He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
7. He was oppressed and he was afflicted ] The first verb (“oppressed”) may summarize the preceding account of the Servant’s afflictions (Dillmann), but more probably it introduces a feature not previously adverted to, namely, the outrages inflicted on the Servant by his contemporaries, in consequence of their false judgement of him. It denotes harsh, cruel and arbitrary treatment, such as that of a slave-driver towards those who are under him (Exo 3:7; Job 3:18), and is nowhere employed of God’s action towards men. The second verb is shewn by the form of sentence to be a contrast to the first, and must therefore be rendered as in R.V.: yet he humbled himself (cf. Exo 10:3, “How long dost thou refuse to humble thyself ?). And as this is the main idea of the verse, the meaning may best be brought out if we translate the first two lines thus:
Though oppressed, he was submissive
and opened not his mouth
Cf. Psa 38:13-14; Psa 39:9.
he is brought dumb ] Two relative sentences, to be rendered with R.V.
as a lamb (lit. “sheep”) that is led to the slaughter,
and a sheep (lit. “ewe”) that before her shearers is dumb.
Comp. Jer 11:19: “I was like a gentle lamb that is led to the slaughter.”
so (R.V. “yea”) he openeth not his mouth ] in the Hebr. an exact repetition of the second line. Since the tetrastich is complete without it, the clause may possibly have been inserted through an error in transcription.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
7 9. The narrative of the Servant’s sufferings is in these verses brought to its conclusion: after enduring violence and injustice at the hands of men, his life was cut short and he was laid in a dishonoured grave. The passage presents many difficulties, and the details of the picture are somewhat uncertain. Thus it is doubtful whether the Servant be represented as put to death by men, or as carried off by the disease with which Jehovah had smitten him. With perhaps less reason it has been questioned whether there is any reference to human cruelty in the verses at all, whether the strong expressions “oppressed,” “oppression,” “judgement” are not to be understood figuratively of the hard fate which relentlessly pursued the sufferer to his death (so Duhm). These matters, however, are of subordinate interest; the prominent feature of the description is the meek and submissive demeanour of the Servant under his undeserved sufferings.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
He was oppressed – ( niggas’). Lowth renders this, It was exacted. Hengstenberg, He was abased. Jerome (the Vulgate), He was offered because he was willing. The Septuagint He, on account of his affliction, opened not his mouth, implying that his silence arose from the extremity of his sorrows. The Chaldee renders it, He prayed, and he was heard, and before he opened his mouth he was accepted. The Syriac, He came and humbled himself, neither did he open his mouth. Kimchi supposes that it means, it was exacted; and that it refers to the fact that taxes were demanded of the exiles, when they were in a foreign land. The word used here ( nagas’) properly means, to drive, to impel, to urge; and then to urge a debtor, to exact payment; or to exact tribute, a ransom, etc. (see Deu 15:2-3; 2Ki 23:35.) Compare Job 3:18; Zec 9:8; Zec 10:4, where one form of the word is rendered oppressor; Job 39:7, the driver; Exo 5:6, taskmasters; Dan 11:20, a raiser of taxes. The idea is that of urgency, oppression, vexation, of being hard pressed, and ill treated. It does not refer here necessarily to what was exacted by God, or to sufferings inflicted by him – though it may include those – but it refers to all his oppressions, and the severity of his sufferings from all quarters. He was urged impelled, oppressed, and yet he was patient as a lamb.
And he was afflicted – Jahn and Steudel propose to render this, He suffered himself to be afflicted. Hengstenberg renders it, He suffered patiently, and opened not his mouth. Lowth, He was made answerable; and he opened not his mouth. According to this, the idea is, that he had voluntarily taken upon himself the sins of people, and that having done so, he was held answerable as a surety. But it is doubtful whether the Hebrew will bear this construction. According to Jerome, the idea is that he voluntarily submitted, and that this was the cause of his sufferings. Hensler renders it, God demands the debt, and he the great and righteous one suffers. It is probable, however, that our translation has retained the correct sense. The word anah, in Niphil, means to be afflicted, to suffer, be oppressed or depressed Psa 119:107, and the idea here is, probably, that he was greatly distressed and afflicted. He was subjected to pains and sorrows which were hard to be borne, and which are usually accompanied with expressions of impatience and lamentation. The fact that he did not open his mouth in complaint was therefore the more remarkable, and made the merit of his sufferings the greater.
