"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/
— Footnote 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. — Footnote
Till now he has spent his strength only in the bosom of his own people, which is always inclined to fall away from Jehovah and from itself: heedless of reproach and suffering he has laboured unweariedly in carrying out the behests of his Master and has declared His word. All in vain. He has not been able to avert the victory of heathenism in Israel, now followed by its victory over Israel. Now in the exile Jehovah has severed His relation with His people; the individual Hebrews survive, but the servant, the people of Jehovah, is dead. Then is the Torah to die with him, and truth itself to succumb to falsehood, to heathenism? That cannot be; truth must prevail, must come to the light. As to the Apostle Paul the Spirit is the earnest of the resurrection of those who are born again, so to our author the Torah is the pledge of the resurrection of Israel, the justification of the servant of Jehovah. The final triumph of the cause, which is God's, will surpass all expectations. Not only in Israel itself will the Torah, will the servant of Jehovah prevail and bring about a regeneration of the people: the truth will in the future shine forth from Israel into the whole world, and obtain the victory among all the Gentiles (xlix. 6). Then it will appear that the work of the servant, resultless as it seemed to be up to the exile, has yet not been in vain.
It is surely unnecessary for me to demonstrate how uncommonly vivid, I might say how uncommonly historical, the notion of the Torah is as here set forth, and how entirely incompatible that notion is with "the Torah of Moses." It might most fitly be compared with the Logos of the prologue of John, if the latter is understood in accordance with John x. 35, an utterance certainly authentic, and not according to Philo. As Jesus is the revelation of God made man, so the servant of Jehovah is the revelation of God made a people. The similarity of their nature and their significance involves the similarity of their work and of their sufferings, so that the Messianic interpretation of Isaiah lii. 13-liii. 12 is in fact one which could not fail to suggest itself. /1/
— Footnote 1. The personification is carried further in this passage than anywhere else, and it is possible that the colours of the sketch are borrowed from some actual instance of a prophet-martyr: yet the Ebed Jahve cannot have a different meaning here from that which it has everywhere else. It is to be noted that the sufferings and death of the servant are in the past, and his glorification in the future, a long pause lying between them in the present. A resurrection of the individual could not be in the mind of the writer of Isaiah xl seq., nor do the details of the description, lii. 12 seq., at all agree with such an idea. Moreover, it is clear that liv. 1-lvi. 8 is a kind of sermon on the text lii. 13-liii. 12; and there the prophecy of the glorification of the servant has reference to Zion. See Vatke, p. 528 seq. — Footnote
X.II.
X.II.1. In the 18th year of King Josiah (621 B.C) Deuteronomy was found and published. In the account of the discovery, 2Kings xxii. xxiii., it is always called simply the book of the Torah; it was accordingly the first, and in its time the only book of the kind. It is certainly the case that the prophets had written down some of their speeches before this, and the priests also may before this time have written down many of their precepts: it appears in fact, as Vatke surmises, that we have a monument of their spirit, e.g., in the Sinaitic Book of the Covenant. Deuteronomy presupposes earlier attempts of this kind, and borrows its materials largely from them; but on the other hand it is distinguished from them not only by its greater compass but also by its much higher claims. It is written with the distinct intention not to remain a private memorandum, but to obtain public authority as a book. The idea of making a definite formulated written Torah the law of the land, is the important point /1/
— Footnote 1. Duhm, ap. Cil. p. 201. — Footnote