Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2

by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

Upon this sketch, there follows in chap. liii. 1-10, the enlargement. First, in vers. 1-3 that is expounded which, in ver. 14 had been said of the many being shocked, and of the cause. The commentary upon שממו "they were shocked," is given in ver. 1: a great portion of the Jews do not believe in the salvation which had appeared. The enlargement of: "so marred," &c., is given in vers. 2, 3. The cause of the unbelief is, that the glory of the Servant of God is concealed behind humiliation, misery, and shame.

Chap. liii. 1: "Who believes that which we hear, and the arm of the Lord, to whom it is revealed?"

The Prophet, whose spiritual eye is just falling upon the large, the enormously large number of unbelievers, overlooks, at the moment, the other aspect, and, in his grief, expresses that which took place in a large portion only, in such a manner as if it were general. Similar representations we elsewhere frequently meet with, e.g., Ps. xiv. 3 (compare my Commentary); Jer. v. 1--שמועה is commonly understood in the signification, "message" or "discourse." But in favour of the explanation: "That which is heard by us," q.d., "that which we hear," there is, in the first instance, the usus loquendi. The word never occurs in any other than its original signification, "that which is heard," and in the signification, "rumour," which is closely connected with the former. In Isa. xxviii. 9, a passage which is most confidently referred to in proof of the signification, institutio, doctrina, שמועה is that which the Prophet hears from God. The mockers who exclaim: "Whom will he make to understand שמועה?" take, with a sneer, out of his mouth the word upon which chap. xxi. 10: "That which I have heard of the Lord of Hosts, I declare unto you," forms a commentary, Ἀκοή too, by which, in the New Testament, שמועה is rendered, has not at all the signification, "discourse," "preaching." Ἀκοή in Rom. x. 16, 17, is not the preaching, but the hearing, as is shown by the μὴ οὐκ ἤκουσαν in ver. 18. The ἀκοή, according to ver. 17: ἡ δὲ ἀκοὴ διὰ ῥήματος Θεοῦ, is the passive to the active to the word of God. "Who believes our ἀκοή, our hearing," i.e., that which we hear, which is made known to us by the Word of God. In a passive sense, ἀκοή stands likewise in the passages Matt. iv. 24, xiv. 1, xxiv. 6, which Stier cites in support of the signification "discourse," "preaching;" it is that which has been heard by some one, "rumour," "report." In Heb. iv. 2 (as also in 1 Thess. ii. 13) λόγος ἀκοῆς, is the word which they heard. That passage: οὐκ ὠφέλησεν ὁ λόγος τῆς ἀκοῆς ἐκείνους, μὴ συγκεκεραμένους τῇ πίστει τοῖς ἀκούσασι, may simply be considered as a paraphrase of our: Who believes that which we hear. A second argument in favour of our explanation: "That which we hear" lies in the relation to the preceding, which, only when thus explained, arranges itself suitably: "Those understand what they formerly did not hear; Israel, on the contrary, does not believe that which they have heard." Of great importance, finally, is the circumstance, that it is only with this interpretation that the unity of the speaker in vers. 1-10 can be