as a branch and root
root out of a dry ground; he had no
form nor
out of a dry ground, for he had no form nor
comeliness; and we saw him, and there was no
comeliness; we saw him, but so hideous, that it
did
appearance that we should covet it.
not seem to us an appearance, for which we should
envy
him.
He was despised and rejected of men, a man of
He was despised and rejected from the society
of
sorrows accustomed to sickness; and as they
hid their
men, a man of sorrows, accustomed to suffer
faces from him, he was despised, and we esteemed
troubles; we hid our faces from him, he was
him not.
despised and un-esteemed among us.
Surely he bare our sicknesses, and endured
our
But now we see that the sicknesses and troubles
sufferings; and we esteemed him wounded, smitten
which we ought in reason to have suffered, he
by God, and afflicted.
suffered and endured, and we thought that he was
just smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pained by our transgressions, was
Whereas he suffered the sicknesses and
sufferings
crushed by our iniquities: the
chastisement of our
which we deserved for our sins: he bore the
peace was upon him, and by his wounds we were chastisement which our peace and felicity
healed.
deserved; but his troubles appear to have been
the
cure of ourselves.
All we like sheep went astray, we turned
every one to
All we like sheep went astray: we followed every
his own way; and Adonai (God) caused the sin of all
one his own sect, and so the Lord seems to have
to meet upon him.
transferred on him the punishment of us all.
[Page 24]
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, and he opened …….He
was oppressed and afflicted: he was taken by
not his mouth; he was carried as a lamb to the
us as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep
slaughter and was dumb as a sheep before its
shearers;
before its shearers, depriving him of life and
and he opened not his mouth.
property: and he was dumb and opened not his
mouth.
He was taken from imprisonment and judgment, and
From prison and these torments he is now
who shall declare his generation? for he was
cut off
delivered: and who would have thought of this
from the land of the living: for the
transgression of my
his happy age when he was banished from the
people they were stricken.
holy land?
Though the wickedness of my
people (each nation will say) this blow came
upon them.
And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the
He was buried with malefactors, and suffered
rich in his deaths, although he had not acted
falsely and
various torments with the rich, without having
there was no deceit in his mouth.
committed crime or used deceit with his mouth.
And Adonai wished to crush him, made him
sick: if he
But it was the Lord (the prophet says) who
offer his soul as an expiation, he shall see
seed, he shall
wished to make him sick and afflict him, in
prolong days, and the will of Adonai shall prosper
in his order
to purify him: if he offer his soul as an
hand.
expiation, he shall see seed, he shall prolong
his days, and the will and determination of the
Lord shall prosper in his hand.
From the trouble of his soul he shall see, shall
be
For the
trouble which his soul suffered in
satisfied: by his wisdom my righteous servant
shall
captivity,
he shall see good, shall be satisfied
justify many: and he shall bear their iniquities.
with days: by his wisdom my righteous
servant
will bear their burdens.
[Page 25]
Therefore I will distribute to him with many:
because
Therefore I will give him his share of
the spoil
he gave himself up unto
death, and was numbered with
among the many and powerful of Gog and
the transgressors; and he bare
the sin of many: and he
Magog, because he gave himself up unto
prayed for the transgressors.
death for the sanctification of my name; and
was numbered with the transgressors; and he
bare the offence of many, even praying for
the
very transgressors from whom he received
injuries.”
Of his “Commentary”
I am only able, for lack of space, to reproduce his notes on those verses which
speak particularly of the vicariousness of the sufferings of Jehovah’s
righteous servant. He says, on chapter 52: 13:
“ ‘Servant’ was one of the
many titles of honour with which the blessed God honoured
“The prophet addresses himself
to the people, and shows that in the same manner as the nations of the [Page 27] world wondered at their
low estate and fortunes, even going so far as to charge them with being
disfigured, having a form unsuitable to man, and unlike other mortals, so at
that period will they wonder at their prosperity and elevated state; for,
seeing the sudden change in the fortune of Israel, rising from such extreme
meanness to such extensive empire, all the kings of the earth will wonder and
discourse on the subject. And he
gives the reason of this, namely, because what had never been told them of any
nation they see in the people of
On verses 4-7 he puts the following words into the mouth of the
Gentile nations: “We unbelievers more justly
merited the troubles and calamities which this innocent people suffered in
their captivity. But we were so
blind that we considered him to be wounded, smitten, and afflicted by God, and
not through ourselves, and that all this came on them for keeping themselves
apart from the truth, and not joining with us in our religion.
“But it was quite the contrary,
for our wickedness alone was the cause of his troubles; did they not arise from
any hatred God bore them. The punishment (…, musar) or discipline of our
peace, was upon him, for, [Page 27] as grief always accompanies
pleasure, the chastisement of this happiness appears to have fallen on
him. Or it may also mean, when in
the enjoyment of peace adversaries were wanting, we immediately turned our arms
against this people, and what we established for the discipline and good
government of our states all rebounded in measures against him, decrees of
death, banishment, and confiscation of property, as experience daily
shows. Or otherwise, the doctrine
(… musar) taught by our
preachers was that our tranquillity depended upon our being irritated against
him, and ultimately we should find health in wounding him.
“But all we like
sheep went astray, etc. That
is, they will not only acknowledge the ill-treatment and bodily inflictions
they had made Israel suffer, but at the same time their errors, attributing
their wickedness thereto; for many will say, We all (Ishmaelites and Idumeans)
like sheep went astray, each in his own way following a new sect, just as the
prophet Jeremiah says (16. 19). And the Lord
made to fall on him the wickedness of us all. That is, we erred; they followed the
truth; consequently they suffered the punishments which we deserved.
“We
deprived them of their property as tribute, and afflicted their bodies with
various kinds of torture, yet he opened not his mouth, etc. The experience of
this is seen every day, particularly in the cruelties of the Inquisition, and
the false testimony raised against them to take their wool and rob them of
their property. And [Page 28] it is exactly this that the
Psalmist says, ‘Thou hast given us, O Lord, like sheep appointed for meat’ (44: 12); and further on, ‘For thy sake are we killed every day; we are counted as sheep for
the slaughter’
(44: 23), suffering daily with the greatest patience these acts of tyranny
and fearful calamities.”
On verse 9 he says: “The nations continue, We have frequently condemned this
people to death, and buried them with malefactors, and with the rich, …,
in their various deaths, though it is certain that, in order to take away their
property, we raised against them innumerable false testimonies, and martyred
them, without them having committed any crime or our having any charge against
them, except of having accumulated wealth, as he continues, although he had
committed no …, robbery, and there was no deceit in his mouth, that is,
allowing themselves to be robbed of the property they had not robbed, and to be
killed for the sanctification of the Lord, and refusing to acknowledge with
their mouth any other religion.
“From verse 10 onward the
prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, and relates the reason why these
troubles were suffered, and the reward to be hoped from them. And, firstly, he says that the will and
determination of the Lord has been to crush them and to make them sick by so
many different calamities, that, being purified by these means, they may become
worthy of such great felicity. If he offer his soul as an expiation, … surrendering it for the sake
of the Law; or, if he [Page 29] give himself up and
acknowledge himself guilty, becoming repentant, as Joseph’s brethren, who
said, ‘But
we are guilty’
(Gen. 42: 21), he shall see seed, that
is, they shall multiply infinitely (Ezek. 36: 37; Zech. 10: 10; Deut. 30: 5). He shall prolong days. The
same prophet confirms this where he says, ‘As the days of the tree,’ that is, the tree
of life, ‘are the days of my people’ (65: 22); and Zechariah, ‘And every man with his staff
in his hand from multitude of days’ (8: 4). Lastly, and the will of the Lord, which
is to oppress him and make him sick with punishments for his greater glory, shall
prosper in his hand, for the
purpose and end to which they are directed will be attained. Or, the will of the Lord, which is that
all should be saved and come to the holy knowledge of himself, will prosper
through his hand and means and take effect.
“By his knowledge my
righteous servant shall justify many. That is, Israel, who is termed ‘a righteous people and holy nation,’ justifies many by his knowledge and wisdom,
bringing them with brotherly love over to the true religion, and separating
them from their vain sects; and this at the very time that he bears their
iniquities, patiently suffering the tyranny of their wickedness. Or it may
otherwise mean, At that time my servant
“And he shall bear
their iniquities. For, being a most religious and holy
people, he will take charge of the spiritual administration of the observance
of the Law, [Page 30] as Moses says to Aaron, ‘Thou and thy sons
with thee shall bear the iniquity of the sanctuary’ (Num. 18: 1).
“Because he poured
out his soul unto death, etc. The prophet here
attributes four merits to them, for which they justly deserve the reward of
that happiness; and again in the form of a compendium he recapitulates the
contents of the chapter. (1)
Because he delivered himself up to death, allowing himself to be killed for the
sanctification of the Lord’s name and the observance of His most holy
Law. (2) Because he was reckoned among the wicked, patiently enduring to be
called a heretic. (3) For having
borne the sin of many, the wickedness and tyranny of others falling on his
shoulders. (4) Lastly, in having
observed the precept of Jeremiah, ‘Seek the welfare of the city whither I
have caused you to be carried captive’ (29: 7); and this, too, so carefully that in all their prayers
they pray for the health of the prince, and the peace of the kingdom or
province wherein they reside; and, what is more, it may be even for the welfare
of those from whom they are receiving insult and wrong, which is highly
meritorious, and a convincing proof of the constancy and patience with which
they receive from the Lord’s hand the yoke of captivity and the
sufferings of its misfortunes.”
This, then, is the modern Jewish view of this prophecy.
“Among Christians,” to quote the
words of a great German Bible student, “the
interpretation has taken nearly the same course as among the Jews. [Page 31] Similar causes have produced similar effects in both
cases. By both, the true
explanation was relinquished, when the prevailing tendencies had become opposed
to its results. And if we descend
to particulars, we shall find a great resemblance even between the modes of
interpretation proposed by both.
Even a priori, we could not
but suppose otherwise than that the Christian Church, as long as she possessed
Christ, found Him here also, where He is so clearly and distinctly set before
our eyes - that as long as she in general still acknowledged the authority of
Christ and of the Apostles, she could not but, here too, follow their distinct,
often-repeated testimony. And so,
indeed, do we find it to be. With
the exception of a certain Silesian called Seidel - who, given up to total
unbelief, asserted that the Messiah had never yet come, nor would ever come - and
of Grotius, both of whom supposed Jeremiah to be the subject - no one of the
Christian Church has, for seventeen centuries, ventured to call in question the
Messianic interpretation.
“On the contrary, this passage was
always considered to be the most distinct and glorious of all the Messianic
prophecies. It was reserved to the
last quarter of the eighteenth century to be the first to reject the Messianic
interpretation. At a
time when Naturalism exercised its sway,
it could no longer be retained.
For, if this passage contains a Messianic prophecy at all, its contents
offer so striking an argument with the history of Christ that its origin cannot
at all be accounted for in the natural [Page 32] way. Expedients
were therefore sought for; and these were so much the more easily found that
the Jews had, in this matter, already opened up the way.
“All that was necessary was
only to appropriate their arguments and counter-arguments, and to invest them
with the semblance of solidity by means of a learned apparatus.”
* * *
[Page 33]
CHAPTER IV
THE UNTENABLENESS OF THE MODERN
INTERPRETATION
I shall now proceed to show the untenableness of this modem
interpretation; but before doing so it is necessary to point out that, like
most of the false teaching of the present day, it contains a germ of truth
which lends plausibility to the error.
The germ of truth contained in this explanation is that, as
has already been observed above, the
term “Servant of Jehovah” is indeed again and again applied to
* Isaiah 41: 8 ** Isaiah 43:
10.
“Yet now hear, O Jacob My servant; and
* Isaiah 44: 1.
This is Israel’s high calling, but, alas! in this, as in [Page 34] the other great relationships to God,
to which he was called, namely, that of a son to his father, and of a wife to
her husband,
* Isaiah 42: 18-20.
But
* The following suggestive note is from Franz Delitzsch on
Isaiah: “The idea of the Servant of Jehovah
assumed, so to speak, figuratively, the form of a pyramid. The base was
“Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye peoples, from far; Jehovah hath called
me from the womb; from the bowels of
my mother hath He made mention of my name.
“And He hath made my
mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of
His hand hath He hid me, and He hath made me
a polished shaft; in His quiver hath
He kept me close;
“And He said unto me, Thou art My servant,
“But I said, I have laboured in vain, I have
spent my strength for nought, and for
vanity: yet surely my
judgment is with Jehovah, and my recompence
with my God.
“And now, saith
Jehovah that formed me from the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob
again to Him, and that
“Yea, He saith, It is too light a
thing that thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of
* Isaiah
49: 1-6.
That it is not of the nation of Israel that this prophecy speaks is clear, and
manifest to every unbiased mind, [Page 37] since the One who is here thus dramatically introduced as proclaiming His own
call and enduement for His office, and whom Jehovah addresses, is the One who
is sent as the Redeemer of Israel namely, “to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved
of Israel,” i.e. not
only to their land [as His promised “inheritance”
(Ps. 2: 8)], but to their God.
Here God says to him, “Thou art My servant, O Israel” (or, “Thou art
Here, too, as in chapter 42:
1-9, where the ideal personal Servant of
Jehovah is contrasted with the nation whose failure and unfaithfulness is
depicted in verses 18-25 of the same chapter, His mission
extends, not only to Israel, whom He is to raise up and restore, and to whom He
is to be, not only the mediator, but the very embodiment of “the
covenant” which shall be everlastingly established between them and their God, but
is to be the light also of the Gentiles, and God’s salvation unto the
very ends of the earth.
And as in chapters 42. and 4p., so also in Isaiah
53. itself, “where the figure of the
Servant of Jehovah unfolds its entire fullness of meaning,” He is
clearly and definitely distinguished from the nation. Thus, for instance, we read in the 8th. verse, “For the transgressions [Page 38] of my people was
He stricken.”
The speaker is either Jehovah or the prophet, but in either case
…, ami, “my people,” can apply only to
Now, none of these
points is found in the Jewish nation.
* See
The Shepherd of
Modern Rabbis, in spite of the
definite statement in the chapter itself, that it was “for the transgressions of My
people” (Israel)
that the righteous servant was stricken, put verses
1-9 into the mouth of the Gentile
nations, and make them say that “he (i.e. Israel) suffered
the sickness and sufferings which we Gentiles deserved”; but this
is only part of the self-deception which characterizes the modem teachers and
leaders of the Synagogue, and which has led them to perversive views of their
own Scriptures and facts of history.
It is this same spirit of pharisaic self-satisfaction which regards the
dispersion among the nations as a blessing, and denies the necessity of
atonement and of a mediator between God and man.
But whether we will heed or not, the solemn fact remains that
At the very beginning of their history Moses foretold what the
consequences would be if they departed from their God. “If ye will not for
all this hearken unto Me, but walk contrary
unto Me, then I will walk
contrary unto you in fury: and I also will chastise you seven times for your sins.
... And I will
make your cities a waste and your sanctuaries a desolation. ... And you will I
scatter among the nations, and I will draw out the sword after [Page 40] you. And you shall perish among the nations,
and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. And they that are left of you (far from atoning by their sufferings
for the sins of the Gentile nations) shall pine away in their iniquity in your
enemies’ lands. And also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine
away with them.” And this is to last until “they
shall confess their iniquities, and the
iniquity of their fathers in their trespass which they trespassed against Me, and also that because they walked contrary unto Me.
... If then
their uncircumcised heart be humbled and they accept of the punishment of their
iniquity, then will I
remember My covenant with Jacob; and
also My covenant with Isaac,
and also My
covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.”*
* Lev. 26:
14-45.
And what Moses announced in advance in Lev. 26. and Deut. 28.,
etc., is repeated and confirmed by all the prophets. We need only contemplate the picture of
*Isa. 1: 2-9. **Isa. 59: 2-15.
[Page 41]
In the 42nd.chapter
* Isaiah 42: 23-25.
To evade the force of this truth, that the nation could not be
the innocent sufferer set forth in the personal portraiture of the Servant of
Jehovah in chapters 42., 49., 50., 53., and 61.,
some Jewish and rationalistic writers have interpreted this great prophecy of
the godly remnant in the nation.
But, though relatively the pious in the nation may be spoken of as
righteous when compared with the godless majority, they are not absolutely
righteous, and, far from being able to render a vicarious satisfaction for
others, they cannot even stand themselves before God on the ground of their own
righteousness.
It is indeed the godly remnant in the nation which is
described in the second part of Isaiah as of
“a
contrite [Page
42] and
humble spirit,” who
are themselves waiting for the salvation of God, which will be wholly of grace.
It is they - “the righteous ones” - who confess for themselves and the entire nation
that “we are all become as one that is unclean, and all our
righteousnesses are as a polluted garment; and we
all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, take us
away.”*
* Isaiah 54: 6.
It is perfectly true, therefore, that Isaiah speaks of the
“entire nation as needing enlightening, redeeming, and reconciling to
God,” and the godly
remnant of it, far from being represented in these chapters as rendering
satisfaction for others by their sufferings, “appears
on the contrary a fainting flock which the Servant of Jehovah is to release,
and refresh, and for whose justification He is to suffer and die.”
*
* Von Orelli.
And as
Still less can it be asserted that
* Doctrine and Interpretation of the Fifty-Third Chapter of
Isaiah, by Dr. Alexander McCaul.
And yet in spite of these facts a modern Jewish writer (Dr. A.
Kohut, in Discussions on Isaiah 52: 13.
- 53: 12)
can allow himself to write: “We have suffered
much and murmured less; the annals of history teem with the atrocious crimes of
cruel Torquemadas, but fail to reproach us with even a breath of remonstrance.
... We have whispered sweetly of our wrongs, not imprecations of revenge, but
hope-fraught hymns of glad release.” But it is a fact, as Dr. Lukyn Williams
observes in reply, that “meekness is not, and
never has been, a characteristic of Jews, and they have not hesitated to call
down the vengeance of God upon their enemies in their private or public
devotions. So, for example, in the
Service for the Festival of the Dedication: ‘When Thou shalt have
prepared a slaughter of the blaspheming foe, I will complete with song and
psalm the dedication of Thy altar,’ and, at the end of the same piece,
though omitted by Dr. Singer: ‘Lay bare Thy holy arm, and bring the time
of Thy salvation near. Take vengeance
for the blood of Thy servants from the wicked nation’” (Christian Evidence for Jewish People, by Canon A. Lukyn Williams, vol. i. p. 168).
Neither have the sufferings of the Jewish nation ended in death, as is the lot
of the Servant of Jehovah in Isa. 53.
No;
I must bring this introductory section to a close, but [Page 45] I may add to all that has been said that it is clear
and manifest to all unprejudiced minds that the chapter cannot be applied to a collective body personified, but
must refer to an individual person.
To quote from another writer, “Not one
analogous instance can be quoted in favour of a personification carried on
through a whole section, without the slightest intimation that it is not a
single individual who is spoken of.
In verse 3 the subject is called … (ish, ‘a man’); in verses 10 and 12 a soul is ascribed to Him; grave and death are used so as
to imply a subject in the singular.
Scripture never leaves anything to be guessed. If we had an allegory before us,
distinct hints as to the interpretation would certainly not be wanting. It is, e.g., quite different in
those passages where the prophet designates
* Compare Isa. 41: 8, 54: 1, 2, 21, 45: 4, 44: 4, 48: 20. ** E.g. 43:
10-14, 48: 20, 21.
No, this prophecy speaks of an individual, and there is only
one person in the history of the world whom it fits. “Let any one steep his mind in the contents of this chapter,”
observes Professor James Orr, “and then read
what is said about Jesus in the Gospels, and as he stands under the shadow of
the Cross, say if there is [Page 46] not the most perfect correspondence between the two. In
Jesus of
Thus Rabbi Abraham Farissol,* who himself proceeds to misinterpret the prophecy of Israel,
says: “In this chapter there seem to be
considerable resemblances and allusions to the work of the Christian Messiah
and to the events which are asserted to have happened to him - so that no other
prophecy can be found, the gist and subject of which can be so immediately
applied to him.” And
as a matter of fact this glorious prophecy of the sufferings of the Messiah and the glory which should follow has
been used of God more than any Scripture in opening the eyes of Jews to
recognize in Jesus Israel’s Redeemer-King.**
* Rabbi Farissol, early in the sixteenth century, author of Iggereth Orechoth Olam; Itinera
Mundi.
** “Blessed, precious chapter, how many of God’s ancient
covenant people have been led by thee to the foot of Christ’s cross! - that
cross over which was written, ‘Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews!’
And oh ! what a glorious commentary shall be given of thee when, in the latter
days, repentant and believing Israel, looking unto Him whom they have pierced,
shall exclaim, ‘Surely He hath borne our
griefs, and
carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted!’”-
Adolph Saphir, D.D., The Sinner and the Saviour.
[Page 47]
Is this, perhaps, the chief reason why this chapter is omitted
from the public readings in the Synagogue?
We know, of course, that whereas the whole Torah (the Pentateuch) is read through on the Sabbaths in the course of
the year, only selections from the prophets are appointed for the Haphtarahs, but it is none the less remarkable that
in these “selections” the portion
for one Sabbath should end with the 12th
verse of the 52nd chapter, and the one for the
following should begin with the 54th
chapter, and that the whole of this sublime section about the suffering
Servant, through the knowledge of whom the many are made righteous, is passed
over.
It certainly gives ground for the statement that the 53rd of Isaiah
is “the bad conscience of the Synagogue,”
which it dare not face because it reminds them too much of Him whom the nation,
alas! in its blindness still despises and rejects, and considers “smitten of God and afflicted.” But this
very feeling and attitude on the part of the Jewish nation is one great proof
that Jesus is the Messiah, and that it is to Him that this prophecy refers.
* * *
[Page 48 blank: Page
49]
PART II
THE EXPOSITION
“Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the
same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.” - Acts 8: 35.
[Page 50 blank: Page
51]
CHAPTER I
JEHOVAH’S INTRODUCTION OF HIS
SERVANT AND
A SUMMARY OF HIS REDEEMING WORK
THE DIVISIONS
We will
now seek, apart from controversy and criticisms, to look into the heart of this
great prophecy, and I will make no further apologies if in the handling of this
chapter I do so in the full light which is thrown upon it in the New Testament
as well as the Old. The whole
prophecy divides itself into three sections.
The first section consists of verses
13-15 of chapter
52., and may be described as God’s Ecce Homo. In it God introduces His Servant, and
seeks to direct the attention of all men to Him. This introductory section is really a
summary of the whole prophecy, and contains in brief the whole story of Messiah’s sufferings and the glory
which should follow.
The second section, consisting of verses
1-9 of chapter
53., is primarily the lament and confession of penitent
[Page 52]
The third section, consisting of the last three verses, sets
forth the blessed fruit of
Messiah’s sufferings, or the [millennial] glory which should follow.
The prophecy really begins and ends with a description of the
exaltation and glory of the Righteous Servant, but in between the mountain-tops
of glory lies the deep valley of shame and suffering, which “for us men and our salvation” He has to pass.
“Behold My
Servant”
The prophecy begins with the word …hinneh (“behold”)
This is the little word by which in Scripture God seeks to
call the attention of men to matters which are of the utmost importance for
them to know. Here it is on His
beloved and only-begotten Son in the form of a servant that He would have our
eyes fixed.
We may note in passing that several different times is the
Messiah introduced in the Old Testament by this word “behold,” and in four different
aspects. Here (as in Zech. 3: 8, which refers back to the passages about the
Servant of Jehovah in the second part of Isaiah)
it is “Behold My Servant.”
In Zech. 6: 12 we read,
“Behold the
Man whose name is the Branch”; and in chap. 9: 9 of the same prophecy, the announcement to the
daughter of Zion is, “Behold, thy King cometh unto thee”; while the proclamation in the sublime prologue to the second half
of Isaiah unto the cities of judah is, “Behold
your God”; [Page
53] that it is of the Epiphany of
God in the person of the Messiah that the prophet speaks is evident from the
whole context of those chapters.
Under these four different aspects also is Messiah spoken of by the name
of “Branch” - “the
Branch of Jehovah” (Isa. 4: 2); “the Branch of David” (Jer.
23: 5, 6); “My Servant,
the Branch” (Zech.
3: 8); and “the Man whose name is the ‘Branch’” (Zech.
6: 12).
The Man - the Servant -
the Son of David - and the Son of God.
And this fourfold portraiture of the Redeemer in the Old
Testament corresponds (as I first pointed out in a small work many years ago)* to the fourfold picture of our
Saviour in the New Testament.
* Rays of Messiah’s
Glory, now out of print.
The subject is also more fully dealt with in the exposition of the 3rd chapter of Zechariah
in The Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah.
We have four different and independent accounts of the Life of
Christ, and so harmonious and similar are the main features and facts about His
character and work in all the Four Gospels that no one who has ever read them
has had to be told that they all speak of the same blessed Person. Yet each one of the Evangelists was led
by the Spirit of God to portray a different aspect of His character.
Over the Gospel of Matthew
- which was primarily written for the Jews, and which sets forth Christ as the
Redeemer-King of
[Page 54]
Over the Gospel of Mark - a
summary more of His deeds than of His words, written, in the first instance,
for the practical Roman world of power and action - the words, “Behold My Servant,” are, so to say, inscribed, for there it is the Servant aspect of our Saviour that is portrayed
before us - “how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power;
who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed with the devil; for God was with Him.”
In the Gospel of Luke,
written primarily for the Greek, who, in the New Testament, stands as the
representative of the Gentile world, it is as the Son of Man that He is pictured to us, who, by His
human nature, stands related as Kinsman-Redeemer to the whole race, and is
therefore able and willing to save men of all nations and kindreds and peoples
who turn to God through Him. Over
this Gospel the words, “Behold the Man whose name is the Branch,” may be written; while over
the Gospel of John, which was designed
neither for Jews nor Gentiles, neither for Greek nor Roman, but for the Church
- the congregation of the faithful, those whose eyes are opened to behold His
glory, “the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” - the words, “Behold
your God,”
are graven in letters of gold.
In our chapter, however, it is as the Servant that He is
introduced to us by the Father - as One who is sent to accomplish a work and to
fulfil a mission. And it is with
special satisfaction and complacency that [Page 55] God speaks of His only-begotten Son in
His character as Servant. “Behold My Servant,” whom I uphold; Mine elect
(“My chosen One”), “in whom My soul delighteth” - one reason being, perhaps, because in this respect this ideal
Servant stands out as the great contrast, not only to Israel nationally, who
was called to be God’s servant, but proved unfaithful, but to all other
men. The curse of man and the cause
of his ruin is pride, self-will - the striving to be independent of God, and
seeking to strike out a career for himself. By seeking to be free, and thinking that
freedom consists in doing, not what he ought, but what he pleases, man landed
himself in bondage to sin and Satan.
But here is One who says, “Lo, I am come; in the scroll of
the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy
will, O My God: yea, Thy Law is within My
heart,” and
who, when on earth, could say, “I came down from
heaven, not to do Mine own
will but the will of Him that sent Me”; “MY meat
is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and tofinish His work.”
Insignificant, fallen man ever aims at exalting himself, but
here is One who, though in the form of God counted not His equality with God a
prize (“to be grasped” at), but
emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant “and being found in
fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the Cross.”
No wonder, then, that the
Father points with delight to Him, saying, “Behold My Servant,” and would have our eyes fixed on Him,
not [Page 56] only as our
Saviour, but as our example, that we might follow in His footsteps.
This true Servant of Jehovah, we read,
“shall deal prudently.” The verb …his'kil, primarily means
“to act wisely,” but since “wise action as a rule is also effective,” and
leads to prosperity, the verb is used also sometimes as a synonym for “prosperously.” It is used in such passages as 1 Sam. 23: 14, “And David was acting wisely in all his ways, and the Lord was
with him”;
and in David’s charge to Solomon (1 Kings 2:
3), “And keep the charge of the Lord
thy God ... in order that thou mayest act
wisely in all that thou doest.”
In Jer. 23: 5, this verb
is used directly of the Messiah, and describes one feature of His blessed [messianic] rule, “Behold, the days come, saith
Jehovah, that I will raise
unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper (his'kil, ‘deal wisely’), and shall execute magment and justice in the
land.” Here, in Isaiah
52: 13, it is used to describe the action of the Servant of Jehovah in
relation to the great task which is entrusted to Him. “He shall ‘deal wisely’ and
accomplish His great work skilfully” - an assurance, as it were, at the
very outset, that “the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in His hand.” He shall be exalted and extolled (“lifted up”), and be very high. There is an ancient Rabbinic Midrash
on this sentence, which says, “He shall be
exalted above Abraham; He shall be lifted up above Moses, and be higher than
the ministering angels.” [Page 57] I I sometimes think that when the inspired writer of the
Epistle to the Hebrews sat down to write
that wonderful and comprehensive treatise on the supremacy and greater glory of
the Messiah, and took for his keynote the little phrase “better
than,”* and proceeded to show how Christ was
greater, and higher, and “better” than the angels, than Moses, than Joshua, than Aaron
and the whole Aaronic priesthood and ritual, and than all the types and shadows
of the Old Covenant, the substance and fulfilment of which are to be found in
Him alone - he must have had the thought expressed in this Midrash in his mind.
* Heb. 1:
4.
Yes, our Lord Jesus is exalted above Abraham, the father of
the faithful, who stands at the head of the history of the peculiar people,
whose history also prefigures and unfolds the story of Redemption, inasmuch as
He is not only Abraham’s Son but Abraham’s Lord, whose day Abraham rejoiced to see “from
afar,”** through
whom the great promise that in Abraham’s seed all the families of the
earth should be blessed is realized, and
in and through whom the history of
Abraham and of the nation which sprang from his loins receives its true
significance and glory.
