sent by His Spirit through the old prophets:  therefore came a great wrath from Jehovah Sebaoth.  And as He cried and they would not hear, so now shall they cry and I will not hear, and I will blow them away among the peoples....  Thus saith Jehovah Sebaoth [after the exile to the present generation], As I thought to punish you without pity because your fathers provoked me to anger, so again have I thought in these days to do well to the house of Judah:  fear ye not.  These are the things that ye shall do:  Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates; and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour, and love no false oath, for all these are things which I hate, saith Jehovah” (Zechariah vii. 9-11, viii. 14-16).  The contents of the Torah, on obedience to which the theocracy is here based, are very suggestive, as also its derivation from the “old” prophets.  Even Ezra can say (ix. 10, 11):  “We have forsaken Thy commandments which Thou hast commanded by the servants the prophets, saying, The land unto which ye go to possess it is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of the land, which have filled it from one end to another with their uncleanness.”  He is thinking of Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, and Leviticus xvii.-xxvi.

Of those who at the end reflected on the meaning of the development which had run its course, the writer of Isaiah xl.-lxvi. occupies the first place.  The Torah, which he also calls mishpat, right (i.e., truth), appears to him to be the divine and imperishable element in Israel.  With him, however, it is inseparable from its mouthpiece, the servant of Jehovah, xlii. 1-4, xlix. 1-6, l. 4-9, lii. 13-liii. 12.  The name would denote the prophet, but here it stands for the people, a prophet on a large scale.  Israel’s calling is not that of the world-monarchies, to make sensation and noise in the streets (xiii. 1-4), but the greater one of promulgating the Torah and getting it received.  This is to be done both in Israel and among the heathen.  What makes Israel a prophet is not his own inner qualities, but his relation to Jehovah, his calling as the depository of divine truth:  hence it involves no contradiction that the servant should begin his work in Israel itself. 1

************************************* 1.  This is as if one were to say that there is much to be done before we Evangelicals are truly evangelical.  Yet the distinction as worked out in Isaiah xl. seq. is certainly very remarkable, and speaks for a surprising degree of profound meditation. ************************************