maintained. In the sequel, the we everywhere refers to the believing Church. But, for this reason, it is difficult to think here of the order of the teachers, which must be the case when we translate: "Who believes our preaching." It has been objected that, even in this case, no real change of subject takes place, but that, in both cases, the Prophet is speaking, with this difference only, that, in ver. 1, he numbers himself among the proclaimers of the message, while, in ver. 2 ff., he reckons himself among the believing Congregation. But we shall be obliged not to bring in the Prophet at all. In ver. 2 ff., the speaker is the believing Church of the Future, in the time after the appearance of the Saviour, and just so, in ver. 1, the preaching, if it should be spoken of at all, cannot belong to the Prophet and his contemporaries, but to those only who came forward with the message of the manifested Saviour; just as in John xii. 38; Rom. x. 16, our verse is referred to the unbelief of the Jews in the manifested Saviour. The cause of the unbelief over which ver. 1 laments is indeed, according to vers. 2 and 3, the appearance of the Saviour in the form of a Servant, and His bitter suffering. That, then, must first have taken place, before the unbelief manifested itself.^[5] Stier rightly remarks: "Between 'the arm of God,' and ourselves, a שמועה] is placed as the medium, and the point is to believe in it." It is the gospel, the tidings of the manifested Saviour. By the side of the joy over the many Gentiles who with delight hear and understand the message of the Servant of God, there is the sorrow over the many in Israel who do not believe this message.--The arm of the Lord comes into consideration as the seat of His divine power; comp. chap. xl. 10, li. 5-9, lii. 10. According to the context, the manifestation of this power in Christ is here spoken of Stier says: "In this Servant, the redeeming arm manifests itself, personifies itself Christ himself is, as it were, the outstretched arm of the Lord." In Rom. i. 16, the Gospel is designated as δύναμις θεοῦ εἰς σωτηρίαν παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι. גלה is elsewhere commonly construed with אל or ל, here with על. This indicates that the revealing of the arm of the Lord is of a supernatural kind, such an one as conies down from above. The Lord has revealed His arm, His power and glory, as He has manifested them in the mission of His servant, in the eyes of all (comp. chap. lii. 10: "The Lord hath made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth see the salvation of our God"); but it is really seen by those only whose eyes God opens. The deeds of God, even the most manifest, always retain the nature of a mystery which remains concealed to the worldly disposition. God can be recognised only by God. Of the ungodly it holds true: "With seeing eyes they do not see, and with hearing ears they do not hear." What was the cause of this unbelief in the Son of God, we are told in the sequel. It is the appearance of the Divine in the form of a servant, which the gross carnal disposition cannot understand, and by which it is offended. This offence which, according to the sequel, even the God-fearing had to overcome, is, for the ungodly, a lasting one.