** John 8: 56.
And “He is lifted up above Moses” because He is the Mediator of
a better covenant which rests upon better promises, who brings us out of a
greater bondage than that of Egypt, and whose “law of the spirit of Life” implanted in our hearts
enables us to render that [Page 58] obedience to God which the mere letter of the law graven on tablets of stone could not do.
And “He is higher than the angels, for
to which of the angels did God say at any time, Sit
thou on My right hand till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet?” which is the height of exaltation
attained by the Servant of Jehovah as the Son of Man, who through the deepest
sufferings enters into glory.*
* “Rosenmuller observes on
verse 13b, ‘There
is no need to discuss, or even to inquire, what precise difference there is in
the meaning of the separate words’; but
this a very superficial remark. If
we consider that ‘rum’
signifies not only to be high, but to rise up (Prov. 11: 11) and become exalted, and also to become manifest as exalted
(Ps. 21: 14), and that misa,
according to the immediate and original reflective meaning of the niphal,
signifies to raise one’s self, whereas gubhah expresses merely the condition, without the subordinate idea
of activity, we obtain this chain of thought: he will rise up, he will raise
himself still higher, he will stand on high. The three verbs (of which the two
perfects are defined by the previous future) consequently denote the
commencement, the continuation, and the result or climax of the exaltation; and
Stier is not wrong in recalling to mind the three principal steps of the exaltatio in the historical fu filment,
namely, the resurrection, the ascension, and the sitting down at the right hand
of God. The addition of the word
…, m’od, shows very
clearly that v'gabha, is intended to
be taken as the final result; the Servant of Jehovah, rising from stage to
stage, reaches at last an immeasurable height that towers above everything
besides” (Delitzsch).
The climax in the height of His exaltation, as set forth by
the three verbs in this sentence, is expressed by the word … m’od, lit. very much, with which the sentence ends. “He shall be exalted and lifted
up and be high very much, or exceedingly.”
[Page 59]
Of the glorious fulfilment of it in the person of our Lord
Jesus we are told in the New Testament.
“Wherefore” - because for our salvation He
descended so low, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross -
“God also hath highly exalted him”; yes, “far above all principality
and power, and might and dominion, and
every name that is named, not only in this
world [age], but also in that which is [about] to come.”**
* Eph. 1: 20-23; Phil. 2: 9-11.
[* NOTE: Eph. 1: 21,
translated literally from the Greek, reads: “Far above
every government and authority and power and lordship, and every name being named, not only in the age this, but also
in the one about coming.”]
But after what may be called this preface of glory, which
tells us at the very outset what shall be the end of His path of humiliation,
the next verse of this introductory section gives a glimpse of the valley of
sorrow and suffering through which the Servant of Jehovah has first to emerge -
the valley which is, so to say, lengthened out and extended in the more
detailed account of His sufferings in the next section. Verses 14 and 15 are in the Hebrew linked together by
the words … ka'asher, “like,” or, “just
as,” and ken, “so.”
They express, if I may so put it, the balance of proportion, and
announce in advance that the effect shall be commensurable with the greatness
of the cause. Let me first
translate these verses literally.
“Like (or,
‘just as’) many were astonished at Thee (so marred,
or ‘disfigured,’ or ‘distorted’ was His
visage more than that of any man, and His form more than the sons of men”)* - so shall He sprinkle many
nations,” etc.
* Delitzsch renders, “So
disfigured, His appearance was not human and His
form not like that of the children of men” and Von Orelli, “So disfigured was His visage beneath man’s, and His form so unlike man’s.”
The sudden transition from the second to the third person is
not exceptional, but is found in many other places in the prophetic writings.
[Page 60]
It is generally agreed among commentators that the words which
I have enclosed in brackets must be regarded as a parenthesis and explain the
reason of the astonishment at Him on the part of many. The verb … shamem, which is rendered “astonished,”
means to be desolate or waste; to be thrown by anything into a desolate or
bereaved condition; to be startled, confused, as it were petrified by
paralysing astonishment.* Even to such an extent will
many be astonished at Him because of the greatness of His suffering, which
shall cause His blessed countenance and form to be so “marred” that it shall appear, as it were,
“disfigurement” itself, without any
trace of the grace and beauty which belong to the human face and figure.**
* See its use in Lev. 26: 32; Ezek. 26: 16.
** “His
appearance and His form were altogether distortion (mishchath, an expression stronger than mashchalk, which means distorted - lit. away from men, out beyond
men), i.e. a distortion that destroys all likeness to man.
“The Church before the time of
By these strong words and expressions the Spirit of God seeks
to give us a glimpse into the depth and [Page 61] intensity of
the vicarious sufferings of our Saviour, and of the greatness of the cost of
our redemption; and as we contemplate this picture of the Man of Sorrows, with
the “face” which for us was “marred” more than that of any man, and with His
form bowed and disfigured more than the sons of men, may our hearts be stirred with shame and sorrow for the sin which was
the cause of it all, and with greater love and undying gratitude to Him who
bore all this for us!
But as His humiliation and sufferings were great, yea, “more than that of any other
man,” so also shall the blessed fruit and
consequences of them be. The fifteenth verse is, so to say, the antithesis to
the fourteenth, and sets forth the state of glory after the suffering. “Like
(or ‘just, as’)
many were astonished at Thee (because His visage
and form were distorted by suffering ‘beyond men’)
- so shall He sprinkle
many nations; kings shall shut
their mouths at Him”
with astonishment and reverence,
for that which could not “have been told them” by any man, and which was previously altogether
unheard of, shall they now “see” and “understand” or, in the words of the seventh verse
of chapter 49., which might be described as Isa. 53. in
miniature, for it summarizes in few words the sufferings of the Messiah and the [millennial] glory which should
follow - [Page 62] “Kings shall see and
arise, princes and they
shall worship, because of Jehovah
that is faithful, the Holy One of Israel who hath chosen Thee” - they shall see
that the One whom man humbled God has exalted; that He who was despised of man,
and abhorred of the nation, is, after all, He whom the Holy One of Israel hath
chosen; that in spite of their vain counsels, and their individual and united
efforts, His kingdom progresses, and is
destined to triumph - and they shall “arise” from their thrones in token of reverence, and shall
signify their submission and allegiance by prostrating themselves before Him in
worship; and all this “because of Jehovah that is faithful” to His covenants and promises,
“even the
Holy One,” who will
never draw back from His word, and shall, by espousing and vindicating His
Servant’s cause, make it manifest in the sight of
the whole world that He hath chosen Him!
In a measure this has already been fulfilled. Because “He hath humbled Himself,
becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross, therefore
also God hath highly exalted Him, and given unto
Him the Name which is above every name; that in
the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of
things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth, and
that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Already before the crucified Nazarene kings must rise from
their thrones, and princes fall in the dust, not, indeed, necessarily because
their hearts have been subdued [Page 63] by His grace, or their eyes opened to His essential glory as the Son of
God, but because they have found out by experience that it is no longer safe to
resist His power. But even though
the obedience be feigned, and the worship be outward, it is still a testimony
to Christ’s exaltation, and to the faithfulness of Jehovah, in lifting
Him out of the valley of humiliation, and appointing Him His “First-born,
higher than the kings of the earth.”
But we are looking forward to a fuller, more visible, and universal
fulfilment, when He who was “despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” shall be the acknowledged King
over the whole earth,
and when -
“He
shall have dominion from sea to sea
And from the River unto the
ends of the earth.
They that dwell in the
wilderness shall bow before Him;
And His enemies shall lick
the dust.
The kings of Tarshish and of
the isles shall bring presents;
The kings of
Yea, all kings
shall fall down before Him;
All nations shall serve Him” (Ps. 72: 8-11).
But I must return for a moment to the first sentence in this fifteenth verse, concerning which there has been
much discussion. Most modern
scholars object to the rendering of the word … yazzeh, by “He shall sprinkle,” as is given in the Authorized and Revised Versions of
the English Bible, and translate the phrase, “so
shall He startle,” or “make to
tremble,” or “cause to leap”
- [Page 64] i.e. either for joy or fear - on the
ground chiefly that the parallelism between the fourteenth
and fifteenth verses demands that
this phrase should express “a change in those
who formerly abhorred the Servant,” or, as another prominent Bible
scholar puts it, as a parallel to the words, “were
astonished at Thee, we have the word yazzeh (which he renders, ‘He shall make
to tremble’) - in other words, the effect
which He produces by what He does stands over against the effect produced by
what He suffers.” But
to this it has been replied that the real parallel (or, rather, contrast) to
the words, “as many were astonished,” in the fourteenth verse are the
words, “kings shall shut their mouths,” in the fifteenth verse, as is shown by the correspondence
of the words, “at Thee,” and
“at Him” in these two sentences. I shall not enter into a minute controversial
disquisition on this point, as nothing of a fundamental character really turns
on it.
The priestly and atoning functions of the Servant of Jehovah
stand out prominently enough in the next section of the prophecy. I will only briefly state my own grounds
for retaining the rendering “sprinkle,” first and
chiefly because of the general usage of the Hebrew word.
The verb …, nazah, occurs in very many passages in the Old Testament, and the hiphil
form of it, … hizzah (which is used
in Isaiah 52: 15)
invariably signifies “to sprinkle.”
It is true also, as another writer observes, that [Page 65] it is specially set apart and used for
the sprinkling with the blood of atonement and the water of purification.*
* It is used, for instance, in Lev.
4: 6, 16: 14-19, 14: 7, Num. 19:
19, and in many other places.
Delitzsch, who himself renders the word “He shall make to tremble,” writes: The hiphil hizzah (to sprinkle) generally means to
spirt or sprinkle (adspergere), and is applied to the sprinkling of the
blood with the finger, more especially upon the capporeth and altar of incense on the Day of Atonement (differing
in this respect from zaraq, the
swinging of the blood out of the bowl), also to the sprinkling of the water of
purification upon a leper with the bunch of hyssop (Lev.
14: 7),
and of the ashes of the red heifer upon those defiled through touching a corpse
(Num. 19:
18); in fact, generally, to sprinkling for
the purpose of expiation and sanctification. And Vitringa, Hengstenberg, and others,
accordingly follow the Syriac and Vulgate in adopting the rendering adsperget (he
will sprinkle).
They have the usage of the language in their favour; and this
explanation also commends itself from a reference to … (nagua) in chapter
53: 4, and … (nega)
in chapter 53: 8
(words which are generally used of leprosy, and on account of which the
suffering Messiah is called in b. Sanhedrin
98b by an emblematical name adopted from the old synagogue, (“the leper of Rabbi’s school”) since it
yields the significant antithesis, that He who was Himself regarded as unclean,
even as a second Job, would sprinkle and sanctify whole nations, and thus
abolish the wall of partition between Israel and the heathen, and gather
together into one holy church with Israel those who had hitherto been
pronounced “unclean” (chap. 52: 1).
It is true that hizzah (to
sprinkle) is usually construed with the accusative, in which case the
preposition …'al “upon,” should follow the verb. But slight deviations and irregularities
in the construction of phrases do sometimes occur in the Hebrew Bible; they do
not, however, alter the meaning of words, and in this [Page 66] case, though hizzah al would mean “sprinkle upon,”
hizzah by itself still means “sprinkle,” or, more properly,
“besprinkle.”
Secondly, the only other passage in the second half of Isaiah where another form of this same verb occurs
is chap. 43:
3, and there the word most certainly means
“sprinkle.” It is alleged against the rendering of
the phrase, “so shall He sprinkle,”
that “there would be something very abrupt in
the sudden representation of the Servant as priest”; but there is
no more abruptness, it seems to me, in the introduction of this idea of
priesthood in this passage than in the sudden transition from the exaltation
described in the thirteenth verse to the depth of humiliation in the fourteenth
verse.
In this introductory section we have, as stated at the
beginning, a brief summary in terse, condensed form, of the whole prophecy,
which is fully developed in the 53rd
chapter. And to my mind it
would seem strange if there were no reference also to the priestly atoning
function of the Servant (of which the next section is so full), in this introductory
summary.
* * *
[Page 67]
CHAPTER II
HISTORY OF THE SERVANT OFJEHOVAH UNFOLDED.
The
second section, into which the whole prophecy divides itself, is, as stated above,
primarily the sorrowful lament and confession of repentant
Let me say, at the beginning of this exposition, that the
tenses in these verses are perfects, the future being regarded prophetically as
already past. “Who hath
believed our report?” - literally, “that which we hear,” namely, the wonderful story
about this glorious Servant [Page 68] of Jehovah, who, through His self -humiliation and vicarious suffering
even unto death, has accomplished for us so great a salvation, and is now
exalted to such height of glory - “and the arm of
Jehovah over (or ‘upon’) whom has it been revealed?”
The arm of Jehovah is the emblem of divine power. In the Pst chapter we have the remnant
of
* Chap. 51:
9. ** Chap. 52: 10.
From the context we see that it is the manifestation of this
power of God in and through the Messiah that is here spoken of. “In the
Servant of Jehovah who is depicted in this prophecy,” an old
writer truly observes, “the redeeming arm of
Jehovah manifests itself: so to say, personifies itself. The Messiah Himself is, as it were, the
outstretched arm of Jehovah,” and the message (the proclaiming)
concerning Him, “the power of God unto salvation to all who believe.” But who hath believed this message? and
whose eyes were opened to behold in this despised and humiliated Servant the
very embodiment of the power of God and the wisdom of God? The answer implied in the first question
is that very few, if any, did believe it; and to the second
question, that only such upon whom an [Page 69] operation of divine power has been performed, only those
“over” or “upon” whom the arm of Jehovah has
been revealed, could believe it - so marvellous, so
utterly incredible to mere human thought and imagination is the wonderful story
which, in all its saving power and glory, is now made plain to us. Truly, the message, or “report,” of a full and perfect salvation
through a suffering Messiah, who through humiliation and death enters into
glory, could not have been known or believed, and much less invented, by either
Jew or Gentile; but all the more it bears upon it the seal of Divine wisdom and
Divine power. “As it is written, Eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.*
* 1 Cor. 2: 9, 10.
(1) The Early Years and Unobtrusive
Character of
the Servant of Jehovah
In the plaintive confession which follows there is
incidentally unfolded also the whole earthly life-story of the Servant of Jehovah,
beginning with His tender youth, which gradually develops into a manhood of
suffering, and ends in a violent and ignominious death.
“For (or ‘And’) He grew up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground.”
“Jehovah’s Servant,” as has been well said by another, “does not
burst upon the world all at once in sudden [Page 70] splendour of daring or achievement, dazzling all
eyes and captivating all hearts. He
conforms to God’s slow, silent law of growth. This law holds in every
* James
Culross.
The word … yoneq, translated
“tender
plant,” literally
means “suckling,” but is used here
figuratively (in a horticultural sense) for the tender twig upon a tree or
trunk, or stalk. * Taken in connection with chap.
11: 1, we
see that it springs up out of the decayed stump of Jesse, “after the proud cedar of the Davidic monarchy had been
felled.” But the second verse of Isaiah
53. presents not only a parallel but also a contrast to chapter 11. There, the figure is that of a strong,
vigorous shoot coming out of the root of the decayed house of David; here, it
is the frail “tender twig” or
sapling, struggling out of the dry ground.
Here, men are represented as turning away in disappointment, if not in
disgust, from this “root”
springing up out of such unpromising surroundings; there, we read in the tenth verse, “And it shall come to
pass in that day, that the root of
Jesse, which standeth for
an ensign of the peoples, unto[Page 71] Him shall the nations seek,
and His resting
place shall be glory.”
* Ezek. 17:
22.
The difference is explained by the fact that whereas in chapter 53.
it is Messiah’s sufferings and
rejection which are depicted, it is especially His millennial glory and reign, the beneficent effects of which
extend even to the animal creation, which are described in chapter 11.
But, to return for a moment to a more minute examination of
the second verse. We have here incidentally a prophetic
description of our Lord Jesus during the early years of His life, concerning
which there is so little recorded in the Gospel narrative. According to the manifest suggestion of
the passage, “He grew up in obscurity and
lowliness. Not as a prince royal,
on whom the hopes and eyes of a nation are fixed, and all whose movements are
chronicled in Court Gazette or Circular.
Here is one living a lowly life in lowly environments. ... Men expected
‘a plant of renown,’ fairer and statelier than all the trees in the
garden of God, with boughs lifted cedar-like in majesty; instead, there is a
suckling, a sprout from the root of a tree that had been cut down, with nothing
fair or magnificent about it. It
owes nothing to the soil in which it grows. The ground is dry, an arid waste without
moisture; the plant is a tender one; and in that unpropitious soil whence no
sweet juices can be drawn it grows up stunted, dwarfed, unattractive.”
The expression “out of dry ground” (which, as [Page 72] Delitzsch correctly observes, belongs to both figures, namely “tender twig,” or “suckling,”
and “root”) is intended to depict
“the miserable character of the external
circumstances in the midst of which the birth and growth of the Servant would
take place.” The
“dry ground” describes the
then-existing state of the enslaved and degraded nation; i.e. “He was subject to all the
conditions inseparable from a nation that had been given up to the power of the
world, and was in utter ignorance; in a word, the dry ground is the corrupt
character of the age.”*
* Delitzsch.
And yet, in spite of all the obscure and adverse circumstances
of His earthly environment, “He grew up before Him,” that
is, before Jehovah - “increasing in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and
men” with the eye
of His heavenly Father ever complacently resting upon Him.
In rendering the last part of the second
verse, most modern commentators depart from the accents of the
Massoretic text, and translate, “He had no form and
comeliness that we should look on Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him,” but the English
Authorized and Revised Versions properly adhere to the punctuation of the
Hebrew text, and render, “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him there is no beauty that we should
desire Him.”
There was nothing in His appearance or surroundings that the
carnal or worldly minded could be attracted by; [Page 73] everything was so different from what they had pictured or anticipated.
It is not inconsistent with the language of the text to
suppose that “there may have been in His aspect,
power, grace, majesty, blended with sorrow and meekness. The heart of the thing is, that men did
not see the beauty that was there; He did not answer to their ideal; He wanted
the qualities which they admired; His greatness was not shaped to their
thoughts. Having misread the
prophecies, having imagined another Deliverer than God had promised, being
blind to the heavenly, while their souls lay open to the carnal and earthly,
they found nothing worth gazing upon in Jehovah’s Servant when He
came. They would have welcomed a
plumed and mail-clad warrior, riding forth to battle against the oppressor,
would have shouted before him, ‘Gird thy
sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and with thy majesty!’ They
have no admiration and no welcome for One who comes, meek and lowly, to make
His soul an offering for sin, and to be God’s salvation to the end of the
earth. It was not sin that troubled
them: how should a Saviour from sin delight them? What was there in a Bringer-in of
righteousness to inspire such hearts?”*
* Culross.
(2)
The
Despised and Rejected of Men
The penitential confession proceeds in
the third verse to set forth the positive
aversion and hostility [Page 74] which the nation in its former ignorance manifested towards
Jehovah’s righteous Servant. “He was
despised and rejected (or
‘forsaken’) of men.”
The first description of Him in this line - …, nibhzeh, “despised”- takes our thoughts back once
more to what has already been said of Jehovah’s Servant in the seventh verse of the 49th
chapter: “Thus saith Jehovah, the
Redeemer of Israel, and His Holy One, to Him whom man despiseth, to
Him whom the nation abhorreth.”*
* Or “despised of soul,”
as the words in Isa. 49: 7 may best be rendered,
describing the depth of contempt, as from the very soul of man, which
He shall encounter.
If, instead of prophecy uttered centuries before His advent,
it were history written subsequent to the events, no more terse or graphic
description could be given of the attitude and feeling of the Jewish nation in
relation to Jesus of Nazareth: “despised and rejected of men” -
“whom man despiseth and the nation abhorreth.”
No person in the history of the Jews has provoked such
deep-seated abhorrence as He who came only to bless them, and who even on the
cross prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
When on earth, at the end of His three-and-a-half years of blessed
ministry among them, they finally rejected Him. Their hatred was intense and mysterious. “Away with this man; release unto us Barabbas. ... Crucify
Him, crucify Him!” was their cry. And all through the centuries no name
has provoked such intense abhorrence among the Jews as the name of Jesus.
[Page 75]
I have known personally most amiable, and as men, lovable
characters among the Jews; but immediately the name “Jesus” was mentioned, a change came
over their countenances, and they would fall into a passion of anger. In the course of my missionary
experiences these past thirty five or forty years, how often has it been my lot
to witness some of my people almost mad with rage - clenching their fists,
gnashing their teeth, and spitting on the ground at the very mention of the
Name which to the believer “is as ointment poured forth”!
The Holy One who knew no sin nor was guile found in His mouth,
is often styled “the Transgressor”;
and another term frequently in the mouth of the Jews is “Tolui” (“the
hanged one”), which is equivalent to “the accursed one.” There are also other hateful
designations, such as “Ben Stada,”
or “Ben Pandera,” which imply
blasphemies not only against Him, but against her who is “blessed
among women.”
And
This may be painful reading to some Christians, and the Lord
knows it is far from my thoughts to write anything which might tend to foster
unchristian prejudice against my people, but it is necessary to show how
literally the prophetic forecast has been verified, and how deep-seated and
mysterious Jewish hatred has been to Him who, according to His human nature, is
flesh of their flesh, and bone of their bone, and in whom is bound up all their
hope and salvation.
Let it be remembered also that Jewish hatred to Christ and His
followers, at any rate in more modern times, is partly to be traced to the
sufferings which they have endured at
the hands of so-called Christians, and also that it is not our Lord Jesus
as we know Him, that Israel in ignorance thus blasphemes, but the caricature of
Him as presented to them by apostate
persecuting Christendom in the dark ages and since. [Page 77] Often the only way left to the Jews
to avenge their terrible sufferings and massacres was to write blasphemously of
Him in whose name they were ignorantly perpetrated.
Neither is it to be forgotten that if Christ has been, and
alas! to a large extent still is, “abhorred of the nation,” there has always been a remnant in the nation
to whom He has been “the fairest of ten thousand and altogether lovely,” and who, for the love of Him,
counted not even their lives dear unto them. It was a man of Israel and a Pharisee
who wrote: “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ, yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord;
for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung that I might win Christ.”
And when the “blindness in part” which has befallen Israel shall be removed, and their
eyes are open to behold the true glory of Him whom they have pierced, then the
whole nation shall show an example of love and zeal for their Messiah, such as
has not been known in the world.
The phrase …, chadal ishim, “rejected (or ‘forsaken’) of men” has been variously rendered. To quote only two or three examples,
Hengstenberg translates the clause, “the most
unworthy among men”; Moses Margoliouth, “the meanest of men”; and Von Orelli, “shunned of men.” But it seems to me that Franz Delitzsch
has caught the true force of the Hebrew [Page 78] idiom. “The predicate chadal
ishim” (rendered in the Authorized Version “rejected of men”), he says, “is misunderstood by nearly all the commentators, inasmuch as
they take ishim, the word for ‘men,’ as synonymous
with b’ne Adam (children of
men), whereas it is rather used in the sense of b’ne ish (men of high rank, lords) as distinguished from b’ne Adam (ordinary men, or common people). Hence Cocceius explains it thus:
‘wanting in men,’ i.e. having no respectable men with Him to
support Him with their authority.
In Hebrew …, chadal, has
not only the transitive meaning to discontinue or ‘leave off’ a
thing, but the intransitive to cease, or be in want, so that chadal ishim may mean one in want of men
of rank, i.e. finding no sympathy from such men. The
chief men of His nation who towered above the multitude, the great men of this
world, withdrew their hands from Him: He had none of the men of any distinction
at His side.”
And this, alas! is still the case. The great, mighty, and noble in the
world, the “men of high degree”
(with few exceptions, for which God be praised), still ignore and despise Him,
and use their power and influence to
hinder rather than to advance His cause and [His messianic] kingdom. It was a reproach brought against
Christianity by Celsus and other early pagan writers, that it was the religion
of slaves, and Jewish Rabbis still taunt believers from among their nation that
it is to the poor that the gospel is preached, and that those who have been
drawn to Christ belong for the most [Page 79] part to “the common people.” “Have any
of the rulers believed on Him, or of the
Pharisees?”* And not only was He “despised and forsaken,” especially by the men of high
rank, the leaders of the nation, but He was ish-makh'obhoth
vidua choli - “a man of sorrows” (or, “a man of pains,”
the Hebrew idiom denoting “sorrow of heart in
all its forms”), a
man whose chief distinction was
that “His life was one of constant, painful
endurance” - and “acquainted” (or, “well acquainted”) with grief (or, “sickness”),
the meaning of which, as Delitzsch explains, is not that He had by nature a
sickly body, falling from one disease into another (as some would explain), but
that “the wrath instigated by sin, and the zeal
of self-sacrifice,** burnt like the fire of a fever in His soul and body.” The point emphasised is that sorrow and
grief were the very characteristics of the Servant of Jehovah, “the tokens we know Him by.” “We have
all seen grief and sorrow in our time,” writes one; “no one can live long without doing so, God knows; but it is
not one sorrow, or two, that makes one ‘a man of sorrows,’ nor one
meeting, or two, with grief that makes him the acquaintance of it.
*1
John 7: 47, 48. **Ps. 69: 9.
“How the Servant endured, with
what fortitude and patience, with what faith in God and acquiescence in His
will, is not here brought into view, but simply the fact that sorrows came
thick and heavy upon Him, like wind-driven rain beating on an unsheltered head,
[Page 80] and that
grief was present with Him as His close companion through life.”
And the chief causes of His sorrows and grief were not
personal ills, or physical pain, though these were great enough. It was heart sorrow and grief of soul. “A noble
nature, repelled in all its efforts to bless, is pained unspeakably more by
that repulse than by the crowding in of merely personal ills, or by all the
slings and arrows of adversity: and His sorrow came, thus, because His brethren
rejected the help He brought, repelled the Helper, and abode in their lost
state.”
The last two sentences in the third verse form, so to say, a climax in the sorrow and humiliation which the
righteous Servant of Jehovah had to endure.
The words kh'master
panim mimmennu (rendered in the Authorized Version, “we hid as it were our faces from Him”) have been
variously rendered. The marginal
reading in the A.V. and R.V. is, “He hid as it were
His face from us,” which
is the translation adopted by Hengstenberg, who sees in it an allusion to the
law in relation to the leper, who, according to Leviticus
13: 45, had to cover his face, and
cry “Unclean, unclean”;
also by Margoliouth, who translates, “as one who
would hide his face from us,” by not revealing to us His true
character and glory. But it is now
pretty generally agreed among scholars that the word master is a verbal noun,
and that the true translation is that given in the text of the English
versions, [Page
81] namely, “As one from whom men hide
their face”*
i.e. “like one whose repulsive face it is
impossible to endure, so that men turn away their face or cover it with their
dress” (Delitzsch); or, as another expresses it: “Instead of meeting Him with a joyful gleam in their eyes
responding to His grace and help, men turned away from Him - as one looks the
other way to avoid the eye of a person whom he dislikes, or as one shrinks from
an object of loathing” (Culross).
* A suggestive and possible rendering of the sentence also is:
“There was, as it
were, a hiding of God’s face from Him.”
Lastly, all the predicates of shame and sorrow are summed up
in the word with which also this third verse
began, …, nibhzeh, “He was despised” - to which, however, is added
a negative preposition which the Hebrew idiom requires to mark the depth of the contempt in which He was held - “and we
esteemed Him not.” Instead of counting Him dear and worthy, we formed a very low
estimate of Him, or rather we did not estimate Him at all, or, as Luther
forcibly expresses it: “we estimated Him at
nothing.”
This, dear Christian reader, will be
Israel’s broken-hearted confession on the day when the Spirit of grace
and supplications is poured upon them, and their eyes are opened at last to the
fearful error which they committed as a nation in the rejection of their
Messiah. But, as we read these sad
and solemn words, “He was despised, and we
esteemed Him not,” may we not pause for a moment to ask ourselves if this is not true also in
professing Christendom to-day?
[Page 82]
“How often,”
writes another Hebrew Christian brother, “do we
meet Christians expatiating on the atrocious wickedness of the Jews in
crucifying the Lord of Glory; implying, in fact, that if He had appeared amongst
them, He would have met with a more favourable reception. There was a horrid custom once in the Christian Church, which rendered
the Jews especial objects of hatred and insult during Lent, and more
particularly during the ceremonies of Easter week. The Bishop used to mount the pulpit of
the Cathedral, and address the people to the following effect: ‘You have among you, my brethren, the descendants of the
impious wretches who crucified the Lord Jesus Christ, whose Passion we are soon
to commemorate. Shew yourselves
animated with the spirit of your ancestors; arm yourselves with stones, assail
the Jews with them, and thus, as far as in you lies, revenge the sufferings of
that Saviour who redeemed you with His own blood.’ Alas! this custom still prevails in some
countries. You may be sure, however, that if Christ humbled Himself once more,
and appeared visibly amongst us, He would be treated in the same way as He was
by the Jews; yea, ‘crucified afresh, and put to an open shame.’ He
would again have to listen to the
dogmas of insolent reasoning; He would once more be disgusted with the
fiend-like sneers of reprobate men, and the polished cavils of fashionable
contempt.” *
* Moses Margoliouth.
And what about ourselves, who by the
grace of God [Page 83] do believe on Him ? Do we
estimate our Lord Jesus at His true worth?
Is He indeed to us the chiefest of ten thousand and altogether lovely? Are
we prepared for His dear sake to forsake all and to follow Him outside the
camp, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of
Egypt?
