![were most in danger of absorption into the world. And, conversely,
when disaster came down, and there was no hope in the sky, it was
upon the inward sense of their election to the service of God that
the prophets rallied the people's faith and assured them of their
survival as a nation. They brought to Israel that sovereign message,
which renders all who hear it immortal: "God has a service for you to
serve upon earth." In the Exile especially, the wonderful survival of
the nation, with the subservience of all history to that end, is made
to turn on this,—that Israel has a unique purpose to serve. When
Jeremiah and Ezekiel seek to assure the captives of their return to
the land and of the restoration of the people, they commend so
unlikely a promise by reminding them that the nation is the Servant
of God. This name, applied by them for the first time to the nation
as a whole, they bind up with the national existence. Fear thou not,
O My Servant Jacob, saith Jehovah; neither be dismayed, O Israel:
for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their
captivity.[143] These words plainly say, that Israel as a nation cannot
die, for God has a use for them to serve. The singularity of Israel's
redemption from Babylon is due to the singularity of the service that
God has for the nation to perform. Our prophet speaks in the same
strain: Thou, Israel, My Servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of
Abraham My lover, whom I took hold of from the ends of the earth
and its corners. I have called thee and said unto thee, My Servant
art thou, I have chosen thee and have not cast thee away (ch. xli. 8
ff). No one can miss the force of these words. They are the
assurance of Israel's miraculous survival, not because he is God's
favourite, but because he is God's servant, with a unique work in the
world. Many other verses repeat the same truth.[144] They call Israel
the Servant, and Jacob the chosen, of God, in order to persuade the
people that they are not forgotten of Him, and that their seed shall
live and be blessed. Israel survives because he serves—Servus
servatur.
Now for this service,—which had been the purpose of the nation's
election at first, the mainstay of its unique preservation since, and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3912-250309085601-23b6dd19/85/MCTS-Guide-to-Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Network-Infrastructure-Configuration-1st-Edition-Bender-Test-Bank-14-320.jpg)
![the reason of all its singular pre-eminence before God,—Israel was
equipped by two great experiences. These were Redemption and
Revelation.
On the former redemptions of Israel from the power of other nations
our prophet does not dwell much. You feel, that they are present to
his mind, for he sometimes describes the coming redemption from
Babylon in terms of them. And once, in an appeal to the Arm of
Jehovah, he calls out: Awake like the days of old, ancient
generations! Art thou not it that hewed Rahab in pieces, that pierced
the Dragon? Art thou not it which dried up the sea, the waters of the
great deep; that made the depths of the sea a way of passage for
the redeemed?[145] There is, too, that beautiful passage in ch. lxiii.,
which makes mention of the lovingkindnesses of Jehovah, according
to all that He hath bestowed upon us; which describes the carriage
of the people all the days of old, how He brought them out of the
sea, caused His glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses,
divided the water before them, led them through the deeps as a
horse on the meadow, that they stumbled not. But, on the whole,
our prophet is too much engrossed with the immediate prospect of
release from Babylon, to remember that past, of which it has been
truly said, He hath not dealt so with any people. It is the new glory
that is upon him. He counts the deliverance from Babylon as already
come; to his rapt eye it is its marvellous power and costliness, which
already clothes the people in their unique brilliance and honour. Thus
saith Jehovah, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake
have I sent to Babylon, and I will bring down their nobles, all of
them, and the Chaldeans, in the ships of their exulting.[146] But it is
more than Babylon that is balanced against them. I am Jehovah, thy
God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour. I am giving as thy ransom,
Egypt, Cush and Seba in exchange for thee, because thou art
precious in mine eyes, and hast made thyself valuable (lit., of
weight); and I have loved thee, therefore do I give mankind for
thee, and peoples for thy life.[147] Mankind for thee, and peoples for
thy life,—all the world for this little people? It is intelligible only](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3912-250309085601-23b6dd19/85/MCTS-Guide-to-Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Network-Infrastructure-Configuration-1st-Edition-Bender-Test-Bank-15-320.jpg)
![moral issues of life; and even religious customs are omitted, such as
the employment of women in the sanctuary, which, however
innocent in themselves, might lead men into temptations, not
desirable in connection with the professional pursuit of religion.[148]
In short, a stern and inexorable conscience was at work in the
Hebrew religion, which was not at work in any of the religions most
akin to it. In our previous volume we saw the same conscience
inspiring the prophets. Prophecy was not confined to the Hebrews; it
was a general Semitic institution; but no one doubts the absolutely
distinct character of the prophecy, which was conscious of having
the Spirit of Jehovah. Its religious ideas were original, and in it we
have, as all admit, a moral phenomenon unique in history. When we
turn to ask the secret of this distinction, we find the answer in the
character of the God, whom Israel served. The God explains the
people; Israel is the response to Jehovah. Each of the laws of the
nation is enforced by the reason, For I am holy. Each of the
prophets brings his message from a God, exalted in righteousness.
In short, look where you will in the Old Testament,—come to it as a
critic or as a worshipper,—you discover the revealed character of
Jehovah to be the effective principle at work. It is this Divine
character, which draws Israel from among the nations to their
destiny, which selects and builds the law to be a wall around them,
and which by each revelation of itself discovers to the people both
the measure of their delinquency and the new ideals of their service
to humanity. Like the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by
night, we see it in front of Israel at every stage of their marvellous
progress down the ages.
So that when Jehovah says that He has magnified the Revelation
and made it glorious, He speaks of a magnitude of a real, historical
kind, that can be tested by exact methods of observation. Israel's
election by Jehovah, their formation, their unique preparation for
service, are not the mere boasts of an overweening patriotism, but
sober names for historical processes as real and evident as any that
history contains.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3912-250309085601-23b6dd19/85/MCTS-Guide-to-Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Network-Infrastructure-Configuration-1st-Edition-Bender-Test-Bank-17-320.jpg)
![in which God Himself is lifted up and adored. Jehovah and Jehovah's
Servant—these are the two heroes of the drama.
Now we might naturally expect that so indispensable and fondly
imagined a figure would also be defined past all ambiguity, whether
as to His time or person or name. But the opposite is the case.
About Scripture there are few more intricate questions than those on
the Servant of the Lord. Is He a Person or Personification? If the
latter, is He a Personification of all Israel? Or of a part of Israel? Or
of the ideal Israel? Or of the Order of the Prophets? Or if a Person—
is he the prophet himself? Or a martyr who has already lived and
suffered, like Jeremiah? Or One still to come, like the promised
Messiah? Each of these suggestions has not only been made about
the Servant, but derives considerable support from one or another of
our prophet's dissolving views of his person and work. A final answer
to them can be given only after a comparative study of all the
relevant passages; but as these are scattered over the prophecy, and
our detailed exposition of them must necessarily be interrupted, it
will be of advantage to take here a prospect of them all, and see to
what they combine to develop this sublime character and mission.
And after we have seen what the prophecies themselves teach
concerning the Servant, we shall inquire how they were understood
and fulfilled by the New Testament; and that will show us how to
expound and apply them with regard to ourselves.
I.
The Hebrew word for Servant means a person at the disposal of
another—to carry out his will, do his work, represent his interests. It
was thus applied to the representatives of a king or the worshippers
of a god.[149] All Israelites were thus in a sense the servants of
Jehovah; though in the singular the title was reserved for persons of
extraordinary character or usefulness.
But we have seen, as clearly as possible, that God set apart for His
chief service upon earth, not an individual nor a group of individuals,
but a whole nation in its national capacity. We have seen Israel's](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3912-250309085601-23b6dd19/85/MCTS-Guide-to-Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Network-Infrastructure-Configuration-1st-Edition-Bender-Test-Bank-23-320.jpg)
![political origin and preservation bound up with that service; we have
heard the whole nation plainly called, by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the
Servant of Jehovah.[150] Nothing could be more clear than this, that
in the earlier years of the Exile the Servant of Jehovah was Israel as
a whole, Israel as a body politic.
It is also in this sense that our prophet first uses the title in a
passage we have already quoted (xli. 8); Thou Israel, My Servant,
Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham My lover, whom I took
hold of from the ends of the earth and its corners! I called thee and
said unto thee, My Servant art thou. I have chosen thee, and not
cast thee away. Here the Servant is plainly the historical nation,
descended from Abraham, and the subject of those national
experiences which are traced in the previous chapter. It is the same
in the following verses:—xliv. 1 ff: Yet now hear, O Jacob My servant;
and Israel, whom I have chosen: thus saith Jehovah thy Maker, and
thy Moulder from the womb, He will help thee. Fear not, My servant
Jacob; and Jeshurun, whom I have chosen.... I will pour My spirit
upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring. xliv. 21:
Remember these things, O Jacob; and Israel, for My servant art
thou: I have formed thee; a servant for Myself art thou; O Israel,
thou shalt not be forgotten of Me. xlviii. 20: Go ye forth from
Babylon; say ye, Jehovah hath redeemed His servant Jacob. In all
these verses, which bind up the nation's restoration from exile with
the fact that God called it to be His Servant, the title Servant is
plainly equivalent to the national name Israel or Jacob. But Israel or
Jacob is not a label for the mere national idea, or the bare political
framework, without regard to the living individuals included in it. To
the eye and heart of Him, Who counts the number of the stars,
Israel means no mere outline, but all the individuals of the living
generation of the people—thy seed, that is, every born Israelite,
however fallen or forwandered. This is made clear in a very beautiful
passage in ch. xliii. (vv. 1-7): Thus saith Jehovah, thy Creator, O
Jacob; thy Moulder, O Israel.... Fear not, for I am with thee; from
the sunrise I will bring thy seed, and from the sunset will I gather
thee; ... My sons from far, and My daughters from the end of the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3912-250309085601-23b6dd19/85/MCTS-Guide-to-Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Network-Infrastructure-Configuration-1st-Edition-Bender-Test-Bank-24-320.jpg)
![perceive that the true, effective Israel—the real Servant of Jehovah
—must needs be a much smaller body than the sum of all these: a
loyal kernel within Israel, who were still conscious of the national
calling, and capable of carrying it out; who stood sensible of their
duty to the whole world, but whose first conscience was for their
lapsed and lost countrymen. This Israel within Israel was the real
Servant of the Lord; to personify it in that character—however vague
might be the actual proportion it would assume in his own or in any
other generation—would be as natural to our dramatic prophet as to
personify the nation as a whole.
