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ISAIAH 40-66.

BY CLAUDE G. MONTEFIORE.

A LECTUBE DELIVERED AT NEUMEYEB HALL, TUESDAY, APEIL 21ST, 1885,
I must begin my lecture this evening by an apology. Some people may
think that the subject — the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah — is r.eally too
solemn for an evening's entertainment. Others, again, may think that Biblical sub
jects should be spoken about, not in a lecture-hall, but from the pulpit in a syna
gogue. As regards the first objection, I can only say that I hope your patience will
not have been too utterly worn out at the end of my remarks this evening, and that
you will pardon, though you have been the sufferers, the rashness of my venture.
Bub as regards the second objection — that Biblical subjects are unsuited for lectures,
and above all, for lectures by laymen — I should like to say this : If we put the Bible
on a sort of high pedestal of its own, and treat it differently from any other book,
we run the great danger of making it unreal. The Bible is a unique book ; but
just because its value is so high, it will not suffer if we use the same ways for ex
plaining it as we use for every other book. It is not only a book for Saturdays and
synagogues ; it is a book for every day. It must live, if it is to be of use ; it must be
understood, if it is to live.
That is one reason why I have chosen the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah
for this evening's lecture. But another reason iB this : that these twenty-seven
chapters are in their own class the finest bit of literature that we have in the world.
They are among the finesb bits in any class. And they are of espeoial value to
Jews. For these twenty-seven chapters contain some of the noblest religious
teaching which has ever been put forward ; they certainly contain the grandest
view of Judaism and its duties in the world which has ever been spoken or written
whether before or after them. Since their author died some 2,300 years have passed
away ; but Judaism has never been so lucky as to get such another preacher
again.

Surely the study of this small document, (for these twenty-seven chapters do
not contain as much printed matter as a single number of the Daily Telegraph, not
counting the advertisements), ought not to be npglected. Nevertheless, I am afraid
that a very large number of Jews are either quite unfamiliar with the twenty-seven
chapters, or have not read them properly and with profit. Nor <ire they altogether
to be blamed for this. The Hebrew in which the chapters are written, though
not very difficult, is also not very easy ; and I am afraid that a great many English
Jews and Jewesses do not avail themselves of the cheap prices at which they can
buy an English Bible, and read there a translation, which though not always right,
(for it waB made nearly 300 years ago when people did not understand Hebrew so
well as they do now), is far more often right than wrong, and is also the most
glorious monument of our noble English language whioh is in existence. Let me
take this opportunity of adding that the Revised Translation of the Old Testament,
which will contain as good a translation as it is possible to get of the original text,
will be published very shortly.
Still even with a good translation the difficulties in the way of understanding
these famous chapters are not by any means at an end. For people read them too
often without stopping to think under what circumstances they were written, and,
as I shall have occasion to say afterwards, we must, if we want to understand a
book which has to do with life and public affairs, first ask ourselves when, and how,
and why was this book written. But we do not do this with the Biblical writings,
nor do we weigh each sentence and word carefully and ask not what me would like
it to mean, but what the writer really meant. I complained of the ignorance of
many Jews about the Bible, but really I should also like to complain of those who
are familiar with it. Over-familiarity breeds, in their case, not contempt, but inat
tention ; the words are read, but they are not properly fitted in with the times in-
which they were written, nor are they rightly made use of for our own. We read
Isaiah, but we do not apply him and his teaching to our own day. And therefore, to
all intents and purposes, this book and these twenty-seven chapters are for many
of us just as if we had never read them ; they are not alive, but dead.
As I have said, the first thing we have to do in studying a book relating to
life and morals and society is to ask some such questions as these three :—
(1.) When was this book written 1
(2.) What were the circumstances in which it was written — the state of society
at the time ?
(2.) Who was the writer ? What sort of man was he, and what was his pur
pose in writing this book 1
These questions can sometimes be answered easily ; at other times only with
very great difficuty. In the case of most modern books they can be answered easily,
without the help of, or at all events, not solely by means of the books them
selves. So, for instance, if the book were " Paradise Lost," and the
author John Milton, we can readily get good and useful answers to
our questions. So also with such books as " Gulliver's Travels," by
Jonathan Swift, and " Alton Locke," by Charles Kingsley. But in the
case of books written long ago, the answers are only to be got with difficulty, and
are sometimes matters of dispute. Who wrote the book in question may not be
known, and its date may be only fixable by what is called internal evidence, got,
from the book itself. Supposing there is a, book A, of which we know the date

