Chapter XX: The Suffering Servant (2)

And this Onlyness was to be realised in suffering. He said, _I must suffer_; or again, _It behoves the Christ to suffer_. Suffering is the experience in which men feel their oneness with their kind. Christ, too, by suffering felt His oneness with men; but largely in order to assert a singularity beyond. Through suffering He became like unto men, but only that He might effect through suffering a lonely and a singular service for them. For though He suffered in all points as men did, yet He shared none of their universal feelings about suffering. Pain never drew from Him either of those two voices of guilt or of doubt. Pain never reminded Christ of His own past, nor made Him question God.

Nor did He seek pain for any end in itself. There have been men who have done so; fanatics who have gloried in pain; superstitious minds that have fancied it to be meritorious; men whose wounds have been as mouths to feed their pride, or to publish their fidelity to their cause. But our Lord shrank from pain; if it had been possible He would have willed not to bear it: _Father, save Me from this hour; Father, if it be Thy will, let this cup pass from Me_. And when He submitted and was under the agony, it was not in the feeling of it, nor in the impression it made on others, nor in the manner in which it drew men's hearts to Him, nor in the seal it set on the truth, but in something beyond it, that He found His end and satisfaction. Jesus _looked out of the travail of His soul and was satisfied_.

For, _firstly_, He knew His pain to be God's will for an end outside Himself,--_I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished: Father, save Me from this hour, yet for this cause came I to this hour: Father, Thy will be done_,--and all opportunities to escape as temptations.

And, _secondly_, like the Servant, Jesus _dealt prudently, had insight_. The will of God in His suffering was no mystery to Him. He understood from the first why He was to suffer.[236]

The reasons He gave were the same two and in the same order as are given by our prophet for the sufferings of the Servant,--first, that fidelity to God's truth could bring with it no other fate in Israel;[237] then that His death was necessary for the sins of men, and as men's ransom from sin. In giving the first of these reasons for His death, Christ likened Himself to the prophets who had gone before Him in Jerusalem; but in the second He matched Himself with no other, and no other has ever been known in this to match himself with Jesus.

When men, then, stand up and tell us that Christ suffered only for the sake of sympathy with His kind, or only for loyalty to the truth, we have to tell them that this was not the whole of Christ's own consciousness, this was not the whole of Christ's own explanation. Suffering, which leads men into the sense of oneness with their kind, only made Him, as it grew the nearer and weighed the heavier, more emphatic upon His difference from other men. If He Himself, by His pity, by His labours of healing (as Matthew points out), and by all His intercourse with His people, penetrated more deeply into the participation of human suffering, the very days which marked with increasing force His sympathy with men, only laid more bare their want of sympathy with Him, their incapacity to follow into that unique conscience and understanding of a Passion, which He bore not only _with_, but, as He said, _for_ His brethren. _Who believed that which we heard, and to whom was the arm of the Lord revealed? As to His generation, who reflected ... that for the transgression of my people He was stricken?_ Again, while Christ indeed brought truth to earth from heaven, and was for truth's sake condemned by men to die, the burden which He found waiting Him on earth, man's sin, was ever felt by Him to be a heavier burden and responsibility than the delivery of the truth; and was in fact the thing, which, apart from the things for which men might put Him to death, remained the reason of His death in His own sight and in that of His Father. And He told men why He felt their sin to be so heavy, because it kept them so far from God, and this was His purpose, He said, in bearing it--that He might bring us back to God; not primarily that He might relieve us of the suffering which followed sin, though He did so relieve some when He pardoned them, but that He might restore us to right relations with God,--might, like the Servant, _make many righteous_. Now it was Christ's confidence to be able to do this, which distinguished Him from all others, upon whom has most heavily fallen the conscience of their people's sins, and who have most keenly felt the duty and commission from God of vicarious suffering. If, like Moses, one sometimes dared for love's sake to offer his life for the life of his people, none, under the conscience and pain of their people's sins, ever expressed any consciousness of thereby making their brethren righteous. On the contrary, even a Jeremiah, whose experience, as we have seen, comes so wonderfully near the picture of the Representative Sufferer in ch. liii.,--even a Jeremiah feels, with the increase of his vicarious pain and conscience of guilt, only the more perplexed, only the deeper in despair, only the less able to understand God and the less hopeful to prevail with Him. But Christ was sure of His power to remove men's sins, and was never more emphatic about that power than when He most felt those sins' weight.