All this very natural process—this passing from the historical Israel,
the nation originally designed by God to be His Servant, to the
conscious and effective Israel, that uncertain quantity within the
present and every future generation—takes place in the chapters
before us; and it will be sufficiently easy for us to follow if we only
remember that our prophet is not a dogmatic theologian, careful to
make clear each logical distinction, but a dramatic poet, who delivers
his ideas in groups, tableaux, dialogues, interrupted by choruses;
and who writes in a language incapable of expressing such delicate
differences, except by dramatic contrasts, and by the one other
figure of which he is so fond—paradox.
Perhaps the first traces of distinction between the real Servant and
the whole nation are to be found in the Programme of his Mission in
ch. xlii. 1-7. There it is said that the Servant is to be for a covenant
of the people (ver. 6). I have explained below why we are to
understand people as here meaning Israel.[151] And in ver. 7 it is
said of the Servant that he is to open blind eyes, bring forth from
prison the captive, from the house of bondage dwellers in darkness:
phrases that are descriptive, of course, of the captive Israel. Already,
then, in ch. xlii. the Servant is something distinct from the whole
nation, whose Covenant and Redeemer he is to be.
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](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3912-250309085601-23b6dd19/85/MCTS-Guide-to-Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Network-Infrastructure-Configuration-1st-Edition-Bender-Test-Bank-28-320.jpg)
![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!...](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3912-250309085601-23b6dd19/85/MCTS-Guide-to-Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Network-Infrastructure-Configuration-1st-Edition-Bender-Test-Bank-29-320.jpg)
![looked upon the Servant as an individual, and who regard ch. liii. as
simply a sublimer form of the prophet's previous pictures of the ideal
people of God. Surely Christ could and did fulfil prophecies other
than personal ones. The types of Him, which the New Testament
quotes from the Old Testament, are not exclusively individuals.
Christ is sometimes represented as realising in His Person and work
statements, which, as they were first spoken, could only refer to
Israel, the nation. Matthew, for instance, applies to Jesus a text
which Hosea wrote primarily of the whole Jewish people: Out of
Egypt have I called My Son.[153] Or, to take an instance from our
own prophet—who but Jesus fulfilled ch. xlix., in which, as we have
seen, it is not an individual, but the ideal of the prophet people, that
is figured? So that, even if it were proved past all doubt—proved
from grammar, context, and every prophetic analogy—that in writing
ch. liii. our prophet had still in view that aspect of the nation which
he has personified in ch. xlix., such a conclusion would not weaken
the connection between the prophecy and its unquestioned
fulfilment by Jesus Christ, nor render the two less evidently part of
one Divine design.
But we are by no means compelled to adopt the impersonal view of
ch. liii. On the contrary, while the question is one, to which all
experts know the difficulty of finding an absolutely conclusive
answer one way or the other, it seems to me that reasons prevail,
which make for the personal interpretation. . Let us see what exactly
are the objections to taking ch. lii. 13-liii. in a personal sense. First,
it is very important to observe, that they do not rise out of the
grammar or language of the passage. The reference of both of these
is consistently individual. Throughout, the Servant is spoken of in the
singular.[154] The name Israel is not once applied to him: nothing—
except that the nation has also suffered—suggests that he is playing
a national rôle; there is no reflection in his fate of the features of the
Exile. The antithesis, which was evident in previous passages,
between a better Israel and the mass of the people has disappeared.
The Servant is contrasted, not with the nation as a whole, but with](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3912-250309085601-23b6dd19/85/MCTS-Guide-to-Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Network-Infrastructure-Configuration-1st-Edition-Bender-Test-Bank-33-320.jpg)
![His people as individuals. 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. As far as grammar can, this surely
distinguishes a single person. It is true, that one or two phrases
suggest so colossal a figure—he shall startle many nations, and
kings shall shut their mouths at him—that for a moment we think of
the spectacle of a people rather than of a solitary human presence.
But even such descriptions are not incompatible with a single
person.[155] On the other hand, there are phrases which we can
scarcely think are used of any but a historical individual; such as that
he was taken from oppression and judgement, that is from a process
of law which was tyranny, from a judicial murder, and that he
belonged to a particular generation—As for his generation, who
considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living. Surely a
historical individual is the natural meaning of these words. And, in
fact, critics like Ewald and Wellhausen, who interpret the passage, in
its present context, of the ideal Israel, find themselves forced to
argue, that it has been borrowed for this use from the older story of
some actual martyr—so individual do its references seem to them
throughout.
If, then, the grammar and language of the passage thus conspire to
convey the impression of an individual, what are the objections to
supposing that an individual is meant? Critics have felt, in the main,
three objections to the discovery of a historical individual in Isa. lii.
13-liii.
The first of these that we take is chronological, and arises from the
late date to which we have found it necessary to assign the
prophecy. Our prophet, it is averred, associates the work of the
Servant with the restoration of the people; but he sees that
restoration too close to him to be able to think of the appearance,
ministry and martyrdom of a real historic life happening before it.
(Our prophet, it will be remembered, wrote about 546, and the
Restoration came in 538.) "There is no room for a history like that of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3912-250309085601-23b6dd19/85/MCTS-Guide-to-Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Network-Infrastructure-Configuration-1st-Edition-Bender-Test-Bank-34-320.jpg)
![the suffering Servant between the prophet's place and the
Restoration."[156]
Now, this objection might be turned, even if it were true that the
prophet identified the suffering Servant's career with so immediate
and so short a process as the political deliverance from Babylon. For,
in that case, the prophet would not be leaving less room for the
Servant, than, in ch. ix., Isaiah himself leaves for the birth, the
growth to manhood, and the victories of the Prince-of-the-Four-
Names, before that immediate relief from the Assyrian, which he
expects the Prince to effect. But does our prophet identify the
suffering Servant's career with the redemption from Babylon and the
Return? It is plain that he does not—at least in those portraits of the
Servant, which are most personal. Our prophet has really two
prospects for Israel—one, the actual deliverance from Babylon; the
other, a spiritual redemption and restoration. If, like his fellow
prophets, he sometimes runs these two together, and talks of the
latter in the terms of the former, he keeps them on the whole
distinct, and assigns them to different agents. The burden of the
first he lays on Cyrus, though he also connects it with the Servant,
while the Servant is still to him an aspect of the nation (see xlix. 8a,
9b). It is temporary, and soon passes from his thoughts, Cyrus being
dropped with it. But the other, the spiritual redemption, is confined
to no limits of time; and it is with its process—indefinite in date and
in length of period—that he associates the most personal portraits of
the Servant (ch. l. and lii. 13-liii.). In these the Servant, now spoken
of as an individual, has nothing to do with that temporary work of
freeing the people from Babylon, which was over in a year or two,
and which seems to be now behind the prophet's standpoint. His is
the enduring office of prophecy, sympathy, and expiation—an office
in which there is all possible "room" for such a historical career as is
sketched for him. His relation to Cyrus, before whose departure from
connection with Israel's fate the Servant does not appear as a
person, is thus most interesting. Perhaps we may best convey it in a
homely figure. On the ship of Israel's fortunes—as on every ship and
on every voyage—the prophet sees two personages. One is the Pilot](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3912-250309085601-23b6dd19/85/MCTS-Guide-to-Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Network-Infrastructure-Configuration-1st-Edition-Bender-Test-Bank-35-320.jpg)
![identified with the Prince-of-the-Four-Names in ch. ix., as at first
nothing but a sufferer—a sufferer from the sins of His predecessors.
[157] And, even though we are wrong in taking the suffering
Immanuel for the Messiah, and though Isaiah meant him only as a
personification of Israel suffering for the error of Ahaz, had not the
two hundred years, which elapsed between Isaiah's prophecy of
Israel's glorious Deliverer, been full of room enough, and, what is
more, of experience enough, for the ideal champion of the people to
be changed to something more spiritual in character and in work?