and that this book A ref er» to or quotes from a book B, of which we don't know the
date ; then we may be fairly sure that the book B was written before the book A .
That is a case of external evidence, but we have often to trust to internal evidence
only. That is pretty well the case with these twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah. We
can get no answers to our questions except by internal evidence. But that evidence
is very strong ; so that there is a very general agreement among learned people as
to the date at, and the circumstances in which this book was written. I shall follow
in the footsteps of the learned to-night, and tell you what I have read on the subject
in their books and commentaries.
I will begin with the second half of the third question, and try to answer it as
shortly and clearly as I can. What sort of man was the author of the last twenty-
seven chapters of the Book of Isaiah 1 This question can be answered roughly ;
the question who he was, what sort of life he lived, and what his
name was cannot be answered at all. He belonged, however, to the class of
people, who in Hebrew are called Nebiim, and whom we, using the Greek and Latin
term, call Prophets. Our word Prophets is not an exact translation of the Hebrew
word Nebiim. The " Nabi " (the singular of Nebiim) means the "Speaker" — the
Bubbler over with speech — the man of a, message. We commonly use the word
" Prophet " to mean the announcer of the future. But foretelling was not the
most important part of the Nabi's work. He often did foretell the future, and
many of the prophecies of the Hebrew " Nebiim " did strangely come to pass. But
the main portion of his work did not consist in a mere foretelling of events which were to
come. The Hebrew Prophet believed himself to be the messenger and servant of God.
He believed that the spirit of God drove him on to speak certain words, and make
certain declarations to his people. So far as we know, it was only from time to time
that the Prophets were urged to speak. The message of God seemed to come to them
but now and again ; sometimes on occasions of public need, and sometimes without
any particular occasion having suggested a subject for their words. But these
divine messages — of what did they tell 1 What were they about 1 The Prophets
spoke of life and how it ought to be lived ; they were public teachers— teachers of
morals and of religion ; rebuking, encouraging, , exhorting, even as the hour
might ask. They were often not only teachers of private morals, but also politi
cal advisers, who sought to make kings and statesmen pursue the path of justice
and integrity. They showed the Jews of old their weaknesses and their sins ;
they pointed out with an unsparing hand the sore places in the society of their
time ; they spoke, and here their voice was always loudest, against the outward
shows and forms which in their days, as in our own days, were so often made to do
duty for true religion. Burnt offerings and peace offerings and sin offerings, they
told the people, are not what your God demands. " I will have mercy and not
sacrifice, and goodness rather than the fat of lambs.'' Just as now their disciple
might say, " It is better to pray little and to be honest, than to pray much and to
cheat." And in the earlier times the Prophets had to speak against the coarser sin
of idolatry— a sin which, in that earlier form, we may be said to have outgrown.
For us the main interest of the Prophets lies in their teaching about the true nature
of religion, and how that nature is bound up not with external rites but with moral
states of mind and heart, and with moral action. All the Prophets, of whom we
have written records (of course there were many of whose words we have no written

remembrance), have a strong family likeness, though they have all their individual
peculiarities both in matter and form. In all of them we can discern the same
divine enthusiasm, the same divine inspiration.
Many of tbe Prophets— all the earlier ones— spoke their message straight out
before the people. In our days the man who feels that he has a message, something
of value to give to the world about him, does not go out into the streets and shout
it out before the passers by. He writes a book and his words are scattered broad
cast and yet permanently preserved. But in those days there was no reading public
whatever. Tbe Prophet, therefore, spoke his message in the market place or the
outer courts of the Temple or elsewhere ; and his disciples wrote do itn some portions
of his speeches. In this way chosen fragments have beenhanded down to us. It is,
however, likely that the later Prophets, among whom falls the author of our
twenty-seven chapters, wrote down their prophecies themselves, and in many cases
never spoke them at all.
The Hebrew Prophets stand quite alone in literature and history. As ardent
patriots— for the prophets luved their people with a passionate intensity of devo
tion — and as ardent believers in God and His sovereign justice, they are of the
deepest interest for all students of history and religion. But for Jews they have a
quite peculiar value, because their lessons have not yet been fully learnt and the
vision of their highest inspiration is yet unrealized.
Of all the Prophetical writings, the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah are the
noblest and most beautiful . Although written foraparticular occasion, much of what
they say holds good for quite different and much later times, and so they have the
most general interest for every time ; they belong to that small list of books which
are not of one age but of all.
You will have gathered from what I have said that the latter portion of Isaiah
was not the production of the man who spoke or wrote tbe earlier chapters. And
this is indeed the case. The author of the earlier chapters lived in Palestine about
the year 730 B.C. The author of Isaiah 40-66 lived in Babylonia about the year 545
B.C. The one therefore lived about 200 years after the other. How the writings of
the later Prophet — the great Unknown as we shall call him — came to be added on
to those of Isaiah nobody can tell. But that they do not belong to Isaiah is almost
universally admitted. The proofs you will be glad to be spared. They are long and
somewhat dull. All I need say is that if these chapters were really written in
Palestine in the eighth century before Christ, they are the most hopeless puzzle
imaginable to * hich we may despair of ever finding a clue ; if, however, they were
written in Babylonia in the sixth century before Christ they are not merely intelli
gible but instructive : before a puzzle, they are now luminous with a blaze of light.
I have now told you of the class of men to whom our author belonged.
I have also told you that his name and the story of his life are totally unknown
to us. Who he was, how he lived and how he died, his very name and tribe, are
all matters on which we must remain in ignorance to all time. Of none of
the Prophets do we know very much ; of this one, the greatest and most f arseeing
of them, we know nothing at all. Our curiosity is barred the way at the very
outset of our enquiry. We must comfort ourselves with the comfort which Shakes
peare gave to his friend, "My spirit is thine, the better part of me." His spirit is
ours, the better part of him.

