Notes To Chapter XIII.
Verse 5. :כי אדם הקנני מנעורי
For a man taught me to keep cattle from my youth.
Parkhurst, in his Lexicon, remarks upon this passage, as being strangely translated in our version; while Dr. Blayney agrees with him in the translation. For a man bought me, (or obtained possession of me,) from my youth. The Jew, while he acquiesces in the sense of הקנני (or יננקה) signifying to appropriate, contends that אדם (or םדא) does not mean merely a man, but a husbandman, or labourer, and renders it, For a husbandman I was appropriated from my youth. But neither the sense nor the grammatical construction thus appearing clear to my apprehension, as the verb is not in the first, but the third person with the suffix י me, after it; I propose to reconcile both by rendering the passage thus: For a husbandman bought or appropriated me from my youth. But in fact the difference is immaterial, as the sense, in whatever way expressed, is, For I was a farmer's servant, and a bondsman from my youth.
Verse 6. :ואמר אלין מה המכות האלה בין ידיך
What are these wounds in thine hands? &c.
Both Lowth and Blayney agree in regarding these words as an allusion to the custom of the idolatrous priests and prophets, of marking themselves in the hands. Their being challenged as the marks of Paganism, is a sufficient proof of their being so, and I have rendered it accordingly, marks instead of wounds. For if, as Blayney states, they were made by cutting and slashing themselves, still the marks, and not the wounds, would remain when healed.
Verse 7. :חרב עורי על רעי ועל גבר עמיתי
Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, &c.
In supposing these words to have had no direct reference to the death of Christ in their original intention, notwithstanding their appearing from St. John's Gospel to have been used by him, in forewarning his disciples of what was about to befal him, I offer no new opinion, for Dr. Blayney declares himself fully persuaded that they had not; and what gives weight to this opinion is, that it must have been founded on other grounds than those which have led me to that conclusion. For as Dr. Blayney had not embraced the spiritual view in expounding the prophecy, he could not be led to this inference by the same train of reasoning as myself. The words, גבר עמיתי (or יתימע רבג) he renders, “The man that is next to me,” which is certainly much nearer to the sense of the original than, The man that is my fellow.