as speaking, and make the penitent confession that they have
formed an erroneous opinion of Israel, and now see that its suffering's
are not the punishment of its own sins, but that it had suffered as a
substitute for their sins.

(_b._) The hypothesis which makes the Jewish people in the abstract--in
antithesis to its single members--the subject of this prophecy, was
discovered by _Eckermann_, _theol. Beitraege_, [Pg 323] Bd. i. H. i. S.
192 ff. According to _Ewald_, the prophecy refers to "Israel according
to its true idea." According to _Bleek_, the Servant of God is a
"designation of the whole people, but not of the people in its actual
reality, but as it existed in the imagination of the author,--the ideal
of the people."

(_c._) The hypothesis, that the pious portion of the Jewish people--in
contrast to the ungodly--are the subject, has been defended especially
by _Paulus_ (_Memorabilien_, Bd. 3, S. 175-192, and _Clavis_ on
Isaiah). His view was adopted by _Ammon_ (_Christologie_, S. 108 ff.).
The principal features of this view are the following:--It was not on
account of their own sins that the godly portion of the nation were
punished and carried into captivity along with the ungodly, but on
account of the ungodly who, however, by apostatising from the religion
of Jehovah, knew how to obtain a better fate. The ungodly drew from it
the inference that the hope of the godly, that Jehovah would come to
their help, had been in vain. But when the captivity came to an end,
and the godly returned, they saw that they had been mistaken, and that
the hope of the godly was well founded. They, therefore, full of
repentance, deeply lament that they had not long ago repented of their
sins. This view is adopted also by _Von Coelln_ in his _Biblische
Theologie_; by _Thenius_ in _Wiener's Zeitschrift_, ii. 1; by _Maurer_
and _Knobel_. The latter says: "Those who were zealous adherents of the
Theocracy had a difficult position among their own people, and had to
suffer most from foreign tyrants." The true worshippers of Jehovah were
given up to mockery and scorn, to persecution and the grossest abuse,
and were in a miserable and horrible condition, unworthy of men and
almost inhuman. The punishments for sin had to be endured chiefly by
those who did not deserve them. Thus the view easily arose that the
godly suffered in substitution for the whole people.

(_d._) The hypothesis which makes the priestly order the subject, has
bee