Had the nation been baptized, for most of those two centuries, in
vain, in the meaning of suffering, and in vain had they seen
exemplified in their noblest spirits the fruits and glory of self-
sacrifice?[158] The type of Hero had changed in Israel since Isaiah
wrote of his Prince-of-the-Four-Names. The king had been replaced
by the prophet; the conqueror by the martyr; the judge who smote
the land by the rod of his mouth, and slew the wicked by the breath
of his lips,—by the patriot who took his country's sins upon his own
conscience. The monarchy had perished; men knew that, even if
Israel were set upon their own land again, it would not be under an
independent king of their own; nor was a Jewish champion of the
martial kind, such as Isaiah had promised for deliverance from the
Assyrian, any more required. Cyrus, the Gentile, should do all the
campaigning required against Israel's enemies, and Israel's native
Saviour be relieved for gentler methods and more spiritual aims. It is
all this experience, of nearly two centuries, which explains the
omission of the features of warrior and judge from ch. liii., and their
replacement by those of a suffering patriot, prophet and priest. The
reason of the change is, not because the prophet who wrote the
chapter had not, as much as Isaiah, an individual in his view, but
because, in the historical circumstance of the Exile, such an
individual as Isaiah had promised, seemed no longer probable or
required.
So far, then, from the difference between ch. liii. and previous
prophecies of the Messiah affording evidence that in ch. liii. it is not](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3912-250309085601-23b6dd19/85/MCTS-Guide-to-Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Network-Infrastructure-Configuration-1st-Edition-Bender-Test-Bank-37-320.jpg)
![approaches more nearly to an individual, his prophecy passes into
martyrdom. And in ch. liii., where at last we recognise him as
intended for an actual personage, his martyrdom becomes an
expiation for the sins of the people. Is there a natural connection
between these two developments? We have seen that it was by a
very common process that our prophet transferred the national
calling from the mass of the nation to a select few of the people. Is
it by any equally natural tendency that he shrinks from the many to
the few, as he passes from prophecy to martyrdom, or from the few
to the one, as he passes from martyrdom to expiation? It is a
possibility for all God's people to be prophets: few are needed as
martyrs. Is it by any moral law equally clear, that only one man
should die for the people? These are questions worth thinking about.
In Israel's history we have already found the following facts with
which to answer them. The whole living generation of Israel felt
themselves to be sinbearers: Our fathers have sinned, and we bear
their iniquities. This conscience and penalty were more painfully felt
by the righteous in Israel. But the keenest and heaviest sense of
them was conspicuously that experienced by one man—the prophet
Jeremiah.[159] And yet all these cases from the past of Israel's
history do not furnish more than an approximation to the figure
presented to us in ch. liii. Let us turn, therefore, to the future to see
if we can find in it motive or fulfilment for this marvellous prophecy.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3912-250309085601-23b6dd19/85/MCTS-Guide-to-Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Network-Infrastructure-Configuration-1st-Edition-Bender-Test-Bank-40-320.jpg)
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- 5. Chapter 7: Configuring File Services in Windows Server 2008 TRUE/FALSE 1. The SMB protocol can be used on private networks and the Internet by communicating over TCP/IP. ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 263 2. Shares on FAT32 volumes can use share permissions; they also have the ability to use file or folder-level security. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 265 3. NTFS permissions are retained when a file or folder is backed up, while share permissions are not. ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 265 4. DFS is the preferred file system used in Windows networks for its increased security and detailed configuration settings. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 268 5. After installing the DFS roles and role services, you should create a DFS namespace to act as the central point for clients to access network shared data. ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 283 MULTIPLE CHOICE 1. ____ makes files and folders accessible from a network location. a. Folder sharing c. Filter screening b. Standard file sharing d. DFS replication ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 265 2. ____ is the preferred format in Windows Server 2008 due to its more robust features and file-level security. a. NTFS c. OEM b. DFS d. DCDiag ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 265 3. ____ are defined at the shared resource level and allow clients access to a network share. a. Server Message Blocks c. Offline files b. Share-level permissions d. Security identifiers ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 265 4. ____ can be identified by name because they always end with a dollar sign ($). a. Tokens c. Administrative shares b. Permissions d. Net shares ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 266
- 6. 5. ____ are defined at the folder or file level. a. Net shares c. Administrative shares b. Tokens d. User-level permissions ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 268 6. Folder ____ are applied to a specific folder on a Windows Server 2008 server. a. permissions c. files b. namespaces d. ACLs ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 268 7. NTFS uses ____ to define permissions to resources. a. DFS namespaces c. access control lists b. administrative shares d. domains ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 270 8. A ____ is an object attached to a user’s account that validates the user’s identity and privileges they have to resources. a. zone c. record b. token d. domain ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 270 9. Windows uses ____ to make every user, computer, and resource on a network unique. a. security identifiers c. domains b. ACLs d. root hints ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 270 10. ____ is a CLI utility provided with Windows that allows you to create and manage shared folder resources. a. SID c. Server Message Block b. ACL d. Net share ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 274 11. ____ allow shared file resources to be available to clients when they are not connected to the network. a. Domains c. Offline files b. Net shares d. ACLS ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 276 12. A ____ is stored on one or more servers as part of AD DS. a. domain-based namespace c. token b. share-level permission d. network access point ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 278 13. The ____ requires a domain to be running in Windows Server 2008 AD DS functional mode, and all namespace servers to be running Windows Server 2008. a. Windows Server 2008 mode c. ACL b. stand-alone namespace d. DFS namespace ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 279
- 7. 14. The ____ requires a domain to be running in Windows 2000 mixed AD DS functional mode or higher, and all namespace servers to be running at least Windows 2000 Server. a. Windows Server 2000 mode c. DFS b. NTFS d. ACL ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 279 15. ____ is responsible for synchronizing all the data within a DFS structure. a. DFS namespace c. Administrative share b. DFS replication d. Net share ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 280 16. Using a multimaster replication engine (such as AD), ____ allows servers connected across WAN or limited bandwidth network connections to stay current. a. DFS namespace c. administrative share b. DFS replication d. net share ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 280 17. Once deployed, ____ has a hierarchical namespace structure that allows users to locate information using a UNC path location. a. net share c. SID b. DFS d. ACL ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 282 18. ____ allows you to add existing folder shares into a namespace. a. DFS c. DFS b. NTFS d. SID ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 284 19. ____ allows administrators to block specific types of files from being stored in Windows Server 2008 file directories. a. DFS replication c. Public folder sharing b. Filter screening d. Private folder sharing ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 290 20. ____ can be defined by using built-in templates or custom-created templates or by specific file type. a. ACLs c. SIDs b. Filters d. Domains ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 290 21. ____ use actual file size instead of the logical file size. a. FSRM quotas c. SMBs b. File servers d. Net shares ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 288 COMPLETION
- 8. 1. _________________________ allows users to share files with all the users logged on locally or on the network, if that feature is enabled. ANS: Public folder sharing PTS: 1 REF: 263 2. Each ACL contains ___________________________________, which are the individual permissions assigned to a specific user or group on an object. ANS: ACEs (access control entries) access control entries (ACEs) access control entries ACEs PTS: 1 REF: 270 3. Storing offline files is also called _________________________. ANS: caching PTS: 1 REF: 276 4. ___________________________________ is a set of client and server services that allows companies to deploy their shared file resources, known as targets, as a single file structure while distributing the resources across multiple servers and network locations. ANS: DFS (Distributed File System) Distributed File System (DFS) Distributed File System DFS PTS: 1 REF: 278 5. Microsoft’s implementation of DFS allows you to create an entry point for shared file resources using a naming convention of your choice. This is referred to as the _____________________________________________ ANS: DFS namespace Distributed File System (DFS) namespace DFS (Distributed File System) namespace Distributed File System namespace PTS: 1 REF: 278 MATCHING Match each item with a statement below. a. Folders f. Data collection b. Shared Folders console g. Failover clustering
- 9. c. Caching h. File Server Resource Manager d. DFS i. Server Message Block e. Load balancing 1. Available through the Computer Management console or as a stand-alone MMC snap-in. 2. Defined by administrators at the shared resource level. 3. Used by clients to access shared resources. 4. Allows you to deploy multiple servers that hold copies of your data. 5. Allows you to place quotas on folders and volumes, actively screen files, and generate comprehensive storage reports. 6. Can be used to provide load balancing for your shared file services. 7. Responsible for providing permissions to new or existing files or folders it contains through the process of inheritance. 8. Allows administrators to implement fault tolerance of service applications through the use of server clustering. 9. Allows you to take data from multiple servers and collect it in a central location on one server. 1. ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 271 2. ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 276 3. ANS: I PTS: 1 REF: 263 4. ANS: E PTS: 1 REF: 281 5. ANS: H PTS: 1 REF: 262 6. ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 281 7. ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 268 8. ANS: G PTS: 1 REF: 262 9. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 281 SHORT ANSWER 1. The Windows Server 2008 File Services role contains many functions for providing access to and storage of electronic data. Each function includes a specific service for network clients. Briefly describe the following functions: File Server and Distributed File System. ANS: File Server—The most basic of the File Services functions, the file server is responsible for sharing and managing data resources on a Windows Server 2008 computer. Distributed File System—This function is improved in Windows Server 2008. DFS provides a framework for creating a centralized point of entry for accessing network data. DFS uses a common namespace as the entry point for all clients to access data on one or more servers. PTS: 1 REF: 262 2. The Windows Server 2008 File Services role contains many functions for providing access to and storage of electronic data. Each function includes a specific service for network clients. Briefly describe the following functions: Services for Network File System and Windows Server 2003 File Services. ANS:
- 10. Services for Network File System—Services for Network File System (NFS) provide a filesharing solution for enterprises that have a mixed Windows and UNIX environment. With Services for NFS, you can transfer files between computers running Windows Server 2008 and UNIX operating systems using the NFS protocol. Windows Server 2003 File Services—This function provides backward compatibility for Windows Server 2003 computers by providing access to two Windows Server 2003 features: the File Replication Service and the Indexing Service. PTS: 1 REF: 262 3. What information is contained in the following shares: Admin$ and IPC$? ANS: Admin$—This share provides you with network access to the Windows Server 2008 system files on a remote computer. By default, the system files, also known by the environmental variable of %systemroot%, are located in the c:Windows directory. IPC$—This share is used by Windows Server 2008 for sharing resources, not files or folders, and facilitating communication between processes and computers. IPC$ is used for any remote management function not related to the sharing of files. For example, IPC$ is used to exchange authentication data between computers wanting to communicate. PTS: 1 REF: 266-267 4. Provide brief descriptions of the following NTFS file permissions: Full Control and Read & Execute. ANS: Full Control: Read, write, modify, execute, change attributes and permissions, and take ownership of the file. Read & Execute: Display the file’s data, attributes, owner, and permissions and run the file (if it’s a program or has a program associated with it for which you have the necessary permissions) PTS: 1 REF: 268 5. List four tools that can be used to implement file and folder sharing. ANS: The tools include: • Shared Folders console • Windows Explorer • Net share command • Share and Storage Management console PTS: 1 REF: 270 6. Briefly discuss the following implementations of DFS namespaces: domain-based and stand-alone. ANS: Domain-based—A domain-based namespace is stored on one or more servers as part of AD DS. Because of its integration with AD DS, this namespace provides increased scalability and availability because it can be spread across multiple servers.