And _He has seen His seed_; He _has made many righteous_. We found it to be uncertain whether the penitent speakers in ch. liii. understood that the Servant by coming under the physical sufferings, which were the consequences of their sins, relieved them of these consequences; other passages in the prophecy would seem to imply, that, while the Servant's sufferings were alone valid for righteousness, they did not relieve the rest of the nation from suffering too. And so it would be going beyond what God has given us to know, if we said that God counts the sufferings on the Cross, which were endured for our sins, as an equivalent for, or as sufficient to do away with, the sufferings which these sins bring upon our minds, our bodies and our social relations. Substitution of this kind is neither affirmed by the penitents who speak in the fifty-third of Isaiah, nor is it an invariable or essential part of the experience of those who have found forgiveness through Christ. Every day penitents turn to God through Christ, and are assured of forgiveness, who feel no abatement in the rigour of the retribution of those laws of God, which they have offended; like David after his forgiveness, they have to continue to bear the consequences of their sins. But dark as this side of experience undoubtedly is, only the more conspicuously against the darkness does the other side of experience shine. By _believing what they have heard_, reaching this belief through a quicker conscience and a closer study of Christ's words about His death, men, upon whom conscience by itself and sore punishment have worked in vain, have been struck into penitence, have been assured of pardon, have been brought into right relations with God, have felt all the melting and the bracing effects of the knowledge that another has suffered in their stead. Nay, let us consider this--the physical consequences of their sins may have been left to be endured by such men, for no other reason than in order to make their new relation to God more sensible to them, while they feel those consequences no longer with the feeling of penalty, but with that of chastisement and discipline. Surely nothing could serve more strongly than this to reveal the new conscience towards God that has been worked within them. This inward _righteousness_ is made more plain by the continuance of the physical and social consequences of their sins than it would have been had these consequences been removed.

Thus Christ, like the Servant, became a force in the world, inheriting in the course of Providence a _portion with the great_ and _dividing the spoils_ of history _with the strong_. As has often been said, His Cross is His Throne, and it is by His death that He has ruled the ages. Yet we must not understand this as if His Power was only or mostly shown in binding men, by gratitude for the salvation He won them, to own Him for their King. His power has been even more conspicuously proved in making His fashion of service the most fruitful and the most honoured among men. If men have ceased to turn from sickness with aversion or from weakness with contempt; if they have learned to see in all pain some law of God, and in vicarious suffering God's most holy service; if patience and self-sacrifice have come in any way to be a habit of human life,--the power in this change has been Christ. But because these two--to say, _Thy will be done_, and to sacrifice self--are for us men the hardest and the most unnatural of things to do, Jesus Christ, in making these a conscience and a habit upon earth, has indeed shown Himself able to divide the spoil with the strong, has indeed performed the very highest Service for Man of which man can conceive.

FOOTNOTES:

[203] Thus Ewald supposed ch. lii. 13-liii. to be an elegy upon some martyr in the persecutions under Manasseh. Professor Briggs, as we have noticed before, claims to have discovered that all the passages in the Servant are parts of a trimeter poem, older than the rest of the prophecy, which he finds to be in hexameters. See p. 315.