5
The date of the great Unknown's short prophecies is, as I have said, the middle
of the sixth century before Christ. They were written after the second of those two
captivities, which are great landmarks in the history of the Jewish people. After
the death of Solomon in the year 977 B.c ., the ten tribes of Israel, as you know,
revolted from the hou-e of David, and they kept up a separate and independent life
under their own kings for about 250 years. But in 719 B.C., Samaria, the capital of the
Northern kingdom, was taken and sacked by the Assyrians, and the majority of the
people, according to the barbarous custom of the time, carried captive into Assyria.
From this moment they disappear off the page of history. The worship of one God
had never made real way among these tribes ; and so they become merged with the
peoples among whom they lived. The Southern kingdom, of which Jerusalem was
the capital, kept up its independence for 133 years after tbe fall of Samaria. But in
the year 586 it, too, came to an end. Despite the continued warnings of the Pro
phets, the tiny Judaic kingdom became the foe of the mighty empire of the Chal-
dasans, and after Juda3a had become tributary to the Chaldaeans, repeated revolt
ended in the siege and capture of Jerusalem. The Chaldsean king was called
Nebuchadnezzar, and the name of his capital was Babylon. Babylon is situated in
the south eastern corner of the lands which now form the dominion of Asiatic
Turkey. Thither the larger number of the Judaeans were carried captive by
Nebuchadnezzar, and in and round Babylon they remained for nearly fifty years, till
after the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Persian. Cyrus was the founder of the
kingdom of Persia and one of the greatest of Asiatic conquerors. Of his birth and
childhood, and how he induced the Persians to revolt from the Medes who ruled
over them strange stories were told, some of which have been preserved by Herodotus,
the great Grecian historian. He captured Babylon in 538 and put forth a decree by
which the Jews were allowed to return to their own land. Our twenty-seven chap
ters were probably all written or spoken before the fall of Babylon (which our
Prophet fore old), while the fame of Cyrus was spreading over the Asiatic Continent
and while his hosts were drawing nearer to the kingdom of the Chaldeans. That
they were all written at one time is very unlikely ; indeed, a minute critical investi
gation has attempted, and with some success, to trace the progress of Cyrus's
arms through the various chapters of our Prophet.
Such are the bare historical facts. But we have still to ask, before we can pass
on to the prophecies themselves, what was the condition of the exiles with whom
our author lived and of whom he was one 1 We have seen that in the case of the
ten tribes, the effect of removal from their own country had been to make them
utterly forget their own religion and become merged with their conquerors. In the
case of the Judaeans, the effect of the Captivity had not been the same . The
result was more complex ; the Captivity told differently upon different
parts of the whole community. We must remember that certain large but simple
religious ideas, which are accepted common-places now and familiar to every well-
taught child, were not learnt, so to speak, all at once, but are the outcome of a long
and painful development. The idea of a single and all-powerful God, before whom
all races are equal, who is not partial in his justice, but who is the Redeemer of all
humanity, — this idea, which seems quite simple and natural to everybody whom I see
before me to-night, was totally unknown to the Jew of two thousand years ag .>„
Still more, the idea was fairly common that the power of God was somehow limited