- 11. Stand-alone—This type of namespace is stored on a single server so that it is restricted to the space and availability of the server on which it is stored. Stand-alone namespace servers can use increased availability if they are hosted on a failover cluster. PTS: 1 REF: 278-279 7. What questions would you ask when trying to determine how to deploy DFS? ANS: The following questions will help you determine how to deploy DFS: • Are you running an AD DS domain? • Do you need support for DFS servers not running Windows Server 2008? • Do you need multiple DFS servers or just one? • Will your environment support moving to Windows Server 2008 functional mode on all your DCs? • Does your solution require scalability? • Do you need to replicate across LAN or WAN connections? PTS: 1 REF: 279 8. DFS replication can be used on its own for replicating data, or it can be combined with the DFS namespace. Discuss the benefits derived when used along with the DFS namespace. ANS: When used along with the DFS namespace, you receive the following advantages: • Data collection—This allows you to take data from multiple servers and collect it in a central location on one server. Data collection is helpful if you need to perform local server backups from a single server. • Data distribution—DFS allows you to distribute data across multiple locations so that users can use a copy of a resource located in their geographic location. AD DS sites are used to determine which DFS resources are local to the user. • Load balancing—This allows you to deploy multiple servers that hold copies of your data. When users attempt to access a document stored in DFS, they will be directed to a DFS server in their AD DS site or the closest AD DS site. PTS: 1 REF: 281 9. What are the steps involved in deploying DFS? ANS: The steps for deploying DFS are as follows: • Install the File Services role and the Distributed File System role services • Create a namespace • Add folders to the namespace • Configure the DFS referral order • Create a DFS replication group PTS: 1 REF: 283 10. FSRM allows administrators to perform various tasks in managing files and disk volumes through the FSRM console. List three of these tasks. ANS: These tasks include the following:
- 12. • Managing file and disk quotas • Screening files using built-in and custom templates • Creating reports on storage resources PTS: 1 REF: 287
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- 14. were most in danger of absorption into the world. And, conversely, when disaster came down, and there was no hope in the sky, it was upon the inward sense of their election to the service of God that the prophets rallied the people's faith and assured them of their survival as a nation. They brought to Israel that sovereign message, which renders all who hear it immortal: "God has a service for you to serve upon earth." In the Exile especially, the wonderful survival of the nation, with the subservience of all history to that end, is made to turn on this,—that Israel has a unique purpose to serve. When Jeremiah and Ezekiel seek to assure the captives of their return to the land and of the restoration of the people, they commend so unlikely a promise by reminding them that the nation is the Servant of God. This name, applied by them for the first time to the nation as a whole, they bind up with the national existence. Fear thou not, O My Servant Jacob, saith Jehovah; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity.[143] These words plainly say, that Israel as a nation cannot die, for God has a use for them to serve. The singularity of Israel's redemption from Babylon is due to the singularity of the service that God has for the nation to perform. Our prophet speaks in the same strain: Thou, Israel, My Servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham My lover, whom I took hold of from the ends of the earth and its corners. I have called thee and said unto thee, My Servant art thou, I have chosen thee and have not cast thee away (ch. xli. 8 ff). No one can miss the force of these words. They are the assurance of Israel's miraculous survival, not because he is God's favourite, but because he is God's servant, with a unique work in the world. Many other verses repeat the same truth.[144] They call Israel the Servant, and Jacob the chosen, of God, in order to persuade the people that they are not forgotten of Him, and that their seed shall live and be blessed. Israel survives because he serves—Servus servatur. Now for this service,—which had been the purpose of the nation's election at first, the mainstay of its unique preservation since, and
- 15. the reason of all its singular pre-eminence before God,—Israel was equipped by two great experiences. These were Redemption and Revelation. On the former redemptions of Israel from the power of other nations our prophet does not dwell much. You feel, that they are present to his mind, for he sometimes describes the coming redemption from Babylon in terms of them. And once, in an appeal to the Arm of Jehovah, he calls out: Awake like the days of old, ancient generations! Art thou not it that hewed Rahab in pieces, that pierced the Dragon? Art thou not it which dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; that made the depths of the sea a way of passage for the redeemed?[145] There is, too, that beautiful passage in ch. lxiii., which makes mention of the lovingkindnesses of Jehovah, according to all that He hath bestowed upon us; which describes the carriage of the people all the days of old, how He brought them out of the sea, caused His glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses, divided the water before them, led them through the deeps as a horse on the meadow, that they stumbled not. But, on the whole, our prophet is too much engrossed with the immediate prospect of release from Babylon, to remember that past, of which it has been truly said, He hath not dealt so with any people. It is the new glory that is upon him. He counts the deliverance from Babylon as already come; to his rapt eye it is its marvellous power and costliness, which already clothes the people in their unique brilliance and honour. Thus saith Jehovah, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake have I sent to Babylon, and I will bring down their nobles, all of them, and the Chaldeans, in the ships of their exulting.[146] But it is more than Babylon that is balanced against them. I am Jehovah, thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour. I am giving as thy ransom, Egypt, Cush and Seba in exchange for thee, because thou art precious in mine eyes, and hast made thyself valuable (lit., of weight); and I have loved thee, therefore do I give mankind for thee, and peoples for thy life.[147] Mankind for thee, and peoples for thy life,—all the world for this little people? It is intelligible only
- 16. because this little people are to be for all the world. Ye are My witnesses that I am God. I will also give thee for a light to nations, to be My salvation to the end of the earth. But more than on the Redemption, which Israel experienced, our prophet dwells on the Revelation, that has equipped them for their destiny. In a passage, in ch. xliii., to which we shall return, the present stupid and unready character of the mass of the people is contrasted with the instruction which God has lavished upon them. Thou hast seen many things, and wilt not observe; there is opening of the ears, but he heareth not. Jehovah was pleased for His righteousness' sake to magnify the Instruction and make it glorious, —but that—the result and the precipitate of it all—is a people robbed and spoiled. The word Instruction or Revelation is that same technical term, which we have met with before, for Jehovah's special training and illumination of Israel. How special these were, how distinct from the highest doctrine and practice of any other nation in that world to which Israel belonged, is an historical fact that the results of recent research enable us to state in a few sentences. Recent exploration in the East, and the progress of Semitic philology, have proved that the system of religion, which prevailed among the Hebrews, had a very great deal in common with the systems of the neighbouring and related heathen nations. This common element included not only such things as ritual and temple-furniture, or the details of priestly organization, but even the titles and many of the attributes of God, and especially the forms of the covenant in which He drew near to men. But the discovery of this common element has only thrown into more striking relief the presence at work in the Hebrew religion of an independent and original principle. In the Hebrew religion historians observe a principle of selection operating upon the common Semitic materials for worship,—ignoring some of them, giving prominence to others, and with others again changing the reference and application. Grossly immoral practices are forbidden; forbidden, too, are those superstitions, which, like augury and divination, draw men away from single-minded attention to the
- 17. moral issues of life; and even religious customs are omitted, such as the employment of women in the sanctuary, which, however innocent in themselves, might lead men into temptations, not desirable in connection with the professional pursuit of religion.[148] In short, a stern and inexorable conscience was at work in the Hebrew religion, which was not at work in any of the religions most akin to it. In our previous volume we saw the same conscience inspiring the prophets. Prophecy was not confined to the Hebrews; it was a general Semitic institution; but no one doubts the absolutely distinct character of the prophecy, which was conscious of having the Spirit of Jehovah. Its religious ideas were original, and in it we have, as all admit, a moral phenomenon unique in history. When we turn to ask the secret of this distinction, we find the answer in the character of the God, whom Israel served. The God explains the people; Israel is the response to Jehovah. Each of the laws of the nation is enforced by the reason, For I am holy. Each of the prophets brings his message from a God, exalted in righteousness. In short, look where you will in the Old Testament,—come to it as a critic or as a worshipper,—you discover the revealed character of Jehovah to be the effective principle at work. It is this Divine character, which draws Israel from among the nations to their destiny, which selects and builds the law to be a wall around them, and which by each revelation of itself discovers to the people both the measure of their delinquency and the new ideals of their service to humanity. Like the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, we see it in front of Israel at every stage of their marvellous progress down the ages. So that when Jehovah says that He has magnified the Revelation and made it glorious, He speaks of a magnitude of a real, historical kind, that can be tested by exact methods of observation. Israel's election by Jehovah, their formation, their unique preparation for service, are not the mere boasts of an overweening patriotism, but sober names for historical processes as real and evident as any that history contains.