(3) The Vicarious
Character of His Sufferings
The veil lifted from their eyes,
The verb …, nasa, “to bear,” is continually used in Leviticus of
the expiation effected by the appointed sacrifices, as, for instance, Lev. 16:
22, “The goat
shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land.”
“When construed with the accusative of
the sin,” as Deliusch properly explains, “nasa' signifies to take the debt of sin upon oneself, and carry it
as one’s own, i.e.[Page 84] to look at it and feel it as one’s own (e.g., Lev. 5: 1, 17), or more frequently to bear the punishment occasioned by sin, i.e.
to make expiation for it (Lev. 20: 19, 20; 24: 15), and in any case in which
the person bearing it is not himself the guilty person (‘nasa’ signifies) to bear sin in a mediatorial capacity for the purpose of making
expiation for it. It is evident
that both the verbs used in this verse, ‘He hath borne,’ and ‘He carried,’ are to be understood
in the sense of an expiatory bearing, and not merely of taking away, as has
been recently maintained in opposition to the satisfactio vicaria, as we may see clearly enough from Ezek. 4: 4-8, where seth 'avon
(‘bearing
iniquity’)
is represented by the prophet in a symbolical action. But in the case before us, where it is
not the sins, but ‘our diseases’ and ‘our pains’ that are the object, this mediatorial sense
remains essentially the same. The
meaning is not merely that the Servant of God entered into the fellowship of
our sufferings, but that He took upon Himself the sufferings which we had to
bear, and deserved to bear, and therefore not only took them away (as Matt. 8: 17 might make it appear), but bore them in His own person, that
He might deliver us from them. But
when one person takes upon himself suffering which another would have had to
bear, and therefore not only endures it with him, but in his stead, this is
called substitution or representation - an idea which, however unintelligible
to the understanding, belongs to the actual substance of the common
consciousness of man, and [Page 85] the realities of the divine government of the world as
brought within the range of our experience, and one which has continued even
down to the present time to have much greater vigour in the Jewish nation,
where it has found its true expression in sacrifice and the kindred
institutions, than in any other, at least so far as its nationality has not
been entirely annulled.”
As I have already explained, in the more literal translations
of the text of the 3rd and 4th verses, the words rendered in the
English versions, “our griefs” and
“our sorrows,” mean also “our sicknesses” (or “diseases”) and “our
pains,” and it is in this sense that the Evangelist Matthew quotes
this passage from Isa. 53.
After recording some of His precious works of healing - how He cast out
the spirits with His word, and healed all that were sick, he adds: “that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, ‘Himself took
our infirmities and bare our diseases.’”
The question has been raised how
Christ’s miraculous works of healing can be a fulfilment of this
Scripture which sets forth Messiah’s vicarious sufferings for sinners,
and in what sense did He Himself “take
our infirmities and bear our sicknesses”? The answer is that these cures were
in fact and in strictness a fulfilment of this Scripture because wrought in His
character as Saviour. As one has
said: “Christ was sent for the general purpose
of removing
by the sacrifice of Himself the
evil which sin had brought into the world. And this work He commenced when He
cured bodily diseases, for [Page 86] these diseases were the consequences and punishment
of sin. And more - they were types
of another disease, of the moral and spiritual effects of man’s fall,
which the prophecy has principally in view, as is evident from the words which
follow.”*
* William De Burgh, D.D., The Messianic Prophecies of Isaiah.
To put it still more simply, the mission of the Messiah was to
accomplish a full redemption for His people, and this He did not only by taking
upon Himself our sins, but our “infirmities” and “diseases,” which are the direct consequences of sin, though not
always of the sin of the individual.
The blessed results of His redeeming work to us therefore are not only
pardon and regeneration, but the ultimate redemption of body as well as of [soul and] spirit in resurrection life.
The miracles of healing not only served to certify Him as the
Redeemer, and as “signs”
of the spiritual healing which He came to bring, but were, so to say, pledges also
of the ultimate full deliverance of the redeemed, not only from sin but from
every evil consequence of it in body as well as in soul. Hence our full salvation includes not
only the perfecting of our spirits, but the “fashioning anew of the body
of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of His glory.”
The self-accusing confession of their former blindness as to
the true cause of Messiah’s sufferings is continued in the second half of
the verse. It was for us that He
bore all this; it was our crushing burden that He took [Page 87] upon Himself, they say, “but we
regarded Him as stricken (or
‘plagued’), smitten of God, and
afflicted.”
Every one of the three expressions, …, nagua', “one stricken, i.e. afflicted with a hateful, shocking
disease” - hence used particularly of “the
plague” of leprosy (of which … is, so to say, the nomen proprium), and … mukeh Elohim, “one smitten of God” (“one who has been defeated in conflict with God his Lord”),* and …, m'unneh, “one bowed down by suffering,” is intended to describe one suffering terrible punishment for sin.
* Delitzsch.
The error confessed, as Hengstenberg well observes, is not in
their having considered the sufferings which the Servant of Jehovah endured, as
a punishment of sin, but in having considered them as the punishment for the
sins which He Himself had committed. This, alas! is what spiritually
blinded
* See especially the “Iggereth
Ternan,” the letter addressed by Maimonides to the Jewish
communities in
** Gittin, 566. The passage in the original, with translation and
comment, will be found in Jesus Christ in the
Talmud, etc., by Professors Gustave Dalman and Heinrich Laible.
We can well imagine, therefore, the deep contrition and heartbrokenness of repentant
“But He was wounded
for our transgressions, He was bruised for
our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him: and with His
stripes we are healed.”
The …, v’hu (“and He”), as contrasted with …, v'anach'nu
(“and we”) in verses 3 and 4, continue to set forth the true cause of
Messiah’s sufferings in contrast to our former false judgment with regard
to Him. “We”
in our former blindness and ignorance regarded Him as plagued and smitten of
God for His own sin and guilt, while “He” - which is the emphatic word in the [Page 89] 5th verse -
this Holy One, whose true glory as our Redeemer we now behold, endured all in
our stead, paying with His own life for the “transgressions” and “iniquities” which we have committed. And how great were His sufferings, both
in life and in death! He was
wounded, literally, “He was pierced through” (as the verb …, ehalal, primarily means) - or, “wounded to death,” as Von Orelli, and others,
render it - an expression which reminds us of Zech.
12: 10:
“They shall
look upon Me whom they have pierced,” though the
verb for piercing used there is not exactly the same as here. And “He
was bruised,” literally “crushed”
(m'duka), by the heavy burden of our sin which He took upon Himself,
weighted by the wrath of God.
And it was all - to repeat once again - for our iniquities and “for our transgressions.” What else, we ask again, can these words
mean than that He suffered vicariously?
Not merely with, but for others? By no exegesis is it
possible to escape this conclusion.
And there is nothing in the conclusion that need surprise us.
“It is in keeping with what we
know otherwise. You would not
abolish vicariousness by getting it eliminated from the Bible. No one can be unfamiliar with instances
of one taking upon himself the penalty of another’s recklessness or
folly, even within the range of what we call ‘natural law.’ A child, for instance, playing in a room
beside his mother, moves a bar which he has been forbidden to touch, and
overturns a vessel of scalding water.
The mother sees the danger to her child, [Page 90] and in an
instant throws herself between him and the deadly peril, voluntarily taking
upon herself her child’s penalty, and saving his life at the cost of
cruel suffering for herself. Cases
less or more resembling this are not uncommon within the range of ordinary
observation.
“To leave out vicarious
suffering were to erase the brightest pages from the story of the past,- of all
golden deeds, - of men who have died for their country, - of martyrs who have
gone to stake or scaffold for the truth’s sake, and helped to pay the
purchase-price of our religious light and freedom; and would leave history but
a poor record of ignoble selfishness or mean ambition, a record unutterably
sad, little better than the record of a herd of wolves or a Newgate
Calendar. Seldom, indeed, has there
been love absolutely pure from the taint of selfish feeling; and yet it has
been strong enough to take upon itself much suffering in the stead of others;
and has taught us at least to acknowledge that it is a sweeter thing to do good
than to enjoy selfish ease and pleasure, a nobler thing to suffer for others
than to win the world’s renown.
“Among the Jews, the idea of
vicarious suffering was far from strange; their sacrificial system distinctly
expressed it. Sin (said the sacrificial system) is an offence unspeakably
odious to God, which He cannot look upon, but must punish. Death is the due punishment of sin. But God has no pleasure in the
sinner’s death. He is full of
mercy, and has Himself opened up a channel, through sacrifice, whereby sin may
be expiated, [Page 91] and pardon granted in righteousness. The sacrifices under the law had no
intrinsic efficacy to put away sin; but only symbolized substitution - the
substitution of Jehovah’s righteous Servant in place of the guilty. Men may indeed exclaim against the propriety
of one suffering for others, and may insist that every man be wounded for his
own transgressions and bruised for his own iniquities. But there is no moral reason, so far as
I can see, to forbid love from voluntarily stepping in and suffering for
others, to save them from badness and misery. Now in this prophecy, here is One
suffering for sins which He never committed - enduring what others
deserved - standing in the
transgressor’s place, as if Himself the transgressor.
“Within the human bosom, the
world over, are self-accusings and poignant regrets because of ill that has
been done, and dread of what may be, when God shall reckon with us. The case may not be clear to the man
himself; but the sense of guilt is there, ineradicable; it is done; I did it; I
cannot undo it; no tears or repentings can change the fact; and I dread the
future, for I hear a Voice which proclaims with mysterious, awful sovereign
authority, ‘Woe
unto the wicked; it shall
be ill with him.’ And so the conscience of the sinner is
in a condition of pain, varying from mere uneasiness to darkest and intensest
remorse.
“A fire smoulders within that
may blaze up any hour into fierce misery.
Under such conditions, there can be no true peace with God, no true love to Him, no true [Page 92] joy in Him, no
true walking before Him; but revolt and aversion whenever His will thwarts and
crosses ours.
“Oh, if only that guilty past
were blotted out and made as if it had never been! Oh, if only I could go forward into that
unknown future a pardoned man! But
the question of blotting out that guilty past is not so simple as at first it
seems.
“The forgiveness of sins is a
question of righteousness as truly as of mercy. If God cannot forgive in righteousness,
then He cannot forgive at all. If
He were to forgive simply because He is compassionate, or because (being
sovereign) He so wills it, or out of mere good nature, He would remove the very
ground on which my conscience plants itself in all its moral operations. It behoves that the glory of His
character and the rectitude of His government should suffer no eclipse, but, on
the contrary, be demonstrated. But
now light is thrown on the case - though still deep mystery remains - when it
is said, ‘The chastisement of our peace was upon Him.’ Through His suffering for others,
they obtain ‘peace,’
in the sense of reconcilement to God.”*
* Culross.
The phrase musar sh'lomenu - the “chastisement (or punishment) of our peace” - denotes “the chastisement which leads to our peace,” or, as more fully expressed
by Von Orelli, “The punishment of our well-being
- i.e. by the bearing of which, on His part, our peace or well-being is secured
- was
upon Him,” i.e. He bore the burden of it in our
stead. The same thought is [Page 93] differently expressed in the last
supplementary clause in this verse: “By His stripes” (ubhachabhuratho,
literally His wounds) “we were healed (or, healing
was brought to us).”* Peace and healing - two most blessed
results which accrue to us from the vicarious suffering and atoning death of
our Saviour. Peace with God because of His justifying grace on the ground of what Messiah
bore and did for us; and peace in our own conscience, which can never be at
peace until sin is expiated - and “healing.” This, I
believe, goes beyond justification, and hints at the regenerating, sanctifying grace in the
souls of the justified, for the work of our Saviour not only procures pardon
and reconciliation with God, but is the ground also of the work of the Holy
Spirit, who accomplishes within us His
mission of renewal and sanctification, so that, delivered from spiritual
disease and moral blemish, we may become conformed to His own image.
* …, chabhurah, denoting a tumour raised by
scourging. Margoliouth translates
the clause, “By reason of His contusions we were
healed.” In Isa. 1: 6 chabhurah is
rendered “bruises” in the English
Version. It may well lead our
thoughts to the cruel scourging endured by our Saviour on our behalf.
(4) The Moral Necessity of
Messiah’s Sufferings
The 6th verse,
as is well observed by Dr. J. A. Alexander, describes the occasion, or rather
the necessity, of the sufferings of the Servant of
Jehovah, which are spoken of in the verses which precede: “All we
like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned
every one to his own way, and Jehovah hath
laid (literally, ‘caused to meet’)
upon [Page 94] Him the
iniquity of us all.” It is
because men are wholly estranged from God, and an atonement was required for
their reconciliation, that Messiah suffered and died. “As the
sea furnishes a thousand illustrations of life or truth to the
‘inhabiters of the isles,’ so the shepherd and the flock to the
Hebrew prophets and psalmists. The
picture is that of the scattered flock, all wandering from the pasture and the
protection and care of the shepherd.
It is not, as in the parable, the wandering of one sheep out of a
hundred, ninety-and-nine being left, but the scattering of the whole
flock. Under this figure is
represented our iniquity, the word implying both the sinful act and its
guilt. Sheep are not to blame for
wandering; they know no better; but in men, with reason, conscience, and
heavenly light, wandering means sin.”*
* Culross.
Thus, to repeat, “we all,” without any exception, are
involved in this sin and guilt and consequent misery of having strayed from the
Great Shepherd, who is Himself also the fountain of life and all
blessedness. But while “the sinful alienation is universal, the modes of its manifestation are as
various as men and their tendencies.”
“We have
turned every one,”* or, more literally, each [Page 95] (one) man, “to his own way,” which is the very opposite of the way of God. “We have turned,” so that we are not only involved in the sin of
the mass, but stand also under a load of personal and individual guilt which we
have incurred. But let us not
forget that it is primarily still the penitential confession of the remnant of
Israel, and the special applicability of the figure employed in this verse to
the nation, which, because they have wandered away from God, have for many
centuries been a scattered flock, and as sheep having no shepherd.
* “The second clause is
understood by Augustine as denoting selfishness, and a defect of public spirit,
or benevolence ; and this interpretation is admitted by Hengstenberg as correct
' if taken in a deeper sense,' viz. that union among men can only spring from
their common union with God. But this idea, however just it may be in itself,
is wholly out of place in a comparison with scattered sheep, whose running off
in different directions does not spring from selfishness, but from confusion,
ignorance, and incapacity to choose the right path. A much better exposition of the figure,
though still too limited, is that of Theodoret, who understands it to denote
the vast variety of false religions, as exemplified by the different idols
worshipped in Egypt, Phoenicia, Scythia, and Greece, alike in nothing but the
common error of departure from the true God” (J. A. Alexander).
“Any
one taking a view of the state of the Jewish nation, both spiritual and
temporal, since they rejected their Messiah,” writes a Hebrew
Christian brother, “cannot fail to be struck
with the graphic description in this concise inspired sentence. ‘We have
each one of us turned to his own way.’
We have all gone in the path which we
chose. There was no union in the service
of God; no common bond to unite us; we have not entered into the thoughts of
God, nor endeavoured to follow His ways, but we went on the broad way of our
own. We were like sheep which are scattered; which have no shepherd, which
wander where they please, with [Page 96] no one to collect, defend, or guide them. One would wander in one direction, and
another in another; and of course solitary and unprotected, they would be
exposed to the more danger. Such
has been the state of the Jewish nation since they have rejected the Lord of
Glory; they have been sifted among all nations like as corn is sifted, and
everywhere they turn to their own way; they have neither king, nor prince, nor
sacrifice, nor Ephod.”
Disunion among themselves as well as corporate wandering from
God has marked their history in dispersion. But to return to the more immediate
context: while ours was the sin and guilt, Jehovah, in infinite grace and
mercy, “laid (or more literally, caused to meet, or caused to alight*) upon Him the iniquity of us
all.”
* yiph’gia’, from … paga’, signifies to cause anything to strike, or fall upon a
person. The rendering in the
English Version (“laid upon Him”) is
objectionable only because it is too weak and suggests the idea of mild and
inoffensive gesture, whereas that conveyed by the Hebrew word is necessarily a
violent one, namely, that of “causing to strike,
or fall” (Alexander).
The verb is used in such a passage as 2 Sam.
1: 15
“Go near and fall upon him; and he smote him that he died.” “In other
passages our iniquity is spoken of as resting on the Holy One, and He bearing
it. Here it is spoken of as coming
upon Him like a destroying foe and overwhelming Him with the wrath that it
brought with it” (B. W. Newton).
… avon (“iniquity”), is used to denote not only the transgression itself,
but also the guilt incurred thereby, and the punishment to which it gives rise. The last word, kullanu, translated “of us all,” is the very same also with which this verse began,
rendered “all we.” It [Page 97] is repeated to give emphasis that it is the sin of “all we,” primarily of all redeemed
Israel, but inclusively also of all the redeemed from among all the nations, yea,
of every individual sinner, who in repentance and faith turns to God, for as
“all we” are included in the sin and
guilt, so also are we all included in the provision of God’s redeeming
grace.
And it is Jehovah Himself who caused “all this great multitude of sins, and mass of guilt, and
‘weight of punishment,’* to light upon Him.” The previous verses have shown
man’s guilty hand in the case, now we must mark Jehovah’s
action. He it was who placed this awful burden on His
shoulders. This was at once His
deepest humiliation and His most glorious distinction.** “There is a striking antithesis
in this verse,” writes one.
“In ourselves we are scattered” - “astray” - “each
one turned to his own way”; in Christ Jesus we are collected together. By nature we wander and are driven
headlong towards destruction; in Christ we find the way by which we are led to
the gate of life. Yes, Jehovah hath caused to meet in Him the
iniquity of us all.
He was the
object on which all the rays collected on the focal point, fell. These fiery rays which would have fallen
on all mankind diverged from divine justice to the east, west, north, and
south, were deflected from them and converged in Him. So the Lord caused to meet in Him the
punishment due to the iniquity of all. How wonderful are God’s judgments!***
* Delitzsch. ** Culross. *** Margoliouth.
[Page 98]
(5) The Voluntary Character of His
Sufferings
But while men, in their ignorance of His true character,
“and with
wicked hands,” heaped
humiliations and sufferings upon Him, and Jehovah Himself “laid upon Him the iniquity
of us all,” the
righteous Servant of Jehovah endured all the shame and sorrow voluntarily. This is set forth in the next three
verses, which describe the manner of Messiah’s vicarious life and death
and burial.
There has been much discussion over the first part of the seventh verse, and quite a number of different
renderings have been suggested by the commentators. The Authorized Version reads:
“He was oppressed, and He was afflicted; and He
opened not His mouth,” which the Revised Version has altered
to, “He was oppressed, yet
when He was afflicted He opened not His mouth.”
Delitzsch translates, “He was
ill-treated, whilst He bowed Himself,” i.e. “suffered voluntarily”; and Von Orelli, “He was used violently, though He humbled Himself.” To these I may add the rendering given
by Bishop Lowth, which is the same as already suggested by Cyril (among ancient
writers) and by De Dieu, Tremellius, and others, namely: “It was exacted, and
He was made answerable, and He opened not His mouth.”
This last rendering comes, according to my judgment, nearer to
the true sense of the original, but while …
niggas (rendered in the
English versions, “He was [Page 99] oppressed”)
does indeed mean to exact, and may here
be used in the impersonal sense, the
rendering of the second verb (… na'aneh)
by “He was made answerable” is
not in accord with its usage in the original, for the word nowhere else conveys
the notion of legal responsibility.
Margoliouth, on the ground that …, niggas, is sometimes
applied to the rigorous exaction of debts, paraphrases the first part of the verse
thus:
“He was rigorously
demanded to pay the debt, and He submitted Himself, and did not open His mouth.”
That the Messiah in His love and compassion for man became our
surety and took upon Himself our great moral debt, paying the ransom with His
own life, is a truth set forth in the whole of this great prophecy, even if it
be not fully expressed in this particular sentence. What this passage does emphasize is that
He “bowed
Himself” under this
heavy burden, which He took upon our account voluntarily. “He was oppressed,” “He was used violently,” “He was treated tyrannically” (which is yet
another suggested meaning of the word niggas), and He - which is the emphatic word in the verse - “He Himself” it was who “bowed,”
or “humbled,” or “submitted” Himself, and opened not His mouth.
This voluntary endurance is in the second half of the verse
set forth in a simile: “As a sheep that is led to the slaughter,” and “As a lamb
before its shearers is dumb,
and opened not
His mouth.”
“The object of the whole passage
is to mark the [Page 100] meek and quiet subjection of our Redeemer in His
prolonged suffering. He was the
subject of cruel and unjust oppression, yet His persecutors were not
crushed. God allowed them to pursue
their course and to accumulate sorrows on the head of the Holy One; and He
patiently and meekly bowed His head to the infliction, and opened not His
mouth.”* “When we suffer,” writes one,
“how hard we find it to be still! The flames of resentment - how they leap
up in our bosom, and flush our cheek with angry red! What impatience there often is, what
murmuring, what outcry, what publishing of our sorrow! Or if there is silence, it is at times
akin to stoicism, the proud determination not to let men see how we feel. But the spirit of the Servant is loftier
and grander unutterably. In sublime
and magnanimous silence He endures to the uttermost, sustained by His mighty
purpose and by the conviction, Jehovah wills it. I see the temper of His mind in this silence; I see
His strength; I see His rest in God; and I look down into the unfathomed
mystery of Love. He came to do what
only Love was equal to - that is abundantly clear - and He shrank from no
suffering; raised not His arm, opened not His mouth, in His own defence,
wearied not, fainted not, but was dumb with silence.”**
* B. W.
But we may, I believe, go a step further. In this wonderful patience and silence
of the Servant - which in the history of fulfilment was exhibited in the silence
of our Lord Jesus before the Jewish Sanhedrin and before [Page 101] the Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate
- we see not only His lamb-like meekness and “His
love for man, which made Him content to suffer for our redemption,”
but His acquiescence in the justice
of God in the
punishment of sin, the whole burden of which He bore. To the Christian this verse is specially
precious because of the prominence given to it in the New Testament. Not only was it “from this Scripture” that the evangelist Philip
“preached
Jesus” unto the
Ethiopian eunuch; and not only does the Apostle Peter use it as the basis of
his exhortation to believers to be patient in suffering and to follow the
example of Him, “who when He was reviled, reviled
not again, and when He suffered He threatened
not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth
righteously”; but, as Delitzsch truly observes, “All the
references in the New Testament to the Lamb of God (with which the
corresponding allusions to the Passover are interwoven) spring from this passage in the
book of Isaiah.”
(6) The Trial and Death of the
Servant of Jehovah
We now come to perhaps the most difficult verse in this great
prophecy, the main purport of which is to describe the closing portion of the life
of the Servant of Jehovah and the manner of death that He should die.
“No three words in the Hebrew
Bible (with the exception perhaps of the four words which follow) have been
more variously rendered,” says Dr. Henderson, than those which
constitute the first sentence in the eighth verse.
[Page 102] It would not be to much profit were
we to enter into examination of the many translations and paraphrases of these
three words in ancient and modern versions and commentaries. The Authorized Version reads, “He was
taken from prison and from judgment,” and the Revised
Version, “By oppression and judgment was He taken away.” A suggestive reading, first given by
Dr. Henderson, and adopted by Margoliouth, is: “Without restraint and
without a sentence He was taken away,” which of course
fits in with the fulfilment of the prophecy in our Lord Jesus, who exercised no
manner of restraint over His persecutors, and was given over to a cruel death
in violation of every principle of justice, and without a proper trial or
sentence. But this, though a
possible and suggestive rendering, does somewhat strain the meaning of the
words from their general usage. On
the whole, I prefer the reading given by Delitzsch, Von Orelli, and others: “He was
taken away from prison and from judgment,” which is
almost, though not quite, the same as that in the Authorized Version. The
principal emphasis (in the sentence) is not laid upon the fact that He was
taken away from suffering, but that it was out of the midst of suffering that He was carried off.
The idea that is most prominent in the word …, luqqach (“taken
away”), is that of being snatched or hurried away.* The word …, otser (rendered “prison”), primarily means a violent
constraint. “Here, as in Ps. 107: 39, it signifies a persecuting treatment which [Page 103] restrains by
outward force, such as that of prison or bonds. ... The word mishpat (‘judgment’)
refers to the judicial proceedings, in which He was put upon His trial, accused
and convicted as worthy of death - in other words, to His unjust judgment
... Hostile oppression and judicial persecution were
the circumstances out of which He was carried away by death.”**
* See, e.g., chap. 52: 5; Ezek. 33: 4. ** Delitzsch.
The second sentence in this verse, consisting of the four
words …, V’eth doro mi
y'soche-ach, has also been very variously rendered and interpreted by
translators and commentators.
The Authorized Version reads: “And who shall
declare His generation?”
The Revised Version connects the sentence with the words that
follow, and translates: “And as for His generation, who
among them considereth that He was cut off from the land of the living for the
transgression of My people?” etc., which is practically the same as that given by
Delitzsch and others. Von Orelli translates: “And among His
contemporaries who was concerned.”
Of other suggested renderings I may mention the following:-
(1) “As to His generation, who shall
set it forth?” i.e., in all the guilt of
their iniquity.
(2) “Who shall declare His life?” i.e. the
mystery of His Being.
(3) “Who can declare the number of His generation?”- i.e. of those inspired by His
spirit or filled with [Page 104] His life.* Luther, Calvin, and Vitringa understand the clause to mean,
“Who can
declare the length of His life hereafter?”; Kimchi, like Hengstenberg, explains it to mean,
“Who can
declare His posterity?” Yet another rendering based on the fact
that …, (dor) sometimes stands
for “habitation,” or “dwelling,” is that given by Hoffmann and
Margoliouth, namely, “As for His dwelling, who cares for it?” (or who can speak of it?) **
* Hengstenberg.
** See Isa. 38: 12, R.V. The new American Jewish translation of
the Bible renders: “And with His generation, who did reason?”
This great variety of opinions by Bible scholars, both ancient
and modern, Jewish and Christian, will give the reader an idea of the
difficulty of coming to a positive conclusion as to the actual meaning of this
clause, and how unbecoming it would be to speak with anything like
dogmatism. Yet I may venture to
suggest an explanation which seems to me the most probable. In
the Hebrew Bible …, (dor rendered
“generation”) signifies “an age,” or “the
men living in a particular age”; or, in an ethical sense “the entire body of those who are connected together by
similarity of disposition,” or likeness of moral character.
The Pillel verb …, soche'-ach
(rendered in A.V. “declare,” and
in R.V. “considereth”), signifies,
“a thoughtful consideration,”
“meditation,”* but it means also “to speak,”
“to complain,” “to lament,” and is [Page 105] used in at least one or two places to describe an exercise
very much akin to prayer.
As, for instance, Ps.
55: 17, “Evening, morning, and at
noonday will I pray, and cry aloud: and He
shall hear my voice.” The words
“will I pray” (the R.V. has, “will I
complain”) are a translation of this same verb,** would therefore translate “As for His generation - who
(among them) poureth out a complaint?” (i.e. at His treatment); or, “who among them uttereth a prayer?” (i.e. on His
behalf). In either case there may
be, as suggested already by Bishop Lowth, a prophetic allusion to the custom
which prevailed among the Jews in the case of trials for life to call upon all
who had anything to say in favour of the accused, to come and “declare it,” or “plead”
on his behalf.
* E.g. Ps. 143:
5:
“I remember the days of old, I meditate (…, soche'-ach) on all Thy doings.”
** As a noun it is
found also in the inscription of Ps. 102 - a prayer of the afflicted when he is
overwhelmed and poureth out his complaint (…, sicho) before Jehovah.
The following striking passage from the Talmud (Sanhedrin fol.
43) may be cited by way of illustration. “There
is a tradition: On the eve of the Sabbath and the Passover they hung
Jesus. And the herald went forth
before him for forty days crying, ‘Jesus goeth to be executed, because he
has practised sorcery and seduced
That this legend about Jesus has for its basis a well-known
custom in the procedure of the Sanhedrin in trials for life, there is, I think,
no doubt;* for the principle by
which they were supposed to be regulated was that “they sat to justify, and not to condemn; to save life, and
not to destroy.” That
this humane custom of calling upon those who knew anything in favour of the
accused to come and declare it, was not observed in the case of Jesus of
Nazareth, and that the proceedings at this hasty, mock trial before the Sanhedrin were in flagrant contradiction with the
regulations which were supposed to govern their procedure, are facts of
history, but there is this much truth in this Talmudic passage, that none dared to appear in His favour; and that in
the great crisis when the Christ of God stood on His trial before the corrupt
hostile Jewish hierarchy and the representatives of the then great Gentile world
power, no one came forward with a justifying plea “on His behalf” for fear of the Jews. Yea, at that solemn [Page 107] moment, when the sword awoke to smite
the Shepherd, the sheep were all scattered; and even His own disciples, who
later on when convinced of His resurrection became as bold as lions, and
willingly laid down their lives for Him, became demoralized with fear and
forsook Him and fled.
* Lowth thinks that our Lord referred to
this custom in His words to the high priest in John
18: 20, 21,
“I spoke openly to the world. ... Why askest thou Me? ask them
that have heard Me,” etc.
And in a sense our Lord Jesus is still on His trial. Are we, His professed disciples, ready
now to take our stand as His witnesses in the face of a hostile Jewish and
Gentile world, and make our “justifying plea” on His behalf not only in word
but by showing forth the power of His gospel over our own hearts and lives?
But this has been somewhat of a digression. The next clause in this verse proclaims
clearly the fact
of His death, and
the manner of it. “For He
was cut off out of the land of the living.”
It is by wicked and violent hands that this righteous Servant of Jehovah
dies, “cut off” as it were, in the midst of
His days. And then, finally, in repudiation
once again of their previous false notion that it was for His own sin that He
was “stricken and smitten of God” (ver.
