Surely he has borne our sickness and carried our suffering; yet we considered him plagued, struck by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he didn’t open his mouth. As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he didn’t open his mouth.
He was taken away by oppression and judgment. As for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living and stricken for the disobedience of my people?
They made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him. He has caused him to suffer. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he will see his offspring. He will prolong his days and Yahweh’s pleasure will prosper in his hand.
After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light and be satisfied. My righteous servant will justify many by the knowledge of himself; and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion with the great. He will divide the plunder with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death and was counted with the transgressors; yet he bore the sins of many and made intercession for the transgressors.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv4–12 We judgeth evil, thinking that he was punished for…
We judgeth evil, thinking that he was punished for his own sins, and not for ours.
That is, the punishment due to our sins: for the which he hath both suffered and made satisfaction, Matt. 8:17; 1 Pet. 2:24.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv4–12 Isa 53:4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and…
Isa 53:4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
Ver. 4. Surely he hath borne our griefs.] He took our infirmities natural, though not sinful; or, He suffered for our offences. And his satis sufficient passion 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." {1Pe 2:24} He, the true scape goat, "taketh away the sins of the world," {Joh 1:29} bearing them into the land of forgetfulness. This is his continual act, and this should be as a perpetual picture in our hearts. "Surely" he did all this for us; iuramentum est vere. This surely or truly is an oath, for better assurance and satisfaction to any doubting conscience. For which cause also the same thing is said over again, {Isa 53:5} and herewith agreeth that of the apostle in 1Ti 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."
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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 winebibber, a blasphemer, and one that wrought by Beelzebub, &c., and therefore we crucified him.
Smitten {a} of God.] Percussus Dei, saith the Syriac. The apostle saith, "God spared not his Son"; {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." {Isa 52:13} We also who "suffer with him shall be glorified together," and in a proportion. {2Ti 2:12}
{a} Flagellatum a Deo, Whipped by God. - Theodotion.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv4–12 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our…
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: and whereas it may seem all unreasonable and incredible thing, that so excellent and glorious, and 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 we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted; 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.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv4, 10 In these verses we have,
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 male factors, 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 (Isa 53:7): 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, Ecc 4:1. Oppression is a sore affliction; it has made many a wise man mad (Ecc 7:7); 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, Isa 53:8. 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.
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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, Isa 53:4. 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, Psa 71:11. 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 Caesar. 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, Isa 53:10 (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 (Isa 53:9), to which the apostle refers, Pe1 2:22. 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 (Isa 53:7), 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 (Psa 39:9), and his meekness under reproach (Psa 38:13), 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 (Isa 53:6): 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 (Isa 53:4), or, as it may be read, our sicknesses and our wounds: the Septuagint reads it, our sins; and so the apostle, Pe1 2:24. 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 Psa 40:6-12. 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 (Isa 53:7) 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, Joh 18:8. 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, Isa 53:4. 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 (Mat 8:17) 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 (Isa 53:5): 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, Isa 1:6. 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 Isa 53:8, 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 4:25. Hence it is said to be according to the scriptures, according to this scripture, that Christ died for our sins, Co1 15:3. 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, Act 2:23. 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 9:24.
(5.) The consequence of this to us is our peace and healing, Isa 53:5. [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 1:20. He is our peace, Eph 2:14. 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, Isa 53:8, [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, Deu 1:11.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv4–12 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our…
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows,.... Or "nevertheless", as Gussetius (k); notwithstanding the above usage of him; though it is a certain and undoubted truth, that Christ not only assumed a true human nature, capable of sorrow and grief, but he took all the natural sinless infirmities of it; or his human nature was subject to such, as hunger, thirst, weariness, &c.; and to all the sorrow and pain arising from them; the same sorrows and griefs he was liable to as we are, and therefore called ours and hence he had a sympathy with men under affliction and trouble; and, to show his sympathizing spirit, he healed all sorts of bodily diseases; and also, to show his power, he healed the diseases of the soul, by bearing the sins of his people, and making satisfaction for them; since he that could do the one could do the other; wherefore the evangelist applies this passage to the healing of bodily diseases, Mat 8:17, though the principal meaning of the words may be, that all the sorrows and griefs which Christ bore were not for any sins of his own, but for the sins of his people; wherefore these griefs and sorrows signify the punishment of sin, and are put for sins, the cause of them and so the apostle interprets them of Christ's bearing our sins in his own body on the tree, Pe1 2:24, and the Septuagint and Arabic versions render the words here, "he bears our sins"; and the Targum is,
"wherefore he will entreat for our sins;''
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these being laid upon him, as is afterwards said, were bore by him as the surety of his people; and satisfaction being made for them by his sufferings and death, they are carried and taken away, never to be seen any more:
yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted; so indeed he was by the sword of divine justice, which was awaked against him, and with which he was stricken and smitten, as standing in the room of his people; but then it was not for any sin of his own, as the Jews imagined, but for the sins of those for whom he was a substitute; they looked upon all his sorrows and troubles in life, and at death, as the just judgment of God upon him for some gross enormities he had been guilty of; but in this they were mistaken. The Vulgate Latin version is, "we esteemed him as a leprous person"; and so Aquila and Symmachus render the word; and from hence the Jews call the Messiah a leper (l); they say,
"a leper of the house of Rabbi is his name''
as it is said, "surely he hath borne our griefs", &c.; which shows that the ancient Jews understood this prophecy of the Messiah, though produced to prove a wrong character of him; and so it is applied unto him in other ancient writings of theirs; See Gill on Mat 8:17. The words are by some rendered, "and we reckoned him the stricken, smitten of God" (m), and "humbled"; which version of the words proved the conversion of several Jews in Africa, as Andradius and others relate (n); by which they perceived the passage is to be understood not of a mere man, but of God made man, and of his humiliation and sufferings in human nature.
(k) Ebr. Comment. p. 41. "verumtamen", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; "et tamen", so some is Vatablus. (l) T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 98. 2. (m) "percussum Deum", Sanctius. (n) Vid. Sanctium in loc.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv4–12 Yet - Our people believed that he was thus…
Yet - Our people believed that he was thus punished by the just judgment of God.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Verse 4. Surely he hath borne our griefs -…
Verse 4. Surely he hath 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.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 Isa 53:4-5. Surely he hath borne our griefs —…
Isa 53:4-5. Surely he hath borne our griefs — Whereas it may seem an incredible thing, that so excellent and glorious, and so innocent and holy 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 for the sake of sinful men, in whose stead he stood, and for whose sins he suffered: yet we did esteem him — Yet our people, the Jews, were so far from giving him the glory and praise of such astonishing condescension and compassion, that they made a most perverse construction of it; and so great was their prejudice against him, that they believed he was thus disgraced and punished, and, at last, put to death, by the just judgment of God, for his blasphemy and other manifold acts of wickedness. But, &c. — This was a most false and unrighteous sentence. He was wounded —
Which word comprehends all his pains and punishments, and his death among the rest; for our transgressions — The prophet does not say by, but for them, or, because of them, namely, for the guilt of our sins, which he had voluntarily taken upon himself, and for the expiation of our sins, which was hereby purchased. The chastisement of our peace — 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. With his stripes we are healed — By his sufferings we are saved from our sins, and from the dreadful effects thereof.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv4–12 Surely - This is an exceedingly important verse, and…
Surely - This is an exceedingly important verse, and is one that is attended with considerable difficulty, from the manner in which it is quoted in the New Testament. The general sense, as it stands in the Hebrew, is not indeed difficult. It is immediately connected in signification with the previous verse. The meaning is, that those who had despised and rejected the Messiah, had greatly erred in condemning him on account of his sufferings and humiliation. ‘We turned away from him in horror and contempt. We supposed that he was suffering on account of some great sin of his own. But in this we erred. It was not for his sins but for ours. It was not that he Was smitten of God for his own sins - as if he had been among the worst of mortals - but it was because he had taken our sins, and was suffering for them. The very thing therefore that gave offence to us, and which made us turn away from him, constituted the most important part of his work, and was really the occasion of highest gratitude. It is an acknowledgment that they had erred, and a confession of that portion of the nation which would be made sensible of their error, that they had judged improperly of the character of the sufferer. The word rendered ‘surely’ (אכן 'âkēn, Vulgate, vere), is sometimes a particle strongly affirming, meaning truly, of a certain truth Gen 28:16; Exo 2:14; Jer 8:8. Sometimes it is an adversative particle, meaning but yet Psa 31:23; Isa 49:24. It is probably used in that sense here, meaning, that though he was despised by them, yet he was worthy of their esteem and confidence, for he had borne their griefs. He was not suffering for any sins of his own, but in a cause which, so far from rendering him an object of contempt, made him worthy of their highest regard.
He hath borne - Hebrew, נשׂא nâs'â'. Vulgate, Tulit. Septuagint, φερει pherei - ‘He bears.’ Chald. ‘He prayed (יבעי yibe‛ēy) for, or on account of our sins.’ Castilio, Tulit ac toleravit. In these versions, the sense is that of sustaining, bearing, upholding, carrying, as when one removes a burden from the shoulders of another, and places it on his own. The word נשׂא nâs'a' means properly “to take up, to lift, to raise” Gen 7:17, ‘The waters increased, and lifted up the ark;’ Gen 29:1, ‘And Jacob lifted up his feet (see the margin) and came.’ Hence, it is applied to lifting up a standard Jer 4:6; Jer 50:2 : to lifting up the hand Deu 32:40; to lifting up the head Job 10:15; 2Ki 25:27; to lifting up the eyes (Gen 13:10, et soepe); to lifting up the voice, etc. It then means to bear, to carry, as an infant in the arms Isa 46:3; as a tree does its fruit Eze 17:8, or as a field its produce Psa 70:3; Gen 12:6.
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Hence, to endure, suffer, permit Job 21:3. ‘Bear with me, suffer me and I will speak.’ Hence, to bear the sin of anyone, to take upon one’s self the suffering which is due to sin (see the notes at Isa 53:12 of this chapter; compare Lev 5:1, Lev 5:17; Lev 17:16; Lev 20:19; Lev 24:15; Num 5:31; Num 9:13; Num 14:34; Num 30:16; Eze 18:19-20). Hence, to bear chastisement, or punishment Job 34:31 : ‘I have borne chastisement, I will not offend anymore.’ It is also used in the sense of taking away the sin of anyone, expiating, or procuring pardon Gen 50:17; Lev 10:17; Job 7:21; Psa 33:5; Psa 85:3. In all cases there is the idea of lifting, sustaining, taking up, and conveying away, as by carrying a burden. It is not simply removing, but it is removing somehow by lifting, or carrying; that is, either by an act of power, or by so taking them on one’s own self as to sustain and carry them. If applied to sin, it means that a man must bear the burden of the punishment of his own sin, or that the suffering which is due to sin is taken up and borne by another.
If applied to diseases, as in Mat 8:17, it must mean that he, as it were, lifted them up and bore them away. It cannot mean that the Saviour literally took those sicknesses on himself, and became sick in the place of the sick, became a leper in the place of the leper, or was himself possessed with an evil spirit in the place of those who were possessed Mat 8:16, but it must mean that he took them away by his power, and, as it were, lifted them up, and removed them. So when it is said Isa 53:12 that he ‘bare the sins of many,’ it cannot mean literally that he took those sins on himself in any such sense as that he became a sinner, but only that he so took them upon himself as to remove from the sinner the exposure to punishment, and to bear himself whatever was necessary as a proper expression of the evil of sin. Peter undoubtedly makes an allusion to this passage Isa 53:12 when he says 1Pe 2:24, ‘Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree’ (see the notes at Isa 53:12). Matthew Mat 8:17 has translated it by ἔλαβε elabe (“he took”), a word which does not differ in signification essentially from that used by Isaiah. It is almost exactly the same word which is used by Symmachus (ἀνελαβε anelabe).
Our griefs - The word used here (חלי chăliy) means properly sickness, disease, anxiety, affliction. It does not refer to sins, but to sufferings. It is translated ‘sickness’ Deu 28:61; Deu 7:15; 2Ch 21:15; 1Ki 17:17; ‘disease’ Ecc 6:2; 2Ch 21:18; 2Ch 16:12; Exo 15:26; ‘grief’ (Isa 53:3-4; compare Jer 16:4). It is never in our version rendered sin, and never Used to denote sin. ‘In ninety-three instances,’ says Dr. Magee (On atonement and Sacrifice, p. 229, New York Ed. 1813), ‘in which the word here translated (by the Septuagint) ἀμαρτίας hamartias, or its kindred verb, is found in the Old Testament in any sense that is not entirely foreign from the passage before us, there occurs but this one in which the word is so rendered; it being in all other cases expressed by ἀσθένεια astheneia, μαλακία malakia, or some word denoting bodily disease.’ ‘That the Jews,’ he adds, ‘considered this passage as referring to bodily diseases, appears from Whitby, and Lightfoot. Hor. Heb. on Mat 8:17.’ It is rendered in the Vulgate, Languores - ‘Our infirmities.’ In the Chaldee, ‘He prayed for our sins.’ Castellio renders it, Morbos - ‘Diseases;’ and so Junius and Tremellius. The Septuagint has rendered it in this place: Ἁμαρτίας Hamartias - ‘Sins;’ though, from what Dr. Kennicott has advanced in his Diss. Gen. Section 79, Dr. Magee thinks there can be no doubt that this is a corruption which has crept into the later copies of the Greek. A few Greek manuscripts of the Septuagint also read it ἀσθενείας astheneias, and one copy reads μαλακίας malakias.
