Isaiah 53 commentary

No where in all the Old Testament is it so plainly and fully prophesied, that Christ ought to suffer, and then to enter into his glory, as in this chapter. But to this day few discern, or will acknowledge, that Divine power which goes with the word. The authentic and most important report of salvation for sinners, through the Son of God, is disregarded. The low condition he submitted to, and his appearance in the world, were not agreeable to the ideas the Jews had formed of the Messiah. It was expected that he should come in pomp; instead of that, he grew up as a plant, silently, and insensibly. He had nothing of the glory which one might have thought to meet with him. His whole life was not only humble as to outward condition, but also sorrowful. Being made sin for us, he underwent the sentence sin had exposed us to. Carnal hearts see nothing in the Lord Jesus to desire an interest in him. Alas! by how many is he still despised in his people, and rejected as to his doctrine and authority!

In these verses is an account of the sufferings of Christ; also of the design of his sufferings. It was for our sins, and in our stead, that our Lord Jesus suffered. We have all sinned, and have come short of the glory of God. Sinners have their beloved sin, their own evil way, of which they are fond. Our sins deserve all griefs and sorrows, even the most severe. We are saved from the ruin, to which by sin we become liable, by laying our sins on Christ. This atonement was to be made for our sins. And this is the only way of salvation. Our sins were the thorns in Christ's head, the nails in his hands and feet, the spear in his side. He was delivered to death for our offences. By his sufferings he purchased for us the Spirit and grace of God, to mortify our corruptions, which are the distempers of our souls. We may well endure our lighter sufferings, if He has taught us to esteem all things but loss for him, and to love him who has first loved us.

Come, and see how Christ loved us! We could not put him in our stead, but he put himself. Thus he took away the sin of the world, by taking it on himself. He made himself subject to death, which to us is the wages of sin. Observe the graces and glories of his state of exaltation. Christ will not commit the care of his family to any other. God's purposes shall take effect. And whatever is undertaken according to God's pleasure shall prosper. He shall see it accomplished in the conversion and salvation of sinners. There are many whom Christ justifies, even as many as he gave his life a ransom for. By faith we are justified; thus God is most glorified, free grace most advanced, self most abased, and our happiness secured. We must know him, and believe in him, as one that bore our sins, and saved us from sinking under the load, by taking it upon himself. Sin and Satan, death and hell, the world and the flesh, are the strong foes he has vanquished. What God designed for the Redeemer he shall certainly possess. When he led captivity captive, he received gifts for men, that he might give gifts to men. While we survey the sufferings of the Son of God, let us remember our long catalogue of transgressions, and consider him as suffering under the load of our guilt. Here is laid a firm foundation for the trembling sinner to rest his soul upon. We are the purchase of his blood, and the monuments of his grace; for this he continually pleads and prevails, destroying the works of the devil.

CHAPTER 53

Is 53:1-12. Man's Unbelief: Messiah's Vicarious Sufferings, and Final Triumph for Man.

The speaker, according to Horsley, personates the repenting Jews in the latter ages of the world coming over to the faith of the Redeemer; the whole is their penitent confession. This view suits the context (Is 52:7-9), which is not to be fully realized until Israel is restored. However, primarily, it is the abrupt exclamation of the prophet: "Who hath believed our report," that of Isaiah and the other prophets, as to Messiah? The infidel's objection from the unbelief of the Jews is anticipated and hereby answered: that unbelief and the cause of it (Messiah's humiliation, whereas they looked for One coming to reign) were foreseen and foretold.

1. report--literally, "the thing heard," referring to which sense Paul says, "So, then, faith cometh by hearing" (Ro 10:16, 17).

arm--power (Is 40:10); exercised in miracles and in saving men (Ro 1:16; 1Co 1:18). The prophet, as if present during Messiah's ministry on earth, is deeply moved to see how few believed on Him (Is 49:4; Mr 6:6; 9:19; Ac 1:15). Two reasons are given why all ought to have believed: (1) The "report" of the "ancient prophets." (2) "The arm of Jehovah" exhibited in Messiah while on earth. In Horsley's view, this will be the penitent confession of the Jews, "How few of our nation, in Messiah's days, believed in Him!"

2. tender plant--Messiah grew silently and insensibly, as a sucker from an ancient stock, seemingly dead (namely, the house of David, then in a decayed state) (see on Is 11:1).

shall grow ... hath--rather, "grew up ... had."

before him--before Jehovah. Though unknown to the world (Joh 1:11), Messiah was observed by God, who ordered the most minute circumstances attending His growth.

root--that is, sprout from a root.

form--beautiful form: sorrow had marred His once beautiful form.

and when we shall see--rather, joined with the previous words, "Nor comeliness (attractiveness) that we should look (with delight) on Him."

there is--rather, "was." The studied reticence of the New Testament as to His form, stature, color, &c., was designed to prevent our dwelling on the bodily, rather than on His moral beauty, holiness, love, &c., also a providential protest against the making and veneration of images of Him. The letter of P. Lentulus to the emperor Tiberius, describing His person, is spurious; so also the story of His sending His portrait to Abgar, king of Edessa; and the alleged impression of His countenance on the handkerchief of Veronica. The former part of this verse refers to His birth and childhood; the latter to His first public appearance [Vitringa].

3. rejected--"forsaken of men" [Gesenius]. "Most abject of men." Literally, "He who ceases from men," that is, is no longer regarded as a man [Hengstenberg]. (See on Is 52:14; Is 49:7).

man of sorrows--that is, whose distinguishing characteristic was sorrows.

acquainted with--familiar by constant contact with.

grief--literally, "disease"; figuratively for all kinds of calamity (Jr 6:14); leprosy especially represented this, being a direct judgment from God. It is remarkable Jesus is not mentioned as having ever suffered under sickness.

and we hid ... faces--rather, as one who causes men to hide their faces from Him (in aversion) [Maurer]. Or, "He was as an hiding of the face before it," that is, as a thing before which a man covers his face in disgust [Hengstenberg]. Or, "as one before whom is the covering of the face"; before whom one covers the face in disgust [Gesenius].

we--the prophet identifying himself with the Jews. See Horsley's view (see on Is 53:1).

esteemed ... not--negative contempt; the previous words express positive.

4. Surely ... our griefs--literally, "But yet He hath taken (or borne) our sicknesses," that is, they who despised Him because of His human infirmities ought rather to have esteemed Him on account of them; for thereby "Himself took OUR infirmities" (bodily diseases). So Mt 8:17 quotes it. In the Hebrew for "borne," or took, there is probably the double notion, He took on Himself vicariously (so Is 53:5, 6, 8, 12), and so He took away; His perfect humanity whereby He was bodily afflicted for us, and in all our afflictions (Is 63:9; He 4:15) was the ground on which He cured the sick; so that Matthew's quotation is not a mere accommodation. See Note 42 of Archbishop Magee, Atonement. The Hebrew there may mean to overwhelm with darkness; Messiah's time of darkness was temporary (Mt 27:45), answering to the bruising of His heel; Satan's is to be eternal, answering to the bruising of his head (compare Is 50:10).

carried ... sorrows--The notion of substitution strictly. "Carried," namely, as a burden. "Sorrows," that is, pains of the mind; as "griefs" refer to pains of the body (Psa 32:10; 38:17). Mt 8:17 might seem to oppose this: "And bare our sicknesses." But he uses "sicknesses" figuratively for sins, the cause of them. Christ took on Himself all man's "infirmities;" so as to remove them; the bodily by direct miracle, grounded on His participation in human infirmities; those of the soul by His vicarious suffering, which did away with the source of both. Sin and sickness are ethically connected as cause and effect (Is 33:24; Psa 103:3; Mt 9:2; Joh 5:14; Jas 5:15).

we did esteem him stricken--judicially [Lowth], namely, for His sins; whereas it was for ours. "We thought Him to be a leper" [Jerome, Vulgate], leprosy being the direct divine judgment for guilt (Le 13:1-59; Nu 12:10, 15; 2Ch 26:18-21).

smitten--by divine judgments.

afflicted--for His sins; this was the point in which they so erred (Lu 23:34; Ac 3:17; 1Co 2:8). He was, it is true, "afflicted," but not for His sins.

5. wounded--a bodily wound; not mere mental sorrow; literally, "pierced"; minutely appropriate to Messiah, whose hands, feet, and side were pierced (Psa 22:16). The Margin, wrongly, from a Hebrew root, translates, "tormented."

for ... for--(Ro 4:25; 2Co 5:21; He 9:28; 1Pe 2:24; 3:18)--the cause for which He suffered not His own, but our sins.

bruised--crushing inward and outward suffering (see on Is 53:10).

chastisement--literally, the correction inflicted by a parent on children for their good (He 12:5-8, 10, 11). Not punishment strictly; for this can have place only where there is guilt, which He had not; but He took on Himself the chastisement whereby the peace (reconciliation with our Father; Ro 5:1; Ep 2:14, 15, 17) of the children of God was to be effected (He 2:14).

upon him--as a burden; parallel to "hath borne" and "carried."

stripes--minutely prophetical of His being scourged (Mt 27:26; 1Pe 2:24).

healed--spiritually (Psa 41:4; Jr 8:22).

6. Penitent confession of believers and of Israel in the last days (Zec 12:10).

sheep ... astray--(Psa 119:176; 1Pe 2:25). The antithesis is, "In ourselves we were scattered; in Christ we are collected together; by nature we wander, driven headlong to destruction; in Christ we find the way to the gate of life" [Calvin]. True, also, literally of Israel before its coming restoration (Eze 34:5, 6; Zec 10:2, 6; compare with Eze 34:23, 24; Jr 23:4, 5; also Mt 9:36).

laid--"hath made to light on Him" [Lowth]. Rather, "hath made to rush upon Him" [Maurer].

the iniquity--that is, its penalty; or rather, as in 2Co 5:21; He was not merely a sin offering (which would destroy the antithesis to "righteousness"), but "sin for us"; sin itself vicariously; the representative of the aggregate sin of all mankind; not sins in the plural, for the "sin" of the world is one (Ro 5:16, 17); thus we are made not merely righteous, but righteousness, even "the righteousness of God." The innocent was punished as if guilty, that the guilty might be rewarded as if innocent. This verse could be said of no mere martyr.

7. oppressed--Lowth translates, "It was exacted, and He was made answerable." The verb means, "to have payment of a debt sternly exacted" (De 15:2, 3), and so to be oppressed in general; the exaction of the full penalty for our sins in His sufferings is probably alluded to.

and ... afflicted--or, and yet He suffered, or bore Himself patiently, &c. [Hengstenberg and Maurer]. Lowth's translation, "He was made answerable," is hardly admitted by the Hebrew.

opened not ... mouth--Jr 11:19; and David in Psa 38:13, 14; 39:9, prefiguring Messiah (Mt 26:63; 27:12, 14; 1Pe 2:23).

8. Rather, "He was taken away (that is, cut off) by oppression and by a judicial sentence"; a hendiadys for, "by an oppressive judicial sentence" [Lowth and Hengstenberg]. Gesenius not so well, "He was delivered from oppression and punishment" only by death. English Version also translates, "from ... from," not "by ... by." But "prison" is not true of Jesus, who was not incarcerated; restraint and bonds (Joh 18:24) more accord with the Hebrew. Ac 8:33; translate as the Septuagint: "In His humiliation His judgment (legal trial) was taken away"; the virtual sense of the Hebrew as rendered by Lowth and sanctioned by the inspired writer of Acts; He was treated as one so mean that a fair trial was denied Him (Mt 26:59; Mr 14:55-59). Horsley translates, "After condemnation and judgment He was accepted."

who ... declare ... generation--who can set forth (the wickedness of) His generation? that is, of His contemporaries [Alford on Ac 8:33], which suits best the parallelism, "the wickedness of His generation" corresponding to "oppressive judgment." But Luther, "His length of life," that is, there shall be no end of His future days (Is 53:10; Ro 6:9). Calvin includes the days of His Church, which is inseparable from Himself. Hengstenberg, "His posterity." He, indeed, shall be cut off, but His race shall be so numerous that none can fully declare it. Chyrsostom, &c., "His eternal sonship and miraculous incarnation."

cut off--implying a violent death (Da 9:26).

my people--Isaiah, including himself among them by the word "my" [Hengstenberg]. Rather, Jehovah speaks in the person of His prophet, "My people," by the election of grace (He 2:13).

was he stricken--Hebrew, "the stroke (was laid) upon Him." Gesenius says the Hebrew means "them"; the collective body, whether of the prophets or people, to which the Jews refer the whole prophecy. But Jerome, the Syriac, and Ethiopiac versions translate it "Him"; so it is singular in some passages; Psa 11:7, His; Job 27:23, Him; Is 44:15, thereto. The Septuagint, the Hebrew, lamo, "upon Him," read the similar words, lamuth, "unto death," which would at once set aside the Jewish interpretation, "upon them." Origen, who laboriously compared the Hebrew with the Septuagint, so read it, and urged it against the Jews of his day, who would have denied it to be the true reading if the word had not then really so stood in the Hebrew text [Lowth]. If his sole authority be thought insufficient, perhaps lamo may imply that Messiah was the representative of the collective body of all men; hence the equivocal plural-singular form.

9. Rather, "His grave was appointed," or "they appointed Him His grave" [Hengstenberg]; that is, they intended (by crucifying Him with two thieves, Mt 27:38) that He should have His grave "with the wicked." Compare Joh 19:31, the denial of honorable burial being accounted a great ignominy (see on Is 14:19; Jr 26:23).

and with ... rich--rather, "but He was with a rich man," &c. Gesenius, for the parallelism to "the wicked," translates "ungodly" (the effect of riches being to make one ungodly); but the Hebrew everywhere means "rich," never by itself ungodly; the parallelism, too, is one of contrast; namely, between their design and the fact, as it was ordered by God (Mt 27:57; Mr 15:43-46; Joh 19:39, 40); two rich men honored Him at His death, Joseph of Arimathæa, and Nicodemus.

in his death--Hebrew, "deaths." Lowth translates, "His tomb"; bamoth, from a different root, meaning "high places," and so mounds for sepulture (Eze 43:7). But all the versions oppose this, and the Hebrew hardly admits it. Rather translate, "after His death" [Hengstenberg]; as we say, "at His death." The plural, "deaths," intensifies the force; as Adam by sin "dying died" (Ge 2:17, Margin); that is, incurred death, physical and spiritual. So Messiah, His substitute, endured death in both senses; spiritual, during His temporary abandonment by the Father; physical, when He gave up the ghost.

because--rather, as the sense demands (so in Job 16:17), "although He had done no," &c. [Hengstenberg], (1Pe 2:20-22; 1Jo 3:5).

violence--that is, wrong.

10. Transition from His humiliation to His exaltation.

pleased the Lord--the secret of His sufferings. They were voluntarily borne by Messiah, in order that thereby He might "do Jehovah's will" (Joh 6:38; He 10:7, 9), as to man's redemption; so at the end of the verse, "the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand."

bruise--(see Is 53:5); Ge 3:15, was hereby fulfilled, though the Hebrew word for "bruise," there, is not the one used here. The word "Himself," in Matthew, implies a personal bearing on Himself of our maladies, spiritual and physical, which included as a consequence His ministration to our bodily ailments: these latter are the reverse side of sin; His bearing on Him our spiritual malady involved with it His bearing sympathetically, and healing, the outward: which is its fruits and its type. Hengstenberg rightly objects to Magee's translation, "taken away," instead of "borne," that the parallelism to "carried" would be destroyed. Besides, the Hebrew word elsewhere, when connected with sin, means to bear it and its punishment (Eze 18:20). Matthew, elsewhere, also sets forth His vicarious atonement (Mt 20:28).

when thou, &c.--rather, as Margin, "when His soul (that is, He) shall have made an offering," &c. In the English Version the change of person is harsh: from Jehovah, addressed in the second person (Is 53:10), to Jehovah speaking in the first person in Is 53:11. The Margin rightly makes the prophet in the name of Jehovah Himself to speak in this verse.

offering for sin--(Ro 3:25; 1Jo 2:2; 4:10).

his seed--His spiritual posterity shall be numerous (Psa 22:30); nay, more, though He must die, He shall see them. A numerous posterity was accounted a high blessing among the Hebrews; still more so, for one to live to see them (Ge 48:11; Psa 128:6).

prolong ... days--also esteemed a special blessing among the Jews (Psa 91:16). Messiah shall, after death, rise again to an endless life (Ho 6:2; Ro 6:9).

prosper--(Is 52:13, Margin).

11. Jehovah is still speaking.

see of the travail--He shall see such blessed fruits resulting from His sufferings as amply to repay Him for them (Is 49:4, 5; 50:5, 9). The "satisfaction," in seeing the full fruit of His travail of soul in the conversion of Israel and the world, is to be realized in the last days (Is 2:2-4).

his knowledge--rather, the knowledge (experimentally) of Him (Joh 17:3; Php 3:10).

my ... servant--Messiah (Is 42:1; 52:13).

righteous--the ground on which He justifies others, His own righteousness (1Jo 2:1).

justify--treat as if righteous; forensically; on the ground of His meritorious suffering, not their righteousness.

bear ... iniquities--(Is 53:4, 5), as the sinner's substitute.

12. divide--as a conqueror dividing the spoil after a victory (Psa 2:8; Lu 11:22).

him--for Him.

with ... great--Hengstenberg translates, "I will give Him the mighty for a portion"; so the Septuagint. But the parallel clause, "with the strong," favors English Version. His triumphs shall be not merely among the few and weak, but among the many and mighty.

spoil ... strong--(Col 2:15; compare Pr 16:19). "With the great; with the mighty," may mean, as a great and mighty hero.

poured out ... soul--that is, His life, which was considered as residing in the blood (Le 17:11; Ro 3:25).

numbered with, &c.--not that He was a transgressor, but He was treated as such, when crucified with thieves (Mr 15:28; Lu 22:37).

made intercession, &c.--This office He began on the cross (Lu 23:34), and now continues in heaven (Is 59:16; He 9:24; 1Jo 2:1). Understand because before "He was numbered ... He bare ... made intercession." His meritorious death and intercession are the cause of His ultimate triumph. Maurer, for the parallelism, translates, "He was put on the same footing with the transgressors." But English Version agrees better with the Hebrew, and with the sense and fact as to Christ. Maurer's translation would make a tautology after "He was numbered with the transgressors"; parallelism does not need so servile a repetition. "He made intercession for," &c., answers to the parallel, "He was numbered with," &c., as effect answers to cause, His intercession for sinners being the effect flowing from His having been numbered with them.

Who hath believed our report? - The report of the prophets, of John the Baptist, and Christ's own report of himself. The Jews did not receive the report, and for this reason he was not manifested to them as the promised Messiah. 'He came unto his own, but his own received him not.' Before the Father he grew up as a tender plant: but to the Jews he was as a root out of a dry ground. 'He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.'

For he shall grow up - Supposes something to have preceded; as it might be asked, what or who shall 'grow up before him,' etc. As the translation now stands, no correct answer can be given to this question. The translation then is wrong, the connection broken, and the sense obscured. זרוע zeroa, translated the arm, from the root zara.

1. To sow, or plant; also seed, etc.

2. The limb which reaches from the shoulder to the hand, called the arm; or more properly beginning at the shoulder and ending at the elbow.

The translator has given the wrong sense of the word. It would be very improper to say, the arm of the Lord should grow up before him; but by taking the word in its former sense, the connection and metaphor would be restored, and the true sense given to the text. זרע zera signifies, not only the seed of herbs, but children, offspring, or posterity. The same word we find Gen 3:15, where Christ is the Seed promised. See also Gen 22:17, Gen 22:18; Gen 26:4; Gen 28:14. Hence the Seed of the woman, the Seed promised to the patriarchs is, according to Isaiah, the Seed of the Lord, the Child born, and the Son given; and according to St. John, 'the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.' זרע then, in this place, should be understood to mean Jesus Christ, and him alone. To speak here of the manifestation of the arm or power of God would be irregular; but to suppose the text to speak of the manifestation of Jesus Christ would be very proper, as the whole of the chapter is written concerning him, particularly his humiliation and sufferings, and the reception he should meet with from the Jewish nation. "The first verse of this chapter is quoted Joh 12:38, and the former part of the same verse Rom 10:16. But no objection of importance can be brought forward from either of these quotations against the above explanation, as they are quoted to show the unbelief of the Jews in not receiving Christ as the promised Messiah."

He hath no form nor comeliness "He hath no form nor any beauty" - Ουκ ειδος αυτῳ, ουδε αξιωμα, ἱνα ειδωμεν αυτον· ουδε θεωρια, ἱνα επιθυμωμεν αυτον. "He hath no form, nor any beauty, that we should regard him; nor is his countenance such that we should desire him."

Symmachus; the only one of the ancients that has translated it rightly.

Acquainted with grief - For וידוע vidua, familiar with grief, eight MSS. and one edition have וירע veyada, and knowing grief; the Septuagint, Syriac, and Vulgate read it ויודע veyodea.

We hid as it were our faces from him "As one that hideth his face from us" - For וכמסתר uchemaster, four MSS. (two ancient) have וכמסתיר uchemastir, one MS. ומסתיר umastir. For פנים panim, two MSS. have פניו panaiu; so likewise the Septuagint and Vulgate. Mourners covered up the lower part of their faces, and their heads, 2Sam 15:30; Eze 29:17; and lepers were commanded by the law, Lev 13:45, to cover their upper lip. From which circumstance it seems that the Vulgate, Aquila, Symmachus, and the Jewish commentators have taken the word נגוע nagua, stricken, in the next verse, as meaning stricken with the leprosy: εν αφῃ οντα, Sym.; αφημενον, Aq.; leprosum, Vulg. So my old MS. Bible. I will insert the whole passage as curious: -

There is not schap to him, ne fairnesse,

And we seegen him, and he was not of sigte,

And we desiriden him dispisid; and the last of men:

Man of souaris and witing infirmitie;

And he hid his cheer and despisid;

Wherfor ne we settiden bi him:

Verili our seeknesse he toke and our sorewis he bair,

And we helden him as leprous and smyten of God, and meekid;

He forsoth wounded is for our wickednesse,

Defoulid is for our hidous giltis

The discipline of our pese upon him,

And with his wanne wound we ben helid.

Surely he Bath borne our griefs "Surely our infirmities he hath borne" - Seven MSS. (two ancient) and three editions have חליינו cholayeynu in the plural number.

And carried our sorrows "And our sorrows, he hath carried them" - Seventeen MSS. (two ancient) of Dr. Kennicott's, two of De Rossi's, and two editions have the word הוא hu, he, before סבלם sebalam, "carrieth them, "in the text; four other MSS. have it in the margin. This adds force to the sense, and elegance to the construction.

The chastisement of our peace "The chastisement by which our peace is effected" - Twenty-one MSS. and six editions have the word fully and regularly expressed, שלמינו shelomeynu; pacificationum nostrarum, "our pacification;" that by which we are brought into a state of peace and favor with God. Ar. Montan.

The Iniquity of us all - For עון avon, "iniquity," the ancient interpreters read עונות avonoth, "iniquities," plural; and so the Vulgate in MS. Blanchini. And the Lord hath הפגיע בו hiphgia bo, caused to meet in him the iniquities of us all. He was the subject on which all the rays collected on the focal point fell. These fiery rays, which should have fallen on all mankind, diverged from Divine justice to the east, west, north, and south, were deflected from them, and converged in him. So the Lord hath caused to meet in him the punishment due to the iniquities of All.

