Isaiah,
"inasmuch as the year which is assigned for Sennacherib's death, B.C.
696, is not historically ascertained and certain. Nor can the
supposition, that Isaiah lived until the time of Manasseh, and himself
arranged and edited the collection of his prophecies on the eve of his
life, be liable to any well-founded doubts" (_Keil_, _Einleitung_, S.
271). The inscription in chap. i. 1, only indicates that the collection
does not contain any prophecies which go beyond the time of Hezekiah.]

[Footnote 2: To a certain degree analogous are those other passages of
the Old Testament, in which the Past presents itself in the form of the
Present, as the deliverance from Egypt in Ps. lxvi. 6; lxxxi. 6. Faith,
at the same time, makes all the old things new, fresh, and lively, and
anticipates the Future.]

[Pg 196]

CHAP. XLII. 1-9.

The 40th chapter has an introductory character. It comforts the people
of the Lord by pointing, in general, to a Future rich in salvation. In
chap. xli. the Prophet describes the appearance of the conqueror from
the East for the destruction of Babylon,--an event from which he
derives, as from a rich source, ample consolations for his poor
wretched people, while, at the same time, he represents idolatry as
being thereby put to shame. It is on purpose that, immediately after
the first announcement of this conqueror from the East, his antitype
is, in chap. xlii. 1-9, contrasted with him. In the preceding chapter,
the Prophet had shown how, by the influence of the king from the East,
the Lord would put idolatry to shame, and work out deliverance for His
Church. In the section now before us, he describes how, by the mission
of His servant, the Lord would effect, definitely and absolutely, that
which the former had done only in a preliminary, limited, and imperfect
manner. In the subsequent section, the Prophet then first farther
carries out the image of the conqueror from the East; and from chap.
xlix. he turns to a more minute representation of the image of the true
Saviour. In chaps. xlii. 10, to xliii. 7, the discourse turns, from a
general description of God's instruments of salvation, to a general
description of the salvation in its whole extent; just as it is the
manner of the second part ever again to return from the particular to
the general.

Here, where the Servant of God is first to be introduced, He is at
first spoken _of_; it is in ver. 5 that the Lo