Matthew Mat 8:17 has rendered it, ἀσθενείας astheneias - ‘infirmities,’ and intended no doubt to apply it to the fact that the Lord Jesus healed diseases, and there can be no doubt that Matthew has used the passage, not by way of accommodation, but in the true sense in which it is used by Isaiah; and that it means that the Messiah would take upon himself the infirmities of people, and would remove their sources of grief. It does not refer here to the fact that he would take their sins. That is stated in other places Isa 53:6, Isa 53:12. But it means that he was so afflicted, that he seemed to have taken upon himself the sicknesses and sorrows of the world; and taking them upon himself he would bear them away. I understand this, therefore, as expressing the twofold idea that he became deeply afflicted for us, and that. being thus afflicted for us, he was able to carry away our sorrows. In part this would be done by his miraculous power in healing diseases, as mentioned by Matthew; in part by the influence of his religion, in enabling people to bear calamity, and in drying up the fountains of sorrow. Matthew, then, it is believed, has quoted this passage exactly in the sense in which it was used by Isaiah; and if so, it should not be adduced to prove that he bore the sins of men - true as is that doctrine, and certainly as it has been affirmed in other parts of this chapter.
And carried - Hebrew, (סבל sābal). This word means properly to carry, as a burden; to be laden with, etc. Isa 46:4, Isa 46:7; Gen 49:15. It is applied to carrying burdens 1Ki 5:15; 2Ch 2:2; Neh 4:10, Neh 4:17; Ecc 12:5. The verb with its derivative noun occurs in twenty-six places in the Old Testament, twenty-three of which relate to carrying burdens, two others relate to sins, and the other Lam 5:7 is rendered, ‘We have borne their iniquities.’ The primary idea is undoubtedly that of carrying a burden; lifting it, and bearing it in this manner.
Our sorrows - The word used here (מכאב make'ob, from כאב kâ'ab, “to have pain, sorrow, to grieve, or be sad”), means properly “pain, sorrow, grief.” In the Old Testament it is rendered ‘sorrow’ and ‘sorrows’ Ecc 1:18; Lam 1:12-18; Isa 65:14; Jer 45:3; Jer 30:15; ‘grief’ Job 16:6; Psa 69:26; 2Ch 6:29; ‘pain’ Job 33:19; Jer 15:18; Jer 51:8. Perhaps the proper difference between this word and the word translated griefs is, that this refers to pains of the mind, that of the body; this to anguish, anxiety, or trouble of the soul; that to bodily infirmity and disease. Kennicott affirms that the word here used is to be regarded as applicable to griefs and distresses of the mind. ‘It is evidently so interpreted,’ says Dr. Magee (p. 220), ‘in Psa 32:10, ‘Many sorrows shall be to the wicked;’ and again, Psa 69:29, ‘But I am poor and sorrowful;’ and again, Pro 14:13, ‘The heart is sorrowful;’ and Ecc 1:18, ‘He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow;’ and so Ecc 2:18; Isa 65:14; Jer 30:15.’ Agreeably to this, the word is translated by Lowth, in our common version, and most of the early English versions, ‘Sorrows.’ The Vulgate renders it, Dolores: the Septuagint, ‘For us he is in sorrow’ (ὀδυνᾶται odunatai), that is, is deeply grieved, or afflicted.
The phrase, therefore, properly seems to mean that he took upon himself the mental sorrows of people. He not only took their diseases, and bore them away, but he also took or bore their mental griefs. That is, he subjected himself to the kind of mental sorrow which was needful in order to remove them. The word which is used by Matthew Mat 8:17, in the translation of this, is νόσου nosou. This word( νόσος nosos) means properly sickness, disease Mat 4:23-24; Mat 9:35; but it is also used in a metaphorical sense for pain, sorrow, evil (Rob. Lex.) In this sense it is probable that it was designed to be used by Matthew. He refers to the general subject of human ills; to the sicknesses, sorrows, pains, and trials of life; and he evidently means, in accordance with Isaiah, that he took them on himself. He was afflicted for them. He undertook the work of removing them. Part he removed by direct miracle - as sickness; part he removed by removing the cause - by taking away sin by the sacrifice of himself - thus removing the source of all ills; and in regard to all, he furnished the means of removing them by his own example and instructions, and by the great truths which he revealed as topics of consolation and support. On this important passage, see Magee, On atonement and Sacrifice, pp. 227-262.
Yet we did esteem him stricken - Lowth, ‘Yet we thought him judicially stricken.’ Noyes, ‘We esteemed him stricken from above.’ Jerome (the Vulgate), ‘We thought him to be a leper.’ The Septuagint renders it, ‘We considered him being in trouble (or in labor, ἐν πόνῳ en poiō) and under a stroke (or in a plague or divine judgment, ἐν πληγή en plēgē), and in affliction.’ Chaldee, ‘We thought him wounded, smitten from the presence of God, and afflicted.’ The general idea is, that they thought he was subjected to great and severe punishment by God for his sins or regarded him as an object of divine disapprobation. They inferred that one who was so abject and so despised; who suffered so much and so long, must have been abandoned by God to judicial sufferings, and that he was experiencing the proper result and effect of his own sins. The word rendered ‘stricken,’ (נגוע nâgû‛a) means properly “struck,” or “smitten.”
It is applied sometimes to the plague, or the leprosy, as an act by which God smites suddenly, and destroys people Gen 12:17; Exo 11:1; Lev 13:3, Lev 13:9, Lev 13:20; 1Sa 6:9; Job 19:21; Psa 73:5, and very often elsewhere. Jerome explains it here by the word leprous; and many of the ancient Jews derived from this word the idea that the Messiah would be afflicted with the leprosy. Probably the idea which the word would convey to those who were accustomed to read the Old Testament in Hebrew would be, that he was afflicted or smitten in some way corresponding to the plague or the leprosy; and as these were regarded as special and direct divine judgments, the idea would be that he would be smitten judicially by God. or be exposed to his displeasure and his curse. It is to be particularly observed here that the prophet does not say that he would thus be in fact smitten, accursed, and abandoned by God; but only that he would be thus esteemed, or thought, namely, by the Jews who rejected him and put him to death. It is not here said that he was such. Indeed, it is very strongly implied that he was not, since the prophet here is introducing them as confessing their error, and saying that they were mistaken. He was, say they, bearing our sorrows, not suffering for his own sins.
Smitten of God - Not that he was actually smitten of God, but we esteemed him so. We treated him as one whom we regarded as being under the divine malediction, and we therefore rejected him. We esteemed him to be smitten by God, and we acted as if such an one should be rejected and contemned. The word used here (נכה nâkâh) means “to smite, to strike,” and is sometimes employed to denote divine judgment, as it is here. Thus it means to smite with blindness Gen 19:11; with the pestilence Num 14:12; with emerods 1Sa 5:6; with destruction, spoken of a land Mal 4:6; of the river Exo 7:25 when he turned it into blood. In all such instances, it means that Yahweh had inflicted a curse. And this is the idea here. They regarded him as under the judicial inflictions of God, and as suffering what his sins deserved. The foundation of this opinion was laid in the belief so common among the Jews, that great sufferings always argued and supposed great guilt, and were proof of the divine displeasure. This question constitutes the inquiry in the Book of Job, and was the point in dispute between Job and friends.
And afflicted - We esteemed him to be punished by God. In each of these clauses the words, ‘For his own sins,’ are to be understood. We regarded him as subjected to these calamities on account of his own sins. It did not occur to us that he could be suffering thus for the sins of others. The fact that the Jews attempted to prove that Jesus was a blasphemer, and deserved to die, shows the fulfillment of this, and the estimate which they formed of him (see Luk 23:34; Joh 16:3; Act 3:17; 1Co 2:8).
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 Sorrows. Healing them by his own afflictions, Matthew viii.…
Sorrows. Healing them by his own afflictions, Matthew viii. 15. Sickness is an effect of sin, which Jesus came to destroy, 1 Peter ii. 24 --- Leper, who was bound to have his face covered, ver. 3., and Leviticus xiii. 45. --- God. Payva (Def. Trin. iv.) assures us that many Jews were converted by the perusal of this chapter, and particularly of this verse, which may be rendered "as a God wounded and afflicted." (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv4–12 Surely . . . our griefs--literally, "But yet He…
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 Mat 8:17 quotes it. In the Hebrew for "borne," or took, there is probably the double notion, He took on Himself vicariously (so Isa 53:5-6, Isa 53:8, Isa 53:12), and so He took away; His perfect humanity whereby He was bodily afflicted for us, and in all our afflictions (Isa 63:9; Heb 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 (Mat 27:45), answering to the bruising of His heel; Satan's is to be eternal, answering to the bruising of his head (compare Isa 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; Psa 38:17). Mat 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 (Isa 33:24; Psa 103:3; Mat 9:2; Joh 5:14; Jam 5:15).
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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 (Lev. 13:1-59; Num 12:10, Num 12:15; Ch2 26:18-21).
smitten--by divine judgments.
afflicted--for His sins; this was the point in which they so erred (Luk 23:34; Act 3:17; Co1 2:8). He was, it is true, "afflicted," but not for His sins.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 4. Another turn occurs here. Already it seems to…
4. Another turn occurs here. Already it seems to have been implied that when, in the prophetic outlook, the Messiah should come, he would not come in the form or aspect expected. Now the confession is:
Surely — That is, actually.
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He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows — It is, indeed, an actual burden he has borne — that of our sorrows; also, that of expiation for our sins.
Did esteem him — Our opinion was, indeed, that he was, or had been, stricken. But struck with leprosy, as it were, for so the original may mean, or what was equal to the worst of diseases. He knew in his experience the suffering due to every form of evil.
Smitten of God — Visited of God, and thus to be looked upon as worthy to be despised and rejected.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv4–12 4. Surely he hath borne &c.] Render:
4. Surely he hath borne &c.] Render:
Surely it was our sicknesses that he bore
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and our pains that he carried.
The emphasis of contrast lies on the words our and he in both lines. To “bear” sickness is not to take it away (although that will be the effect of vicarious bearing of it) but simply to endure it (as Jer_10:19). In Mat_8:17 the words are applied to our Lord’s miracles of healing, but the prophet’s meaning plainly is that the Servant endured in his own person the penal consequences of the people’s guilt.
yet we did esteem &c.] Rather, while we accounted him stricken &c. The subject “we” is strongly emphasised, and the clause is circumstantial, introducing the people’s false estimate of the Servant as a concomitant of the main statement of the verse. “Stricken” is the expression used when God visits a man with severe and sudden sickness (Gen_12:17; 1Sa_6:9), especially leprosy, which was regarded as preeminently the “stroke” of God’s hand (Job_19:21; 2Ki_15:5; Lev_13:3; Lev_13:9; Lev_13:20) and the direct consequence of sin. That the Servant is pictured as a leper is suggested by several particulars in the description, such as his marred and disfigured form, and his isolation from human society, as well as the universal conviction of his contemporaries that he was a special object of the divine wrath; and the impression is confirmed by the parallel case of Job, the typical righteous sufferer, whose disease was elephantiasis, the most hideous form of leprosy. It has to be-borne in mind, of course, that the figure of the Servant is in some sense an ideal creation of the prophet’s mind, so that the leprosy is only a strong image for such sufferings as are the evidence of God’s wrath against sin.
4–6. While Isa_53:2-3 describe the natural instinctive impressions produced by the Servant’s appearance, Isa_53:4-6 reveal incidentally the moral judgement which the people were led to form regarding him. His unparalleled sufferings had seemed to them to mark him out as a special object of Jehovah’s anger (Isa_53:4), just as Job’s calamities were believed by his friends to be the evidence of great, though secret, sins. But it is the reversal of this judgement, and the perception thereby gained of the true nature of the Servant’s mission, that is the chief theme of this section. The people now see that although he suffered greatly he was himself innocent, and from this they have advanced to the conclusion that he suffered vicariously, bearing the penalty due to the sin of his nation. This change of attitude towards the Servant marks the beginning of repentance in the people; the consciousness of their own guilt takes possession of their minds when they read God’s judgement upon it in the chastisement borne by their substitute.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv4–12 (4) Surely he hath borne our griefs . .…
(4) Surely he hath borne our griefs . . .—The words are spoken as by those who had before despised the Servant of Jehovah, and have learnt the secret of His humiliation. “Grief” and “sorrow,” as before, imply “disease” and “pain,” and St. Matthew’s application of the text (Mat_8:17) is therefore quite legitimate. The words “stricken, smitten of God,” are used elsewhere specially of leprosy and other terrible sicknesses (Gen_12:17; Lev_13:3; Lev_13:9; Num_14:12; 1Sa_6:9; 2Ki_15:5). So the Vulg. gives leprosus. The word for “borne,” like the Greek in Joh_1:29, implies both the “taking upon himself,” and the “taking away from others,” i.e., the true idea of vicarious and mediatorial atonement.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv4–12 Surely he hath borne our griefs; or, surely they…
Surely he hath borne our griefs; or, surely they were our griefs which he bore. The pronouns are emphatic. Having set forth at length the fact of the Servant"s humiliation (vers. 2, 3), the prophet hastens to declare the reason of it. Twelve times over within the space of nine verses he asserts. with the most emphatic reiteration, that all the Servant"s sufferings were vicarious, borne for him, to save him from the consequences of his sins, to enable him to escape punishment. The doctrine thus taught in the Old Testament is set forth, (with equal distinctness in the Mat_20:28 Joh_11:50-52 Rom_3:25 Rom_5:6-8 Rom_8:3 2Co_5:18-21 2Co_8:9 Gal_3:13 Eph_1:7 1Pe_2:24, etc.) and forms the hope, the trust, and the consolation of Christians. and carried our sorrows. The application which St. Matthew makes of this passage to our Lord"s miracles of healing (8:17) is certainly not the primary sense of the words, but may be regarded as a secondary application of them. Christ"s sufferings were the remedy for all the ills that flesh is heir to. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God. They who saw Christ suffer, instead of understanding that he was bearing the sins of others in a mediatorial capacity, imagined that he was suffering at God"s hands for his own sins. Hence they scoffed at him and reviled him, even in his greatest agonies. (Mat_27:39-44) To one only, and him not one of God"s people, was it given to see the contrary, and to declare aloud, at the moment of the death, "Certainly this was a righteous Man". (Luk_23:47)
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON Vers. 4-6. The suffering Servant of Jehovah.