And who shall declare his generation "And his manner of life who would declare" - A learned friend has communicated to me the following passages from the Mishna, and the Gemara of Babylon, as leading to a satisfactory explication of this difficult place. It is said in the former, that before any one was punished for a capital crime, proclamation was made before the prisoner by the public crier, in these words: כל מי שיודע לו זכות יבא וילמד עליו col mi shioda lo zachoth yabo vayilmad alaiv, "whosoever knows any thing of this man's innocence, let him come and declare it. "Tract. Sandhedrim. Surenhus. Part 4 p. 233. On which passage the Gemara of Babylon adds, that "before the death of Jesus this proclamation was made for forty days; but no defense could be found." On which words Lardner observes: "It is truly surprising to see such falsities, contrary to well-known facts." Testimonies, Vol. 1 p. 198. The report is certainly false; but this false report is founded on the supposition that there was such a custom, and so far confirms the account given from the Mishna. The Mishna was composed in the middle of the second century according to Prideaux; Lardner ascribes it to the year of Christ 180.

Casaubon has a quotation from Maimonides which farther confirms this account: - Exercitat. in Baronii Annales, Art. lxxvi. Ann. 34. Numbers 119. Auctor est Maimonides in Perek 13 ejus libri ex opere Jad, solitum fieri, ut cum reus, sententiam mortis passus, a loco judicii exibat ducendus ad supplicium, praecedoret ipsum חכרוז κηρυξ, praeco; et haec verba diceret: Ille exit occidendus morte illa, quia transgressus est transgressione illa, in loco illo, tempore illo, et sunt ejus ret testes ille et ille. Qui noverit aliquid ad ejus innoeentiam probandam, veniat, et loquatur pro eo. "It was customary when sentence of death was passed upon a criminal, and he was led out from the seat of judgment to the place of punishment, a crier went before, and spoke as follows: - 'This man is going out to suffer death by - because he has transgressed by - such a transgression, in such a place, in such a time; and the witnesses against him are - . He who may know any thing relative to his innocence let him come and speak in his behalf.'"

Now it is plain from the history of the four Evangelists, that in the trlal and condemnation of Jesus no such rule was observed; though, according to the account of the Mishna, it must have been in practice at that time, no proclamation was made for any person to bear witness to the innocence and character of Jesus; nor did any one voluntarily step forth to give his attestation to it. And our Savior seems to refer to such a custom, and to claim the benefit of it, by his answer to the high priest, when he asked him of his disciples and of his doctrine: "I spoke openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing. Why askest thou me? ask them who heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said," Joh 18:20, Joh 18:21. This, therefore, was one remarkable instance of hardship and injustice, among others predicted by the prophet, which our Savior underwent in his trial and sufferings.

St. Paul likewise, in similar circumstances, standing before the judgment seat of Festus, seems to complain of the same unjust treatment; that no one was called, or would appear, to vindicate his character. "My manner of life (την βιωσιν μου, דורי dori, 'my generation') from my youth, which was at the first among my own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews, who knew me from the beginning, if they would testify; that after the straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee;" Act 26:4, Act 26:5. דור dor signifies age, duration, the time which one man or many together pass in this world, in this place; the course, tenor, or manner of life. The verb דור dor signifies, according to Castell, ordinatam vitam sive aetatem egit, ordinavit, ordine constituit. "He passed a certain course of life, he ordained," etc. In Arabic, curavit, administravit, "he took care of, administered to."

Was he stricken "He was smitten to death" - The Septuagint read למות lemaveth, εις θανατον, "to death." And so the Coptic and Saidic Versions, from the Septuagint; MSS. St. Germain de Prez. "Origen, "(Contra Celsum, lib. 1 p. 370, edit. 1733), after having quoted at large this prophecy concerning the Messiah, "tells us, that having once made use of this passage in a dispute against some that were accounted wise among the Jews, one of them replied, that the words did not mean one man, but one people, the Jews, who were smitten of God and dispersed among the Gentiles for their conversion; that he then urged many parts of this prophecy to show the absurdity of this interpretation, and that he seemed to press them the hardest by this sentence, απο των ανομιων του λαου μον ηχθη εις θανατον, 'for the iniquity of my people was he smitten to death.'" Now as Origen, the author of the Hexapla, must have understood Hebrew, we cannot suppose that he would have urged this last quotation as so decisive if the Greek Version had not agreed here with the Hebrew text; nor that these wise Jews would have been at all distressed by this quotation, unless their Hebrew text had read agreeably to εις θανατον, "to death," on which the argument principally depended; for, by quoting it immediately, they would have triumphed over him, and reprobated his Greek version. This, whenever they could do it, was their constant practice in their disputes with the Christians. Jerome, in his Preface to the Psalms, says, Nuper cum Hebraeo disputans, quaedam pro Domino Salvatore de Psalmis testimonia protulisti: volensque ille te illudere, per sermones fere singulos asserebat, non ita haberi in Hebraeo, ut tu de lxx. opponebas. "Lately disputing with a Hebrew, - thou advancedst certain passages out of the Psalms which bear testimony to the Lord the Savior; but he, to elude thy reasoning, asserted that almost all thy quotations have an import in the Hebrew text different from what they had in the Greek." And Origen himself, who laboriously compared the Hebrew text with the Septuagint, has recorded the necessity of arguing with the Jews from such passages only as were in the Septuagint agreeable to the Hebrew: ἱνα προς Ιουδαιοις διαλεγομενοι μη προφερωμεν αυτοι τα μη κειμενα εν τοις αντιγραφοις αυτων, και ἱνα συγχρησωμεθα τοις φερομενοις παρ' εκεινοις. See Epist. ad African. p. 15, 17. Wherefore as Origen had carefully compared the Greek version of the Septuagint with the Hebrew text, and speaks of the contempt with which the Jews treated all appeals to the Greek version where it differed from their Hebrew text; and as he puzzled and confounded the learned Jews by urging upon them the reading εις θανατον, "unto death," in this place; it seems almost impossible not to conclude, both from Origen's argument and the silence of his Jewish adversaries, that the Hebrew text at that time actually had למות lemaveth, "to death," agreeably to the version of the Septuagint. - Dr. Kennicott.

With the rich in his death "With the rich man was his tomb" - It may be necessary to introduce Bishop Lowth's translation of this verse before we come to his very satisfactory criticisms: -

And his grave was appointed with the wicked;

But with the rich man was his tomb:

Although he had done no wrong,

Neither was there any guile in his mouth.

Among the various opinions which have been given on this passage, I have no doubt in giving my assent to that which makes the ב beth in במותיו bemothaiv radical, and renders it excelsa sua. This is mentioned by Aben Ezra as received by some in his time; and has been long since approved by Schindler, Drusius, and many other learned Christian interpreters.

The most simple tombs or monuments of old consisted of hillocks of earth heaped up over the grave; of which we have numerous examples in our own country, generally allowed to be of very high antiquity. The Romans called a monument of this sort very properly tumulus; and the Hebrews as properly במות bamoth, "high place," for that is the form of' the noun in the singular number; and sixteen MSS. and the two oldest editions express the word fully in this place, במותיו bamothaiv. Tumulus et collem et sepulchrum fuisse significat. Potest enim tumulus sine sepulchro interpretatione collis interdum accipi. Nam et terrae congestio super ossa tumulus dicitur. "Tumulus signifies a sepulcher with a hillock of earth raised over it. The word is sometimes restrained to the bank of earth; for the heaping up of the earth over the bones is named the tumulus." - Servius, Aen. 3:22. And to make the tumulus still more elevated and conspicuous, a pillar or some other ornament was often erected upon it: - Τυμβον χευαντες, και επι στηλην ερυσαντες, Πηξαμεν ακροτατῳ τυμβῳ ευηρες ερετμον.

Odyss. sii. 14. "A rising tomb, the silent dead to grace,

Fast by the roarings of the main we place;

The rising tomb a lofty column bore,

And high above it rose the tapering oar."

Pope

The tomb therefore might with great propriety be called the high place. The Hebrews might also call such a tomb במות bamoth, from the situation, for they generally chose to erect them on eminences. The sepulcher of Joseph of Arimathea, in which the body of Christ was laid, was upon a hill, Mount Calvary. See Isa 22:16 (note), and the note there. "It should be observed that the word במותיו bamothaiv is not formed from במות bamoth, the plural of במה bamah, the feminine noun, but from במותים bamothim, the plural of a masculine noun, במות bamoth. This is noted because these two nouns have been negligently confounded with one another, and absurdly reduced to one by very learned men. So Buxtorf, lex. in voc. במה bamah, represents במותי bamotey, though plainly without any pronoun suffixed, as it governs the word ארץ arets following it, as only another form of במות bamoth; whereas the truth is, that במות bamoth and במותים bamothim are different words, and have through the whole Bible very different significations; במה bamah, whether occurring in the singular or plural number, always signifying a place or places of worship; and במותים bamothim always signifying heights. Thus in Deu 32:13; Isa 58:14; Amo 4:13; and Mic 1:3, במותי ארץ bamothey arets signifies 'the heights of the earth;' Isa 14:14, במותי עב bamothey ab, 'the heights of the clouds;' and in Job 9:8, במותי ים bamothey yam, 'the heights of the sea,' i.e., the high waves of the sea, as Virgil calls a wave praeruptus aqua mons, 'a broken mountain of water.' These being all the places where this word occurs without a suffix, the sense of it seems nearly determined by them. It occurs in other instances with a pronoun suffixed, which confirm this signification. Unluckily, our English Bible has not distinguished the feminine noun במה bamah from the masculine singular noun במות bamoth; and has consequently always given the signification of the latter to the former, always rendering it a high place; whereas the true sense of the word appears plainly to be, in the very numerous passages in which it occurs, 'a place of worship,' or 'a sacred court,' or 'a sacred inclosure;' whether appropriated to the worship of idols or to that of the true God, for it is used of both, passive. Now as the Jewish graves are shown, from 2Chr 32:33, and Isa 22:16, to have been in high situations, to which may be added the custom of another eastern nation from Osbeck's Travels, who says, vol. 1 p. 339, 'the Chinese graves are made on the side of hills;' 'his heights' becomes a very easy metaphor to express 'his sepulcher.'" - Jubb.

The exact completion of this prophecy will be fully shown by adding here the several circumstances of the burial of Jesus, collected from the accounts of the evangelists: - "There was a rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, a member of the sanhedrin, and of a respectable character, who had not consented to their counsel and act; he went to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus: and he laid it in his own new tomb, which had been hewn out of the rock, near to the place where Jesus was crucified; having first wound it in fine linen with spices, as the manner of the Jews was to bury the rich and great."

It has been supposed that קברו kibro, his grave, and במתיו bemothaiv, in his death, may have been transposed, as also the prefix ב be originally placed before רשעים reshaim, the wicked. Thus: - מתיו את ברשעים ויתן mothaiv eth bireshayim vaiyitten קברו עשיר ואת kibro ashir veeth

Yea, his death was appointed among the wicked,

And with a rich man, his tomb.

By these alterations it is supposed the text would be freed from all embarrassment. But see the preceding notes of Bishop Lowth, and the various readings of De Rossi, in loc.

To grief "With affliction" - For החלי hecheli, the verb, the construction of which seems to be hard and inelegant in this place, the Vulgate reads בחלי bocholi, in infirmitate, "with infirmity."

When thou shalt make his soul "If his soul shall make" - For תשים tasim, a MS. has תשם tasem, which may be taken passively, "If his soul shall be made" agreeably to some copies of the Septuagint, which have δωται See likewise the Syriac.

When thou shalt make his soul an offering - The word נפש dro nephesh, soul, is frequently used in Hebrew to signify life. Throughout the New Testament the salvation of men is uniformly attributed to the death of Christ.

He shall see his seed - True converts, genuine Christians.

He shall prolong his days - Or this spiritual progeny shall prolong their days, i.e., Christianity shall endure to the end of time.

And the pleasure of the Lord - To have all men saved and brought to the knowledge of the truth.

Shall prosper in his hand - Shall go on in a state of progressive prosperity; and so completely has this been thus far accomplished, that every succeeding century has witnessed more Christianity in the world than the preceding, or any former one.

Shall be satisfied "And be satisfied" - The Septuagint, Vulgate, Sryiac, and a MS. add the conjunction to the verb, וישבע vaigisba.

Shall my righteous servant justify "Shall my servant justify" - Three MSS., (two of them ancient), omit the word צדיק tsaddik; it seems to be only an imperfect repetition, by mistake, of the preceding word. It makes a solecism in this place; for according to the constant usage of the Hebrew language, the adjective, in a phrase of this kind, ought to follow the substantive; and צדיק עבדי tsaddik abdi, in Hebrew, would be as absurd as "shall my servant righteous justify," in English. Add to this, that it makes the hemistich too long.

He bare the sin of many - רבים rabbim, the multitudes, the many that were made sinners by the offenses of one; i.e., the whole human race; for all have sinned - all have fallen; and for all that have sinned, and for all that have fallen, Jesus Christ died. The רבים rabbim of the prophet answers to the οἱ πολλοι, of the apostle, Rom 5:15, Rom 5:19. As the πολλοι of the apostle means all that have sinned; so the רבים rabbim of the prophet means those for whom Christ died; i.e., all that have sinned.

And made intercession for the transgressors - For יפגיע yaphgia, in the future, a MS. has הפגיע hiphgia, preterite, rather better, as agreeable with the other verbs immediately preceding in the sentence.

He made intercession for the transgressors. - This was literally fulfilled at his death, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!" Luk 23:34. And to make intercession for transgressors is one part of his mediatorial offlce. Heb 7:25, and Heb 9:24.

In this chapter the incarnation, preaching, humiliation, rejection, sufferings, death, atonement, resurrection, and mediation of Jesus Christ are all predicted, together with the prevalence of his Gospel, and the extension of his kingdom through all ages.

Who - Who, not only of the Gentiles, but even of the Jews, will believe the truth of what I say? And this premonition was highly necessary, both to caution the Jews that they should not stumble at this stone, and to instruct the Gentiles that they should not be seduced with their example. The arm - The Messiah, called the arm or power of God, because the almighty power of God was seated in him. Revealed - Inwardly and with power.

As a root - And the reason why the Jews will generally reject their Messiah, is, because he shall not come into the world with secular pomp, but he shall grow up, (or spring up, out of the ground) before him, (before the unbelieving Jews, of whom he spake ver.1, and that in the singular number, as here, who were witnesses of his mean original; and therefore despised him) as a tender plant (small and inconsiderable) and as a root, or branch, grows out of a dry, barren ground. No form - His bodily presence shall be mean and contemptible. No beauty - This the prophet speaks in the person of the unbelieving Jews. We - Our people, the Jewish nation.

We hid - We scorned to look upon him.

Yet - Our people believed that he was thus punished by the just judgment of God.

Wounded - Which word comprehends all his pains and punishments. For our iniquities - For the guilt of their sins, which he had voluntarily taken upon himself, and for the expiation of their sins, which was hereby purchased. The chastisement - Those punishments by which our peace, our reconciliation to God, was to be purchased, were laid upon him by God's justice with his own consent. Healed - By his sufferings we are saved from our sins.

We - All mankind. Astray - From God. Have turned - In general, to the way of sin, which may well be called a man's own way, because sin is natural to us, inherent in us, born with us; and in particular, to those several paths, which several men chuse, according to their different opinions, and circumstances. Hath laid - Heb. hath made to meet, as all the rivers meet in the sea. The iniquity - Not properly, for he knew no sin; but the punishment of iniquity, as that word is frequently used. That which was due for all the sins of all mankind, which must needs be so heavy a load, that if he had not been God as well as man, he must have sunk under the burden.

He opened not - He neither murmured against God, nor reviled men.

Taken away - Out of this life. By distress and judgment - By oppression and violence. and a pretence of justice. His generation - His posterity. For his death shall not be unfruitful; when he is raised from the dead, he shall have a spiritual seed, a numberless multitude of those who shall believe in him. Cut off - By a violent death. And this may be added as a reason of the blessing of a numerous posterity conferred upon him, because he was willing to be cut off for the transgression of his people.

With the wicked - This was a farther degree of humiliation. He saith, he made his grave, because this was Christ's own act, and he willingly yielded up himself to death and burial. And that which follows, with the wicked, does not denote the sameness of place, as if he should be buried in the same grave with other malefactors, but the sameness of condition.

He - God was the principal cause of all his sufferings, tho' mens sins were the deserving cause. When - When thou, O God, shalt have made, thy son a sacrifice, by giving him up to death for the atonement of mens sins. His soul is here put for his life, or for himself. Shall see - He shall have a numerous issue of believers reconciled by God, and saved by his death. Prolong - He shall live and reign with God for ever. The pleasure - God's gracious decree for the salvation of mankind shall be effectually carried on by his ministry and mediation.

Shall see - He shall enjoy. The travel - The blessed fruit of all his labours, and sufferings. Satisfied - He shall esteem his own and his father's glory, and the salvation of his people, an abundant recompence. By his knowledge - By the knowledge of him. Justify - Acquit them from the guilt of their sins, and all the dreadful consequences thereof. And Christ is said to justify sinners meritoriously, because he purchases and procures it for us. Many - An innumerable company of all nations. For - For he shall satisfy the justice of God, by bearing the punishment due to their sins.

I - God the father. A portion - Which is very commodiously supplied out of the next clause. With the strong - God will give him happy success in his glorious undertaking: he shall conquer all his enemies, and set up his universal and everlasting kingdom in the world. Because - Because he willingly laid down his life. Transgressors - He prayed upon earth for all sinners, and particularly for those that crucified him, and in heaven he still intercedes for them, by a legal demand of those good things which he purchased; by the sacrifice of himself, which, though past, he continually represents to his father, as if it were present.

1 WHo hath believed our report ? and to whom is the Arm of the LORD revealed ?

The Prophet having in the 3 last verses of the former Chapter, made a general report concerning the great and wonderful Humiliation, and Exaltation of Christ, of which he intended more largely to discourse in this Chapter, before he descended to particulars he thought fit to use this Preface, Who, not only of the Gentiles, but even of the Jews, will believe the truth of what I have said and must say? Few or none. The generality of them will never receive, nor believe in such a Messias as this. Thus this place is expounded by Christ himself, Iob. 12. 38. and by Paul, Rom. 10. 16. And this premonition was highly necessary, both to caution the Jews that they should not stumble at this Stone, and to instruct the Gentiles that they should not be surprised, nor scandalized, nor seduced with their Example.

Either 1. The Word of God, called the report in the former clause, the Doctrine of the Gospel, which is expresly called the power of God, 1 Cor. 1. 18. because of that admirable Virtue and Success which accompanied the preaching of it. Or 2. The Messiah, who also is called the arm or power of God, 1 Cor. 1. 24▪ and that most fitly, because the Almighty power of God was both seated in him, and declared and exercised by him in his powerful Words and mighty Deeds, as Simon for some great works wrought by him, was called by the Samaritanes, the great power of God, Act. 8. 10.

Not outwardly, for so Christ was revealed and preached to vast numbers, both of Jews and Gentiles, as is evident from this Context, and from divers other places of Scripture, but inwardly and with power to their Minds and Hearts, of which kind of Revelation, See Eph. 1. 17, 18, 19. and compare it with 2 Cor. 4. 4. Thus even Moses though sufficiently revealed to the Eyes and Ears of the Jews, yet is said to be unrevealed or hid from their Minds and Hearts, 2 Cor. 3. 14, 15. The sense of the place is, few or none of the Jews will believe the Gospel, or receive their Messiah when he comes among them.

Marginal references: Joh. 12. 38. Rom. 10. 16.; Or, doctrine.; Heb. hearing.

2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground : he hath no form nor comeliness : and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him .

And the reason or occasion why the Jews will so generally reject their Messiah, is because he shall not come into the World with secular pomp, and power, like an earthly Monarch, as they carnally and groundlesly imagined, but he shall grow up (or spring up, Heb. ascend, to wit, out of the ground, as it follows, be brought forth, and brought up) before him (before the unbelieving Jews of whom he spake, v. 1. and that in the singular number, as here, who were witnesses of his mean original; and therefore despised him, according to Christs observation, Iob. 4. 44. or, as others, according to his face, or outward appearance, as he was man; whereby he sufficiently implies that he had another, a far higher, and a Divine Nature in him▪) as a tender plant (or, as this very word is translated, Ezek. 17. 4. a young twig, which is a small and inconsiderable thing) and as a root (as Christ is called, Rom. 15. 12. and elsewhere: or, as a branch, the root being put Metonimically for the branch growing out of the root, as it is apparently used, where Christ is called the root of Iesse, and of David, Isa. 11. 10. Rev. 5. 5. and in other places, as 2 Chr. 22. 10▪) out of a dry ground, out of a mean and barren soil, whose productions are generally poor and contemptible; either 1. Out of the Womb of a Virgin; but that was no ground of contempt: Or 2. Of the Jewish Nation, which was then poor, and despised, and enslaved▪ Or 3. Out of a poor, and decayed, and contemptible Family, such as the Royal Family of David was at that time.

His bodily presence and condition in the World shall be mean and contemptible.

When we shall look upon him, expecting to find incomparable Beauty and Majesty in his Countenance, and Carriage, and Condition, we shall be altogether disappointed, and shall meet with nothing amiable or desirable in him. This the Prophet speaketh in the person of the carnal and unbelieving Jews, we, i. e. our People, the Jewish Nation.

Marginal references: Ch. 49. 7. & 52. 14. Mark 9. 12.

3 He is despised and rejected of men , a man of sorrows , and acquainted with grief : and we hid as it were our faces from him ; he was despised, and we esteemed him not .

Accounted as the scum of Mankind, as one unworthy of the company and conversation of all men.

Whose whole Life was filled with, and in a manner made up of an uninterrupted succession of Sorrows and Sufferings.

Who had constant Experience of and familiar converse with grievous afflictions: for knowledge is oft taken practically, or for Experience, as Gen. 3. 5. 2 Cor. 5. 21. and elsewhere.

We scorned and loathed to look upon him. Or, as others, he hid as it were his face from us, as one ashamed to shew his Face, or to be seen by any Men, as persons conscious to themselves of any great deformity, do commonly shun the sight of men, as Lepers did, Lev. 13. 45.

Here are divers words expressing the same thing, to signifie both the utmost degree of contempt, and how strange and wonderful a thing it was, that so excellent a person should be so despised.

Marginal references: Or, he hid as it were his face from us.; Heb. as a hiding of faces from him, or, from us.

4 Surely he hath born our griefs, and carried our sorrows : yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted .

And whereas it may seem an unreasonable and incredible thing, that so excellent and glorious, & so innocent and just a person should meet with this usage, it must be known that his griefs and miseries were not laid upon him for his own sake, but wholly and solely for the sake of sinful men, in whose stead he stood, and for whose sins he suffered, as it here follows.

Yet our people, the Jews, were so far from giving him the Glory and Praise of such a prodigious condescension and compassion, that they made a most perverse construction of it, and so great was their prejudice against him, that they believed that he was thus disgraced and punished, and at last put to death by the just judgment of God, for his Blasphemy and other manifold Wickednesses.

