'He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by
His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many; and He shall
bear their iniquities'--ISAIAH liii. 11.
These are all but the closing words of this great prophecy, and are the
fitting crown of all that has gone before. We have been listening to
the voice of a member of the race to whom the Servant of the Lord
belonged, whether we limit that to the Jewish people or include in it
all humanity. That voice has been confessing for the speaker and his
brethren their common misapprehensions of the Servant, their blindness
to the meaning of His sufferings and the mystery of His death. It has
been proclaiming the true significance of these as now he had learned
them, and has in verse 10 touched the mystery of the reward and triumph
of the Servant.
That note of His glory and coronation is caught up in the two closing
verses, which, in substance, are the continuation of the idea of verse
10. But this identity of substance makes the variety of form the more
emphatic. Observe the '_My_ Servant' of verse 11, and the '_I_ will
divide' of verse 12. These oblige us to take this as the voice of God.
The confession and belief of earth is hushed, that the recognition and
the reward of the Servant may be declared from heaven. An added
solemnity is thus given to the words, and the prophecy comes round
again to the keynote on which it started in chapter lii, 13, '_My_
Servant.' Notice, too, how the same characteristic is here as in verse
10--that the recapitulation of the sufferings is almost equally
prominent with the description of the reward. The two are so woven
together that no power can part them. We may take these two verses as
setting forth mainly two things--the divine promise that the Servant
shall give righteousness to many, and the divine promise that the
Servant shall conquer many for Himself.
As to the exposition, 'of' here is probably casual, not partitive, as
the Authorised Version has it; 'travail' is not to be understood in the
sense of childbirth, but of toil and suffering; 'soul' is equivalent to
_life_. This fruit of His soul's travail is further defined in the
words which follow. The great result which will be beheld by Him and
will fill and content His heart is that 'by His knowledge He shall
justify many.' 'By _His_ knowledge' certainly means, by the knowledge
of Him on the part of others. The phrase might be taken either
objectively or subjectively, but it seems to me that only the former
yields an adequate sense. 'My righteous servant' is scarcely emphatic
enough. The words in the original stand in an unusual order, which
might be represented by 'the righteous one, My servant,' and is
intended to put emphasis on the Servant's righteousness, as well as to
suggest the connection between His righteousness and His 'justifying,'
in virtue of His being righteous. 'Justify' is an unusual form, and
means to procure for, or impart righteousness to. '_The_ many' has
stress on the article, and is the antithesis not to _all_, but to
_few_. We might render it 'the masses,' an indefinite expression, which
if not declaring universality, approaches very near to it, as in Romans
v. 19 and Matthew xxvi. 28. 'He shall bear,' a future referring to the
Servant in a state of exaltation, and pointing to His continuous work
after death. This bearing is the root of our righteousness.
We may put the thoughts here in a definite order.