The reading of the words must first be considered, and then their sense and meaning; for against both these doth the learned annota- tor ti'ansgress, perverting the former that he might the more easily wrest the latter.
1. " He was wounded for our sins, crimine nostro," "by our crime;" that is, it was our fault, not his, that he was so evill}'- dealt with. And not to insist on the word " wounded," or " tormented with pain," which is slightly interpreted by "evil-entreated," the question
4G8 VINDICI^ EVANGELIC^.
is, whether the efficient or procuring and meritorious cause of Christ's wounding be here expressed.
2. The words used to express this cause of wounding are two, and both emphatical. The first is ^^1: "He was wounded l^Tf?"?, for our prevarications, our proud transgressing of the law." " J^^'? est rebel- lare, et exire a voluntate Domine vel praecepto, ex superbia," R. D. in Michi. It is, properly, to rebel against man or God. Against man: 2 Kings iii. 7, " The king of Moab y??'?, hath rebelled against me;" and chap. viii. 20, "In his days Edom W^, rebelled." As also against God: Isa. i. 2, " I have brought up children, and they ^V^'^, have rebelled against me." Nor is it used in any other sense in the Scriptures but for prevarication and rebellion with a high hand, and through pride. The other word is i^}^ : " He was bruised l^'T'^^^J^':? , for our iniquities." The word signifies a declining from the right way with perversity and frowardness, " ^l^^ est inique vel perverse agere ; proprie curvum esse vel incurvari." So that all sorts of sins are here emphatically and distinctly expressed, even the greatest rebellion, and most perverse, crooked turning aside from the ways of God.
3. Their causality in reference to the wounding of him here men- tioned is expressed in the preposition IP, which properly is " de, ex, a, e," " from," or " for." Now, to put an issue to the sense of these words, and thence, in a good measure, to the sense of this place, let the reader consult the collections of the use of this preposition in Pagnine, Buxtorf, Calasius, or any other. When he finds it with "sin," as here, and relating to punishment, if he find it once to signify any thing but the meritorious procuring cause of punishment, the learned annotator may yet enjoy his interpretation in quietness. But if this be so, if this expression do constantly and perpetually denote the impulsive, procuring cause of punishment, it was not well done of him to leave the preposition quite out in the first place, and in the next place so to express it as to confine it to signify the efficient cause of what is affirmed.
This, then, being the reading of the woixls, " He was wounded or tormented for our sins," the sense as relating to Jesus Christ is manifest: "When we thought he was justly for his own sake, as a seducer and malefactor, smitten of God, he was then under the punishment due to our iniquities, was so tormented for what we had deserved." This is thus rendered by our annotator: " Jeremiah was not in the fault, who prophesied to us, but we, that he was so evilly dealt with. 'He was bruised for our iniquities;' that is, we thought hard of him, and dealt evilly with him ;" — which may pass with the former.
The LXX. render these words, Avrhs ds sTpav/j,c/.TiffD'/j 8ia rag aijj. apriag ri/^uiv, xa! fjue/MaXdxigrai dice rag dvo,alag Ti/mmv. Rightly! to be wounded hid ra^ dij^apriag is to be wounded for and not by sin, no
DIGRESSION CONCERNING GHOTIUS ON ISAIAH LIII. 469
otherwise than that also signifies the impulsive cause. And the Chaldee parajahrast, not able to avoid the clearness of the expres- sion denoting the meritorious cause of punishment, and j^et not un- derstanding how the Messiah should be wounded or punished, thus rendered the words : " Et ipse sedificabit domum sanctuarii nostri, quod violatum est propter peccata nostra, et traditum est propter iniquitates nostras;" — " He shall build the house of our sanctuary, which was violated for our sins" (that is, as a punishment of them) " and delivered for our iniquities." So he. Not being able to offer suflScient violence to the phrase of expression, nor understanding an accommodation of the words to him spoken of, he leaves the words with their own proper significancy, but turns their intendment, by an addition to them of his own.
Proceed we to the next words, which are exegetical of these: " The chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." Of these thus the annotator: —
" Disciplina pacts nostrce super eum. Apud ewm : id est, monitis nobis attulit salutaria, si ea recepissemus ; " — "He gave us whole- some warnings, if we would have received them."
But, — 1. There is in this sense of the words nothing peculiar to Jeremiah. All the rest of the prophets did so, and were rejected no less than he.
2. The words are not, " He gave us good counsel, if we would have taken it ; " but, " The chastisement of our peace was upon him." And what affinity there is between these two expressions, that the one of them should be used for the explication of the other, I profess I know not. Peter expounds it by, " He bare our sins in his own body on the tree," 1 Pet. ii. 24.