Yet he opened not his mouth – This means that he was perfectly quiet, meek, submissive, patient, He did not open his mouth to complain of God on account of the great sorrows which he had appointed to him; nor to God on account of his being ill-treated by man. He did not use the language of reviling when he was reviled, nor return upon people the evils which they were inflicting on him (compare Psa 39:9). How strikingly and literally was this fulfilled in the life of the Lord Jesus! It would seem almost as if it had been written after he lived, and was history rather than prophecy. In no other instance was there ever so striking an example of perfect patience; no other person ever so entirely accorded with the description of the prophet.
He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter – This does not mean that he was led to the slaughter as a lamb is, but that as a lamb which is led to be killed is patient and silent, so was he. He made no resistance. He uttered no complaint. He suffered himself to be led quietly along to be put to death. What a striking and beautiful description! How tender and how true! We can almost see here the meek and patient Redeemer led along without resistance; and amidst the clamor of the multitude that were assembled with various feelings to conduct him to death, himself perfectly silent and composed. With all power at his disposal, yet as quiet and gentle as though he had no power; and with a perfect consciousness that he was going to die, as calm and as gentle as though he were ignorant of the design for which they were leading him forth. This image occurs also in Jeremiah, Jer 11:19, But I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter.
As a sheep – As a sheep submits quietly to the operation of shearing. Compare 1Pe 2:23, Who when he was reviled, reviled not again. Jesus never opened his mouth to revile or complain. It was opened only to bless those that cursed him, and to pray for his enemies and murderers.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 53:7-8
He was oppressed
Christs sufferings and His deportment under them
I.
THE NATURE OF THE SUFFERINGS. He was oppressed, and He was afflicted.
II. THE CARRIAGE OF CHRIST UNDER THEM. He opened not His mouth, which is amplified and illustrated by two similitudes, of a lamb going, to the slaughter, and a sheep before her shearers.
1. He opened not His mouth. This shows two things.
(1) The great patience of Christ.
(2) His great love to man, shown in His wonderful silence, even when He might justly have spoken in His own defence, but would not seem to interrupt the design of God.
2. The particular resemblance.
(1) He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter. It is an emblem of innocence, meekness, and patience. It may import weakness and slenderness of appearance in the world. Christ is nothing in show, though mighty in power. It noteth the meekness and sweetness of Christ, willingly yielding to be a sacrifice for us.
(2) As a sheep before her shearers is dumb. Christ did not open His mouth, unless to pray, instruct, and reprove. (T. Manton, D.D.)
Christs patience in suffering
Christ upon the Cross is as a doctor in his chair, where He readeth unto us all a lecture of patience. (J. Trapp.)
The monarch surrenders Himself
In Isa 53:7-8 there are five specific predictions:–
(1) That the Messiah would be subject to oppression.
(2) That amidst the oppression He would maintain silence.
(3) That from the midst of oppression and judicial procedure He would be hurried off.
(4) That beneath all the outer incidents in which men had a hand, there would be another work going on of which the men of His generation would never dream.
(5) That this work, unthought of by His generation, was, that He was being stricken for them. How each of these predictions was fulfilled in the event we know. It will be simplest for us, as we stand this side of the history, to note the several points as history.