to the land of Palestine, and that when the Jews were away from their own land,
and there was no sacrificial service to mediate between themselves and Divinity, God
either could not or would not look after them any longer. There seemed to many of
the Jews no hope of any return to Palestine. The power of the Chaldasans was at
its height ; its sudden fall, through the army of Cyrus, was scarcely expected before
it actually took place. What inducement was there, therefore, not to adopt the
religious customs of their conquerors and to merge with them entirely f For it is
tolerably certain that nothing paid, so well as a complete giving up of the ancestral
religion. Those who clung to it closely and would not mingle with the Chaldseans,
were doubtless subjected to derision and insult, sometimes to imprisonment and tor
ture, possibly even to death. To these religious persecutions there seem to be refer
ences in the twenty-seven chapters of our unknown prophet. Many of the
captive Jews were men in whom the religion of their fathers had become a part
of themselves, not easily shaken off. Hence the effect of tbe captivity was different
upon different natures. Some forgot the old faith ; others clung to it in a half
hearted sort of way, with some falling back into idolatry and much despair of the
future ; others, again, were more eager to practise certain outward rites but for
getful of the moral law ; a very few rose to higher ideas of morality and religion
than could have been possible without their having passed through the purifying
fires of sorrow and persecution. The general result of the Captivity was a sort of
mean between worst and best. The band of Jews who returned to Palestine were
certainly purged of the Bins of idolatry, to which they never went back. But they
had got a certain hard narrowness as a counterbalancing error. They returned, as
it has well been said, a band of Puritans, with all the merits of Puritanism and all
its faults. It is not given to many men to be ardent and eager in faith, and yet
liberal and broad-minded. The unknown prophet stands, so far as we know, in this
respect alone; fired with an intensity of conviction that yielded to none of his
contemporaries, he excelled them all in the breadth of his vision and the far-reach
ing nature of his aims.
I have pointed out to you the different feelings prevailing among the Jews with
whom our Great Unknown lived and laboured. It was, therefore, necessary that his
Divine message should also be of a various nature ; now suited for one class of his
hearers or readers, and now for another. His manner and his thought change
according as he has now this class before his mind, and now the other. In all the
prophetical writings there are frequent changes of subject and style : rebuke and
exhortation, threat and promise are often strangely mingled together. We find the
same sudden changes in our twenty- seven chapters ; for the message with which the
Prophet was entrusted was of a manifold character. The old sin of idolatry had
not yet been finally overcome, and he had to preach against it with all his might-
So we find him pouring out a flood of irony and denunciation upon the idolatrous
tendencies and practices of some sections of the captives. He had also to teach
Morality as well as Religion, or rather he had to show that the essence of Religion
consists in that moral life which is kept warm and keen and strong by the love for
God. To those, moreover, who despaired or thought unworthily of Judaism, he
had to speak of its power and meaning ; of its future in the world's history ; of its
true mission before God to all mankind. But above all, as the one point which lay
nearest to his heart and the hearts of all, he had to begin his message with words of

hope and encouragement ; he had to foretell the speedy coming of deliverance and
the restoration of the captives to the land of their fathers. He had to rouse those
who doubted of God's power and of His truth to a fuller and deeper faith by telling
them, in all the rush and flow of his superb oratory, how the pangs and sadness of
the present were quickly to be exchanged for a future, of which the glories should
be such as none had dreamt of, in which there should be no more danger and war,
but in which peace and righteousness should be the emblems of a new and golden
age. The mind of the Prophet, when his words are not of rebuke and condemnation,
is turned towards the future. The present is about to pass away ; of the past
he is wholly silent. But in his prophecies respecting the future, it seems as if there
were two different future times of which he speaks — one nearer and one more dis
tant. It is not always easy to say when he is speaking of the first period and when of
the second. They fade into each other, and the distinction between them was probably
not always clearly before the Prophet's mind. For the Prophet doubtless believed in
a far more glorious state of things af terthe Restoration to Palestine than the course
of events actually displayed. He probably believed that his golden age would
quickly come to pass ; he hardly can have thought that the eternal reign of peace
and justice, which he foresaw in his dreams, would still be a dream and a, hope for
the future after more than two thousand years.
But we can nevertheless see a certain distinction of times, and these roughly
correspond to a divison of his whole book. In chapters 40 to 48 the main subject
is the near deliverance from the Babylonian yoke, the great victories of Cyrus, and
the grandeur of the re-established Judasan state. In chapters 49 to 66 Cyrus and
Babylon disappear from the scene, and the future spoken of seems to be more dis
tant ; the promises are fuller and grander, or, if you prefer it, more visionary. The
Prophet seems to lose himself every now and again in his own dreams, gazing with
rapture and enthusiastic joy upon the picture of the wondrous Messianic Age.
We must call to mind why it was that the restoration of the Jews to Palestine
was an event of such enormous importance and such immense delight to the great
Unknown. There was, first of all, the general feeling of patriotism. Like all the
Prophets, the great Unknown was an intense lover of his people ; he mourned
with them over their sorrows, he rejoiced with them over their joys. He, therefore,
looked forward to the Restoration with just the same feelings that we Englishmen
should look forward to a successful revolt, if ever, which God forbid, the Empire of
England were conquered by a foreign foe. But this patriotic feeling was not the
only motive which induced the Prophet to yearn for the coming capture of Babylon.
He longed for its capture, because that event meant for him a signal proof of
the Truth and Power of God. It meant the destruction of the wicked, the idolatrous,
and the unbelieving ; the strengthening of the half-hearted and the doubting, the
terror and the conversion of the nations which had no knowledge of God. The reli
gious motive weighed with the Prophet as strongly as his Patriotism, or rather, the
two were indissolubly bound up together. Thirdly, the renewed foundation of the
state in Palestine meant to the Prophet, as he firmly believed, the fresh beginning
of the true Jewish mission, the beginning of the kingdom of God. The Jews are
God's servants, whom He has chosen ; servants with a distinct and separate duty,
servants in whom their Master is to be glorified for ever. The Restoration is to