4), the vicarious atoning character of His sufferings and death
is yet again emphasized: “For the transgression
of My people the stroke fell upon Him.”
Ewald, one of the chief fathers of the German rationalistic
school of interpreters, who assigns a different (and earlier) authorship for 53rd chapter than the rest of the
writings of the Great Unknown,* with
which, [Page
108] according to
him, it has somehow become incorporated, adduces the “frequent repetition of expressions and ideas which occur
nowhere else” in the second part of Isaiah,
as a ground of his theory; but these “frequent
repetitions,” as Dr. Alexander observes, “so far from being rhetorical defects, or indications of
another author, are used with an obvious design, namely, that of making it
impossible for any ingenuity or learning to eliminate the doctrine of vicarious
atonement from this passage by presenting it so often, and in forms so varied
and yet still the same, that he who succeeds in expelling it from one place is
compelled to meet it in another.
Thus in this verse, which fills up the
last particulars of the humiliation and sufferings of the Messiah even unto
death, it is once again repeated that it was ‘for the transgression of My
People’
that the stroke fell upon Him.”
* The name with which the critics have christened their “second Isaiah.”
As already pointed out in the introductory part, the term
…, Ammi (“My people”), can only apply to Israel,
and is one of the many internal marks which make it impossible to interpret the
prophecy of the Jews as a nation, for the servant suffers and dies for the
people, and therefore cannot be confounded with the people. Yes, the Good
Shepherd laid down His life in the first instance for “My people” - the people which in a special sense
He calls “His own,” and
that is the chief ground of our hope and confidence for Israel as a nation,
but, blessed be God 1 He died, not for the nation only, but that " He
might also gather into one the [Page 109] children of God that were scattered abroad;* and since Christ came, in whom this prophecy received its minute
fulfilment, millions from among all the Gentile nations, “who in time
past were no people,” are now the people of God.**
* John 11: 51, 52.
** No
little controversy has centred round the last line of this verse. It is contended by Jewish
controversialists that …, lamo (the
last word in the verse which I have rendered “upon
Him”), has the plural suffix and ought to be translated “upon them,” and this is adduced by some in proof
that it is a collective subject that the prophet speaks of in this chapter,
namely, Israel.
But first Kimchi, who originated this
argument, himself denied it. In his
commentary he says: “I should like to ask the
Nazarenes who explain the Parashah of Jesus, how the prophet could have said to
them (…) when he ought to
have said “to him” (…), for (lamo) is
plural, being equivalent to (la-hem).” But in his grammar he says: “ … (mo)
occurs as the affix of the 3rd person singular, as in Job 20: 23; 22: 2.” And again, “…
(mo) is used both of many and of one.”
There are also other instances in the Hebrew Bible besides these two
passages in Job quoted by Kimchi where the poetic plural suffix … is
used for the singular. We find
it even in this second part of Isaiah, chap. 44: 15 – “he
maketh it a graven image, and falleth down
thereto.” (…).
But even if it be admitted that lamo
is here a plural, there would be no
ground for the assertion that the subject is a collective one. The translation would then be: “For He was cut off from the land of the living. For the
transgression of My people - the stroke or
punishment that should have fallen on them.” This is admitted in
the New American Jewish translation of the Bible, which renders: “For the transgression of My people, to whom the stroke was due.”
(7) God’s Special Interposition
in the Burial of His Servant
The prophetic story of the Servant of Jehovah unfolded in this
penitential confession moves on. From [Page 110] His life of vicarious suffering and
atoning death we come to His burial.
“And they made (or ‘appointed’*) His grave with the wicked,
And with a rich man in His death,
Because He hath done no violence,
Neither was deceit in His mouth.”
* …, vayyitten (rendered
in Authorized Version “He gave”),
is, as generally admitted, used here, as in many other places in the Hebrew
Bible, impersonally, as in the German man
gab.
“The predictions concerning
Christ in this chapter,” writes Moses Margoliouth, “are so numerous and so minute that they could not possibly
have been dictated by any but by Him to whom all things are naked and open, and
who worketh all things according to the counsel of His own will. The most insignificant circumstances
connected with our Lord’s death are set forth with as much accuracy as
those which are most important. If
we reflect but for a moment on the peculiar circumstances which attended our
Saviour’s last hours, we shall see reason to exclaim with Moses, ‘The secret things belong unto the Lord our God’; or with Paul, ‘O the depth of the riches both
of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and
His ways past finding out!’” What could be more unlikely than that
the Messiah should be crucified when crucifixion was not a Jewish but a Roman
punishment? And yet David (in Ps. 22.)
predicted that such would be the case centuries [Page 111] before
* Deut. 17:
14, 15.
Their Rabbinic law pronounced the most severe anathema against any one who should deliver a
Jew to a heathen magistrate. But in
this
case - that the word of God may come to pass - they regard neither their
law nor their tradition, but deliver Jesus to the judgment of the Roman
Procurator and call upon him to pronounce sentence. And when Pilate, half in remonstrance
and half in mockery, said: “Shall I
crucify your King?” they replied, “We have no king but Caesar.”
After the remarkable fulfilment of an extraordinary prophecy
when Jesus was really put to death according to the Roman law, and was crucified between two male~ factors, what more
likely than that He should be treated as they were? But no: for when Pilate,
yielding once more to the clamour of the Jews that the death of the victims
should be hastened so that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the
Sabbath - “The soldiers [Page 112] came and broke the legs of the
first and of the other that were crucified with Him;
but when they
came to Jesus and saw that He was dead already, they broke not His legs. Howbeit one of the
soldiers with a spearpierced His side, and straightway there came out blood and
water … These things came
to pass that the scriptures might be fulfilled, a bone of Him shall not be broken - and again another
scripture, They shall look
upon Him whom they have pierced.” Again, “what
more insignificant than that the soldiers should part His garments and cast lots for His vesture? Yet
that too, with a great number of other incidents equally minute, was
circumstantially predicted.”*
And so also was it with His burial.
* Margoliouth. I have
taken the liberty to abbreviate and slightly recast his remarks.
The Jewish leaders, not content with the humiliations and
sufferings they heaped upon Him; not appeased even by the cruel and shameful
death to which at their will He was given over, followed Him with hatred even
to the grave. “They appointed His grave
with the wicked.”
“In all countries, I suppose,
it has been the rule that persons put to death as criminals have had
ignominious sepulture,” writes one. “Even
after death shame has followed them, though after ages have oft times reversed
the award and built monuments to them.” But this was especially the case among
the Jews. This was the law of the
time, as stated by Josephus.* “He that [Page 113] blasphemeth
God let him be stoned, and let him hang upon a tree all that day, and let him
be buried in an ignominious and obscure manner.” Now, it was as a blasphemer that they
condemned Him in their ignorance and blindness, and what more likely than that
as He died with criminals He should also be buried with them? But – “with a
rich man (He
was) in His death.”**
* Antiquities, iv. viii. 6.
** The word for death is in the plural, and some have argued that
it should be rendered, “in His deaths,”
and have adduced it as yet another proof that the subject of the prophecy is a
collective one. But there is no
basis for this assertion, for first, if a plurality of persons were intended,
it is the plural suffix which would be required, and this is here expressed by
the singular. “There is no ground,” as Pusey correctly
observes, “to lay any emphasis on the plural in
…, methim ‘death,’ than …, chayyim ‘life’ (in the preceding
verse), which is also in the plural- the singular for ‘life’ not being used in
Hebrew. Many nouns in Hebrew are
used in the plural where we Westerns could hardly account for it. The plural is used of a condition as a period of life, or a condition of
body. There is then no reason why
‘deaths,’ if there is any stress on the plural, should not mean
‘the state of death,’ as …, chayyim (the plural for ‘life,’ the state of life).”
In Ezek. 28: 10 “deaths” is certainly used “for the death of one.” Delitzsch says the plural is used of a
violent death, the very pain of which makes it like dying again and again.
Modern scholars have sought to explain the word …, v'ashir, as being a synonymous parallel
to …, sha'im (“wicked”), in the previous clause. This explanation is, as far as I can
trace it, first mentioned by Rabbi Sh'lomoh ben Melekh of Fez in his Mikhlol
Yophi (about 1500 A.D.), where he
says, “`Ashir (rich) is [Page 114] considered
by Rabbi Yonah to be equivalent to rasha,
‘wicked’”;
but he himself adds that “it is not allowable to
abandon the usual signification ‘rich’ merely on account of the parallel clause.”
This explanation, which Franz Delitzsch properly says, is
“untenable,” has unfortunately been
adopted by Luther, Calvin, and Gesenius, who regard the word “rich” here as suggesting the necessary idea of
“one who sets his heart upon his wealth, or puts his trust in
it,” or makes an unlawful use of it. But this is so arbitrary that some of
the later writers abandon the Hebrew usage altogether, and profess to derive
the sense “wicked” from an Arabic
root. But this, as Dr. Alexander
truly says, “is doubly untenable;
first, because the Hebrew usage cannot be put aside for an Arabic analogy
without extreme necessity, which does not here exist; and secondly, because the
best authorities (as Delitzsch also shows) find no such meaning in the
particular Arabic word itself.”*
* Ewald, Hoffmann, Bottcher, etc., have tried their hands at
altering the original word so as to produce a synonymous parallelism to “wicked,” but this is a violent method of
handling the sacred text, especially when there it; absolutely no necessity for
it.
It may seem surprising that this forced imposition of a new
and foreign meaning on a word so familiar should be thus insisted on. “Luther
and Calvin, no doubt, simply followed the rabbinical tradition; but the later
writers have a deeper motive for pursuing a course which, in other
circumstances, they would boldly charge [Page 115] upon the Reformer’s ignorance
of Hebrew. That motive is the wish
to do away with the remarkable coincidence between the circumstances of our
Saviour’s burial and the language of this verse, as it has been commonly
understood since Capellus.” (Alexander).
And this “remarkable
coincidence” is truly wonderful, for, in the words of Delitzsch, “if we reflect that the Jewish rulers would have
given to Jesus the same dishonourable burial as to the two thieves, but that
the Roman authorities handed over the body to Joseph the Arimathaean, a ‘rich man’ (Matt. 27: 57), who placed it in the
sepulchre in his own garden, we see an agreement at once between the gospel
history and the prophetic words, which could only be the work of the God of
both the prophecy and its fulfilment, inasmuch as no suspicion could possibly
arise of there having been any human design of bringing the former into
conformity with the latter.”
And the reason assigned for this honourable burial, which was
so different from what had been planned, or “appointed”
for Him by His enemies, is that - “He hath done no
violence, neither was deceit
found in His mouth” - which is yet another reiteration of
the absolute innocence of His outward actions and of the inward purity and
gentleness of His character. It was
vicarious sufferings that He endured; it was a death of atonement for others that
He died; but immediately those sufferings were ended and that death
accomplished, His humiliation was ended,
and no further indignity to His [Page 116] blessed person could be permitted.
And so, already, in His burial, He was “separated from sinners,” and was laid in the tomb of
the “rich man of Arimathaea, wherein
never man before was laid.”*
* Luke 23: 53.
* * *
[Page 117]
CHAPTER III
THE RESURRECTION AND FUTURE GLORY OF
THE SERVANT OFJEHOYAH
With the 10th
verse begins the account of the Messiah’s exaltation and
glory. But first it is once more
reiterated and emphasized that they were not mere chance experiences which the Servant
of Jehovah passed through. Nor was
it merely that wicked men were allowed to work out the evil of their hearts in
the sufferings and humiliations which they were permitted to heap upon Him, and
thus make manifest by their treatment of “the
Holy One” their enmity towards God.
No: “the supreme causa efficiens,” as
Delitzsch expresses it, was God, “who made the
sin of men subservient to His pleasure, His will, and predetermined counsel.”
“Yet it
pleased Jehovah to bruise (…. dak’o, literally to crush) Him; He hath put Him to grief.”*
* …, he'cheli,
as is generally admitted by scholars, is the hiphil of …, chalah. Both the verbs “to bruise,” or “crush,”
and “to put to grief,” or “afflict with sickness,” go back to verses 4 and 5: “He hath
borne our griefs,” or “sicknesses,”
and “He was bruised,” or “crushed,” “for our
iniquities.”
[Page 118]
This is the confession of the penitents whose eyes are now
opened to see the true meaning of it all.
He who “had done no violence nor was deceit
found in His mouth,” “whose actions
were invariably prompted by pure love, and whose speech consisted of unclouded
sincerity and truth,” was yet “crushed”
and put to grief by Jehovah.
“Here is not only the mystery of
suffering innocence; but of innocence suffering at the hands of righteousness
and perfect love.”
Yes, mystery of mysteries; and apart from the explanation He Himself
gives of it, it is the most inexplicable thing in God’s moral
government. But it is fully
explained, not only in all that preceded in this chapter, but by the great
purpose of redemption formed by the triune God before the world was founded,
and which is progressively unfolded in the pages of the Old and New Testaments.
In this light of God’s own revelation the sufferings of
the Messiah in which the good pleasure of God’s will was accomplished,
become a mystery of light in which there is no darkness at all. We see that this pleasure of Jehovah in
the sufferings of the Righteous One, to use the words of another, “does not proceed from caprice, but that He acted righteously
as well as sovereignly in what He did.
“Not only did the Lord bruise
Him, but it was the ‘good pleasure of His will’ to do so. He who has no pleasure in the death of
the wicked was pleased to put His righteous Servant to grief - not, of course,
[Page 119] because the
death-agony was a pleasure to look upon, but as means to the fulfilment of a
great purpose.
“Even a noble-minded man finds
pleasure in contemplating heroic and self-sacrificing love in others, to
accomplish glorious ends. We look
back, for example, on our martyrs, who suffered cruel death for the
Gospel’s sake we forget the physical torture they endured; or rather it
ceases to be a horror in our eyes, and becomes a glory; we read of their
sufferings with uplifted and joyful hearts, thanking God who gave such grace to
men. And even so, we cannot help
thinking, the Lord, whose pity is like unto a father’s pity, had pleasure
in the self-sacrifice of His Servant; yea, had pleasure in the very appointment
which issued in the self-sacrifice.
And if we add to this - as exhibited in what follows - the results which
the sufferings achieved, in their nature, blissfulness, magnitude, and
perpetuity, we shall understand how it comes to be said, ‘Yet it pleased the Lord to
bruise Him: He did put Him to grief.’”*
* Culross.
These blessed results the spirit of prophecy in the mouth of
the penitent confessors now proceeds to enumerate, after emphasizing yet again that
they are all conditioned on His sufferings and death.
“If (or
when), His soul shall make
an offering for sin.”
The word …, tasim
(“shall make”), is either second
person masculine, in which case the rendering would be as in the Authorized and
Revised Versions, “When Thou (i.e. God) shalt make His soul an offering for sin”; [Page 120] or third person feminine, “When His soul
shall make an offering,”
which is the rendering accepted in the margin and by most modern scholars. The latter translation is preferable, as
Jehovah is nowhere else addressed in this chapter. In either case the Servant of Jehovah
gives His life as an offering for the sin of others and takes on Himself the
penalty which their guilt had incurred.
“Language could not more simply and
unequivocally declare the significance of His death.”
The word rendered “offering for sin” …, asham, really means “trespass,” but just as the word …, chattath, which is used for “sin offering,” “denotes
first the sin, then the punishment of the sin, and the expiation of the sin,
and hence the sacrifice which cancels the sin; so asham signifies first the guilt or debt, then the compensation or
penance, and hence the sacrifice which discharges the debt or guilt and sets
the man free.” There
was much in common between the trespass offering and the “sin offering.” Both are called kodesh-kadashint, “most holy,”*
and as regards the manner in which the sacrifice was to be slain, and as to
which portions were to be burnt on the altar, and what parts assigned to the
priests, there was “one law for them both.”**
*Lev. 6:
17; 14: 13.
**Lev. 7:
7.
Yet there were differences between the chattath (sin offering)
and asham (trespass offering), and in
their moral and typical significance each one of the sacrifices set forth a
distinctive aspect of the great work of [Page 121] atonement which was to be accomplished by the Messiah* and the blessed results accruing
therefrom to sinful men. On the
whole, it is correct to say with Dr. Culross, that while the sin offering
looked to the sinful state of the offerer, the trespass offering was appointed
to meet actual transgressions, the
fruit of the sinful state. The sin
offering set forth propitiation, the trespass offering set forth
satisfaction. It was brought by the
transgressor “to make amends for the harm that
he hath done.” “It symbolized rights violated and compensation rendered,
debt contracted and satisfaction made.” But whether it be a sin offering or a
trespass offering it had to be slain, and its blood shed before it could become a sacrifice.
* “Every species of sacrifice had
its own primary idea. The
fundamental idea of the ‘olah (burnt
offering) was oblatio, or the
offering of worship; that of the sh'lamin
(peace offering) conciliatio, or
the knitting of fellowship; that of the minchah
(meat offering) donatio, or
sanctifying consecration; that of the chattath
(sin offering) expiatio, or
atonement; that of the asham (trespass
offering) mulkta (satisfactio), or a compensatory payment.
The self-sacrifice of the Servant of Jehovah may be presented under all
these points of view. It is the
complete antitype, the truth, the object, and the end of all the sacrifices” (Franz
Delitzsch).
1. The first of
the blessed results of Messiah’s vicarious sufferings and atoning death
which are enumerated in this 10th verse
is expressed in the two Hebrew words, …, yir’eh zera, “He shall see His (or more literally a) seed (or
posterity).” Jewish controversialists,
supported by some Gentile rationalistic writers, have based a quibble on this
clause. Taking zera', “seed,” in its literal sense as
denoting natural offspring, they have [Page 122] argued that this prophecy cannot apply to Jesus of Nazareth,
who had no natural progeny, overlooking the fact that this “seed” (like the other fruits of His atoning
Passion set forth in the last three verses of the prophecy) follows His death, on
which it is conditioned, and therefore cannot be taken in a literal sense.* No; the Messiah’s “seed,” of which the spirit of prophecy speaks
here, is the glorious spiritual progeny which He has begotten with “the travail of His soul,” and the new family which He
came to found, and which sprang, so to say, at His resurrection out of His
empty tomb, is the new “seed of Israel,”
or the Household of Faith. This
spiritual “seed” - the “bringing of many sons unto
glory” ** - was the chief joy which was set before
Him, for the sake of which He endured the cross, despising the shame. Except a grain of wheat fall into the
ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit; and the
Church of Christ, consisting of the multitude of the redeemed out of all
nations, Jew and Gentile - which was born when He died, and which looks back to
Him as the source of its life and the origin of its being - is the continuous
living witness to this truth.
*…, zera’, is again and again used in the Hebrew Scriptures in a
figurative sense of spiritual seed.
It is used also in this sense of spiritual “seed,” or disciples, in post-Biblical Rabbinical
writings.
** Heb. 2: 10.
The parallel scripture to Isa.
53. is Ps.
22.
There also the sufferings of the Messiah are minutely foretold in
advance as well as the glory which should follow. [Page 123] And among the blessed results which are there set forth as
following from His death is, “A seed (zera') shall serve Him”;* which shows that it is not a literal but a spiritual seed,
namely, His disciples, or followers, who also “serve” Him.
*Ps. 22:
30.
2. “He shall prolong His days.” How wonderful, how seemingly
paradoxical! He “pours out His soul unto
death,” as a trespass
offering; He is “cut off from the land of the living”; is dead and buried, and yet
He shall live and have continuance of days!
How is it possible? The answer to this question is that the
Messiah was not only to die for our sins but must rise again from the dead
“according
to the Scriptures.” And in the light of the glorious
fulfilment all these seeming paradoxes in the Old Testament in reference to the
person and mission of the Messiah are cleared up.
Our Lord Jesus, who was delivered up
for our offences, was raised again for our justification, and ascended into
heaven, where He now sitteth at the right hand of God, whence His word of
encouragement and assurance comes to His disciples: “Fear not, I am the First and the Last, and the Living One; and I
became dead, and behold I am
alive for evermore, and have the keys
of death and of Hades.”*
* Rev. 1: 17, 18.
This prediction that Messiah shall
“prolong
His days” after having died, is in accord also with what we
read in other Scriptures, as for instance Ps.
16: 10: “Thou wilt
not leave my soul in (or
to) Sheol; neither [Page 124] wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see
corruption”; and Ps. 21. “He asked
life of Thee, Thou gavest it Him, even length of days for ever and ever,” which Jonathan in
his Targum, and Kimchi in his Commentary, themselves explain that the
expression orekh yamim, “length of days,” refers to “the life of the world to come,” and so in fact it must be, since it is for
ever and ever.
3. “And
the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in His hand,” i.e. God’s will shall be fully
accomplished by Him: the mission on which He is sent He shall triumphantly
carry through. But if we want to
know more particularly what this “pleasure of Jehovah” is, which is thus to be brought to prosperous
issue “in
His hand,” we find
the answer in the commission entrusted to the perfect Servant of Jehovah as set
forth in this second part of Isaiah.
Let me quote only two or three passages from preceding chapters.
“Behold My Servant, whom I uphold; My
chosen, in whom My soul
delighteth: I have put My
Spirit upon Him, He shall bring
forth judgment (or “justice”) to the nations. ... I
Jehovah have called Thee in righteousness, and will
hold Thy right hand, and will keep Thee
and give Thee for a covenant of the people, for a
light of the Gentiles; to open the blind
eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.” “And now, saith Jehovah that formed Me from the womb to be His Servant, to bring Jacob again to Him, and that Israel be gathered unto Him: … yea, He saith, It is too light a thing that Thou [Page
125] shouldest be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and
to restore the Preserved of Israel; I will also give Thee for a light to the Gentiles, that Thou mayest be My salvation unto the end of the earth.”*
* Isa. 42: 1-7; 49: 5, 6.
This then, in brief, is the pleasure of Jehovah which shall
prosper in His hand, or be brought to a triumphant accomplishment through His mediation,
namely, the regathering of Israel, the bringing back of Jacob, not only to his land but into new covenant
relationship with God, of which He Himself will be the bond; the illumination
of the Gentile world with the light of the knowledge of the true and living
God; the establishing of judgment and justice in the earth; the deliverance of
men from spiritual blindness and the bondage of sin, and the bringing near of
God’s salvation to all men throughout the whole world, even “unto the end of the earth.”
And to this we must add words from the New Testament which
open up yet more illimitable vistas of this “good pleasure” of Jehovah which is to be
realized in and through the mediation of the Messiah. “For it was the good pleasure of the Father,” writes the Apostle Paul, “that in Him should
all the fulness dwell; and through Him to
reconcile all things unto Himself, having
made peace through the blood of the cross ... whether
things upon the earth or things in heaven.” And again, “Making known unto us the
mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed
in Him unto a dispensation of the fulness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth ... according to the
purpose of Him who worketh all things [Page 126] after the counsel of His will.”* “Glorious
consummation of redemption,” exclaims one, “which is also the manifestation in its fulness of the Divine
Love!”
* Col. 1: 19, 20; Eph. 1: 9-11.
* * *
[Page 127]
CHAPTER IV
JEHOVAH’S FINAL WORD CONCERNING HIS SERVANT - THE
GLORIOUS AWARD
FOR HIS SUFFERINGS.
In the last two verses “the prophecy leaves the standpoint of
* Delitzsch.
“He shall see of the
travail of His soul” (or, more literally, “because,”
or, “in consequence of the toil or labour of His
soul), He shall see and be satisfied.”
This “travail of soul” includes, as
has been well observed, “all the toil,
suffering, and sorrow through which He came, and has been outlined, if not
unfolded, in the previous part of the prophecy. It culminated when He was cut off out of
the land of the living, and His soul was made an offering for sin,
accomplishing [Page 128] what the Levitical sacrifices only
symbolized. No accumulation of mere
bodily sufferings could satisfy these expressions. The ‘travail’ is that of the
soul; it has its seat within, and is such as might find voice in those words
reported from
* Culross.
But what is it that He shall see, i.e. look upon with delight,
and be abundantly satisfied?* For answer we have, I believe, to go
back to the verse which immediately precedes as well as to what follows.
* The verb …, yisbd =
from. …, sabha’, means not only to be contented, but to be filled, or
abundantly supplied. It stands for
the fullest realization of expectation, or gratification of any particular
desire.
Abarbonel, followed by some Christian commentators,
paraphrases, “He shall see, i.e. His seed; He
shall be satisfied, i.e. with length of days.” That is true, but it goes beyond and
includes the full and final accomplishment of all “the pleasure of Jehovah.” In part this is already being
realized. He who for us men and our
salvation endured agony and shame, and poured out His soul unto death, is now
seated at the right hand of God, being endowed as the Son of Man with “length of days for ever and
ever,” and
everywhere He beholds with joy “a seed that serveth Him.”
[Page 129]
Then, apart also from the multitude
which no man can number, who have been redeemed by His precious blood and who
out of love for Him have sought to do the will of His Father in heaven, the indirect influences of His gospel in almost all
parts of the earth have been great and wonderful. But this is not all for which Christ
suffered and died. This is not all
the “pleasure
of Jehovah,” which
He came to accomplish. It is only [after
the ‘first resurrection’] when Redemption is fully completed
that “He
shall see” a
glorious completed church “without spot or wrinkle”; a restored and converted Israel which shall bear upon itself the
inscription “Holiness unto Jehovah,” and be “the priests of Jehovah” and the willing
“ministers” a God in diffusing the blessings of their Messiah’s gospel
among all nations; a world which shall be “filled with the knowledge of God as the waters
cover the sea”; and [‘until the thousand years should be finsised: after this”
(Rev. 20:
3, R.V.)] - a new heaven and a new
earth wherein shall dwell righteousness for evermore. Yes,
He shall see all this as the outcome of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied.
One of the most blessed results of the
“travail of His soul,” and that which at the same time forms no
little part of the “satisfaction” for all the sufferings which He
endured, is the prerogative with which He is endowed of removing guilt and
imparting righteousness to those who, through faith in Him, seek communion with
God.
“By His
knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many,” or, to give a
more literal rendering of the words [Page 130] in the order in which they stand in the Hebrew, “By His knowledge shall make
righteous (or, bring righteousness)
the Righteous
One (My Servant)
many.”
It cannot be positively stated whether …, bedato (by His knowledge), is to be
understood in a subjective sense of the Servant of Jehovah, i.e. “according
to His knowledge,” or objectively, “by the knowledge of Him.”
Grammatically it might be rendered either way, but it is correct to say with
Delitzsch (who himself favours the subjective view) that nearly all the commentators
who understand by the Servant of Jehovah the divine Redeemer, give preference
to the latter of the two explanations, namely, by the knowledge of Him on the
part of others. And this, it seems to me, is the
more satisfactory view. The kind of
“knowledge” expressed in the word is not
only that which has reference to understanding with the mind, but a practical,
experimental knowledge* - a
spiritual heart acquaintance
with Him, a personal appropriation by a living faith of His redeeming work for sinners
- such a “knowledge,” for
instance, as is implied in the words of Christ, “This is life eternal,
that they might know Thee the only
true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou didst send,” or, in the prayer of the Apostle, “That I
might know Him and the power of His
resurrection.”
* …, yada,
stands in the Bible for experimental knowledge.
The construction of the phrase …, Tsaddiq abhdi, is unusual,
and is intended to emphasize the unique character of the Servant of Jehovah and
to explain [Page 131] in part how it is that He is the bringer of righteousness to others.
“It is in the Hebrew language
as a rule, that the adjective should be placed after the substantive to which
it belongs. But in the passage
before us that rule is transgressed.
‘Righteous’ is not placed after ‘Servant,’ but stands
before it, and that without the article.
The omission of the article before words which are, nevertheless,
definite, indicates both in Hebrew and Greek that the person or thing denoted
is to be regarded as standing in a sphere of its own - singular, isolated, or
pre-eminent. So it is here. We must translate ‘One that is righteous,’
or ‘the Righteous One.’ The
omission of the article indicates that the person thus spoken of held in earth
a position of righteousness that was singular and isolated, and that there was
none like it. The peculiar position
of the word ‘righteous’ preceding, and not following its substantive, is
intended to give especial prominence to the thought it expresses. Our minds are intended to rest on the
righteousness of the Righteous One as the procuring cause of the blessing
spoken of in this verse. In virtue
of having been the Righteous One, He becomes the causer, or bringer of
righteousness to His believing people.
“Yet whilst prominence is thus
given to the great fact of His righteousness, it is important also to observe
that the words ‘MY Servant’ are added. ...
“It is not in virtue of that
essential righteousness that pertains to Him as God - one with the Father and
the [Page 132] Holy Ghost - that He brings to us righteousness. The righteousness by which we are
constituted righteous is a service, an obedience which He
became man in order to render, and which He commenced and finished in
the
earth. It commenced when He said, ‘Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.’ It terminated when He had become
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and said, ‘It is finished.’ It is true, indeed, that unless He had
been one to whom righteousness essentially belonged, He could not have wrought
out the righteousness which He did work out as the Servant. The service of that Servant had in it a
superhuman excellency, for that Servant was Immanuel - God manifest in the
flesh.”*
* B. W.
The word …, yats'dik,
followed as it is by the preposition …, le, ought, as I have already suggested, to be rendered “shall cause, or bring righteousness.”
The …, rabbim (“many”), to whom He thus brings righteousness, or
constitutes righteous, is the mass of mankind, or all - not only in Israel, but
amongst the nations also - who shall respond to His call, and by a living faith
enter into an acquaintance with Him.