Ver. 2. "And He grew up as the sprout before Him, and as the root from a dry ground. He had no form nor comeliness: and we see Him, but there is no appearance that we should desire Him."

The relation of this verse to the preceding one was correctly seen by Michaelis: "The cause of the offence is this, that He does not rise or stand out like the cedar, but He grows up gradually," &c. The subject, the Servant of God, is easily inferred from עליו in ver. 15. This is the more admissible that ver. 1, too, indirectly refers to Him. He is the subject of the report in whose appearance the arm of the Lord has been revealed. The sprout, the twig, designates, even in itself, the poor condition; and, notwithstanding Stier's counter-remarks, it is the pointing to such a poor condition alone which suits the connection, and there is no reason why we should here already supply "from a dry ground." A member of the royal house before its fall resembled, at his very origin, a proud tree, or, at least, a proud branch of such a tree. The sprout, here, supposes the stump, גזע. in chap. xi. 8. יונק elsewhere always signifies "suckling;" comp. here chap. xi. 8. Of the sprout, elsewhere, the feminine יונקת is used. According to Stier, this deviation from the common use is here not a matter of accident. Supposing a double sense, he finds it an indication of the helpless infancy of the Redeemer, and in this a representation of His lowliness. The LXX.: ὡς παιδίον. The suffix in לפניו "before Him" refers to the immediately preceding יהוה, not to the people. Before Him, the Lord--known to Him, watched by Him, standing under His protection, comp. Gen. xvii. 18; Job viii. 16. The lowliness here, and the contempt of men in ver. 3, form the contrast; He is low, but He will not remain so; for the eye of the Most High is directed towards Him. Before the eyes of men who are not able to penetrate to the substance through the appearance, He is concealed; but God beholds Him, beholds His concealed glory, beholds His high destination; and because He beholds, He also takes care, and prepares His transition from lowliness to glory. But the "before Him" does not by any means here form the main thought; it only gives a gentle and incidental hint.--The root denotes here, as in chap. xi. 1, 10, the product of the root, that whereby it becomes visible, the sprout from the root. In reference to this parallel passage, Stier strikingly remarks: "It is, by our modern interpreters, put aside as quietly as possible; for, with a powerful voice, it proclaims to us two truths: that the same Isaiah refers to his former prophecy,--and that this Servant of the Lord here is none other than the Messiah there." A twig which grows up from a dry place is insignificant and poor. Just as the Messiah is here, in respect to His state of humiliation, and specially in reference to His origin from the house of David, sunk into complete obscurity, compared to a weak, insignificant twig, so He is, in Ezek. xvii. 23, in reference to His state of glorification, compared to a lofty, splendid cedar tree, under which all the fowls of heaven dwell. The Jews, in opposition even to ver. 22 of Ezekiel, expected that He should appear so from the very beginning; and since He did not appear so, they despised Him. The ונראהו is, by most of the modern interpreters, in opposition to the accents, connected with the first member: "He had no form nor comeliness that we should have seen Him." But from internal reasons, this explanation must be rejected. "To see," in the sense of "to perceive," would not be suitable. For, how could they have such views of the condition of the Servant of God, if they overlooked Him? But it is not possible to adduce any real demonstrative parallel passage in support of ראה with the Accusat., without ב, ever having the signification, "to look at," "to consider with delight." The circumstance that the Future is used in the sense of the Present: "and we see Him," is explained from the Prophet's viewing it as present.--The statement that the Servant of God had no form, nor comeliness, nor appearance, must not be referred to His lowliness before His sufferings only; we must, on the contrary, perceive, in His sufferings and death, the completion of this condition; in the Ecce Homo, the full historical realization of it. Calvin rightly points out that that which here, in the first instance, is said of the Head, is repeated upon the Church; He says: "This must not be understood of Christ's person only, who was despised by the world, and was at last given up to an ignominious death, but of His whole Kingdom which, in the eyes of men, had no form, nor comeliness, nor splendour."

Ver. 3. "Despised and most unworthy among men, a man of pains and an acquaintance of disease, and like one hiding His face from us, despised, and we esteemed Him not."