1. The oppression to which Christ was subjected was of no ordinary kind. The first three Gospels indicate to some extent the spirit of hostility which animated the people, though in the fourth Gospel the advancing stages of that hostility are most clearly marked. At the last we find Jesus hurried off to trial. There were two trials: first, the Jewish, and then the Roman one. In the first, so far was the mind of the accusers set against Christ, that neither the fairness nor even the form of proper judicial procedure was observed. In the facts of
(1) the trial being begun, continued, and finished, apparently, in the course of one night,
(2) witnesses against the accused being sought for by the judges,
(3) the evidence of one witness not being sustained by another,
(4) questions being put to the accused which Hebrew law did not sanction,
(5) a demand being made for confession, which Jewish doctors expressly forbade, and
(6) all being followed by a sentence pronounced twenty-four hours too soon–in all these six main features the Jewish trial was an outrage on Hebrew law. Nor was the second trial a whit more in accordance with the rules of Roman procedure. In the first trial the point of law was, the claim of Jesus to be the Son of God; and, without any proof, that was pronounced invalid, and therefore blasphemous. In the Roman accusation the question concerned the claim of Christ to be a king; and the point on which the whole matter turned was this, Did Christs Kingdom clash with Caesars rights? And though the Lord Jesus had expressed Himself with a clearness on this point which ought to have made mistake impossible, yet men came with lies on their lips to charge Him with plotting against the Roman Government. Pilate, the governor, who shows by turns indecision, complaisance, bluster and subserviency, evasion, protest, compromise, superstitious dread, conscientious reluctance, cautious duplicity and sheer moral cowardice–is overcome at last, and decides against his knowledge to please the people, perhaps (as men on the incline of scepticism must sooner or later be) stricken with inward paralysis from want of a motive and a hope. It would not be easy to say in which of the two trials the injustice was the more glaring; there was a more striking violation of form in the Hebrew trial; but, perhaps, a grosser violation of conscience in the president at the Roman one.
2. Amid this oppression there was no defence of Himself. Once He called attention to His rights as a Hebrew; once and again He reaffirmed His claims when challenged on oath. But when He was reviled, He reviled not again. Why this silence? He knew His hour was come, and He yielded Himself to the stroke. He knew that His words would not tell rightly on His accusers in the state of mind which they cherished. With the far-distant future before Him, He saw that the sequel would vindicate His honour, and He could wait. He loved, too, to show patience rather than to display power; and He would show us the Divine grandeur of keeping power in reserve.
3. Underlying all this there was a Divine purpose being wrought out, of which the men of that generation had no conception. Man meant one thing, God was intending another.
4. This great work, of which the men of that generation never dreamt, was that the Messiah was cut off, a stroke for them, for the people who sought His life and crucified Him. Let us, then,
(1) Give the full and loving consent of our hearts to this Divine arrangement.
(2) Learn to see sin in the light in which God views it.
(3) Live a life of faith on Jesus Christ as being ever in His own glorious person our atoning sacrifice.
(4) Be perpetually thankful and devoted to Him who consented to lay down His life for us.
(5) Imitate our Saviour. In its relation to the government of God, the sacrifice of Christ must ever stand absolutely alone. But in that aspect of it which represented fidelity to the truth, and devotion to man, we can imitate it, even though at a far remove. It is precisely in connection with this view of it that Peter tells us, He left us an example that we should follow His steps. But how can we follow such steps? By patience under wrong. By being willing to renounce our own ease and comfort, if thereby we may advance the welfare of others. By taking the sorrows of others on ourselves, not only by suffering for them, but by suffering with them. Suffering for others is the divinest form of life in a sinful world. By bearing others on our hearts in prayer, even though they may be our bitterest foes. (C. Clemance, D.D.)
Yet He opened not His mouth
The silence of Christ
(with Mat 26:63; Mat 27:14):–What can be said of the silence of Christ? Much has been said of the words He spake, and too much can never be said of them, for He spake as never man spake. Much has been said of the sacrifice He made. Much has been said of His miracles, etc., but how little of His silence, and yet how full of meaning to every thoughtful and inquiring-mind.
I. IT WAS WONDERFUL. Wonderful that Christ should remain silent, especially under false accusations–false witnesses giving testimony against Him, and a wicked judge about to deliver the charge. He who could with one word have made the world tremble, witnesses, judge and jury fall dead before Him, testifying to His innocence as well as His Divinity by their lifeless bodies. The silent years of Christ–how wonderful! He who knew so well how to speak and what to say. But, we can understand something of this–it was a time of restraint, of growth, of preparation. But the preparation is over and Christ Jesus has asserted Himself. He has declared Himself by His life and by miracles to be the Son of God. He is falsely and basely accused, declared an impostor, sentenced and condemned to die, scourged mocked spit upon, arrayed in a gorgeous robe and finally crucified, but silent amid it all. Do you ask why? The wonder is only increased. It was for our sake.
II. HIS SILENCE WAS FULL OF SUFFERING, suffering that was vicarious and expiatory. We are not to attribute the justification of sinners to the death of Christ alone. It was the sinless purity of perfect obedience of His whole life.