Marginal references: Mat. 8. 1[illegible: 1+ letters].

5 But he was wounded for our transgressions , he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him , and with his stripes we are healed .

But this was a most false and unrighteous Sentence.

Which word comprehends all his pains, and punishments, and his Death among and above the rest.

Not by them, which is expressed by another particle, not by the wickedness of the Jews, but for or because of them, as this particle commonly signifies, for the guilt of their sins, which he had voluntarily taken upon himself, and for the Expiation of their sins, which was hereby purchased and procured of God for Men. Which Interpretation is confirmed 1. By the opposition of this truth to the false opinion mentioned in the foregoing clause, that he was smitten of God for the guilt of his own sins. 2. By the following clause, as we shall see. 3. By the nature of the thing, this being evident from Scriptures both of the old and new Testament, that Christ was not to suffer for his own, but for other mens sins. See Dan. 9. 24, 26.

Those punishments by which our Peace, i. e. our reconciliation to God, and Salvation, or Happiness, was to be purchased.

Was laid upon him by Gods justice with his own consent,

By his sufferings we are saved from our sins, and from the dreadful effects thereof.

Marginal references: Or, tormented.; Rom. 4. 25. 1 Cor. 15. 3.; 1 Pet. 2. 24.; Heb. bruise.

6 All we like sheep have gone a stray : we have turned every one to his own way , and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

All mankind, the Jews no less than the Gentiles.

Which are simple and foolish Creatures, and exceeding apt to straggle and lose themselves.

From God, and from the way of his Precepts, in which he put our first Parents, and in which he commanded us to walk.

In general, to the way and course of sin, which may well be called a mans own way, as sins are called mens own Lusts, Jam. 1. 14. 2 Pet. 3. 3. and elsewhere, because sin is natural to us, inherent in us, born with us, and very dear to us; and in particular, to those several paths of divers Lusts, which several men chuse and follow, according to their differing Opinions, Inclinations, Occasions, and Circumstances.

Heb. hath made to meet, as all the Rivers meet in the Sea.

Not properly, for so he knew no sin, 2 Cor. 5. 21. but the punishment of iniquity, as that word is most frequently used, as Gen. 4. 13. Lev. 20. 17, &c. That which was due for all the sins of all his people, whether Jews or Gentiles, which must needs be so great and heavy a load, that if he had not been God as well as Man, he must have sunk under the burden of them. This was actually verified in Christ. And both this and divers other passages here do as manifestly and fully point at Christ, as if they were not a prophetical Representation of things to come, but an historical Relation of them after they were done. Nor do I see how they can be excused from a fearful wresting of the Scripture that expound these places of the Prophet Ieremiah, or any other person but Christ.

Marginal references: Heb. hath made the iniquities of us all to meet on him.

7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted , yet he opened not his mouth , he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb , so he openeth not his mouth.

He was sorely punished for our sins. But there is another Translation, which seems to be more emphatical and more agreeable to the Hebrew Text: It (to wit, our iniquity last mentioned, or the punishment of all our sins) was exacted or required; (as this word most properly and frequently signifies, of which see my Latin Synopsis. Gods Justice expected and required satisfaction from us for our sins; which, alas! we could not make to him:) and he was afflicted or punished: he bore the guilt and punishment of our sins in his Body upon the tree, as is said 1 Pet. 2. 24. or, as others render this last word, and he answered, i. e. became our surety, or undertook to pay the debt, and to suffer the Law in our stead, and for our sake.

He neither murmured against God, for causing him to suffer for other mens sins, nor reviled men for punishing him without cause, nor used Apologies or endeavours to save his own Life; but willingly and patiently accepted of the punishment of our Iniquity.

Bears the loss of its fleece or Life without any such clamour or resistance as other Creatures use in such cases.

Marginal references: Mat. 26. 63. & 27. 12, 14. Mar. 14. 61. & 15. 5. Act. 8. 32.

8 He was taken from prison and from judgment e: and who shall declare his generation ? for he was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of my people was he stricken .

Who can declare it? The future being taken potentially, as it is frequently: no words can sufficiently express it.

Either 1. His Age, or the continuance of his Life. So the sense is, That he shall not only be delivered from death, and all his punishments, but also shall be restored to an inexpressible or endless Life, and to an everlasting Kingdom. Thus great Interpreters understand it: with whom I cannot comply, because I do not find this Hebrew word to be ever used in Scripture of the continuance of one mans Life. Or rather 2. His Posterity; and so this word is unquestionably used, Gen. 15. 16. Exod. 20. 5. Deut. 23. 2, 3, 8. and in many other places. And so the sense of the place is this, That Christs death shall not be unfruitful, and that when he is raised from the dead, he shall have a spiritual seed, as is promised, v. 10. a numberless multitude of those who shall believe in him, and be regenerated and adopted by him into the number of his Children, and of the Children of God, Ioh. 1. 12. Heb. 2. 10, 13, 14.

To wit, by a violent death. And this may be added as a reason both of his exaltation, and of the blessing of a numerous posterity conferred upon him, because he was willing to be cut off for the transgression of his People; and, as it followeth, v. 10. made his soul an offering for sin; Christs death being elsewhere declared to be the only way and necessary means of obtaining both these ends, Luk. 24. 26, 46. Ioh▪ 12. 24, 32, 33. Philip. 2. 8, 9. But these words may be rendred, although he was cut off; to fignifie that his death should not hinder these glorious effects.

This is repeated again, as it was fit it should be, to prevent mens mistakes about, and stumbling at the death of Christ, and to assure them that Christ did not die for his own sins, but only for the sins and salvation of his People.

[illegible: 1+ letters] These words are understood either 1. Of Christs Humiliation or Suffering: and then the words are to be thus rendred, He was taken away (to wit, out of this Life, as this word is used, Psal. 31. 13. Prov. 1. 19. and elsewhere: he was put to death:) by distress (or violence, or tyranny, as this word is used with this Preposition before it, Psal. 107. 39.) and judgment, by oppression and violence under a form and pretence of Justice. Or rather 2. Of Christs Exaltation▪ because of the following clause: which is not unseasonably mentioned in the midst of his Sufferings, to take off the scandal which might have arisen from Christs Sufferings, if there had not been a prospect and assurance of his victoriousness over them, and his Glory after them: and so the words may be rendered, He was taken up (or, taken away, freed or delivered) from prison (i. e. from the Grave, which being called an house, Job. 30. 23. and a pit, in which men are shut up, Psal. 69. 15. may fitly be called a prison: or from distress, or affliction, or oppression, from the power and malice of his Enemies, and from the torments of his own Soul, arising from the sense of Mens sins and Gods displeasure) and from judgment, i. e. from all the sufferings and punishments inflicted upon him, either by the unrighteous judgment of men, or by the just judgment of God, punishing him for those sins which he had voluntarily taken upon himself: or, which is the same thing, from the sentence of Condemnation, and all the effects of it: for in this sense judgment is very commonly taken▪ both in Scripture and other Authors.

Marginal references: Or, he was taken away by distress and judgment, but, &c.; Heb. was the stroke upon him.

9 And he made his grave with the wicked , and with the rich in his death , because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth .

And although he did not die for his own, but only for his Peoples sins, yet he was willing to die like a malefactor, or like a sinner, as all other men are, and to be put into the grave, as they used to be; which was a farther degree of his Humiliation. He saith, he made his Grave, because this was Christs own act, and he willingly yielded up himself to death and burial. And that which follows, with the wicked, doth not note the sameness of place, as if he should be buried in the same Grave with other malefactors, but the sameness of condition: as when David prayeth Psal. 26. 9. Gather not my soul (to wit, by death) with sinners, he doth not mean it of the same Grave, but of the same state of the dead.

This passage is thought by many to signifie that Christ should be buried in the Sepulchre of Ioseph, who is said to be both rich, Mat. 27. 57. and honourable, Mark 15. 43. which they conceive to be intimated as a token of Favour and Honour shewed to him. Which to me seems not probable, partly because this disagrees with the former clause, which confefsedly speaks of the dishonour which was done to him; and partly because the burial of Christ, whatsoever Circumstances it was attended with, is ever mentioned in Scripture as a part of his Humiliation, Act. 2. 24. 27. And it seems more reasonable, and more agreeable to the usage of Holy Scripture, that this clause should design the same thing with the former, and that by rich he means the same persons whom he now called wicked, not as if all rich men were, or must needs be wicked, but because for the most part they are so; upon which ground, riches and rich men do commonly pass under an ill name in Scripture; of which see Psal. 37. 16. & 49. 6. Luk. 6. 24. & 18. 24. Iam. 1. 11. & 5. 1.

Heb. in, or at (or after, as this particle is frequently taken, as hath been already noted) his deaths: for Christs death might well be called deaths in the plural number, because he underwent many kinds of death, and many deadly dangers and pains, which are frequently called by the name of death in Scripture, of which instances have been formerly given; and he might say, with no less truth than Paul did, 1 Cor. 15. 31. I die daily, and 2 Cor. 11. 23. I was in deaths oft.

This some suppose to be added as a reason of the last branch of the foregoing clause, why God so overruled matters by his providence, that Christ should not be buried in the same Grave, or in the same ignominious manner as malefactors were, but in a more honourable manner, in Iosephs own Tomb. But the last part of the foregoing clause cannot, without violence, be pulled asunder from the former, wherewith it is so closely joined, not only by a Conjunction copulative, and, but also by being under the government of the same Verb: And therefore this latter clause of the verse, if thus rendred, must be added as the reason of what is said to be done in the former. And so the sense of the place may be thus conceived, This was all the reward of the unspotted Innocency of all his words and actions, to be thus ignominiously used: But these words may well be, and are otherwise re[illegible: 1+ letters]dred both by Jewish and Christian Interpreters, either thus, although he had done, &c. or rather thus, not for (as these two same particles placed, in the very same order, are rendred by our Translator, and others, Iob 16. 17.) any violence (or injury, or iniquity) which he had done, nor for any deceit which was in his mouth; not for his own sins, but, as hath been said before, for his Peoples [illegible: 1+ letters]ins. In which Translation there is nothing supplied but what is most frequent in Scripture use.

Marginal references: Heb. deaths.; 1 Pet. 2. 22, 1 Ioh. 3. 5.

10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him , he hath put him to grief : when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin , he shall see his seed , he shall prolong his days , and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand .

But although he was perfectly innocent, it pleased God for other just and wise Reasons to punish him.

God was the principal cause of all his sorrows and sufferings, although mens sins were the deserving cause.

When thou, O God, shalt make, or have made, thy Son a Sacrifice, by giving him up to death for the attonement of mens sins. His Soul is here put for his Life, or for himself, or his whole humane nature, which was sacrificed, his Soul being tormented with the sense of Gods Wrath, and his Body crucified, and Soul and Body separated by Death. Or the words may be rendred, When his soul shall make, or have made, itself an offering for sin: whereby it may be implied that he did not lay down his Life by force, but willingly.

His death shall be glorious to himself, and highly beneficial to others, for he shall have a numerous issue of Believers reconciled to God, and saved by his death.

He shall be raised to immortal Life, and shall live and reign with God for ever; he shall die no more, Rom. 6. 9. and of his Kingdom there shall be no end, Luk. 1. 33.

Gods gracious decree for the redemption and Salvation of Mankind shall be effectually carried on by his Ministry and Mediation.

Marginal references: Or, when his soul shall make an offering.; If thou shalt make his soul sin: 2 Cor. 5. 21. 1 Pet. 2. 24.

11 He shall see of the travel of his soul , and shall be satisfied : by his knowledg shall my righteous servant justifie many : for he shall bear their iniquities .

He shall receive or enjoy, as this word commonly signifies.

The comfortable and blessed fruit of all his hard labours, and grievous sufferings.

He shall esteem his own and his Fathers Glory, and the Salvation of his People, an abundant recompence for all his Sufferings.

Either 1. Actively, by that knowledg of Gods Will, and of the way of Salvation, which is in him in its highest perfection, and which by him is revealed unto men, and by his Spirit is imprinted in the Minds and Hearts of his People, so as to produce Faith and Obedience in them. Or 2. Passively, by the knowledg of him, as my fear and thy fear are put for the fear of me and of thee, Psal. 5. 7. Ier. 32. 40. Knowledg being here, as it is most frequently in Scripture, taken practically for that kind of Knowledge which worketh Faith, and Love, and Obedience to him. So the sense is the same in both cases.

Which title is here given to Christ, partly to vindicate him from those false imputations of wickedness which were fastened upon him by his Adversaries, and which found the more belief because of his most grievous and unexampled Sufferings both from God and Men; and partly to shew his fitness for this great work of justifying sinners, because he was exactly holy, and harmless, and undefiled, Heb. 7. 26. and fulfilled all righteousness according to his duty, Mat. 3. 15. and therefore his person and performance must needs be acceptable to God, and effectual for the justification of his People, which was the great design of his coming into the World.

Acquit them from the guilt of their sins, and all the dreadful consequences thereof: For Iustification is here opposed to condemnation, as appears from the following clause, and from many other passages in this Chapter, and as it is used in all places of Scripture, one, or two at most, excepted, where it is mentioned. And Christ is said to justifie sinners meritoriously, because he purchaseth and procureth it for us; as God the Father is commonly said to do it authoritatively, because he accepted the price paid by Christ for it, and the pronunciation of the sentence of Absolution is referred to him in the Gospel Dispensation.

Which word is seasonably added, partly by way of Restriction, to shew that Christ will not justifie all, but only such as believe in him, and obey him: and partly by way of Amplification, to declare that this blessed priviledge shall not now be, as hitherto it had in a manner been, confined to Iudoea, and the Jews, but shall be conferred upon an innumerable company of all the Nations of the World.

For he shall satisfie the Justice and Law of God for them, by bearing the punishments due to their sins, and therefore by the principles of Reason and Justice they must be justified or acquitted, otherwise the same debt should be twice required and paid.

Marginal references: Ch. 42. 1. & 49. 3.

12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great , and he shall divide the spoil with the strong : because he hath poured out his soul unto death : and he was numbred with the transgressors , and he bare the sin of many , and made intercession for the transgressors .

God the Father, the spectator and Judge of the Action or Combat.

Give him his share. Or, impart, or give to him; for this word is oft used without respect to any distribution or division, as Deut. 4. 19. & 29. 26. and elsewhere.

Which is very commodiously supplied out of the next clause, where a word which answers to it, the spoil, is expressed.

Or, among the great: such as the great and mighty Potentates of the World use to have after a sharp Combat and a glorious Victory. Though he be a very mean and obscure person, as to his extraction and outward condition in the World, yet he shall attain to as great a pitch of the Glory as the greatest Monarchs enjoy.

The same thing is repeated in other words, after the manner of prophetical Writers. The sense of both clauses is, That God will give him, and he shall receive great and happy success in his glorious undertaking, he shall conquer all his Enemies, and lead Captivity Captive, as is said Eph. 4. 8. and set up his universal and everlasting Kingdom in the World.

Because he willingly laid down his Life in Obedience to Gods Command, Ioh. 10. 17, 18. and in order to the Redemption of Mankind. Death is here called a pouring out of the Soul, or Life, either because the Soul or Life▪ which in living men is contained in the body, is turned out of the Body by Death; or to signifie the manner of Christs Death, that it should be with the shedding of his Blood, in which the Life of Man consists, Levit. 17. 11, 14.

He was willing for Gods Glory and for Mans Good to be reproached and punished like a Malefactor, in the same manner and place, and betwixt two of them, as is noted with reference to this place, Mark 15. 27, 28.

Which was said v. 11. and is here repeated to prevent a mistake, and to intimate, that although Christ was numbred with Transgressors, and was used accordingly, yet he was no Transgressor, nor did submit to, and suffer this usage for his own sins, but for the sins of others, the punishment whereof was by his own consent laid upon him.

Either▪ 1. By way of satisfaction: he interposed himself between an angry God and sinners, and received those blows in his own Body which otherwise must have faln upon them: Or 2. In way of Petition, as this word is constantly used▪ He prayed upon Earth for all sinners, and particularly for those that crucified him, Luke 23. 34. and in Heaven he still interceedeth for them, not by an humble Petition, but by a legal demand of those good things which he purchased for his own People by the Sacrifice of himself, which, though past, he continually represents to his Father, as if it were present.

Marginal references: Mar. 15. 28. Luk. 22. 37.; Luk. 23. 34. Rom. 8. 34. Heb. 7. 25. & 9. 24. 1 Joh. 2. 1.

Isa 53:1

But, says the second turn in Isa 53:1-3, the man of sorrows was despised among us, and the prophecy as to his future was not believed. We hear the first lamentation (the question is, From whose mouth does it come?) in Isa 53:1 : “Who hath believed our preaching; and the arm of Jehovah, over whom has it been revealed?” “I was formerly mistaken,” says Hofmann (Schriftbeweis, ii. 1, 159, 160), “as to the connection between Isa 53:1 and Isa 52:13-15, and thought that the Gentiles were the speakers in the former, simply because it was to them that the latter referred. But I see now that I was in error. It is affirmed of the heathen, that they have never heard before the things which they now see with their eyes. Consequently it cannot be they who exclaim, or in whose name the inquiry is made, Who hath believed our preaching?” Moreover, it cannot be they, both because the redemption itself and the exaltation of the Mediator of the redemption are made known to them from the midst of Israel as already accomplished facts, and also because according to Isa 52:15 (cf., Isa 49:7; Isa 42:4; Isa 51:5) they hear the things unheard of before, with amazement which passes into reverent awe, as the satisfaction of their own desires, in other words, with the glad obedience of faith. And we may also add, that the expression in Isa 53:8, “for the transgression of my people,” would be quite out of place in the mouths of Gentiles, and that, as a general rule, words attributed to Gentiles ought to be expressly introduced as theirs. Whenever we find a “we” introduced abruptly in the midst of a prophecy, it is always Israel that speaks, including the prophet himself (Isa 42:24; Isa 64:5; Isa 16:6; Isa 24:16, etc.). Hofmann therefore very properly rejects the view advocated by many, from Calvin down to Stier and Oehler, who suppose that it is the prophet himself who is speaking here in connection with the other heralds of salvation; “for,” as he says, “how does all the rest which is expressed in the 1st pers. plural tally with such a supposition?” If it is really Israel, which confesses in Isa 53:2. how blind it has been to the calling of the servant of Jehovah, which was formerly hidden in humiliation but is now manifested in glory; the mournful inquiry in Isa 53:1 must also proceed from the mouth of Israel. The references to this passage in Joh 12:37-38, and Rom 10:16, do not compel us to assign Isa 53:1 to the prophet and his comrades in office. It is Israel that speaks even in Isa 53:1. The nation, which acknowledges with penitence how shamefully it has mistaken its own Saviour, laments that it has put no faith in the tidings of the lofty and glorious calling of the servant of God. We need not assume, therefore, that there is any change of subject in Isa 53:2; and (what is still more decisive) it is necessary that we should not, if we would keep up any close connection between Isa 53:1 and Isa 52:15. The heathen receive with faith tidings of things which had never been heard of before; whereas Israel has to lament that it put no faith in the tidings which it had heard long, long before, not only with reference to the person and work of the servant of God, but with regard to his lowly origin and glorious end. שמוּעה (a noun after the form ישׁוּעה, שׁבוּעה, a different form from that of גּדלּה, which is derived from the adjective גדל) signifies the hearsay (ἀκοή), i.e., the tidings, more especially the prophetic announcement in Isa 28:9; and שׁמעתנוּ, according to the primary subjective force of the suffix, is equivalent to שמענוּ אשר שמוּעה (cf., Jer 49:14), i.e., the hearsay which we have heard. There were some, indeed, who did not refuse to believe the tidings which Israel heard: ἀλλ ̓ οὖ πάντες ὑπήκουσαν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ (Rom 10:16); the number of the believers was vanishingly small, when compared with the unbelieving mass of the nation. And it is the latter, or rather its remnant which had eventually come to its senses, that here inquires, Who hath believed our preaching, i.e., the preaching that was common among us? The substance of the preaching, which had not been believed, was the exaltation of the servant of God from a state of deep degradation. This is a work performed by the “arm of Jehovah,” namely, His holy arm that has been made bare, and that now effects the salvation of His people, and of the nations generally, according to His own counsel (Isa 52:10; Isa 51:5). This arm works down from on high, exalted far above all created things; men have it above them, and it is made manifest to those who recognise it in what is passing around them. Who, asks Israel, has had any faith in the coming exaltation of the servant of God? who has recognised the omnipotence of Jehovah, which has set itself to effect his exaltation? All that follows is the confession of the Israel of the last times, to which this question is the introduction. We must not overlook the fact that this golden “passional” is also one of the greatest prophecies of the future conversion of the nation, which has rejected the servant of God, and allowed the Gentiles to be the first to recognise him. At last, though very late, it will feel remorse. And when this shall once take place, then and not till then will this chapter - which, to use an old epithet, will ever be carnificina Rabbinorum - receive its complete historical fulfilment.

Isa 53:2

The confession, which follows, grows out of the great lamentation depicted by Zechariah in Zec 12:11. “And he sprang up like a layer-shoot before Him, and like a root-sprout out of dry ground: he had no form, and no beauty; and we looked, and there was no look, such that we could have found pleasure in him.” Isa 53:2, as a sequel to Isa 53:1, looks back to the past, and describes how the arm of Jehovah manifested itself in the servant’s course of life from the very beginning, though imperceptibly at first, and unobserved by those who merely noticed the outside. The suffix of לפניו cannot refer to the subject of the interrogative sentence, as Hahn and Hofmann suppose, for the answer to the quis there is nemo; it relates to Jehovah, by which it is immediately preceded. Before Jehovah, namely, so that He, whose counsel thus began to be fulfilled, fixed His eye upon him with watchfulness and protecting care, he grew up כּיּונק, like the suckling, i.e., (in a horticultural sense) the tender twig which sucks up its nourishment from the root and stem (not as Hitzig supposes, according to Eze 31:16, from the moisture in the soil); for the tender twig upon a tree, or trunk, or stalk, is called ינקת (for which we have יונק here): vid., Eze 17:22, the twig of a cedar; Psa 80:12 (11), of a vine; Job 8:16, of a liana. It is thought of here as a layer, as in Eze 17:22; and, indeed, as the second figure shows when taken in connection with Isa 11:1, as having been laid down after the proud cedar of the Davidic monarchy from which it sprang had been felled; for elsewhere it is compared to a shoot which springs from the root left in the ground after the tree has been felled. Both figures depict the lowly and unattractive character of the small though vigorous beginning. The expression “out of dry ground,” which belongs to both figures, brings out, in addition, the miserable character of the external circumstances in the midst of which the birth and growth of the servant had taken place. The “dry ground” is the existing state of the enslaved and degraded nation; i.e., he was subject to all the conditions inseparable from a nation that had been given up to the power of the world, and was not only enduring all the consequent misery, but was in utter ignorance as to its cause; in a word, the dry ground is the corrupt character of the age. In what follows, the majority of the commentators have departed from the accents, and adopted the rendering, “he had no form and no beauty, that we should look at Him” (should have looked at Him), viz., with fixed looks that loved to dwell upon Him. This rendering was adopted by Symmachus and Vitringa (ἳνα εἴδωμεν αὐτόν; ut ipsum respiceremus). But Luther, Stier, and others, very properly adhere to the existing punctuation; since the other would lead us to expect בּו ונראה instead of ונראהוּ, and the close reciprocal relation of ולא־מראה ונראהוּ, which resembles a play upon the words, is entirely expunged. The meaning therefore is, “We saw Him, and there was nothing in His appearance to make us desire Him, or feel attracted by Him.” The literal rendering of the Hebrew, with its lively method of transferring you into the precise situation, is ut concupisceremus eum (delectaremur eo); whereas, in our oriental style, we should rather have written ut concupivissemus, using the pluperfect instead of the imperfect, or the tense of the associated past. Even in this sense ונראהוּ is very far from being unmeaning: He dwelt in Israel, so that they had Him bodily before their eyes, but in His outward appearance there was nothing to attract or delight the senses.