In the preceding verse, we are told what the Servant of God had not, viz., anything which could have attracted the natural man who had no conception of the inward glory, and as little of the cause why the Divine appears in the form of a Servant and a sufferer. Here we are told what He had, viz.: everything to offend and repulse him to whom the arm of the Lord had not been revealed,--the full measure of misery and the cross. Instead of "the most unworthy among men," the text literally translated has: "one ceasing from among men" (חדל in the signification "ceasing" in Ps. xxxix. 5), i.e., one who ceases to belong to men, to be a man, exactly corresponding to "from man," and "from the sons of men," in the sketch, ver. 14, and to: "I am a worm and no man," in Ps. xxii. The explanation: "Forsaken by men, rejected of men," is opposed by the usus loquendi, and by these parallel passages.--"A man of pains"--one who, as it were, possesses pains as his property. There is a similar expression in Prov. xxix. 1: "A man of chastenings"--one who is often chastened. "An acquaintance of disease,"--one who is intimately acquainted with it, who has, as it were, entered into a covenant of friendship with it. The passive Participle has no other signification than this, Deut. i. 13, 15, and does not occur in the signification of the active Participle "knowing."--There is no reason for supposing that disease stands here figuratively. It comprehends also the pain arising from wounds, 1 Kings xxii. 34; Jer. vi. 7, x. 19; and there is so much the greater reason for thinking of it here, that החלי in ver. 10, evidently refers to the חלי in this place. As an acquaintance of disease, the Lord especially showed himself in His passion. And then every sorrow may be viewed as a disease; every sorrow has, to a certain degree, disease in its train. On Ps. vi., where sickness is represented as the consequence of hostile persecution, Luther remarks: "Where the heart is afflicted, the whole body is weary and bruised; while, on the other hand, where there is a joyful heart, the body is also so much the more active and strong." הסתיר always means "to hide;" the whole phrase occurs in chap. l. 6, in the signification "to hide the face." מסתר is the Participle in Hiphil. In the singular, it is true, such a form is not found any where else; but, in the Plural, it is, Jer. xxix. 8. In favour of the interpretation: "Like one hiding His face from us," is the evident reference to the law in Lev. xiii. 45: "The leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent and his head bare, and the beard he shall have covered over, and shall cry: Unclean, unclean,"--where that which the leper crieth forms the commentary upon the symbolical act of the covering. They covered themselves, as a sign of shame, as far as possible, in order to allow of breathing, up to the nose; hence the mention of the beard. In my Commentary on the Song of Solomon i. 7, it was proved that covering has every where the meaning of being put to shame--of being in a shameful condition. The leper was by the law condemned to be a living representation of sin. No horror was like that which was felt in his presence. Hence it is the highest degree of humiliation and abasement which is expressed by the comparison with the leper, who must hide his face, whom God has marked. It is the more natural to suppose this reference to the leper, that probably, the חדל אישים likewise pointed to the leper. The leper was "one ceasing from men." In 2 Kings xv. 5; 2 Chron. xxvi. 21, a house in which lepers dwell is called a "house of liberty," i.e., of separation from all human society; compare the expression "free among the dead," in Ps. lxxxviii. 6. Lepers were considered as dead persons. Uzziah, while in his leprosy, was, according to the passage in Chronicles already cited, cut off from the house of the Lord, and forfeited his place there, where all the servants of the Lord dwell with Him. To leprosy, the term נגוע in ver. 4 likewise points. Beck's objection: "The point in question here is not that which the unfortunate man does but that which others do in reference to him," is based upon a misconception. Neither the one nor the other is spoken of The comparative כ must not be overlooked. The comparison with the leper, the culminating point of all contempt, is highly suitable to the parallelism with נבזה. Ordinarily מסתר is now understood as a substantivum verbale: "He was like hiding of the face before Him," i.e., like a thing or person before which or whom we hide our face, because we cannot bear its horrible and disgusting appearance. But with one before whom we hide our face, the Servant of God could not be compared; the comparison would, in that case, be weak.--נבזה is not the 1st pers. Fut. but Partic. Niph., "despised."--The close of the verse returns to its beginning, after having been, in the middle, established and made good.

The second subdivision from ver. 4 to ver. 7 furnishes us with the key to the sufferings of the Servant of God described in what precedes, by pointing to their vicarious character, to which (ver. 7) the conduct of the Servant of God under His sufferings corresponds.

Ver. 4. "But our diseases He bore, and our pains He took upon Him: and we esteemed Him plagued, smitten of God, and afflicted."