8
mark the beginning of the conversion of all people to the belief in
a single God. There is much patriotic fervour breathing through all the visions of
the Prophet about the good time to come; and we to-day are sometimes rather annoyed
when the Prophet turns aside from hiB dreams of the new birth in morality and
religion, to dwell with unqualified satisfaction on the mere physical supremacy of
the Jewish nation among the kingdoms of the world. But the one element in the
picture is inseparable from the other to the mind of the Prophet ; it is for ub to dis
entangle the eternal moral and religious elements of his message from what is merely
local, temporary, and material. When the Prophet tells his people, " that kings shall
minister unto them and that they shall eat the riches of many nations, and in their
glory shall boast themselves," we feel that this is only true in a spiritual sense, and
not as the speaker meant it ; but we feel that we are one with him entirely, and that
we have reached the essence of his whole message when he prophecies that " in one
House of God all the nations of the earth shall kneel in prayer together."
It is impossible in the time that remains to me to give an analysis of these
twenty-seven chapters. What I purpose to do is to give an analysis with quotations
of the first nine chapters, and then to treat of one or two memorable points in the
whole book.
In the opening 40th chapter the great Unknown begins with a message of peace.
He addresses the prophets, for he was one of a band, their leader and their friend. To
them he speaks and bids them say to the captives words of consolation and divine
encouragement. " Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye
comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is ended, that her
iniquity is pardoned, that she hath received of the Lord's hands double for all her sins.
Tbe voice of one that crieth : Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord ;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God  And the glory
of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the
Lord hath spoken.'' The Prophet goes on to speak of the power of God in nature,
and the greatness of his wisdom, and then he thinks of the idolatry around him,
and with change of tone begins an indignant protest against those who make their
worship to the work of men's hand. " To whom then will ye liken God, to what
likeness will ye compare him 1 0 Israel dost thou not know, hast thou not heard
that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth hot,
neither is weary ; He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might
he increaseth strength, they that wait upon him shall put forth wings like the eagle,
they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."
But the heathen gods know nothing and are senseless. The God of Israel alone
reigns. It is He who has foretold : it is He who is bringing to pass. Be strong and
fear not. " Thou, Israel, art my servant, whom I have taken from the ends of the
earth ; thou art my servant, I have chosen thee and not cast thee away." " Fear
not, for I am with thee, when thou passest through the waters I will be with thee,
when thou walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned." The chosen few
among the people, they who believe in God and walk in His ways, loving goodness
.and truth, have a duty to perform to the whole of Israel and through Israel to the
world. " Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen ;
that ye may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He ; before me there
was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the Lord and

9
beside Me there is no Saviour." Then follows a long and sarcastic account of the
idol makers and idol worshippers, with a renewed call to Israel to remember these
things and to trust only in the God of the heavens and the earth, whose instrument
is Cyrus the Persian king. In the next chapter (the 45th) the Prophet declares
solemnly that Cyrus is the anointed of the Lord, called for the sake of Israel,
the servant. A renewed vindication of God's omnipotent majesty follows, with the
solemn assertion, " I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and
create darkness. I make peace and create evil, I, the Lord, do all these things."
There follow in the next two chapters a renewed exhortation to the people to trust
in God and abandon idolatry, and a sort of triumphal hymn sung over the vision of
fallen Babylon. In the 48th chapter there is a summing up of all that has gone
before. Denunciations against idolatry are intermingled with repeated appeals to
the better and higher feelings of the people, and the gracious promises of deliver
ance are once more renewed. " Thus saith the Lord thy Redeemer, the holy one of
Israel : I am the Lord thy God which teacheth thee do profit, which leadeth thee
by the way that thou shouldest go. Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chal-
dseans, with a voice of ringing declare je, tell this, utter it even to the end of the
earth ; say ye 'The Lord hath redeemed his servant.' "
Such is the meagrest outline of these 9 chapters. The remaining 18 are equally,
and in certain respects even more interesting and beautiful. It is not possible,
however, to go through them in the same way. I must, as I have said, confine
myself to touching on one or two central ideas which are contained in them and
the whole book.
The first point to which I shall invite your atttention is the conception
of the servant. The "servant" is first mentioned in the 41st chapter, and, as
a single personification, he disappears at the end of the most famous chapter in all
the twenty-seven, namely, the 53rd. By this I mean that after that chapter we hear
about God's servants in the plural, but no more about His servant in the singular .
Round the conception of the servant cluster some of the newest and strangest fea
tures in the Prophet's teaching. It is therefore needful to examine it somewhat
closely. The word "servant," or "slave," had been used in this metaphorical sort
of sense before the days of the great Unknown. It had been chiefly applied to the
Prophets. Moses had been called " God's servant." The phrase " My servants the
Prophets " was not uncommon, and in some of the Psalms, possibly as old as our
Prophet though not certainly, the pious among the people are called " the ser
vants of the Lord." In the writings of the great Unknown the word is differently
used, but, as it would seem, not always about the same person or persons.
The consequence is, that in many places it is not quite clear to whom the
Prophet is alluding, and thus the question who the servant really is, has
been the subject of innumerable disquisitions. In the 41st chapter, where the
servant is first mentioned, it is also said who the servant is. " Thou Israel srt
my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen ; I will not cast thee away." In the
next chapter the duties of the servant are distinctly set forth : " Behold my servant
whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul is well pleased ; I have put my
spirit upon him, he shall cause the law to go forth to, the nations. He shall not cry,
nor clamour, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street ; a crushed reed he shall
not break, and a dimly burning wick he shall not quench." But, nevertheless, in