III. IT WAS OMINOUS; that is full of foreboding, portentous, inauspicious, foreshowing ills. It told of the utter degradation of the men before whom He stood. He had already said and done everything that was necessary to establish His claims to the Messiahship. His silence said, what more can I do unto My vineyard than I have already done unto it, and having done all He could do, He answered now to never a word. It is an appalling sign when Christ ceases to plead with any of us. It shows that we have seared our hearts–that we are bent on ruin.
IV. CHRISTS SILENCE WAS INSPIRED, and therefore full of instruction as well as the words He spake. I refer now to the general silence of Christ. If His words were inspired must not His silence have been also? It is absolutely inconceivable that He who is Himself the Truth could have connived at heresy in any of the great doctrines He taught, or desired that should be taught even through silence.
1. Take the great doctrine of our Lords Deity, and was it not the very question under dispute and for which He had been accused of making Himself equal with God? Now this fundamental doctrine is established by a vast and varied mass of evidence, but no stronger proof of it is anywhere to be found, as it seems to me, than that to be drawn from the silence of
Christ. We know how Peter checked the homage of Cornelius, and how the angel shrank in alarm from the worship which John offered him. But Christ never acted so; He held His peace; He spake not a word. He never so much as hinted that this devotion should not be paid Him, and when His enemies accused Him of making Himself equal with God, He did not repel the charge with horror. Meek and lowly as He was He accepted all the worship that men offered Him; He welcomed it, and by His silent approval seemed to claim it.
2. Apply it to the authenticity of the Old Testament Scriptures, and what an argument we find! He held His peace in regard to all these criticisms that are being made. He condemned the unscriptural traditions of the Jews, but He at no time questioned the purity or integrity of the Old Testament Canon.
3. Apply His silence to the perpetuity of the Sabbath law and with what force it speaks. There are those amongst us who maintain that the Sabbath was only an institution for the Jews, and that its observance is not binding now under the Christian dispensation, but Christ nowhere says so. He often spoke in reference to Sabbath observance. He found the Sabbath a standing ordinance of God, and He left it such, only freshened by the dew of His blessing.
V. CHRISTS SILENCE WAS BEAUTIFUL, especially during His dread trial. It is difficult to speak aright amid enemies and detractors, but it is even more difficult to be silent right before them. The lip is ever ready to curl unbidden, the light of malice hurries to the eye, in a moment the crimson of anger mounts to the cheek before we are aware, but not so with Christ.
VI. CHRISTS SILENCE IS EXEMPLARY TO US ALL. Self-imposed silence often becomes a duty. There are calumnies good men cannot refute. There are accusations which they must leave unanswered.
1. Because of the perils of speech. In self-justification we are liable to self-glorification, to irritability, to extravagance.
2. Because of the blessings of the discipline of silence. If we spend our time in self-vindication, then farewell labour for Christ, for we will have no time for anything else. (J. I. Blackburn.)
Silent suffering
Is it not always true with those that are called to suffer that they suffer most at times when one hears no sound from their lips? It is considered a relief to cry out in the midst of pain. So long as one can plead his case the excitement of pleading enables him to forget the painfulness of his position. When the tongue is silent then it is that the brain is busy. What must have been the thoughts of Christ when He held His peace? Must they not have been of the most painful nature? The silence of Christ was full of the most awful suffering and that suffering was expiatory and vicarious. Because He was wounded, we are healed; and because He kept silent before this earthly tribunal, we shall hereafter speak. (J. I. Blackburn.)
Christs speechlessness
Why this speechlessness? In part it was due to the Saviours clear apprehension of the futility of arguing with those who were bent on crucifying Him. It was also due to the quiet rest of His soul on God, as He committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously, and anticipated the hour when the Father would arise to give Him a complete vindication. But it was due also to His consciousness of carrying in His breast a golden secret, another explanation of His sufferings than men were aware of, a Divine solution of the mystery of human guilt. (F. B. Meyer, B.A.)
