[228] Isa. xlvi. 3, 4. See pp. 179, 180 of this volume.
[230] If we remember this we shall also feel more reason than ever against perceiving the Nation, or any aspect of the Nation, in the Sufferer of ch. liii. For he suffers, as the individual suffers, sickness and legal wrong. Tyrants do not put whole nations through a form of law and judgement. Of course, it is open to those, who hold that the Servant is still an aspect of the Nation, to reply, that all this is simply evidence of how far the prophet has pushed his personification. A whole nation has been called "The Sick Man" even in our prosaic days. But see pp. 268-76.
[232] xl. 39; xlii. 13; xliv. 29; xlvi. 20.
[234] _Cf._ Wellhausen's _Prolegomena_, ch. ii., 2.
[235] There is no exegete but agrees to this. There may be differences of opinion about the syntax,--whether the verse should run, _though Thou makest his soul guilt_, or _a guilt-offering_; or, _though his soul make a guilt-offering_; or (reading ישים for תשים), _while he makes his soul a guilt-offering_,--but all agree to the fact that by himself or by God the Servant's life is offered an expiation for sin, a satisfaction to the law of God.
[236] _Cf._ Baldensperger (_Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu_, p. 119 ff.) on the genuineness of Christ's predictions and explanations of His sufferings.
We have now reached the summit of our prophecy. It has been a long, steep ascent, and we have had very much to seek out on the way, and to extricate and solve and load ourselves with. But although a long extent of the prophecy, if we measure it by chapters, still lies before us, the end is in sight; every difficulty has been surmounted which kept us from seeing how we were to get to it, and the rest of the way may be said to be down-hill.
To drop the figure--the Servant, his vicarious suffering and atonement for the sins of the people, form for our prophet the solution of the spiritual problem of the nation's restoration, and what he has now to do is but to fill in the details of this.