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I THE DESCRIPTION OF THE SUFFERING. It depicts, by simple force of language, its extreme intensity not a suffering springing from internal weakness of nature, and so withering and dying like a lamp for want of oil, but like a torch in its full flame bent and ruffled, and at length blown out by the breath of a north wind." It was a diffused suffering, according to the expression of the psalmist, "like water in his bowels, or oil in his bones." "In his person we may see grief in its height and supremacy, triumphant, crowned and arrayed in purple, grief reigning and doing the utmost that it was able." In proportion to the fineness of the nature is the sensitiveness, and in proportion to the sensitiveness, the capacity for suffering. In these words, "stricken, pierced, afflicted, crushed, beaten with stripes," we have a cumulation of strong touches in the picture. Add to this, "smitten of God." The allusion is said to be to leprosy, regarded as a punishment for grievous sin. (Num_12:9, 10 2Ki_15:5 Psa_51:7) "The measure of every passion is the operation of the agent. We must not measure the Divine strokes by the proportion of those blows which are inflicted by the greatest and most exasperated mortal. Every blow inflicted by the fiercest tyrant can reach no further than the body, and the body is but the dwelling-place, not any part, of the soul. None can reach the conscience but he who made it. God is able, merely by letting a few drops of his wrath fall upon the guilty conscience, so to scald with a lively sense of sin, that the man shall live a continual terror to himself. His own breast shall echo peals of vengeance to him every hour. Suffering must needs be grievous when infinite justice passes sentence, and infinite power does execution" (South). An "unparalleled greatness" of suffering is, then, here indicated.
II THE VICARIOUS NATURE OF THE SUFFERING. He bore our sicknesses; "the first of twelve distinct assertions in this one chapter of the vicarious character of the sufferings of the Servant." They are "because of our rebellions" and of "our iniquities." The punishment which is the means of "our peace" and welfare fell upon him; we have been healed through his stripes. The iniquity of all has been made to light upon him. "As the avenger of blood pursues the murderer, so punishment by an inner necessity overtakes the sinner. (Psa_40:12 Num_32:23; cf. Deu_27:15) And inasmuch as the Servant, by Jehovah"s will, has made himself the Substitute of the Jewish nation, it follows that the punishment of the latter must fall upon him." After all that has been written for ages upon this difficult subject of vicarious suffering or punishment, there remain difficulties not to be surmounted by our reason. How can punishment be transferred? How can the suffering due to the sinner be imposed upon an innocent person? How can any honest mind admit such a confusion of relation, even were it offered, as a means of escape from penalty? The answers to these questions are given in poetic metaphors, and analogies which do not reach to the heart of the matter, and forensic quibbles which are not lovely in connection with spiritual matters. For all that, there is something the heart of all men fixes upon as lovely, Divine, adorable, in the idea of a man laying down his life for his brethren, a patriot for his country. Much of this deep feeling enters into the old legends, often of a woman an Alkestis, a Makaria, a Hesione; often of a man a son of Mesa, King of Moab, a Menoikeus, a Curtius. If we begin to criticize, we lose the sense and spirit of these sweet stories. So with the great tradition of the Servant of Jehovah, and with the still greater tradition by which our lives and hearts have been formed.
III APPLICATION. Every Christian thinks of Christ when he reads these beautiful words. Who but he can inspire us with the willingness to "crucify the flesh, with the affections and lusts"? "Nature, indeed, cannot, will not, prompt it; but Christianity, which rises many strains above nature, must and will. The best sacrifice to a crucified Saviour is a crucified lust, a bleeding heart, and a dying corruption. Let the ambitious man lay his pride in the dust, the covetous man deposit his treasures in the banks of charity and liberality, and let the voluptuous epicure renounce his cups and his whores, and this will be a present to Heaven better than a whole hecatomb; nor could the fruit of his body fall so grateful a sacrifice upon God"s altar as the sin of his soul" (South). J.
Vers. 4, 5. The Divine account of the sufferings of Christ.
In these words, which remain ever fresh and sacred, though they are so familiar to our hearts, we have
I A SAD AND STRIKING PICTURE. It is the picture of the Servant of the Lord, wounded, bruised, chastened, stricken. We cannot fail to see in it the sufferings of the holy Saviour. We see him:
1. Wounded in body; not only a-hungered and athirst, not only weary with long-continued labours and without the promise of the soft pillow. of rest when the day was done, but suffering, beyond this, the laying on him the hard, rough hand of a brutal soldiery, the cruel smiting and scourging, the piercing of hand and foot with the remorseless nail, the pains and pangs of crucifixion. But beyond this, immeasurably more serious and more severe than this, we see him:
2. Wounded in spirit; bruised in soul by the shortcoming, the inconstancy, even the treachery of his own friends, by the superficiality and frailty of the outer band of his disciples, by the intense and inappeasable malignity of his enemies, by the sight of sickness and sorrow, by the pressure and burden of human sin; all this weight of evil crushing his holy and tender spirit.
II A NATURAL BUT A FALSE CONCLUSION. "We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted," i.e. on account of his own sins. It was natural that men should think thus; there are facts which go to support though they do not justify it.
1. It is true that sin and suffering are very closely and causally connected. All sinners are, as such, sufferers.
2. It is true that, as a rule, great sinners are great sufferers. It was not accidental that Antiochus Epiphanes, Herod the Great, Philip II of Spain, and other men, who, like them, committed enormities of wrong-doing, endured terrible pains of body and fearful remorse of spirit. But it does not follow that a very great sufferer is a very great sinner. For it is also true
(1) that some of the purest and saintliest of mankind have been visited with severest bodily pains, or have passed through most trying troubles, or been called to endure heaviest afflictions.
(2) And that the great Teacher warned us against pushing this doctrine to a perversion of the truth. (Luk_13:3)
(3) And we know that it was wholly inapplicable to the Lord himself. He who suffered mere than any other of the children of men was that one Son of man who "did no sin, and in whose mouth no guile was found;" he was the innocent, the pure, the just, the righteous One.
III THE DIVINE ACCOUNT OF IT. "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows... he was wounded for our transgressions," etc. But is it credible or is it even possible that the innocent One would or could suffer for us the guilty ones? Why not? Being such a One as he is the pitiful, compassionate, magnanimous One, it is exactly what we might expect he would do.
1. Involuntarily, we are continually bearing one another"s griefs. One sins and another suffers, beneath every sky and from generation to generation.
2. Voluntarily we suffer in one another"s stead. The father willingly suffers and strives that his son may not endure all the threatened consequences of his guilty folly; the mother eagerly endures greatest privations that her daughter may be spared the dishonour which is her due; the friend gladly shares, halves the trouble, the anxiety, the loss, into which his old companion has fallen. Just as men are magnanimous and noble-minded, so do they carry the sorrows of their fellows, so are they willingly wounded and bruised for the transgressions of their kindred and their friends. And if we, being evil, will do this, how much more our Father who is in heaven! if we, whose thoughts and ways are so comparatively low, how much more he whose thoughts and whose ways are as much higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth! It is just the very thing we should look for from the heavenly Father.
IV THE PRACTICAL CONCLUSION. That we should, by a living faith in the Divine Redeemer, avail ourselves of the work he wrought when he suffered for us. Otherwise we shall not know the peace and rest of heart which he came to secure us. C.
Vers. 4, 5. Man"s thoughts of God"s Sufferer.
The prophet sets before us an unusual Sufferer, and bids us think what can be the explanation of such sufferings.
1. It might be punishment for sin; as was David"s bitter trial in the matter of Absalom.
2. It might be discipline of character; as was the suffering of Job. Neither of these will suffice for the case that Isaiah presents.
3. It might be vicarious, a burden-bearing for others. This only will suffice to explain the unusual woes of Messiah. Treating the subject more fully, we note
I MAN"S EXPLANATIONS OF THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST"S SUFFERINGS. "We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
1. Take the case of a man who was told of our Lord"s sufferings and death, but had no knowledge of his personal innocence. Such a man would know that God has established a direct connection between sin and suffering. Suffering is the universal and necessary consequence of sin. The association is plain in regard to our bodily nature. Disregard of the rules of health, exposure to changing seasons, or indulgence in unwholesome food, are certainly followed by bodily suffering and peril. Adam sinned, and at once suffering came, in the upwelling of passion, the hiding of God"s favour, and the loss of Eden. Cain sinned, and suffering came, as remorse and disgrace. David sinned, and his "bones waxed old through his roaring." Such a man, then, would have good grounds for suspecting sin wherever he found suffering, and for arguing that there must be unusual sin if there is unusual suffering. Job"s friends argued thus; and, so far as surface-truth is concerned, they argued fairly enough. We cannot wonder if the man should say that Christ"s sufferings must be explained on the ground that Christ has sinned, and is bearing the natural and necessary consequences of his transgressions. To the casual observer there was nothing so extraordinary about Christ"s sufferings as to make his an exceptional case, requiring an exceptional explanation. He was condemned after trial by Pilate; he was only treated in accordance with the custom of the age; he made high pretensions, he called himself "King of the Jews," and so, when he was condemned, the Roman soldiers taunted him, and Jewish fanatics insulted him. And such a man would have a further right to say that God"s hand of judgment was in his sufferings. Human laws, if they are to gain the respect of men, must be regarded as applications and adaptations of God"s law. When a man is convicted and punished by human law, we ought to feel that he is punished by God. Then, as Christ was delivered up to death by Pilate, the administrator of law, a man may fairly infer that Christ was "smitten of God." Thus Jewish bigots seem to have thought of the Nazarene malefactor. As they looked on that crucified group, why should they think differently of the central Sufferer? Why may they not say of all the three what the one robber said to the other, "We indeed suffer the due reward of our deeds"?
2. Take the case of a man who has some knowledge of Christ"s life, and some impression of his personal innocence. Such a man would regard Christ as strangely "afflicted;" his sufferings were calamities. The more he knew of the "blessed life" Jesus had lived, the more would he feel that such an early and such a humiliating death was inconceivably sad something to be mourned over, as was that death of Ulric Zwingle, when in the fulness of his power and influence. Calamity, that is, suffering of which the sufferer"s sin is not the immediate cause, is no uncommon thing in this world. The tower of Siloam fell, and buried beneath its ruins some of the people; but our Lord reminds us that those who perished were not sinners above all that dwelt at Jerusalem. The fall was, to them, a "visitation of God." In this way the man might fairly look upon the innocent Jesus, and say he fell a victim to the cruelty of his enemies. He attacked national vices, he aroused national hatred; he, like Socrates, fell through the wicked schemes of vile men. If the man knew that he was the Son of God, coequal with the Father, then that life of humiliation and death of shame must take place among the mysteries that baffle human intelligence. It is the mystery which has been hid from ages and from generations a mystery which God must unfold, or it never can be unfolded.
II GOD"S EXPLANATION OF THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST.
1. God maintains man"s view that the sufferings were his appointment. The special connection between Christ and God, in the work of human redemption, may be argued on these lines.
(1) Christ claimed to be a commissioned Agent. (Joh_4:34 Joh_6:38 Joh_8:42)
(2) God himself bore witness to Christ as his Son and Messenger, expressing his relation to and interest in the work which Christ came to do (see testimonies at our Lord"s baptism and transfiguration).
(3) The witness of both the previous and the subsequent revelation is in favour of the connection. (see Psa_40:7 1Jn_4:14)
1. The sufferings of Christ bore no relation to his own personal guilt. (see 2Co_5:21 1Pe_2:22 1Jn_3:5)
2. God distinctly affirms that Christ suffered as a Substitute, in place of guilty men, and that on him the burden and penalty of our transgressions rested. This is God"s answer to the supremely important question, "How can man be just with God?". R.T. (see Rom_4:25 1Pe_3:18 Heb_9:28)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv4–12 Surely He hath borne our griefs
Isa_53:4-6
Surely He hath borne our griefs
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Christs love and mans unthankfulness
I.
CHRISTS LOVE.
1. The certainty of what is averred of Christ: Surely.
2. The acts of Christs obedience, set forth in two words: He hath borne, He hath carried.
3. The objects. They are griefs, sorrows.
II. MANS UNTHANKFULNESS, in censuring Christ and despising Him; and there consider--
1. The persons: We.
2. The guilt. Esteeming Christ stricken and smitten of God. (T. Manton, D.D.)
The pressure of the burden on God
My positions are these--
1. The Lord--electing to perpetuate the sinful race, to endure all the sorrow which Heaven would look upon, and the question which would fall upon His government through the existence of a world so full of wrong and wretchedness, in a universe whose order was his charge--stooped at once, in infinite, tender pity, to lift the burden, and to become a fellow-wayfarer in the sorrowful pilgrimage to which man had doomed himself by his sin. Suffering sin to live on and reproduce itself, with all its bitter fruits, in the universe which He made to be so blest, He needs must become its sacrifice; making the atonement for the sin which He did not on the moment crush, and bearing the burden of the sorrow which He did not at once destroy. And this is Divine love. It must share the sorrow which it allows to live on, though the fountain of the sorrow be a sin which he hates; it must lift and bear the burden which most righteous necessities lay heavily upon erring souls. We none of us know, even dimly, what is meant by Emmanuel, God with us. God always with us, incarnate from the hour when He announced Himself as the womans seed, and the destroyer of her foe. God with us, our fellow in all the dread experience into which our sharing in the sin of Adam has driven us; knowing Himself the full pressure of its burdens, and infinitely more nearly touched than we are by everything that concerns the dark, sad history of mankind.