- 18. To sum up, then. If Jehovah's sovereignty be absolute, so also is the uniqueness of Israel's calling and equipment for His Service. For, to begin with, Israel had the essential religious temper; they enjoyed a unique moral instruction and discipline; and by the side of this they were conscious of a series of miraculous deliverances from servitude and from dissolution. So singular an experience and career were not, as we have seen, bestowed from any arbitrary motive, which exhausted itself upon Israel, but in accordance with God's universal method of specialisation of function, were granted to fit the nation as an instrument for a practical end. The sovereign unity of God does not mean equality in His creation. The universe is diverse. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; and even so in the moral kingdom of Him, who is Lord of the Hosts of both earth and heaven, each nation has its own destiny and function. Israel's was religion; Israel was God's specialist in religion. For confirmation of this we turn to the supreme witness. Jesus was born a Jew, He confined His ministry to Judæa, and He has told us why. By various passing allusions, as well as by deliberate statements, He revealed His sense of a great religious difference between Jew and Gentile. Use not vain repetitions as the Gentiles do.... For after all these things do the nations of the world seek; but your Father knoweth that you have need of these things. He refused to work except upon Jewish hearts: I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And He charged His disciples, saying, Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans; but go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. And again He said to the woman of Samaria: Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. These sayings of our Lord have created as much question as the pre-eminence given in the Old Testament to a single people by a God, who is described as the one God of Heaven and earth. Was He narrower of heart than Paul, His servant, who was debtor to Greek
- 19. and Barbarian? Or was He ignorant of the universal character of His mission till it was forced upon His reluctant sympathies by the importunity of such heathen as the Syrophenician woman? A little common-sense dispels the perplexity, and leaves the problem, over which volumes have been written, no problem at all. Our Lord limited Himself to Israel, not because He was narrow, but because He was practical; not from ignorance, but from wisdom. He came from heaven to sow the seed of Divine truth; and where in all humanity should He find the soil so ready as within the long-chosen people? He knew of that discipline of the centuries. In the words of His own parable, the Son when He came to earth directed His attention not to a piece of desert, but to the vineyard which His Father's servants had so long cultivated, and where the soil was open. Jesus came to Israel because He expected faith in Israel. That this practical end was the deliberate intention of His will, is proved by the fact that when He found faith elsewhere, either in Syrian or Greek or Roman hearts, He did not hesitate to let His love and power go forth to them. In short, we shall have no difficulty about these Divine methods with a single, elect people, if we only remember that to be Divine is to be practical. Yet God also is wise, said Isaiah to the Jews when they preferred their own clever policies to Jehovah's guidance. And we need to be told the same, who murmur that to confine Himself to a single nation was not the ideal thing for the One God to do; or who imagine that it was left to one of our Lord's own creatures to suggest to Him the policy of His mission upon earth. We are shortsighted: and the Almighty is past finding out. But this at least it is possible for us to see, that, in choosing one nation to be His agent among men, God chose the type of instrument best fitted at the time for the work for which He designed it, and that in choosing Israel to be that nation, He chose a people of temper singularly suitable to His end. Israel's election as a nation, therefore, was to Service. To be a nation and to be God's Servant was pretty much one and the same
- 20. thing for Israel. Israel were to survive the Exile, because they were to serve the world. Let us carry this over to the study of our next chapter—The Servant of Jehovah.
- 21. CHAPTER XVI. THE SERVANT OF THE LORD. Isaiah xli. 8-20; xlii. 1-7, 18 ff; xliii. 5-10; xlix. 1-9; l. 4-10; lii. 13-liii. With chapter xlii. we reach a distinct stage in our prophecy. The preceding chapters have been occupied with the declaration of the great, basal truth, that Jehovah is the One Sovereign God. This has been declared to two classes of hearers in succession—to God's own people, Israel, in ch. xl., and to the heathen in ch. xli. Having established His sovereignty, God now publishes His will, again addressing these two classes according to the purpose which He has for each. Has He vindicated Himself to Israel, the Almighty and Righteous God, Who will give His people freedom and strength: He will now define to them the mission for which that strength and freedom are required. Has He proved to the Gentiles that He is the one true God: He will declare to them now what truth He has for them to learn. In short, to use modern terms, the apologetic of chs. xl.-xli. is succeeded by the missionary programme of ch. xlii. And although, from the necessities of the case, we are frequently brought back, in the course of the prophecy, to its fundamental claims for the Godhead of Jehovah, we are nevertheless sensible that with ver. 1 of ch. xlii. we make a distinct advance. It is one of those logical steps which, along with a certain chronological progress that we have already felt, assures us that Isaiah, whether originally by one or more authors, is in its present form a unity, with a distinct order and principle of development. The Purpose of God is identified with a Minister or Servant, whom He commissions to carry it out in the world. This Servant is brought before us with all the urgency with which Jehovah has presented
- 22. Himself, and next to Jehovah he turns out to be the most important figure of the prophecy. Does the prophet insist that God is the only source and sufficiency of His people's salvation: it is with equal emphasis that He introduces the Servant as God's indispensable agent in the work. Cyrus is also acknowledged as an elect instrument. But neither in closeness to God, nor in effect upon the world, is Cyrus to be compared for an instant to the Servant. Cyrus is subservient and incidental: with the overthrow of Babylon, for which he was raised up, he will disappear from the stage of our prophecy. But God's purpose, which uses the gates opened by Cyrus, only to pass through them with the redeemed people to the regeneration of the whole world, is to be carried to this Divine consummation by the Servant: its universal and glorious progress is identified with his career. Cyrus flashes through these pages a well- polished sword: it is only his swift and brilliant usefulness that is allowed to catch our eye. But the Servant is a Character, to delineate whose immortal beauty and example the prophet devotes as much space as he does to Jehovah Himself. As he turns again and again to speak of God's omnipotence and faithfulness and agonising love for His own, so with equal frequency and fondness does he linger on every feature of the Servant's conduct and aspect: His gentleness, His patience, His courage, His purity, His meekness; His daily wakefulness to God's voice, the swiftness and brilliance of His speech for others, His silence under His own torments; His resorts— among the bruised, the prisoners, the forwandered of Israel, the weary, and them that sit in darkness, the far-off heathen; His warfare with the world, His face set like a flint; His unworldly beauty, which men call ugliness; His unnoticed presence in His own generation, yet the effect of His face upon kings; His habit of woe, a man of sorrows and acquainted with sickness; His sore stripes and bruises, His judicial murder, His felon's grave; His exaltation and eternal glory—till we may reverently say that these pictures, by their vividness and charm, have drawn our eyes away from our prophet's visions of God, and have caused the chapters in which they occur to be oftener read among us, and learned by heart, than the chapters
- 23. in which God Himself is lifted up and adored. Jehovah and Jehovah's Servant—these are the two heroes of the drama. Now we might naturally expect that so indispensable and fondly imagined a figure would also be defined past all ambiguity, whether as to His time or person or name. But the opposite is the case. About Scripture there are few more intricate questions than those on the Servant of the Lord. Is He a Person or Personification? If the latter, is He a Personification of all Israel? Or of a part of Israel? Or of the ideal Israel? Or of the Order of the Prophets? Or if a Person— is he the prophet himself? Or a martyr who has already lived and suffered, like Jeremiah? Or One still to come, like the promised Messiah? Each of these suggestions has not only been made about the Servant, but derives considerable support from one or another of our prophet's dissolving views of his person and work. A final answer to them can be given only after a comparative study of all the relevant passages; but as these are scattered over the prophecy, and our detailed exposition of them must necessarily be interrupted, it will be of advantage to take here a prospect of them all, and see to what they combine to develop this sublime character and mission. And after we have seen what the prophecies themselves teach concerning the Servant, we shall inquire how they were understood and fulfilled by the New Testament; and that will show us how to expound and apply them with regard to ourselves. I. The Hebrew word for Servant means a person at the disposal of another—to carry out his will, do his work, represent his interests. It was thus applied to the representatives of a king or the worshippers of a god.[149] All Israelites were thus in a sense the servants of Jehovah; though in the singular the title was reserved for persons of extraordinary character or usefulness. But we have seen, as clearly as possible, that God set apart for His chief service upon earth, not an individual nor a group of individuals, but a whole nation in its national capacity. We have seen Israel's
