The next references to the Servant are a couple of paradoxes, which are evidently the prophet's attempt to show _why_ it was necessary to draw in the Servant of Jehovah from the whole to a part of the people. The first of these paradoxes is in ch. xlii. ver. 18.
_Ye deaf, hearken! and ye blind, look ye to see! Who is blind but My Servant, and deaf as My Messenger_ whom _I send? Who is blind as Meshullam, and blind as the Servant of Jehovah? Vision of many things--and thou dost not observe, Opening of ears and he hears not!_
The context shows that the Servant here--or Meshullam, as he is called, the _devoted_ or _submissive one_, from the same root, and of much the same form as the Arabic Muslim[152]--is the whole people; but they are entitled _Servant_ only in order to show how unfit they are for the task to which they have been designated, and what a paradox their title is beside their real character. God had given them every opportunity by _making great His instruction_ (ver. 21, cf. p. 247), and, when that failed, by His sore discipline in exile (vers. 24, 25). _For who gave Jacob for spoil and Israel to the robbers? Did not Jehovah? He against whom we sinned, and they would not walk in His ways, neither were obedient to His instruction. So He poured upon him the fury of His anger and the force of war._ But even this did not awake the dull nation. _Though it set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it kindled upon him, yet he laid it not to heart._ The nation as a whole had been favoured with God's revelation; as a whole they had been brought into His purifying furnace of the Exile. But as they have benefited by neither the one nor the other, the natural conclusion is that as a whole they are no more fit to be God's Servant. Such is the hint which this paradox is intended to give us.
But a little further on there is an obverse paradox, which plainly says, that although the people are blind and deaf as a whole, still the capacity for service is found among them alone (xliii. 8, 10).
_Bring forth the blind people--yet eyes are there! And the deaf, yet ears have they!... Ye are My witnesses, saith Jehovah, and My Servant whom I have chosen._
The preceding verses (vv. 1-7) show us that it is again the whole people, in their bulk and scattered fragments, who are referred to. Blind though they be, _yet are there eyes_ among them; deaf though they be, yet _they have ears_. And so Jehovah addresses them all, in contradistinction to the heathen peoples (ver. 9), as His Servant.
These two complementary paradoxes together show this: that while Israel as a whole is unfit to be the Servant, it is nevertheless within Israel, alone of all the world's nations, that the true capacities for service are found--_eyes are there, ears have they_. They prepare us for the Servant's testimony about himself, in which, while he owns himself to be distinct from Israel as a whole, he is nevertheless still called Israel. This is given in ch. xlix. _And He said unto me, My Servant art thou; Israel, in whom I will glorify Myself. And now saith Jehovah, my moulder from the womb to be a Servant unto Him, to turn again Jacob to Him, and that Israel might not be destroyed; and I am of value in the eyes of Jehovah, and my God is my strength. And He said, It is too light for thy being My Servant,_ merely _to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will also set thee for a light of nations, to be My salvation to the end of the earth_ (xlix. 3-6). Here the Servant, though still called Israel, is clearly distinct from the nation as a whole, for part of his work is to raise the nation up again. And, moreover, he tells us this as his own testimony about himself. He is no longer spoken of in the third person, he speaks for himself in the first. This is significant. It is more than a mere artistic figure, the effect of our prophet's dramatic style--as if the Servant now stood opposite him, so vivid and near that he heard him speak, and quoted him in the direct form of speech. It is more probably the result of moral sympathy: the prophet speaks out of the heart of the Servant, in the name of that better portion of Israel which was already conscious of the Divine call, and of its distinction in this respect from the mass of the people.