He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter
The sufferings of Christ
St. Peter makes it almost a description of a Christian, that he loves Him whom he has not seen. Unless we have a true love of Christ, we are not His true disciples; and we cannot love Him unless we have heartfelt gratitude to Him; and we cannot duly feel gratitude, unless we feel keenly what He suffered for us. No one who will but solemnly think over the history of those sufferings, as drawn out for us in the Gospels, but will gradually gain, through Gods grace, a sense of them.
1. As to these sufferings, our Lord is called a lamb in the text; He was as defenceless, and as innocent as a lamb is. Since then Scripture compares Him to this inoffensive and unprotected animal, we may, without presumption or irreverence, take the image as a means of conveying to our minds those feelings which our Lord s sufferings should excite within us. Consider how very horrible it is to read the accounts which sometimes meet us of cruelties exercised on brute animals. What is it moves our very hearts, and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? First, that they have done no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their sufferings so especially touching. He who is higher than the angels, deigned to humble Himself even to the state of the brute creation.
2. Take another example, and you will see the same thing still more strikingly. How overpowered should we be, nay not at the sight only, but at the very hearing of cruelties shown to a little child, and why so? for the same two reasons, because it was so innocent, and because it was so unable to defend itself. You feel the horror of this, and yet you can bear to read of Christs sufferings without horror. Our Lord was not only guiltless and defenceless, but He had come among His persecutors in love.
3. And now, let us suppose that some venerable person whom we have known as long as we could recollect any thing, and loved and reverenced, suppose such a one, who had often done us kindnesses, rudely seized by fierce men, made a laughing-stock, struck, spit on, severely scourged and at last exposed with all his wounds to the gaze of a rude multitude who came and jeered him, what would be our feelings? But what is all this to the suffering of the holy Jesus, which we bear to read of as a matter of course! A spirit of grief and lamentation is expressly mentioned in Scripture as a characteristic of those who turn to Christ. If then we do not sorrow, have we turned to Him (J. H. Newman, B. D.)
Christ the victim and the example
1. There is only One in whom are fulfilled all the prophecies of this wonderful Lesson (Act 8:34-35).
2. It may be noticed how animals are chosen in Holy Scripture as symbols of Divine Persons and mysteries; and Christian art has perpetuated the association. The dove has been the symbol of the Holy Ghost from earliest times. The man, the calf, the lion, and the eagle represent the four Evangelists, and are types of the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. Christ is represented by a lamb, for this was the symbol of our Lord both in the Old Testament and the New. Indeed, it was such a popular symbol in the early ages of the Church, that authority was invoked to check it as a substitute for His human body.
3. Throughout Holy Scripture, by hints and prophecies, by types and fulfilment, Christ is depicted by the lamb (Gen 22:8; the Paschal lamb; the, daily sacrifice in the temple; St. John s exclamation, Behold the Lamb of God! Joh 19:36; 1Co 5:7; 1Pe 1:19; Rev 5:6; Rev 5:12; Rev 6:1; Rev 7:14, etc.). The symbol has two aspects–that of the victim, and that of the example. Let us look at it in both lights.
I. THE VICTIM.
1. The text expresses the willingness of the Sufferer. He was ill-treated whilst He bowed Himself, i.e. suffered voluntarily, as the simile of the unresisting animal explains. It is a prophecy of the self-oblation of Christ Joh 10:15; Joh 10:18). The oblation was the result of love. He was led to the slaughter with the full knowledge of all that was before Him. The voluntariness of Christs sufferings is a ground of merit and a secret of attractiveness. Sacrifice must be the blood of the soul, the offered will, to have value before God; and it must be spontaneous, to touch and win the hearts of men.
2. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter reminds us of the greatness of Christs sufferings. He was obedient unto death, a sacrificial death–different from a mere martyr s death, as the words just before the text show. The Lord had laid on Him the punishment of Israels guilt–nay, the iniquity of us all. There can be no getting rid of the poena vicaria here (Delitzsch)
. This is a great mystery. But it is not one man suffering for another, for no man can deliver his brother; but God Himself in mans nature suffering. Those who think such a mode of redemption unjust, it will be found, have not grasped the dogma of the Incarnation, or the oneness of will in the Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity. It was an act of love. Death is the test of love, and the worst kind of death, that of the cross, the most convincing test. He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter is a sentence which at once would bring up before the mind of the Jew the sacrificial worship in which he had often taken part. In the language of St. Paul, Christ became sin for us–a Sin Offering–who knew no sin. In the language of St. Peter, we were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish.