The words חלי and מכאב of the preceding verse here appear again. He was laden with disease and pains; but these sufferings, the wages of sin, were not inflicted upon Him on account of His own sins, but on account of our sins, so that the horror falls back upon ourselves, and is changed into loving admiration of Him. Beck remarks: "Properly speaking, they had not become sick or unfortunate at all; this had a priori been rendered impossible by the vicarious suffering of the Son of God; but since they deserved the sickness and calamity, the averting of it might be considered as a healing." But this view is altogether the result of embarrassment. Disease is the inseparable companion of sin. If the persons speaking are subject to the latter, the disease cannot be considered as an evil merely threatening them. If they speak of their diseases, we think, in the first instance, of sickness by which they have already been seized; and the less obvious sense ought to have been expressly indicated. In the same manner, the healing also suggests hurts already existing. But quite decisive is ver. 6, where the miserable condition clearly appears to have already taken place.--According to the opinion of several interpreters, by diseases, all inward and outward sufferings are figuratively designated; according to the opinion of others, spiritual diseases, sins. But even from the relation of this verse to the preceding, it appears that here, in the first instance, diseases and pains, in the ordinary sense, are spoken of; just as the blind and deaf in chap. xxxv. are, in the first instance, they who are naturally blind and deaf.--Disease and pain here cannot be spoken of in a sense different from that in which it is spoken of there. Diseases, in the sense of sins, do not occur at all in the Old Testament. The circumstance that in the parallel passage, vers. 11 and 12, the bearing of the transgressions and sins is spoken of, does not prove anything. The Servant of God bears them also in their consequences, in their punishments, among which sickness and pains occupy a prominent place. Of the bearing of outward sufferings, נשא חלי occurs in Jer. x. 19 also. If the words are rightly understood, then at once, light falls upon the apostolic quotation in Matt. viii. 16, 17: πάντας τοὺς κακῶς ἔχοντας ἐθεράπευσεν, ὅπως πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν διὰ Ἠσαΐου τοῦ προφήτου λέγοντος· αὐτὸς τὰς ἀσθενείας ἡμῶν ἔλαβε καὶ τὰς νόσους ἐβάστασε; and this deserves a consideration so much the more careful, that the Evangelist here intentionally deviates from the Alexandrine version (οὗτος τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν φέρει καὶ περὶ ἡμῶν ὀδυνᾶται). In doing so, "we do not give an external meaning to that which is to be understood spiritually;" but when the Saviour healed the sick, He fulfilled the prophecy before us in its most proper and obvious sense. And this fulfilment is even now going on. For him who stands in a living faith in Christ, sickness, pain, and, in general all sorrow, have lost their sting. But it has not yet appeared what we shall be, and we have still to expect the complete fulfilment. In the Kingdom of glory, sickness and pain shall have altogether disappeared.--Some interpreters would translate נשא by "to take away;" but even the parallel סבל is conclusive against such a view; and, farther, the ordinary use of נשא of the bearing of the punishment of sin, e.g., Ezek. xviii. 19; Num. xiv. 33; Lev. v. 1, xx. 17. But of conclusive weight is the connection with the preceding verse, where the Servant of God appears as the intimate acquaintance of sickness, as the man of pains. He has, accordingly, not only put away our sicknesses and pains, but He has, as our substitute, taken them upon Him; He has healed us by His having himself become sick in our stead. This could be done only by His having, in the first instance, as a substitute, appropriated our sins, of which the sufferings are the consequence; compare 1 Peter ii. 24: ὃς τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν αὐτὸς ἀνήνεγκεν ἐν τῷ σώματι αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τὸ ξύλον.--Plagued, smitten of God, afflicted, are expressions which were commonly used in reference to the visitation of sinful men. It is especially in the word plagued, which is intentionally placed first, that the reference to a self-deserved suffering is strongly expressed, compare Ps. lxxiii. 14: "For all the day long am I plagued, and my chastisement is new every morning." Of Uzziah, visited on account of his sin, it is said in 2 Kings xv. 5: "And the Lord inflicted a plague upon the king, and he was a leper unto the day of his death." נגע "plague" is in Lev. xiii., as it were, nomen proprium for the leprosy, which in the law is so distinctly designated as a punishment of sin.--הכה too, is frequently used of the infliction of divine punishments and judgments. Num. xiv. 12; Deut. xxviii. 22. The people did not err in considering the suffering as a punishment of sin, but only in considering it as a punishment for the sins committed by the Servant of God himself. According to the view of both the Old and New Testament, every suffering is punishment. The suffering of a perfect saint, however, involves a contradiction, unless it be vicarious. By his completely stepping out of the territory of sin, he must also step out of the territory of evil, which, according to the doctrine established at the very threshold of revelation, is the wages of sin, for otherwise God would not be holy and just. Hence, as regards the Servant of God, we have only the alternatives: either His sinlessness must be doubted, or the vicarious nature of His sufferings must be acknowledged. The persons speaking took up, at first, the former position; after their eyes had been opened, they chose the latter.