Isaiah also,
in chap. xi. 1,--a passage which contains, in a germ, all that, in the
second part, [Pg 330] is more fully stated regarding the suffering
Messiah, and which has many striking points of contact specially with
chap. liii. And just so it is with Isaiah's contemporary, Micah, who,
in chap. v. 1 (2), makes the Messiah proceed, not from Jerusalem, the
seat of the Davidic family after it was raised to the royal dignity,
but from Bethlehem, where Jesse, the ancestor, lived as a peasant,--as
a proof that the Messiah would proceed from the family of David sank
back into the obscurity of private life. This knowledge, that the
Messiah should proceed from the altogether abased house of David,--a
knowledge which appears as early as in Amos, and which pervades the
whole of prophecy--touches very closely upon the knowledge of His
sufferings. Lowliness of origin, and exaltation of destination, can
hardly be reconciled without severe conflicts. But it is _a priori_
impossible, that the idea of the suffering Messiah should be wanting in
the Old Testament. Since, in the Old Testament, throughout,
righteousness and suffering in this world of sin are represented as
being indissolubly connected, the Messiah, being [Greek: kat'exochen]
the Righteous One, must necessarily appear also as He who suffers in
the highest degree. If that were not the case, the Messiah would be
totally disconnected from all His types, especially from David, who,
through the severest sufferings, attained to glory, and who in his
Psalms, everywhere considers this course as the normal one, both in the
Psalms which refer to the suffering righteous in general, and in those
which especially refer to his family reaching their highest elevation
in the Messiah; compare my Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. iv., p. lxxx.
ff.

[Footnote 1: The same thing occurs also in the parallel passages, chap.
xlix. 9, on which _Gesenius_ was constrained to remark: "As the
deliverance was still impending, the Preterites cannot well be
understood in any other way than as Futures."]

* * * * * * * * * *

III. THE ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF THE MESSIANIC INTERPRETATION.

Even the fact that this is among the Jews the original interpretation,
which was given up from their evil disposition only, makes us
favourably inclined towards it. The authority of tradition is here of
so much the greater consequence, the more that the Messianic
interpre