Isa 53:3

On the contrary, the impression produced by His appearance was rather repulsive, and, to those who measured the great and noble by a merely worldly standard, contemptible. “He was despised and forsaken by men; a man of griefs, and well acquainted with disease; and like one from whom men hide their face: despised, and we esteemed Him not.” All these different features are predicates of the erat that is latent in non species ei neque decor and non adspectus. Nibhzeh is introduced again palindromically at the close in Isaiah’s peculiar style; consequently Martini’s conjecture לא וגו  נבזהוּ is to be rejected. This nibhzeh (cf., bâzōh, Isa 49:7) is the keynote of the description which looks back in this plaintive tone. The predicate chădal 'ı̄shı̄m is misunderstood by nearly all the commentators, inasmuch as they take אישׁים as synonymous with בני־אדם, whereas it is rather used in the sense of בני־אישׁ (lords), as distinguished from benē 'âdâm, or people generally (see Isa 2:9, Isa 2:11, Isa 2:17). The only other passages in which it occurs are Pro 8:4 and Psa 141:4; and in both instances it signifies persons of rank. Hence Cocceius explains it thus: “wanting in men, i.e., having no respectable men with Him, to support Him with their authority.” It might also be understood as meaning the ending one among men, i.e., the one who takes the last place (S. ἐλάχιστος, Jer. novissimus); but in this case He Himself would be described as אישׁ, whereas it is absolutely affirmed that He had not the appearance or distinction of such an one. But the rendering deficiens (wanting) is quite correct; compare Job 19:14, “my kinsfolk have failed” (defecerunt, châdelū, cognati mei). The Arabic chadhalahu or chadhala ‛anhu (also points to the true meaning; and from this we have the derivatives châdhil, refusing assistance, leaving without help; and machdhûl, helpless, forsaken (see Lane’s Arabic Lexicon). In Hebrew, châdal has not only the transitive meaning to discontinue or leave off a thing, but the intransitive, to case or be in want, so that chădal 'ı̄shı̄m may mean one in want of men of rank, i.e., finding no sympathy from such men. The chief men of His nation who towered above the multitude, the great men of this world, withdrew their hands from Him, drew back from Him: He had none of the men of any distinction at His side. Moreover, He was מכאבות אישׁ, a man of sorrow of heart in all its forms, i.e., a man whose chief distinction was, that His life was one of constant painful endurance. And He was also חלי ידוּע, that is to say, not one known through His sickness (according to Deu 1:13, Deu 1:15), which is hardly sufficient to express the genitive construction; nor an acquaintance of disease (S. γνωστὸς νόσῳ, familiaris morbo), which would be expressed by מידּע or מודע; but scitus morbi, i.e., one who was placed in a state to make the acquaintance of disease. The deponent passive ירוּע, acquainted (like bâtuăch, confisus; zâkbūr, mindful; peritus, pervaded, experienced), is supported by מדּוּע = מה־יּרוּע; Gr. τί μαθών. The meaning is not, that He had by nature a sickly body, falling out of one disease into another; but that the wrath instigated by sin, and the zeal of self-sacrifice (Psa 69:10), burnt like the fire of a fever in His soul and body, so that even if He had not died a violent death, He would have succumbed to the force of the powers of destruction that were innate in humanity in consequence of sin, and of His own self-consuming conflict with them. Moreover, He was kemastēr pânı̄m mimmennū. This cannot mean, “like one hiding his face from us,” as Hengstenberg supposes (with an allusion to Lev 13:45); or, what is comparatively better, “like one causing the hiding of the face from him:” for although the feminine of the participle is written מסתּרת, and in the plural מסתּרים for מסתּירים is quite possible, we never meet with mastēr for mastı̄r, like hastēr for hastı̄r in the infinitive (Isa 29:15, cf., Deu 26:12). Hence mastēr must be a noun (of the form marbēts, marbēq, mashchēth); and the words mean either “like the hiding of the face on our part,” or like one who met with this from us, or (what is more natural) like the hiding of the face before his presence (according to Isa 8:17; Isa 50:6; Isa 54:8; Isa 59:2, and many other passages), i.e., like one whose repulsive face it is impossible to endure, so that men turn away their face or cover it with their dress (compare Isa 50:6 with Job 30:10). And lastly, all the predicates are summed up in the expressive word nibhzeh: He was despised, and we did not think Him dear and worthy, but rather “esteemed Him not,” or rather did not estimate Him at all, or as Luther expresses it, “estimated Him at nothing” (châshabh, to reckon, value, esteem, as in Isa 13:17; Isa 33:8; Mal 3:16).

The second turn closes here. The preaching concerning His calling and His future was not believed; but the Man of sorrows was greatly despised among us.

Isa 53:4

Those who formerly mistook and despised the Servant of Jehovah on account of His miserable condition, now confess that His sufferings were altogether of a different character from what they had supposed. “Verily He hath borne our diseases and our pains: He hath laden them upon Himself; but we regarded Him as one stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” It might appear doubtful whether אכן (the fuller form of אך) is affirmative here, as in Isa 40:7; Isa 45:15, or adversative, as in Isa 49:4. The latter meaning grows out of the former, inasmuch as it is the opposite which is strongly affirmed. We have rendered it affirmatively (Jer. vere), not adversatively (verum, ut vero), because Isa 53:4 itself consists of two antithetical halves - a relation which is expressed in the independent pronouns הוּא and אנחנוּ, that answer to one another. The penitents contrast themselves and their false notion with Him and His real achievement. In Matthew (Mat 8:17) the words are rendered freely and faithfully thus: αὐτὸς τὰς ἀσθενείας ἡμῶν ἔλαβε καὶ τὰς νόσους ἐβάστασεν. Even the fact that the relief which Jesus afforded to all kinds of bodily diseases is regarded as a fulfilment of what is here affirmed of the Servant of Jehovah, is an exegetical index worth noticing. In Isa 53:4 it is not really sin that is spoken of, but the evil which is consequent upon human sin, although not always the direct consequence of the sins of individuals (Joh 9:3). But in the fact that He was concerned to relieve this evil in all its forms, whenever it came in His way in the exercise of His calling, the relief implied as a consequence in Isa 53:4 was brought distinctly into view, though not the bearing and lading that are primarily noticed here. Matthew has very aptly rendered נשׂא by ἔλαβε, and סבל by ἐβάστασε. For whilst סבל denotes the toilsome bearing of a burden that has been taken up, נשׂא combines in itself the ideas of tollere and ferre. When construed with the accusative of the sin, it signifies to take the debt of sin upon one’s self, and carry it as one’s own, i.e., to look at it and feel it as one’s own (e.g., Lev 5:1, Lev 5:17), or more frequently to bear the punishment occasioned by sin, i.e., to make expiation for it (Lev 17:16; Lev 20:19-20; Lev 24:15), and in any case in which the person bearing it is not himself the guilty person, to bear sin in a mediatorial capacity, for the purpose of making expiation for it (Lev 10:17). The lxx render this נשׂא both in the Pentateuch and Ezekiel λαβεῖν ἁμαρτίαν, once ἀναφέρειν; and it is evident that both of these are to be understood in the sense of an expiatory bearing, and not merely of taking away, as has been recently maintained in opposition to the satisfactio vicaria, as we may see clearly enough from Eze 4:4-8, where the עון שׂאת is represented by the prophet in a symbolical action.

But in the case before us, where it is not the sins, but “our diseases” (חלינוּ is a defective plural, as the singular would be written חלינוּ) and “our pains” that are the object, this mediatorial sense remains essentially the same. The meaning is not merely that the Servant of God entered into the fellowship of our sufferings, but that He took upon Himself the sufferings which we had to bear and deserved to bear, and therefore not only took them away (as Mat 8:17 might make it appear), but bore them in His own person, that He might deliver us from them. But when one person takes upon himself suffering which another would have had to bear, and therefore not only endures it with him, but in his stead, this is called substitution or representation - an idea which, however unintelligible to the understanding, belongs to the actual substance of the common consciousness of man, and the realities of the divine government of the world as brought within the range of our experience, and one which has continued even down to the present time to have much greater vigour in the Jewish nation, where it has found it true expression in sacrifice and the kindred institutions, than in any other, at least so far as its nationality has not been entirely annulled.See my Jesus and Hillel, pp. 26, 27.

Here again it is Israel, which, having been at length better instructed, and now bearing witness against itself, laments its former blindness to the mediatorially vicarious character of the deep agonies, both of soul and body, that were endured by the great Sufferer. They looked upon them as the punishment of His own sins, and indeed - inasmuch as, like the friends of Job, they measured the sin of the Sufferer by the sufferings that He endured - of peculiarly great sins. They saw in Him נגוּע, “one stricken,” i.e., afflicted with a hateful, shocking disease (Gen 12:17; 1Sa 6:9) - such, for example, as leprosy, which was called נגע κατ ̓ ἐξ (2Ki 15:5, A. ἀφήμενον, S. ἐν ἁφῆ ὄντα = leprosum, Th. μεμαστιγωμένον, cf., μάστιγες, Mar 3:10, scourges, i.e., bad attacks); also אלהים מכּה, “one smitten of God” (from nâkhâh, root נך, נג; see Comm. on Job, at Job 30:8), and מענּה bowed down (by God), i.e., afflicted with sufferings. The name Jehovah would have been out of place here, where the evident intention is to point to the all-determining divine power generally, whose vengeance appeared to have fallen upon this particular sufferer. The construction mukkēh 'Elōhı̄m signifies, like the Arabic muqâtal rabbuh, one who has been defeated in conflict with God his Lord (see Comm. on Job, at Job 15:28); and 'Elōhı̄m has the syntactic position between the two adjectives, which it necessarily must have in order to be logically connected with them both.

Isa 53:5

In Isa 53:5, והוּא, as contrasted with ואנחנוּ, continues the true state of the case as contrasted with their false judgment. “Whereas He was pierced for our sins, bruised for our iniquities: the punishment was laid upon Him for our peace; and through His stripes we were healed.” The question is, whether Isa 53:5 describes what He was during His life, or what He was in His death. The words decide in favour of the latter. For although châlâl is applied to a person mortally wounded but not yet dead (Jer 51:52; Psa 69:27), and châlal to a heart wounded to death (Psa 109:22); the pure passives used here, which denote a calamity inflicted by violence from without, more especially mechōlâl, which is not the participle polal of chı̄l (made to twist one’s self with pain), but the participle poal of châl (pierced, transfossus, the passive of mechōlēl, Isa 51:9), and the substantive clauses, which express a fact that has become complete in all its circumstances, can hardly be understood in any other way than as denoting, that “the servant of God” floated before the mind of the speaker in all the sufferings of death, just as was the case with Zechariah in Zec 12:10. There were no stronger expressions to be found in the language, to denote a violent and painful death. As min, with the passive, does not answer to the Greek ὑπό, but to ἀπό, the meaning is not that it was our sins and iniquities that had pierced Him through like swords, and crushed Him like heavy burdens, but that He was pierced and crushed on account of our sins and iniquities. It was not His own sins and iniquities, but ours, which He had taken upon Himself, that He might make atonement for them in our stead, that were the cause of His having to suffer so cruel and painful a death.

The ultimate cause is not mentioned; but עליו שׁלומנוּ מוּסר which follows points to it. His suffering was a mūsâr, which is an indirect affirmation that it was God who had inflicted it upon Him, for who else could the yōsēr (meyassēr) be? We have rendered mūsâr “punishment;” and there was no other word in the language for this idea; for though נקם and פּקדּה (to which Hofmann refers) have indeed the idea of punishment associated with them, the former signifies ἐκδίκησις, the latter ἐπίσκεψις, whereas mūsâr not only denotes παιδεία, as the chastisement of love (Pro 3:11), but also as the infliction of punishment (= τιμωρία κόλασις, Pro 7:22; Jer 30:14), just as David, when he prayed that God might not punish him in His anger and hot displeasure (Psa 6:2), could not find a more suitable expression for punishment, regarded as the execution of judgment, than יסּר (הוכיח). The word itself, which follows the form of mūsâd (Isa 28:16), signifies primarily being chastised (from yâsar = vâsar, constringere, coercere), and included from the very outset the idea of practical chastisement, which then passed over into that of admonition in words, of warning by example, and of chastity as a moral quality. In the case before us, in which the reference is to a sufferer, and to a mūsâr resting upon him, this can only mean actual chastisement. If the expression had been עליו מוּסרנוּ, it would merely mean that God had caused Him, who had taken upon Himself our sins and iniquities and thus made Himself representatively or vicariously guilty, to endure the chastisement which those sins deserved. but it is שׁלומנוּ מוּסר. The connection of the words is the same as that of חיּים תּוכחת in Pro 15:31. As the latter signifies “reproof leading to life,” so the former signifies “the chastisement which leads to our peace.” It is true that the suffix belongs to the one idea, that that has grown up through this combination of the words, like berı̄th shelōmı̄, “my peace-covenant” (Isa 54:10); but what else could our “peace-chastisement” be, than the chastisement that brings us peace, or puts us into a state of salvation? This is the idea involved in Stier’s rendering, “restoring chastisement,” and Hofmann’s, “the chastisement wholesome for us.” The difference in the exposition simply lies in the view entertained of the mūsâr, in which neither of these commentators will allow that there is any idea of a visitation of justice here. But according to our interpretation, the genitive שׁלומנו, which defines the mūsâr so far as its object and results are concerned, clearly shows that this manifestation of the justice of God, this satisfaction procured by His holiness, had His love for its foundation and end. It was our peace, or, what is more in accordance with the full idea of the word, our general well-being, our blessedness, which these sufferings arrived at and secured (the synonyms of shâlōm are tōbh and yeshū‛âh, Isa 52:7). In what follows, “and by His stripes (chăbhūrâh = chabbūrâh, Isa 1:6) we have been healed,” shâlōm is defined as a condition of salvation brought about by healing. “Venustissimum ὀξύμωρον,” exclaims Vitringa here. He means the same as Jerome when he says, suo vulnere vulnera nostra curavit. The stripes and weals that were inflicted upon Him have made us sound and well (the lxx keeps the collective singular, and renders it very aptly τῷ μώλωπι αὐτοῦ; cf., 1Pe 2:24). We were sick unto death because of our sins; but He, the sinless one, took upon Himself a suffering unto death, which was, as it were, the concentration and essence of the woes that we had deserved; and this voluntary endurance, this submission to the justice of the Holy One, in accordance with the counsels of divine love, became the source of our healing.

Isa 53:6

Thus does the whole body of the restored Israel confess with penitence, that it has so long mistaken Him whom Jehovah, as is now distinctly affirmed, had made a curse for their good, when they had gone astray to their own ruin. “All we like sheep went astray; we had turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” It is the state of exile, upon which the penitent Israel is here looking back; but exile as being, in the prophet’s view, the final state of punishment before the final deliverance. Israel in its exile resembled a scattered flock without a shepherd; it had lost the way of Jehovah (Isa 63:17), and every one had turned to his own way, in utter selfishness and estrangement from God (Isa 56:11). But whereas Israel thus heaped up guilt upon guilt, the Servant of Jehovah was He upon whom Jehovah Himself caused the punishment of their guilt to fall, that He might make atonement for it through His own suffering. Many of the more modern expositors endeavour to set aside the paena vicaria here, by giving to הפגּיע a meaning which it never has. Thus Stier renders it, “Jehovah caused the iniquity of all to strike or break upon Him.” Others, again, give a meaning to the statement which is directly at variance with the words themselves. Thus Hahn renders it: Jehovah took the guilt of the whole into His service, causing Him to die a violent death through their crime. Hofmann very properly rejects both explanations, and holds fast to the fact that בּ הפגּיע, regarded as a causative of בּ פּגע, signifies “to cause anything to strike or fall upon a person,” which is the rendering adopted by Symmachus: κύριος καταντήσαι ἐποίησεν εἰς αὐτὸν τὴν ἀνομίαν πάντων ἡμῶν. “Just as the blood of a murdered man comes upon the murderer, when the bloody deed committed comes back upon him in the form of blood-guiltiness inflicting vengeance; so does sin come upon, overtake (Psa 40:13), or meet with the sinner. It went forth from him as his own act; it returns with destructive effect, as a fact by which he is condemned. But in this case God does not suffer those who have sinned to be overtaken by the sin they have committed; but it falls upon His servant, the righteous One.” These are Hofmann’s words. But if the sin turns back upon the sinner in the shape of punishment, why should the sin of all men, which the Servant of God has taken upon Himself as His own, overtake Him in the form of an evil, which, even it if be a punishment, is not punishment inflicted upon Him? For this is just the characteristic of Hofmann’s doctrine of the atonement, that it altogether eliminates from the atoning work the reconciliation of the purposes of love with the demands of righteousness. Now it is indeed perfectly true, that the Servant of God cannot become the object of punishment, either as a servant of God or as an atoning Saviour; for as servant of God He is the beloved of God, and as atoning Saviour He undertakes a work which is well pleasing to God, and ordained in God’s eternal counsel. So that the wrath which pours out upon Him is not meant for Him as the righteous One who voluntarily offers up Himself but indirectly it relates to Him, so far as He has vicariously identified Himself with sinners, who are deserving of wrath. How could He have made expiation for sin, if He had simply subjected Himself to its cosmical effects, and not directly subjected Himself to that wrath which is the invariable divine correlative of human sin? And what other reason could there be for God’s not rescuing Him from this the bitterest cup of death, than the ethical impossibility of acknowledging the atonement as really made, without having left the representative of the guilty, who had presented Himself to Him as though guilty Himself, to taste of the punishment which they had deserved? It is true that vicarious expiation and paena vicaria are not coincident ideas. The punishment is but one element in the expiation, and it derives a peculiar character from the fact that one innocent person voluntarily submits to it in His own person. It does not stand in a thoroughly external relation of identity to that deserved by the many who are guilty; but the latter cannot be set aside without the atoning individual enduring an intensive equivalent to it, and that in such a manner, that this endurance is no less a self-cancelling of wrath on the part of God, than an absorption of wrath on the part of the Mediator; and in this central point of the atoning work, the voluntarily forgiving love of God and the voluntarily self-sacrificing love of the Mediator meet together, like hands stretched out grasp one another from the midst of a dark cloud. Hermann Schultz also maintains that the suffering, which was the consequence of sin and therefore punishment to the guilty, is borne by the Redeemer as suffering, without being punishment. But in this way the true mystery is wiped out of the heart of the atoning work; and this explanation is also at variance with the expression “the chastisement of our peace” in Isa 53:5, and the equally distinct statement in Isa 53:6, “He hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” It was the sin of all Israel, as the palindromically repeated kullânū emphatically declares, which pressed upon Him with such force when His atoning work was about to be decided, but עון is used to denote not only the transgression itself, but also the guilt incurred thereby, and the punishment to which it gives rise. All this great multitude of sins, and mass of guilt, and weight of punishment, came upon the Servant of Jehovah according to the appointment of the God of salvation, who is gracious in holiness. The third turn ends here. It was our sins that He bore, and for our salvation that God caused Him to suffer on our account.

Isa 53:7

The fourth turn describes how He suffered and died and was buried. “He was ill treated; whilst He suffered willingly, and opened not His mouth, like the sheep that is led to the slaughter-bench, and like a lamb that is dumb before its shearers, and opened not His mouth.” The third pers. niphal stands first in a passive sense: He has been hard pressed (1Sa 13:6): He is driven, or hunted (1Sa 14:24), treated tyrannically and unsparingly; in a word, plagued (vexatus; compare the niphal in a reciprocal sense in Isa 3:5, and according to the reading נגשׂ in Isa 29:13 in a reflective sense, to torment one’s self). Hitzig renders the next clause, “and although tormented, He opened not His mouth.” But although an explanatory subordinate clause may precede the principal clause which it more fully explains, not example can be found of such a clause with (a retrospective) והוּא explaining what follows; for in Job 2:8 the circumstantial clause, “sitting down among the ashes,” belongs to the principal fact which stands before. And so here, where נענה (from which comes the participle נענה, usually met with in circumstantial clauses) has not a passive, but a reflective meaning, as in Exo 10:3 : “He was ill treated, whilst He bowed Himself (= suffered voluntarily), and opened not His mouth” (the regular leap from the participle to the finite). The voluntary endurance is then explained by the simile “like a sheep that is led to the slaughter” (an attributive clause, like Jer 11:19); and the submissive quiet bearing, by the simile “like a lamb that is dumb before its shearers.” The commentators regard נאלמה as a participle; but this would have the tone upon the last syllable (see Isa 1:21, Isa 1:26; Nah 3:11; cf., Comm. on Job, at Job 20:27, note). The tone shows it to be the pausal form for נאלרמה, and so we have rendered it; and, indeed, as the interchange of the perfect with the future in the attributive clause must be intentional, not quae obmutescit, but obmutuit. The following words, פּיו יפתּח ולא, do not form part of the simile, which would require tiphtach, for nothing but absolute necessity would warrant us in assuming that it points back beyond רחל to שׂה, as Rashi and others suppose. The palindromical repetition also favours the unity of the subject with that of the previous יפתח and the correctness of the delicate accentuation, with which the rendering in the lxx and Act 8:32 coincides. All the references in the New Testament to the Lamb of God (with which the corresponding allusions to the passover are interwoven) spring from this passage in the book of Isaiah.

Isa 53:8

The description of the closing portion of the life of the Servant of Jehovah is continued in Isa 53:8. “He has been taken away from prison and from judgment; and of His generation who considered: 'He was snatched away out of the land of the living; for the wickedness of my people punishment fell upon Him'?” The principal emphasis is not laid upon the fact that He was taken away from suffering, but that it was out of the midst of suffering that He was carried off. The idea that is most prominent in luqqâch (with â in half pause) is not that of being translated (as in the accounts of Enoch and Elijah), but of being snatched or hurried away (abreptus est, Isa 52:5; Eze 33:4, etc.). The parallel is abscissus (cf., nikhrath, Jer 11:19) a terra viventium, for which נגזר by itself is supposed to be used in the sense of carried away (i.e., out of the sphere of the living into that of the dead, Lam 3:54; cf., Eze 37:11, “It is all over with us”). עצר (from עצר, compescere) is a violent constraint; here, as in Psa 107:39, it signifies a persecuting treatment which restrains by outward force, such as that of prison or bonds; and mishpât refers to the judicial proceedings, in which He was put upon His trial, accused and convicted as worthy of death - in other words, to His unjust judgment. The min might indeed be understood, as in Isa 53:5, not as referring to the persons who swept Him away (= ὑπὸ), but, as in Psa 107:39, as relating to the ground and cause of the sweeping away. But the local sense, which is the one most naturally suggested by luqqach (e.g., Isa 49:24), is to be preferred: hostile oppression and judicial persecution were the circumstances out of which He was carried away by death. With regard to what follows, we must in any case adhere to the ordinary usage, according to which dōr (= Arab. daur, dahr, a revolution or period of time) signifies an age, or the men living in a particular age; also, in an ethical sense, the entire body of those who are connected together by similarity of disposition (see, for example, Psa 14:5); or again (= Arab. dâr) a dwelling, as in Isa 38:12, and possibly also (of the grave) in Psa 49:20. Such meanings as length of life (Luther and Grotius), course of life (Vitringa), or fate (Hitzig), it is impossible to sustain. Hence the Sept. rendering, τὴν γενεὰν αὐτοῦ τίς διηγήσεται, which Jerome also adopts, can only mean, so far as the usage of the language is concerned, “who can declare the number of His generation” (i.e., of those inspire by His spirit,or filled with His life); but in this connection such a thought would be premature. Moreover, the generation intended would be called זרעו rather than דורו, as springing from Him.