It is probable that this passage was in the mind of our Saviour when, on
the night of His betrayal, He took the cup and said to His disciples, “This is my blood of the New
Covenant which is poured out for many (… [see] Matt. 26: 28.), and it is almost certain that it
was in the mind of the Apostle Paul when writing Romans
5: 12-21,
[Page 133] which is an inspired unfolding and application
of the same doctrine of substitution which is set forth in this great Old
Testament prophecy. After writing
of the consequence of Adam’s transgression to the whole of mankind, he
says: “But not as the trespass, so also
is the free gift. For if by the
trespass of the one the many be dead, much
more did the grace of God,
and the gift by
the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto many. ... For as
through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One shall the many
(…), be
made righteous.”
To repeat, it is the righteousness of
faith which is the consequence of justification [by faith alone] on the ground of the atoning work of the
Messiah which is set forth in this passage, yet those are not altogether wrong
who maintain that it includes also that “righteousness of life which springs by an inward necessity out of
those sanctifying powers that are bound up with the atoning work which we have
made our own.”* For
though this is not the ground of our acceptance before God, it is yet important
to remember that the doctrine of
justification [by faith] does not stand alone in
the Bible,* and
that God does not constitute any one
righteous to whom He does not also impart the power to be righteous. We
are justified [by faith] that we
may also be sanctified and glorified,
and the outward seal of the true followers of Christ is that they “depart from
iniquity” and “walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”
* Delitzsch. [*See
James 1: 12;
2: 5. cf.
James 2: 21-25, R.V.]
But to return to our immediate
context. “Because our [Page 134] righteousness [by
faith alone] has its roots in the
forgiveness of sins as an absolutely unmerited
gift of grace without works, the prophecy returns once more from the
justifying work of the Servant of Jehovah to His sin-expunging work as the
basis of all righteousness.”
“And their iniquities
He shall bear.” The introduction of the pronoun, as Dr. Alexander
observes, makes a virtual antithesis suggesting the idea of exchange or mutual
substitution. They shall receive His
righteousness, and He shall bear the
heavy burden* of their
iniquities. “From this doctrine the heart that is self-righteous, hard,
and proud may turn scornfully away - as Naaman did when told to dip seven times
in Jordan; but to the man who knows himself to be a ruined and helpless sinner,
and who has been made to sigh for reconcilement and peace with God, the news of
grace to the ill-deserving manifested in righteousness will be welcome beyond
all thought, and mighty to produce newness of life.”**
*The thought expressed in …, yisbol – “shall bear” - is that of pressure as of a heavy
burden. It is the future of the
same verb as is rendered “carried”
in ver. 4.
** Culross.
Before we pass on to the last verse let me quote also a note
by Delitzsch on this last clause: “This yisbol (He shall bear),” he says,
“which stands along with future verbs, and being
also future itself, refers to something
to be done by the Servant of Jehovah after the completion of the work to which
He is called in this life, and denotes the [Page 135] continued operation of His ‘bearing,’ or ‘carrying’ (ver. 4) through His own active mediation. His continued lading of
our trespasses upon Himself is merely the constant pressure and presentation of
His atonement which has been offered once for all. The dead yet living One, because of His
one self-sacrifice, is an eternal Priest, who now lives to distribute the
blessings that He has acquired.”
The last verse takes us back, as it were, to the very
beginning of this prophecy (chap. 52: 13-15), and sets forth again the personal exaltation
of the One who has been despised and rejected of men, and the victor’s prize, which He shall receive on His triumphant
emergence from the conflict with the powers of darkness.
“Therefore will I
divide (or ‘allot’) to Him
a portion among (or ‘in’) the
many (or ‘great’), and with the strong shall He divide the spoil.”*
The award is bestowed upon Him by Jehovah’s own hand - “I will divide Him
a portion” - and the prize
is glorious beyond conception, for the rabbim,
“many,” who form His portion
include not only “His own” nation,
whom He saves and blesses, and who shall
yet render Him such [Page 136] loyal
devotion and service [during their Messiah’s millennium*] as the world has not known, but
extends beyond the bounds of Israel to
the Gentile nations.
* The Septuagint and Vulgate, followed by the Fathers and many
modern commentators, render …, (barabbim), among the many, and …, (eth-atzumim), with the strong, as accusatives, and explain “the great” and “the
strong” as constituting the spoil given to the Servant of
Jehovah. But the more natural
construction of the words is that given in the English versions. …, (be)
occurs nowhere else as a connective of this verb with its object, and the
particle, …, (eth), must mean with,
as it is indeed rendered in this same verse, where it occurs again, as well as in the ninth
verse.
[* See 1 Pet.
1: 5, 9-11. cf.
Isa. 54: 3b-5, R.V.,
etc.]
“What is meant by His having
His portion among the rabbim (the
‘many,’
or ‘great’)”
observes Delitzsch, “is clearly seen from such
passages as chaps. 52: 15 and 59: 7, according to which the great ones of the earth will be
brought to do homage to Him, or, at all events, to submit to Him.” But this is only a mere outline. For the full extent of His “portion” as the Son of David and Son of Man,
who, in order to carry out the pleasure
of Jehovah in the redemption of the world, took upon Himself the
form of a servant, we have to go to a Scripture like the 2nd Psalm: “Ask of
Me, and I
will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost
parts of the earth for Thy possession” or Psalm 72.:
“He shall have dominion also from sea to sea.
And from the
River unto the ends of the earth.
They that
dwell in the wilderness shall bow before Him;
And His enemies shall lick
the dust.
* * * * * * *
Yea,
all kings shall
fall down before Him:
All nations
shall serve Him.”
But while His portion is “divided”
or allotted to Him of God, He Himself “divides spoil”
“with”
or “among”
the strong. These …, (atsumim, “strong” or
“mighty ones”) are those who flock to His banner [Page 137] and go forth with Him to the conflict against the powers of darkness.
They are those of whom we read in the third
verse of the 110th Psalm:
“Thy
people offer themselves willingly (or ‘are all willingness,’
or ‘thorough devotion’) in the day of Thy power.” They are those whom the beloved John
beheld in vision as “the armies of heaven,” following in His train as He rides forth in glorious
majesty, conquering and to conquer, “riding upon white horses, clothed in
fine linen, white and pure.”*
*Rev. 19:
14.
With these He
condescends to share His triumph and to divide the spoil taken from the enemy
by making them partners with Himself in His kingdom and glory, even as
they were sharers in His sufferings.* And truly He and no one else is worthy
to be thus exalted, and deserves the glorious award which God bestows
upon Him. This is emphasized in the
recapitulation of His peerless merit in the last words of this wonderful
prophecy.
[* NOTE: It is only regenerate believers, who are to “show the same diligence into the full assurance of HOPE to the end: that ye may be not sluggish, but imitators of
them who through faith and patience (Gk. ‘long suffering’) inherit [with their Saviour] the promises” (Heb. 6: 11). I am not to hope that I am saved, but
to believe
it; on the contrary, I am not to believe I have won ‘the prize,’ but
to hope
that I shall win
it. For only ‘the end’ can reveal how
I have run. But the more battles
won, and the more mileage covered, the
more we can mature to the ‘full assurance
of hope’. ‘We are well able to
overcome’ (Num. 13: 30).” - D. M. Panton.]
“Because He poured
out His soul unto death, and was numbered
with the transgressors. And He (Himself) bore the sin of many. And He made intercession for the transgressors.”
The phrase …, tahath asher, expresses more distinctly
than the English rendering “because” the idea of compensation or reward. It has been translated by some “instead of,” or “in
return for that, i.e. the glorious
portion or allotment which is divided to Him by the Father is ‘in
return’ for the great Redemption [Page 138] which He has accomplished with His own
life’s blood. The word
…, he'erah (rendered ‘poured out’), means ‘to
strip,’ ‘lay bare,’ ‘empty,’ or to ‘pour
clean out,’ even to the very last remnant.’”*
And it was “His soul,”
which stands here for His life-blood, which He thus completely emptied out “unto death.”
* Delitzsch.
And although all this was in accord
with the pre-determinate counsel of God, He did it voluntarily, for this also is implied in the
original verb, which accords again with His own word, which has already been
quoted: “Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life. ... No man taketh it from Me, but I
lay it down Myself.” And not only did He thus voluntarily pour
out His soul unto death as an atonement for sinners, but “He was
numbered” (or, as Delitzsch, Hengstenberg, and others more properly translate the
reflexive verb …, mim'nah, He suffered Himself,
i.e. voluntarily, to be numbered, or “reckoned”)
with
transgressors.” …, posh'im - that is, not only ordinary sinners,
such as all men are, but criminals - open transgressors of the laws of God and
of man, with whom to be associated would be a great humiliation for ordinary
men, and how much more to the “Holy One.” To the
believer it is precious and interesting to remember that this clause formed one
of the direct quotations from this chapter made by our Lord Jesus Himself just
before His betrayal and crucifixion.
“This which is written,” He
said, “must be fulfilled in Me, And
He was [Page 139] reckoned among transgressors.”* It was, indeed, as another writer observes, “one of those remarkable coincidences which were brought
about by
* Luke 22: 37. ** J. A.
Alexander.
He suffered Himself also to be reckoned with transgressors
“in the judgment of His countrymen, and in the
unjust judgment (or ‘sentence’) by which He was delivered up to
death as a wicked apostate and transgressor of the law.”*
“And
He” - the pronoun
is emphatic - “He
Himself bare the sin of many” - blessed words which are again and again joyously echoed in the
New Testament, as, for instance, in 1 Pet. 2: 24: “Who His
own self bare” (or “carried up”)
our sins in
His own body upon the tree, that we, having
died unto sin, might live unto
righteousness”; and Heb. 9: 26-28, where
there is also an underlying allusion to the great Old Testament prophecy: “But now
once at the endof the ages hath He been manifested to put away sin by the
sacrifice of Himself. And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men
once to die, and after death
the judgment:** so Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart from sin, to them
that wait for Him unto salvation.”
* Delitzsch.
[** See Heb.
9: 27,
R.V. A Judgment before
the time of “Resurrection from the dead” (Lit. ‘out of dead ones.’). See Luke 20:
35; Phil.
3: 11; Heb. 11: 35b; Rev. 6: 9-11, R.V.]
[Page 140]
Yes, He Himself, the Holy One, who knew no sin, bare our sin
right “up to the tree,” and “was made sin for us,” enduring the penalty due to
it on our behalf, that we might for ever be freed from the accursed load and “become
the righteousness of God in Him.”
The whole prophetic picture of the sufferings of the Messiah and of the [millennial] glory that should follow closes with a brief but pregnant
reference to His priestly function:
“And He made (or ‘maketh’) intercession
for the transgressors.”
The verb …, yaphgia'
(“made
intercession”), is
an instance of the imperfect or indefinite future, and expresses a work begun, but not yet ended. Its most striking fulfilment, as
Delitzsch observes, was the prayer of the crucified Saviour, “Father,
forgive them, for they
know not what they do.” But this work of
intercession which He began on the cross He still continues at the right hand
of God, where He is now seated, a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance unto
[Page 141]
But remember, dear Christian reader, that He who is now our
Advocate (or blessed Paraclete) with the Father, by whose unceasing priestly ministry in the
heavenly sanctuary our life of fellowship with God is maintained, bears also “His own” nation
“I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem;
they shall never
hold their peace day nor night.
Ye that
are Jehovah’s remembrancers, take ye no rest, and give Him no
rest till He establish and till He make
* * *
[Page 142 blank: Page 143]
APPENDIX
THE SUFFERING MESSIAH OF THE SYNAGOGUE*
* After the MS. of this little work was already completed I
asked my friend and fellow-worker in the Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel,
Mr. J. I. Landsman, to copy for me a few of the most striking passages from the
Talmud and Midrashim which speak of a suffering Messiah, thinking it might
interest Christian readers if they were added as an appendix.
Mr. Landsman has kindly done more than I asked, for some of
the passages are, as will be observed, already either quoted or alluded to in
the first part of this book.
I think it well, however, to give the whole of his collection
here, as these extracts (most of which he has translated from the original
sources) represent in orderly form the different sections of Rabbinic
literature, and follow in chronological sequence.
THE TARGUM
The oldest testimony we possess that Isa.
53. was by the Synagogue applied to the
Messiah is found in the Targum on the Prophets ascribed to Jonathan ben Uzziel
(first century, A.D.). Although the
Targum in the form we now possess it has been edited in
“Behold my servant, the
Messiah, shall prosper; He shall be high, and increase, and be exceedingly
strong.”
This is almost a literal translation. But in what follows the Targum, though
ascribing to the Messiah a central place in Israel’s redemption,
contrives by a method singularly strange to us to make Israel the real sufferer,
naturally at the hands of the Gentiles, but for her own sins, the modern Jewish
idea of Israel suffering for the sins of the nations being entirely foreign to
the Targum. In this way the Targum
succeeds in purging the Messiah from any taint of personal suffering and
humiliation. Verses 3 and 4
are therefore thus paraphrased:
3. “Then He will become despised
(i.e. by the nations), and will cut
off the glory of all the kingdoms; they (Israel) will be prostrate and
mourning, like a man of pains and like one destined to sickness; and as though
the presence of the Shekhinah had been withdrawn from us, they will be
despised, and esteemed not.
4. “Then for our sins He will
pray, and our iniquities will for His sake be forgiven, although we were accounted stricken, smitten from
before the Lord, and afflicted.”
The Targum pictures the Messiah as a man of an [Page 145] imposing, holy and awe-inspiring
appearance (ver. 2). He makes intercession for the sins of
His people, and they are forgiven for His sake (vers.
4, 6, 11, 12). His
prayers are answered, and before opening His mouth He is accepted (v. 7). He is a great teacher. By His wisdom He holds the guilty free
from guilt, makes the rebellious subject to the Law (vers.
11, 12);
by His instruction peace increases upon His people, and on account of its
devotion to His words it obtains forgiveness of sin (ver.
5).
From subjection to the nations, from chastisement and punishment, He
delivers the souls of His people (vers. 8, 11), builds
the
With the advent of the Messiah a
glorious time dawns for
Thus the Targurn succeeded in reading into this chapter the
whole Jewish Messianic hope, in which there was no place for a suffering
Messiah. The words, “because
He delivered up His soul to death,” in verse 12, do not
mean that the Messiah actually died, but rather, that He for the sake of His
people, like Moses of old, was ready to give His life.
But the Targum, in spite of the high esteem in which it was
held, found no imitators. Its
method was too drastic, and the violence done to the sacred text too apparent
to be imitated. We find, therefore,
in early Rabbinic literature not a few passages which speak of a suffering
Messiah; but they all belong to the time after the Mishna was edited, i.e.
after 200 A.D.
THE TALMUD
1. THE NAME OF THE MESSIAH
In the Bab. Talmud, Sanhedrin 98b we read: “The Messiah - what is His name?
... The Rabbis say, The leprous one of the house of Rabbi is His name, as it is
said, ‘Surely He hath borne our griefs ... yet we did esteem Him
stricken, smitten
of God, and
afflicted.’” The
name, “The leprous one of the house of Rabbi,”
[Page 147] is very obscure. Dr. Pusey* has called attention to
the better reading of this passage found in the Pugio Tidei by Raymundus Martini, where it reads: “The Rabbis say, The leprous one is His name; those of the
house of Rabbi say, The sick one is His name,” etc. In Isa.
53: 4 the
word “stricken” [‘nagua’] is taken by the Rabbis as
meaning stricken with leprosy, hence they give the name, “The leprous one.” The house of Rabbi (i.e. R. Jehuda the saint, the editor of the Mishna) based their
name, “The sick one,” on the words
“our griefs,” lit. our diseases,
having in mind their teacher. R.
Jehuda, who had voluntarily taken upon himself bodily sufferings for thirteen
years for the sake of the whole people, for during this period no pregnant
woman died, nor did any miscarriage take place.**
* Cf. The 53rd
chapter of Isaiah, according to the
Jewish interpreters, vol. ii. Translations,
P. 34. The Jewish scholar, A.
Epstein, in his M'kadmonioth Ha-yehudim, p.
109, defends Martini’s reading.
** Cf. Jer. Talmud, Kil’ayim 32b and Kethuboth 35a.
2. B. Sanhedr. 93b: “It is written (in Isa. 11: 3), ‘And His delight (harichi) shall be
in the fear of the Lord’. R. Alexandri said, This indicates that
He (God) will load Him (i.e. the
Messiah) with commandments and sufferings as with millstones (rechayim).”
It is not said here for what purpose the many sufferings will be
laid on the Messiah, but the idea of a suffering Messiah is here expressed,
although it has no connection with the Scripture quoted.
[Page 148]
3. B. Sanhedr. 98a. Here we read:
“R. Joshua, the son of Levi (third cent. A.D.),
met Elijah standing at the door of the
To understand this legend one must remember that, according to
the Rabbis, Messiah was born on the very day
[Page 149]
THE MIDRASHIM
[Page 149]
4. In Ruth
Rabba 5, 6 (on
ch. 2: 14) we read: “‘Come hither’ - this
refers to the King Messiah. ‘Come hither,’ draw near
to the kingdom; ‘and eat of the bread,’ that is, the bread of the kingdom; ‘and dip thy morsel in the vinegar,’ this refers to the sufferings, as it is said,
‘But He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.’”
5. Midrash Tehillim on Ps. 2., and
Midrash Samuel ch. 19.
(with the readings of the Yalkut, ii. 620): “R.
Huna in the name of R. Acha says: The sufferings are divided into three parts:
one for David and the fathers, one for our own generation, and one for the King
Messiah, and this is what is written, ‘He
was wounded for our transgressions,’ etc.
And when the hour comes, says the Holy One - blessed be He! - to them: I must
create Him a new creation, as even it is said, ‘This day have I begotten thee.’ This is the hour when He is made a new
creation.” - So many and great are Messiah’s sufferings and
afflictions that God must create for Him a new body. It is not said in what way, perhaps by
raising Him from the dead. Psalm 2: 7 is
here used almost in the same way as it is used by the Apostle Paul in Acts 13: 33.
6. Pesiktha Rabbathi, chs. 33.- 38.”* Nowhere in Rabbinic literature are
the sufferings of the Messiah so graphically described and so expressly stated
that [Page 150] He is suffering for the sins of His
people as in this Midrash. Apart
from this, we have here a vague conception of the pre-existence of the Messiah,
for the transaction between God and Messiah takes place at the beginning of
creation, when man was not yet created.
* Friedmann’s edition,
Chapter 36. is based on Isa. 60: 1, 2. Ps. 36: 10 is quoted, and the question is asked, “What mean the words, In thy light we see light?”
“Which light is the
congregation of
[Page 151]
Messiah’s Willingness to suffer
for His People
“And the Holy One began to make
an agreement with Him, saying, Those who are hidden with Thee - their sins will
cause Thee to be put under an iron yoke, and they will make Thee like this calf
whose eyes are dim, and they will choke Thy spirit under the yoke, and on
account of their sins Thy tongue shall cleave to Thy mouth. Art Thou willing to do this? Said
Messiah before the Holy One: Perhaps this anguish will last many years? And the
Holy One said to Him. By Thy life, and by the life of My head, one week only
have I decreed for Thee; but if Thy soul is grieved I shall destroy them even
now. But He said to Him: Lord of
all the worlds, with the gladness of My soul and the joy of My heart I take it
upon Me, on condition that not one of Israel shall perish, and not only those
alone should be saved who are in My days, but also those who are hid in the
dust; and not only should the dead be saved who are in My days, but also those
who have died from the days of the first Adam till now; and not only those, but
also those who have been prematurely born.
And not only those, but also those whom Thou hast intended to create,
but who have not yet been created.
Thus I agree, and thus I take all upon Me. In that hour the Holy One -
blessed be He! - orders for Him four creatures to carry the throne of glory of
the Messiah.”
[Page 152]
The Sufferings of the Messiah
“In the
week when the Son of David comes, they bring beams of iron and put them (like a
yoke) on His neck, until His stature is bent down. But He cries and weeps, and His voice
ascends on high, and He says before Him: Lord of the world, what is My
strength, the strength of My spirit, of My soul and of My members? Am I not
flesh and blood? In view of that
hour David wept, saying: ‘My strength is
dried up like a potsherd.’* In that hour the Holy One - blessed
be He! - says to Him. Ephraim,** My
righteous Messiah, Thou hast already taken this upon Thee from the six days of
creation, now Thy anguish shall be like My anguish, for from the time that
Nebuchadnezzar, the wicked one, has come and destroyed My house, and burned My
Sanctuary, and sent My children into exile among the nations of the world, by
Thy life and the life of My [Page 153] head, I have not sat down upon My throne. And if Thou wilt not believe Me, see the
dew which is on My head, as it is said: ‘My
head is filled with dew.’*** In that
hour the Messiah answers Him: Lord of the world, now I am quited, for
it is enough for the servant that He is as His Master.” ****
* Ps. 22: 16. Here
the Editor has a note in which he calls attention to the fact that this psalm
deals with the exile of the congregation of Israel, the sufferings of the
Messiah and the future redemption, and that only on account of “the seditious talk of the heretics” (i.e. the
Christians) the Rabbis explained it as referring to Esther.
** The Messiah is in these chapters
called Ephraim, but not the Messiah, the son of Joseph, is here meant, as Dr.
Edersheim thinks, but the Son of David, as can be seen from the words with
which the passage begins (viz., “In the week
when the Son of David comes”). I believe that they called the
Messiah Ephrairn on account of Jer. 31: 20, which
passage they applied to the Messiah.
***Cant. V. 2.
**** pp. 161, 162.
Chapter 37. describes Messiah’s triumph and the glory which He
receives as a due reward for His humiliation and sufferings on behalf of
“The fathers of the world (the
patriarchs) will rise again in the month of Nisan and will say to Him: Ephraim,
our righteous Messiah, though we are Thy fathers, yet Thou art greater than we,
because Thou hast borne the sins of our sons, and hard and evil measure has
passed upon Thee, such as has not been passed either upon those before or upon
those after. And Thou hast been for
laughter and derision to the nations for the sake of Israel, and Thou hast
dwelt in darkness and in gloominess, and Thine eyes have not seen light, and
Thy skin was cleaving to Thy bones, and Thy body was as dry as wood, and Thine
eyes were darkened through fasting, and Thy strength was dried up like a
potsherd. And all this on account
of the sins of our children. Is it
Thy pleasure that our sons should enjoy the good things which the Holy One -
blessed be He! - has poured out so abundantly upon
* This would indicate that He also suffered at the hand of His
own people.
“Says He to them: Fathers of
the world, whatever I have done I have only done for your sakes, and for the
sake of your children, for the sake of your honour and that of your children,
that they may enjoy the goodness which the Holy One - blessed be He! - has
poured out over
Messiah’s Glory
“R. Simeon, the son of Pasi,
said: In that hour the Holy One - blessed be He! - exalts the Messiah to the
heaven of heavens, and spreads over Him the splendour of His glory. ... And at
once He makes for the Messiah seven canopies of precious stones and
pearls. And from each canopy issue
four streams of wine, honey, milk, and pure balsam. And the Holy One - blessed be He! -
embraces Him in the presence of all the righteous ones and conducts Him into
the Sanctuary,* and all the righteous ones see Him. And the Holy One [Page 155] says unto
them: Ye righteous ones of the world, Ephraim, the Messiah of My righteousness,
has not yet received even the half for all He had suffered. But I have still one reward with Me
which I will give unto Him, which no eye hath ever seen. In that hour the Holy One commands the
North wind and the South wind, saying unto them: ‘Come ye, and do honour
and lie down before Ephraim, My righteous Messiah, fully loaded with all the
perfumes from the Garden of Eden,’ as it is said: ‘Awake, O North
wind; and come, thou South: blow upon My garden, that the spices thereof may
flow out. Let My Beloved come into
His garden, and eat His precious fruits.”**
* The word “chuppah,” canopy, means here the “seat of the Divine Majesty, Sanctuary.” See
Jastrow, Taimudical Dictionary, i, 437.
** Cant. iv. 16, pp. 162b, 163a
A MESSIANIC HYMN
“As a
bridegroom decketh himself with a garland.”*
* Isa. 61:
10.
“This teaches us that the Holy One shall clothe Ephraim,
our righteous Messiah, with a garment, the splendour of which will be seen from
one end of the world to the other end.
And
“Blessed is the hour when the Messiah was created!
Blessed
the womb out of which He has come!
Blessed
the generation whose eyes behold Him!
Blessed
the eye that was waiting for Him!
For
the opening of His lips is blessing and peace;
His
whisper - a spiritual delight.
The
thoughts of His heart are confidence and cheerfulness;
The
speech of His tongue is pardon and forgiveness unto
His prayer is the sweet
incense of offerings;
His petitions are purity
and holiness:
Blessed are His fathers who
obtained the eternal good hidden for ever!”*
*p. 164a. See also Pesiktha d’rab
Cahana, ed. Buber, p. 149, where the same hymn is quoted. There, however, the last line reads.
“Blessed is
THE LITURGY
The following remarkable hymn, by the famous hymn-writer,
Eleazar ben Qualir, who, according to the Jewish historian, Zuriz, lived in the
ninth century A.D., is taken from the
Service for the Day of Atonement.*
In it are gathered up the teachings of the Synagogue about a suffering Messiah.
* Cf. The Festival Prayers, with David Levi’s English
translation, vol. 3. p. 33. The translation has been revised by me.
“Before the world was yet created,
His dwelling-place and
Yinnon* God prepared.
The Mount of His house,
lofty from the beginning,
He established, ere people
and language existed.
It was His pleasure that
there His Shekhina should dwell,
To guide those gone astray
into the path of rectitude.
Though their sins were red
like scarlet,
They were preceded by
‘Wash you, make you
clean.’
If His anger was kindled
against His people,
Yet the Holy One poured not
out all His wrath.
We are ever threatened by
destruction because of our evil deeds,
And God does not draw nigh
us - He, our only refuge.
Our righteous Messiah has
departed from us,
We are horror-stricken, and
have none to justify us. [Page 157]
Our iniquities and the yoke of our transgressions
He carries who is wounded
because of our transgressions.
He bears on His shoulder the
burden of our sins,
To find pardon for all our
iniquities.
By His stripes we shall be
healed -
O Eternal One, it is time
that thou shouldst create Him anew!
O bring Him up from the
terrestrial sphere,
Raise Him up from the
To announce salvation to us
from
Once again through the hand
of Yinnon.”
* “Yinnon” is,
according to Bab. Sanhedrin 98b one of Messiah’s names according to Ps. 72: 17, which the Talmud renders, “Before the Sun, Yinnon (Heb., shall flourish) was His name,” the name indicating the
pre-existence of the Messiah.
** Seir stands here for
***
THE ZOHAR (Vol. II. 212a)
“The souls which are in the
garden of Eden below go to and fro every new moon and Sabbath, in order to ascend
to the place that is called the Walls of Jerusalem. … After that they
journey on and contemplate all those that are possessed of pains and sicknesses
and those that are martyrs for the unity of their Lord, and then return and
announce it to the Messiah. And as
they tell Him of the misery of Israel in their captivity, and of those wicked
ones among them who are not attentive to know their Lord, He lifts up His voice
and weeps for their wickedness: and so it is written, ‘He was wounded for our transgressions,’ etc.
Then those souls return and abide in their own place.
[Page 158]
“There is in the garden of Eden
a palace called the palace of the sons of sickness: this palace the Messiah
then enters, and summons every sickness, every pain, and every chastisement of
* The Zohar, the Bible of the Mystics, contains another
tradition about the concealed existence of the Messiah preceding His
Advent. He lives in Paradise, in a
place called The Bird’s Nest (Kan Tsippor), from whence He will appear to
save
* * *
2
JOSEPH
BY
DAVID BARON *
THE HEBREW CHRISTIAN
TESTIMPNY TO
189,
[* My
sincere thanks go to Ronnie and Pat
McCracken for providing a copy of this writing by David Baron.]
[Page 2 is blank.]
-------
[Page 3]
JOSEPH
Beloved of his father, but hated by his brethren.
“UNTO thee
will I give the land of
From Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who are the outstanding,
figures in the first fifteen verses of Psalm 105., the narrative moves on to Joseph; the seven verses
following epitomise the last fourteen chapters of Genesis, in which he is the most prominent
personality and central link in the further development of
[Page 4]
“And He
called for a famine upon the land;
He brake the whole stall of bread.”
Both the thought and the words in
which it is expressed are sublime: “He called for a
famine” - as a master calls for his servant ready to do his bidding.
It reminds us of Jehovah’s
omnipotent creative voice in Psalm 33: 9: “For He
spake, and it was done:
He commanded, and it
stood fast” - or, more literally, “He said,
and it was; He
commandeth, and it stood forth” - the idea being, that He need only
speak the word, and that which He wills comes into being out of nothing. He need only utter His creative, “Let there be,” and that which He commands
“stands
forth,” like an
obedient servant who appears in all haste at the call of his lord.
Feeble man is dependant on “bread,” even as the lame or cripple
upon his “staff,” and it
is
God who provides this means of support for him, and who also can
“break” it.
He sent a man before them; Joseph was sold for a “servant” (or “slave”).
It was his brethren who, out of malice
and “with
wicked hands,” sold
him to the Midianite merchants for twenty pieces of silver, but all the time it
was God’s invisible hand which was overruling it to the accomplishment of
His purpose, and causing even the wrath of man to praise Him. This in the end was seen and
acknowledged by Joseph himself.
“God,” he said, “sent me
before you to preserve a remnant in the earth, and to save you by a great deliverance. So now it was not
you who sent me hither, but God.”
And again: “As for you, ye meant
evil against me; but God meant it for
good, to bring to pass as
it is this day, to save much people
alive.” Gen. 45: 7, 8.
