healing is to come to all the
nations,--an inimitable picture of a self-sacrificing hero, whose death
means life to the world and glory to God, and who will at last live
forever with the Lord whom he has served so steadfastly. Our seer mentions
in earlier passages the Servant of the Lord who "gave his back to the
smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; and hid not his
face from shame and spitting."(1182) Yet "he shall set his face like a
flint," so that "he shall not fail nor be crushed, till he have set the
right in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his teaching."(1183)
Still more directly, he says: "And He said unto Me, 'Thou art My servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.' ... It is too light a thing that
thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to
restore the offspring of Israel; I will also give thee for a light of the
nations, that My salvation may be unto the end of the earth. Thus saith
the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, to him who is despised of
men, to him who is abhorred of nations, to a servant of rulers: kings
shall see and arise, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because
of the Lord that is faithful, even the Holy One of Israel, who hath chosen
thee."(1184)

5. It was, however, no easy matter for men reared in the old view to reach
the lofty conception of a suffering hero. Even the dramatic figure of Job
seemed to lack the right solution. Job protests his guiltlessness, defies
the dark power of fate, and even challenges divine justice, but God
himself announces at the end that no man can grasp the essence of His plan
for the world. A later and more naive writer, who added the conclusion of
the book, reversed Job's destiny and compensated him by a double share of
what he had lost in both wealth and family.(1185) As if the great problem
of suffering could be solved by such external means! Neither would the
problem of the great tragedy of Israel, the martyr-priest of the
centuries, the Job of the nations, ever find its solution in a national
restoration. A mere political rebirth could never compensate for the
thousandfold death and untold woe of the Jew for his God and his faith!
But the people at large could not grasp such a conception as is that of
Deutero-Isaiah's of the mission of Israel to be the suffering servant of
the Lord, the witness of God--which is "martyr" in the Greek version,--the
redeemer of the nations. They were e