Still less can we adopt the meaning “dwelling,” as Knobel does, who explains the passage thus: “who considers how little the grave becomes Him, which He has received as His dwelling-place.” The words do not admit of this explanation. Hofmann formerly explained the passage as meaning, “No one takes His dwelling-place into his mind or mouth, so as even to think of it, or inquire what had become of Him;” but in His Schriftbeweis he has decided in favour of the meaning, His contemporaries, or the men of His generation. It is only with this rendering that we obtain a thought at all suitable to the picture of suffering given here, or to the words which follow (compare Jer 2:31, O ye men of this generation). ואת־דּורו in that case is not the object to ישׂוחח, the real object to which is rather the clause introduced by כּי, but an adverbial accusative, which may serve to give emphatic prominence to the subject, as we may see from Isa 57:12; Eze 17:21; Neh 9:34 (Ges §117, Anm.); for את cannot be a preposition, since inter aequales ejus would not be expressed in Hebrew by את־דרור, but by בדורו. The pilel sōchēăch with be signifies in Psa 143:5 a thoughtful consideration or deliberation, in a word, meditationem alicujus rei (compare the kal with the accusative, Psa 145:5). The following kı̄ is an explanatory quod: with regard to His contemporaries, who considered that, etc. The words introduced with kı̄ are spoken, as it were, out of the heart of His contemporaries, who ought to have considered, but did not. We may see from עמּי that it is intended to introduce a direct address; and again, if we leave kı̄ untranslated, like ὃτι recitativum (see, for example, Jos 2:24; compare di, Dan 2:25), we can understand why the address, which has been carried on thus far in such general terms, assumes all at once an individual form. It cannot be denied, indeed, that we obtain a suitable object for the missing consideration, if we adopt this rendering: “He was torn away (3rd praet.) out of the land of the living, through (min denoting the mediating cause) the wicked conduct of my people (in bringing Him to death), to their own punishment; i.e., none of the men of His age (like mı̄ in Isa 53:1, no one = only a very few) discerned what had befallen them on account of their sin, in ridding themselves of Him by a violent death.” Hofmann and V. F. Oehler both adopt this explanation, saying, “Can the prophet have had the person of the Ecce Homo before his eye, without intimating that his people called down judgment upon themselves, by laying violent hands upon the Servant of God?” We cannot, however, decide in favour of this explanation; since the impression produced by this למו נגע עמּי מפּשׁע is, that it is intended to be taken as a rectification of נגוע חשׁבנהו ואנחנו in Isa 53:4, to which it stands in a reciprocal relation. This reciprocal relation is brought out more fully, if we regard the force of the min as still continued (ob plagam quae illis debebatur, Seb. Schmid, Kleinert, etc.); though not in the sense of “through the stroke proceeding from them, my people” (Hahn), which would be opposed to the general usage of נגע; or taking למו נגע as a relative clause, populi mei quibus plaga debebatur (Hengstenberg, Hävernick). But the most natural course is to take lâmō as referring to the Servant of God, more especially as our prophet uses lâmō pathetically for lō, as Isa 54:15 unquestionably shows (notwithstanding the remonstrance of Stier, who renders the passage, “He was all plague, or smiting, for them”). נגע always signifies suffering as a calamity proceeding from Go (e.g., Exo 11:1; Psa 39:11, and in every other passage in which it does not occur in the special sense of leprosy, which also points back, however, to the generic idea of a plague divinely sent); hence Jerome renders it, “for the sin of my people have I smitten Him.” The text does not read so; but the smiter is really Jehovah. Men looked upon His Servant as a נגוע; and so He really was, but not in the sense of which men regarded Him as such. Yet, even if they had been mistaken concerning His during His lifetime; now that He no longer dwelt among the living, they ought to see, as they looked back upon His actions and His sufferings, that it was not for His own wickedness, but for that of Israel, viz., to make atonement for it, that such a visitation from God had fallen upon Him (ל as in Isa 24:16 and Isa 26:16, where the sentence is in the same logical subordination to the previous one as it is here, where Dachselt gives this interpretation, which is logically quite correct: propter praevaricationem populi mei plaga ei contingente).

Isa 53:9

After this description in Isa 53:7 of the patience with which He suffered, and in Isa 53:8 of the manner in which He died, there follows a retrospective glance at His burial. “And they assigned Him His grave with sinners, and with a rich man in His martyrdom, because He had done no wrong, and there was no deceit in His mouth.” The subject to ויּתּן (assigned) is not Jehovah, although this would not be impossible, since נגע has Jehovah as the latent subject; but it would be irreconcilable with Isa 53:10, where Jehovah is introduced as the subject with antithetical prominence. It would be better to assume that “my people” is the subject; but as this would make it appear as if the statement introduced in Isa 53:8 with kı̄ (for) were continued here, we seem compelled to refer it to dōrō (His generation), which occurs in the principal clause. No objection could be offered to our regarding “His own generation” as the subject; but dōrō is somewhat too far removed for this; and if the prophet had had the contemporaries of the sufferer in his mind, he would most likely have used a plural verb (vayyittenū). Some, therefore, supply a personal subject of the most general kind to yittēn (which occurs even with a neuter subject, like the German es gibt, Fr. il y a, Eng. “there is;” cf., Pro 13:10): “they (on) gave;” and looking at the history of the fulfilment, we confess that this is the rendering we prefer. In fact, without the commentary supplied by the fulfilment, it would be impossible to understand Isa 53:9 at all. The earlier translators did great violence to the text, and yet failed to bring out any admissible thought. And the explanation which is most generally adopted now, viz., that עשׁיר is the synonymous parallel to רשׁעי (as even Luther rendered it, “and died like a rich man,” with the marginal gloss, “a rich man who sets all his heart upon riches, i.e., a wicked man”), is also untenable; for even granting that ‛âshīr could be proved by examples to be sometimes used as synonymous with רשׁע, as עני and אביון are as synonyms of צדּיק, this would be just the passage in which it would be least possible to sustain any such use of the word; since he who finds his grave with rich men, whether with the godly or the ungodly, would thereby have received a decent, and even honourable burial. This is so thoroughly sustained by experience, as to need no confirmation from such passages as Job 21:32. Hitzig has very good ground, therefore, for opposing this “synonymous” explanation; but when he adopts the rendering lapsator, after the Arabic ‛tūr, this is quite as much in opposition to Arabic usage (according to which this word merely signifies a person who falls into error, and makes a mistake in speaking), as it is to the Hebrew. Ewald changes עשׁיר into עשּׁהיק (a word which has no existence); and Böttcher alters it into רע עשׂי, which is comparatively the best suggestion of all. Hofmann connects the two words בּמותיו עשׁיר, “men who have become rich through the murders that they have treacherously caused” (though without being able to adduce any proof that mōth is ever applied to the death which one person inflicts upon another). At any rate, all these attempts spring from the indisputable assumption, that to be rich is not in itself a sin which deserves a dishonourable burial, to say nothing of its receiving one.

If, therefore, רשׁיעם and עשׁיר are not kindred ideas, they must be antithetical; but it is no easier to establish a purely ethical antithesis than an ethical coincidence. If, however, we take the word רשׁעים as suggesting the idea of persons found guilty, or criminals (an explanation which the juridical context of the passage well sustains; see at Isa 50:9), we get a contrast which our own usage of speech also draws between a rich man who is living in the enjoyment of his own possessions, and a delinquent who has become impoverished to the utmost, through hatred, condemnation, ruin. And if we reflect that the Jewish rulers would have given to Jesus the same dishonourable burial as to the two thieves, but that the Roman authorities handed over the body to Joseph the Arimathaean, a “rich man” (Mat 27:57), who placed it in the sepulchre in his own garden, we see an agreement at once between the gospel history and the prophetic words, which could only be the work of the God of both the prophecy and its fulfilment, inasmuch as no suspicion could possibly arise of there having been any human design of bringing the former into conformity with the latter. But if it be objected, that according to the parallel the ‛âshı̄r must be regarded as dead, quite as much as the reshâ‛ı̄m, we admit the force of this objection, and should explain it in this way: “They assigned Him His grave with criminals, and after He had actually died a martyr’s death, with a rich man;” i.e., He was to have lain where the bodies of criminals lie, but He was really laid in a grave that was intended for the corpse of a rich man.A clairvoyant once said of the Lord: “Died like a criminal; buried like a prince of the earth” (vid., Psychol. pp. 262, 364).

The rendering adopted by Vitringa and others, “and He was with a rich man in his death,” is open to this objection, that such a clause, to be quite free from ambiguity, would require במויתו הוּא ואת־עשׁיר. Hengstenberg and Stier very properly refer both ויתן and קברו, which must be repeated in thought, to the second clause as well as the first. The rendering tumulum ejus must be rejected, since bâmâh never has this meaning; and בּמתיו, which is the pointing sustained by three Codd., would not be mausolea, but a lofty burial-hill, after the fashion of the Hünengräber (certain “giants’ graves,” or barrows, in Holstein and Saxony).The usage of the language shows clearly that bâmâh had originally the meaning of “height” (e.g., 2Sa 1:19). The primary meaning suggested by Böttcher, of locus clausus, septus (from בום = מהב, Arab. bhm), cannot be sustained. We still hold that בם is the expanded בא, and במה an ascent, steep place, or stair. In the Talmud, bâmâh is equivalent to βωμός, an altar, and בּימה (Syr. bim) equivalent to the βῆμα of the orator and judge; βωμός, root βα, like the Hebrew bâmâh, signifies literally an elevation, and actually occurs in the sense of a sepulchral hill, which this never has, not even in Eze 43:7. מותי is a plur. exaggerativus here, as in Eze 28:10 (compare memōthē in Eze 28:8 and Jer 16:4); it is applied to a violent death, the very pain of which makes it like dying again and again. The first clause states with whom they at first assigned Him His grave; the second with whom it was assigned Him, after He had really died a painful death. “Of course,” as F. Philippi observes, “this was not a thorough compensation for the ignominy of having died the death of a criminal; but the honourable burial, granted to one who had been ignominiously put to death, showed that there must be something very remarkable about Him. It was the beginning of the glorification which commenced with His death.” If we have correctly interpreted the second clause, there can be no doubt in our minds, since we cannot shake the word of God like a kaleidoscope, and multiply the sensus complex, as Stier does, that לא על (= לא על־אשׁר) does not mean “notwithstanding that not,” as in Job 16:17, but “because not,” like על־בּלי in Gen 31:20. The reason why the Servant of God received such honourable treatment immediately after His ignominious martyrdom, was to be found in His freedom from sin, in the fact that He had done no wrong, and there was no deceit in His mouth (lxx and 1Pe 2:22, where the clause is correctly rendered οὐδὲ εὑρέθη δόλος ἐν τῶ στόματι αὐτοῦ). His actions were invariably prompted by pure love, and His speech consisted of unclouded sincerity and truth.

Isa 53:10

The last turn in the prophecy, which commences here, carries out Isa 53:6 still further, and opens up the background of His fate. The gracious counsel of God for our salvation was accomplished thus. “And it pleased Jehovah to bruise Him, to afflict Him with disease; if His soul would pay a trespass-offering, He should see posterity, should live long days, and the purpose of Jehovah should prosper through His hand.” החלי cannot possibly be equivalent to החלי, as Hitzig supposes. An article appended to a noun never obliterates the fundamental character of its form (not even in הארץ). Nor does Böttcher’s suggestion, that we should read החלי as an accusative of more precise definition, commend itself; for what would the article do in that case? It is the hiphil of חלה, like the Syriac agil from gelo; or rather, as even in Syriac this אגלי is equivalent to אגליא, of חלא,   2Ch 16:12 (cf., תּחלוּאים), like החטי in 2Ki 13:6 and Jer 32:35, from חטא. דּכּאו is placed under דּכא) (= דּכאו with Dag. dirimens) in Gesenius’ Lexicon; but this substantive is a needless fiction. דכאו is an inf. piel: conterere eum (Jerome), not καθαρίσαι αὐτόν (lxx from דּכא) = זכה). According to Mic 6:13 (הכּותך החליתי, I hurt to smite thee, i.e., I smite thee with a painful blow), החלי דכּאו are apparently connected, in the sense of “And it pleased Jehovah to bruise Him painfully.” But both logically and syntactically this would require the opposite construction, viz., דכאו החלי. דּכּאו must therefore be an infinitive, depending upon חפץ, according to Job 33:32 (= εὐδόκησε; the lxx thoughtlessly renders it βούλεται). The infinitive construction is then changed into the finite; for even החלי is subordinate to חפץ, as in Hos 5:11 (cf., Isa 42:21; Ges. §142, 3); “he would, made ill,” being equivalent to “he would make ill,” i.e., he would plunge into distress. There is no necessity to repeat דכאו after החלי, in the sense of “he caused sore evil therewith,” viz., with the דכאו. It was men who inflicted upon the Servant of God such crushing suffering, such deep sorrow; but the supreme causa efficiens in the whole was God, who made the sin of men subservient to His pleasure, His will, and predetermined counsel. The suffering of His Servant was to be to Him the way to glory, and this way of His through suffering to glory was to lead to the establishment of a church of the redeemed, which would spring from Him; in other words, it would become the commencement of that fulfilment of the divine plan of salvation which He, the ever-living, ever-working One, would carry out to completion. We give up the idea that תּשׂים is to be taken as addressed by Jehovah to “His Servant.” The person acting is the Servant, and it is to Jehovah that the action refers. But Hofmann’s present view, viz., that tâsı̄m is addressed to the people, is still less admissible. It is the people who are speaking here; and although the confession of the penitent Israel runs on from Isa 53:11 (where the confessing retrospective view of the past becomes prospective and prophetic glance at the future) in a direct prophetic tone, and Isa 53:10 might form the transition to this; yet, if the people were addressed in this word tâsı̄m, it would be absolutely necessary that it should be distinctly mentioned in this connection. And is it really Israel which makes the soul of the Servant an 'âshâm, and not rather the Servant Himself? No doubt it is true, that if nothing further were stated here than that “the people made the life of the Servant of God an 'âshâm, inasmuch as it treated Him just as if it had a pricking in its conscience so long as it suffered Him to live,” - which is a natural sequel in Hofmann’s case to his false assumption, that the passion described in Isa 53:1-12 was merely the culminating point in the sufferings which the Servant was called to endure as a prophet, whereas the prophet falls into the background here behind the sacrifice and the priest - we should no doubt have one scriptural testimony less to support the satisfactio vicaria.In the first edition of Hofmann’s Schriftbeweis (i. 2, 137), in which he regarded tâsı̄m as addressed to God, he set aside the orthodox view with the remark, that God Himself makes good the injury that men have done to Him by giving up the life of His Servant. In the second edition (i. 2, 208) he supposes the people to be addressed, and it is therefore the people who make the Servant’s life an 'âshâm. The first edition contained the following correct definition of 'âshâm: “In general, it denotes what one person pays to make good an injury done by him to another.” The exposition which follows above will show how we are forced to adopt the orthodox view, if we adhere to this definition and regard the Servant Himself as presenting the 'âshâm.

But if we adopt the following rendering, which is the simplest, and the one least open to exception: if His soul offered (placed, i.e., should have placed; cf., Job 14:14, si mortuus fuerit) an 'âshâm - it is evident that 'âshâm has here a sacrificial meaning, and indeed a very definite one, inasmuch as the 'âshâm (the trespass-offering) was a sacrifice, the character of which was very sharply defined. It is self-evident, however, that the 'âshâm paid by the soul of the Servant must consist in the sacrifice of itself, since He pays it by submitting to a violent death; and a sacrifice presented by the nephesh (the soul, the life, the very self) must be not only one which proceeds from itself, but one which consists in itself. If, then, we would understand the point of view in which the self-sacrifice of the Servant of God is placed when it is called an 'âshâm, we must notice very clearly the characteristic distinction between this kind of sacrifice and every other. Many of the ritual distinctions, however, may be indicated superficially, inasmuch as they have no bearing upon the present subject, where we have to do with an antitypical and personal sacrifice, and not with a typical and animal one. The 'âshâm was a sanctissimum, like that of the sin-offering (Lev 6:10, Lev 6:17, and Lev 14:13), and according to Lev 7:7 there was “one law” for them both. This similarity in the treatment was restricted simply to the fact, that the fat portions of the trespass-offering, as well as of the sin-offering, were placed upon the altar, and that the remainder, as in the case of those sin-offerings the blood of which was not taken into the interior of the holy place, was assigned to the priests and to the male members of the priestly families (see Lev 6:22; Lev 7:6). There were the following points of contrast, however, between these two kinds of sacrifice: (1.) The material of the sin-offerings varied considerably, consisting sometimes of a bullock, sometimes of a pair of doves, and even of meal without oil or incense; whereas the trespass-offering always consisted of a ram, or at any rate of a male sheep. (2.) The choice of the victim, and the course adopted with its blood, was regulated in the case of the sin-offering according to the condition of the offerer; but in the case of the trespass-offering they were neither of them affected by this in the slightest degree. (3.) Sin-offerings were presented by the congregation, and upon holy days, whereas trespass-offerings were only presented by individuals, and never upon holy days. (4.) In connection with the trespass-offering there was none of the smearing of the blood (nethı̄nâh) or of the sprinkling of the blood (hazzâ'âh) connected with the sin-offering, and the pouring out of the blood at the foot of the altar (shephı̄khâh) is never mentioned.The ritual for the blood consisted purely in the swinging out of the blood (zerı̄qâh), as in the case of the whole offering and of the peace-offerings. There is only one instance in which the blood of the trespass-offering is ordered to be smeared, viz., upon certain portions of the body of the leper (Lev 14:14), for which the blood of the sin-offering that was to be applied exclusively to the altar could not be used. And in general we find that, in the case of the trespass-offering, instead of the altar-ritual, concerning which the law is very brief (Lev 7:1-7), other acts that are altogether peculiar to it are brought prominently into the foreground (Lev 5:14.; Num 5:5-8). These are all to be accounted for from the fact that a trespass-offering was to be presented by the man who had unintentionally laid hands upon anything holy, e.g., the tithes or first-fruits, or who had broken any commandment of God “in ignorance” (if indeed this is to be taken as the meaning of the expression “and wist it not” in Lev 5:17-19); also by the man who had in any way defrauded his neighbour (which was regarded as unfaithfulness towards Jehovah), provided he anticipated it by a voluntary confession - this included the violation of another’s conjugal rights in the case of a bondmaid (Lev 19:20-22); also by a leper or a Nazarite defiled by contact with a corpse, at the time of their purification, because their uncleanness involved the neglect and interruption of the duties of worship which they were bound to observe. Wherever a material restitution was possible, it was to be made with the addition of a fifth; and in the one case mentioned in Lev 19:20-22, the trespass-offerings was admissible even after a judicial punishment had been inflicted. But in every case the guilty person had to present the animal of the trespass-offering “according to thy valuation, O priest, in silver shekels,” i.e., according to the priests’ taxation, and in holy coin. Such was the prominence given to the person of the priest in the ritual of the trespass-offering. In the sin-offering the priest is always the representative of the offerer; but in the trespass-offering he is generally the representative of God. The trespass-offering was a restitution or compensation made to God in the person of the priest, a payment or penance which made amends for the wrong done, a satisfactio in a disciplinary sense. And this is implied in the name; for just as חטּאת denotes first the sin, then the punishment of the sin and the expiation of the sin, and hence the sacrifice which cancels the sin; so 'âshâm signifies first the guilt or debt, then the compensation or penance, and hence (cf., Lev 5:15) the sacrifice which discharges the debt or guilt, and sets the man free.

Every species of sacrifice had its own primary idea. The fundamental idea of the ‛ōlâh (burnt-offering) was oblatio, or the offering of worship; that of the shelâmı̄m (peace-offerings), conciliatio, or the knitting of fellowship that of the minchâh (meat-offering), donatio, or sanctifying consecration; that of the chattâ'th (sin-offering), expiatio, or atonement; that of the 'âshâm (trespass-offering), mulcta (satisfactio), or a compensatory payment. The self-sacrifice of the Servant of Jehovah may be presented under all these points of view. It is the complete antitype, the truth, the object, and the end of all the sacrifices. So far as it is the antitype of the “whole offering,” the central point in its antitypical character is to be found in the offering of His entire personality (προσφορὰ τοῦ σώματος, Heb 10:10) to God for a sweet smelling savour (Eph 5:2); so far as it is the antitype of the sin-offering, in the shedding of His blood (Heb 9:13-14), the “blood of sprinkling” (Heb 12:24; 1Pe 1:2); so far as it is the antitype of the shelâmı̄m, and especially of the passover, in the sacramental participation in His one self-sacrifice, which He grants to us in His courts, thus applying to us His own redeeming work, and confirming our fellowship of peace with God (Heb 13:10; 1Co 5:7), since the shelâmı̄m derive their name from shâlōm, pax, communio; so far as it is the antitype of the trespass-offering, in the equivalent rendered to the justice of God for the sacrileges of our sins. The idea of compensatory payment, which Hofmann extends to the whole sacrifice, understanding by kipper the covering of the guilt in the sense of a debt (debitum), is peculiar to the 'âshâm; and at the same time an idea, which Hofmann cannot find in the sacrifices, is expressed here in the most specific manner, viz., that of satisfaction demanded by the justice of God, and of paena outweighing the guilt contracted (cf., nirtsâh, Isa 40:2); in other words, the idea of satisfactio vicaria in the sense of Anselm is brought out most distinctly here, where the soul of the Servant of God is said to present such an atoning sacrifice for the whole, that is to say, where He offers Himself as such a sacrifice by laying down the life so highly valued by God (Isa 42:1; Isa 49:5). As the verb most suitable to the idea of the 'âshâm the writer selects the verb sı̄m, which is generally used to denote the giving of a pledge (Job 17:3), and is therefore the most suitable word for every kind of satisfactio that represents a direct solutio. The apodoses to “if His soul shall have paid the penalty (paenam or mulctam)” are expressed in the future, and therefore state what would take place when the former should have been done. He should see posterity (vid., Gen 50:23; Job 42:16), i.e., should become possessed of a large family of descendants stretching far and wide. The reference here is to the new “seed of Israel,” the people redeemed by Him, the church of the redeemed out of Israel and all nations, of which He would lay the foundation. Again, He should live long days, as He says in Rev 1:18, “I was dead, and, behold, I am alive for evermore.”Knobel observes here: “The statement that a person first offers himself as a trespass-offering, and then still lives for a long time, and still continues working, is a very striking one; but it may be explained on the ground that the offerer is a plurality.” But how are we to explain the striking expression in our creed, “rose again from the dead?”