10
spite of his gentleness and endurance, his spirit shall not be " crushed till he have
set the law— that is to say, the religion of the Lord— in the earth." And again of
him it is said that God " has appointed him as a light to the nations, to open blind
eyes and bring forth the baptives from the prison." This, then, is the magnificent
mission of the servant, to bring mankind near to God; to this end he has been
ohosen. But the servant himself is unaware of and even unwilling to
undertake his divine calling : " who is blind as my servant and deaf as the
messenger whom I send? He has seen many things, but does not observe
them ; his ears are open, but he does not hear." In the 43rd, 44th, and 45th chap
ters it is again said that Israel is the servant of God. Except for one phrase in the
42nd chapter (v. 6) which I have purposely omitted, there is no opposition yet indi
cated between the servant and the whole people of Israel. In the three following
chapters the servant is only mentioned once. But in the 49th chapter he reappears
and is introduced as speaking in his own person. " Listen ye countries unto me ;
The Lord has called me from the womb, from my mother's lap has he made mention
of my name, and he said unto me, Thou art my servant ; even Israel, with whom I
will beautify myself. And now he, the Lord, who formed me from the womb to be
a servant unto him, that I might bring back Jacob unto him and that Israel might
be gathered unto him— he, the Lord, hath said, it is too light a, thing that thou
shouldest be to me a servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the
preserved of Israel ; so IJappoint thee the light of the nations, to be my salvation
unto the end of the earth." Here the Prophet speaks again in his own person. " For
thus saith the Lord, unto him who is by man despised, abhorred by the peoples, a
servant of rulers : kings shall see and rise up ; princes — they shall bow down,
because of the Lord, in that he is faithful, and of the Holy One of Israel, in that he
chose thee, I appoint thee for a covenant of the people, to raise up the land, to
assign the desolate heritages, saying to the bondsmen, Go forth, and to those who
are in darkness, Show yourselves." You will notice in these verses that the duties
towards the whole Gentile world are the same here as before. The words are a
repetition in some places of those used in the 42nd chapter. The servant is to be
" a light to the nations, a, divine salvation to the ends of the earth." But he has
also duties to'perform towards Israel, thus showing plainly that he is not identical
with the whole Jewish people. His Maker has formed him " from the womb to bring
Israel back to God ; " he is chosen " to raise up the tribes of Jacob, to gather Israel
unto their Lord again." Who, then, is the servant now ? Is he one person or is he
many ? Is he the prophet himself or the Prophets as a whole 1 Is he an historical
personage of the future or past, or is he only a personification 1 I shall not trouble
you with the various conjectures that have been made,butonly give you the explana
tion which seems to be based on the best evidence and which makes upon the whole
the most likely", sense. At first the servant is the people of Israel chosen
by God to a divine duty. But when the Prophet looked at the people as they actu
ally were, he saw that only a small number were capable of understanding the
nature of the heavenly call. It is the small number who in times past have been
the salt of the whole race ; it is they who are so now, it is they who for long will
continue to be so. It is the chosen and faithful few who have suffered for the
general wrong-doing. It is they who must spread their missionary influence through
Israel, so that after the spiritual transformation of Israel has been completed, the mis-