But Joseph could become the saviour of
“much [Page 5] people,” and fulfil his God-appointed
mission, he had first to descend into
the deepest depths of humiliation and suffering, and his faith had to be put to
the severest test. Of these sufferings, which were the
appointed way to glory, the Psalmist speaks pathetically. Joseph, the beloved and tenderly
cherished son of his father, for whom Jacob had made “a coat of many colours” which,
among other privileges, carried with it exemption from hard toil, was sold for a slave,
whom his purchaser could use as he pleased, and put to the most degrading
tasks.
And not only so, but though perfectly innocent, and the purest
and noblest of the sons of Jacob, he was treated as a criminal and had to endure
cruel sufferings of body and soul.
“His feet they hurt (or
‘afflicted’) with
fetters; he was laid in chains of iron.” A little glimpse into the intense
suffering of mind, as well as of body, which he endured through the cruel
treatment of his brethren when they handed him over as a slave to the Midianite
merchants, we get in the remorseful soliloquy of Jacob’s sons when their
conscience began to awake in the unexpected trouble in which they found
themselves on their first visit to Egypt - “We are verily guilty concerning our brother in that
we saw the distress (or ‘agony’) of his soul
when he besought us and we would not hear.”
And their “distress,” or agony of soul, was not less when, on the false
charge of a wanton woman, he was bound with fetters, and cast into prison
without any apparent chance of ever being
delivered.
Between that “word” concerning his future glorious
destiny when first uttered, and its eventual fulfilment, lay a valley of
humiliation and suffering some thirteen years long - the imprisonment in Egypt alone lasting over ten
years. And all this time “The word
of Jehovah tried him.”
[Page 6]
The revelations of God conveying His
promises of future exaltation which came to him in these dreams, “tried,” tested, and purified him,
inasmuch as be was not to be raised to honour without having, in a state of
deep abasement, proved a faithfulness that wavered not, and a confidence that
knew no despair. “Sold into
“In the gloom of that
imprisonment it was most hard to believe in God’s faithfulness when his
affliction had risen from his obedience, and most hard to keep the promise clearly
before him when his mighty trouble would perpetually tempt him to regard it as
an idle dream. But through the
temptation he gained the strong trust which the pomp and glory of the
Brit immediately the “need be” for the long and painful trial was over, a rapid and
wonderful transformation in his circumstances was brought about by the
providence of God, Whose eye had been upon him all the time, even while His
word tried and tested him.
“The king sent and loosed him;
The ruler of the peoples let
him go free,
He made him lord of his
house,
And ruler of all his
possessions;
To bind his
princes at his pleasure,
And to teach
his elders wisdom.”
[Page 7]
There is a ring of the sinner’s
voice as he tells of the honour and power heaped on the captive, and how the
king of many nations sent - as the mightier King in heaven had done - and not
only liberated him but exalted him, giving him, whose “soul” had been bound in “fetters,” power to bind princes
according to his “soul,”
and to instruct and command the elders of Egypt.
The scripture on which these verses are based is Gen. 41: 14-46. “Then
Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they
brought him hastily out of the dungeon.
… And Pharaoh said unto Joseph,
Forasmuch as God has showed thee all this, there is
none so discreet and wise as thou; thou
shalt be over my house, and according unto
thy word shall all my people be ruled. … See I have set thee over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh took
off his signet-ring from his hand and put it upon Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck, and he made him ride in the second chariot which he had, and they cried before him ‘abech’ (bow the knee, or kneel, in token of
allegiance). And
Pharaoh said unto Joseph, ‘I am
Pharaoh, and without thee
shall no man lift his hand or feet in all the
And all this, as the Psalmist would remind us, God wrought in
His wonderful providence with a view to the ultimate fulfilment of His
covenant, and more particularly of his promise:
“Unto thee
wilt I give the
The lot of
your inheritance.”*
[*
Compare Psa. 2:
8 with Eph.
5: 5 and Gal. 5: 21, R.V.]
[Page 8]
Truly wonderful are the ways of God, and His thoughts unfathomable as the “great deep”! The most wonderful history of all
Who can fail to recognise in the touching and beautiful story
of Joseph a foreshadowing of the experiences of Him of whom all the prominent
personalities of Bible history are - in a greater or lesser degree of
distinctness - types and shadows, and for whose coming into the world in the
fulness of time the whole previous history of the chosen nation was, so to say,
a prophetic preparation?
Joseph was the specially beloved son of his father,
and of the greater than Joseph we read, “This is
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Because Joseph was beloved of Jacob, he was hated of his brethren,
who were more or less estranged from
their father by evil conduct which he condemned.
And it was the unique and peculiar relation of the Messiah to
His heavenly Father, and the fact that He loved righteousness and hated
iniquity, which were the chief reasons why he was hated of those who were
“his own” brethren,
but who, as a result of a long process
of self-hardening, were estranged in their hearts from God, whom they also
claimed as their Father.
If, like the false prophets, He had come to them with
flatteries, and cried, “Peace, peace,” they would have received Him with
favour, but the keynote of His preaching and testimony was, “Repent
ye, for the
Of Joseph, we read that “they hated him yet the more for his dreams
and for his words.” But these dreams were Divine
premonitions, prophetic revelations [Page 9] of his future exaltation, which, after his testing time was over, were
abundantly fulfilled. And one chief cause of the
ever-growing opposition and hatred on the part of the Scribes and Pharisees to
the Lord Jesus was His clear, full, conscious testimony concerning Himself -
His Divine claims as the Son of God, whom all men should honour, even as they
honour the Father, and of the glory which belonged to Him in virtue of His
being not only the Son of God, but as the Son of Man. “For this cause, therefore,” to quote only one passage,
“the Jews
sought the more to kill Him,” because He not only (according to their perverted ideas) broke the
Sabbath, “but also called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”
Not only was Joseph hated by his own brethren, but they abused
and ill-treated him, and in the end sold him into Gentile hands for twenty
pieces of silver. In Egypt he was re-sold
by the Midianite merchants; he was, though pure and innocent, treated with the
greatest indignity as a vile criminal, and for over ten long years kept in a
“dungeon,” where his very “soul
entered into the iron.” (John 5:
18, RV.)
And does not this remind us of the still greater humiliations
of the “Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief,” Who, though
Himself “holy and undefiled and separate from sinners,” was reckoned with “transgressors,” and had all sorts of
sufferings heaped upon Him? He also
was sold - not for twenty, but thirty, pieces of silver - and handed over by
His own brethren into the hands of the Gentiles.
And the Lord Jesus was not only thrown into a pit and dungeon,
but after suffering the most ignominious death on the Cross, His grave was
appointed “with the wicked.”
For many long years after Joseph had been handed [Page 10] over, sold by his own brethren, into
the hands of the Midianites,
Joseph’s brethren - indeed, Jacob’s whole family thought and spoke
of him as dead.
In their account of themselves, given in his own presence in
Egypt, before he made himself known to them, they said (referring to himself),
“one is
not” (i.e., is no
longer in existence) and again as actually “dead” (Gen. 44: 20.)
And even so do [many, but not all]* the Jews think of Jesus.
According to them He [their Messiah] is
dead.
[* See (1) www.facebook.com/JewsForJesusUK (2) www.prayer4i.org (3) info@cwi.org ]
A Zionist leader
tauntingly wrote some years since, “Christianity
centres round a sepulchre,” and compared his false representation
of Christian belief with Judaism, which according to him, is a religion of life
and hope.
But while Joseph’s brethren thought and spoke of him as
no more, he was not only alive, but greatly exalted among the
Gentiles, as the “Support of Life,” or “Deliverer
of the World,” before whom all had to “bow the knee” in humble allegiance.
Even so it is with the Lord Jesus. Despised, rejected and counted as dead
among His own people, He is not only alive, for evermore but exalted and extolled,
having a Name which is above every name - before Whom hundreds of millions in
the Gentile world “bow the knee,” in humble worship, because He is called the “Support of Life,” being Himself the “Divine Bread” which came down from heaven, of
which if any man eat he shall live for ever.
The separation and estrangement between Joseph and his
brethren did not last forever.
In the extremity of their need they
again came face to face with him and though, while yet unknown to them, he
spake and dealt “roughly”
with them, so [Page 11] as to awaken their conscience and bring, home the sense of guilt, his
heart was all the time full of yearning love and compassion for them, and the
account of Joseph’s making himself known to his brethren is one of the most
touching and thrilling stories in the Bible.
And this most truly, foreshadows what
will yet take place between Christ and [the nation of]
In the extremity of their need in
“the time
of Jacob’s trouble,”
the Jewish people will yet come face to face with their long rejected Messiah
and see on His person the marks of the spear and of their bitter rejection of
Him, and mourn and broken-heartedly confess, “We are very guilty
concerning our brother”
- Jesus - whom we handed over to the Romans to be crucified, and “denied before the face of
Pilate, when he had determined to release Him ... and asked for a murderer to be given unto us, and killed the Prince of 1ife,” calling down His blood upon us
and our children. And then Jesus will make Himself known to His brethren, and comfort
them in their great sorrow, saying “I am Jesus, your Brother, whom you handed
over to be crucified, and for so long thought to
be dead; and now be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves ... for
God sent Me before you to preserve life.”
This will be a great and glorious
event in the world’s
history, and the
effect of it as “life from the dead” for all peoples.
Then not only the Church, but angels, will join in the adoring
exclamation, “Oh, the depth of the riches,
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable
are His judgments and His ways past finding out.”
In the severest trial God never
leaves, nor forsakes,
nor forgets, the soul that trusts Him and holds fast to His word and promise, however remote or improbable [Page 12] the fulfilments may appear. It is a true saying,
that if God’s people are “proved,” it is that
they may be approved, and tested, in order
that they may be attested as sure heirs of the kingdom which God has prepared for them before the foundations of
the world.
DAVID BARON.
* * *
3
The following short articles, by David Baron, are taken from “Watching and Waiting” -
A quarterly Magazine issued by the Sovereign Grace Advent Testimony:-
-------
1
The Last Chapters of the Book of Isaiah
By David Baron
(This
article is taken from Mr Barons book, ‘The
Ancient Scriptures and the Modern Jew,’ written in 1900. Mr David Baron was born in Russia but
ultimately came to London, where, in 1893, with Mr C. A. Schonberger he
commenced the mission known as ‘The Hebrew Christian
Testimony, to
‘The Book of Consolations,’ as the Rabbis call the last
chapters of the Book of Isaiah (40 -66),
consists for the most part of the general announcement of a glorious future of
salvation and peace, but often the salvation which the prophet foretells is
defined and specified. The message
embraces a two-old promise.
First, the certain restoration
from the Babylonish captivity, which is portrayed in terms which far exceed
what actually took place at that restoration, and which will only be exhausted
and fulfilled in the greater restoration of Israel from all ‘the four corners of the earth,’ he very
instrument who should be the means of the minor restoration (Cyrus) is
foretold, and called by name more than 150 years before he was born.
But the theme with which the prophet’s soul is full and
to which his thoughts ever recur, even while he deals with the minor
deliverance, is the grand redemption and
salvation to be accomplished by One greater than Cyrus, even by Messiah - a
salvation of which
In dealing with this greater salvation the relation of time is
not observed. Now, the prophet
beholds the author of it in His humiliation and suffering, then the most
distant future of Messiah’s kingdom presents itself to the enraptured eye
- the time when Israel shall walk in the light of Jehovah and all the Gentile
world will be converted to Him; when all that is opposed to God shall be
destroyed; when inward and outward peace shall prevail and all evil caused by
sin shall be removed. Elevated
above time and space, his own soul full of rapturous enthusiasm for the
Redeemer-King, Isaiah in these twenty-seven chapters surveys the whole
development of the Messianic kingdom from its small beginning to its glorious
end, and gives us the fullest portrayal of the Messiah’s person and
mission, humiliation and exaltation to be found in the Old Testament.
On examining this glorious prophecy closely we find that the
twenty-seven chapters range themselves into three equal smaller cycles of nine
chapters each, all ending with nearly the same solemn refrain, ‘there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.’ The subject is the development and
certain overthrow of the evil and the wicked, who are excluded from all the
blessings of Messiah’s kingdom; and the sufferings but final glory of the
righteous remnant who are the subjects of that kingdom, whose King is described
as passing through the same path of suffering to the glory that should
follow. The subject treated
throughout the three sections becomes developed and intensified as we go along
until it reaches its climax in the last chapter.
The first section is brought to a close at the end of chapter 48, where the blessedness of the righteous
who are ‘redeemed’ (verse 20) and peacefully led and satisfied even in
the desert is contrasted with the state of the wicked to whom ‘there is no peace.’
In the second division the same subject becomes intensified,
there is development of both evil and good, righteousness and wickedness, and
it ends with chapter 57, where ‘Peace! peace!’ is
announced to the righteous, but the wicked have not only ‘no peace,’ but having grown in wickedness, have
become like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire
and dirt.
In the last division the destiny of both is brought to a
climax and become fixed for ever.
‘Therefore
thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, My servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry: behold, My servants shall
drink, but ye shall be thirsty: behold, My servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be
ashamed: behold, My servants shall sing for joy of heart, but ye shall cry
for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit. And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto My chosen:
for the Lord GOD
shall slay thee, and call His servants by another name.’ This
contrast is continued until finally we find the righteous dwelling for ever in
the new heavens and the new earth wherein shall dwell righteousness, while as
to the wicked who have transgressed against God, ‘their worm shall not die, neither shall their
fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring to all flesh.’
The heart and Messianic climax of the whole prophecy is to be
found in its inmost centre, which, instead of a prophecy uttered centuries in
advance, reads like an historic summary of the Gospel narrative of the
sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. Taking our position at this central
point we are almost overwhelmed with the evidence of design in the very
structure of this prophecy, for on closer examination we find that each book is
sub-divided into three sections of three chapters each, nearly corresponding to
the divisions in the Authorised Version.
Thus the middle book is 49 - 57.
The middle section of the middle book is chapters 52, 53,
54, and chapter
53 is the middle chapter of the middle section of the middle book -
forming, as it were the heart and centre of this wonderful Messianic poem, as
well as the heart and centre of all Old Testament prophecy. The central verse
of this central paragraph, which begins properly with chapter
52: 13, is, ‘He was wounded for
our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement with the view to our peace was upon Him; and with His
stripes we are healed.’
The doctrine it enshrines (substitution) is the essence of the teaching
in Old and New Testaments, as well as the central truth of the prophecy. It is moreover, the essence of the
message of comfort with which the prophet begins (40:
1-2),
solving the problem as to how ‘her iniquity is pardoned.’
* * * * * * *
2
The Prophecy of the Interregnum
by David Baron
(This
article is taken from ‘The Morning Star,’ April, 1897. Being written over 100 years ago,
figures relating to
dates should now be altered, but we have left the wording as
originally given).
Hosea 3: ‘Then said the LORD unto me, Go yet, love a woman
beloved of her fiend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the LORD toward the children of
Israel, who look to other
gods, and love flagons of wine. So I bought her
to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for
an homer of barley, and an half homer
of barley: and I said unto her, Thou shalt abide, for me
many days; thou shalt not be
for another man: so will I also be
for thee. For the children of Israel shall abide
many days without a king, and without a
prince, and without a
sacrifice, and without an
image, and without an
ephod, and without
teraphim: afterward shall the
children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David their
king; and shall fear the
LORD and His goodness in the latter days.’
It is
very important for us to have a proper understanding of the symbolical teaching
of the first verse of this chapter.
The language is realistic, and perhaps to Westerns the symbolism a
little strange; but there is a deep truth underlying it in reference to
God’s attitude to the Jewish nation.
This woman was a very unworthy person; but to illustrate the infinite
grace of God, the prophet was told to love her, and to make her his wife.
God entered into this relationship with
The love of God to
It is due to no people that there is such a being as a
Jew. For centuries, in whatever men
did disagree, they were at one in saying, ‘Let us cut them off (destroy them) from being a
nation, that the name of
Without King, Without Prince
That means without king of God’s appointment, and
without prince of their own choice.
The prophet could almost hear the steps of the Assyrian army on its way
to destroy the northern kingdom.
The prophecy here is not limited, but embraces the whole Jewish
nation. The geographical centre of
prophecy is
The rightful king of the Jewish nation is God. The peculiarity of
Whenever the advent of the Messiah is spoken of, it is as the
advent of God. He set up a royal
family, and said that One Who comes through it - Who shall be nothing less than
God Himself - shall reign over
Without Sacrifice, Without Image
Sacrifice stands here as the symbol of the true worship of
Jehovah, and the image as that of idolatry. No word could so well summarise the true
religion of
It should move our hearts to pity, that the Jewish people all
over the world to-day, having a great zeal, have no sacrifice, no blood of
atonement, no means of drawing near to God. Let these prophetic scriptures move us
to a great pity and interest, and lead us to evangelise them as a nation. God has a people to gather out of
* * * * * * *
3
A Germinal Prophecy
by David Baron
(This
article is taken from ‘The Morning Star,’ October, 1896. Being written over
100 years ago, figures relating to
dates
should now be altered
and ‘
Deuteronomy 4: 25-31: ‘When thou
shalt beget children, and
children’s children, and ye shall have
remained long in the land, and shall corrupt
yourselves, and make a graven
image, or the likeness of
any thing, and shall do evil
in the sight of the LORD thy God, to
provoke Him to anger: I call heaven and
earth to witness against you this day, that ye
shall soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to
possess it; Ye shall not
prolong your days upon it, but shall utterly
be destroyed. And the LORD shall scatter you among the
nations, and ye shall be left few in
number among the heathen, whither the LORD shall lead you. And there Ye shall serve gods, the work of men s hands, wood and
stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. But if from thence thou shalt seek the
LORD thy God, thou shalt find Him,
if thou seek Him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. When thou art in
tribulation, and all these
things are come upon thee, even in the latter
days, if thou turn to the LORD thy God, and shalt be obedient unto His voice; (For the LORD thy God
is a merciful God); He will not forsake
thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which He sware unto
them.’
This passage
of Scripture is a germinal prophecy.
It is a paragraph in the farewell speech of Moses spoken 3,300 years
ago; and it is not much to say that from this prophetic Pisgah we have a vision
through the centuries of
Let me lead you to some of the mountain peaks of this Pisgah,
and let us remember that
We see, then, first (verse 25)
that, remaining long in the land, they were to corrupt themselves and become
idolaters.
No one can rationally deny that
How foolish, then, to say that
Sin Must Be Punished
Next,
‘I call heaven and earth to witness ... ye shall soon
utterly perish from off the land’ (verse 26). Not off the earth, but off the
land. They were most certainly not
to perish off the earth, for they were
to be miraculously preserved everywhere on its surface, though scattered, sifted in all parts of it.
The extent of their dispersion is something wonderful. Many of them have been found recently in
It should be remembered that the dispersion dated, not from
the destruction of
Part of the punishment was according to the next clause of the
prophecy.
Great Numerical Reduction
‘Ye shall be left few in number among the nations (heathen).’ Basnage estimated that about 200 years ago there were only about
three millions of Israelites in the world, though in the palmy days of their
kingdom there were probably seven or eight millions in the land. It is surely a sign of the times that
within the last fifty years there has been a rapid and great increase of Jewish
population everywhere. Kellog, in
his very able work on the Jews, which was published thirteen years ago, tells
us that the THEN lowest estimation
of the Israel nation he could find was between six and seven millions: but he
goes on to say that, according to the high authority of Herzog’s ‘Real-Encyklopadic,’ the whole number of the
present Jewish dispersion is to be reckoned at no less than twelve
millions. And this was written more
than thirteen years ago, while the increase is continuing by leaps and bounds,
the increase being in a much greater and more rapid ratio than the gentile
populations among whom they have been scattered.
Now, I call your attention to verses
29 and 30, and a little word in them
which appears in our text, but which [today’s anti-semitism says] has no right to be there.
It Is The Little Word ‘If’
In our expectation of God’s fulfilments we are ever
putting in our ‘ifs.’ Not so Moses; not so God. The restoration and blessing [of the nation of
‘When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee,
even in the
latter days, thou SHALT turn to the LORD and SHALT he obedient to His
voice; for the LORD thy God is a merciful God.’ Yes; because
Nay, rather, Jehovah is already beginning to fulfil verses 29 and 30
of this marvellous prophecy of three thousand years ago.
Two Special Landmarks
There are two special landmarks, so to
speak, here.
1. When thou art in tribulation, or
rather, the tribulation - for it is a
special time marked by the definite article referred to in Jeremiah 30: 7
(read whole chapter for connection); also in Psalm
118: 5, where the word is translated ‘distress.’ ‘It is even the time of Jacob’s trouble;
but he shall be
saved out of it.’ This shows us that the great and final deliverance is still
future, and that the prophecies of blessings, beginning to be fulfilled, are
only marking the nearing approach to this final trouble and deliverance.
2. The words, ‘in the latter days’ (verse 30). This expression occurs only
seven or eight times in the Old Testament.
From Hosea 3: 4-5 we learn that in the
latter days - the period definitely marked, all the passages concerning which
should be carefully studied -
Already there is a tide of a God-fearing and God-seeking
spirit setting in among very large numbers of the poorer Jews - orthodox, but
very ignorant. In this, too, we
have a very definite sign of the nearing latter days. Well may we lift up our heads
and rejoice! Surely ‘the Bridegroom cometh!’
One more thing.
You will please notice that this remarkable prophecy from verses 25-30 is
bracketed by verses 24 and 31 between the great Names of Jehovah, the God of
Israel. It is ushered in by His
assertion of His character as a ‘jealous God,’ and closes with His declaration and manifestation of
His character as the ‘merciful God.’
Let it be well and prayerfully noticed that ALL God’s dealings are thus
bracketed.
* * * * * * *
4
Israel’s Apostasy
By David Baron
(This is the second chapter of a small book
entitled, ‘A Divine Forecast of Jewish History,’
by Mr Baron (1855-1926).
The first chapter was included in the previous issue of our
magazine).
‘Ye ... shall
corrupt yourselves’ (Deuteronomy 4:
25; see also 31:
29)
Let us
now compare one or two of the outstanding points in the Divine forecast with
the actual history of
‘Ye ... shall corrupt yourselves, and ... do evil in the sight of the LORD your God,
to provoke Him
to anger,’ - or, as we have it more definitely in Deuteronomy
31: 16, ‘Jehovah said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep
with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the
strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake Me,
and break My
covenant which I have made with them.’
Now this, which once formed a subject of prophecy, is now a well-known
and humiliating fact of history.
Everybody knows about the sad failure and apostasy of
The history of
These writers are very fond of attributing to the Jewish
people a genius for monotheism, or ‘a
monotheistic genius,’ as Renan, who invented the phrase, expressed
it; as if by this monotheistic genius
This theory will not stand historic investigation, and it is
bound up with a number of fallacies.
One of the great fallacies underlying this theory is that it confounds
the faith of
This was the aim and end of God’s relations to them as a
people. That thou mightiest know
what? That there is a God? Or that God is one, which is the dead
creed of the modern Synagogue and of a philosophic Unitarianism? - ‘That thou mightest know that Jehovah’ - the Infinite, Eternal,
Unchangeable, but personal, living, holy, and gracious God, Who spoke to them,
Who acted on their behalf, Who gave them promises, and Who entered into
covenants; Who in His infinite grace
and condescension took notice of every relationship and of every detail in the
life of His people - ‘that thou mightiest
know that Jehovah, He is God.
There is
none else beside Him. Out of heaven He
made thee to hear His voice, that He might instruct thee: and upon earth He showed thee His great fire.’
And this Jehovah - was it by searching, was it by supposed
monotheistic genius that
In the song which Moses was instructed to put into the mouth
of
And it is ever so.
Neither in his folly nor in his wisdom does man know God; nor can he arrive
at a true knowledge of God by his own understanding. There has never been a man who has
lifted up his heart to heaven and said, ‘Thy face, LORD, will I seek,’ to whom the voice of God came not first, saying, ‘Seek ye My face.’
Sometimes people speak of faith as independent of Scripture, and of
Christianity as being independent of the Bible. These are all phrases. Faith, Christian faith, Bible faith, as Dr Saphir once expressed it, ‘is the echo of the Word of God in the soul of
man.’ It presupposes a revelation. All that man is capable of, is to
respond to God’s self-revelations.
When God comes down to us and tells us, we can say, ‘Yea, Amen,’ and act upon it. Experience shows that; and the history
of
Look at this people, with the supposed genius of monotheism,
which is meant to explain so much in the present day - so soon after the God of
Glory appeared unto them, so soon after they heard that voice out of the midst
of the fire, and saw all those wonderful things - dancing around a golden calf,
and saying, ‘These be thy gods,
O Israel.’
‘Ye shall corrupt yourselves,’ said Moses; and we know how, in later
times, in spite of the warnings and remonstrances of inspired prophets and
teachers, and in spite of the premonitory judgments of God, Israel utterly
corrupted themselves, becoming worse and worse, so that the prophet, in
realistic language, showing up idolatry as spiritual adultery against Jehovah,
could truthfully say: ‘Lift up thine eyes
unto the high places, and see where thou has not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian in
the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with
thy wickedness. And it came to pass
through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed
adultery with stones and with stocks’ (Jeremiah
3: 2, 9).
Such is the natural tendency of man; and the lesson it teaches
us as individuals is this: That we must ever seek and
receive fresh supplies of grace in order to retain the knowledge of God in our
souls, and to continue in His grace. With all the wisdom and knowledge and
revelation of Himself, which the
Lord may have given us, unless we
keep in continual contact with the Living God we soon wander away and gravitate
downward, because we are by nature ‘of the earth, earthy.’
* * * * * * *
5
Song of Ascents
by David Baron
(This exposition of Psalm
130 follows that of the previous Psalm in the July issue of Watching and
Waiting.*
It is taken from the book ‘Types, Psalms, and Prophecies’).
[* NOTE:
Unfortunately, page 108 which began the author’s initial writing of ‘Song and Ascents’ in ‘July issue of Watching and Waiting,’
is missing! I foolishly cut it out of the magazine
many years ago, to keep another very important short writing which was printed
on the same page! However, the bulk of the author’s
writing (pages 109-111)
are shown in part
1 as follows. The
concluding section, (pages 120-125), which were published in the
next issue
of ‘Watching
and Waiting,’ is in part 2. - Ed.]
-------
[PART 1]
[Page 108 is missing: Page 109]
…This is
To commence with
Then, not to mention Canaanites, Philistines, Midianites, and
other small powers, there came Syria, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and
Rome, each of whom in turn afflicted them much, and made deep and long furrows;
but where are all these powers?
They have crumbled and died, and
Then came the centuries of dispersion, when it might be
supposed that a comparative handful of men scattered on the great ocean of
humanity would soon be swallowed up of the multitude. As a matter of fact, every force was
brought to bear against them with terrible severity. Their enemies were united, and seemed
confident of success. The crusaders went from west to east with the cry ‘Hierosolyma est perdita!’ (or, ‘Hep! Hep!’ - which is an abbreviation formed
from the three initial letters of this Latin phrase; the English corruption of
it is ‘Hip! Hip!’) and perpetrated wholesale massacres of the
Jews as a commencement of their ‘holy’
wars.
Again and again apostate
Christendom in the dark ages showed its zeal for the Jewish Messiah, Who
teaches His followers to love even their enemies, by burning whole communities
of Jews, numbering sometimes thousands of souls, on one huge scaffold: but in
spite of it all Israel lives; ‘they
have not prevailed’ over him; for there are more Jews in the world, after all the
centuries of banishments, massacres, and untold sufferings, than there have
been at any previous point of the world’s history, and the Jews at the
present day (about 90
years ago - Ed.), as is proved from official statistics,
in some parts of the world increase in proportion to their Gentile neighbours
at the ratio of three and four to one.
Well might the eloquent Michael Beers, in his ‘Appeal to the Justice of Kings,’ make use of
the following language ‘Braving all kinds of
torments - the pangs of death, and still more terrible pangs of life - we have
withstood the impetuous storm of time, sweeping indiscriminately in its course,
nations, religions, and countries.
What has become of those celebrated empires whose very name still
excites our admiration by the idea of splendid greatness attached to them, and
whose power embraced the whole surface of the known globe? They are only
remembered as monuments of the vanity of human greatness.
Alas! the sufferings of Israel are not yet ended, and even in
this 20th century we read almost daily of Jewish massacres and
atrocities worse than any which disgrace the annals of the dark ages, but
Czardom and the corrupt bureaucracy of that unhappy empire will pass away (remember that this was written at the
beginning of the century - Ed.),
while Israel will still sing: ‘Yet they have not prevailed against me.’ And there is yet a future, or final,
culminating ‘affliction,’
‘trouble,’ or ‘tribulation,’ as the same Hebrew word is elsewhere rendered,
awaiting Israel after a large portion of them are returned to their land in a
condition of unbelief, when all
nations will be gathered in a final siege of Jerusalem (Zechariah 13 and 14)
- but even then, when the nations cry ‘Come, and let us cut them off (destroy them) from being a nation; that the name of Israel be no more held in remembrance’ (Psalm 83:
4) (one more blow and the Jewish nation will
be no more) the answer of the saved
remnant who are delivered by the sudden appearance of
their Messiah will be: ‘I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of Jehovah’ (Psalm 118: 17),
‘yet they have not
prevailed against me.’
In the verse 4 we have, as already
stated, a solemn acknowledgment on the part of
The vindication of His Own glorious character as the
absolutely holy and yet loving God, which has been brought into question since
the fall, is the end towards which all His ways are directed; and when the
mystery of God shall be finished, and sin and Satan shall be finally swept from
the world, heaven and earth will join in the song of Moses and of the Lamb, ‘Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty,
just and true
are Thy ways, Thou King of saints. Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy Name? for Thou only art
holy.’