2. The fellowship of God with the race in the very hour of the transgression infused at once a tincture of hope into the experience of the sinner, and made it, from the first, a discipline unto life instead of a judgment unto death.
3. This first promise to man, this fellowship of God with the sinning, suffering race, whose existence He perpetuated, pledged Him to the sacrifice of Calvary, the baptism of Pentecost, and the abiding of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, with the world. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
Christ the Burden-bearer
There are two questions which here suggest themselves--
I. WHAT BURDENS PRESSED ON CHRIST, WHICH COULD NOT HAVE BEEN HIS, UNLESS HE HAD TAKEN THEM UP?
1. By His incarnation He inserted Himself into our race, and by assuming our own nature, He felt whatever sorrows press on man as man
2. By His position He represented our race. As the Son of God, He is Heavens representative on earth. As the Son of Man, He is our Great High Priest, to intercede with Heaven. Thus all earths spiritual concerns rested on Him. Could such a work be entrusted to man, and He-be otherwise than a man of sorrows?
3. By His own personal sympathy He so felt for man, that He made the sorrows of others His own. His was no heartless officialism.
4. By suffering and sorrow, Christ not only discloses His own human sympathy, but by reason of the two-foldness of His nature, that human sympathy was an incarnation of the Divine!
5. But we have to take one more step, in accounting for the burden which lay upon Christ. He came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life, a ransom for many.
II. WHAT BURDENS DO NOT REST UPON US, THAT MUST HAVE BEEN OURS IF CHRIST HAD NOT BORNE THEM AWAY?
1. The burden of unatoned guilt rests on none! Behold the Lamb of God that beareth away the sin of the world!
2. The burden of hopeless corruption of nature need rest on none. When the Son of God came to be a sacrifice for us, He came to be also a Living
Root in us. He allied Himself with human weakness, and joined it to His almightiness, that in Him that weakness might be lost, and be substituted by everlasting strength.
3. The burden of unshared sorrows rests on none. Does our sorrow arise from the sin without us? That pressed more heavily on Christ than ever it can do on us. Does it come from personal trial? Christs were far heavier than ours. Does it come from the temptations of Satan? He was in all points tempted like as we are. But perhaps it may be said, By reason of the infirmities of the flesh, I am betrayed into impatience, murmuring and fretfulness and I cannot feel that Christ has lifted off that burden, for I am sure Christ never felt any fretfulness or impatience, and so He cannot sympathize with mine. But, strange as it may seem at first sight, it is just here that the perfection of Christs sympathy is seen. In this last-named course of sorrow there is a mixture of what is frail with what is wrong. But since Christs nature was untainted by sin, He can draw exactly the line between infirmity and sin, which sinful natures cannot do. Now, we do not want, and we ought not to wish for sympathy with the wrong, but only with weakness and frailty. How does Christ, then, meet this complex case! Distinguishing most clearly between the two, He looks on the infirmity, and has for it a fulness of pity; He discerns the sin, and has for that fulness of power to forgive it, and fulness of grace to remove it! In that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted.
4. The burden of dreaded death need rest on none. Christ passed through death that He might deliver them who through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage.
5. The great burden of the destiny of the human race rests not on us. Christ has taken that up. (C. Clemance, D. D.)
The death of Christ a propitiation for sin
Two things are asserted--
I. THAT THE MESSIAH SHOULD SUFFER NOT FOR HIS OWN SINS, BUT FOR OURS (Isa_53:4-5). This indeed is what His enemies would deny, esteeming Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted, for His own sins, His imposture, usurpation and blasphemy. But if we peruse the history of His life we shall find that the sum of all they had to lay to His charge was His presuming to act in a character which really did (but which they would not believe did) belong to him: that the whole course of His behaviour exemplified the most perfect integrity of heart and life, and showed Him to be the spotless Lamb of God, in whom there was no sin. Hence it follows that He must have suffered for the sins of others.
1. Some have put this gloss upon the words, He was wounded for--i.e., (they say) by our transgressions, and bruised by our iniquities. Or, that it was owing to the sins of the Jews that He suffered so much as He did. It was their malice, unrighteousness and envy that was the cause of all His suffering. But this construction is not only apparently forced, but is confuted by the whole scope and tenor of the prophecy. For He is not said to be smitten by the Jews, but for them; nay, that He was smitten of God for them, for it was the Lord that laid on Him the punishment of their iniquities.
2. Others say that He bore our sins by imputation, and was wounded for our transgressions, because our transgressions were imputed to Him, or reckoned as His. But you will say, perhaps, Were not our sins then imputed to Christ? I answer, I find no fault with the word, provided it be rightly understood and explained. If by imputation be meant, that our sins were actually made over or transferred to Him, so as to become His, I do not see how this can be conceived possible. But might they not be reckoned His? No, for that would be to reckon them what they were not, and what it was impossible they should be. But if by our sins being imputed to Christ be understood no more than that the punishment thereof was actually laid upon Him, this is easily conceived, and readily granted: that is what the sacred Scriptures everywhere say. If anything further be necessary to illustrate this affair, we may explain it by the case of the propitiatory sacrifices under the law, all which pointed at or prefigured the great Christian sacrifice under the Gospel. Those piacular victims were of Divine appointment. The sin-offerings, over the heads of which the priest was to confess the sins of the people, were substituted in the room of the offenders, and died instead of those sinners for whom they were offered. The sins of the people were not transferred over to the victim, but the victim was slain for the sins of the people. Lev_16:21-22 must of necessity be taken in a figurative construction: because the sins of a man can in no other sense be transferred to, or laid upon a beast, than by transferring upon it the punishment of them.
3. Others there are who acknowledge that Christ died for us, meaning thereby that He died for our sakes or for our good, and to set us a perfect example of patience and submission under sufferings; but not for our sins, or in our room and stead. But if Christ died for us as our Sacrifice, or as the sacrifices under the law died for the offenders (as He certainly did if they were proper types of Him), then He must have died in our room, and as substituted in our place.
4. Others think, that all those places of Scripture which speak of Christs death as a propitiation are to be explained in a figurative sense: that the apostles borrowed those sacrifical terms from the Jewish law, and applied them to the death of Christ, only by way of accommodation or analogy, not that the blood of Christ did really and properly expiate or atone for sin, any more than that of the Jewish sacrifices; but that He only died for us as a pledge to assure us that God would pardon and accept us upon our repentance. To which it may suffice to say, that the apostle does not speak of the death of Christ merely by way of analogy to the Jewish sacrifices, but as typified, represented and prefigured by them (Eph_5:2; Heb_9:13-14; Heb_10:4).
II. THAT THE GREAT END AND DESIGN OF CHRISTS SUFFERING FOR OUR SINS, WAS TO MAKE OUR PEACE WITH GOD. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, etc. These words plainly intimate to us the way whereby our peace is made with God, viz by our justification and sanctification. (J. Mason, M.A.)
Vicarious Sacrifice of Christ
In these words Isaiah declares the end of Christs sufferings. The Jews, who put Him to death, did esteem Him smitten of God, that is, crucified according to the will of God, for attempting to turn away men from the law of Moses. And, to this day, they speak of Jesus as one who suffered according to the law of God, for seducing the Israelites from the faith of their forefathers. The prophet gives a different view of Christs death. Instead of dying for His own sins, He was wounded for our transgressions.
1. There is no passage of Scripture in which the substitution of Christs sufferings, in place of those of the sinner, is more clearly revealed than in our text.
2. All agree that men are sinners, and that sin deserves punishment. But when we come to ask how it may be forgiven, and for what consideration God forgives it, we begin to differ. The Trinitarian doctrine is, that the eternal Son of God, the uncreated, and equal with the Father, became incarnate, and suffered the punishment of our sins, as our Substitute; and that for the sake of what He has done, we may be forgiven. They who are opposed to us, on the other hand, believe that Christ, a created being, but still so very exalted that He may be called a God--yet not the supreme God--took our nature upon Him, that He might teach men a purer religion than was ever before known, and set before them a perfect example, and thus draw them away from their sins; so that He saves us from our sins, not by atoning for them, but just as any merely good man does, who so teaches and practises as to lead men from sin to holiness. While engaged in this work, they assert further, that the Jews seized upon the Saviour and put Him to death; and Jesus, to show that He was persuaded of the truth of what He had taught, gave Himself up to die, just as Latimer and Ridley sealed their testimony with their blood; and that thus Christ may be said to have died for us, because He met His death in seeking to do us good. Some go a little further, and believe that God was so pleased with the holy life, and the martyr-death of His Son, that for His sake He is graciously inclined to forgive sin, just as the good conduct of one child may procure favours for an erring brother, for whom he pleads. They expect to be saved through their repentance, by the mercy of God; we expect salvation through the alone merits of the suffering Son of God.
3. Now let us go on to see how this great doctrine of our Church is sustained by Scripture.
4. But again, we ask attention to the fact, that Christs sufferings were not so much from man as from God, not bodily so much as of the soul. How do we account for this? If He was seized upon by the Jews, and died merely as a martyr, would God have withdrawn His presence from Him in His last agonies Would He not then have had, as other good men have had, the brightest views of the Divine presence and comfort? But it was just the reverse. The Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. It is said God made Christs soul, not His body alone, an offering for sin; it was foretold that it should be mental, not merely corporal suffering, that He should endure. And such, in fact, was the case.
5. How can these facts be explained on the Unitarian system? (W. H. Lewis, D.D.)
Redemption
I. THE NEED (Isa_53:6). Sheep, but astray; through following their own inclinations. Divine pity is on the selfish and the lost.
II. THE MEANS.
1. The reality of the redemption seen in the fact that Christ died. He did not die for His own sin; I am innocent of the blood of this just man, said His judge. He did not die through His own feebleness; I have power to lay down My life, etc., said Christ. He did not die by accident; the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all: it was the will of the Father, and foretold, and a fact.
2. The form of the redemption.
(1) The humiliation of Christ. The humiliation of Christ teaches the intensity of sin. Where sin is not felt His humiliation is misunderstood. We did esteem Him stricken, etc.
(2) The substitution of Christ. The substitution of Christ teaches the wealth in our redemption; where Christ is not known in His Divine nature the riches of salvation not fully appreciated.
III. THE EFFECT (Isa_53:5).
1. Sin atoned for, iniquity borne away.
2. Peace. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him. Being justified by faith we have peace.
3. Healing. We are free from sin to be the servants of God. The depth of His love the measure of our obligation. As that cannot be fathomed our obligation can never be fully realized. (R. V. Pryce, M.A., LL.B.)
Vicarious suffering
Great is the power of vicarious suffering in its endless varieties. By the struggles and the obstinate questionings of deep souls the world of ordinary men is redeemed and elevated. It is by His suffering prophets that God most truly saves the world. By the untold miseries of Job, by the deep grief of Isaiah, by the piercing sorrows of Paul, by the weary restlessness of Augustine, by the fiery agonies of Luther, by the sore trials of John Bunyan, by the spiritual travail of Wesley and Whitfield, by the brave endurance of Theodore Parker, by the torn heart of Robertson of Brighton, by the manifold diquietudes and internal gloom of the great army of bewildered doubters and baffled pioneers--by all these we have been led from the house of bondage and the city of destruction, from the valley of the shadow of death, into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (A. Crauford, M.A.)
Luther and Bunyan
By their agony and bloody sweat. it is given to sympathetic souls in every age to deliver the world to some extent. Thus by the stripes of Luther John Bunyan was healed. From Luthers commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians Bunyan received peace and victory. (A. Crauford, M.A.)
Vicarious suffering
Vicarious suffering, with its far-reaching influence, pervades the whole world. Assuredly this is not due to any after-thought of God. It is an essential part of the original arrangement. No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. (A. Crauford, M.A.)
Society an organism
The English Deists certainly erred in rejecting the true inner meaning of the doctrine of salvation by vicarious suffering. The Deists did not realize the truth that society is an organism. And our perception of this fact in the present day enables us to appreciate the real meaning of the doctrine of vicarious suffering. This truth shines all the more clearly, owing to the light of modern science, which has discredited the old Deism even more effectually than Bishop Butler did. (A. Crauford, M.A.)
Sadder and mysterious aspects of vicarious suffering
Some of these aspects are so unspeakably sad that it is only in the light of a future life that I can bear to gaze upon them. We do but skim over the surface of the deep mystery of vicarious suffering, unless we recognize the fact that the spiritual world is full of wasted lives, of marvellous abortions, of grand and heroic failures, of illustrious scapegoats dying in the bleak wilderness of ignominy and defeat, bearing away the sins of the many, and yet by them misunderstood, condemned, and anathematized. In many respects these outcast scapegoats of the spiritual world are the truest saviours of our race, though by commonplace religionists they are numbered with the transgressors, and die unhealed and unredeemed, and make their graves with the wicked. (A. Crauford, M.A.)
The worlds majestic failures
The worlds majestic failures are a sorrowful hint of Gods inexhaustible resources. (A. Crauford, M.A.)
The failure of one the gain of another
I suppose that no thoughtful person would think of denying the fact that predestined failure is the lot of many noble natures here on earth. They are stepping-stones on which others rise to higher things. Of each of them we might truly, affirm that he is thus addressed by others, Bow down, that we may go over. And, in meek obedience, he complies; so that we write concerning him, And thou hast laid thy body on the ground, and as the street to them that went over. Such souls are scapegoats of the race, bearing away the deficiencies and the sins of many into the wilderness of isolation, despondency, and disaster. They drink to the very dregs the cup of ancestral sinfulness, and their brethren thereby escape that fatal heritage of the soul. It seems as if it were necessary that they should be lost, in order that others may be saved. Consciously or unconsciously, they suck out the poison from the wounds of the human race. (A. Crauford, M.A.)