[204] I may quote Dillmann's opinion on this last point: "Andererseits sind nicht blos die Grundgedanken und auch einzelne Wendungen wie 52, 13-15. 53, 7. 11. 12 durch 42, 1 ff. 49, 1 ff. 50, 3 ff. so wohl vorbereitet und so sehr in Übereinstimmung damit, dass an eine fast unveränderte Herübernahme des Abschnitts aus einer verlornen Schrift (_Ew._) nicht gedacht werden kann, sondern derselbe doch wesentlich als Werk des Vrf. angesehen werden muss" (_Commentary_ 4th ed., 1890, p. 453).

[205] This verb best gives the force of the Hebrew, which means both _to deal prudently_ and to _prosper_ or succeed. See p. 346.

[206] Vulgate finely: "extolletur, sublimis erit et valde elatus."

[207] "The term rendered 'startle' has created unnecessary difficulty to some writers. The word means to 'cause to spring or leap;' when applied to fluids, to spirt or sprinkle them. The fluid spirted is put in the _accusative_, and it is spirted _upon_ the person. In the present passage the person, 'many nations,' _is_ in the _accusative_, and it is simply treason against the Hebrew language to render 'sprinkle.' The interpreter who will so translate will 'do anything.'"--A. B. Davidson, _Expositor_, 2nd series, viii., 443. The LXX. has θαυμασονται εθνη πολλα. The Peschitto and Vulgate render _sprinkle_.

[208] And not _our report_, or _something we caused to be heard_, as in the English Version,--מועהש is the passive participle of מעש, to hear, and not of השמיע, to cause to hear. The speakers are now the penitent people of God who had been preached to, and not the prophets who had preached.

[209] _Tender shoot._ Masculine participle, meaning _sucker_, or _suckling_. Dr. John Hunter (_Christian Treasury_) suggests succulent plant, such as grow in the desert. But in Job viii. 16; xiv. 7; xv. 30, the feminine form is used of any tender shoot of a tree, and the feminine plural in Ezek. xvii. 22 of the same. The LXX. read παιδιον, _infant_. _Before Him_, i.e. Jehovah. Cheyne, following Ewald, reads _before us_. So Giesebrecht.

[210] _Took for his burden._ _Loaded_ himself with them. The same grievous word which God uses of Himself in ch. xlvi. See p. 180.

[211] There is more than _afflicted_ (Authorised Version) in this word. There is the sense of being _humbled_, punished for his own sake.

[212] The possessive pronoun has been put to the end of the lines, where it stands in the original, producing a greater emphasis and even a sense of rhyme.

[213] לנוכ Kūllanū so rendered instead of "all of us," in order to be assonant with the close of the verse, as the original is, which closes with kullam.

[214] That is, by a form of law that was tyranny, a judicial crime.

[215] Cut off violently, prematurely, unnaturally.

[216] See p. 368.

[217] The verbs, hitherto in the perfect in this verse, now change to the imperfect; a sign that they express the purpose of God. _Cf._ Dillmann, _in loco_.

[218] _From the travail of his soul shall he see, and by his knowledge be satisfied._ Taking דעתוב with שבעי instead of with יצדיק. This reading suggested itself to me some years ago. Since then I have found it only in Prof. Briggs's translation, _Messianic Prophecy_, p. 359. It is supported by the frequent parallel in which we find _seeing_ and _knowing_ in Hebrew.

[219] Some translate _many_, _i.e._, the many to whom he brings righteousness, as if he were a victor with a great host behind him.

[220] Jer. xxiii. 5.

[221] Hitzig (among others) held that it is the prophets who are the speakers of ver. 1, and that the voices of the penitent people come in only with ver. 2 or ver. 3. In that case מועתינוש would mean _what we heard from God_ (מועהש is elsewhere used for the prophetic message) and delivered to the people. This interpretation multiplies the dramatis personæ, but does not materially alter the meaning, of the prophecy. It merely changes part of the penitent people's self-reproach into a reproach cast on them by their prophets. But there is no real reason for introducing the prophets as the speakers of ver. 1.

