ISAIAH xlii. 1-7.
We now understand, whom to regard as the Servant of the Lord. The Service of God was a commission to witness and prophesy for God upon earth, made out at first in the name of the entire nation Israel. When their unfitness as a whole became apparent, it was delegated to a portion of them. But as there were added to its duties of prophecy, those of martyrdom and atonement for the sins of the people, our prophet, it would seem, saw it focussed in the person of an individual.
In history Jesus Christ has fulfilled this commission both in its national and in its personal aspects. He realised the ideal of the prophet-people. He sacrificed Himself and made atonement for the sins of men. But having illustrated the service of God in the world, Christ did not exhaust it. He returned it to His people, a more clamant conscience than ever, and He also gave them grace to fulfil its demands. Through Christ the original destination of these prophecies becomes, as Paul saw, their ultimate destination as well. That Israel refused this Service or failed in it only leaves it more clearly to us as duty; that Jesus fulfilled it not only confirms that duty, but adds hope and courage to discharge it.
Although the terms of this Service were published nearly two thousand five hundred years ago, in a petty dialect that is now dead, to a helpless tribe of captives in a world, whose civilisation has long sunk to ruin, yet these terms are so free of all that is provincial or antique, they are so adapted to the lasting needs of humanity, they are so universal in their scope, they are so instinct with that love which never faileth, though prophecies fail and tongues cease, that they come home to heart and conscience to-day with as much tenderness and authority as ever. The first programme of these terms is given in ch. xlii. 1-7. The authorised English version is one of unapproachable beauty, but its emphasis and rhythm are not the emphasis and rhythm of the original, and it has missed one at least of the striking points of the Hebrew. The following version, which makes no attempt at elegance, is almost literal, follows the same order as the original that it may reproduce the same emphasis, and, as far as English can, repeats the original rhythm. The point, which it rescues from the neglect of the Authorised Version, is this, that the verbs used of the Servant in ver. 4, _He shall not fade nor break_, are the same as are used of the wick and the reed in ver. 3.
_Lo, My Servant! I hold by him;_ _My Chosen! Well-pleased is My soul!_ _I have set My Spirit upon him;_ _Law to the Nations he brings forth._
_He cries not, nor lifts up,_[177] _Nor lets his voice be heard in the street. Reed_ that is _broken he breaks not off,_ _Wick_ that is _fading he does not quench:_ _Faithfully brings he forth Law._ _He shall not fade neither break,_ _Till he have set in the Earth_[178] _Law;_ _And for his teaching the Isles are waiting._
_Thus saith the God, Jehovah,_ _Creator of the heavens that stretched them forth,_ _Spreader of Earth and her produce,_ _Giver of breath to the people upon her,_ _And of spirit to them that walk therein:_ _I, Jehovah, have called thee in righteousness,_ _To grasp thee fast by thy hand, and to keep thee,_ _And to set thee for a covenant of the People,_ _For a light of the Nations:_ _To open blind eyes,_ _To bring forth from durance the captive,_ _From prison the dwellers in darkness._