Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/344

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makes it more natural to take דור in a genealogical sense; and, moreover, with the former interpretation it ought to have been לדּור instead of לדּור. We must therefore retain the customary interpretation: “a seed (posterity) shall serve Him, it shall be told concerning the Lord to the generation (to come).” Decisive in favour of this interpretation is לדּור with the following יבאוּ, by which דור acquires the meaning of the future generation, exactly as in Psa 71:18, inasmuch as it at once becomes clear, that three generations are distinctly mentioned, viz., that of the fathers who turn unto Jahve, Psa 22:30, that of the coming דור, Psa 22:31, and עם נולד, to whom the news of the salvation is propagated by this דור, Psa 22:31 : “They shall come (בּוא as in Psa 71:18 : to come into being), and shall declare His righteousness to the people that shall be born, that He hath finished.” Accordingly זרע is the principal notion, which divides itself into (יבאו) דור and עם נולד; from which it is at once clear, why the expression could be thus general, “a posterity,” inasmuch as it is defined by what follows. עם נולד is the people which shall be born, or whose birth is near at hand (Psa 78:6); the lxx well renders it: λαῷ τῷ τεχθησομένῳ (cf. Psa 102:19 עם נברא populus creandus). צדקתו is the dikaiosu'nee of God, which has become manifest in the rescue of the great sufferer. That He did not suffer him to come down to the very border of death without snatching him out of the way of his murderous foes and raising him to a still greater glory, this was divine צדקה. That He did not snatch him out of the way of his murderous foes without suffering him to be on the point of death - even this wrathful phase of the divine צדקה, is indicated in Psa 22:16, but then only very remotely. For the fact, that the Servant of God, before spreading the feast accompanying the shelamim (thank-offering) in which He makes the whole world participants in the fruit of His suffering, offered Himself as an asham (sin-offering), does not become a subject of prophetic revelation until later on, and then under other typical relationships. The nature of the עשׂה, which is in accordance with the determinate counsel of God, is only gradually disclosed in the Old Testament. This one word, so full of meaning (as in Ps 52:11; Psa 37:5; Isa 44:23),