The reward of his overcoming temptation - yet with it also the fitting for still fiercer conflict (which two, indeed, are always conjoined), was at hand. After His victorious contest with the Devil, Angels had come to minister to Jesus in body and soul. But better than Angels' vision came to refresh and strengthen His faithful witness John. On the very day of the Baptist's temptation Jesus had left the wilderness. On the morrow after it, John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold, the Lamb of God, Which taketh away the sin of the world!' We cannot doubt, that the thought here present to the mind of John was the description of The Servant of Jehovah,' [1667] as set forth in Is. liii. If all along the Baptist had been filled with Isaiah-thoughts of the Kingdom, surely in the forty days after he had seen the King, a new morning' must have risen upon them, [1668] and the halo of His glory shone around the well-remembered prophecy. It must always have been Messianically understood; [1669] it formed the groundwork of Messianic thought to the New Testament writers [1670] - nor did the Synagogue read it otherwise, till the necessities of controversy diverted its application, not indeed from the times, but from the Person of the Messiah. [1671] But we can understand how, during those forty days, this greatest height of Isaiah's conception of the Messiah was the one outstanding fact before his view. And what he believed, that he spake, when again, and unexpectedly, he saw Jesus.
Yet, while regarding his words as an appeal to the prophecy of Isaiah, two other references must not be excluded from them: those to the Paschal Lamb, and to the Daily Sacrifice. These are, if not directly pointed to, yet implied. For the Paschal Lamb was, in a sense, the basis of all the sacrifices of the Old Testament, not only from its saving import to Israel, but as that which really made them the Church,' [1672] and people of God. Hence the institution of the Paschal Lamb was, so to speak, only enlarged and applied in the daily sacrifice of a Lamb, in which this twofold idea of redemption and fellowship was exhibited. Lastly, the prophecy of Isaiah liii. was but the complete realisation of these two ideas in the Messiah. Neither could the Paschal Lamb, with its completion in the Daily Sacrifice, be properly viewed without this prophecy of Isaiah, nor yet that prophecy properly understood without its reference to its two great types. And here one Jewish comment in regard to the Daily Sacrifice (not previously pointed out) is the more significant, that it dates from the very time of Jesus. The passage reads almost like a Christian interpretation of sacrifice. It explains how the morning and evening sacrifices were intended to atone, the one for the sins of the night, the other for those of the day, so as ever to leave Israel guiltless before God; and it expressly ascribes to them the efficacy of a Paraclete - that being the word used. [1673] Without further following this remarkable Rabbinic commentation, [1674] which stretches back its view of sacrifices to the Paschal Lamb, and, beyond it, to that offering of Isaac by Abraham which, in the Rabbinic view, was the substratum of all sacrifices, we turn again to its teaching about the Lamb of the Daily Sacrifice. Here we have the express statement, that both the school of Shammai and that of Hillel - the latter more fully - insisted on the symbolic import of this sacrifice in regard to the forgiveness of sin. Kebhasim' (the Hebrew word for lambs'), explained the school of Shammai, because, according to Micah vii. 19, they suppress [in the A.V. subdue'] our iniquities (the Hebrew word Kabhash meaning he who suppresseth).' [1675] Still more strong is the statement of the school of Hillel, to the effect that the sacrifical lambs were termed Kebhasim (from kabhas, to wash'), because they wash away the sins of Israel.' [1676] The quotation just made gains additional interest from the circumstance, that it occurs in a meditation' (if such it may be called) for the new moon of the Passover-month (Nisan). In view of such clear testimony from the time of Christ, less positiveness of assertion might, not unreasonably, be expected from those who declare that the sacrifices bore no reference to the forgiveness of sins, just as, in the face of the application made by the Baptist and other New Testament writers, more exegetical modesty seems called for on the part of those who deny the Messianic references in Isaiah.