Thirdly, the pleasure of Jehovah should prosper “in His hand,” i.e., through the service of His mediation, or (according to the primary meaning of tsâlach) should go on advancing incessantly, and pressing on to the final goal. His self-sacrifice, therefore, merely lays the foundation for a progressively self-realizing “pleasure of the Lord,” i.e., (cf., Isa 44:28) for the realization of the purpose of God according to His determinate counsel, the fuller description of which we had in chapters 42 and 49, where it was stated that He should be the mediator of a new covenant, and the restorer of Israel, the light of the Gentiles and salvation of Jehovah even to the ends of the earth.

Isa 53:11

This great work of salvation lies as the great object of His calling in the hand of the deceased and yet eternally living One, and goes on victoriously through His mediation. He now reaps the fruit of His self-sacrifice in a continuous priestly course. “Because of the travail of His soul, He will see, and be refreshed; through His knowledge will He procure justice, my righteous servant, for the many, and will take their iniquities upon Himself.” The prophecy now leaves the standpoint of Israel’s retrospective acknowledgment of the long rejected Servant of God, and becomes once more the prophetic organ of God Himself, who acknowledges the servant as His own. The min of מעמל might be used here in its primary local signification, “far away from the trouble” (as in Job 21:9, for example); or the temporal meaning which is derived from the local would be also admissible, viz., “from the time of the trouble,” i.e., immediately after it (as in Psa 73:20); but the causal sense is the most natural, viz., on account of, in consequence of (as in Exo 2:23), which not only separates locally and links together temporarily, but brings into intimate connection. The meaning therefore is, “In consequence of the trouble of His soul (i.e., trouble experienced not only in His body, but into the inmost recesses of His soul), He will see, satisfy Himself.” Hitzig supplies בּטּוב (Jer 29:32); Knobel connects בדעתּו, in opposition to the accents (like A. S. Th. ἐμπλησθήσεται ἐν τῇ γνώσει αὐτοῦ), thus: “He looks at His prudent work, and has full satisfaction therewith.” But there is nothing to supply, and no necessity to alter the existing punctuation. The second verb receives its colouring from the first; the expression “He will see, will satisfy Himself,” being equivalent to “He will enjoy a satisfying or pleasing sight” (cf., Psa 17:15), which will consist, as Isa 53:10 clearly shows, in the successful progress of the divine work of salvation, of which He is the Mediator. בדעתו belongs to יצדּיק as the medium of setting right (cf., Pro 11:9). This is connected with ḻ in the sense of “procure justice,” like ל רפא (Isa 6:10); ל הניח in Isa 14:3; Isa 28:12 (cf., Dan 11:33, ל הבין, to procure intelligence; Gen 45:7, ל החיה, to prolong life - a usage which leads on to the Aramaean combination of the dative with the accusative, e.g., Job 37:18, compare Job 5:2). Tsaddı̄q ‛abhdı̄ do not stand to one another in the relation of a proper name and a noun in apposition, as Hofmann thinks, nor is this expression to be interpreted according to דּוד המּלך (Ges. §113); but “a righteous man, my servant,” with the emphatic prominence given to the attribute (cf., Isa 10:30; Isa 23:12; Psa 89:51), is equivalent to “my righteous servant.'

But does בדעתו mean per cognitionem sui, or per cognitionem suam? The former gives a sense which is both doctrinally satisfying and practically correct: the Righteous One makes others partakers of righteousness, through their knowledge of Him, His person, and His work, and (as the biblical ידע, which has reference not only to the understanding, but to personal experience also, clearly signifies) through their entrance into living fellowship with Him. Nearly all the commentators, who understand by the servant of God the Divine Redeemer, give the preference to this explanation (e.g., Vitringa, Hengstenberg, and Stier). But the meaning preferred is not always the correct one. The subjective rendering of the suffix (cf., Pro 22:17) is favoured by Mal 2:7, where it is said that “the priest’s lips should keep da‛ath (knowledge);” by Dan 12:3, where faithful teachers are called matsdı̄qē hârabbı̄m (they that turn many to righteousness); and by Isa 11:2, according to which “the spirit of knowledge” (rūăch da‛ath) is one of the seven spirits that descend upon the sprout of Jesse; so that “knowledge” (da‛ath) is represented as equally the qualification for the priestly, the prophetic, and the regal calling. It is a very unseemly remark, therefore, on the part of a modern commentator, when he speaks of the subjective knowledge of the Servant as “halting weakly behind in the picture, after His sacrificial death has already been described.” We need only recall to mind the words of the Lord in Mat 11:27, which are not only recorded both by the synoptists and by John, but supported by testimony outside the Gospels also: “No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.” Let us remember also, that the Servant of Jehovah, whose priestly mediatorial work is unfolded before us here in chapter 53, upon the ground of which He rises to more than regal glory (Isa 52:15, compare Isa 53:12), is no other than He to whom His God has given the tongue of the learned, “to know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary, i.e., to raise up the wary and heavy laden” (Isa 50:4). He knows God, with whom He stands in loving fellowship; He knows the counsels of His love and the will of His grace, in the fulfilment of which His own life ascends, after having gone down into death and come forth from death; and by virtue of this knowledge, which rests upon His own truest and most direct experience, He, the righteous One, will help “the many,” i.e., the great mass (hârabbı̄m as in Dan 9:27; Dan 11:33, Dan 11:39; Dan 12:3; cf., Exo 23:2, where rabbı̄m is used in the same sense without the article), hence all His own nation, and beyond that, all mankind (so far as they were susceptible of salvation = τοῖς πολλοῖς, Rom 5:19, cf., πολλῶν, Mat 26:28), to a right state of life and conduct, and one that should be well-pleasing to God. The primary reference is to the righteousness of faith, which is the consequence of justification on the ground of His atoning work, when this is believingly appropriated; but the expression also includes that righteousness of life, which springs by an inward necessity out of those sanctifying powers, that are bound up with the atoning work which we have made our own (see Dan 9:24). The ancients recognised this connection between the justitia fidei et vitae better than many of the moderns, who look askance at the Romish justitia infusa, and therewith boast of advancing knowledge. Because our righteousness has its roots in the forgiveness of sins, as an absolutely unmerited gift of grace without works, the prophecy returns once more from the justifying work of the Servant of God to His sin-expunging work as the basis of all righteousness: “He shall bear their iniquities.” This yisbōl (He shall bear), which stands along with futures, and therefore, being also future itself, refers to something to be done after the completion of the work to which He is called in this life (with which Hofmann connects it), denotes the continued operation of His sebhâlâm (Isa 53:4), through His own active mediation. His continued lading of our trespasses upon Himself is merely the constant presence and presentation of His atonement, which has been offered once for all. The dead yet living One, because of His one self-sacrifice, is an eternal Priest, who now lives to distribute the blessings that He has acquired.

Isa 53:12

The last reward of His thus working after this life for the salvation of sinners, and also of His work in this life upon which the former is founded, is victorious dominion. “Therefore I give Him a portion among the great, and with strong ones will He divide spoil; because He has poured out His soul into death: and He let Himself be reckoned among transgressors; whilst He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” The promise takes its stand between humiliation and exaltation, and rests partly upon the working of the exalted One, and partly upon the doing and suffering of One who was so ready to sacrifice Himself. Luther follows the lxx and Vulgate, and adopts the rendering, “Therefore will I give Him a great multitude for booty;” and Hävernick, Stier, and others adopt essentially the same rendering, “Therefore will I apportion to Him the many.” But, as Job 39:17 clearly shows, this clause can only mean, “Therefore will I give Him a portion in the many.” If, however, chillēq b' means to have a portion in anything, and not to give the thing itself as a portion, it is evident that hârabbı̄m here are not the many, but the great; and this is favoured by the parallel clause. The ideas of greatness and force, both in multitude and might, are bound up together in rabh and ‛âtsūm (see Isa 8:7), and the context only can decide which rendering is to be adopted when these ideas are separated from one another. What is meant by “giving a portion bârabbı̄m,” is clearly seen from such passages as Isa 52:15; Isa 49:7, according to which the great ones of the earth will be brought to do homage to Him, or at all events to submit to Him. The second clause is rendered by Luther, “and He shall have the strong for a prey.” This is at any rate better than the rendering of the lxx and Vulgate, “et fortium dividet spolia.” But Pro 16:19 shows that את is a preposition. Strong ones surround Him, and fight along with Him. The reference here is to the people of which it is said in Psa 110:3, “They people are thorough devotion in the day of Thy power;” and this people, which goes with Him to battle, and joins with Him in the conquest of the hostile powers of the world (Rev 19:14), also participates in the enjoyment of the spoils of His victory. With this victorious sway is He rewarded, because He has poured out His soul unto death, having not only exposed His life to death, but “poured out” (he‛ĕrâh, to strip or empty, or pour clean out, even to the very last remnant) His life-blood into death (lammâveth like the Lamed in Psa 22:16), and also because He has suffered Himself to be reckoned with transgressors, i.e., numbered among them (niph. tolerativum), namely, in the judgment of His countrymen, and in the unjust judgment (mishpât) by which He was delivered up to death as a wicked apostate and transgressor of the law. With והוּא there is attached to נמנה ואת־פּשׁעים (He was numbered with the transgressors), if not in a subordinate connection (like והוא) in Isa 53:5; (compare Isa 10:7), the following antithesis: He submitted cheerfully to the death of a sinner, and yet He was no sinner, but “bare the sin of many (cf., Heb 9:28), and made intercession for the transgressors.” Many adopt the rendering, “and He takes away the sin of many, and intervenes on behalf of the transgressors.” But in this connection the preterite נשׂא) can only relate to something antecedent to the foregoing future, so that יפגּיע denotes a connected past; and thus have the lxx and Vulg. correctly rendered it. Just as בּ הפגּיע in Isa 53:6 signifies to cause to fall upon a person, so in Jer 15:11 it signifies to make one approach another (in supplication). Here, however, as in Isa 59:16, the hiphil is not a causative, but has the intensive force of the kal, viz., to press forward with entreaty, hence to intercede (with a Lâmed of the person on whose behalf it occurs). According to the cons. temporum, the reference is not to the intercession (ἔντευξις) of the glorified One, but to that of the suffering One, on behalf of His foes. Every word stands here as if written beneath the cross on Golgotha. And this is the case with the clause before us, which was fulfilled (though not exclusively) in the prayer of the crucified Saviour: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luk 23:34). “The prophetic view,” says Oehler, who agrees with us in the general opinion that the idea of the Servant of Jehovah has three distinct stages, “ascends in these discourses step by step, as it were, from the one broad space covered by the foundation-walls of a cathedral up to the very summit with its giddy height, on which the cross is planted; and the nearer it reaches the summit, the more conspicuous do the outlines of the cross itself become, until at last, when the summit is reached, it rests in peace, having attained what it desired when it set its foot upon the first steps of the temple tower.” There is something very striking in this figure. Here, in the very centre of this book of consolation, we find the idea of the Servant of Jehovah at the very summit of its ascent. It has reached the goal. The Messianic idea, which was hidden in the general idea of the nation regarded as “the servant of Jehovah,” has gradually risen up in the most magnificent metamorphosis from the depths in which it was thus concealed. And this fusion has generated what was hitherto altogether strange to the figure of the Messiah, viz., the unio mystica capitis et corporis. Hitherto Israel has appeared simply as the nation governed by the Messiah, the army which He conducted into battle, the commonwealth ordered by Him. But now, in the person of the Servant of Jehovah, we see Israel itself in personal self-manifestation: the idea of Israel is fully realized, and the true nature of Israel shines forth in all its brilliancy. Israel is the body, and He the head, towering above it. Another element, with which we found the Messianic idea enriched even before Isa 53:1-12, was the munus triplex. As early as chapters 7-12 the figure of the Messiah stood forth as the figure of a King; but the Prophet like unto Moses, promised in Deu 18:15, was still wanting. But, according to chapters 42, 49, Isa 50:1-11, the servant of Jehovah is first a prophet, and as the proclaimer of a new law, and the mediator of a new covenant, really a second Moses; at the close of the work appointed Him, however, He receives the homage of kings, whilst, as Isa 53:1-12 clearly shows, that self-sacrifice lies between, on the ground of which He rules above as Priest after the order of Melchizedek - in other words, a Priest and also a King. From this point onward there are added to the Messianic idea the further elements of the status duplex and the satisfactio vicaria. David was indeed the type of the twofold state of his antitype, inasmuch as it was through suffering that he reached the throne; but where have we found, in all the direct Messianic prophecies anterior to this, the suffering path of the Ecce Homo even to the grave? But the Servant of Jehovah goes through shame to glory, and through death to life. He conquers when He falls; He rules after being enslaved; He lives after He has died; He completes His work after He Himself has been apparently cut off. His glory streams upon the dark ground of the deepest humiliation, to set forth which the dark colours were supplied by the pictures of suffering contained in the Psalms and in the book of Job. And these sufferings of His are not merely the sufferings of a confessor or a martyr, like those of the ecclesia pressa, but a vicarious atoning suffering, a sacrifice for sin. To this the chapter before us returns again and again, being never tired of repeating it. “Spiritus Sanctus,” says Brentius, “non delectatur inani battologi'a, et tamen quum in hoc cap. videatur βαττολόγος καὶ ταυτολόγος esse, dubium non est, quin tractet rem cognitu maxime necessariam.” The banner of the cross is here set up. The curtain of the most holy is lifted higher and higher. The blood of the typical sacrifice, which has been hitherto dumb, begins to speak. Faith, which penetrates to the true meaning of the prophecy, hopes on not only for the Lion of the tribe of Judah, but also for the Lamb of God, which beareth the sin of the world. And in prophecy itself we see the after-effect of this gigantic advance. Zechariah no longer prophesies of the Messiah merely as a king (Isa 5:13); He not only rules upon His throne, but is also a priest upon His throne: sovereignty and priesthood go hand in hand, being peacefully united in Him. And in Zec 12:13 the same prophet predicts in Him the good Divine Shepherd, whom His people pierce, though not without thereby fulfilling the counsel of God, and whom they afterwards long for with bitter lamentation and weeping. The penitential and believing confession which would then be made by Israel is prophetically depicted by Isaiah’s pen - “mourning in bitter sorrow the lateness of its love.”

The Humiliation of the Messiah. (b. c. 706.)

1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? 2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. 3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

The prophet, in the close of the former chapter, had foreseen and foretold the kind reception which the gospel of Christ should find among the Gentiles, that nations and their kings should bid it welcome, that those who had not seen him should believe in him; and though they had not any prophecies among them of gospel grace, which might raise their expectations, and dispose them to entertain it, yet upon the first notice of it they should give it its due weight and consideration. Now here he foretels, with wonder, the unbelief of the Jews, notwithstanding the previous notices they had of the coming of the Messiah in the Old Testament and the opportunity they had of being personally acquainted with him. Observe here,

I. The contempt they put upon the gospel of Christ, v. 1. The unbelief of the Jews in our Saviour's time is expressly said to be the fulfilling of this word, John xii. 38. And it is applied likewise to the little success which the apostles' preaching met with among Jews and Gentiles, Rom. x. 16. Note, 1. Of the many that hear the report of the gospel there are few, very few, that believe it. It is reported openly and publicly, not whispered in a corner, or confined to the schools, but proclaimed to all; and it is so faithful a saying, and so well worthy of all acceptation, that one would think it should be universally received and believed. But it is quite otherwise; few believed the prophets who spoke before of Christ; when he came himself none of the rulers nor of the Pharisees followed him, and but here and there one of the common people; and, when the apostles carried this report all the world over, some in every place believed, but comparatively very few. To this day, of the many that profess to believe this report, there are few that cordially embrace it and submit to the power of it. 2. Therefore people believe not the report of the gospel, because the arm of the Lord is not revealed to them; they do not discern, nor will be brought to acknowledge, that divine power which goes along with the word. The arm of the Lord is made bare (as was said, ch. lii. 10) in the miracles that were wrought to confirm Christ's doctrine, in the wonderful success of it, and its energy upon the conscience; though it is a still voice, it is a strong one; but they do not perceive this, nor do they experience in themselves that working of the Spirit which makes the word effectual. They believe not the gospel because, by rebelling against the light they had, they had forfeited the grace of God, which therefore he justly denied them and withheld from them, and for want of that they believed not. 3. This is a thing we ought to be much affected with; it is to be wondered at, and greatly lamented, and ministers may go to God and complain of it to him, as the prophet here. What a pity is it that such rich grace should be received in vain, that precious souls should perish at the pool's side, because they will not step in and be healed!

II. The contempt they put upon the person of Christ because of the meanness of his appearance, v. 2, 3. This seems to come in as a reason why they rejected his doctrine, because they were prejudiced against his person. When he was on earth many that heard him preach, and could not but approve of what they heard, would not give it any regard or entertainment, because it came from one that made so small a figure and had no external advantages to recommend him. Observe here,

1. The low condition he submitted to, and how he abased and emptied himself. The entry he made into the world, and the character he wore in it, were no way agreeable to the ideas which the Jews had formed of the Messiah and their expectations concerning him, but quite the reverse. (1.) It was expected that his extraction would be very great and noble. He was to be the Son of David, of a family that had a name like to the names of the great men that were in the earth, 2 Sam. vii. 9. But he sprang out of this royal and illustrious family when it was reduced and sunk, and Joseph, that son of David, who was his supposed father, was but a poor carpenter, perhaps a ship-carpenter, for most of his relations were fishermen. This is here meant by his being a root out of a dry ground, his being born of a mean and despicable family, in the north, in Galilee, of a family out of which, like a dry and desert ground, nothing green, nothing great, was expected, in a country of such small repute that it was thought no good thing could come out of it. His mother, being a virgin, was as dry ground, yet from her he sprang who is not only fruit, but root. The seed on the stony ground had no root; but, though Christ grew out of a dry ground, he is both the root and the offspring of David, the root of the good olive. (2.) It was expected that he should make a public entry, and come in pomp and with observation; but, instead of that, he grew up before God, not before men. God had his eye upon him, but men regarded him not: He grew up as a tender plant, silently and insensibly, and without any noise, as the corn, that tender plant, grows up, we know not how, Mark iv. 27. Christ rose as a tender plant, which, one would have thought, might easily be crushed, or might be nipped in one frosty night. The gospel of Christ, in its beginning, was as a grain of mustard-seed, so inconsiderable did it seem, Matt. xiii. 31, 32. (3.) It was expected that he should have some uncommon beauty in his face and person, which should charm the eye, attract the heart, and raise the expectations of all that saw him. But there was nothing of this kind in him; not that he was in the least deformed or misshapen, but he had no form nor comeliness, nothing extraordinary, which one might have thought to meet with in the countenance of an incarnate deity. Those who saw him could not see that there was any beauty in him that they should desire him, nothing in him more than in another beloved, Cant. v. 9. Moses, when he was born, was exceedingly fair, to such a degree that it was looked upon as a happy presage, Acts vii. 20; Heb. xi. 23. David, when he was anointed, was of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to, 1 Sam. xvi. 12. But our Lord Jesus had nothing of that to recommend him. Or it may refer not so much to his person as to the manner of his appearing in the world, which had nothing in it of sensible glory. His gospel is preached, not with the enticing words of man's wisdom, but with all plainness, agreeable to the subject. (4.) It was expected that he should live a pleasant life, and have a full enjoyment of all the delights of the sons and daughters of men, which would have invited all sorts to him; but, on the contrary, he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. It was not only his last scene that was tragical, but his whole life was so, not only mean, but miserable, ————but one continued chain Of labour, sorrow, and consuming pain.             Sir R. Blackmore . Thus, being made sin for us, he underwent the sentence sin had subjected us to, that we should eat in sorrow all the days of our life (Gen. iii. 17), and thereby relaxed much of the rigour and extremity of the sentence as to us. His condition was, upon many accounts, sorrowful. He was unsettled, had not where to lay his head, lived upon alms, was opposed and menaced, and endured the contradiction of sinners against himself. His spirit was tender, and he admitted the impressions of sorrow. We never read that he laughed, but often that he wept. Lentulus, in his epistle to the Roman senate concerning Jesus, says, "he was never seen to laugh;" and so worn and macerated was he with continual grief that when he was but a little above thirty years of age he was taken to be nearly fifty, John viii. 57. Grief was his intimate acquaintance; for he acquainted himself with the grievances of others, and sympathized with them, and he never set his own at a distance; for in his transfiguration he talked of his own decease, and in his triumph he wept over Jerusalem. Let us look unto him and mourn.

2. The low opinion that men had of him, upon this account. Being generally apt to judge of persons and things by the sight of the eye, and according to outward appearance, they saw no beauty in him that they should desire him. There was a great deal of true beauty in him, the beauty of holiness and the beauty of goodness, enough to render him the desire of all nations; but the far greater part of those among whom he lived, and conversed, saw none of this beauty, for it was spiritually discerned. Carnal hearts see no excellency in the Lord Jesus, nothing that should induce them to desire an acquaintance with him or interest in him. Nay, he is not only not desired, but he is despised and rejected, abandoned and abhorred, a reproach of men, an abject, one that men were shy of keeping company with and had not any esteem for, a worm and no man. He was despised as a mean man, rejected as a bad man. He was the stone which the builders refused; they would not have him to reign over them. Men, who should have had so much reason as to understand things better, so much tenderness as not to trample upon a man in misery—men whom he came to seek and save rejected him: "We hid as it were our faces from him, looked another way, and his sufferings were as nothing to us; though never sorrow was like unto his sorrow. Nay, we not only behaved as having no concern for him, but as loathing him, and having him in detestation." It may be read, He hid as it were his face from us, concealed the glory of his majesty, and drew a veil over it, and therefore he was despised and we esteemed him not, because we could not see through that veil. Christ having undertaken to make satisfaction to the justice of God for the injury man had done him in his honour by sin (and God cannot be injured except in his honour), he did it not only by divesting himself of the glories due to an incarnate deity, but by submitting himself to the disgraces due to the worst of men and malefactors; and thus by vilifying himself he glorified his Father: but this is a good reason why we should esteem him highly, and study to do him honour; let him be received by us whom men rejected.

The Humiliation of the Messiah. (b. c. 706.)