- 24. political origin and preservation bound up with that service; we have heard the whole nation plainly called, by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the Servant of Jehovah.[150] Nothing could be more clear than this, that in the earlier years of the Exile the Servant of Jehovah was Israel as a whole, Israel as a body politic. It is also in this sense that our prophet first uses the title in a passage we have already quoted (xli. 8); Thou Israel, My Servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham My lover, whom I took hold of from the ends of the earth and its corners! I called thee and said unto thee, My Servant art thou. I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away. Here the Servant is plainly the historical nation, descended from Abraham, and the subject of those national experiences which are traced in the previous chapter. It is the same in the following verses:—xliv. 1 ff: Yet now hear, O Jacob My servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen: thus saith Jehovah thy Maker, and thy Moulder from the womb, He will help thee. Fear not, My servant Jacob; and Jeshurun, whom I have chosen.... I will pour My spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring. xliv. 21: Remember these things, O Jacob; and Israel, for My servant art thou: I have formed thee; a servant for Myself art thou; O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of Me. xlviii. 20: Go ye forth from Babylon; say ye, Jehovah hath redeemed His servant Jacob. In all these verses, which bind up the nation's restoration from exile with the fact that God called it to be His Servant, the title Servant is plainly equivalent to the national name Israel or Jacob. But Israel or Jacob is not a label for the mere national idea, or the bare political framework, without regard to the living individuals included in it. To the eye and heart of Him, Who counts the number of the stars, Israel means no mere outline, but all the individuals of the living generation of the people—thy seed, that is, every born Israelite, however fallen or forwandered. This is made clear in a very beautiful passage in ch. xliii. (vv. 1-7): Thus saith Jehovah, thy Creator, O Jacob; thy Moulder, O Israel.... Fear not, for I am with thee; from the sunrise I will bring thy seed, and from the sunset will I gather thee; ... My sons from far, and My daughters from the end of the
- 25. earth; every one who is called by My name, and whom for My glory I have created, formed, yea, I have made him. To this Israel—Israel as a whole, yet no mere abstraction or outline of the nation, but the people in mass and bulk—every individual of whom is dear to Jehovah, and in some sense shares His calling and equipment—to this Israel the title Servant of Jehovah is at first applied by our prophet. 2. We say "at first," for very soon the prophet has to make a distinction, and to sketch the Servant as something less than the actual nation. The distinction is obscure; it has given rise to a very great deal of controversy. But it is so natural, where a nation is the subject, and of such frequent occurrence in other literatures, that we may almost state it as a general law. In all the passages quoted above, Israel has been spoken of in the passive mood, as the object of some affection or action on the part of God: loved, formed, chosen, called, and about to be redeemed by Him. Now, so long as a people thus lie passive, their prophet will naturally think of them as a whole. In their shadow his eye can see them only in the outline of their mass; in their common suffering and servitude his heart will go out to all their individuals, as equally dear and equally in need of redemption. But when the hour comes for the people to work out their own salvation, and they emerge into action, it must needs be different. When they are no more the object of their prophet's affection only, but pass under the test of his experience and judgement, then distinctions naturally appear upon them. Lifted to the light of their destiny, their inequality becomes apparent; tried by its strain, part of them break away. And so, though the prophet continues still to call on the nation by its name to fulfil its calling, what he means by that name is no longer the bulk and the body of the citizenship. A certain ideal of the people fills his mind's eye—an ideal, however, which is no mere spectre floating above his own generation, but is realised in their noble and aspiring portion—although his ignorance as to the exact size of this portion, must always leave his image of them more or less ideal to his eyes.
- 26. It will be their quality rather than their quantity that is clear to him. In modern history we have two familiar illustrations of this process of winnowing and idealising a people in the light of their destiny, which may prepare us for the more obscure instance of it in our prophecy. In a well-known passage in the Areopagitica, Milton exclaims, "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam, ... while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means." In this passage the "nation" is no longer what Milton meant by the term in the earlier part of his treatise, where "England" stands simply for the outline of the whole English people; but the "nation" is the true genius of England realised in her enlightened and aspiring sons, and breaking away from the hindering and debasing members of the body politic—"the timorous and flocking birds with those also that love the twilight"— who are indeed Englishmen after the flesh, but form no part of the nation's better self. Or, recall Mazzini's bitter experience. To no man was his Italy more really one than to this ardent son of hers, who loved every born Italian because he was an Italian, and counted none of the fragments of his unhappy country too petty or too corrupt to be included in the hope of her restoration. To Mazzini's earliest imagination, it was the whole Italian seed, who were ready for redemption, and would rise to achieve it at his summons. But when his summons came, how few responded, and after the first struggles how fewer still remained,—Mazzini himself has told us with breaking heart. The real Italy was but a handful of born Italians; at times it seemed to shrink to the prophet alone. From such a core the conscience indeed spread again, till the entire people was delivered from tyranny and from schism, and now every peasant and burgher from the Alps to Sicily understands what Italy means, and is proud
- 27. to be an Italian. But for a time Mazzini and his few comrades stood alone. Others of their blood and speech were Piedmontese, Pope's men, Neapolitans,—merchants, lawyers, scholars,—or merely selfish and sensual. They alone were Italians; they alone were Italy. It is a similar winnowing process, through which we see our prophet's thoughts pass with regard to Israel. Him, too, experience teaches that the many are called, but the few chosen. So long as his people lie in the shadow of captivity, so long as he has to speak of them in the passive mood, the object of God's call and preparation, it is their seed, the born people in bulk and mass, whom he names Israel, and entitles the Servant of Jehovah. But the moment that he lifts them to their mission in the world, and to the light of their destiny, a difference becomes apparent upon them, and the Servant of Jehovah, though still called Israel, shrinks to something less than the living generation, draws off to something finer than the mass of the people. How, indeed, could it be otherwise with this strange people, than which no nation on earth had a loftier ideal identified with its history, or more frequently turned upon its better self, with a sword in its hand. Israel, though created a nation by God for His service, was always what Paul found it, divided into an Israel after the flesh, and an Israel after the spirit. But it was in the Exile that this distinction gaped most broad. With the fall of Jerusalem, the political framework, which kept the different elements of the nation together, was shattered, and these were left loose to the action of moral forces. The baser elements were quickly absorbed by heathendom; the nobler, that remained loyal to the divine call, were free to assume a new and ideal form. Every year spent in Babylonia made it more apparent that the true and effective Israel of the future would not coincide with all the seed of Jacob, who went into exile. Numbers of the latter were as contented with their Babylonian circumstance as numbers of Mazzini's "Italians" were satisfied to live on as Austrian and Papal subjects. Many, as we have seen, became idolaters; many more settled down into the prosperous habits of Babylonian commerce, while a large multitude besides were scattered far out of sight across the world. It required little insight to
- 28. perceive that the true, effective Israel—the real Servant of Jehovah —must needs be a much smaller body than the sum of all these: a loyal kernel within Israel, who were still conscious of the national calling, and capable of carrying it out; who stood sensible of their duty to the whole world, but whose first conscience was for their lapsed and lost countrymen. This Israel within Israel was the real Servant of the Lord; to personify it in that character—however vague might be the actual proportion it would assume in his own or in any other generation—would be as natural to our dramatic prophet as to personify the nation as a whole. All this very natural process—this passing from the historical Israel, the nation originally designed by God to be His Servant, to the conscious and effective Israel, that uncertain quantity within the present and every future generation—takes place in the chapters before us; and it will be sufficiently easy for us to follow if we only remember that our prophet is not a dogmatic theologian, careful to make clear each logical distinction, but a dramatic poet, who delivers his ideas in groups, tableaux, dialogues, interrupted by choruses; and who writes in a language incapable of expressing such delicate differences, except by dramatic contrasts, and by the one other figure of which he is so fond—paradox. Perhaps the first traces of distinction between the real Servant and the whole nation are to be found in the Programme of his Mission in ch. xlii. 1-7. There it is said that the Servant is to be for a covenant of the people (ver. 6). I have explained below why we are to understand people as here meaning Israel.[151] And in ver. 7 it is said of the Servant that he is to open blind eyes, bring forth from prison the captive, from the house of bondage dwellers in darkness: phrases that are descriptive, of course, of the captive Israel. Already, then, in ch. xlii. the Servant is something distinct from the whole nation, whose Covenant and Redeemer he is to be. 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
- 29. 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!...
- 30. 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.
