Hengstenberg on The Servant: "The Personal and Embodied Covenant"

Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (one whom Vos acknowledges as an influence), in pointing out that Christ is both Prophet and Prophecy in Isaiah 42:1-9, says of verse 6: "...the Lord turns to His Servant and addresses Him. He announces to Him that it should be His glorious destination, partly to bring, in His person, the covenant with Israel to its full truth..." -- E. W. Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament, p. 529.

Hengstenberg cements his point: "The covenant can belong to the covenant-people only, Rom. 9:4, - the old, no less than the new one. The covenant with Abraham is an everlasting covenant of absolutely exclusiveness, Gen. 17:7. The Servant of God is called the personal and embodied Covenant, because in His appearance the covenant made with Israel is to find its full truth; and everything implied in the very idea of a covenant, all the promises flowing from this idea, are to be in Him, Yea and Amen. The Servant of God is here called the Covenant of Israel, just in the same manner as in Micah 5:5 (compare with Eph. 2:14), it is said of Him: 'This (man) is Peace," because in Him, peace, as it were, represents itself personally; - just as in Isaiah chap. 49:6, He is called the Salvation of God, because this salvation becomes personal in Him, the Savior, - just as in Gen. 17:10, 13, circumcision is called a covenant, as being the embodied covenant (my note: doesn't that have some huge implications for the blood of the covenant in Christ's death? crb), -- just as in Luke 22:20, the cup, the blood of Christ, is called the New Covenant, because in it, it has its root. The explanation: Mediator of the covenant, is meager and weakens the meaning. The circumstance that the Servant of God is, without farther qualification, called the Covenant of the people shows that he stands in different relation to the covenant from that of Moses, to whom the name of the Mediaor of the covenant does not the less belong than to Him. From Jeremiah 31:31, we learn which are the blessings and gifts which the Servant of God is to bestow, and by which He represents himself as the personal Covenant. They are concentrated in the closest connection to be established by Him between God and His people: 'I will be their God, and they shall be my people.' It is only in the New Covenant, described in that passage of Jeremiah, that the Old Covenant attains to its truth." -- Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament, p. 548.

On Isaiah 42:9, Hengstenberg says: "...the appearance of the Servant of God, and the victory over the idols accomplished thereby, the bringing forth of the law of God over the whole earth through Him, and the full realization of the covenant with Israel. The thought is this: -- that a God who does not manifest and prove himself as such, who is contented with the honor granted to Him wthout His interference, cannot e a god; that the true God must of necessity be filled with the desire of absolutely, exclusive dominion, and cannot but manifest and prove this desire." Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament, p. 550.

To paraphrase Hengstenberg: the Servant of God, as the Covenant Himself, is both Lawgiver and Law... he exerts his dominion over the world not merely by what He says but by *who He is*. He not only brings salvation to all people groups, He himself *is* salvation for all people groups.