fter the painful experience acquired during
his own long ministry; comp. chap. vi. For the fruitlessness of His
ministry among the mass of the covenant-people, ver. 4, as well as the
great contempt which the Servant of God found among them, ver. 7, are
represented as having already taken place; [Pg 232] while the
enlightenment of the Gentiles, the worship of the kings, &c, which are
to be expected by Him, are represented as being still future. In the
same manner, in chap. liii., the humiliation of the Servant of God
appears as past; the glorification, as future, the reason why the
_isles_ are addressed (comp. remarks on chap. xlii. 4) appears in ver.
6 only, at the close of the discourse of the Servant of God, for all
that precedes serves as a preparation. In that verse, the Servant of
the Lord announces that the Lord had appointed Him to be the Light of
the Gentiles; that He should be His salvation unto the ends of the
earth. It is very significant that the second book at once begins with
an address to the Gentiles, inasmuch us, thus, we are here introduced
into the sphere of a redemption which does not refer to a single
nation, like that with which the _first_ book is engaged, but to the
ends of the earth. At the close of the first book, in chap. xlviii. 20,
it was said: "Declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the
earth, say ye: The Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob." The fact that
the redemption, in the first instance peculiar to Jacob, is to be
proclaimed to all the nations of the earth, leads us to expect that
these nations, too, have their portion in the Lord; that at some future
period they are to hear a message which concerns them still _more
particularly_. This expectation is realized here, at the opening of the
second book. The fact that the Gentiles are to listen here, as those
who have a personal interest in the message, is proved by the
circumstance, that the words: "Unto the ends of the earth," in ver. 6
of the chapter before us, point back to the same words in chap. xlviii.
20.--_The Lord had called me from the womb._ It is sufficient to go
thus far back in order to repress or refute the idea of His having
himself usurped His office, and to furnish a foundation for the
expectation that God would powerfully uphold and protect His Servant in
the office which He himself had assigned to Him. Calvin remarks on
these words: "They do not indicate the commencement of the time of His
vocation, as if