[222] For the argument that it is Israel who speaks here, see Hoffmann (_Schriftbeweis_), who was converted from the other view, and Dillmann, 4th ed., _in loco_. A very ingenious attempt has been made by Giesebrecht (_Beiträge zur Jesaia Kritik_, 1890, p. 146 ff.), in favour of the interpretation that the heathen are the speakers. His reasons are these: 1. It is the heathen who are spoken of in lii. 13-15, and a change to Israel would be too sudden. Answer: The heathen are not exclusively spoken of in lii. 13-15; but if they were a change in the next verse to Israel would not be more rapid than some already made by the prophet. 2. The words in liii. 1 suit the heathen. They have already received the news of the exaltation of the Servant, which in lii. 15 was promised them. This is the שמועתינו, that is _news we have just heard_. האמין is a pluperfect of the subjunctive mood: _Who could_ or who _would have believed_ this news of the exaltation _we have_ just _heard, and the arm of Jehovah to whom was it revealed_! _i.e._, it was revealed to nobody. Answer: besides the precariousness of taking האמין as a pluperfect subjunctive, this interpretation is opposed to the general effort of the prophecy, which is to expose unbelief before the exaltation, not after it. 3. To get rid of the argument--that, while the speakers own that the Servant bears their sins, it is said the Servant was stricken for the sins of _my people_, and that therefore the speakers must be the same as "my people":--Giesebrecht would utterly alter the reading of ver. 8 from למו ננע עמו מפשע, _for the transgression of my people was the stroke to him_ to יְנֻנַּע מִפִּשְׁעָם, _for their stroke was he smitten_.

[223] נשׂא and סבל. In speaking of his country's woes, Jeremiah (x. 19) says: _This is sickness_, or _my sickness, and I must bear it_, חלי זה ואשׂאני. Ezekiel (iv. 4) is commanded to lie on his side, and in that symbolic position to _bear the iniquity of His people_, עונם תשא. One of the Lamentations (v. 7) complains: _Our fathers have sinned and are not, and we bear_ (סבל) _their iniquities._ In these cases the meaning of both נשא and סבל is simply to feel the weight of, be involved in. The verbs do not convey the sense of _carrying off_ or _expiating_. But still it had been said of the Servant that in his suffering he would be practical and prosper; so that when we now hear that he bears his people's sins, we are ready to understand that he does not do this for the mere sake of sharing them, but for a practical purpose, which, of course, can only be their removal. There is, therefore, no need to quarrel with the interpretation of ver. 4, that the Servant _carries away_ the suffering with which he is laden. Matthew makes this interpretation (viii. 17) in speaking of Christ's healing. But it is a very interesting fact, and not without light upon the free and plastic way in which the New Testament quotes from the Old, that Matthew has ignored the original and literal meaning of the quotation, which is that the Servant shared the sicknesses of the people: a sense impossible in the case for which the Evangelist uses the words.

[224] But they do not tell us, whether they were totally exempted from suffering by the Servant's pains, or whether they also suffered with him the consequence of their misdeeds. For that question is not now present to their minds. Whether they also suffer or not (and other chapters in the prophecy emphasize the people's bearing of the consequences of their misdeeds), they know that it was not their own, but the Servant's suffering, which was alone the factor in their redemption.

[225] _Mystery of Pain_, by James Hinton, p. 27.

[226] Psalm cvi. 23; _cf._ also ver. 32, where the other side of the solidarity between Moses and the people comes out. _They angered Him also at the waters of Strife, so that it went ill with Moses for their sakes ... he spake unadvisedly with his lips._

[227] See p. 352.

[228] Isa. xlvi. 3, 4. See pp. 179, 180 of this volume.

[229] Ch. xlii. 25.

[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.

[231] Jer. li. 4.

[232] xl. 39; xlii. 13; xliv. 29; xlvi. 20.

[233] 1 Sam. vi. 13.

[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.

[237] _Cf._ p. 330.

BOOK IV.

_THE RESTORATION._