- 31. It is futile to inquire what this better portion of Israel actually was, for whom the prophet speaks in the first person. Some have argued, from the stress which the speaker lays upon his gifts of speech and office of preaching, that what is now signified by the Servant is the order of the prophets; but such forget that in these chapters the proclamation of the Kingdom of God is the ideal, not of prophets only, but of the whole people. Zion as a whole is to be heraldess of good news (xl. 9). It is, therefore, not the official function of the prophet-order which the Servant here owns, but the ideal of the prophet-nation. Others have argued from the direct form of speech, that the prophet puts himself forward as the Servant. But no individual would call himself Israel. And as Professor Cheyne remarks, the passage is altogether too self-assertive to be spoken by any man of himself as an individual; although, of course, our prophet could not have spoken of the true Israel with such sympathy, unless he had himself been part of it. The writer of these verses may have been, for the time, as virtually the real Israel as Mazzini was the real Italy. But still he does not speak as an individual. The passage is manifestly a piece of personification. The Servant is Israel—not now the nation as a whole, not the body and bulk of the Israelites, for they are to be the object of his first efforts, but the loyal, conscious and effective Israel, realised in some of her members, and here personified by our prophet, who himself speaks for her out of his heart, in the first person. By ch. xlix., then, the Servant of Jehovah is a personification of the true, effective Israel as distinguished from the mass of the nation—a Personification, but not yet a Person. Something within Israel has wakened up to find itself conscious of being the Servant of Jehovah, and distinct from the mass of the nation—something that is not yet a Person. And this definition of the Servant may stand (with some modifications) for his next appearance in ch. l. 4-9. In this passage the Servant, still speaking in the first person, continues to illustrate his experience as a prophet, and carries it to its consequence in martyrdom. But let us notice that he now no longer calls himself Israel, and that if it were not for the previous passages it would be
- 32. natural to suppose that an individual was speaking. This supposition is confirmed by a verse that follows the Servant's speech, and is spoken, as chorus, by the Prophet himself. Who among you is a fearer of Jehovah, obedient to the voice of His Servant, who walketh in darkness, and hath no light. Let him trust in the name of Jehovah, and stay himself upon his God. In this too much neglected verse, which forms a real transition to ch. lii. 13-liii., the prophet is addressing any individual Israelite, on behalf of a personal God. It is very difficult to refrain from concluding that therefore the Servant also is a Person. Let us, however, not go beyond what we have evidence for; and note only that in ch. l. the Servant is no more called Israel, and is represented not as if he were one part of the nation, over against the mass of it, but as if he were one individual over against other individuals; that in fine the Personification of ch. xlix. has become much more difficult to distinguish from an actual Person. 3. This brings us to the culminating passage—ch. lii. 13-liii. Is the Servant still a Personification here, or at last and unmistakably a Person? It may relieve the air of that electricity, which is apt to charge it at the discussion of so classic a passage as this, and secure us calm weather in which to examine exegetical details, if we at once assert, what none but prejudiced Jews have ever denied, that this great prophecy, known as the fifty-third of Isaiah, was fulfilled in One Person, Jesus of Nazareth, and achieved in all its details by Him alone. But, on the other hand, it requires also to be pointed out that Christ's personal fulfilment of it does not necessarily imply that our prophet wrote it of a Person. The present expositor hopes, indeed, to be able to give strong reasons for the theory usual among us, that the Personification of previous passages is at last in ch. liii. presented as a Person. But he fails to understand, why critics should be regarded as unorthodox or at variance with New Testament teaching on the subject, who, while they acknowledge that only Christ fulfilled ch. liii., are yet unable to believe that the prophet
- 33. looked upon the Servant as an individual, and who regard ch. liii. as simply a sublimer form of the prophet's previous pictures of the ideal people of God. Surely Christ could and did fulfil prophecies other than personal ones. The types of Him, which the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament, are not exclusively individuals. Christ is sometimes represented as realising in His Person and work statements, which, as they were first spoken, could only refer to Israel, the nation. Matthew, for instance, applies to Jesus a text which Hosea wrote primarily of the whole Jewish people: Out of Egypt have I called My Son.[153] Or, to take an instance from our own prophet—who but Jesus fulfilled ch. xlix., in which, as we have seen, it is not an individual, but the ideal of the prophet people, that is figured? So that, even if it were proved past all doubt—proved from grammar, context, and every prophetic analogy—that in writing ch. liii. our prophet had still in view that aspect of the nation which he has personified in ch. xlix., such a conclusion would not weaken the connection between the prophecy and its unquestioned fulfilment by Jesus Christ, nor render the two less evidently part of one Divine design. But we are by no means compelled to adopt the impersonal view of ch. liii. On the contrary, while the question is one, to which all experts know the difficulty of finding an absolutely conclusive answer one way or the other, it seems to me that reasons prevail, which make for the personal interpretation. . Let us see what exactly are the objections to taking ch. lii. 13-liii. in a personal sense. First, it is very important to observe, that they do not rise out of the grammar or language of the passage. The reference of both of these is consistently individual. Throughout, the Servant is spoken of in the singular.[154] The name Israel is not once applied to him: nothing— except that the nation has also suffered—suggests that he is playing a national rôle; there is no reflection in his fate of the features of the Exile. The antithesis, which was evident in previous passages, between a better Israel and the mass of the people has disappeared. The Servant is contrasted, not with the nation as a whole, but with
- 34. His people as individuals. 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. As far as grammar can, this surely distinguishes a single person. It is true, that one or two phrases suggest so colossal a figure—he shall startle many nations, and kings shall shut their mouths at him—that for a moment we think of the spectacle of a people rather than of a solitary human presence. But even such descriptions are not incompatible with a single person.[155] On the other hand, there are phrases which we can scarcely think are used of any but a historical individual; such as that he was taken from oppression and judgement, that is from a process of law which was tyranny, from a judicial murder, and that he belonged to a particular generation—As for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living. Surely a historical individual is the natural meaning of these words. And, in fact, critics like Ewald and Wellhausen, who interpret the passage, in its present context, of the ideal Israel, find themselves forced to argue, that it has been borrowed for this use from the older story of some actual martyr—so individual do its references seem to them throughout. If, then, the grammar and language of the passage thus conspire to convey the impression of an individual, what are the objections to supposing that an individual is meant? Critics have felt, in the main, three objections to the discovery of a historical individual in Isa. lii. 13-liii. The first of these that we take is chronological, and arises from the late date to which we have found it necessary to assign the prophecy. Our prophet, it is averred, associates the work of the Servant with the restoration of the people; but he sees that restoration too close to him to be able to think of the appearance, ministry and martyrdom of a real historic life happening before it. (Our prophet, it will be remembered, wrote about 546, and the Restoration came in 538.) "There is no room for a history like that of
- 35. the suffering Servant between the prophet's place and the Restoration."[156] Now, this objection might be turned, even if it were true that the prophet identified the suffering Servant's career with so immediate and so short a process as the political deliverance from Babylon. For, in that case, the prophet would not be leaving less room for the Servant, than, in ch. ix., Isaiah himself leaves for the birth, the growth to manhood, and the victories of the Prince-of-the-Four- Names, before that immediate relief from the Assyrian, which he expects the Prince to effect. But does our prophet identify the suffering Servant's career with the redemption from Babylon and the Return? It is plain that he does not—at least in those portraits of the Servant, which are most personal. Our prophet has really two prospects for Israel—one, the actual deliverance from Babylon; the other, a spiritual redemption and restoration. If, like his fellow prophets, he sometimes runs these two together, and talks of the latter in the terms of the former, he keeps them on the whole distinct, and assigns them to different agents. The burden of the first he lays on Cyrus, though he also connects it with the Servant, while the Servant is still to him an aspect of the nation (see xlix. 8a, 9b). It is temporary, and soon passes from his thoughts, Cyrus being dropped with it. But the other, the spiritual redemption, is confined to no limits of time; and it is with its process—indefinite in date and in length of period—that he associates the most personal portraits of the Servant (ch. l. and lii. 13-liii.). In these the Servant, now spoken of as an individual, has nothing to do with that temporary work of freeing the people from Babylon, which was over in a year or two, and which seems to be now behind the prophet's standpoint. His is the enduring office of prophecy, sympathy, and expiation—an office in which there is all possible "room" for such a historical career as is sketched for him. His relation to Cyrus, before whose departure from connection with Israel's fate the Servant does not appear as a person, is thus most interesting. Perhaps we may best convey it in a homely figure. On the ship of Israel's fortunes—as on every ship and on every voyage—the prophet sees two personages. One is the Pilot
- 36. through the shallows, Cyrus, who is dropped as soon as the shallows are past; and the other is the Captain of the ship, who remains always identified with it—the Servant. The Captain does not come to the front till the Pilot has gone; but, both alongside the Pilot, and after the Pilot has been dropped, there is every room for his office. The second main objection to identifying an individual in ch. lii. 13- liii. is, that an individual with such features has no analogy in Hebrew prophecy. It is said that, neither in his humiliation, nor in the kind of exaltation, which is ascribed to him, is there his like in any other individual in the Old Testament, and certainly not in the Messiah. Elsewhere in Scripture (it is averred) the Messiah reigns, and is glorious; it is the people who suffer, and come through suffering to power. Nor is the Messiah's royal splendour at all the same as the very vague influence, evidently of a spiritual kind, which is attributed to the Servant in the end of ch. liii. The Messiah is endowed with the military and political virtues. He is a warrior, a king, a judge. He sits on the throne of David, He establishes David's kingdom. He smites the land with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He slays the wicked. But very different phrases are used of the Servant. He is not called king, though kings shut their mouths at him,—he is a prophet and a martyr, and an expiation; and the phrases, I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, are simply metaphors of the immense spiritual success and influence with which His self-sacrifice shall be rewarded; as a spiritual power He shall take His place among the dominions and forces of the world. This is a true prophecy of what Israel, that worm of a people, should be lifted to; but it is quite different from the political throne, from which Isaiah had promised that the Messiah should sway the destinies of Israel and mankind. But, in answer to this objection to finding the Messiah, or any other influential individual, in ch. liii., we may remember that there were already traces in Hebrew prophecy of a suffering Messiah: we come across them in ch. vii. There Isaiah presents Immanuel, whom we
