o the Messiah. This is quite openly expressed by _Koester_:
"The Servant of Jehovah is the Jewish people; viewed, however, by the
Prophet in such a manner as to combine in itself the attributes of
both, the prophets and the Messiah." Prophetism would have dug its own
grave if its organs had, in a manner so inconsiderate, contradicted
each other as regards the highest hopes of the people. The national
conviction of the inspiration of the prophets, which formed the
foundation of their activity and efficiency, could, in that case, not
have arisen at [Pg 205] all. The same arguments decide partly also
against a modification of this explanation which evidently has
proceeded from embarrassment only,[1] against those who, by the Servant
of God, understand the better portion of Israel,--such as _Maurer_,
_Ewald_, _Oehler_ (_Ueber den Knecht Gottes_, _Tuebinger Zeitschrift_,
1840. The latter differs from the other supporters of this view in
this, that, according to him, the notion of the ideal Israel which, he
thinks, prevails in chap. xlii. and xlix., is, in chap. liii., raised
to the view of an individual--the Messiah), _Knobel_ ("The theocratic
substance of the people, to which especially the prophets and priests
belonged.") By this modification, the explanation which makes the
people the subject, loses its only apparent foundation, inasmuch as it
can no more appeal to those passages in which Israel is spoken of as
the Servant of the Lord; for it is obvious that, in these, not merely
the pious portion of the people is spoken of. At the very outset, in
ver. 19, the whole of the people are undeniably designated by the
Servant of the Lord. It is they only who are blind and deaf in a
spiritual point of view. The whole people, and not a portion of them,
are in the condition of servitude, ver. 22. In ver. 24, Jacob and
Israel are expressly mentioned. The whole people, and not merely the
pious portion, are objects of the Lord's election (chap. xli. 8, xliv.
1, 2); the whole people are to be redeemed from Babylon, chap. xlviii.
20. The hypothesis of the pious portion of the people can as little
account for the unexceptional use of the singular, as the hypothesis of
the whole people; like it, it isolates the prophecies of the Servant of
God, and brings them into contradiction with all the other prophecies,
which assign to Christ the same things that are here assigned to the
Servant of God. But what is especially in opposition to this hy