Thus it had always been in Israel, nation not only of prophets, but of the slayers of prophets. According to Christ, prophet-slaying was the ineradicable habit of Israel. _Ye are the sons of them that slew the prophets.... O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killer of prophets and stoner of them that are sent unto her!_ To them who bare it the word of Jehovah had always been _a reproach_: cause of estrangement, indignities, torments, and sometimes of death. Up to the time of our prophet there had been the following notable sufferers for the Word: Elijah; Micaiah the son of Imlah; Isaiah, if the story be true that he was slain by Manasseh; but nearer, more lonely and more heroic than all, Jeremiah, a _laughing-stock_ and _mockery_, _reviled_, _smitten_, fettered, and condemned to death. In words which recall the experience of so many individual Israelites, and most of which were used by Jeremiah of himself, the Servant of Jehovah describes his martyrdom in immediate consequence from his prophecy.
_And I--I was not rebellious,_ _Nor turned away backward._ _My back I have given to the smiters,_ _And my cheek to tormenters;_ _My face I hid not from insults and spitting._
These are not national sufferings. They are no reflection of the hard usage which the captive Israel suffered from Babylon. They are the reflection of the reproach and pains, which, for the sake of God's word, individual Israelites more than once experienced from their own nation. But if individual experience, and not national, formed the original of this picture of the Servant as Martyr, then surely we have in this another strong reason against the objection to recognise in the Servant at last an individual. It may be, of course, that for the moment our prophet feels that this frequent experience of individuals in Israel is to be realised by the faithful Israel, as a whole, in their treatment by the rest of their cruel and unspiritual countrymen. But the very fact that individuals have previously fulfilled this martyrdom in the history of Israel, surely makes it possible for our prophet to foresee, that the Servant, who is to fulfil it again, shall also be an individual.
But, returning from this slight digression on the person of the Servant to his fate, let us emphasize again, that his sufferings came to him as the result of his prophesying. The Servant's sufferings are not penal, they are not yet felt to be vicarious. They are simply the reward with which obdurate Israel met all her prophets, the inevitable martyrdom which followed on the uttering of God's Word. And in this the Servant's experience forms an exact counterpart to that of our Lord. For to Christ also reproach and agony and death--whatever higher meaning they evolved--came as the result of His Word. The fact that Jesus suffered as our great High Priest must not make us forget, that His sufferings fell upon Him because He was a Prophet. He argued explicitly He must suffer, because so suffered the prophets before Him. He put Himself in the line of the martyrs: as they had killed the servants, He said, so would they kill the Son. Thus it happened. His enemies sought _to entangle Him in His talk_: it was for His talk they brought Him to trial. Each torment and indignity which the Prophet-Servant relates, Jesus suffered to the letter. They put Him to shame and insulted Him;[198] His helpless hands were bound; they spat in His face and smote Him with their palms; they mocked and they reviled Him; scourged Him again; teased and tormented Him; hung Him between thieves; and to the last the ribald jests went up, not only from the soldiers and the rabble, but from the learned and the religious authorities as well, to whom His fault had been that He preached another word than their own. The literal fulfilments of our prophecy are striking, but the main fulfilment, of which they are only incidents, is, that like the Servant, our Lord suffered directly as a Prophet. He enforced and He submitted to the essential obligation, which lies upon the true Prophet, of suffering for the Word's sake. Let us remember to carry this over with us to our final study of the Suffering Servant as the expiation for sin.