because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.  Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief.  When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.  He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied:  by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.  Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death; and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

These words are extant in a book purporting to contain the predictions of a writer who lived seven centuries before the Christian era.

That material part of every argument from prophecy, namely, that the words alleged were actually spoken or written before the fact to which they are applied took place, or could by any natural means be foreseen, is, in the present instance, incontestable.  The record comes out of the custody of adversaries.  The Jews, as an ancient father well observed, are our librarians.  The passage is in their copies as well as in ours.  With many attempts to explain it away, none has ever been made by them to discredit its authenticity.

And what adds to the force of the quotation is, that it is taken from a writing declaredly prophetic; a writing professing to describe such future transactions and changes in the world as were connected with the fate and interests of the Jewish nation.  It is not a passage in an historical or devotional composition, which, because it turns out to be applicable to some future events, or to some future situation of affairs, is presumed to have been oracular.  The words of Isaiah were delivered by him in a prophetic character, with the solemnity belonging to that character:  and what he so delivered was all along understood by the Jewish reader to refer to something that was to take place after the time of the author.  The public sentiments of the Jews concerning the design of Isaiah’s writings are set forth in the book of Ecclesiasticus:* “He saw by an excellent spirit what should come to pass at the last, and he comforted them that mourned in Sion.  He showed what should come to pass for ever, and secret things or ever they came.”

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* Chap. xlviii. ver. 24.
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It is also an advantage which this prophecy possesses, that it is intermixed with no other subject.  It is entire, separate, and uninterruptedly directed to one scene of things.