The Great Messianic Prophecy [pp. 419-438]

426 The Great Messianic Prophecy. [July,
his courage, by his power, by his military supremacy; but this
servant by his meekness, his submission, his suffering, his
death and burial. Nor are his sufferings merely preliminary to
his work. They do the work. This is disclosed, chiaro oscuro
after the usual prophetic manner, in the opening announcement: "He shall sprinkle many nations." The well-known
word, with the technical meaning of sacrificial worship, to sanctify the unclean by sprinkling on them the blood of innocence,
is boldly and deliberately chosen. But even if this meaning
is rejected,* the following descriptions are so precise that rationalism has made no attempt to evade them.t
These words can bear but one meaning. Guilt, and suffering
for guilt, were taken off from transgressors and borne by their
innocent substitute. He expiated their sins by his atoning
death. Men may say that this is only figuratively true, and
describes no real transaction. They make no attempt to deny
that the prophet believes and affirms that sinners are saved by
the sacrifice of this victim.
Now, what if this servant of the Lord is Isaiah, or Jeremiah,
or any other martyr of Israel-or, for that matter, any collective class of good men? Then human guilt is expiated by the
death of a human victim! And no trace of such a doctrine can
be found elsewhere in the Bible. When it is said that God will
give Seba, Egypt and Ethiopia as a ransom,t or that the evildoer is a ransom for the righteous, and the ungodly for the
pious,~ this figurative sense of ransom has nothing in common
with the expiation of guilt by the substitution of an innocent
victim. Prophecy knows nothing of the atonement of guilt by
human suffering.
Or rather the Scriptures know and reject with horror this
refuge of guilty despair. It prevailed in every nation surrounding Israel. It prevailed in Greece, and Rome, and ancient
Mexico. It prevails still in savage Africa. And once God did
tempt Abraham, for this among other purposes, to fix in the
minds of all his descendants a horror of human immolation, and
make it forever impossible for them to believe that he could
command them to make their children pass through the fire
* Gesenius, De Wette, Knobel.'
t See our version of liii: 4, 5, 6, IC-12
t Is. xliii: 3.
~ Prov. xxi: I8.