Vicarious sacrifice in the intellectual world
I In the intellectual world it is often expedient that one man should be sacrificed for the race. For instance, David Humes total want of spirituality, though extremely injurious to him individually, was probably highly beneficial to the race in one way, viz by showing to what monstrous conclusions intellect by itself was likely to lead. And the very infirmities and aberrations of the intellect, in some men, are full of instruction for the race at large. Unrestrained imagination often mars or destroys the life of its possessor, as did that of Rousseau, but adds much to the worlds abiding mental wealth. (A. Crauford, M.A.)
Poisons as tonics
The spiritual poisons of individuals are often turned into tonics for the race. (A. Crauford, M.A.)
Stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted
Jesus, smitten of God
Smitten as with a loathsome leprosy--the curse-mark of judicial vengeance upon Him, for so it is rendered by St. Jerome, We thought Him to be a leper. (Jr. R Macduff, D.D.)
Stricken
Stricken is the expression used when God visits a man with severe and sudden sickness (Gen_12:17; 1Sa_6:9), especially leprosy, which was regarded as pre-eminently the stroke of Gods hand (Job 2Ki_15:5; Lev_13:3; Lev_13:9; Lev_13:20), and the direct consequence of sin. (Prof. J. Skinner, D.D.)
The Servant of the Lard pictured as a leper
That the Servant is pictured as a leper is suggested by several particulars in the description, such as His marred and disfigured form, and His isolation from human society, as well as the universal conviction of His contemporaries that He was a special object of the Divine wrath; and the impression is confirmed by the parallel case of Job, the typical righteous sufferer, whose disease was elephantiasis, the most hideous form of leprosy. It has to be borne in mind, of course, that the figure of the Servant is, in some sense, an ideal creation of the prophet s mind, so that the leprosy is only a strong image for such sufferings as are the evidence of Gods wrath against sin. (Prof. J. Skinner, D.D.)
The mystery of our Lords sufferings
I. THE MYSTERY OF CHRISTS SUFFERINGS--MANS EXPLANATION OF IT. We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. And it is impossible to say that this is other than a fair view to take from mans position and with mans knowledge.
1. Let us try and realize the process of mind in a man who was told of Christs sufferings and death, but had no knowledge of His personal innocence; no conception of Him as the spotless One, separate from sinners. Such a man would only decide that He was stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. To such a man it would be plain enough that God has established an immediate connection between sin and suffering. And yet we know, we feel, that this explanation of the mystery of our Lords sufferings is insufficient and incorrect. It does not lift the veil. It is altogether too commonplace. Good enough if Christ were a fellow-man. Worthless--nay, wholly wrong--if He be the spotless Lamb of God; if He be the Son of God with power.
2. Then let us try to realize the process of mind in a man who has some knowledge of Christs life, and especially of His personal innocence, as one who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth. Such a man might say, Christs sufferings were a specially and extraordinary Divine judgment. He was smitten of God. Such a knowledge of Christs life would convince the man that Jesus must have been a most amiable and excellent person, an obedient Son, a loving Friend, a gentle-hearted Brother; one who could claim to be a firm and wise moral Teacher. The man would feel sure that the influence of such an one as Jesus must have been very great upon His age. The fast departing moral life of Judaism ought to have had its flickering flame fanned afresh by the presence and teachings of such a Master-Spirit. And then, as he saw Him despised, persecuted, and at last put to the ignominious slaves death of the cross, what could he think about it all But this? It was a sad calamity, one of those mysterious Divine judgments that seem to come in every age, and puzzle sorely the sons of men. Man can only say of the sufferer--Smitten of God. In this way a man might fairly regard the innocent Jesus. Nay; this, too, is insufficient; it is but the beginning of an explanation. A calamity! Yes, but only a seeming calamity, seeing that by dying He conquered death, led captivity captive, and opened the kingdom of heaven you to all-believers. Man cannot of himself explain the mystery of Christs sufferings. But he can be humble, and learn so much of the mystery as God may be pleased to reveal.
II. THE MYSTERY OF CHRISTS SUFFERINGS--GODS EXPLANATION OF IT. He was wounded for our transgressions, etc.
1. We may first notice that God sustains mans view, that the sufferings of Christ were His appointment; but He further declares that they were an unusual and altogether singular appointment.
2. Then Gods explanation declares that the sufferings of Christ bore no relation whatever to His own guilt.
3. God affirms, further, that Christ suffered as the Representative or Substitute, for others. Is it any wonder that an absorbing love should grow in our souls toward this vicariously-suffering Saviour? In the restoration of man to the Divine favour; in the great and gracious work of reconciliation, we can recognize three stages--
(1) A loving purpose cherished in the deep heart of the Holy Father, that He would recover, deliver, and save His lost, rebellious, prodigal children.
(2) That Divine and loving purpose effectually wrought out by God s well-beloved and only begotten Son, in His incarnate life, labours, sufferings, sacrifice and death.
(3) The third stage is yet incomplete. It is the voluntary and hearty acceptance, by the long sought children, of the redemption thus gloriously wrought for them. (R. Tuck, B.A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 Isa_53:6. All we like sheep have gone astray; we…
WANDERING SHEEP
Isa_53:6. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.
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Comparisons in Scripture are frequently to be understood with great limitation: perhaps, out of many circumstances, one only is justly applicable to the case. Thus, when our Lord says, “Behold, I come as a thief” (Rev_16:15)—common sense will fix the resemblance to a single point, that He will come suddenly and unexpectedly.
So, when wandering sinners are compared to wandering sheep, we have a striking image of the danger of their state, and their inability to recover themselves. Sheep wandering without a shepherd are exposed, a defenceless and easy prey, to wild beasts and enemies, and liable to perish for want of pasture; for they are not able either to provide for themselves, or to find their way back to the place from whence they strayed. Whatever they suffer, they continue to wander, and if not sought out, will be lost. Thus far the allusion holds.
But sheep in such a situation are not the subjects of blame. They would be highly blameable, if we could suppose them rational creatures; if they had been under the eye of a careful and provident shepherd, had been capable of knowing him, had wilfully and obstinately renounced his protection and guidance, and voluntarily chosen to plunge themselves into danger, rather than to remain in it any longer.
Thus it is with man.
1. His wandering is rebellious. God made him upright, but he has sought out to himself many inventions (Ecc_7:29).
2. God has appointed for mankind a safe and pleasant path, by walking in which they shall find rest to their souls; but they say, “We will not walk therein” (Jer_6:16).
3. They were capable of knowing the consequences of going astray, were repeatedly warned of them, were fenced in by wise and good laws, which they presumptuously broke through.
4. When they had wandered from Him, they were again and again invited to return to Him, but they refused. They mocked His messengers, and preferred the misery they had brought upon themselves to the happiness of being under His direction and care.
Surely He emphatically deserves the name of the Good Shepherd, who freely laid down His life to restore sheep of this character.—John Newton: Works, p 712.
We are like sheep,
1. In our proneness to err. No creature is more prone to wander and lose his way than a sheep without a shepherd. So are we apt to transgress the bounds whereby God has hedged up our way (Jer_14:10). This has been manifest in every period of our life (Psa_25:7; Psa_19:12).
2. In our readiness to follow evil example. Sheep run after one another, and one straggler draweth away the whole flock; and so men take and do a great deal of hurt by sad examples. Sheep go by troops, and so do men follow the multitude to do evil; what is common passeth into our practice without observation (Eph_2:2-3).
3. In our danger when we have gone astray. Straying sheep, when out of the pasture, are in harm’s way, and exposed to a thousand dangers. Oh, consider what it is for a poor solitary lamb to wander through the mountains, where, it may be, some hungry lion or ravenous wolf looketh for such a prey. Even so is it with straying men: their judgments sleepeth not; it may be in the next hour they will be delivered to destruction (Jer_7:6-7; Rom_3:16).
4. In our inability to return into the right way. Other animals can find their way home again, but a strayed sheep is irrecoverably lost without the shepherd’s diligence and care. “I could wander by myself, but could not return by myself” (Augustine).
5. In our need of a redeemer.
CONCLUSION.—Has the Good Shepherd brought us back? Then,
1. Let us magnify His self-sacrificing and tender mercy, in following us, and bringing us into the pastures where there is at once safety and true satisfaction.
2. Let us remember for ourselves, and preach to others, that the sheep do not fare the better for going out of the pasture. In departing from God, we turn our back upon our own happiness. The broad and easy ways of sin are pleasing to flesh and blood, but destructive to the soul. Adam thought to find much happiness in forbidden fruit, to mend and better his condition, but was miserably disappointed. The prodigal did not fare well in the far country (Luk_15:14).
3. Let us pray for grace that we may be watchful in the future. Alas, which of us has not sad need to make our own the Psalmist’s confession and prayer (Psa_119:176)? Though our hearts be set to walk with God in the main, yet there is still in them a proneness to swerve from the right way, either by neglecting our duty to God, or by transgressing against His holy commandment; against this let us be on our guard, that we may not again grieve our Good Shepherd!—Thomas Manton, D.D.: Complete Works, vol. iii. pp. 300–303.
We wander, I. Like sheep, without reason—the pasture was rich, the shepherd kind, the food scarce.
II. Like sheep, aimlessly. The lion prowls for food, the hart in search of water, the sheep without aim.
III. Like sheep, persistently, despising the coming shades of evening, the distant bleatings of the abandoned flock, the loss of fleece and smarting wounds.
IV. Like sheep in peril—defenceless, surrounded by dangers and foes.
V. Like sheep—sought; the Good Shepherd calls to us, “Return.”—Stems and Twigs, second series, pp. 267.
It is acknowledged here by the person speaking, that all had, like sheep, broken the hedge of God’s law, forsaken their good and ever blessed Shepherd, and wandered into paths perilous and pernicious. We are not likened to one of the more noble and intelligent animals, but to a silly sheep. All sin is folly, all sinners are fools. You will observe that the creature selected for comparison is one that cannot live without care and attention. There is no such thing as a wild sheep. The creature’s happiness, its safety, and very existence, all depend upon its being under a nurture and care far above its own. Yet for all that the sheep strays from the shepherd. If there be but one gap in the hedge, the sheep will find it out. If there be but one possibility out of five hundred that by any means the flock shall wander, one of the flock will be quite certain to discover that possibility, and all its companions will avail themselves of it. So is it with man. He is quick of understanding for evil things. But that very creature which is so quickwitted to wander is the least likely of all animals to return. And such is man—wise to do evil, but foolish towards that which is good. With a hundred eyes, like Argus, he searches out opportunities for sinning; but, like Bartimeus, he is stone blind as to repentance and return to God.
The sheep goes astray ungratefully. It owes everything to the shepherd, and yet forsakes the hand that feeds it and heals its diseases. The sheep goes astray repeatedly. If restored to-day, it may not stray to-day, if it cannot; but it will to-morrow, if it can. The sheep wanders further and further, from bad to worse. There is no limit to its wandering except its weakness. See ye not your own selves as in a mirror?—C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 925.
DIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUALITY IN TRANSGRESSION
Isa_53:6. We have turned every one to his own way.
I. A NOTICEABLE FACT.
We all resemble each other, in that we all like sheep have gone astray; but we all differ from each other, more or less, in the manner of our departure from God. There are many ways of sinning; though there be one path to heaven, there are many roads to hell. Each man chooses his own road and the choices vary for several reasons:—
1. Because each mind is more or less individually active. While in an unrenewed condition, it is active in devising means for its own gratification (Psa_64:6).
2. Because of the diversity of our constitutions. We see plainly that the body hath some indirect influence on the mind, and that the condition of the mind follows the constitution of the body. Moreover, Satan adapts his temptation according to what he perceives to be our constitutional tendencies (H. E. I. 4680).
3. Because of the variety of our businesses and position in the world. Many men are engaged in ways of sin because they best suit with their employments; it is the sin of their calling, as vainglory in a minister (1Ti_3:6). So worldliness suits a man of business, or deceitfulness in his trade. Callings and businesses have their several corruptions, and into these, through the wickedness of their hearts, men slide.
4. Because of the differences in our education. Their education in the home as well as in school!
5. Because of the differences in the company into which we are drawn, and of the examples that are thus set before us. Men learn from those with whom they converse. Hence come national sins, partly, as they run in the blood, but more by way of example. Of the German we learn drunkenness and gluttony; of the French wantonness, &c. Hence also come individual sins. Hence the importance of shunning the society of the evil, and consorting only with the godly (H. E. I. 2123–2148, 4693, 4700).
II. PRACTICAL USES TO BE MADE OF THIS FACT.
1. Do not be too ready to bless yourselves, merely because the sins of others do not break out upon you; do not flatter yourselves because you do not run into the same sins that others do. The devil may take you in another snare that suiteth more with your temper and condition of life. Some are sensual, some vainglorious, some worldly, &c.; many meet in hell that do not go thither the same way. A man may not be as other men, and yet he may not be as he should be (Luk_18:11). For many reasons men made light of the invitation to the marriage feast (Mat_22:5), but each excuse ruined. One hath business to keep him from Christ, another pleasures, another the pomps and vanities of the present world, another his superstitious observances; but each of these things obstructs the power of the truth, and the receiving of Christ into the soul. Thou hatest this or that public blemish, but what are thy faults? (Joh_8:7.) Do not rashly censure others, and descant on their faults; look within!
2. Stop your way of sinning; pluck out thy right eye, cut off thy right hand (Mat_5:29-30). Your trial lieth there, as Abraham was tried in the call to offer up his Isaac; and David voucheth it as a mark of his sincerity (Psa_18:23).
