enjoyment of salvation, which, in the Messianic times, shall be
bestowed upon the Congregation of the Lord. This description goes on to
chap. l. 3, and then, in chap. l. 4 ff., the person of the Servant of
the Lord is anew brought before us.

The Messianic explanation of our passage is already met with in the New
Testament. It is with reference to it that [Pg 227] Simeon, in Luke ii.
30, 31, designates the Saviour as the [Greek: soterion] of God, which
He had prepared before the face of all people (comp. ver. 6 of our
passage: "That thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth"),
as the [Greek: phos eis apokalupsin ethnon kai doxan laou sou Israel];
comp. again ver. 6, according to which the Servant of God is to be at
the same time, the light of the Gentiles, to raise up the tribes of
Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel. Ver. 1: "The Lord hath
called me from the womb, from the bowels of my mother hath He made
mention of my name," is alluded to in Luke ii. 21: [Greek: Kai eklethe
to onoma autou Iesous, to klethen hupo tou angelou pro tou
sullephthenai auton en te koilia] (comp. i. 31: [Greek: sullepse en
gastri kai texe huion kai kaleseis to onoma autou Iesoun]) as is
sufficiently evident from [Greek: en te koilia] _sc. matris_, which
exactly answers to the [Hebrew: mbTN] in the passage before us. In Acts
xiii. 46, 47, Paul and Barnabas prove, from the passage under review,
the destination of Christ to be the Saviour of the Gentiles, and their
right to offer to them the salvation despised and rejected by the Jews:
[Greek: idou strephometha eis ta ethne. houto gar entetaltai hemin ho
Kurios. tetheika se eis phos ethnon tou einai se eis soterian heos
eschatou tes ges.] In the destination which, in Isaiah, the Lord
assigns to Christ, Paul and Barnabas recognize an indirect command for
his disciples, a rule for their conduct. In 2 Cor. vi. 1, 2, ver. 8 is
quoted, and referred to the Messianic time.

It is obvious that the Jews could not be favourable to the Messianic
interpretation; but the Christian Church has held fast by it for nearly
1800 years. Even such interpreters as _Theodoret_ and _Clericus_, who
are everywhere rather disposed to explain away real Messianic
references, than to find the Messiah where He is not presented,
consider the Messianic interpretation to be, in this place, beyond all
doubt. The former says: "This was said with a view to the Lord Christ,
who is the seed of Abraham, through