Mark among them, must be understood to have been thoroughly familiar with this use of the term, and could scarcely fail to see in its appellative application to Christ a suggestion of His deity, when the implications of the context were, as we have seen them repeatedly to be, of His superhuman dignity and nature. Par- ticularly when they apply to Him Old Testament passages in which the term ' Lord ' refers to God, we can scarcely suppose they do so without a consciousness of the implications involved, and without a distinct intention to convey them.^^ When, for example, in the opening verses of Mark, we read: " Even as it is writ- ten in Isaiah the prophet, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way; The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ye ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight, — [so] John came," etc., we cannot easily rid ourselves of the im- pression that the term ' Lord ' is applied to Jesus. The former of the two prophetic citations here brought
text. This in turn, however, rests upon the connection of the idea of ' Lord ' with ' Jehovah.' " Jehovah," says Oehler ( Theology of the O. T., E. T., ed. Day, 1883, p. loi), " is the Lord . . . That the idea of ^JTX is immediately connected with the idea of Jehovah is clear from the fact that the two names are frequently associated, and that ■•JTX would in later times be substituted in reading for iTliT . . ." When our Lord is called ' Lord,' therefore, in the divine sense, it is to Jehovah specifically that the suggestion points.
1^ Cf. Stanton, Jeiulsh and Christian Messiah, 197, 198 and Note on the latter page. Speaking of passages like these he says: " Deut 33- appears to be alluded to in various places in the Synoptists. It is a passage which speaks in the clearest terms of Jehovah coming to judg- ment, and the attribution of the language in the Synoptists to the second coming of the Christ is an indication of the existence, even in the body of tradition which they record, of a belief in the oneness of Christ with God." Mutatis mutandis, this remark applies to the passage immediately to be adduced.
''Mark's Conception of Our Lord 49
together is distinctly made to refer to Christ, by a change In the pronouns from the form they bear In the original — though the reference in the original is to Jehovah : and this by an inevitable consequence carries with it the reference of the latter also to Christ.^** But in the original of Isaiah 40^ again the reference of the term ' Lord ' is to Jehovah. Here we see Jesus then Identified by means of the common term ' Lord ' with Jehovah.''^ Of course it may be said that It is not Jesus who is identified with Jehovah, but the coming of Jesus which Is Identified with the " advent of Jehovah " to redeem His people predicted so frequently In the Old Testament.^'^ And this explanation might
20 So Sven Herner {op. cit., pp. 7 et seq., cf. pp. 4, 5) solidly argues.
21 Cf. A. B. Davidson, The Theology of the O. T., p. 362: "That splendid passage, Is 40^"^^, which speaks of Jehovah coming in strength, that is, in His fulness, and feeding His flock like a shepherd, is interpreted in the Gospels of the Son. It was in the Son, or as the Son, that Jehovah so manifested Himself. By the Old Testament prophet a distinction in the Godhead was not thought of; but subse- quent revelation casts light on the preceding. The Lord, the Re- deemer and Judge, is God in the Son."
22 According to Dr. A. B. Davidson's representation this is as far as the Old Testament writers themselves go with regard to the Mes- siah. They came to look upon the coming of the Messianic King as the coming of Jehovah ; but not as if the Messiah were Jehovah, but only as if in the Messiah Jehovah came to His people. Cf. e.g. The Theology of the O. T., p. 385: "It may be doubtful if the O. T. went so far as to identify the Messiah with Jehovah or to represent the Mes- siah as divine. It went the length of saying, however, that Jehovah would be present in His fulness in the Messiah, so that the Messiah might fitly be named 'God with us' and 'Mighty God.'" He adds: " It was not a difficult step to take, to infer that the Messiah was Him- self God, and that because He was God He was Saviour; and then to apply even those passages which speak of Jehovah's coming in per- son to His coming as Messiah." It was this step that (if it remained to be taken) was taken by our Lord and the evangelists.
'50 The Designations of Our Lord