Continued: Chapter XXXIII- Man's Post Fall Status in the Moral Kingdom

That we may see the beauty, force, and power of this most graphic and soul-satisfying revelation, I shall give my own translation interspersed with explanatory notes.

(The words in roman type are the translation of the original Hebrew, whereas those in italics are the interspersed explanatory notes of the author,—gathered from the teachings of related passages of scripture—which are thus placed in order to clarify the text for the reader.)

Behold, my Servant, King Messiah מָשִׁיחַ shall deal wisely during His life; notwithstanding His purity and innocence He shall be put to death, but shall rise from the dead, and be lifted up when He accepts the invitation of God to sit at His right hand according to Ps. 110:1,2 and shall be very high. Like as many were confounded at Thee because of the horrifying appearance of thy mutilated body (His visage was so marred more than the sons of men), so shall He startle many nations by His appearing in glory as King of kings and Lord of lords; kings who have renounced Him and thrown off His authority in the World Conference (Ps. 2)* shall shut their mouths at Him and together with princes render divine worship (Isa. 49:7); for that which had not been told them, by those who had the Word of God and who should have proclaimed it to the world, shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they understand clearly.

Who among us Hebrews hath believed our message which was told to us by faithful competent witnesses? And to whom has the arm of the Lord, who is the Messiah, been revealed? For He, the Messiah, grew up before Him, i.e., God, as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground, which figures of speech indicate the low spiritual condition of the people among whom Messiah grew up; He had no form nor comeliness, i.e., He did not have the appearance and bearing of an earthly king; and when we saw Him, He had no beauty that we desired Him as our Messiah. He was despised with the greatest possible contempt and lacked men of influence and power among those who followed Him; a man of sorrows because of the lost spiritual condition of the world, and especially the dearth of spiritual life among the Hebrews, and acquainted with sickness, both spiritual and physical; and like one from whom men hide their faces in disgust He was despised, and we considered Him as nothing, yea as a dreamer and a poor fanatical peasant whose opinions amounted to nothing.

But finally after the lapse of many weary centuries of suffering and persecution in the worst of which we now are, and which is called "the time of Jacob's trouble" (Jer. 30:7),¹ we, having turned to God in our distress and having been brought to the point where we truly say, "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord," can see the great mistake which our forefathers made in rejecting the Messiah when He came and which our nation has made from that time to the present by refusing to listen to His claim to being our Messiah. Now we see the situation clearly, which is this: Surely our sicknesses both spiritual and physical He bore, and our griefs He as our scapegoat carried; but at that time we thought that He was plagued, smitten by God and afflicted because of His own sins and transgressions. The fact is that He was pierced, as the prophets by the Spirit foretold (Ps. 22:16; Zech. 12:10), because of our transgressions and was wounded because of our iniquities, and the chastisement of our peace; i.e., the suffering which had to be borne in order that we might enjoy peace, was upon Him, and by the stripes, which He endured for us, healing is brought to us. We now confess that all of us, i.e., our entire Hebrew race, like sheep strayed away from God and His Word; everyone of us turned to his own way; and yet the Lord caused to meet on Him the iniquity of all of us like rays of light focused on a single spot. When He thus suffered for us, those who were in authority violently treated Him and He was afflicted, but He did not open his mouth in protest against such treatment; as a lamb to the slaughter is led and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, He did not open His mouth. Out of prison and away from trial He was taken. As to His generation, i.e., His contemporaries, that complained against such a miscarriage of justice, who of them clearly realized that He was cut off out of the land of the living because of the transgression of my people to whom the stroke of judgment was due, (or on account of the transgression of my people, the stroke of judgment fell on Him)? They in their plans made His grave with the wicked intending by so doing to heap ignominy and shame upon His name throughout all future generations; but by the overruling providence of God, who says, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther", and who "hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm" (Nahum 1:3), the wicked plan of His enemies was frustrated; hence with a rich man was He in His death because He had done no violence, neither was deceit in His mouth.

The prophet, having foretold the full and voluntary confession which the nation shall make when her blindness is removed, explains the great facts of the death of the Servant by saying that, in keeping with His eternal plan, the Lord was pleased to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief; when His soul shall make a trespass offering for sin, not His own but that of the world, He shall see seed, i.e., a spiritual seed, a host of redeemed men and women; He shall prolong His days after His death and resurrection; and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand—a reference to His making atonement for lost man, and to His regathering Israel into her own land and into fellowship with God. He shall see of the travail of His soul, i.e., results from His atoning suffering, and be satisfied; by the knowledge of Himself, both His knowledge of how to atone for man's sins and the knowledge of those who learn of Him and accept His sacrifice, shall my righteous Servant, who is the Lord our righteousness (Jer. 23:6), bring righteousness to the many, i.e., His righteousness shall be accredited to those who accept His sacrifice; and He shall bear, as the scapegoat, their iniquities. I will therefore divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, when He returns with glory and power to rule the world in righteousness; because He voluntarily poured out His soul unto death and was numbered with the transgressors, though He was pure and holy; yet He bore the sin of the many and, in love, made intercession for the transgressors while He thus suffered³

The prophecy contained in Isaiah 52:13-53:12 found its fulfillment, so far as the Servant's making atonement for man is concerned, in Jesus of Nazareth, who sacrificed Himself in behalf of the redemption of the world. These facts will be brought out in Chapters XXXIV and XXXV.



Footnotes:

* 2 Why do the nations rage,
And the peoples meditate a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against Jehovah, and against his anointed, saying,
3 Let us break their bonds asunder,
And cast away their cords from us.

¹ From a study of the prophetic word, it becomes evident that Israel will have at the end of the Tribulation Period—the seven years with which the present age closes—made the oral confession which is found in Isaiah 53:1-9.

³ Quoted from my volume, The Eternal God Revealing Himself to Suffering Israel and to Lost Humanity. I have taken the liberty to change some of the punctuation for the sake of clarity, and also a word or two.