4. To encourage those that are weak in grace. Mat. xii. 20. God will not despise smoking flax, though it cannot flame : Phil. i. 6, ' Being confident of this very thing, that he who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ,' Be humble and thankful in admiring Grod's goodness towards you, saying, as David, ' Who am I, 0 Lord, and what is my father's house, that thou hast brought me hitherto ? '
THE THIED VEESK
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted loith grief ; and ive hid as it were our faces from him : he loas despised, and lue esteemed him not.
The prophet 'proceedcth now to the second scandal and offence that the Jews took against Christ, who therefore would not believe the report that was made of him. The first was Christ's meanness in his birth and life, which we have handled in the second verse. The next is his suf- ferings, and those are either of his life or of his death, which are set forth in divers verses following. In this verse the prophet's expres- sions do chiefly hint the sufferings of his life. Here are divers phrases which discover the several degrees of Christ's suffei'ings, though I shall not give them to you in the order of the words, because the expressions lie scattered here and there. The degrees are these : —
1. He was not esteemed.
2. Ho was actually despised, and became an object of scorn and contempt.
3. He was liable to great miseries ; and —
4. He was continually pestered with them. This is the sum of this verse. I will make it out unto you from the phrases, opened as the text presenteth them.
1. He is despised and rejected of men. That which we read rejected
248 A PRACTICAL EXrOSlTION UPON [ISA. LIII. 3.
of men, the Hebrew chadal islam, signifietli ' tlie leaving ofif of men.' It may bear a double interpretation : —
[l.J That Christ was so extremely mean and miserable that it was impossible to be lower as a man. He was the minimum quod sic of a man ; if he had gone any lower, wq must liave had some other name for him. In this sense it is said, Ps. xxii. G, ' I am a worm and no man, a reproacli of men, and despised of the people.' You must seek for some name for him among the worms.
[2.] The leaving off of men ; that is, there men left him, they would converse with any other, but not with him. Nobody would deign him speech and company ; he was least of all. Our interpretation seemeth to favour this exposition. There is not much matter which you prefer.
2. A man of sorrows. A Hebraism to express the height of misery. They use the genitive case of the substantive to express the super- lative degree of anything, as ' a man of Belial' for a very wicked man ; so ' a psalm of degrees,' an excellent psalm. This expression compelleth some of the wiser Jews to feign two Messiahs, one that is already come, that walketh up and down on the earth under the shape of a beggar, that he may satisfy for the sins of the Jews, and is in a great deal of misery. The other a glorious king, whom they do as yet expect ; that is the second expression.
3. Acquainted icith grief Familiaris morho, so Tremellius renders it — knowing diseases ; that is, by his own experience. Disease is put for any kind of trouble and molestation, because they are the tilings that are most irksome. For otherwise Christ, though he had many griefs, yet he had no diseases, these usually arising out of some intemperance or badness of constitution, neither of which agree to Christ. He took our personal, not individual infirmities ; hunger and thirst he was acquainted with, not stone or gout or fever.
4. A7id we hid as it ivere our faces from him, or, as it is in the mar- gin. He hid as it icere his face from us ; the Hebrew will bear both. It is either a hiding faces from him or from us. Since the text doth so indifferently allow of both these renderings, I shall show you the sense of both. He hid his face from us, which the Septuagint follows, TO TrpoacoTTov avTov. His face was turned away as it were ; in modesty say some, as if lie were ashamed of the mearuiess of his condition ; but that is unworthy of Christ. The Clialdee paraphrase seemeth to hint another sense, siihtraxit vultum majcstatis sua: — he hid the counte- nance of his divine majesty; that is probable, but doth not thoroughly reach the force of the expression. Others thus — he hid his face as a per- son donmed to die, as sentenced persons had their faces covered, or when much discountennnced. Thus ILunan, when in displeasure with the king, Esther vii. <S, it is said 'his face was covered.' So in great sor- row and mourning, ' Thou shalt cover thy face,' Ezek. xii. 6 ; or it is more properly in shame, or as a token of being unworthy the society of men. So it was with the lepers, who by the law were to put a covering upon the upper lip, Lev. xiii. 45. It is not difficult to reconcile any of these senses with the matter in hand. But let us consider the other reading, ' We hid our faces from him.' This is a natural gesture, and at all times siguifieth some abomination and withdrawing of the mind