3. As we look back upon our past, and humble ourselves before God, let us penitently confess, not only the sinfulness of our nature, which we have in common with all men, but also the personal transgressions by which individually we have grieved Him.
4. As to our future, there are two things we must do.
(1.) We must walk circumspectly. We must look carefully at and around our way, and make sure that it is also the way of God (Pro_4:26-27; Pro_14:12); remembering that while there are many evil paths, there is but one right one. To save us from mistake, four waymarks have been mercifully given us. First, at the entrance of the way which leads to life everlasting there is a strait gate—so strait that we can enter it only by putting off all our sins, and giving ourselves entirely to the Lord. Secondly, it is a narrow way, and sometimes a very rugged way, so that much self-denial is needed to enable us to continue in it. Thirdly, it is a way in which you have little company (Mat_7:14). Fourthly, it is a way in which, if we look carefully, we can discern Christ’s footsteps (1Pe_2:21).
(2.) We must walk prayerfully, day by day asking God to keep us in His way. It is pleasanter the further it is pursued, and it conducts to a glorious resting place (Pro_3:17).—Thomas Manton, D.D.: Works, vol. iii. pp. 304–308.
GUILT CONFESSED, MERCY ACKNOWLEDGED
Isa_53:6. All we like sheep have gone astray, &c.
Our text expresses the sentiment of those, and of those only, who are acquainted with the misery of our fallen state, feel their own concern in it, and approve of the method which God has provided for their deliverance and recovery. It contains—
I. A CONFESSION OF GUILT AND WRETCHEDNESS. “All we … way.”
1. It is a sufficient proof of our depravity, that we prefer our own ways to the Lord’s; nor can He inflict a heavier judgment upon us in this life, than to give us up entirely to the way of our own hearts.
2. There is only one right way, but a thousand ways of being wrong. If you are not following Christ, you are wandering from God. The profane and the self-righteous, the open sinner and the hypocrite, the lover of pleasure and the lover of gold, the formal Papist and the formal Protestant, though they seem to travel different roads, though they pity or censure each other, will meet at last (unless the grace of God prevent) in the same state of final and hopeless misery. Whatever character you may bear amongst men, if you have not faith and holiness, you certainly are not in the way of life (Mar_16:16; Heb_12:14).
3. As wandering sheep are liable to innumerable dangers which they can neither see nor prevent, such is our condition, until, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are stopped, and turned, and brought into the fold of the Good Shepherd.
II. AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MERCY.
Where sin abounded, grace has much more abounded. Man sinned, and Messiah suffered. “The Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.” On what grounds! On the ground of His voluntary substitution for sinners, as their covenant head and representative (H. E. I. 396).—John Newton: Complete Works, pp. 712, 713.
In few words, this text contains the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. It consists of lamentation and consolation.
I. LAMENTATION.
It is a lamentation over human sinfulness. “All we … way.” Here is sinfulness—
1. In its nature. It is a departure from God. It is transgression of the law which defines the boundaries within which God’s responsible creatures should keep. If they overleap or break them down, if they trespass into the territories beyond, they become sinners. Man has strayed from God.
2. In its reality. It is no ideal thing. It has passed into history. It is the sternest of living facts. From the fatal hour when the first transgression was committed, the holy God has witnessed the perpetration of sins beyond the power of any intellect other than His own to enumerate or estimate. But He numbers and estimates them with unerring accuracy.
3. In its universality. There are no exceptions. “All.” The whole flock has followed the leader. The manner in which this is to be accounted for may be disputable, may be mysterious. The fact is neither. Scripture, history, observation, experience unite in the testimony that, with the exception of the incarnate Son of God, all have sinned.
4. In its variety. It does not run onwards in a straight line, as the sinfulness which appears in action would if it were merely imitation of example. The various modes of sin show that it results from a radical tendency to sin in the present state of human nature. According to peculiarities of circumstances, taste, temperament, men transgress. Ten thousand paths of sin strike off in as many directions, each possessing its peculiar attraction to different characters and dispositions. A lamentable ingenuity is displayed in the invention of various ways in which God may be sinned against.
5. In its degrees. The universality predicted of it does not imply that every one is equally sinful. Every sheep of the flock has wandered from the fold, some further than others. But let not this be made a refuge from the accusations of conscience. Because some one has committed fewer crimes than his neighbour, he persuades himself that his case calls for no alarm. He imagines that because wickedness is universal, it has overgrown the power of God to punish it; that there is something in the crowd which lessens the wretchedness of the individual; that the sin and misery of others will be greater than his own. He deems it impossible for himself to fall over the precipice, because it is not so near the point of departure as the pit which opens to engulph another who has chosen a different and swifter road to ruin. One transgression constitutes a sinner. Perhaps you underrate your own transgressions and overrate those of others. The degrees of guilt God alone understands. He sees and knows the heart’s wickedness.
All, then, have gone astray. All are guilty. All need mercy. This is the lamentation of the text. But it contains also
II. CONSOLATION.
“The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” It is found in the substitution of the suffering Saviour. This truth may be—
1. Explained. Our iniquities have been laid on Christ the Son of God. No inferior person could bear such a load. The story of Jesus is the story of Him who has placed Himself, although innocent, in the sinner’s position before the law. His death was instead of the death the sinner deserved.
2. Confirmed. Those who by wicked hands crucified Him were the instruments by whom the determinate counsel of God was carried out. The Lord appointed Him. He prepared the way by type, and prophecy, and history. He has accepted the atoning sacrifice. He declared it openly by the resurrection from the dead. He was thus proclaimed in the preaching of apostles (2Co_5:21).
3. Applied. Is this consolation for you? Are you drinking life from this fountain? Have you, as a penitent sinner, applied for this mercy? Is Jesus your trust? Then your debt is paid. You owe it no longer. What you owe is gratitude and love to Jesus. Dismiss distress and fear. Enter into the liberty which shows itself in loving services.—J. Rawlinson.
SIN LAID ON JESUS
Isa_53:6. 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.
The verse opens with a confession of sin common to all the persons intended in the verse. The confession is also special and particular. It is the mark of genuine repentance that while it naturally associates itself with other penitents, it also feels that it must take up a position of loneliness. “We have turned every one to his own way” is a confession importing that each man had sinned against light peculiar to himself, or sinned with an aggravation which he at least could not perceive in his fellow. It is very unreserved. There is not a single syllable by way of excuse; there is not a word to detract from the force of the confession. It is moreover singularly thoughtful, for thoughtless persons do not use a metaphor so appropriate as the text: “All we like sheep have gone astray”—like a creature cared for, but not capable of grateful attachment to the hand that cares for it; like a creature wise enough to find the gap in the hedge by which to escape, but so silly as to have no propensity or desire to return to the place from which it had perversely wandered; like sheep habitually, constantly, wilfully, foolishly, without power to return, we have gone astray. I wish that all our confessions of sin showed a like thoughtfulness, for to use words of general confession without our soul entering into them may be but a “repentance that needeth to be repented of,” an insult and mockery to high Heaven vented in that very place where there ought to have been the greatest possible tenderness and holy fear.
I. Let us consider the text by way of exposition.
1. It may be well to give the marginal translation of the text, “Jehovah hath made to meet on Him the iniquity of us all.” The first thought that demands notice is the meeting of sin. Sin I may compare to the rays of some evil sun. Sin was scattered throughout this world as abundantly as light, and Christ is made to suffer the full effect of the baleful rays which stream from the sun of sin. God as it were holds up a burning glass, and concentrates all the scattered rays in a focus upon Christ. That seems to be the thought of the text, “The Lord hath focused upon Him the iniquity of us all.” That which was scattered abroad everywhere is here brought into terrible concentration; upon the devoted head of our blessed Lord all the sin of His people was made to meet. [1632]
[1632] Before a great storm when the sky is growing black and the wind is beginning to howl, you have seen the clouds hurrying from almost every point of the compass as though the great day of battle were come, and all the dread artillery of God were hurrying to the field. In the centre of the whirlwind and the storm, when the lightnings threaten to set all heaven on a blaze, and the black clouds fold on fold labour to conceal the light of day, you have a very graphic metaphor of the meeting of all sin upon the person of Christ; the sin of the ages past and the sin of the ages to come, the sins of those of the elect who were in heathendom, and of those who were in Jewry; the sin of the young and of the old, sin original and sin actual, all made to meet, all the black clouds concentrated and brought together into one great tempest, that it might rush in one tremendous tornado upon the person of the great Redeemer and substitute. As when a thousand streamlets dash down the mountain side in the day of rain, and all meet in one deep swollen lake; that lake the Saviour’s heart, those gushing torrents, the sins of us all who are here described as making a full confession of our sins. Or, to take a metaphor not from nature but from commerce, suppose the debts of a great number of persons to be all gathered up, the scattered bonds and bills that are to be honoured or dishonoured on such and such a day, and all these laid upon one person who undertakes the responsibility of meeting every one of them without a single assistant; such was the condition of the Saviour; the Lord made to meet on Him the debts of all His people, so that He became responsible for all the obligations of every one of those whom His Father had given Him, whatsoever their debts might be. Or if these metaphors do not suffice to set forth the meaning, take the text in our own version, “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all;” put upon Him, as a burden is laid upon a man’s back, all the burdens of all His people; put upon His head, as the high priest of old laid upon the scape-goat, all the sin of the beloved ones that He might bear them in His own person. The two translations are perfectly consistent; all sins are made to meet, and then having met together and been tied up in one crushing load the whole burden is laid upon Him.—Spurgeon.
The expression “laid on Him” is rendered in the margin “hath made to meet on Him,” and allusion is supposed to be made to the scape-goat (Lev_16:8-14). This ceremony was typical of the Great Sinbearer; but it is only a part of Christ’s atoning work, the other part being represented by the other goat which was slain in sacrifice. The scape-goat alone is not an adequate representation. Besides, the verb has a stronger meaning than the laying of hands on the head. It conveys the idea of violent collision—to strike, push, urge. “Jehovah hath made to strike or rush upon Him the iniquity of us all.” Our sin was the procuring cause of Christ’s death, and actually brought it about. He was appointed to occupy the place of sinners, and to bear the punishment which they had incurred, and which, but for His enduring it, they must have suffered in their own persons.
Other interpreters see a different figure in this clause. The verse, they think, would be disjointed and broken, unless the image introduced at the beginning be regarded as underlying the whole. As man’s transgression is exhibited as a strayed flock, the atonement made for them would naturally be represented as the means employed to bring them back to the fold, or to avert the evils to which they are exposed. Our iniquity is like a band of ravening wolves, but Jehovah appoints His Son to come in between us and our destroyers. This is the very picture which Jesus Himself draws (Joh_10:11). But we cannot understand the passage in this light, without doing violence to the language of the prophet. Were the figure carried out in the last clause, we should have some such statement as that of Peter (1Pe_2:25). We, therefore, take the words in their literal sense. The statement, no doubt, is obscure, and could not be fully comprehended until its fulfilment; but, viewed in the light of Gethsemane and Calvary, it has a fulness of meaning and a completeness of realisation. We must remember that the prophet views the death of Christ as just over; all His agonies are vividly before him, and he says, “The Lord hath caused the iniquity of us all to strike upon Him.” The standpoint of the prophet, from which he surveys his subject, is placed between the humiliation and the exaltation of our Lord, when He lay in Joseph’s tomb. From that point he looks back on the sufferings, and forward to the triumphs and glories of the Redeemer.—William Guthrie, M.A.
2. Sin was made to meet upon the suffering person of the innocent substitute. I have said “the suffering person,” because the connection of the text requires it (Isa_53:5). The Lord Jesus would have been incapable of receiving the sin of all His people as their substitute, had He been Himself a sinner; but He was the spotless Lamb of God, and therefore He was on all accounts capable of standing in the room, place, and stead of sinful men. The doctrine of the text is, that Christ did stand in such a position as to take upon Himself the iniquity of all His people, remaining still Himself innocent; having no personal sin, being incapable of any, but yet taking the sin of others upon Himself. Not only was Christ treated as if He had been guilty, but the very sin itself was, I know not how, laid upon His head (2Co_5:21). Is it not written, “He shall bear,” not merely the punishment of their sin, nor the imputation of their sin, but “He shall bear their iniquities”? Our sin is laid on Jesus in even a deeper and truer sense than is expressed by the term “imputation.”
3. It has been asked, Was it just that sin should thus be laid upon Christ? Our reply is fourfold. We believe it was rightly so,
(1.) Because it was the act of Him who must do right, for “the LORD hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
(2.) Christ voluntarily took this sin upon Himself (Joh_10:18; H. E. I. 913).
(3.) There was a relationship between our Lord and His people, which is too often forgotten, but which rendered it natural that He should bear the sin of His people. Why does the text speak of our sinning like sheep? I think it is because it would call to our recollection that Christ is our Shepherd. It is not that Christ took upon Himself the sins of strangers. Remember that there always was a union of a most mysterious and intimate kind between those who sinned and the Christ who suffered. The Lord Jesus stood in the relationship of a married husband unto His Church, and it was not, therefore, a strange thing that He should bear her burdens.
(4.) This plan of salvation is precisely similar to the method of our ruin. How did we fall? Not by any one of us actually ruining himself. Our own sin is the ground of ultimate punishment, but the ground of our original fall lay in another. If we grant the fall,—and we must grant the fact, however we may dislike the principle,—we cannot think it unjust that God should give us a plan of salvation based upon the same principle of federal headship.
4. Sin lying upon Christ brought upon Him all the consequences connected with it. [1635] God cannot look where there is sin with any pleasure, and though, as far as Jesus is personally concerned, He is the Father’s beloved Son in whom He is well pleased, it was not possible that He should enjoy the light of His Father’s presence while He was made sin for us; consequently He went through a horror of great darkness, the root and source of which was the withdrawing of the conscious enjoyment of His Father’s presence. More than that, not only was light withdrawn, but positive sorrow was inflicted. God must punish sin [1638] and though the sin was not Christ’s by His actually doing it, yet it was laid upon Him, and therefore He was made a curse for us.
