The expression ‘plain meaning’ is here used in the sense of Hebrew peshat, since this paper is not primarily a study in the higher criticism of Deutero-Isaiah. But I may perhaps be allowed to make three brief preliminary statements of belief concerning the relation of the passage under discussion to the rest of the book: First: that the conception of the Servant found in 42.1–4 is closer to that found in the whole of Deutero-Isaiah than it is to that in the last of the so-called Servant-poems, 52.13–53.12. Second: that the first Servant-poem describes the people of Israel, as do chs. 40–55 generally, and not an individual. Third: that the suffering of the Servant has been unduly emphasized from the early Christian period onward, largely because the sublime portrayal of humility and suffering in ch. 53, which is strikingly different from most of the book, has obscured the predominantly consolatory and triumphant aspects of the Servant as God's instrument. With this introduction I should like to comment on the Masoretic text.