afterwards, Jerusalem and the cities of Judah are placed beside one
another. The parallel passages clearly intimate that, by the servant of
the Lord, Isaiah only is to be understood. Throughout, the Prophet
refers exclusively to his own prophecies, as regards the impending
salvation of Israel (the prophecies of others he mentions, everywhere
else, always in reference to the past only); [Pg 207] and it cannot be
imagined that, in this single passage only, he should have designated
himself as one among the many. If we consider those parallel passages,
we must assume that the _messengers_ also are represented chiefly by
our Prophet; that he is their mouth and organ, just as, in Rev. i. 1,
and xxii. 6, the servants of God and the prophets are represented by
John.

_Farther_--It cannot be denied that a certain amount of truth lies at
the foundation of the explanation which makes the prophetic order the
subject. The Messiah appears in our prophecy pre-eminently as the
Prophet, in harmony and connection with Deut. xviii. (comp. Vol. i., p.
107); and the substratum of the description forms chiefly the prophetic
order, while, in the prophecies of the first part, it is chiefly the
regal office which appears, and, in chap. liii., the priestly. But the
mistake (as _Umbreit_ himself partly saw) is, that this explanation
changes the person into a personification, instead of recognizing that
the idea, which hitherto was only imperfectly realised by the prophetic
order, demands a future perfect realisation in an individual, so that
we could not but expect such an one even if there did not exist any
Messianic prophecy at all. Every prophet who, in human weakness,
performed his office, was a guarantee of the future appearance of _the_
Prophet, as surely as God never does by halves what, according to His
nature, and as proved by the existence of the imperfect, He must do.
But the fact that, here, we have not before us a mere personification
of the prophetic order, nor, as little, according to the opinion of
_Umbreit_, a single individual by whom, in future, the idea of the
prophetic order was to be most perfectly realised, is evident from the
circumstance that the Servant of God does not, by any means, represent
himself as being _only_ the Prophet. The contrast between Cyrus and the
Servant of God, which _G. Mueller_ advances: "Evidently, the former is a
conqueror; the latter, a meek teacher," is one-sided; for the Servant
of God appears