_But Jehovah had purposed to bruise him,_ _Had laid on him sickness; So_[217] _if his life should offer guilt offering,_ _A seed he should see, he should lengthen his days._ _And the purpose of Jehovah by his hand should prosper,_ _From the travail of his soul shall he see,_[218] _By his knowledge be satisfied._ _My Servant, the Righteous, righteousness wins he for many,_ _And their guilt he takes for his load._ _Therefore I set him a share with the great,_[219] _Yea, with the strong shall he share the spoil:_ _Because that he poured out his life unto death,_ _Let himself with transgressors be reckoned;_ _Yea, he the sin of the many hath borne,_ _And for the transgressors he interposes._
Let us now take up the interpretation strophe by strophe.
I. Ch. lii. 13-15. When last our eyes were directed to the Servant, he was in suffering unexplained and unvindicated (ch. l. 4-6). His sufferings seemed to have fallen upon him as the consequence of his fidelity to the Word committed to him; the Prophet had inevitably become the Martyr. Further than this his sufferings were not explained, and the Servant was left in them, calling upon God indeed, and sure that God would hear and vindicate him, but as yet unanswered by word of God or word of man.
It is these words, words both of God and of man, which are given in Isaiah ch. lii. 13-liii. The Sufferer is explained and vindicated, first by God in the first strophe, ch. lii. 13-15, and then by the Conscience of Men, His own people, in the second and third (liii. 1-6); and then, as it appears, the Divine Voice, or the Prophet speaking for it, resumes in strophes iv. and v., and concludes in a strain similar to strophe i.
God's explanation and vindication of the Sufferer is, then, given in the first strophe. It is summed up in the first line, and in one very pregnant word. Jeremiah had said of the Messiah, _He shall reign as a King and deal wisely_ or _prosper_;[220] and so God says here of the Servant, _Behold he shall deal wisely_ or _prosper_. The Hebrew verb does not get full expression in any English one. In rendering it _shall deal wisely_ or _prudently_ our translators undoubtedly touch the quick of it. For it is originally a mental process or quality: _has insight_, _understands_, _is farseeing_. But then it also includes the effect of this--_understands so as to get on_, _deals wisely so as to succeed_, _is practical_ both in his way of working and in being sure of his end. Ewald has found an almost exact equivalent in German, "hat Geschick;" for Geschick means both _skill_ or _address_ and _fate_ or _destiny_. The Hebrew verb is the most practical in the whole language, for this is precisely the point which the prophecy seeks to bring out about the Servant's sufferings. They are practical. He is practical in them. He endures them, not for their own sake, but for some practical end of which he is aware and to which they must assuredly bring him. His failure to convince men by his word, the pain and spite which seem to be his only wage, are not the last of him, but the beginning and the way to what is higher. So _shall he rise and be lift up and be very high_. The suffering, which in ch. l. seemed to be the Servant's misfortune, is here seen as his wisdom which shall issue in his glory.