Have called thee in righteousness... — The words apply to the personal servant. His call was in accordance with the absolute righteousness of God, manifesting itself in love.
A covenant of the people. — The context limits the “people” to Israel. The “servant of the Lord” is to be in Himself not only the mediator of the covenant, but the covenant, the meeting-point between God and man, just as He is the “peace” as well as the peacemaker (Micah 5:5; Ephesians 2:14). The words may well have furnished a starting-point for the “new covenant” of Jeremiah 31:31, and the whole series of thoughts that have grown out of it.
A light of the Gentiles. — Re-echoed in Luke 2:32.