4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. 9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

In these verses we have,

I. A further account of the sufferings of Christ. Much was said before, but more is said here, of the very low condition to which he abased and humbled himself, to which he became obedient even to the death of the cross. 1. He had griefs and sorrows; being acquainted with them, he kept up the acquaintance, and did not grow shy, no, not of such melancholy acquaintance. Were griefs and sorrows allotted him? He bore them, and blamed not his lot; he carried them, and did neither shrink from them, nor sink under them. The load was heavy and the way long, and yet he did not tire, but persevered to the end, till he said, It is finished. 2. He had blows and bruises; he was stricken, smitten, and afflicted. His sorrows bruised him; he felt pain and smart from them; they touched him in the most tender part, especially when God was dishonoured, and when he forsook him upon the cross. All along he was smitten with the tongue, when he was cavilled at and contradicted, put under the worst of characters, and had all manner of evil said against him. At last he was smitten with the hand, with blow after blow. 3. He had wounds and stripes. He was scourged, not under the merciful restriction of the Jewish law, which allowed not above forty stripes to be given to the worst of malefactors, but according to the usage of the Romans. And his scourging, doubtless, was the more severe because Pilate intended it as an equivalent for his crucifixion, and yet it proved a preface to it. He was wounded in his hands, and feet, and side. Though it was so ordered that not a bone of him should be broken, yet he had scarcely in any part a whole skin (how fond soever we are to sleep in one, even when we are called out to suffer for him), but from the crown of his head, which was crowned with thorns, to the soles of his feet, which were nailed to the cross, nothing appeared but wounds and bruises. 4. He was wronged and abused (v. 7): He was oppressed, injuriously treated and hardly dealt with. That was laid to his charge which he was perfectly innocent of, that laid upon him which he did not deserve, and in both he was oppressed and injured. He was afflicted both in mind and body; being oppressed, he laid it to heart, and, though, he was patient, was not stupid under it, but mingled his tears with those of the oppressed, that have no comforter, because on the side of the oppressors there is power, Eccl. iv. 1. Oppression is a sore affliction; it has made many a wise man mad (Eccl. vii. 7); but our Lord Jesus, though, when he was oppressed, he was afflicted, kept possession of his own soul. 5. He was judged and imprisoned, as is implied in his being taken from prison and judgment, v. 8. God having made him sin for us, he was proceeded against as a malefactor; he was apprehended and taken into custody, and made a prisoner; he was judge, accused, tried, and condemned, according to the usual forms of law: God filed a process against him, judged him in pursuance of that process, and confined him in the prison of the grave, at the door of which a stone was rolled and sealed. 6. He was cut off by an untimely death from the land of the living, though he lived a most useful life, did so many good works, and they were all such that one would be apt to think it was for some of them that they stoned him. He was stricken to death, to the grave which he made with the wicked (for he was crucified between two thieves, as if he had been the worst of the three) and yet with the rich, for he was buried in a sepulchre that belonged to Joseph, an honourable counsellor. Though he died with the wicked, and according to the common course of dealing with criminals should have been buried with them in the place where he was crucified, yet God here foretold, and Providence so ordered it, that he should make his grave with the innocent, with the rich, as a mark of distinction put between him and those that really deserved to die, even in his sufferings.

II. A full account of the meaning of his sufferings. It was a very great mystery that so excellent a person should suffer such hard things; and it is natural to ask with amazement, "How came it about? What evil had he done?" His enemies indeed looked upon him as suffering justly for his crimes; and, though they could lay nothing to his charge, they esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted, v. 4. Because they hated him, and persecuted him, they thought that God did, that he was his enemy and fought against him; and therefore they were the more enraged against him, saying, God has forsaken him; persecute and take him, Ps. lxxi. 11. Those that are justly smitten are smitten of God, for by him princes decree justice; and so they looked upon him to be smitten, justly put to death as a blasphemer, a deceiver, and an enemy to Cæsar. Those that saw him hanging on the cross enquired not into the merits of his cause, but took it for granted that he was guilty of every thing laid to his charge and that therefore vengeance suffered him not to live. Thus Job's friends esteemed him smitten of God, because there was something uncommon in his sufferings. It is true he was smitten of God, v. 10 (or, as some read it, he was God's smitten and afflicted, the Son of God, though smitten and afflicted), but not in the sense in which they meant it; for, though he suffered all these things,

1. He never did any thing in the least to deserve this hard usage. Whereas he was charged with perverting the nation, and sowing sedition, it was utterly false; he had done no violence, but went about doing good. And, whereas he was called that deceiver, he never deserved that character; for there was no deceit in his mouth (v. 9), to which the apostle refers, 1 Pet. ii. 22. He did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. He never offended either in word or deed, nor could any of his enemies take up that challenge of his, Which of you convinceth me of sin? The judge that condemned owned he found no fault in him, and the centurion that executed him professed that certainly he was a righteous man.

2. He conducted himself under his sufferings so as to make it appear that he did not suffer as an evil-doer; for, though he was oppressed and afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth (v. 7), no, not so much as to plead his own innocency, but freely offered himself to suffer and die for us, and objected nothing against it. This takes away the scandal of the cross, that he voluntarily submitted to it, for great and holy ends. By his wisdom he could have evaded the sentence, and by his power have resisted the execution; but thus it was written, and thus it behoved him to suffer. This commandment he received from his Father, and therefore he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, without any difficulty or reluctance (he is the Lamb of God); and as a sheep is dumb before the shearers, nay, before the butchers, so he opened not his mouth, which denotes not only his exemplary patience under affliction (Ps. xxxix. 9), and his meekness under reproach (Ps. xxxviii. 13), but his cheerful compliance with his Father's will. Not my will, but thine be done. Lo, I come. By this will we are sanctified, his making his own soul, his own life, an offering for our sin.

3. It was for our good, and in our stead, that Jesus Christ suffered. This is asserted here plainly and fully, and in a very great variety of emphatical expressions.

(1.) It is certain that we are all guilty before God. We have all sinned, and have come short of the glory of God (v. 6): All we like sheep have gone astray, one as well as another. The whole race of mankind lies under the stain of original corruption, and every particular person stands charged with many actual transgressions. We have all gone astray from God our rightful owner, alienated ourselves from him, from the ends he designed us to move towards and the way he appointed us to move in. We have gone astray like sheep, which are apt to wander, and are unapt, when they have gone astray, to find the way home again. That is our true character; we are bent to backslide from God, but altogether unable of ourselves to return to him. This is mentioned not only as our infelicity (that we go astray from the green pastures and expose ourselves to the beasts of prey), but as our iniquity. We affront God in going astray from him, for we turn aside every one to his own way, and thereby set up ourselves, and our own will, in competition with God and his will, which is the malignity of sin. Instead of walking obediently in God's way, we have turned wilfully and stubbornly to our own way, the way of our own heart, the way that our own corrupt appetites and passions lead us to. We have set up for ourselves, to be our own masters, our own carvers, to do what we will and have what we will. Some think it intimates our own evil way, in distinction from the evil way of others. Sinners have their own iniquity, their beloved sin, which does most easily beset them, their own evil way, that they are particularly fond of and bless themselves in.

(2.) Our sins are our sorrows and our griefs (v. 4), or, as it may be read, our sicknesses and our wounds: the LXX. reads it, our sins; and so the apostle, 1 Pet. ii. 24. Our original corruptions are the sickness and disease of the soul, an habitual indisposition; our actual transgressions are the wounds of the soul, which put conscience to pain, if it be not seared and senseless. Or our sins are called our griefs and sorrows because all our griefs and sorrows are owing to our sins and our sins deserve all our griefs and sorrows, even those that are most extreme and everlasting.

(3.) Our Lord Jesus was appointed and did undertake to make satisfaction for our sins and so to save us from the penal consequences of them. [1.] He was appointed to do it, by the will of his Father; for the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. God chose him to be the Saviour of poor sinners and would have him to save them in this way, by bearing their sins and the punishment of them; not the idem—the same that we should have suffered, but the tantundem—that which was more than equivalent for the maintaining of the honour of the holiness and justice of God in the government of the world. Observe here, First, In what way we are saved from the ruin to which by sin we had become liable—by laying our sins on Christ, as the sins of the offerer were laid upon the sacrifice and those of all Israel upon the head of the scape-goat. Our sins were made to meet upon him (so the margin reads it); the sins of all that he was to save, from every place and every age, met upon him, and he was met with for them. They were made to fall upon him (so some read it) as those rushed upon him that came with swords and staves to take him. The laying of our sins upon Christ implies the taking of them off from us; we shall not fall under the curse of the law if we submit to the grace of the gospel. They were laid upon Christ when he was made sin (that is, a sin-offering) for us, and redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us; thus he put himself into a capacity to make those easy that come to him heavily laden under the burden of sin. See Ps. xl. 6-12. Secondly, By whom this was appointed. It was the Lord that laid our iniquities on Christ; he contrived this way of reconciliation and salvation, and he accepted of the vicarious satisfaction Christ was to make. Christ was delivered to death by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. None but God had power to lay our sins upon Christ, both because the sin was committed against him and to him the satisfaction was to be made, and because Christ, on whom the iniquity was to be laid, was his own Son, the Son of his love, and his holy child Jesus, who himself knew no sin. Thirdly, For whom this atonement was to be made. It was the iniquity of us all that was laid on Christ; for in Christ there is a sufficiency of merit for the salvation of all, and a serious offer made of that salvation to all, which excludes none that do not exclude themselves. It intimates that this is the one only way of salvation. All that are justified are justified by having their sins laid on Jesus Christ, and, though they were ever so many, he is able to bear the weight of them all. [2.] He undertook to do it. God laid upon him our iniquity; but did he consent to it? Yes, he did; for some think that the true reading of the next words (v. 7) is, It was exacted, and he answered; divine justice demanded satisfaction for our sins, and he engaged to make the satisfaction. He became our surety, not as originally bound with us, but as bail to the action: "Upon me be the curse, my Father." And therefore, when he was seized, he stipulated with those into whose hands he surrendered himself that that should be his disciples' discharge: If you seek me, let these go their way, John xviii. 8. By his own voluntary undertaking he made himself responsible for our debt, and it is well for us that he was responsible. Thus he restored that which he took not away.

(4.) Having undertaken our debt, he underwent the penalty. Solomon says: He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it. Christ, being surety for us, did smart for it. [1.] He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, v. 4. He not only submitted to the common infirmities of human nature, and the common calamities of human life, which sin had introduced, but he underwent the extremities of grief, when he said, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful. He made the sorrows of this present time heavy to himself, that he might make them light and easy for us. Sin is the wormwood and the fall in the affliction and the misery. Christ bore our sins, and so bore our griefs, bore them off us, that we should never be pressed above measure. This is quoted (Matt. viii. 17) with application to the compassion Christ had for the sick that came to him to be cured and the power he put forth to cure them. [2.] He did this by suffering for our sins (v. 5): He was wounded for our transgressions, to make atonement for them and to purchase for us the pardon of them. Our sins were the thorns in his head, the nails in his hands and feet, the spear in his side. Wounds and bruises were the consequences of sin, what we deserved and what we had brought upon ourselves, ch. i. 6. That these wounds and bruises, though they are painful, may not be mortal, Christ was wounded for our transgressions, was tormented or pained (the word is used for the pains of a woman in travail) for our revolts and rebellions. He was bruised, or crushed, for our iniquities; they were the procuring cause of his death. To the same purport is v. 8, for the transgression of my people was he smitten, the stroke was upon him that should have been upon us; and so some read it, He was cut off for the iniquity of my people, unto whom the stroke belonged, or was due. He was delivered to death for our offences, Rom. iv. 25. Hence it is said to be according to the scriptures, according to this scripture, that Christ died for our sins, 1 Cor. xv. 3. Some read this, by the transgressions of my people; that is, by the wicked hands of the Jews, who were, in profession, God's people, he was stricken, was crucified and slain, Acts ii. 23. But, doubtless, we are to take it in the former sense, which is abundantly confirmed by the angel's prediction of the Messiah's undertaking, solemnly delivered to Daniel, that he shall finish transgression, make an end of sin, and make reconciliation for iniquity, Dan. ix. 24.

(5.) The consequence of this to us is our peace and healing, v. 5. [1.] Hereby we have peace: The chastisement of our peace was upon him; he, by submitting to these chastisements, slew the enmity, and settled an amity, between God and man; he made peace by the blood of his cross. Whereas by sin we had become odious to God's holiness and obnoxious to his justice, through Christ God is reconciled to us, and not only forgives our sins and saves us from ruin, but takes us into friendship and fellowship with himself, and thereby peace (that is, all good) comes unto us, Col. i. 20. He is our peace, Eph. ii. 14. Christ was in pain that we might be at ease; he gave satisfaction to the justice of God that we might have satisfaction in our own minds, might be of good cheer, knowing that through him our sins are forgiven us. [2.] Hereby we have healing; for by his stripes we are healed. Sin is not only a crime, for which we were condemned to die and which Christ purchased for us the pardon of, but it is a disease, which tends directly to the death of our souls and which Christ provided for the cure of. By his stripes (that is, the sufferings he underwent) he purchased for us the Spirit and grace of God to mortify our corruptions, which are the distempers of our souls, and to put our souls in a good state of health, that they may be fit to serve God and prepared to enjoy him. And by the doctrine of Christ's cross, and the powerful arguments it furnishes us with against sin, the dominion of sin is broken in us and we are fortified against that which feeds the disease.

(6.) The consequence of this to Christ was his resurrection and advancement to perpetual honour. This makes the offence of the cross perfectly to cease; he yielded himself to die as a sacrifice, as a lamb, and, to make it evident that the sacrifice he offered of himself was accepted, we are told here, v. 8, [1.] That he was discharged: He was taken from prison and from judgment; whereas he was imprisoned in the grave under a judicial process, lay there under an arrest for our debt, and judgment seemed to be given against him, he was by an express order from heaven taken out of the prison of the grave, an angel was sent on purpose to roll away the stone and set him at liberty, by which the judgment given against him was reversed and taken off; this redounds not only to his honour, but to our comfort; for, being delivered for our offences, he was raised again for our justification. That discharge of the bail amounted to a release of the debt. [2.] That he was preferred: Who shall declare his generation? his age, or continuance (so the word signifies), the time of his life? He rose to die no more; death had no more dominion over him. He that was dead is alive, and lives for evermore; and who can describe that immortality to which he rose, or number the years and ages of it? And he is advanced to this eternal life because for the transgression of his people he became obedient to death. We may take it as denoting the time of his usefulness, as David is said to serve his generation, and so to answer the end of living. Who can declare how great a blessing Christ by his death and resurrection will be to the world? Some by his generation understand his spiritual seed: Who can count the vast numbers of converts that shall by the gospel be begotten to him, like the dew of the morning? When thus exalted he shall live to see A numberless believing progeny Of his adopted sons; the godlike race Exceed the stars that heav'n's high arches grace.             Sir R. Blackmore . Of this generation of his let us pray, as Moses did for Israel, The Lord God of our fathers make them a thousand times so many more as they are, and bless them as he has promised them, Deut. i. 11.

The Exaltation of the Messiah; The Triumph of the Messiah. (b. c. 706.)

10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. 11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

In the foregoing verses the prophet had testified very particularly of the sufferings of Christ, yet mixing some hints of the happy issue of them; here he again mentions his sufferings, but largely foretels the glory that should follow. We may observe, in these verses,

I. The services and sufferings of Christ's state of humiliation. Come, and see how he loved us, see what he did for us.

1. He submitted to the frowns of Heaven (v. 10): Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him, to put him to pain, or torment, or grief. The scripture nowhere says that Christ is his sufferings underwent the wrath of God; but it says here, (1.) That the Lord bruised him, not only permitted men to bruise him, but awakened his own sword against him, Zech. xiii. 7. They esteemed him smitten of God for some very great sin of his own (v. 4); now it was true that he was smitten of God, but it was for our sin; the Lord bruised him, for he did not spare him, but delivered him up for us all, Rom. viii. 32. He it was that put the bitter cup into his hand, and obliged him to drink it (John xviii. 11), having laid upon him our iniquity. He it was that made him sin and a curse for us, and turned to ashes all his burnt-offering, in token of the acceptance of it, Ps. xx. 3. (2.) That he bruised him so as to put him to grief. Christ accommodated himself to this dispensation, and received the impressions of grief from his Father's delivering him up; and he was troubled to such a degree that it put him into an agony, and he began to be amazed and very heavy. (3.) It pleased the Lord to do this. He determined to do it; it was the result of an eternal counsel; and he delighted in it, as it was an effectual method for the salvation of man and the securing and advancing of the honour of God.

2. He substituted himself in the room of sinners, as a sacrifice. He made his soul an offering for sin; he himself explains this (Matt. xx. 28), that he came to give his life a ransom for many. When men brought bulls and goats as sacrifices for sin they made them offerings, for they had an interest in them, God having put them under the feet of man. But Christ made himself an offering; it was his own act and deed. We could not put him in our stead, but he put himself, and said, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit, in a higher sense than David said, or could say it. "Father, I commit my soul to thee, I deposit it in thy hands, as the life of a sacrifice and the price of pardons." Thus he shall bear the iniquities of the many that he designed to justify (v. 11), shall take away the sin of the world by taking it upon himself, John i. 29. This mentioned again (v. 12): He bore the sin of many, who, if they had borne it themselves, would have been sunk by it to the lowest hell. See how this dwelt upon; for, whenever we think of the sufferings of Christ, we must see him in them bearing our sin.

3. He subjected himself to that which to us is the wages of sin (v. 12): He has poured out his soul unto death, poured it out as water, so little account did he make of it, when the laying of it down was the appointed means of our redemption and salvation. He loved not his life unto the death, and his followers, the martyrs, did likewise, Rev. xii. 11. Or, rather, he poured it out as a drink-offering, to make his sacrifice complete, poured it out as wine, that his blood might be drink indeed, as his flesh is meat indeed to all believers. There was not only a colliquation of his body in his sufferings (Ps. xxii. 14, I am poured out like water), but a surrender of his spirit; he poured out that, even unto death, though he is the Lord of life.

4. He suffered himself to be ranked with sinners, and yet offered himself to be an intercessor for sinners, v. 12. (1.) It was a great aggravation of his sufferings that he was numbered with transgressors, that he was not only condemned as a malefactor, but executed in company with two notorious malefactors, and he in the midst, as if he had been the worst of the three, in which circumstance of his suffering, the evangelist tells us, this prophecy was fulfilled, Mark xv. 27, 28. Nay, the vilest malefactor of all, Barabbas, who was a traitor, a thief, and a murderer, was put in election with him for the favour of the people, and carried it; for they would not have Jesus released, but Barabbas. In his whole life he was numbered among the transgressors; for he was called and accounted a sabbath-breaker, a drunkard, and a friend to publicans and sinners. (2.) It was a great commendation of his sufferings, and redounded very much to his honour, that in his sufferings he made intercession for the transgressors, for those that reviled and crucified him; for he prayed, Father, forgive them, thereby showing, not only that he forgave them, but that he was now doing that upon which their forgiveness, and the forgiveness of all other transgressors, were to be founded. That prayer was the language of his blood, crying, not for vengeance, but for mercy, and therein it speaks better things than that of Abel, even for those who with wicked hands shed it.

II. The grace and glories of his state of exaltation; and the graces he confers on us are not the least of the glories conferred on him. These are secured to him by the covenant of redemption, which these verses give us some idea of. He promises to make his soul an offering for sin, consents that the Father shall deliver him up, and undertakes to bear the sin of many, in consideration of which the Father promises to glorify him, not only with the glory he had, as God, before the world was (John xvii. 5), but with the glories of the Mediator.

1. He shall have the glory of an everlasting Father. Under this title he was brought into the world (ch. ix. 6), and he shall not fail to answer the title when he goes out of the world. This was the promise made to Abraham (who herein was a type of Christ), that he should be the father of many nations and so be the heir of the world, Rom. iv. 13, 17. As he was the root of the Jewish church, and the covenant was made with him and his seed, so is Christ of the universal church and with him and his spiritual seed is the covenant of grace made, which is grounded upon and grafted in the covenant of redemption, which here we have some of the glorious promises of. It is promised,

(1.) That the Redeemer shall have a seed to serve him and to bear up his name, Ps. xxii. 30. True believers are the seed of Christ; the Father gave them to him to be so, John xvii. 6. He died to purchase and purify them to himself, fell to the ground as a corn of wheat, that he might bring forth much fruit, John xii. 24. The word, that incorruptible see, of which they are born again, is his word; the Spirit, the great author of their regeneration, is his Spirit; and it is his image that is impressed upon them.

(2.) That he shall live to see his seed. Christ's children have a living Father, and because he lives they shall live also, for he is their life. Though he died, he rose again, and left not his children orphans, but took effectual care to secure to them the spirit, the blessing, and the inheritance of sons. He shall see a great increase of them; the word is plural, He shall see his seeds, multitudes of them, so many that they cannot be numbered.

(3.) That he shall himself continue to take care of the affairs of this numerous family: He shall prolong his days. Many, when they see their seed, their seed's seed, wish to depart in peace; but Christ will not commit the care of his family to any other, no, he shall himself live long, and of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, for he ever lives. Some refer it to believers: He shall see a seed that shall prolong its days, agreeing with Ps. lxxxix. 29, 36, His seed shall endure for ever. While the world stands Christ will have a church in it, which he himself will be the life of.

(4.) That his great undertaking shall be successful and shall answer expectation: The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. God's purposes shall take effect, and not one iota or tittle of them shall fail. Note, [1.] The work of man's redemption is in the hands of the Lord Jesus, and it is in good hands. It is well for us that it is in his, for our own hands are not sufficient for us, but he is able to save to the uttermost. It is in his hands who upholds all things. [2.] It is the good pleasure of the Lord, which denotes not only his counsel concerning it, but his complacency in it; and therefore God loved him, and was well pleased in him, because he undertook to lay down his life for the sheep. [3.] It has prospered hitherto, and shall prosper, whatever obstructions or difficulties have been, or may be, in the way of it. Whatever is undertaken according to God's pleasure shall prosper, ch. xlvi. 10. Cyrus, a type of Christ, shall perform all God's pleasure (ch. xliv. 28), and therefore, no doubt, Christ shall. Christ was so perfectly well qualified for his undertaking, and prosecuted it with so much vigour, and it was from first to last so well devised, that it could not fail to prosper, to the honour of his Father and the salvation of all his seed.

(5.) That he shall himself have abundant satisfaction in it (v. 11): He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied. He shall see it beforehand (so it may be understood); he shall with the prospect of his sufferings have a prospect of the fruit, and he shall be satisfied with the bargain. He shall see it when it is accomplished in the conversion and salvation of poor sinners. Note, [1.] Our Lord Jesus was in travail of soul for our redemption and salvation, in great pain, but with longing desire to be delivered, and all the pains and throes he underwent were in order to it and hastened it on. [2.] Christ does and will see the blessed fruit of the travail of his soul in the founding and building up of his church and the eternal salvation of all that were given him. He will not come short of his end in any part of his work, but will himself see that he has not laboured in vain. [3.] The salvation of souls is a great satisfaction to the Lord Jesus. He will reckon all his pains well bestowed, and himself abundantly recompensed, if the many sons be by him brought through grace to glory. Let him have this, and he has enough. God will be glorified, penitent believers will be justified, and then Christ will be satisfied. Thus, in conformity to Christ, it should be a satisfaction to us if we can do any thing to serve the interests of God's kingdom in the world. Let it always be our meat and drink, as it was Christ's, to do God's will.