- 37. identified with the Prince-of-the-Four-Names in ch. ix., as at first nothing but a sufferer—a sufferer from the sins of His predecessors. [157] And, even though we are wrong in taking the suffering Immanuel for the Messiah, and though Isaiah meant him only as a personification of Israel suffering for the error of Ahaz, had not the two hundred years, which elapsed between Isaiah's prophecy of Israel's glorious Deliverer, been full of room enough, and, what is more, of experience enough, for the ideal champion of the people to be changed to something more spiritual in character and in work? Had the nation been baptized, for most of those two centuries, in vain, in the meaning of suffering, and in vain had they seen exemplified in their noblest spirits the fruits and glory of self- sacrifice?[158] The type of Hero had changed in Israel since Isaiah wrote of his Prince-of-the-Four-Names. The king had been replaced by the prophet; the conqueror by the martyr; the judge who smote the land by the rod of his mouth, and slew the wicked by the breath of his lips,—by the patriot who took his country's sins upon his own conscience. The monarchy had perished; men knew that, even if Israel were set upon their own land again, it would not be under an independent king of their own; nor was a Jewish champion of the martial kind, such as Isaiah had promised for deliverance from the Assyrian, any more required. Cyrus, the Gentile, should do all the campaigning required against Israel's enemies, and Israel's native Saviour be relieved for gentler methods and more spiritual aims. It is all this experience, of nearly two centuries, which explains the omission of the features of warrior and judge from ch. liii., and their replacement by those of a suffering patriot, prophet and priest. The reason of the change is, not because the prophet who wrote the chapter had not, as much as Isaiah, an individual in his view, but because, in the historical circumstance of the Exile, such an individual as Isaiah had promised, seemed no longer probable or required. So far, then, from the difference between ch. liii. and previous prophecies of the Messiah affording evidence that in ch. liii. it is not
- 38. the Messiah who is presented, this very change, that has taken place, explicable as it is from the history of the intervening centuries, goes powerfully to prove that it is the Messiah, and therefore an individual, whom the prophet so vividly describes. The third main objection to our recognising an individual in ch. liii. is concerned only with our prophet himself. Is it not impossible, say some—or at least improbably inconsistent—for the same prophet first to have identified the Servant with the nation, and then to present him to us as an individual? We can understand the transference by the same writer of the name from the whole people to a part of the people; it is a natural transference, and the prophet sufficiently explains it. But how does he get from a part of the nation to a single individual? If in ch. xlix. he personifies, under the name Servant, some aspect of the nation, we are surely bound to understand the same personification when the Servant is again introduced—unless we have an explanation to the contrary. But we have none. The prophet gives no hint, except by dropping the name Israel, that the focus of his vision is altered,—no more paradoxes such as marked his passage from the people as a whole to a portion of them,—-no consciousness that any explanation whatever is required. Therefore, however much finer the personification is drawn in ch. liii. than in ch. xlix., it is surely a personification still. To which objection an obvious answer is, that our prophet is not a systematic theologian, but a dramatic poet, who allows his characters to disclose themselves and their relation without himself intervening to define or relate them. And any one who is familiar with the literature of Israel knows, that no less than the habit of drawing in from the whole people upon a portion of them, was the habit of drawing in from a portion of the people upon one individual. The royal Messiah Himself is a case in point. The original promise to David was of a seed; but soon prophecy concentrated the seed in one glorious Prince. The promise of Israel had always culminated in an individual. Then, again, in the nation's awful sufferings, it had been one man—the prophet Jeremiah—who had stood forth singly
- 39. and alone, at once the incarnation of Jehovah's word, and the illustration in his own person of all the penalty that Jehovah laid upon the sinful people. With this tendency of his school to focus Israel's hope on a single individual, and especially with the example of Jeremiah before him, it is almost inconceivable that our prophet could have thought of any but an individual when he drew his portrait of the suffering Servant. No doubt the national sufferings were in his heart as he wrote; it was probably a personal share in them that taught him to write so sympathetically about the Man of pains, who was familiar with ailing. But to gather and concentrate all these sufferings upon one noble figure, to describe this figure as thoroughly conscious of their moral meaning, and capable of turning them to his people's salvation, was a process absolutely in harmony with the genius of Israel's prophecy, as well as with the trend of their recent experience; and there is, besides, no word in that great chapter, in which the process culminates, but is in thorough accordance with it. So far, therefore, from its being an impossible or an unlikely thing for our prophet to have at last reached his conception of an individual, it is almost impossible to conceive of him executing so personal a portrait as ch. lii. 13-liii., without thinking of a definite historical personage, such as Hebrew prophecy had ever associated with the redemption of his people. 4. We have now exhausted the passages in Isa. xl.-lxvi. which deal with the Servant of the Lord. We have found that our prophet identifies him at first with the whole nation, and then with some indefinite portion of the nation—indefinite in quantity, but most marked in character; that this personification grows more and more difficult to distinguish from a person; and that in ch. lii. 13-liii. there are very strong reasons, both in the text itself and in the analogy of other prophecy, to suppose that the portrait of an individual is intended. To complete our study of this development of the substance of the Servant, it is necessary to notice that it runs almost stage for stage with a development of his office. Up to ch. xlix., that is to say, while he is still some aspect of the people, the Servant is a prophet. In ch. l., where he is no longer called Israel, and
- 40. approaches more nearly to an individual, his prophecy passes into martyrdom. And in ch. liii., where at last we recognise him as intended for an actual personage, his martyrdom becomes an expiation for the sins of the people. Is there a natural connection between these two developments? We have seen that it was by a very common process that our prophet transferred the national calling from the mass of the nation to a select few of the people. Is it by any equally natural tendency that he shrinks from the many to the few, as he passes from prophecy to martyrdom, or from the few to the one, as he passes from martyrdom to expiation? It is a possibility for all God's people to be prophets: few are needed as martyrs. Is it by any moral law equally clear, that only one man should die for the people? These are questions worth thinking about. In Israel's history we have already found the following facts with which to answer them. The whole living generation of Israel felt themselves to be sinbearers: Our fathers have sinned, and we bear their iniquities. This conscience and penalty were more painfully felt by the righteous in Israel. But the keenest and heaviest sense of them was conspicuously that experienced by one man—the prophet Jeremiah.[159] And yet all these cases from the past of Israel's history do not furnish more than an approximation to the figure presented to us in ch. liii. Let us turn, therefore, to the future to see if we can find in it motive or fulfilment for this marvellous prophecy.
- 41. CHAPTER XVII. THE SERVANT OF THE LORD IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. In last chapter we confined our study of the Servant of Jehovah to the text of Isa. xl.-lxvi., and to the previous and contemporary history of Israel. Into our interpretation of the remarkable Figure, whom our prophet has drawn for us, we have put nothing which cannot be gathered from those fields and by the light of the prophet's own day. But now we must travel further, and from days far future to our prophet borrow a fuller light to throw back upon his mysterious projections. We take this journey into the future for reasons he himself has taught us. We have learned that his pictures of the Servant are not the creation of his own mind; a work of art complete "through fancy's or through logic's aid." They are the scattered reflections and suggestions of experience. The prophet's eyes have been opened to read them out of the still growing and incomplete history of his people. With that history they are indissolubly bound up. Their plainest forms are but a transcript of its clearest facts; their paradoxes are its paradoxes (reflections now of the confused and changing consciousness of this strange people, or again of the contrast between God's design for them and their real character): their ideals are the suggestion and promise which its course reveals to an inspired eye. Thus, in picturing the Servant, our prophet sometimes confines himself to history that has already happened to Israel; but sometimes, also, upon the purpose and promise of this, he outruns what has happened, and plainly lifts his voice from the future. Now we must remember that he does so, not merely because the history itself has native possibilities of fulfilment in it, but because he believes that it is in the hands of an Almighty
- 42. and Eternal God, who shall surely guide it to the end of His purpose revealed in it. It is an article of our prophet's creed, that the God who speaks through him controls all history, and by His prophets can publish beforehand what course it will take; so that, when we find in our prophet anything we do not see fully justified or illustrated by the time he wrote, it is only in observance of the conditions he has laid down, that we seek for its explanation in the future. Let us, then, take our prophet upon his own terms, and follow the history, with which he has so closely bound up the prophecy of the Servant, both in suggestion and fulfilment, in order that we may see whether it will yield to us the secret of what, if we have read his language aright, his eyes perceived in it—the promise of an Individual Servant. And let us do so in his faith, that history is one progressive and harmonious movement under the hand of the God in whose name he speaks. Our exploration will be rewarded, and our faith confirmed. We shall find the nation, as promised, restored to its own land, and pursuing through the centuries its own life. We shall find within the nation what the prophet looked for,—an elect and effective portion, with the conscience of a national service to the world, but looking for the achievement of this to such an Individual Servant, as the prophet seemed ultimately to foreshadow. The world itself we shall find growing more and more open to this service. And at last, from Israel's national conscience of the service we shall see emerge One with the sense that He alone is responsible and able for it. And this One Israelite will not only in His own person exhibit a character and achieve a work, that illustrate and far excel our prophet's highest imaginations, but will also become, to a new Israel infinitely more numerous than the old, the conscience and inspiration of their collective fulfilment of the ideal.
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