[1635] For a more careful and discriminating statement of this point, see the outline by Dr. Alexander, p. 506.
[1638] 1. His attribute of justice, which is as undoubtedly a part of His glory as His attribute of love, required that sin should be punished. 2. As God had been pleased to make a moral universe to be governed by laws, there would be an end of all government if the breaking of law involved no penalty whatever. 3. Inasmuch as there is sin in the world, it is the highest benevolence to do all that can be done to restrain the horrible pest. It would be far from benevolent for our government to throw wide the doors of all the jails, to abolish the office of the judge, to suffer every thief and every offender of every kind to go unpunished; instead of mercy it would be cruelty; it might be mercy to the offending, but it would be intolerable injustice towards the upright and inoffensive. God’s very benevolence demands that the detestable rebellion of sin against. His supreme authority should be put down with a firm hand, that men may not flatter themselves that they can do evil and yet go unpunished. The necessities of moral government require that sin must be punished.—Spurgeon.
What were the pangs which Christ endured? I cannot tell you. You have read the story of His crucifixion. That is only the shell, but the inward kernel who shall describe? His griefs are worthy to be described according to the Greek Liturgy as “unknown sufferings.” The height and depth, the length and breadth of what Jesus Christ endured nor heart can guess, nor tongue can tell, nor can imagination frame; God only knows the griefs to which the Son of God was put when the Lord made to meet upon Him the iniquity of us all (H. E. I. 915). To crown all there came death itself. Death is the punishment for sin, and whatever it may mean, whatever over and beyond natural death was intended in the sentence, “In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,” Christ felt. Death went through and through Him, until “He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.” “He became obedient to death, even to the death of the cross.”
II. Now consecrate a few moments to hallowed contemplation. Think,
1. Of the astounding mass of sin that must have been laid on Christ (Joh_1:29; 1Jn_2:2). All the sins against light and knowledge, sins against law and gospel, week-day sins, Sabbath sins, hand sins, lip sins, heart sins, sins against the Father, sins against the Son, sins against the Holy Ghost, sins of all shapes, all laid upon Him!
2. The amazing love of Jesus, which brought Him to do all this (Rom_5:6-8. H. E. I. 920, 946–949).
3. The matchless security which this plan of salvation offers. I do not see in what point that man is vulnerable who can feel and know that Christ has borne his sin. I look at the attributes of God, and though to me, as a sinner, they all seem bristling as with sharp points, thrusting themselves upon me; yet when I know that Jesus died for me, and did literally take my sin, what fear I the attributes of God? (H. E. I. 2286). There is justice, sharp and bright, like a lance; but justice is my friend. If God be just, He cannot punish me for sin for which Jesus has offered satisfaction. As long as there is justice in the heart of Deity, it cannot be that a soul justly claiming Christ as his substitute can himself be punished. As for mercy, love, truth, honour, everything matchless, Godlike, and divine about Deity, I say of all these, “You are my friends; you are all guarantees that since Jesus died for me I cannot die.” How grandly does the apostle put it! (Rom_8:33-34).
4. What, then, are the claims of Jesus Christ upon you and upon me? Did our blessed Lord take your sin, my brethren, and suffer all its terrific consequences for you, so that you are delivered? By His blood and wounds, by His death, and by the love that made Him die, I conjure you treat Him as He should be treated! You will tell me that you have obeyed His precepts. I am glad to hear it. But if you can say this, I am not content; it does not seem to me that with such a leader as Christ mere obedience should be all. Napoleon singularly enough had power to get the hearts of men twisted and twined about him; when he was in his wars there were many of his captains and even of his private soldiers who not only marched with the quick obedience of a soldier wherever they were bidden, but who felt an enthusiasm for him. Have you never heard of him who threw himself in the way of the shot to receive it in his bosom to save the Emperor? No obedience, no law could have required that, of him, but enthusiastic love moved him to it; and it is such enthusiasm that my Master deserves in the very highest degree from us.—C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 694.
Our faith is retrospective as Isaiah’s was anticipatory; faith annihilates the past, and the believer stands in the presence of an actual cross. A stupendous fact is that to which our faith turns. Satan tried to lay iniquity on Christ, and failed. Having met Satan and the powers of evil in struggle after struggle, He yet challenged blame with absolute assurance (Joh_8:46). Wicked men strove to lay iniquity on Christ. Judas (Mat_26:4), Pilate (Mat_22:21). The Church of Jerusalem sought to lay iniquity on Him as guilty of impiety. But he was most devout. He received the sign of the covenant in circumcision, and feast days, &c., were observed by Him with conscientious devotion and carefulness. All these many powers were foiled in attaching sin to the person or character of Jesus Christ. What, then, means the darkness that gathers around the cross? “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” That which sinners failed to do, God in sovereignty that day accomplished, and this sinless Man has become the substitute for the race (2Co_5:21).
I. THE MEETING-PLACE OF ALL SIN IS THE CROSS OF CHRIST. In the margin, our text is rendered, “Hath made the iniquity of us all to meet on Him.”
II. THE MEETING-PLACE OF SIN IS THE MERCY-SEAT FOR ALL SINNERS.
1. How gracious is the assurance!
2. To rest in this assurance is to make sure of our salvation.
3. This should render our worship grateful.
CONCLUSION.—The imperative claim Christ has upon the soul. If you will not consent that your iniquites shall meet on Christ, bear them you must yourself.—Stephen H. Tyng, jr., D.D.: Study and Homilitic Monthly, new series, vol. iv. pp. 328, 329.
CHRIST BEARING OUR SINS
Isa_53:6. The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
1Pe_2:24. Who His own self bear our sins in His own body on the tree.
These texts are not unusual declarations of Scripture, but are of a very numerous class. The doctrine which they set before us is woven into the very texture of Christianity, and furnishes the great resting-place of faith. And, what is especially proper to be observed this day, it is the truth of all others which we are coming to celebrate at the holy table. Yet it has been so altered, and diminished, and shorn of its genuine dignity and proportions, that we often need to reexamine its meaning, and reassert the foundations of our faith. In our own day there is a manifest tendency to explain away its import, and to concede undue force to the objections of opponents. These objections have in many instances been aimed at opinions charged upon us, which we do not hold; at exaggerations, perversions, and even caricatures of the truth: and all the changes have been rung on the terms imputation, satisfaction, and substitution, as if these had been found chargeable with inherent injustice or absurdity. The very first thing, therefore, which we should attempt, is to clear away certain mists which have been conjured up around the Scriptural statement.
I. WHAT WE DO NOT MEAN BY CHRIST BEARING OUR SINS.
1. When we assert that Christ bore our sins, we do not mean that He was a sinner. He is, by way of eminence, “Jesus Christ the righteous.” Only as such could He ever have cleared away our guilt. He bore our sins, without bearing their power or their pollution. Of their vileness and lawlessness His soul had no experience.
2. We do not mean that He suffered, pain of conscience. Remorse is the necessary consequence of sin, and part of its punishment. But He who knew no sin, could know no repentance, no contrition, no personal regrets, no anguish of guilty self-accusation. Even in Gethsemane, when His soul was exceeding sorrowful, and on the cross, when He pierced heaven with His imploring cry, He could no more suffer compunction of conscience, than He could speak falsehood, or blaspheme.
3. We do not mean that Christ was at any time personally displeasing to God. He bore the wrath of God, but He bore it representatively. He never was more pleasing to God, He never was more righteous, He never was more acceptable and lovely, He never was more intensely and immeasurably fulfilling the will of God, than when He cried, Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani! If this exclamation has a difficulty, it is a difficulty for the adversaries of substitution: let them explain it. For our part, we hold it to be an awfully mysterious expression of the truth, that at that moment of darkness and earthquake, Jesus Christ was so involved in the consequences of our sin, as to sink under the sense of agony, and to feel the absence of all consoling divine influence. But while angels stooped to look into these things, they might have heard from the invisible throne the words of infinite complacency: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!” The all-holy Jehovah cannot hate holiness, and could not hate His only-begotten Son, in the exercise of the sublimest holiness which the universe has known.
4. We do not mean that there was any transfer of personal character. The chief strength of our opposers lies in this fallacy. They charge us with maintaining a transfer of personal attributes, and moral qualities, and easily triumph over the phantom which they have raised. We, as well they, hold such a transfer to be impossible and absurd: and (be it declared for the thousandth time) it is no such thing which we mean by the imputation of sins to Christ. Our sins must ever remain our sins, and the sins of no one else, as a matter of fact, as a historical verity, as a personal transaction. As deeds, and as connected with sinful motives and desires, they attach to our own persons, and are to be repented of, and eternally remembered by us as our own. And, on the other hand, Christ’s acts and sufferings, as matter of fact and history, are and cannot but for ever be, His own acts and sufferings, and those of no other being in the universe. There is no confounding of personality, nor has such a thing ever been maintained by our theologians, though assiduously and pertinaciously charged, during at least two centuries. We hold indeed an intimate and blessed union between the head and the members; we hold that our sins were visited on Him, and that His righteousness enures to our benefit, but we repudiate all such commingling of personality as this imagined tenet would convey.
II. WHAT WE DO MEAN WHEN WE ASSERT THAT CHRIST BORE OUR SINS.
1. The Lord Jesus Christ bore our nature. It was the all-essential preliminary to His whole work. To be our Head, “the Word was made flesh.”
2. Christ actually endured pain, It was in this way only that He could bear our sins.
3. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered for our sins. It is one of those truths which lie on the very surface of the Scripture, and which must be twisted into violent metaphor, before it can be robbed of its meaning. To give but a few instances—Isa_53:4-5; Rom_5:6; Rom_5:8; 1Co_15:3; 1Th_5:10; 1Pe_2:21; 1Pe_3:18; 1Pe_4:1.
They declare, first, that Christ’s sufferings were for us, and secondly, that they were for our sins. A friend, a father, a husband, a sister, may suffer, and yet not for us; or these beloved ones may suffer for us, and yet not for our sins. But the suffering of Jesus stands out with this striking peculiarity, that it is always represented as being, not only for our sakes, but for our sins.
4. Christ bore our sins, in this sense, that He bore the penalty of our sins. This is the primary, obvious, and necessary meaning of the words. “Christ died for us,” that is, died in our stead.
But here the adversary rejoins, that penalty must always attach to the person; that he who has sinned must be punished; and that the suffering of the innocent cannot benefit the guilty. If this were true, it would at once cut off all our hopes, and put an end to all proper atonement. But it is not true. The Church in all ages has held first, that sin for its own sake deserves the wrath and curse of God; and secondly, that to redeem us from the law, God sent His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, who in His own person fulfilled those demands, and endured that curse in our stead. And this is so far from violating any of our natural principles of justice, that it is of all things most suited to relieve and pacify the afflicted conscience.
The Scriptures represent the penalty as a debt, which our Surety pays for us (H. E. I. 383). We are familiar with substitution of this kind in civil cases, which would not be true, if such commutation were in itself repugnant to the common sense of justice among mankind. Ancient history has striking instances of similar substitution in criminal and capital cases. And the reason why this is not admitted in such cases, under modern jurisdiction, is not any injustice in the principle. The case, we admit, must be a peculiar one in which such a substitution can take place; and if ever there was a case thus peculiar, in which the innocent might suffer for the guilty, it is surely this. To make such suffering allowable, the innocent person must be one who has lordship and dominion over his own life; which men in common life have not; but which the Son of God had: “I lay it down of Myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” Again, the innocent surety must assume the place and penalty of his own free will: which was eminently and gloriously true of the Lord Jesus. Again, he must be able to answer all the demands of the law, for those whom he represented. Again, he must be able to restore himself from death: no mere man could do this, and therefore if such a substitution were to take place in a capital instance, the state would lose a good citizen. In the substitution, then, of this willing, glorious, triumphant Surety, there is no injustice, but infinite grace.
They object to us that it is incredible that the holy and just God should charge upon Christ the sins of others, and thus make the innocent suffer in the place of the guilty. But let them answer, Is it more credible, or more equitable, that the holy and just God should subject the innocent Redeemer to such sufferings, without any such imputation? Christ suffered and died. This is the admitted fact. Now, did He suffer as a surety for the sinner, taking his place? or did He suffer, without being a surety, as an innocent being, by a mere arbitrary infliction? The difficulty appears to be altogether with the objectors to atonement. [1641]
[1641] All the ancient sacrifices wrote in letters of blood the word Substitution. For what, after all, is the idea of sacrifice but the innocent dying for the guilty? It was an emblem which the feeblest mind might comprehend. There, on the altar, is a spotless lamb—the emblem of innocence. Here am I, a polluted sinner. I lay my right hand on the unblemished victim, and straightway it becomes in type a sinner. I should have died—but now the victim dies: it dies for me—it dies in my place. It was thus the way was prepared for the Lamb of God, that taketh away thesinof the world. It is not here and there, but everywhere, that the Bible thus represents the method of our salvation (Isa_53:5-6; Isa_53:10-12; Gal_3:13; 2Co_5:21). This doctrine is taught in expressions which cannot be mistaken by an unbiassed mind. And we never find unsophisticated persons troubled with those difficulties which have made this doctrine a stumbling-block to Jews and philosophers. There is something intelligible and lovely in Christ’s coming into our place and dying for us. Especially when a soul is overwhelmed with a sense of sin and dread of eternal wrath, the truth is the only thing which can give life.—Alexander.