11
sion may begin to the world at large. It is they who play the part of the hero and the
saint, the martyr and the servant of the Lord. To them, as is most probable, Ihe
verses in chapter xiii. apply, as well as those in chapter xlix. And mark now,
in addition to the novelty of his mission— -the aotive preaching of God's won?, as we
may say, to Israel and to the world — mark, in addition to this, certain new elements
or traits in his character and conduct. The hero who up till then had been
most familiar to the Jews and to people in general, was of the warlike and
martial type. He was a great conqueror ; a suocesBf ul warrior ; a man
who sat on a throne in high places, and dispensed justice to the
people. Even the Messiah — King of Isaiah, the general character of whose
reign is so beautifully set forth in the 11th chapter of the book, is a man who rules,
though his rule is one of peace . But the hero-servant of the Great Unknown, plays a
very different part. He is very humble and lowly. " He shall not cry nor clamour,
nor cause his voice to be heard in the street." He has a " gentle regard," to use the
words of Mr. Cheyne, for the early and feeble germs of spiritual life. " A crushed reed "
— the phrase is metaphorical — " he shall not break, and a dimly burning wick, he
shall not quench." He is a saint, " of men despised, and abhorred by the people,"
and yet " before him shall kings rise from their thrones, and princes shall bow down."
And in the 50th chapter where the servant is again, as it were, brought on to the stage,
he says of himself, " The Lord God hath opened to me an ear, and I have not been
defiant. My back I have given to smiters, and my cheeks to those who plucked out
tbe hair ; my face I have not hidden from confusion and spitting. But the Lord
God will help me, therefore I have made my face as flint, and I shall not be ashamed."
Does the Prophet here refer to events which had taken place in his own lifetime, to
persecutions which had befallen the faithful few from the Babylonians and from the
mockers and unbelievers of his own people — persecutions in which he himself may have
suffered with his friends ? It is possible, but we do not know. At any rate the ideal has
become what we have seen— an ideal of suffering and uncomplaining endurance for
the sake of others, an ideal of duty performed under difficulties and misunderstood,
of faithfulness even unto death. We are therefore prepared for the culminating
prophecy in which the servant is spoken of for the last time and in the most striking
and entirely novel manner. The prophecy begins at the 13th verse of the 52nd
chapter, and ends at the close of the 53rd. It is written in very obscure Hebrew,
and the meaning is more than once very uncertain. The translation which I have
adopted is largely borrowed from that of the latest and far the greatest English
commentator on Isaiah, Mr. Cheyne. " Behold my servant shall deal wisely, he
shall be high and exalted and lofty exceedingly. His visage was disfigured from
that of a man, and his form from that of the sons of men ; many were appalled at
him, and yet kings shall shuttheir mouths (do reverence) because of him ; for that
which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard
they shall perceive." So much God is supposed to say, and now the prophet seems
to speak in the name of the whole people and to identify himself with them. They
speak penitently of the servant in whom they had not believed. " Who believed that
which we heard, and the arm of the Lord unto whom did it become manifest 1 For
he grew up among us as a sapling, and as a root out of a parched ground ; he had no
form nor majesty, and if we looked at him there was no beauty that we should de
light in him. Despised and deserted of men, a man of pains and familiar with sick
ness ; despised, and we regarded him not. But surely our sicknesses he bore, and he
carried our pains ; and me regarded him as stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded because of our transgressions ; crushed because of our iniqui
ties ; the punishment of our peace was upon him, and through his stripes me have
been healed. All we like a flock did go astray, we turned every one to his own way,

12
and the Lord let fall upon him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and opened •
not his mouth, as the sheep that is led to the slaughter is dumb, so opened he not
his mouth. Through oppression and through judgment he was taken away ....
he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the rebellion of my people he was
stricken. With the ungodly was his grave appointed .... although he had done no
violence and there was no deceit in his mouth. But it pleased the Lord to crush
him ; he heaped sicknesses upon him ; and yet even although he gives his soul as an
offering for guilt, he shall see a seed, he shall prolong his days and the business of
the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall look away from his soul's sorrowand be
satisfied ; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make the many
righteous; and their iniquities he shall bear. Therefore will I give him a portion
among the great, and with the powerful shall he divide the spoil, because he poured
out his soul unto death, and was counted with the transgressors ; because he bore
the sins of many, and for the transgressors he makes intercession."
With this vision of a future, in which there shall be full reward and recompense
for the sorrow and anguish of the past and the present, the celebrated chapter closes,
and we hear no more of the servant of the Lord. Bub it is to be noticed that the
servant does not work for success or for payment : he is misunderstood and pours
out his soul unto death. He endures till the bitter end, and though he wins the
crown of martyrdom, it is only his seed who reap the earthly reward. The ideas
and the phrases contained in this chapter were probably suggested to the Prophet by
the scenes of suffering about which he had heard from tradition, as well as from other
scenes which he had witnessed with his own eyes. The faithful few had been per
secuted by their own people while the Jews were still in Palestine. Jeremiah had
been one famous example out of many; and in Babylonia the faithful had been
treated with contumely and harshness, perhaps even with imprisonment and
death by the foreign conqueror. Their own kinsmen had likely enough mocked
them for their steadfastness, and had been unable to see that they were suffering
not for their own sakes but for the sake of others. But though the actual facts
of bygone and present history may have suggested the picture of the suffering
servant, and though the idea of vicarious atonement — the voluntary bearing of
penalty for another's sin — was perhaps enforced upon the minds of a few during
the period of the captivity, it is plain that the idea received a deeper
development and the facts a wider application before they were freshly used
by the Prophet in his inspired writings. It is in this deepening and
widening of fact and idea that the greatness of the author consists. His servant
is drawn in such a manner that the essence of the picture remained true for the
faithful Jews, not only of that age, but for many ages after ; nay, more, it is in many
ways a true picture of the life of God's servants of every race and in every age.
What was the mission and duty of the servant according to the Prophet's vision ?
To the Jewish people, as he believed, had been givena divine charge. They were to
be the religious teachers of humanity. " My servant shall be a light unto the
nations." Their aim is not the heaping together of riches ; their goal is not to
be one of worldly success. But just because the whole nation cannot be expected
to understand and follow out this divine mission, because their actions are baser and
their ends more material, is the servantship, the service of God, withdrawn from
them and vested in the few who seek to live the higher life, although they forfeit
the earthly reward. Through their suffering the whole nation is preserved, and
through their fidelity to God and to Morality, the Jewish race shall gradually be
transformed till all its members are servant3 capable of grappling with their
active missionary work. "By their righteousness they shall make the many
righteous." Something of that sort was in the Prophet's mind ;