‘Jehovah is righteous;’ ‘Righteousness
belongeth unto Thee’ will
[* See Acts 2:
27; 34; 7: 4-5. cf. Rev.
6: 9-11; 20: 4-6 with 2 Tim. 2: 18, R.V.]
The second half, verses 4
to 8, of this short Psalm,
gives us a prophetic vision of the final discomfiture of the enemies of
* * * * * * *
[PART 2]
Song of Ascents
by David Baron
-------
[Page 120]
From the
outward deliverance of the Jews, and the terrible doom of their enemies, which
is the subject of the preceding Psalm, we are next taken to the time when
The 130th Psalm
is known as the 6th of the ‘Penitential
Psalms’ but there are very few who have seen in it the national
repentance of Israel. The beginning
is significant, ‘Out of the depths
have I cried unto Thee, O Jehovah,’ and yet it
is inscribed, as we have seen, as a ‘Song of
Ascents.’ But there is no inconsistency here; there is no
way of ascent to the Mount of God except by a steep descent, and the higher we
would ascend the lower we must descend.
[Page 121]
Before we are fit for communion with God, or to enter into His
thoughts, we must be brought to an end of ourselves; and the descent, as well
as the ascent, is the result of the gracious work of His Own Holy Spirit. ‘The LORD killeth, and maketh alive’ (1 Samuel
2: 6). He bringeth down very low, but only in
order to lift us up. In the case of
Israel, ‘the depths’ of heart trouble on account of sin,
and heart desire for God, will most probably be brought about by the depths of
the outward sorrows and troubles of the culminating national ‘affliction,’ or tribulation, spoken of in the
preceding Psalm. Blessed be God for
those outward troubles, which drive us now, and will drive
But when a man, or a nation, is brought into the depths, he is
very much in earnest. It becomes a
matter of urgency, and we want to be quite sure that we have God’s ear. This is seen in the 2nd verse, ‘Lord, hear my voice: let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my
supplications.’
It is also seen from the frequent use of the Name of God. No fewer than eight times are three
different Names of God repeated in this short Psalm, as if the Psalmist, who in
spirit here utters the soul of Israel, can do nothing else but wrestle with
God, and cry, ‘O Jehovah’ (Thou Covenant, Faithful God); ‘O Adonai’ (Thou Sovereign Lord of all); ‘O Jah’ (Thou Self-existent, Living and
Eternal God) - conscious that it is in His Own glorious Name that all their
hope and strength lie.
‘If Thou, O Jah, shouldest mark iniquities’ (literally, watch), or take note of
iniquity, so as to call man to account, without finding Thyself a way of escape
for him, ‘O Adonai,
who shall stand?’
This is a kind of challenge thrown down - let any son of Adam
take it up. On the ground of
sinlessness, on the ground of having no iniquity, there is not one who could
stand before God. The blessings of
innate purity and absolute innocence have never been tasted by the sons of man
since the Fall, excepting by the One Holy One, in Whom there is no guile,
neither was deceit found in His mouth.
But He Who knew no sin took His stand before God as man’s substitute,
bearing all the load of our sin upon Him, and since then we too may stand
before Him, not indeed on the ground of our own righteousness, but on the
ground of sin forgiven, and iniquity not imputed.
The word ‘
But by and by, when they behold Him Who is ‘glorious in holiness, fearful in praises,’ and their eyes are opened to a sense
of their own vileness, they will cry, ‘Enter not into judgment with Thy servant; for in Thy sight
shall no man [Page 122] (flesh) living be justified’ (Psalm
143: 2). Then they will be glad to take their stand
before God on the ground of His grace expressing itself in forgiveness, as is
seen in the next verse,
‘But there
is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.’
This is one of the three or four passages in the Old Testament
where the word rendered ‘forgiveness’ has a definite article before it. ‘There is the forgiveness with Thee.’
This will be a wonderful discovery made by Israel when their eyes are
opened to look upon Him Whom they have pierced, and in the light of His wounded
side, say, even as we do now, In Him ‘we have redemption (or literally, ‘the redemption,’ the redemption promised, the
redemption typified now actually accomplished) through His
Blood, the forgiveness of
sins, according to the riches of His grace’ (Ephesians
1: 7).
There is only one way, and one ground of forgiveness, and we
only deceive ourselves if it is not ‘according to the riches of His grace’ and ‘through His Blood.’
And those who read forgiveness written on the cross in the Blood of
Christ can no longer think lightly of sin.
Forgiveness after this manner, and at
such a cost, creates [or should create] a holy fear in man’s heart,
a filial fear lest we fall again into
that which our Father hates, and
which the sacrifice of His Only-begotten Son could alone remove. The cross is a practical exhibition, not
only of God’s love, but also of
God’s holiness. It is
only in the light of
It will have this blessed effect upon Israel; for we read by
and by, when as a nation they seek and
find Jehovah their God, and David their king, and are reconciled and
forgiven, that they shall fear toward the LORD and His goodness in the latter
days (see Hosea 3: 5).
We now come to the 5th
verse, which is in keeping with what is told us in other prophecies of the
attitude of the righteous remnant of Israel, when as a nation they are brought
into ‘the depths’
- ‘I wait
for Jehovah, my soul doth wait, and in His Word do I hope.’
This may be understood in a literal, personal sense. In Isaiah 25
and 26, which also deal with the events of
the last days, we have similar language, ‘Yea, in the way of Thy judgments, O LORD, have we waited for Thee: the desire of our
(my) soul is to (toward) Thy Name,
and to
(toward) the remembrance of Thee. With my soul have I desired Thee (my soul longs for Thee, for Thy personal interposition) in the night (of tribulation), yea, with my spirit within me will I seek Thee early: (compare Hosea 5: 13), for when Thy
judgments are in (overtake) the earth, (then) the inhabitants
of the world will learn
righteousness.’ And when at last,
in the hour of their extremity, the heavens shall be rent and Messiah shall
descend, and Israel’s eyes are opened to see in their deliverer none
other than the long-rejected, crucified Jesus, they will cry in amazement and
contrition, ‘Lo, this is our God;
we have waited
for Him, and He will save us. This is (none
other than) Jehovah, we have
waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation’ (Isaiah
25: 9).
And this waiting will not end in disappointment; this hope
will not make ashamed, because it has the Word of the God of Truth for its
foundation, ‘In His Word do I
hope.’
[Page 123]
There is, perhaps, no
other subject which has so much of God’s Word for its basis, as the
blessing and conversion of
Let us take care that we too have God’s Word for all our
hopes and expectations, and let us too remember that we have to do with the
same Jehovah, Whose faithfulness to
The intensity of the waiting is described in the next verse, ‘My soul waiteth for (is
towards) the Lord more than they that watch (from
the time of the watchers) for the morning.’
I believe that this
verse is explained by the custom in
connection with the
At last the signal was given, in these words which are still
preserved to us, ‘The sky is lit as
far as
And this is our attitude also. We too are watching for the
morning. The grace of God which
appeared bringing salvation also teaches us that, denying ourselves in
reference to ungodly or worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and
godly in this present world, ‘looking
for that blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of the great God and our
Saviour Jesus Christ Who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all
iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good
works’
(see Titus 2: 11-14).
In this passage the results of the first advent of our Lord Jesus
Christ are summed up in the words ‘grace and salvation,’ but we are looking ‘for the morning’ when grace [and
that
future salvation] shall be consummated in glory, when
Israel’s Messiah and Deliverer shall descend also as the long-absent
Bridegroom of the Church, and take His waiting people to be for ever with
Himself. ‘Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus’ (Revelation
22: 20).
[Page 124]
The last two verses are, as it were, God’s answer to
Israel’s cry; they also show that the ‘I’ in verses 1 and 5 is Israel personified, ‘Let Israel hope in Jehovah,’ their hope will not put me to shame, ‘for with Jehovah (the covenant God of their fathers) there is mercy.’ Here again
before the word ‘mercy’ or ‘grace’ there is the definite article - ‘the mercy’ - the mercy stored up from
everlasting; ‘the mercy’ displaying itself first of all in ‘the forgiveness’ (verse 4),
procured by the life Blood of the Son of God; it is with Jehovah waiting to pour itself out on Israel on the first
sign of repentance.
But you say, Has not the mercy of God already been exhausted
by the many and long-continued apostasies of the gainsaying and disobedient
nation? Oh, if you think or speak
thus you know not the heart of
Have you ever shown your mercy or compassion for Israel by
pouring out your heart in prayer for their salvation, and by helping to take to
them the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ - that message which gladdens your own
heart, and is the only message of peace to man? If you have not, I can only say that you
will be sorry for it ‘in the morning,’ by not being able, in this respect, to
share the joy of your Redeemer Whose heart has never ceased to yearn ‘for them that are His flesh’ (Romans 9),
and Who will soon return as your Lord and
‘And with Him is plenteous redemption.’ The word translated ‘plenteous’ means also ‘much’ or ‘many,’
so that it can never be exhausted.
It is the same word as is rendered ‘abundantly’ in Isaiah 55: 7, ‘Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous
man his thoughts: and let him return unto Jehovah, and He will have
mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.’
Yes, with Him is plenteous redemption - national and
individual, temporal and spiritual.
He redeemed
At the end of the Psalm 25 there
is a prayer of David, ‘Redeem Israel,
O God,
out of all his
troubles.’ This is how we often
pray. We see
In Psalm 103 the chief
mercies of God are, so to say, catalogued, but that which heads the list is
forgiveness, ‘Who forgiveth all
thine iniquities,’ because that is the first and greatest of our needs. All other things follow, for ‘He that [Page 125] spared not His Own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not
with Him also freely give us all things?’ (Romans 8:
32).
So it will be with
* * *
4
[419]
GREAT DELIVERANCE
[PART 1]
Zechariah 12
By
DAVID BARON*
[*
From chapter
17 (pp. 419-455) in the
author’s book: “The Visions and
Prophecies of Zechariah.”]
-------
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“Born in
Among David Baron’s published
works are the following: The Shepherd of
Israel and His Scattered Flock (Psalm
80), The Servant of Jehovah (Isaiah 53), Types, Psalms and
Prophecies, The Ancient
Scriptures and the Modern Jew, The New
Order of the Priesthood, The History of Israel,
Israel’s Inalienable Possessions, Christ and Israel, and Rays of
Messiah’s Glory.
Baron died, in
-------
[420]
Chapter 17
The burden of the word of Jehovah concerning
-------
[421]
In commencing
my notes on the last section of Zechariah (chaps. 12-14.), I take
the liberty of repeating a brief paragraph from my introductory remarks to the 9th chapter
to which I would again draw the attention of the reader.
The overthrow of world-power, and the establishment of
Messiah’s Kingdom, may be given as the epitome of the last six chapters
of Zechariah. The two oracles which make up the whole
of the second half of the book (chaps. 9.-11. and 12.-14.) show by
their headings, as well as by their contents, and even by their formal
arrangement, that they are corresponding portions of a greater whole. Both sections treat of war between the
heathen world and
In the first (chaps. 9.-11.), the
judgment through which Gentile world-power over Israel is finally destroyed, and Israel is endowed with strength to overcome
all their enemies, forms the
fundamental thought and centre of gravity of the prophetic description. In the second (chaps.
12.-14.),
the judgment through which Israel itself is sifted and purged in the final great conflict with the
nations, and transformed into the holy nation of Jehovah, forms the leading
topic.
The foreground, or more immediate
future of the first main section of the second half of the book (chaps. 9.-11.), were, as shown in my notes on those
chapters, the victories of Alexander the Great, the overthrow of the Persian
Empire, the advent of the Messiah, and His rejection by Israel - though even
there, as we had occasion to observe more particularly in connection with chap. 9: 9, 10, and chap. 10: 4-12, the
foreground of the more immediate or [422] proximate future, and the events which were to precede and accompany the
First Advent, merge into the great and solemn events of the Second Advent, and
the time of the end.
The second or last section, on the other hand (chaps. 12.-14.), seems to me to carry our thoughts altogether
to the more distant future, and is eschatological and apocalyptic in its character,
for it is impossible to apply the solemn predictions in these chapters to
events at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, which is
the favourite theory of those who assign a pre-exilic origin for the second
half of Zechariah, and who degrade this great prophecy to the level of a mere
“political divination of the affairs of the
kingdom of Judah in which ardent hopes were expressed by the unknown prophet -
hopes destined, however, to be sadly disappointed - respecting the final result
of the struggle of the Jewish kingdom with the Babylonian power.” 1
1 Thus, for instance, Ewald in Die Propheien des alien Bundes.
Neither can we, without doing great violence to the prophecy, interpret
it of the taking of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes, as some do, nor to the
destruction of the city and Temple by the Romans; for (to quote from words of
my own) in none of those calamitous events in the past history of Israel did
God in the person of the Messiah visibly appear on the Mount of Olives with His
angelic hosts as the Deliverer of His people and the destroyer of many nations
which were gathered against them; nor was the spirit of grace and supplication
ever yet poured out upon the Jewish nation, so that they might look upon and
recognise “Him whom they have pierced”; nor has the Lord, from any of those past events onward, become “King
over the whole earth” (chap. 14: 9); not to mention many other great and
solemn events which are predicted in these chapters which cannot be allegorised
or explained away. We must reject,
therefore, the view of some of the “orthodox”
commentators that this last section traverses the ground already trodden in the
previous [423] chapters, and “refers to the events which took place in the period between
the time of the prophet and the day of the Messiah.”
The …, yom
ha’hu, the “that day” which is mentioned no less than fourteen times in these last three
chapters, is indeed “the day of the Messiah,” but it is the day not of His first advent in
humiliation, but of His manifestation in
glory. It is, therefore, pre-eminently called …, yom la-Yehovah - a day for
Jehovah - the day set apart and appointed by Him not only for the display of
His majesty and vindication of the holiness and righteousness of His character
and ways, but it is “the day”
of the manifestation of His Divine might and glory in the destruction of
Israel’s enemies, and the salvation of His own people.
The main theme of the first nine verses of chap. 12. is
But though it will be a time of unspeakable anguish for
“Jehovah
shall Juage His people,
And repent Himself for His
servants:
When He sees that their
strength is gone,
And that there is none remaining, shut up or left at
large.”
Then He will “lift up His hand to heaven” and swear, saying:
“As I live
for ever.
If I whet my glittering sword,
and Mine hand
take hold on judgment;
I will render vengeance to
Mine adversaries,
And will recompense them that hate Me.
I will make Mine arrows
drunk with blood,
And My sword shall devour
much flesh.” 1
1 Deut. 32:
36-42.
For the enemies of His people will then be accounted as His
enemies, which in reality they are.
But to return to our chapter.
To remove all possibility of doubt of the fulfilment of the
great and wonderful things which the prophet is about to announce from the
mouth of Jehovah, we are reminded of the almighty-creative and sustaining power
of the everlasting God. This surely
is a sufficient basis for our faith in His word, however great the human
improbabilities and natural impossibilities of their ever being literally
fulfilled, may appear to us.
“Thus saith (or ‘the
saying’ of) Jehovah, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.”
A similar declaration of God's almighty-creative and [425] sustaining power is made in Isa. 42:
5, and with the same purpose, namely, to remove all doubt as to
the realisation of the great and mighty things which the prophet there
predicts: “Thus saith God, Jehovah,
He that createth the heavens and stretcheth them forth; He that spread abroad the earth, and that which cometh out of it; He that giveth
breath (neshamah - soul) unto the people
upon it; and spirit (…, ruach) to them that walk therein.”
The participial verbs in our passage in Zech. 12 - … - noteh, yosed, yotzer – “stretcheth,”
“layeth”(literally, foundeth),
and “formeth” - are intended to remind us of
God’s omnipotence and the continuous active display of His power and wisdom in the universe
which He has created.
Jehovah is altogether a different being from the god of the
deist. He not only once for all
“in the
beginning” created
the heavens and the earth, and appointed certain “laws” to regulate their motions,
without troubling Himself further about them, or about man, who is admittedly
the goal and climax of His creative work on earth. No. “My Father worketh hitherto,” said our Lord Jesus, “and I work”;1 and this is equally true in the sphere of creation,
providence, and redemption. According
to the Biblical view, as a Bible scholar well observes, “God stretches out the heavens every day afresh, and every
day He lays the foundation of the earth, which, if His power did not uphold it,
would move from its orbit and fall into ruin.” 2 In like manner, when it is said that “He formeth the spirit of man within him,” it does not refer merely
“to the creation of the spirits or souls of men
once for all, but denotes the continuous creative formation and guidance
of the human spirit by the Spirit of God.” 3
1 John 5:17. 2 Hengstenberg.
3 Keil.
Now let us hear what Jehovah, the Author of all being and all
life, the Creator of heaven and earth, proceeds to say, and be assured, without
any shadow of doubt, that what He hath spoken He will in His appointed time
bring to pass: “Behold, I (which is very
emphatic) will make [426] Jerusalem a joblet (or ‘basin’) of reeling (or ‘giddiness’) unto all the peoples round about.”
The cup of reeling, or giddiness, is frequently used in
Scripture as a symbol of the judgment of God which brings man into a condition
of helplessness and misery like unto that of the staggering, intoxicated man
who is unable to stand, or walk. “For in the hand of
Jehovah,” we read in the Psalms, “is a cup, and the wine
is red (or
‘foameth’);
it is full of
mixture, and He poureth out
of the same; surely the dregs
thereof, the wicked of the
earth shall wring them out,
and drink them.” 1
1 Ps. 75: 8.
In Isa. 51: 21-23 the figure is used of the judgments which Israel itself
first experiences: “Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not
with wine: thus saith thy Lord
the Lord, and thy God that
pleadeth the cause of His people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of staggering (or ‘reeling’),
even the bowl of the cup of My fury; thou shall no more drink it again: and I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that
we may go over: and thou hast laid
thy back as the ground, and as the street
to them that go over.”
In those passages, however, it is the …, kos (cup), that
is spoken of, but here in Zech. 12. it is the …, saph, 1 the bowl, or “basin of reeling”; the thought expressed in this instance is that of a vessel large
enough for all nations to drink out of it, “either
together, or one after another in succession.” And they shall all drink of this
intoxicating cup of God’s judgment and stagger and fall, not to rise
again.
1 …, saph, has also the signification of threshold, and the LXX, Vulgate, Calvin, etc.,
have translated it in that sense; but the rendering basin is the only suitable one here. It is used of the vessel containing the
blood of the Paschal Lamb; also in 2 Sam. 17: 28 and 1 Kings 7: 50,
etc.
The structure of the second half of the verse presents some
difficulty, and has been variously rendered and interpreted by
commentators. Literally, the clause
in Hebrew reads, “And also upon
The question is, What subject must be supplied to the [427] verb
“shall be”? Ewald and others have rendered it thus: And also upon
I cannot enter on a minute examination of the critical grounds
on which this view has been advocated, but I believe the explanation to be an
erroneous one. It is asserted that
it is to be inferred from the context that Judah is regarded as in the camp of
the enemy,1 but I agree with Keil, who truly
observes that in what follows -
“There is no indication
whatever of Judah’s having made common cause with the enemy against
Jerusalem; on the contrary, Judah and Jerusalem stand together in opposition to
the nations, and the princes of Judah have strength in the inhabitants of
Jerusalem (ver. 5),
and destroy the enemy to save Jerusalem (ver. 6). Moreover, it is only by a false interpretation that any
one can find a conflict between
1 The following is from Kimchi’s
commentary: “The sense of the whole passage is,
that when Gog and Magog come against Jerusalem after the redemption, they will
go up by the land of Judah, for the desire of their faces will be to come
against Jerusalem first; and they will not be anxious first to subdue the whole
land of Israel, for they will think, when we have subdued Jerusalem, the whole
land will fall before us. But they
will go up to Jerusalem by the way of the land of Judah, which is their natural
route, and they will take with them the children of Judah against their will to
go with them to besiege Jerusalem; and so Jonathan has interpreted.”
The best rendering of the clause in my view is that suggested
by a Hebrew student,1 namely: “And also
on Judah shall be (or, fall, this reeling) in (or ‘during’) the siege (which is to take place) against Jerusalem” - the sense being that already
expressed by Keil, that Judah, which stands here for all the rest of the people
of the land, shall experience the same ordeal of suffering in that siege as the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, ere the Lord finally interferes on their behalf as
the destroyer of their enemies.
1 W. H. Lowe, M.A., in
his Hebrew Student’s Commentary. Pusey thinks that the “Burden of the Word of the Lord” is the subject
to he supplied, i.e., the burden which was to be, or should be, upon
The prediction of judgment against the nations who will be
gathered against Jerusalem “in that day,” is strengthened in the 3rd verse by the use of another figure:
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone (lit., a stone
for lifting) for all the peoples;
all that burden
themselves with it (lit., all that lift it) shall be sore wounded (or ‘lacerated,’ or ‘tear
rents for themselves’); and all the nations of the earth shall be
gathered together against it.” 2
2 The figure of the “burdensome
stone” is, according to Jerome (died 420) and others, based on a
custom which prevailed in
But, as it has been observed, the stone of which the prophet
speaks here was not such a round stone, but one with sharp edges by which those
who sought to raise it were lacerated.
Keil may be more correct in considering that the figure is taken from
operations connected with building. Another has suggested that the reference is
to “one of the large stones half buried in the
earth, which it is the effort of the husbandman to tear from its bed and carry
out of his field before he ploughs it.”
[429]
It has been pointed out that there is a gradation in the
thought, both in the figure of the “burdensome stone,” which cuts and wounds those who try to lift it,
whilst the “reeling cup” in
the 2nd
verse only makes
powerless; and also in the description given of the hosts gathered for the
attack. In the 2nd verse the nations round about
The magnitude of the danger and of the sufferings of Jerusalem
are brought before our minds in the last clause of the 3rd verse, and are to be inferred from the fact
that “all nations of the earth,” represented, no
doubt, by the flower of their armies, “will be gathered against it.”
“The gathering of these hosts is
not unfrequently referred to in the Scripture, and always in language
calculated to impress the mind with the peculiar magnitude of the power to be
displayed in this last great effort of man under Satan. In the Revelation, for example (chap.
16: 14), it is said
that ‘spirits of devils,’ working miracles, shall go forth to gather the
kings of the whole world to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.”
1 Joel also speaks
of the same mighty confederation: “Proclaim ye this among the
Gentiles, prepare war, wake up the mighty [430] men, let all the
men of war draw near, let them come up beat your
ploughshares into swords and your pruning-hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble
yourselves, and come, all ye Gentiles, and gather yourselves
together round about” (Joel 3: 9-12).
1 B. W.
But the extremity of
“Out of my
distress 1 I called upon Jehovah:
Jehovah answered me and set me in a large place.
Jehovah is on my side;
I will not fear:
What can man do unto me?
1 The word also means “straitness,” “siege,”
and is the same as is used in Zech. 12: 2 of the
“siege.”
All nations compassed me about:
In the Name of the Lord I will cut them off.
They compassed me about;
yea, they compassed me about:
In the Name of the Lord I will cut them off.
They compassed me about like bees;
they are
quenched as the fire of thorns:
In the Name of the Lord I will cut them off.”
The manner of God’s interposition on Israel’s behalf is described
in the verses which follow: “In that day, saith
Jehovah, will I smite every
horse with astonishment (lit., with ‘bewilderment’ or ‘stupefaction’), and his rider with
madness: and upon the house
of Judah will I open Mine eyes, and
every horse of the peoples (i.e., of their attacking cavalry) will I smite with blindness.”
It is interesting to note that the
three nouns timmahon, “astonishment” or “bewilderment”;
shigga’on, “madness”; and ’ivvaron, “blindness,”
which here describe God’s judgment on the confederated armies of the
anti-Christian world-powers which will be gathered against
The effect of the enemies of
And that look of Jehovah, through the eyes of their Messiah
Jesus, upon His long unbelieving and rebellious people - a look of love and
pity, not unmixed with tender reproach - will have something of the same effect
on stubborn Israel as the look of the Lord Jesus on Peter from the hall of
Caiaphas the high priest,1 when that apostle had thrice denied
Him. It will at last soften and [432] melt their hard heart to true
repentance, and cause them to “weep bitterly.” But this
is set forth fully in the last part of this chapter, and for the present we must return to the prophet’s
description of their outward deliverance and the destruction of their enemies.
1 Luke
22: 61, 62.
While terror and confusion seize the ranks of the assembled
hosts as the result of the plagues with which they shall be smitten, unity,
confidence, and assurance of victory take possession of the “heart” of the reduced, and till then
demoralised, remnant of Judah, from the moment that they become conscious that
the eye of Jehovah is upon them for good, and that the “Captain of the
Lord’s host Himself is with them: “And the governors (or ‘princes’1) of Judah shall say in their hearts,
The inhabitants
of Jerusalem are my strength (or, ‘a strength to me’) in Jehovah
of hosts their God.”
1 … alluphei. See the footnote on the meaning of “alluph” in chap. 9: 7. The root-idea is expressed in the LXX,
which renders “captain of thousands.”
“The princes of Judah,” as Keil truly observes, “recognise in the inhabitants of Jerusalem their strength or
might - not in the sense that Judah, being crowded together before Jerusalem,
expects help against the foe from the strength of the city and the assistance
of its inhabitants, as Hoffmann and Koehler maintain, for ‘their whole
account of the inhabitants of the land being shut up in the city’ (or
crowded together before the walls of Jerusalem, and covered by them) is a pure
invention, and has no foundation in the text - but in this sense, that the
inhabitants of Jerusalem are strong through Jehovah their God, i.e., through the fact that Jehovah has chosen Jerusalem, and by
virtue of this election will save the city of His sanctuary”
(comp. 10: 12 with 3:
2, 1: 17, 2: 16).
It is the fact that Jehovah hath chosen
2 Chap. 1: 16.
A slight alteration in the original text of this verse has been
suggested already in the Targum, which would read: “The princes of
That this great deliverance will be all of grace and by the
power of God is brought out in the verses which follow: “And
Jehovah shall save the tents of
The reason that “Judah” (which stands here for the
people of the land generally in contrast to those who are within the city of
Jerusalem) are saved “first,” is
not, as is mistakenly supposed by some, because Judah, having, [434] though unwillingly, joined the foe in
the siege, “will be found in a place more
rebellious and more evil than that of Jerusalem,” but because of
their weak and defenceless condition (as indicated by the fact that they dwell
in “tents”) as contrasted with those
within the city walls. Or, in the
words of another, “The defenceless land will be
delivered sooner than the well-defended capital, that the latter may not lift
itself up above the former, but that both may humbly acknowledge (as Jerome
expresses it) that the victory is the Lord’s,” and that both
alike may magnify the grace of God in their deliverance. “The glory (or (‘splendour,’
…, tiphereth) of the house of David” consists in the fact that it
is the God-appointed royal line in Israel, which was continued in Zerubbabel, the
prince who was Zechariah’s contemporary, and culminated in our Lord
Jesus, the true Son and Heir of David; and “the
glory” or “splendour”
of the inhabitants of Jerusalem may be regarded as consisting in the fact that
they may consider themselves as especially privileged and exalted above the
rest of the people of the land as dwellers in
the city which God has especially chosen as the seat of His earthly throne.
But the deliverance of the defenceless people of the land will
be only the “first” act of God’s interposition on behalf of
The heart of the great conflict will
be in and around the walls of
1 Isa. 31:
4, 5 (R.
V.).
And not only shall Jehovah Himself “go forth and fight against
those nations,” but
when once the weak and broken remnant of the people recognise their Divine
Saviour, and hear the shout of the King in their midst, they are suddenly girt
with superhuman strength. The
feeblest of them, hannikhshal (lit.,
“he that stumbleth,” i.e., the one so weak that he could not
even stand, much less fight), shall in that day be as David - the greatest of
Israel’s national heroes, and “to the Jew,
therefore, the highest type of strength and glory on earth” - and
the house of David shall be as Elokim (i.e.,
“God” in His might and majesty),
and as the Divine “Angel of Jehovah,” who of old went “before them” in the desert and through the Red Sea smiting
down their enemies, and therefore, “the highest
type of strength and glory in heaven.”
No wonder, therefore, that through Him they “will push down
their adversaries,” and “through
His Name tread them under that had risen up against them”;
1 and, if I may venture a brief digression, 1 would say that there is a message in this scripture for you too, dear
Christian reader. It is this, that however weak in yourself and ready [436] to “stumble,” you may be strong in the Lord
and in the power of His might, and that “more”
and “greater” is He that is for us, and with
us, than all that can be against us. “Through God,” exclaims the Psalmist, “we shall do valiantly” (or, as it might be rendered, “in God we shall form an host”- however
weak and few and insignificant in ourselves), for He it is that shall tread
down our adversaries.2
1 Ps. 44: 4, 5. 2 Ps. 60: 12.
But to return to our chapter. While Jehovah endows the inhabitants of
The Great Spiritual Crisis in
Israel’s History
The first nine verses of the 12th
chapter of Zechariah describe
prophetically, as we have seen,
But yet there is something greater, more solemn and more
blessed, than mere outward deliverance and triumph over their enemies that
1 Dean Alford. 2 2 Cor. 2:
14 (R. V.).
“On former occasions, when
Jeshurun had been made to ride on the high places of the earth, he had waxed fat
and kicked; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock
of his salvation. But it will never be so again. He who comes to conquer their
foes comes also to subdue their hearts.” Hence, great as their triumph will be,
great as will have been their individual might in the last stage of their
conflict with the surrounding hosts (so that “he that is feeble among them
will be as David”),
yet, when they return from their victory, this their glorious day of triumph
will end in self-abasement and tears.1 How this wonderful change will be
brought about, how the stubborn heart of unbelieving and gainsaying Israel will
at last be broken, we are told in the 10th verse: “And I
will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the
spirit of grace and supplication; and they
shall look upon Me whom they have pierced; and they
shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for
his only son, and shall be in
bitterness for Him, as one that is in
bitterness for his first-born.”