5. Christ so bore our sins, as to remove from us all their penal consequences, and secure our salvation. By that suffering He exhausted the penalty and discharged the debt. He who believes, in the very moment of believing, becomes one with Christ, and graciously entitled to all that Christ has purchased for His people. The death of Christ is not merely a transaction which makes our pardon possible, contingent, or even probable: it secures it. It breaks all the penal force of the law. Whatever chastisements, even death itself, may henceforth befall the believer, none of them can befall him in the character of punishment. The law is as fully and eternally at peace with a justified sinner, as though he had never sinned. And this is the glad news which first of all brings peace to the soul of a convinced penitent. He beholds the Cross, and sees how God can be just, and yet the justifier of the ungodly that believeth in Jesus.
CONCLUSION.—
1. When we behold Christ bearing our sins, we should learn to look on sin with shame and horror. How intense must that evil be which demands such a sacrifice!
2. When we behold Christ bearing our sins, we should see in Him the object of saving faith. In all the universe of nature and grace—this is the point for the eye of a convinced sinner.
3. When we behold Christ bearing our sins, we have before us the greatest of all motives to personal holiness. When temptation comes in a like tide, cast your eyes to the Cross (H. E. I. 4589, 4590).—J. W. Alexander, D.D.: The Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii. pp. 222–226.
DIVINE LOVE IN CHRIST’S PASSION
Isa_53:6. The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
“I know the thoughts that I think towards you, thoughts of peace, and not of evil,” said the Lord to His people. And if we could know the thoughts He thinks towards us, we should hardly tell how to admire sufficiently His love for us, or to humble ourselves enough for our baseness towards Him.
The love which God hath for us is manifested in our creation, and in His continual care over us ever since we were born. But in a measure far beyond that in all other instances of His love, it is displayed in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ. But, unhappily, after all that is said of the redeeming love of God, with all the proofs of it in the wonderful things done for our salvation, many have little notion of the Divine kindness exercised in this great and glorious work. Were it better understood, more hearts would be melted into sorrowful contrition for sin, and thence brought to faith and holiness, and so prepared for the kingdom of God.
Let us consider, then, how awful is the accumulated weight of sin laid upon Jesus—“the iniquities of us all,” of the entire human race! (1Jn_2:2). Oh, how can we calculate the weight of this burden? how can we number and measure the sins of the whole world? how can we estimate the punishment due to them which our Saviour endured in our stead? The sins that began with the sins of Eve and Adam, and have been increasing in all times and climes ever since, how appalling their number! When we call to mind that one sin was sufficient, in the judgment of the righteous God, to condemn men to sorrow and death, we wonder not that the contemplation of the burden that awaited our Saviour in atoning for “the iniquities of us all” laid Him prostrate in Gethsemane, caused Him to sweat “as it were great drops of blood,” and to pray that if it were possible that “cup” might pass from Him. No man with his present confined faculties can form an adequate notion of the weight of affliction which Christ endured, when He stood in the place of a world of sinners. All we can say is, that it was something which was equivalent, in the scales of Divine justice, to the eternal punishment due to the sins of all mankind (1Pe_2:24; Rom_3:26). After all the notions I can form of the sufferings of Jesus, all that I can do as a thinker is to stand with awful astonishment contemplating the cross, overwhelmed with thoughts of the unseen and unknown sufferings of my Redeemer.
I. Now, our apprehension of the love of Jesus must run parallel with our apprehension of His sufferings. The more He had to endure, the greater effort of love must have been required to urge Him to undergo it. If a man, seeing another whom he loved condemned to a cruel death, were to go and suffer in his place, we should stand amazed at such a man, and say that he was possessed of an extraordinary measure of charity. How much more, if he were to endure for him the everlasting sufferings of hell! But, how incomprehensibly great would his charity appear, if he could call down upon himself sufferings equivalent to the eternal sufferings of the whole race of mankind! Yet when we contemplate Jesus on the cross, we see one having thus acted. How infinitely great, how stupendous, this makes the love of Christ appear!
The manner in which He suffered also manifests His love for us. With all the mighty love with which He was urged through His sufferings, with all the strength of firmness and resolution with which He endured to the end, with all the immeasurable greatness of His passion, and the vast amount of good He was accomplishing, still there was no vain display of His love or of His endurance, no boast of the great things He was effecting. Not a word did He utter of what He was enduring, or what He was purchasing for us. Humble and quiet lowliness and gentle meekness were the dispositions manifested in Him, through all that He did and suffered for us (Isa_53:7). Now, it is always true love that is the secret of lowly suffering for others. Who can see lowly sorrow, and humble patience and resignation in bitter affliction, especially when it is endured for the benefit of others, without a feeling of love towards the charitable sufferer? Must not that which we see manifested in Jesus attract us to Him, and excite in our hearts admiring love? (P. D. 2340, 2341).
II. In proportion to the sorrow and pain which were laid upon the Son of God, is the measure of the Father’s love in giving Him up to such suffering abasement for us. Here also we see that the Divine love is beyond all bound or measure of ours. If the sufferings and abasements of the Son were infinitely, immeasurably great, the love of the Father, who gave Him up to the pain and humiliation of the cross, must be incomprehensible also. Oh, where is our heart, that we are so little affected with God’s redeeming love; that our return for it is ingratitude and sin? But our very worthlessness magnifies the Divine love. Had it been for unhappy creatures in misery, but not in fault, that God gave His beloved Son, had it been even for those who would one and all prize, highly value, and abound in love for what was done for them, still the love of God in this unspeakable gift would have been immeasurably great; but how incomprehensibly vast does it appear, when we consider how offensive in God’s sight sin has made mankind, how great a portion of mankind never take any notice at all of the Divine love in the great redemption, and how slow the best of us are to see and be grateful for “the exceeding riches of His grace, in His kindness to us through Christ Jesus!” We feel that it rises above all speech or thought of ours (Rom_5:7-8. H. E. I. 2318–2337. P. D. 1468, 2345).—R. L. Cotton, M.A.: The Way of Salvation, pp. 78–91.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv4, 7, 10, 11, 12 Isa 53:4 - Isa 53:6.
Isaiah
THE SUFFERING SERVANT-II
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Isa 53:4 - Isa 53:6.
The note struck lightly in the close of the preceding paragraph becomes dominant here. One notes the accumulation of expressions for suffering, crowded into these verses-griefs, sorrows, wounded, bruised, smitten, chastisement, stripes. One notes that the cause of all this multiform infliction is given with like emphasis of reiteration-our griefs, our sorrows, and that these afflictions are invested with a still more tragic and mysterious aspect, by being traced to our transgressions, our iniquities. Finally, the deepest word of all is spoken when the whole mystery of the servant’s sufferings is referred to Jehovah’s making the universal iniquity to lie, like a crushing burden, on Him.
I. The Burdened Servant.
It is to be kept in view that the ‘griefs’ which the servant is here described as bearing are literally ‘sicknesses,’ and that, similarly, the ‘sorrows’ may be diseases. Matthew in his quotation of the verse {Mat 8:17} takes the words to refer to bodily ailments, and finds their ‘fulfilment’ in Christ’s miracles of healing. And that interpretation is part of the whole truth, for Hebrew thought drew no such sharp line of distinction between diseases of the body and those of the soul as we are accustomed to draw. All sickness was taken to be the consequence of sin, and the intimate connection between the two was, as it were, set forth for all forms of bodily disease by the elaborate treatment prescribed for leprosy, as pre-eminently fitted to stand as type of the whole. But the fulfilment through the miracles is but a parable of the deeper fulfilment in regard to the more virulent and deadly diseases of the soul. Sin is the sickness, as it is also the grief, which most afflicts humanity. Of the two words expressing the Servant’s taking their burden on His shoulders, the former implies not only the taking of it but the bearing of it away, and the latter emphasises the weight of the load.
Following Matthew’s lead, we may regard Christ’s miracles of healing as one form of His fulfilment of the prophecy, in which the principles that shape all the forms are at work, and which, therefore, may stand as a kind of pictorial illustration of the way in which He bears and bears away the heavier burden of sin. And one point which comes out clearly is that, in these acts of healing, He felt the weight of the affliction that He took away. Even in that region, the condition of ability to remove it, was identifying Himself with the sorrow. Did He not ‘sigh and look up’ in silent appeal to heaven before He could say, Ephphatha? Did He not groan in Himself before He sent the voice into the tomb which the dead heard? His miracles were not easy, though He had all power, for He felt all that the sufferers felt, by the identifying power of the unparalleled sympathy of a pure nature. In that region His pain on account of the sufferers stood in vital relation with His power to end their sufferings. The load must gall His shoulders, ere He could bear it away from theirs.
But the same principles as apply to these deeds of mercy done on diseases apply to all His deeds of deliverance from sorrow and from sin. In Him is set forth in highest fashion the condition of all brotherly help and alleviation. Whoever would lighten a brother’s load must stoop his own shoulders to carry it. And whilst there is an element in our Lord’s sufferings, as the text passes on to say, which is not explained by the analogy with what is required from all human succourers and healers, the extent to which the lower experience of such corresponds with His unique work should always be made prominent in our devout meditations.
II. The Servant’s sufferings in their reason, their intensity, and their issue.
The same measure that was meted out to Job by his so-called friends was measured to the servant, and at the Impulse of the same heartless doctrinal prepossession. He must have been had to suffer so much; that is the rough and ready verdict of the self-righteous. With crashing emphasis, that complacent explanation of the Servant’s sufferings and their own prosperity is shivered to atoms, by the statement of the true reason for both the one and the other. You thought that He was afflicted because He was bad and you were spared because you were good-no, He was afflicted because you were bad, and you were spared because He was afflicted.
The reason for the Servant’s sufferings was ‘our transgressions.’ More is suggested now than sympathetic identification with others’ sorrows. This is an actual bearing of the consequences of sins which He had not committed, and that not merely as an innocent man may be overwhelmed by the flood of evil which has been let loose by others’ sins to sweep over the earth. The blow that wounds Him is struck directly and solely at Him. He is not entangled in a widespread calamity, but is the only victim. It is pre-supposed that all transgression leads to wounds and bruises; but the transgressions are done by us, and the wounds and bruises fall on Him. Can the idea of vicarious suffering be more plainly set forth?
The intensity of the Servant’s sufferings is brought home to our hearts by the accumulation of epithets, to which reference has already been made. He was ‘wounded’ as one who is pierced by a sharp sword; ‘bruised’ as one who is stoned to death; beaten and with livid weales on His flesh. A background of unnamed persecutors is dimly seen. The description moves altogether in the region of physical violence, and that violence is more than symbol.
It is no mere coincidence that the story of the Passion reproduces so many of the details of the prophecy, for, although the fulfilment of the latter does not depend on such coincidences, they are not to be passed by as of no importance. Former generations made too much of the physical sufferings of Jesus; is not this generation in danger of making too little of them?
The issue of the Servant’s sufferings is presented in a startling paradox. His bruises and weales are the causes of our being healed. His chastisement brings our peace. Surely it is very hard work, and needs much forcing of words and much determination not to see what is set forth in as plain light as can be conceived, to strike the idea of atonement out of this prophecy. It says as emphatically as words can say, that we have by our sins deserved stripes, that the Servant bears the stripes which we have deserved, and that therefore we do not bear them.
III. The deepest ground of the Servant’s sufferings.
The sad picture of humanity painted in that simile of a scattered flock lays stress on the universality of transgression, on its divisive effect, on the solitude of sin, and on its essential characteristic as being self-willed rejection of control. But the isolation caused by transgression is blessedly counteracted by the concentration of the sin of all on the Servant. Men fighting for their own hand, and living at their own pleasure, are working to the disruption of all sweet bonds of fellowship. But God, in knitting together all the black burdens into one, and loading the Servant with that tremendous weight, is preparing for the establishment of a more blessed unity, in experience of the healing brought about by His sufferings.
Can one man’s ‘iniquity,’ as distinguished from the consequences of iniquity, be made to press upon any other? It is a familiar and not very profound objection to the Christian Atonement that guilt cannot be transferred. True, but in the first place, Christ’s nature stands in vital relations to every man, of such intimacy that what is impossible between two of us is not impossible between Christ and any one of us; and, secondly, much in His life, and still more in His passion, is unintelligible unless the black mass of the world’s sin was heaped upon Him, to His own consciousness. In that dread cry, wrung from Him as He hung there in the dark, the consciousnesses of possessing God and of having lost Him are blended inextricably and inexplicably. The only approach to an explanation of it is that then the world’s sin was felt by Him, in all its terrible mass and blackness, coming between Him and God, even as our own sins come, separating us from God. That grim burden not only came on Him, but was laid on Him by God. The same idea is expressed by the prophet in that awful representation and by Jesus in that as awful cry, ‘Why hast Thou forsaken Me?’
The prophet constructs no theory of Atonement. But no language could be chosen that would more plainly set forth the fact of Atonement. And it is to be observed that, so far as this prophecy is concerned, the Servant’s sole form of service is to suffer. He is not a teacher, an example, or a benefactor, in any of the other ways in which men need help. His work is to bear our griefs and be bruised for our healing.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12 General Information:
General Information:
Isaiah continues describing Yahweh's servant. (See: Isaiah 53:1-2)
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he has borne our sicknesses and carried our sorrows
To "bear" or carry an abstraction like sickness and sorrow represents taking it up. AT: "he has taken our sicknesses and sorrows upon himself" (See: Metaphor)
yet we thought he was being punished by God, struck by God, and afflicted
This can be stated in active form. AT: "yet we thought God was punishing and afflicting him" (See: Active or Passive and Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
translationWords
punish
God
afflicted
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv4–12 53:4 The callous world would assume that the servant…
53:4 The callous world would assume that the servant somehow brought his suffering on himself, never realizing that he was suffering for them. • troubles . . . punishment: These descriptions of the servant’s humiliation contrast with the descriptions of his exaltation.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.