What this verse and this chapter prophetically anticipate the Gospel record of His life shows to have been historically fulfilled. He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
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278 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
No other impression admits of being left upon us by the perusal of the New Testament story. It is tragedy pure and solid ; wrought out, to be sure, with certain touches of light and beauty, but touches added in such a way as to bring out in only stronger relief the tragic features of earnestness and pathos.
The verse probably contains but one topic — the contempt, or rather aversion, with which men regarded the Servant of the Lord. But the English translation contains the classical phrase " a man of sorrows." And from that, it has generally been held, that its chief topic is the sorrows of the Eedeemer. We have, therefore, (1) Christ despised and rejected, and (2) Christ a man of sorrows. The two ideas are not far apart. Keble even says. He was to be a man of sorrows, and because of His sorrows. He was to be despised. Such is the pride and bitterness of our sinful nature, ever since the fall of our first parents ; which began with the lust of the eyes. Eve indulging herself with the sight of the forbidden fruit ; and which has gone on ever since, men refusing in general so much as to look at the afflicted, " hiding, as it were, their faces " from them, because such sights interrupt their enjoyment and satisfaction.
I.
Christ Despised and Eejected.
i. Why He was despised.
The root of it all is Unbelief. This is fully discussed and explained by St. Paul in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Eomans, which should be read in this connection. His reference to the unbelief of the Jews he ends with the state- ment : " God hath concluded them all in unbelief that He might have mercy upon all." To this unbelief the prophet refers in the first verse thus : " Who hath believed our report ? " The announcements made by Isaiah and the other prophets, as Jeremiah, Zechariah, and others, had been discredited and dis- regarded. Piecing the different prophecies of the Old Testament together, the Jews had a clear outline of His whole life from His birth to His ascension, from the earliest prophecy in Gen. iii. 15, in which He is called the " Seed of the woman," to the latest in
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Mai, iv. 2, where He is spoken of as the " Sun of Eighteous- ness." They had His biography in their own Scriptures, but they believed them not. And when John the Baptist and Jesus Himself and His apostles came preaching the Kingdom of God, the mass of the people still refused to believe.
1[ Sigismund Goetze, in his picture " Despised and Eejected," has placed upon the canvas a striking illustration of this text. In the centre of the picture is the suffering Christ, bound upon a Koman altar, overshadowed by an angel with the Gethsemane cup, and surrounded by all sorts and conditions of men. Yet He and His sufferings are not in all their thoughts. The political agitator has his crowd, the workman his beer, the artist his cigarette, the broken down his care. Under the very shadow of the great Sufferer, the sporting man is engrossed in his "pink edition," and the scientist in his test-tube. The newsboy is vigorously pushing the sale of his paper containing " the latest winners " and society scandals. The flower-girl offers her wares unnoticed to the society doll, whose frivolous vanity is flattered by the attentions of a fashionable young man. The world-power militarism ignores the suffering Prince of Peace. At the very feet of the Victim are the outcast woman and her babe, while afar off stands the widow with her lonely burden of grief ; yet even she does not look to Him for sympathy and help. Church- men, of whom more might be expected, dispute the text of Scripture, but forget the spirit of the Gospel. Of all that throng, no eye is turned towards the Sufferer, save that of a nurse, well accustomed to scenes of pain and anguish. Her face is expressive of wonder, horror, and sympathy, and suggests Lam. i. 12, " Is it noth- ing to you, all ye that pass by ? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow." The great world, engrossed in its own pursuits, its business and its pleasui-es, its selfishness, and its gain, its frivolity, its grief — all purely questions of time, has no eye for, and no thought of, Christ, who is still the " despised and rejected of men."
1. They were disappointed in His birth and parentage. They expected Him to come as heir of the Eoyal Family of David, and to be openly known as born and educated at Bethlehem. But He, though of royal descent, was the son of a poor unnoticed virgin and the reputed son of a carpenter, who were not generally known or recognised as descended from David. He grew up and lived a long time in obscurity, probably working at His father's trade. He appeared a poor man who had no home of His own, no attendants but a few poor fishermen,