13
how far the long persecutions of the Jews through so many centuries of suffering and
misery have shown their capacity to be the servants of God, and how far, now that
in the Western lands of Europe and in America persecution has ceased, the Jews are
showing signs of putting themselves in a moral and religious condition which shall
qualify them for the servant's name and the servant's duties I shall leave you to
think over and to answer for yourselves. Much of the Prophet's dream has been
accomplished, for the missionary service has not been confined, and is not confined,
to the single Jewish race, nor did even our great Unknown understand that the
entry into the divine service is not barred by any test of creed, language, or race.
But I fear that the suffering hero of our Prophet is not the chosen hero of most of
us to-day ; we look with greater favour and respect upon the successful money
maker. Is it because the hero pourtrayed in the 53rd chapter has become the beloved
ideal of another creed that the Jews have too greatly forgotten the loftiest product
of their own inspiration ? Is it, therefore, that the ideals of success and station,
and, above all, of gold have been too often inscribed on the banner of their life's
struggle, instead of the old ideals of humility and renunciation, and of a self-
abasing love ?
But, now, omitting for lack of time the teaching of the Prophet as regards the
difference between inward and outward religion — I ask you all to read the 58th
chapter for yourselves — I will glance, in conclusion, at his picture of the fulfilled
ideal, the vision of the New Jerusalem. Whether he was too hopeful, and thought
that the fulfilment would quickly follow the restoration, or whether he was speaking
of a far distant future, we can hardly tell ; all we know is the nature of that Golden
Age which was to come, as he imagined it, and gave it form and substance in glow
ing words, unparalleled in Hebrew literature for their beauty and solemnity.
Remembering the intense patriotism of our great Unknown — and how he could
by no stretch of his imagination have conceived of any man being both a Jew and
a Persian, or a Jew and a Greek— remembering that his religious and national ideals
were so closely mixed up together, we shall find it natural that the foremost feature
in this vision of the New Order is the grandeur and splendour of the regenerate
Judsean community. Jerusalem is addressed iby God in words of pity and ardent
love : " Thy maker is thine husband, thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel. O thou
afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted, I will set thy stones of fair colours
and thy foundations will I lay of sapphires, and I will make thy battlements rubies
and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy border of precious stones ; and all thy
children shall be disciples of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children.
And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and foreigners shall be your plough
men, but ye— the Priests of the Lord shall ye be called ; men shall name you the
ministers of our God. For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver ,
and for wood brass, and for stones iron, and I will make peace thy government and
righteousness thy magistrates." The spiritual and moral beauty of the new and
kingless state is then further described : " Violence shall no more be heard of in thy
land, desolation nor destruction in thy borders ; and thou shalt call thy walls Salva
tion and thy gates Praise. No more shalt thou have the sun for a light by day,
neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee, but the Lord shall be unto
thee for an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory." In those days of righteous
ness and peace it shall seem as if nature wore a new face, and as if the memory of
cruelty in the animals or in man had passed away. " For behold I create a new heaven
and a, new earth, and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the
bullock, and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all
my holy mountain saith the Lord." And the Jews themselves are changed in heart,

14
and a new covenant is made with them. "And I, the Lord, this is my covenant
with them. ' My spirit which is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy
mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth nor from the mouth of thy seed, nor from
the mouth of thy seed's seed, from henceforth and for ever.' " Bat the new Jeru
salem is the centre of something wider than a single nation ; it is the religious home
of a changed humanity. Q' For it shall come to pass that from one new moon to
another and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me,
saith the Lord. And the foreigners that have joined themselves to the Lord, to
minister unto him, and to love the name of the Lord, becoming his servants, every
one that keepeth the Sabbath so as not to pollute it and taketh hold of my covenant ;
even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of
prayer ; their burnt-offerings and sacrifices shall be acceptable upon mine altar ;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the peoples?}
Such is the prophet's vision of the New Jerusalem. Such isahe nature of his
Ideal State. It is only a vision ; it is only an ideal ; but the way to make it real is
not to treat it as an idle dream and forget its teaching, but to remember ft and help
the change of dream into reality. The goal of our aspirations is not the same in
all respects as the goal of the Prophet's. His ideal was in some ways simpler than
our own. He thought that a unity would come both of spirit and of form ; we also
may yearn for the triumph of the single spirit, but we know that it will be em
bodied in a diversity of forms. We also look towards a golden age, but scarcely to an
age when the earth will form bat a single nation, and when there shall not be many
creeds, but one. Yet though we care for the richness of our multiform national life,
we, too, hope for the time " when the war-drum throbs no longer and the battle-flag
is furled, in the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." And thus we
pray for the coming of an age when there shall be many differences of national
character, but one truth, one goodness and one love, an age when there may be
many creeds, but one Religion.

[Reprinted from the Jewish Chronicle of April 24, 1885.]

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