2. He shall have the glory of bringing in an everlasting righteousness; for so it was foretold concerning him, Dan. ix. 24. And here, to the same purport, By his knowledge (the knowledge of him, and faith in him) shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear the sins of many, and so lay a foundation for our justification from sin. Note, (1.) The great privilege that flows to us from the death of Christ is justification from sin, our being acquitted from that guilt which alone can ruin us, and accepted into God's favour, which alone can make us happy. (2.) Christ, who purchased our justification for us, applies it to us, by his intercession made for us, his gospel preached to us, and his Spirit witnessing in us. The Son of man had power even on earth to forgive sin. (3.) There are many whom Christ justifies, not all (multitudes perish in their sins), yet many, even as many as he gave his life a ransom for, as many as the Lord our God shall call. He shall justify not here and there one that is eminent and remarkable, but those of the many, the despised multitude. (4.) It is by faith that we are justified, by our consent to Christ and the covenant of grace; in this way we are saved, because thus God is most glorified, free grace most advanced, self most abased, and our happiness most effectually secured. (5.) Faith is the knowledge of Christ, and without knowledge there can be no true faith. Christ's way of gaining the will and affections is by enlightening the understanding and bringing that unfeignedly to assent to divine truths. (6.) That knowledge of Christ, and that faith in him, by which we are justified, have reference to him both as a servant to God and as a surety for us. [1.] As one that is employed for God to pursue his designs and secure and advance the interests of his glory. "He is my righteous servant, and as such justifies men." God has authorized and appointed him to do it; it is according to God's will and for his honour that he does it. He is himself righteous, and of his righteousness have all we received. He that is himself righteous (for he could not have made atonement for our sin if he had had any sin of his own to answer for) is made of God to us righteousness, the Lord our righteousness. [2.] As one that has undertaken for us. We must know him, and believe in him, as one that bore our iniquities—saved us from sinking under the load by taking it upon himself.

3. He shall have the glory of obtaining an incontestable victory and universal dominion, v. 12. Because he has done all these good services, therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and, according to the will of the Father, he shall divide the spoil with the strong, as a great general, when he has driven the enemy out of the field, takes the plunder of it for himself and his army, which is both an unquestionable evidence of the victory and a recompense for all the toils and perils of the battle. Note, (1.) God the Father has engaged to reward the services and sufferings of Christ with great glory: "I will set him among the great, highly exalt him, and give him a name above every name." Great riches are also assigned to him: He shall divide the spoil, shall have abundance of graces and comforts to bestow upon all his faithful soldiers. (2.) Christ comes at his glory by conquest. He has set upon the strong man armed, dispossessed him, and divided the spoil. He has vanquished principalities and powers, sin and Satan, death and hell, the world and the flesh; these are the strong that he has disarmed and taken the spoil of. (3.) Much of the glory with which Christ is recompensed, and the spoil which he has divided, consists in the vast multitudes of willing, faithful, loyal subjects, that shall be brought in to him; for so some read it: I will give many to him, and he shall obtain many for a spoil. God will give him the heathen for his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession, Ps. ii. 8. His dominion shall be from sea to sea. Many shall be wrought upon by the grace of God to give up themselves to him to be ruled, and taught, and saved by him, and hereby he shall reckon himself honoured, and enriched, and abundantly recompensed for all he did and all he suffered. (4.) What God designed for the Redeemer he shall certainly gain the possession of: "I will divide it to him," and immediately it follows, He shall divide it, notwithstanding the opposition that is given to him; for, as Christ finished the work that was given him to do, so God completed the recompence that was promised him for it; for he is both able and faithful. (5.) The spoil which God divided to Christ he divides (it is the same word), he distributes, among his followers; for, when he led captivity captive, he received gifts for men, that he might give gifts to men; for as he has told us (Acts xx. 35) he did himself reckon it more blessed and honourable to give than to receive. Christ conquered for us, and through him we are more than conquerors. He has divided the spoils, the fruits of his conquest, to all that are his: let us therefore cast in our lot among them.

CHAP. LIII.

Ver. 1. WHo hath believed our report] q. d. The Gentiles, ſome of them, even of their Potentates, have believed our report concerning the Meſſiah, chap. 52.13, 14, 15. But Lord, how few Jews will give credit to what we have ſaid?Lib. 1. de Conſenſ. Evang. cap. 31. Albeit this Chapter may not unfitly be called The Goſpel of Jeſus Chriſt according to Iſaiah: and things are here ſet down ſo plain that Auſtin thinks they need no expoſition: yet thoſe Buzzards the later Rabbines, cannot, or rather will not ſee that the Prophet ſpeaketh here all along concerning Chriſt: but do ſtrangely writh, wring, and wreſt his words to a wrong ſenſe; applying them, ſome to Moſes, ſome to Ezra, ſome to Joſhuah the ſon of Joſadak, &c. John Iſaac indeed the Jew confeſſeth of himſelf, as hath been ſaid before, that by pondering upon this Chapter he was converted to the Chriſtian Religion: the like we read of ſome few others in Andreas Bayna and Cornelius à Lapid. But the Jews themſelves will tell you (falſely and maliciouſly) that ſuch pretended Proſelytes are not of them, but poor Chriſtians hired by us to perſonate their part: ſuch a thick veil is ſtill before their eyes, ſuch a hard hoof upon their hearts, till God pleaſes by his own holy arm made bare, to remove it. They could not (that is, they would not) believe Joh. 12.39. They have not all (nay ſcarce any in compariſon) obeyed the Goſpel, Rom. 10.16. but blaſphemouſly call it Avengelaion a volume of vantiy: ſcorning to be ſaved by a crucified God, although by mighty miracles wrought amongſt them, he ſhewed himſelf to be the Son of God, and an arm to ſave all that believe in his name, Joh. 12.37.

And to whom is the Arm of the Lord] i. e. His Goſpel which is his power to ſalvation, Rom. 1.16. and is hid only to them that periſh, 2 Cor. 4.3.

Ver. 2. For he ſhall grow up before him as a tender plant] His beginning ſhall be mean and deſpicable. See chap. 11.1. with the Notes. God hid his Son under the Carpenters ſon:Humilis Chriſti proſapia nocatur. this the Jews much ſtumbled at, Matth. 13.55, 57. Luke 24.1. Joh. 7.27, 41, 53. 1 Cor. 1.23. that Chriſt ſhould come without ſightly ſhew or ſtate. But they ſhould have known that his Kingdom is not of this world. Some of their Rabbines can ſay In regno Meſſiae nihil mundanum.

He hath no form or comlineſs] How could he (ſay) when his fair face was covered ſanguine, ſputo ſpinis lacrymis, with blood black and blew, ſwelths, ſpettle, tears, ſcratches, ſo that Pilat wondering at it, ſaid Behold the man? q. d. he is not dealt with as a man: but being in greateſt miſery he deſerveth to be pittied.

And when we ſhall ſee him] Here the Prophet taketh upon him the perſon of a carnal Jew, who judged of Chriſt according to his outward appearance, Joh. 7.24. But what ſaith the Chaldee Proverb? Ne spectes cantharum vel urceum, ſed id quod in eo eſt: Look not on the pitcher, but on the liquor, that is contained in it.

And when we ſhall ſee him there is no beauty] Heb. And we ſhall ſee him and no ſight or ſightlineſs.

That we ſhould deſire him] And yet he was a Man of deſires, yea the deſire of all Nations, Hag. 2.7. all over deſirable, Cant. 5.16. but ſo he is only to ſuch as have their ſenſes exerciſed to diſcern good and evil, Heb. 5. ult.

Ver. 3. He is deſpiſed and rejected of men] Heb. deſitus virorum one at whom the nature and name of man endeth: as we would ſay the very liſt and fag-end of mankind,Jun. Tertul. nullificamen hominis, a worm and no man, not held ſo good as wicked Barabbas, but crucified betwixt two theeves as worſe then either of them, and made nothing of, Mar. 9.12. This is ſo plainly here ſet forth, that ſome of the Jew-doctours (Aben-Ezra for one) when as they cannot rightly diſtinguiſh betwixt the two comings of Chriſt, the one in humility and the other in glory, duos conſtruunt Chriſtos, Genebrard. they make us up two Chriſts: the one the Son of Joſeph, to whom agree thoſe things which the Scriptures ſpeak of concerning Chriſts meanneſs and ſufferings; the other the Son of David, to whom they apply thoſe things that are written concerning the glory, majeſty, and triumphs of Chriſt.

Ex doloribus conſlatus. A man of ſorrows] q. d. made up of ſorrows. Atque hic mirus artifex eſt Propheta, and here the Prophet ſheweth ſingular skill in diſcribing Chriſts ſtate of humiliation through all the degrees of it: And Faith is much happier in finding out his croſs, blood, nails, tomb, and all, then ever Helen was or any Popiſh relique-monger: and in making uſe of them too, to better purpoſe then that Popiſh Covent of Friars do, who have hired thoſe places of the Turk, built Temples, altars and ſilver floores in honour of the Paſſion.

And acquainted with grief] Heb. knowing of infirmity, or inured to it: ſee Heb. 4.15. The Greek Letany hath By thine unknown ſorrows and ſufferings, Good Lord deliver us.

And we hid as it were our faces from him] Or, And he hid as it were the face from us, viz. as one for his loth ſomeneſſe, his low condition, aſhamed to be ſeen. The Jews in their Talmud queſtion What is the name of Meſſiah? Sanhedrin. Some anſwer Hhenara leprous: and he ſitteth among the poor in the gates of Rome, carrying their ſickneſſes.

He was despiſed] double-deſpiſed; and for the unworthineſſe of the things this is repeated.

And we eſteemed him not] i. e. We contemned and derided him.

Ver. 4. Surely he hath born our griefs] He took our infirmities natural, though not ſinful: or He ſuffered for our offences: and his ſatispaſſion is our ſatisfaction, as Luther phraſeth it: he ſuffered, ſaith Peter, the juſt for the unjuſt: he bore our ſins in his own body on the tree, 1 Pet. 2.24. he (the true ſcap[illegible: 1 letter]-goat) taketh away the ſins of the world, Joh. 1.29. bearing them into the land of forgetfulneſſe: this is his continual act, and this ſhould be as a perpetual picture in our hearts. Surely he did all this for us: Juramentum eſt Vere: This Surely or Truely is an oath, for better aſſurance and ſatisfaction to any doubting conſcience. For which cauſe alſo the ſame thing is ſaid over again, ver. 5. and herewith agreeth that of the Apoſtle, 1 Tim. 1.15. This is a ſure ſaying and worthy of all men to be received, that Jeſus Chriſt came into the world to ſave ſinners:

Yet we did eſteem him ſtricken, ſmitten of God] ſc. for his own deſerts (and not for ours:) we looked upon him as a deceiver, a wine-bibber, a blaſphemer, and one that wrought by Beelzebub, &c. and therefore we crucified him.

Smitten of God] Percuſſus Dei, ſaith the Syriack: The Apoſtle ſaith, God ſpared not his Son,Flagellatum à Deo. Theodotion. Rom. 8.32. and becauſe the creature could not ſtrike a ſtroke hard enough, himſelf was pleaſed to bruiſe him. But that this was done for his own proper ſins, and in a way of vengeance, was a groſs miſtake.

And afflicted] Or, humbled: He was ſtricken, ſmitten, afflicted: But then afterwards he was exalted, extolled, and made very high, ch. 52.13. We alſo who ſuffer with him ſhall be glorified together, and in a proportion, 2. Tim. 2.12.

Ver. 5. But he was wounded for our tranſgreſſions] Not for his own: for he knew no ſin, neither was guile found in his mouth: nevertheleſſe he took upon him whatſoever was penal that belonged to ſin, that we might go free: he was content to be in the wine-preſs, that we might be in the wine-cellar.

He was bruiſed for our iniquities] [non-Latin text not transcribed], as Anacreon did upon a worſe occaſion.

Cernis ut in toto corpore ſculptus amor!

Oh love, that love of his! as Bernard ſpeaketh: let it bruiſe our hard hearts into peices, grind them to powder, and make them fall aſunder in our boſoms like drops of water. Let us propagate our thankfulneſs into our lives; meditating returns anſwerable in ſome proportion to our Saviours ſufferings.Oh that as Chriſt was crucifixus, ſo he were cordifixus.

The chaſtiſement of our peace was upon him] They which offered burnt-offerings, of old, were to lay their hand upon the head of the beaſt: thereby ſignifying the imputation of our ſins unto Chriſt, and that we muſt lay hand on him by Faith, if we look for any comfort by his death and paſſion.

And with his ſtripes we are healed] By the black and blew of his body after he was buffetted with dry-blows: and by the bloody wailes left on his back, after he had been ſcourged, which was a puniſhment fit for dogs and ſlaves. Nero they threatened to ſcourge to death, as judging him rather a beaſt then a man: But what had this innocent Lamb of God done? And why ſhould the Phyſicians blood thus become the ſick mans ſalve? We can hardly believe the power of Sword-ſalve, &c.

Ver. 6. All we like ſheep have gone aſtray] Gone of our own accords, as longing to wander, Jer. 14.10. to wander as ſheep (loſt ſheep) then the which no creature is more apt to ſtray, and leſs able to return. The Oxe knoweth his owner, and the Aſs his maſters crib: the very Swine accuſtomed to the trough, if he goe abroad, yet at night will find the way home again: Not ſo the ſilly ſheep. Loe ye were all as ſheep going aſtray, ſaith Peter, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Biſhop of your ſouls, 1 Epiſt. 2.25.

We have turned every one to his own way] Quo variae errorum formae inuunntur, dum ſuas quiſque opiniones ſectatur. Each one, as he is out of Gods way, ſo hath his own by-way of wickedneſſe to wander in: Wherein yet (without a Chriſt) he cannot wander ſo far as to miſs of hell.

And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all] i. e. Of all his Elect: the iniquity of us all he hath made to meet on him (ſo the Hebrew hath it) or, to light on him, even the full weight of his wrath and dint of his dipleaſure, for our many and mighty ſins imputed unto him. Let the Jew jear at this and ſay, that Every fox muſt pay his own skin to the fleare: Let the Romiſt reject imputed righteouſneſſe, calling it putative, by a ſcoff: there is not any thing that more ſupporteth a ſinking ſoul, then this righteouſneſſe which is through the faith of Chriſt, the righteouſneſſe which is of God by faith, Philip. 3.9. This Manus Chriſti (as nailed to the croſſe) is the only Phyſick for a ſin-ſick ſoul; believe it.

Ver. 7. He was oppreſſed and he was afflicted] Heb. It (the puniſhment of our ſin) was exacted, and he (being our ſurety) was afflicted. Or, It was exacted, and he anſwered, i. e. ſatisfied.

Yet he opened not his mouth] Though he ſuffered, the juſt for the unjuſt, with the unjuſt, upon unjuſt cauſes, under unjuſt Judges, and by unjuſt puniſhments: Silence and ſufferance was the language of this Holy Lamb, dumb before the ſhearer; inſomuch as that Pilat wondered exceedingly. The Eunuch alſo wondered when he read this Text,In vita ejus apud Surlum. Acts 8.32. and was converted. And the like is related of a certain Earle called Eleazar, a cholerick man, but much altered for the better by ſtudy of Chriſt and of his patience. I beſeech you by the meekneſſe of Chriſt, ſaith Paul: and Peter, who was an eye-witneſſe of his patience, propoundeth him for a worthy partern, 1 Epiſt. 2.23. Vide mihi languidum, exhauſtum, cruentatum, trementem, & gementem Jeſum tuum, & evaneſcet omnis impatientiae effectus. Chriſt upon the Croſſe is as a Doctour in his chair, where he readeth unto us all a lecture of Patience.

He is brought as a Lamb to the ſlaughter] Or, as a ſheep that is led to the ſlaughter: which when we ſee done, we ſhould bethink us of Chriſt, and ſee Him as it were in an Optick glaſſe. The Saints of old did ſo in their Sacrifices: and this was that hidden wiſdom David ſpeaks of Pſal. 51.8. the Ceremonial Law was their Goſpel.

And as a ſheep before her ſhearer is dumb] The word Rachel ſignifieth an Ew, Gen. 31.38. & 32.14. This Ew hath brought forth many Lambs;Act. & Mon. fol. 811. ſuch as was Lambert and the reſt of the Martyrs, who to words of ſcorn and petulancy returned Iſaac's Apology to his brother Iſhmael, Patience and Silence: inſomuch as that the Perſecutours ſaid that they were poſſeſſed with a dumb devil. This was a kind of blaſphemy.

Ver. 8. He was taken from priſon and from judgement] Abſque dilatione & titra judicium raptus eſt, ſc. ad crucem; ſo Vatablus rendereth it: He was hurried away (to the Croſſe) without delay and againſt right or reaſon. Or, as others, he was taken from diſtreſſe and torment into glory, when he had cryed conſummatum eſt, It is finiſhed; Inauditâ cauſâ and, Father, into thy hands I commit my Spirit. The Seventy render it ſomewhat otherwiſe, as may be ſeen. Act. 8.33. the Apoſtle Peter explaineth it, Act. 2.24.

And who ſhall declare his generation?] Or, who can reckon his age, or his race? Or, who can utter or deſcribe his generation? i. e. The wickedneſſe of the men of thoſe times he lived in: or the hiſtory of his life and death? Some underſtand it of his eternal generation, Prov. 8.24, 25. Others of his Incarnation, that great Myſtery of godlineſſe: Quantus enim Deus quantillus factus eſt homo! Others of his holy ſeed, his Croſſe being fruitful,Aug. and his death giving life to an innumerable generation, Revl. 7.9.

For he was cut off out of the land of the living] Quaſi arbor ſaevis icta bipennibus, as a tree that is hewn down, 2 King. 6.4.

For the tranſgreſſion of my people] Our iniquities were the weapons, and our ſelves the traitours, that put to death the Lord of Life; Judas and the Jews were but our workmen. This ſhould draw dreary tears from us, Zach. 12.10.

Ver. 9. And he made his grave with the wicked] i. e. He ſhould have been buried among malefactours, had not rich Joſeph begged his body: Or, his dead body was at the diſpoſal of wicked ones, and of rich men or Rulers (the Jews, and Pilat) at his death.

And with the rich] The ſame, ſay ſome, with wicked. And indeed Magna cognatio ut rei ſi[illegible: 1 letter] nominis, divitiis & vitiis. Rich men are put for wicked rich, Jam. 5.1. And how hardly do rich men enter Heaven? Hyperius thinketh that the two thieves crucified together with Chriſt were rich men, put to death for Sedition: and Chriſt was placed in the midſt, as their chieftain: whence alſo that memorable title ſet over his head King of the Jews.

Becauſe he had done no violence] Or, albeit he had done, &c. notwithſtainding his innocency, and integrity.

— Nec te tua plurima Pentheu Labentem texit pietas.

Ver. 10. Yet it pleaſed the Lord to bruiſe him] Singula verba hic expendenda ſunt cum Emphaſi, ſaith One: Here every word hath its weight:Hyper. and it is very ſure that the Apoſtles and Evangeliſts in deſcribing the myſteries of our ſalvation, have great reſpect as to this whole Chapter of Iſaiah, ſo eſpecially to theſe three laſt verſes. And it muſt needs be that the Prophet when he wrot theſe things was indued with a very great Spirit; becauſe herein he ſo clearly ſetteth forth the Lord Chriſt in his twofold eſtate of Humiliation and of Exaltation, that whereas other oracles of the Old Teſtament borrow light from the New, this Chapter lendeth light to the New in ſeveral places.

He hath put him to grief] Or, he ſuffered him to be put to pain, See Acts 2.23. & 4.28. God the Father had a main hand in his Sons ſufferings: and that out of his free mercy, Joh. 3.16. for the good of many.

When thou ſhalt make his ſoul an offering for ſin] Confer 2 Cor. 5.20. He made him ſin for us that knew no ſin. Our ſins were laid upon him, as the ſins of him that ſacrificed were laid upon the beaſt; which was thereby made the ſinner, as it were, and the man righteous. Chriſts Soul ſuffered alſo, Matth. 26.38. it was undequaque triſtis, ſurrounded wich ſorrows, and heavy as heart could hold. This Sacrifice of his was truly expiatory and ſatisfactory: Confer Heb. 10.1, 2.

He ſhall ſee his ſeed] Bring many ſons to God, Heb. 2.10, 13. (See on ver. 8.) an holy ſeed, the Church of the New Teſtament to the end of the world,Parit dum perit, & perit dum parit; Phae[illegible: 1 letter] nic. aenigma, Pſal. 72.17. filiabitur nomine ejus. The name of Chriſt ſhall endure for ever, it ſhall be begotten, as one generation is begotten of another: there ſhall be a ſucceſſion of Chriſts name, till time ſhall be no more.

And the pleaſure of the Lord ſhall prosper in his hand] He came to ſend fire on the earth, which whiles he lived upon earth was already kindled, Luke 12.49. This ſome interpret of the Goſpel: which how wonderfully it ſpred and proſpered, the Evangelical and Eccleſiaſtical hiſtories teſtify.

Ver. 11. He ſhall ſee of the travel of his ſoul] Or, becauſe his ſoul laboureth, he ſhall ſee (his ſeed) and be ſatisfied. A Metaphor from a travelling woman; confer Acts 2, 24. Joh. 16.21.

And ſhall be ſatisfied] As a Parent is in his dear children, or a rich man in the fight of his large farms and incomes.Saturabitur ſalute fidelium quam eſurivit. If therefore we would gratify and ſatisfy Chriſt, come by troops to the Ordinances.

By his knowledge] i. e. By the lively light and impreſſion of Faith, as Joh. 17.3. Acts 25.23. & 26.18. Joh. 6.69. Faith comprehendeth in it ſelf theſe three acts, Knowledge in the underſtanding, Aſſent of the will, and Truſt of the hear[illegible: 1 letter]: ſo that juſtifiyng Faith is nothing elſe but a fiducial aſſent, preſuppoſing knowledge. The Popiſh-Doctours ſettle the ſeat of Faith in the Will, as in its adaequate ſubject, that they mean while may doe what they will with the Heart, and with the Underſtanding. To which purpoſe they exclude all knowledge: and as for confidence in the promiſes of Chriſt, they cry it down to the utmoſt, and everywhere expunge it by their Iudices expurgatorii: for a bare aſſent (though without wit or ſenſe) is ſufficient, ſay they: and Bellarmine defendeth it, that Faith may better be defined by ignorance then by knowledge.

Shall my righteous ſervant] Jeſus Chriſt the just one, 1 Joh. 2.2. Jehovah our righteouſneſſe, Jer, 23.6.

Juſtify many] i. e. Diſcharge them from the guilt of all iniquity by his righteouſneſſe imputed unto them. This maketh againſt Juſtification by works: Cardinal Pighius was againſt it: ſo before him was Contarenus, another Cardinal. And of Stephen Gardiner it is recorded, that he died a Proteſtant in the point of mans Juſtification by the free mercies of God,Fullers Church hiſt. and merits of Chriſt.

For he ſhall bear their iniquities] Bajulabit: that, by nailing them to his Croſſe, he may expiate them.

Ver. 12. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great] Or, I will give many to him, Pſal. 2.8. Some ſenſe it thus, I will give him to conquer, plunder, and ſpoil the evil ſpirits, as Coloſ. 2.15. and this he ſhall have for a reward of his ignominious death, and his interceſſion for ſome of his enemies, whom he conquered by a new and noble kind of victory, viz. by loving them, and by praying for them.

And he was numbred with tranſgreſſours] So he became a ſinner (though ſinleſſe) 1. By Imputation. 2. By Reputation.

And he bare the ſins of many] Not of all, as a Lapide here would have it, becauſe all are many, &c.

And made interceſſion] For thoſe that with wicked hands crucified him, Luke 23.34. ſo for others ſtill, Heb. 7.25.