1 B. W.
“I think,” said a
great master in
1 Adolph Saphir.
And yet there is not another scripture in the Old [438] Testament around which more
controversy has raged than around “these simple,
unadorned,” and, to the Christian, most precious words. Jewish commentators and some
rationalistic Christian writers who seem not less biased in their
anti-Christological methods in interpreting the Old Testament, 1 have tried their utmost to divert this scripture from Him whose rejection
and suffering unto death, and yet future recognition and penitent reception on
the part of “His own”
nation, it foretells.
1 Thus, for instance, Ewald, one of the
fathers of the “Higher Criticism,”
and who has a very large following among Christian commentators and theological
writers in this country, considers the mourning pictured by the prophet in the
scripture “as a mourning over the Jews fallen in
the defence of their city,” as martyrs for their country and
faith; those slain in the battlefield he considers to be “those pierced by the heathen.” Canon Driver, in his Introduction to the Literature of the 0ld Testament, makes this passage to refer to some
“deed of blood” in which the house of
David, together with the people, became implicated some time before
these chapters were written, which, according to him (and in opposition
to Ewald and his school, who assign a pre-exilic origin to the second half of
Zechariah) was some time between 518 and 300 B. C., of which deed of blood, as
pointed out in my “Introduction to the
second half of Zechariah,” which could occasion such deep
and universal mourning, history knows nothing.
The modern Jewish translation of the
passage as given, for instance, in the “Appendix
of the Revised Version,” issued by the Jewish Community in
England for the use of Jews, in 1896, is as follows: “And they (i.e., the
house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem) shall
look up to Me because of Him whom they (i.e., the nations which come against Jerusalem) have pierced.” This translation, first suggested by
Rashi, adopted by Kimchi in his commentary on Zechariah,
was fully elaborated by Rabbi Isaak of Troki 1 in his polemical work against
Christianity, Chizzuk Emunah (“Strengthening
of the Faith”), who thus explains:
1 Isaac Ben Abraham of Troki, a Karaite Rabbi - born in 1533,
died in 1594. His book is still the
chief arsenal whence many arguments of modern Jews in their polemics against
Christianity are drawn.
“If it should happen that any
of the Israelites should be pierced, namely, in that war, even though it should
be one of the most inconsiderable, they shall wonder greatly how this could
happen, and will think that this is the [439] beginning of a fall and defeat
before their enemies, as Joshua did.
When the men of Ai smote thirty-six of
This translation, however, to which English-speaking Jews
have, as we have seen, officially committed themselves, only shows the length
which modern Judaism will go in misinterpreting the plainest scriptures so as
to evade the Christian argument drawn from them in support of the claims of
Jesus of Nazareth.1
1 An instance of departure not only
from the plain sense and grammar, but from the more ancient Jewish traditional
interpretations of Messianic passages for controversial reasons, is found in
Rashi (Rabbi Solomon Bar Isaac), the most popular commentator on the Bible and
Talmud - born at Troys in 1040, died in 1105. In his commentary on this passage in the
Bible he says: “They shall look back to mourn
because the Gentiles had pierced some amongst them, and killed some of them.”
But in his commentary on the Talmud he says : “The
words, ‘the land shall mourn,’ are
found in the prophecy of Zechariah, and he
prophesies of the future that they shall mourn on account of Messiah, the son
of Joseph, who shall be slain in the war of Gog and Magog” (Sukkah, fol.
52, Col. 1). That this manifest
contradiction is not accidental, but intentional, appears from the fact that
this writer has dealt similarly by other controverted passages; for instance, Isa. 53.,
which, in his commentary on the Bible, he expounds of the Jewish people ; but
in his commentary on the Talmud he explains of Messiah. Indeed, his determination to get rid of
any explanation that could favour Christianity is plainly avowed in his
commentary on Ps. 21.,
where he says: “Our Rabbis have expounded it of
the King Messiah, but it is better to expound it further of David himself, in
order to answer heretics.”
It is a rendering which is contrary to grammar and to the
natural sense, for, first, the word …
(eth asher) cannot possibly mean “because of Him whom,” but simply
“whom,” emphatically and definitely expressed. And, secondly; the modern Jewish
rendering or paraphrase implies that the subject of the second verb of the
first verse, … daqaru - “pierced,” is a different one from that
of the first verb, …, v'hibitu
– “shall look,” in the same
short sentence. But it is
altogether unnatural to suppose that two [440] parties were in the prophet’s mind, and that “they” who “shall look” are the Jews, and “they” who “have pierced” are the Gentile nations.
Another “Jewish”
rendering of the passage, equally unfair and even less tenable, but
contradictory of the above, is that found in the bulky “Jewish Family Bible,” which has also a kind of
“official” air about it, inasmuch
as it was “printed with the sanction of (the late)
Rev. Dr. Adler, the chief Rabbi.” 1 The critical passage in question is
translated thus: “But I will pour upon the house
of David, and upon the inhabitants of
1 It claims to be the Authorised or
“Anglican” version, revised by Dr.
M. Friedlander, Principal of the Jews’ College, published in 1881. Its honesty as a translation, or
“revision,” may be judged from its
rendering of this and other Messianic passages.
But there is a more ancient Jewish interpretation of this
prophecy than those to which I referred, which were invented by Jews for
controversial reasons; it is that, namely, which applies the passage to Messiah
ben Joseph. Thus Aben Ezra, 1 who wrote after Rashi, says: “All the
heathen shall look to me to see what I shall do to those who pierced Messiah,
the son of Joseph”; and Abarbanel,2 after noticing the interpretation of
Rashi and Kimchi, says: [441] “It is more correct to interpret the
passage of Messiah, the son of Joseph, as our Rabbis, of blessed memory, have
interpreted it in the treatise Sukkah,3 for he shall be a mighty man of valour of the tribe of
Joseph, and shall at first be captain of the Lord’s host in that war
(namely, against Gog and Magog), but in that war shall die.”
1 Aben Ezra‑Rabbi Abraham ben
Ezra - one of the greatest of Jewish commentators and grammarians : born, w88 ; died, I 176.
2 Abarbanel (or Abravanel), Rabbi Dan
Isaac ben Jehudah, the celebrated Jewish statesman and philosopher, theologian
and commentator : born, 1437 died, 1508.
3 The passage will be found in Bab.
Talmud, Sukk. 52a.
This interpretation is of interest and importance to the
Christian student, in so far as it shows that the disciples of Christ, when the
New Testament was written, were not alone in interpreting this scripture of the
Messiah. The Jewish Rabbis explained it in the same way, only they applied it
to Messiah ben Joseph, who does not exist in Scripture, and is an invention of
their own brains.
Let me, while dwelling on the Jewish interpretation of this
passage, reproduce a striking passage from Alshech, 1 [442] which, barring the mention of Messiah ben Joseph, might
almost be accepted as a statement of the Christian view of this scripture.
1 Moses Alshech flourished in Safed,
“But
whom did the Rabbis mean by the epithet Messiah ben Joseph?”
writes a learned Hebrew Christian brother.
We do not hesitate to answer: “None other
person than Jesus, whom, after their great disappointment in the revolution of
Bar-Cochba, they tacitly acknowledged as the suffering Messiah, and denominated
Him by the name that He was commonly called in Galilee, in order perhaps to
screen themselves against the hatred and persecution of their own followers, or
of their Roman masters. This idea
has been hinted at by the Rev. M. Wolkenberg in his translation of The
Pentateuch according to the Talmud, p. 156, and broadly asserted by Dr.
Biesenthal in his Hebrew commentary on St. Luke (chap. 23: 48). This accounts
for the remarkable fact that on the Feast of Trumpets, before the blowing of
the ram’s horn, God’s mercy is besought through ‘Jesus, the
Prince of the Presence of God, the Metatron,’ or the One who shares the
throne of God. At this same
service, verses, mostly from Ps. 119., are repeated, whose first letters form the name of
‘Christon,’ but so ingeniously chosen, that they should at the same
time read it … ‘the Bruiser of Satan.’ This name also is written on amulets and
in Jewish houses when a child is born, as well as the name of the angel,
…, which is mentioned in the said service, with alteration of only one
accountable letter, and which stands for the King our Righteousness, ‘the King our Righteousness, Jesus the Messiah.’ To this
Metatron is again applied in the Talmud (Sanhed.
p. z56), the passage Ex. 23: 20, and it is added that ‘His name is the name of His
Master.’ And in the liturgy of the Feast of Tabernacles reference is made
to the glorious and dread Metatron, who was transformed from flesh to fire.
“Who cannot see in these
mysterious hints a purposely covered belief in the Messiahship of Jesus, and
that in a most orthodox manner?” (From Rays of Messiah’s G1ory.)
“I will do yet a third thing,
and that is, that ‘they shall look unto Me,’ for they shall lift up their eyes unto Me in
perfect repentance, when they see Him whom they pierced, that is, Messiah, the
Son of Joseph; for our Rabbis, of blessed memory, have said that He will take
upon Himself all the guilt of Israel, and shall then be slain in the war to
make an atonement in such manner that it shall be accounted as if Israel had
pierced Him, for on account of their sin He has died; and, therefore, in order
that it may be reckoned to them as a perfect atonement, they will repent and
look to the blessed One, saying that there is none beside Him to forgive those
that mourn on account of Him who died for their sin: this is the meaning of
‘They shall look upon Me.’”
There is another critical point on which
I must very briefly touch before proceeding with the exposition. The reading of the Massoretic text,
… v'hibitu elai (“they shall look unto Me”), has been much disputed by Jews and
modern writers, but it is supported by all the ancient versions and extant MSS
with very few exceptions, and is the reading which is accepted in all the
Rabbinic quotations made above. In
a few MSS, however, the marginal correction - …, alav - “unto Him,”
instead of …, elai –
“unto Me,” - was made by Jewish
hands; and in several instances this “Keri,”
or marginal reading, has, as is sometimes apt to be the case, crept into the
text itself.
[443]
But we need not impute any dishonest intention to the Jews in
this matter, as some have done,1 and of a desire to corrupt the text;
for, as a matter of fact, however much they obscured and perverted the true
sense of Scripture, through their misinterpretations, and in their paraphrases and
commentaries, they always most jealously guarded the original letter and text of Scripture from alteration
or corruption.
1 As, for instance, Martini.
The marginal reading in the few MSS which is also accepted in
the Talmud, is, however, not recognised as a Keri, or proper reading, in the Massoretic text. It originated in the very natural difficulty,
from the Jewish point of view, of conceiving how God, who is undoubtedly the
speaker in the first part of the verse, since He promises to pour out the
spirit of grace and supplication, can be “pierced.” It
requires the light which is thrown on Messianic prophecy by the New Testament;
and a knowledge of Him in whom dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and who
could say, “I and the Father are ‘One,’” for men to grasp this mystery. 1
1 It need not, it seems to me, be
supposed that the Apostle John, in John 19: 37, quoted from a manuscript which read, “They shall look on Him.”
It is rather his adaptation and application of the prophecy in the
light of fulfilment (as far as the piercing is concerned) to our Lord
Jesus. He knew well that in its
connection, in Zech. 12., it is spoken of God; but this passage, like many other
prophecies and promises which in the Old Testament centre in Jehovah, find
their fulfilment and realisation in history in the person of the Messiah, whom
this beloved apostle depicts to us as “the Word
made flesh,” and in whose face he beheld the glory of the
only-begotten of the Father. Hence,
as he now gazes upon Him on the Cross, and beholds the Roman soldier plunging
his spear into His side, he says, “Here, truly, is the One to whom
this Scripture applies - they shall look on Him whom they have pierced.”
But we are told by Jewish and rationalistic writers that we
must not “read the New Testament into these Old
Testament prophecies,” but rather ask ourselves what meaning the
people in the prophet’s own time would attach to them. To this we reply. First: Though it is true, generally
speaking, that the prophets spoke first and primarily to those in their own
time, there is, nevertheless, [444] a predictive element in Holy Scripture, and that many of the prophetic
utterances concerning “the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should
follow” were not only not fully comprehensible to the people to whom they
spoke, but to the prophets themselves,1 and could only be fully understood
after, and in the light of, their fulfilment.
1 2 Pet. 1: 10-12.
Secondly: Even the Jews in the prophet’s own time, if
they pondered on the prophet’s word, must have understood, at any rate
this much, that the prediction refers to “a
national mourning over some one who stood in an intimate connection with
Jehovah, and whose rejection and death was to be bitterly bewailed by the
people of
But now, to be done with criticism and controversy, let us
look into the heart of this great prophetic promise.
We will take the words in the order in which they stand in the
Hebrew. “And I will pour” - …, v'sha-phachti - the word expresses the fulness and abundance of the gift of the Spirit
which shall then be bestowed upon the people. The promise points back to Joel 2:
28, 29:
“And it shall come to pass afterward that I will
pour out My spirit upon all flesh,” etc.; or, as we read in Isaiah: “I will
pour My spirit upon thy seed, and My
blessing upon thine offspring” - in the same abundance and with the [445] same blessed quickening and
fertilising effects as “waters”
and “streams” are poured “upon
the dry and thirsty ground.” 1
1 Isa. 44: 3; see also Ezek.
39: 29, 36: 26, 27.
“Upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of
1 Keil.
“The spirit of grace
and of supplication” - …, ruach hen
v'thachnunim - is the Holy Spirit of God who conveys
grace and brings our hearts into a condition of grace. Just as “The
spirit of wisdom and understanding” is the spirit
infusing wisdom and understanding, and “the spirit of
counsel and might” is that same spirit
imparting the gift of counsel to see what is to be done, and of might to do it, and “the spirit of knowledge, and
of the fear of the Lord,” is that same spirit
infusing intimate acquaintance with God with awe at His infinite majesty; so
“the
spirit of grace” is
that same spirit infusing grace and bringing into a state of favour with God,
and a “spirit of
supplication”
is that spirit calling out of the
inmost soul the cry for a yet larger measure of the grace already given.1 But the simplest way to
understand the two kindred terms, hen and
thaohnunim – “grace and supplication” - is to view them in the light
of cause and effect for grace is that which God bestows and the Holy Spirit
conveys, and “supplication”
is the fruit of that condition of heart, or soul, which
that same spirit creates within us.
1 Pusey.
[446]
The blessed effect of the outpouring of the spirit of grace
and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of
(a) They shall look (…, v'hibitu) with no ordinary or mere passing look,
but “with trustful hope and longing,”
as one has paraphrased it. Among
the other meanings which this particular verb has is that of “to regard,” “to
consider,” “to contemplate,”
“to look upon with pleasure.” It is used, for instance, in that
remarkable story of the brazen serpent in Num. 21: 9, which, as it seems to me, was in the mind of Zechariah when he uttered
this prophecy: “And Moses made a serpent of brass, and set it on a pole (or ‘the
standard’), and it came to pass that if a serpent had
bitten any man, when he beheld it
(or looked unto …, v'hibit), the serpent of brass, he
lived.” With this same eager look of faith and
hope shall
1 See also, for instance, Ps. 34: 5: “They looked
unto Him and were lightened”; and Isa.
51: 1, 2: “Look unto the
Rock whence ye were hewn”; “Look
unto Abraham,” etc. where the same word is used to express the
“look,” not only of faith, but of contemplation.
(b) “Unto Me,”
or “Upon Me” (…, elai).
This sets forth the character and majesty of Him whom they
shall behold as their great Deliverer, for the One who speaks throughout the
chapter, as already [447] observed, is none other than Jehovah, “which stretcheth forth the
heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth,
and formeth the spirit of man within him”
(ver. 1); and who in this 10th verse says: “I will pour out the spirit of grace and
of supplications.” This, as already observed above, is a
great mystery comprehensible only to faith based on the Biblical revelation of
the twofold nature of the Messiah; but when perceived it is very precious and
beautiful.
“They shall look upon Me.”
The Jewish nation has hitherto regarded faith in our Lord
Jesus as irreconcilable with faith in God, and have conceived of Him as being in opposition to God.
This was the chief ground of the blind hostility to Christ on
the part of the scribes and Pharisees during His earthly ministry, and has
continued to this day, not knowing that their hatred of Christ was in its
essence nothing else than hatred of God, and their opposition to Him nothing
else than a fighting against God.
But, as Saul of Tarsus (whose experience and history are in many ways a
foreshadowment of the history of his people in relation to Christ) was startled
and surprised to learn from that voice on his way to Damascus, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest,” that those hated
Nazarenes whom he was persecuting, even unto death, were one with Him who was
now revealed to him as the risen and living Son of God, and that he who was
touching them was touching “the apple of His eye”; so shall the Jewish nation in the day when the
spirit of grace and of supplication is poured upon them, and “the eyes of the blind are
opened” to behold
the divine glory of their Messiah, be startled and surprised to discover that
their having persecuted and “pierced” Him was equivalent to their having persecuted and
pierced God, because of His being one with God, in a higher and deeper sense
even than believers are with Christ.
But just as the words, “they shall look unto Me,” set forth the essential oneness of the
pierced One with Jehovah, [448] so does the sudden transition in the same verse from the first person to
the third, and the words, “they shall mourn for Him,” teach us that, as to His person, He is yet distinct from God. The same mystery and apparent paradox
meet us in many other Old Testament scriptures which speak of the Messiah as
“Jehovah” the “mighty God,” and yet as one sent by, and
coming in the name of God, and is - a mystery which (as already stated above)
is solved to all whose eyes have been opened to the Biblical doctrine of the Tri-unity of the blessed
Godhead, and to the twofold nature of the promised Redeemer, who is perfect God
and perfect Man - the Son of David and the Son of the Highest.
(c) “Whom they have pierced.”
The verb …, daqar,
means “to pierce,” or “thrust through with a spear or lance,” 1 and points to “the climax of our
Saviour’s mortal sufferings” when, as the Gospel narrative
bears witness, “one of the soldiers with a spear
pierced His side, and straightway there came out
blood and water.” 2
1 See Num. 25: 7, 8, where the same verb is used in connection with
…, “spear” or lance; the same
verb is used also in Zech. 13: 3.
2 It has been urged that stress must not be laid on the literal fulfilment
of this item in the prophecy as recorded in the Gospel narrative, since the
prophet uses language in chap. 13: 7 “which if its literal signification be insisted on, would
imply death by the sword”; but this is a misapprehension. …,
“sword,” is used frequently, in a
general way, as the instrument of death by violence, without in many
cases defining that it would be brought about by being literally slain with the
sword. In Ps. 22: 20, e.g., we
read: “Deliver my soul from the sword (i.e., from death), my darling (my only one) from the power of
the dog”; yet in the immediate connection we read: “They pierced My hands and My feet.” We take it then that in chap. 13: 9 we have a prophecy of Messiah’s
sufferings unto death in a general
way, by the use of a figure well understood as having this signification, but
that chap. 12: 10 refers to the definite act in process of the
infliction of the sufferings unto death on our Lord, on the literal fulfilment of [His resurrection from the dead] which the Apostle John [and Peter] lays such emphasis (John 19: 34-37; [20: 17.
cf. Acts 2: 31,
R.V.])
It was a Roman soldier who did the actual deed; Roman soldiers
also were they who pierced His blessed brow with the crown of thorns, and His
hands and feet with those cruel nails ; but the guilt and responsibility for [449] these actions will be brought home to
the heart and conscience of the Jewish nation in that day, and they will then
acknowledge that both directly, by delivering Him into the hands of the
Gentiles, and indirectly, on account of their sins, it was they who pierced Him.
(d) “And
they shall mourn for (or ‘over’)
Him - vesaphedhu
alav - not only with the ordinary “mourning,” as those who mourn for the dead (in which sense the
verb …, saphad, is generally
used), but with a deep and intense mourning, namely, “as one that mourneth for his
only son (or, literally, “with the mourning of an only one”),
and “they shall be in bitterness for Him as one that is in
bitterness for his first-born.” Mourning for an
“only son” was proverbial as descriptive of the magnitude of the
grief, as we read in Jer. 6: 26: “O daughter of my people, gird thee with
sarkcloth, and wallow thyself
in ashes: make thee mourning
as for an only son, most bitter
lamentation.” And ain in Amos viii. i o: " 1 will inake it as the iizou;‑nil~,
for an only son."
But not only on account of their proverbial use to express the
intensity and bitterness of the sorrow and grief, are these names “the
only one”
and “first-born” introduced here in connection with Israel’s mourning
over the Messiah whom they had pierced, they are peculiarly appropriate
designations of Him who is “the First-born of every creature,” and of whom the apostle
exclaims: “We beheld His glory, the glory
as of the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.”
And He is not only the “first” and “only-begotten” as the Son of God, in relation
to the Father, but as the Son of Man, and more particularly in relation to the
Jewish nation. He was their child of promise upon whom the
hopes and expectations of the nation had been centred through the
centuries. He is the “only One” whom this nationally barren
woman, who was betrothed unto Jehovah, had brought forth, as it were,
miraculously, by the power of Gad.
And it was
ordained that He should be “the First-born among many brethren,” first and foremost to them
who, according to the flesh, are “His own,” [450] as well as in relation to men generally - and Him they have with wicked hands “pierced” and slain! No wonder that “in that day,” when the spirit of grace and
supplication is poured upon them, and their eyes are open to behold Him, and to
recognise the fearful national crime which they committed, to their own sorrow
and hurt, they shall mourn over Him “with the mourning for an only one,” and shall be in bitterness
for Him as he is in bitterness “who mourneth for his first-born.”
It is in that day of their deep sorrow and contrition that
they shall, amid their broken-hearted sobs, utter that great national
confession and lament contained in that wonderful chapter in Isaiah:
“He was
despised, and rejected of men; a Man of Sorrows, and
acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men
hide their face He was despised; and we esteemed
Him not.
Surely He hath borne our griefs, and
carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our
transgressions, He was bruised for our
iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was
upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.
All we like
sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one
to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him
the iniquity of us all.”
(e) And not only
will the mourning be great and intense, it will also be universal and yet individual:
“In that day shall there be a great mourning in
One or two points in these verses need explanation:
(1)
1 “Hadadrimmon” was, according
to Jerome, a city near Jezreel (“in the valley of
Megiddo”), which in his day was called Maximianopolis, and has
been identified by others with the site of
the modern village of Rammaneh, or Ramani, in the same
“valley,” or “plain”; but the identification is doubtful.
Hitzig, who first held that the reference might be to some
mourning for Ahaziah, king of Judah, who was wounded by Jehu when the latter
rebelled against Joram, and who fled to Megiddo, and died there (2 Kings 9: 27),
afterwards, in his commentary, propounded the still more absurd view, which,
however, has been adopted by some modern writers, i.e., that the mourning of
Hadadrimmon refers to the mourning for the god Adonis, who, according to
mythology, was slain by a boar, and whose orgies probably had their origin in
Phoenicia.
A plausible ground for the conjecture that Hadadrimmon,
instead of being a place-name, might rather he the name of the object of
mourning - that is, the god Adonis - is advanced by these critics, namely, that
according to 2 Chron. 35., Josiah, though
mortally wounded in Megiddo, was brought to Jerusalem, where he died, and that
the great mourning for him took place there.
But to this it has been properly replied that “the mourning may be considered as having commenced at
Hadadrimmon, where the good king received his deadly wound, even though the
great national mourning took place in
Moreover, as it has been suggested, “the mourning of Hadadrimmon” may be explained as
“the mourning over Hadadrimmon,”
i.e., over the national calamity which took place there.
Other suggestions - such as that of Pressel, who considers
that the mourning refers to the wailing of the mother of Sisera over her son,
the great chieftain of the Canaanites, who was slain by Jael not far from
The reference can be nothing else than to the national
mourning over the pious young king Josiah, who was slain by Pharaoh Necho
“in the
valley of Megiddon,”
as recorded in 2 Kings 23: 29,
30, and more fully in 2 Chron.
35: 20-27. His death was the greatest sorrow
which had till then befallen
(2) In the
universal, yet individual, mourning which, commencing in
It would require a treatise to analyse the various conjectures
and explanations which have been advanced on this point by Jewish and Christian
commentators.
Let me in the briefest possible manner give here what seems to
me the most satisfactory explanation.
And first, we may say with certainty that “the family of the house of
Nathan” does not
refer to the posterity of Nathan the prophet, as representing the prophetic
order, as the Rabbis and some Christian writers have supposed, but to the
family of Nathan, the son of David and brother of Solomon (2 Sam. 5: 14), whose name figures also in the genealogy of
our Lord in Luke 3: 31.
Likewise, “the family of the Shimeite”
does not refer to the tribe of Simeon, which, according to rabbinic fiction,
furnished the teachers of the nation;1 for in that case, apart from other
considerations, the name would be differently written in the Hebrew, 2 but refers to Shimei, the son of Gershon and grandson of Levi (Num. 3:
18). We have thus two families of the
royal and two of the priestly line, and of these one stands for the [453] chief (David for the royal, and Levi for the priestly), and of the other (Nathan for the royal, and Shimei for the priestly), for
the subordinate families of
their lines - as including and representing the whole - to indicate, as
Hengstenberg suggests, that the mourning spoken of would pervade every family
(of these lines) from the highest to the lowest.
1 Jerome sums up the Jewish view, which he seems to have
adopted, thus: “In David the regal tribe is
included, i.e.,
2 …, Simonite - instead of as it is in the text -, …
But though these, as the two aristocratic and privileged
lines, the rulers and priests, who, alas! in times past often set an evil example to the
whole nation, will now be foremost in their self-contrition and mourning over
the great national sin, their example for good will now also be followed by all the rest of the
people. This is expressed in the
last verse of the chapter, which tells us that “all the families
that remain shall mourn, every family a part, and their wives apart.”
In the last sentence of the chapter, not only the magnitude
and universality, but the depth and intensity, as well as the individual character of this
unprecedented mourning, is once again described. It is strikingly pictured as a mourning
which shall not only be manifested in public, but be participated in by each
family apart. And not only are
families spoken of as mourning apart from families, but individuals, compelled by
the deep sorrow which shall overwhelm them, shall weep apart by themselves.
This depicts a sorrow greater than any previous sorrow. Even husbands shall mourn apart from
their wives, and wives apart from their husbands, because each individual man
or woman will be overwhelmed with his or her own individual share in the guilt of having slain their Messiah.
It will thus be both a national and individual mourning at the
same time, and no mere ceremonial lamentation, but a genuine sorrow of heart. “Each
individual shall experience the grief so keenly as to desire to hide himself
from the eyes of others” 1 - even from those nearest to them.
1 Wright.
The only one who will be able effectually to comfort them in
this great mourning will be the Lord Himself, He over whom they shall mourn.
And He shall comfort them [454] in that day as “him whom his mother comforteth,” and they
“shall be comforted in
When once this great but godly sorrow shall have accomplished
its blessed end in working a repentance never to be repented of, He shall pour
His consolations into their broken hearts, and give unto them the “oil of
joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the
spirit of heaviness.” Like Joseph to his brethren (in whom the history of Christ
and Israel is depicted), He will say unto them: “As for you, ye thought evil against me, but
God meant it unto good, to bring to pass,
as it is this day, to
save much people alive: now, therefore, be not grieved nor
angry with yourselves.” 1
1 Gen. 45: 5, 50: 20.
We are done with the exposition of this great Messianic prediction. The ultimate literal fulfilment of it
lies yet in the future, in the day for which we watch and pray, when our Lord
Jesus shall, according to His promise, appear in His glory, and the Jewish
nation shall literally look upon Him whom they have pierced, and be, as it
were, “born in a day.” But there
is a forestalment, so to say, in the
fulfilment of this prophecy in the case of the individual even now. “And thus,”
to quote the words of an honoured Hebrew Christian brother and true master of
2 Adolph Saphir.
And as it is with the individual Jew, so it is with the individual
Gentile. Yes, thanks be to God, as we all, [455] whether Jew or Gentile, had
our share in the guilt of Christ’s crucifixion because of our common sin, so also may all have their share in the [eternal] salvation which comes
through a penitent look of faith on
Him whom we have pierced.
The Cross has been from the beginning, and must continue to
be, the centre of all true Christian devotion, “the
security against passion, the impulse to self-denial, the parent of zeal for
souls, the incentive to love. This
has struck the rock, that it gushed forth in tears of penitence; this, the
strength and vigour of hatred of sin - to look to Him whom our sins have
pierced.”
Let us all then look to Him for our salvation, and have our
gaze fixed upon Him for our sanctification, and so have no occasion to dread
that awful day when “He cometh with clouds; and every
eye shall see Him, and they which
pierced Him: and all the
kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so,
Amen”
(Rev. 1: 7).
* * *
PRAY FOR ‘THE PEACE
OF
THE
“For as the earth
bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to
spring forth; so the LORD God will cause righteousness and praise to spring
forh before all the nations.
For
-
Isaiah 61: 11
- 62: 1-3, R.V.
THE HOME OF ISRAEL
(Genesis 13 and 17: 8)
By faith, and at the Lord’s command,
A pilgrim left his native land.
Sent forth by God to found a home
For
generations yet to come.
Obscure at first the path he trod,
He left the issue with his God;
And made it daily his delight
To walk by faith, and not by sight.
Thrice happy they
who walk with God,
Though dark the day, and rough the road.
For them a country is prepared,
A
recompense of high reward.
‘Arise and view what I design
To be possessed by thee and
thine;
The goodly land thine eyes
survey
No power shall ever take away.’
Thus was the heritage decreed
To Abraham and to all his seed;
And that fair land is still their home
For
generations yet to come.
-
William Wileman.