Ver. 1. "_Listen, O isles, unto me, and hearken ye people from far; the Lord hath called me from the womb, from the bowels of my mother hath He made mention of my name._"
As the stand-point which the Messiah occupies in the vision of the Prophet, we have to conceive of the time, at which He had already entered upon His office, and had already experienced many proofs of the Jews' unbelief and hardness of heart,--an event of the Future, the foresight of which was, even in a human point of view, very readily suggested to the Prophet after the painful experience acquired during his own long ministry; comp. chap. vi. For the fruitlessness of His ministry among the mass of the covenant-people, ver. 4, as well as the great contempt which the Servant of God found among them, ver. 7, are represented as having already taken place; [Pg 232] while the enlightenment of the Gentiles, the worship of the kings, &c., which are to be expected by Him, are represented as being still future. In the same manner, in chap. liii., the humiliation of the Servant of God appears as past; the glorification, as future, the reason why the _isles_ are addressed (comp. remarks on chap. xlii. 4) appears in ver. 6 only, at the close of the discourse of the Servant of God, for all that precedes serves as a preparation. In that verse, the Servant of the Lord announces that the Lord had appointed Him to be the Light of the Gentiles; that He should be His salvation unto the ends of the earth. It is very significant that the second book at once begins with an address to the Gentiles, inasmuch us, thus, we are here introduced into the sphere of a redemption which does not refer to a single nation, like that with which the _first_ book is engaged, but to the ends of the earth. At the close of the first book, in chap. xlviii. 20, it was said: "Declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth, say ye: The Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob." The fact that the redemption, in the first instance peculiar to Jacob, is to be proclaimed to all the nations of the earth, leads us to expect that these nations, too, have their portion in the Lord; that at some future period they are to hear a message which concerns them still _more particularly_. This expectation is realized here, at the opening of the second book. The fact that the Gentiles are to listen here, as those who have a personal interest in the message, is proved by the circumstance, that the words: "Unto the ends of the earth," in ver. 6 of the chapter before us, point back to the same words in chap. xlviii. 20.--_The Lord had called me from the womb._ It is sufficient to go thus far back in order to repress or refute the idea of His having himself usurped His office, and to furnish a foundation for the expectation that God would powerfully uphold and protect His Servant in the office which He himself had assigned to Him. Calvin remarks on these words: "They do not indicate the commencement of the time of His vocation, as if God had, only from the womb, called Him; but it is just as if it were said: Before I came forth from the womb, God had decreed that I was to undertake this office. In the same manner Paul also says that he had been separated from his mother's womb, although he was chosen before [Pg 233] the foundation of the world." To be called from the womb is, in itself, nothing extraordinary; it is common to all the servants of the Lord. Jeremiah ascribes it to himself in chap. i. 5: "Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee;" and in harmony with this passage in Jeremiah--not with that before us--Paul says in Gal. i. 15: ὁ θεὸς ὁ ἀφορίσας (corresponding to: I have _sanctified_ thee) με ἐκ κοιλίας μητρός μου. But we have here merely the _introduction to what follows_, where the calling, to which the Servant of God had been destined from the womb appears as quite unique.--_From the bowels of my mother hath He made mention of my name._ The name is here not an ordinary proper name, but _a name descriptive of the nature_,--one by which His office and vocation are designated. This making mention was, in the case of Christ, not a thing concealed; the prophecy before us received its palpable confirmation and fulfilment; inasmuch as, in reference to it, Joseph received, even before His birth, the command to call Him Jesus, Saviour: τέξεται δὲ υἱὸν καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν· αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν, Matth. i. 21, after the same command had previously come to Mary, Luke i. 31; comp. ii. 21, where, as we have already remarked, there is a distinct reference to the passage before us.