II. THE EXAMPLE.
1. One of the purposes for which Christ came was to be an Example. The truth is sometimes obscured by dwelling too exclusively upon the mystery of redemption; as, on the other hand, there have not been wanting those who have been too much absorbed in that view of our Lord as the True Light which meets the cravings of the human intellect. To keep the proportion of faith is not always easy, especially as personal needs and experiences are apt to exaggerate some one aspect of a mystery.
2. Christs life throughout has this twofold view–sacrificial and exemplary. We might have expected that the latter view would be associated chiefly with His public ministry, and the former with His Passion. But it is not so. Both culminate on the cross. Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example (1Pe 2:21); and, as the context shows, the final sufferings are before the apostles gaze. A suffering world needs a suffering Example. The Passion brought out to view the virtues which man is ever requiring to exercise, and in a manner which exercises a spell upon all who look upon that sight. Even those who are blind to the atoning efficacy of the mystery are touched by its moral loveliness.
3. Brought as a lamb to the slaughter; dumb before her shearers. This is a difficult virtue which the words unveil–patience, or meekness. What we read in the prophecy we see in the Passion (Mat 27:12; Mat 27:14; Joh 19:9) and upon the cross. All three hours His silence cried. When He was reviled, He reviled not again. The lamb, innocent and silent, aptly represents the Lamb of God, meek and patient in the midst of His slaughterers.
III. LESSONS.
1. Let us seek through the sufferings of Christ to realize the enormity and malice of sin. Pardon without any revelation of Divine justice and holiness might have demoralized mankind. We know not how that satisfaction operated towards God, and the Church has not attempted to define this. That Christ died for us men and for our salvation is all that we are required to believe and that is the kernel of the doctrine.
2. Seek to imitate the patience of Jesus–to be silent when reviled, and to still within the movements of anger and pride.
3. To be able to do this we must meditate upon Christs sufferings, and see in all things, as they reach us, the will of God, though our sufferings may arise from the faults and sins of others. We must commit our cause to Him that judgeth righteously, accepting calmly all that we may have to bear.
4. We must pray for the help of the Holy Ghost, without which we cannot grow in patience and meekness, which are fruits of the Spirit. (The Thinker.)
And as a sheep before her shearers is dumb
The sheep before the shearers
I. OUR SAVIOURS PATIENCE. Our Lord was brought to the shearers that He might be shorn of His comfort, and of His honour, shorn even of His good name, and shorn at last of life itself; but when under the shearers He was as silent as a sheep. How patient He was before Pilate, and Herod, and Caiaphas, and on the cross.
1. Our lord was dumb and opened not His mouth against His adversaries, and did not accuse one of them of cruelty or injustice.
2. As He did not utter a word against His adversaries, so He did not say a word against any one of us. Zipporah said to Moses, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me, as she saw her child bleeding; and surely Jesus might have said to His Church, Thou art a costly spouse to Me, to bring Me all this shame and bloodshedding. But He giveth liberally, He openeth the very fountain of His heart, and upbraideth not.
3. There was not a word against His Father, nor a syllable of repining at the severity of the chastisement laid upon Him for our sakes. You and I have murmured when under a comparatively light grief, thinking ourselves hardly done by. But not so the Saviour. Many are the Lamentations of Jeremiah, but few are the lamentations of Jesus. Jesus wept, and Jesus sweat great drops of blood, but He never murmured nor felt rebellion in, His heart. I see in this our Lords complete submission. There was complete self-conquest too. There was complete absorption in His work.
II. VIEW OUR OWN CASE UNDER THE SAME METAPHOR AS THAT WHICH IS USED IN REFERENCE TO OUR LORD. As He is so are we also in this world. Just as a sheep is taken by the shearer, and its wool is cut off, so doth the Lord take His people and shear them, taking away all their earthly comforts, and leaving them bare.
1. A sheep rewards its owner for all his care and trouble by being shorn. Some of God s people can give to Christ a tribute of gratitude by active service, and they should do so gladly every day of their lives; but many others cannot do much in active service, and about the only reward they can give to their Lord is to render up their fleece by suffering when He calls upon them to suffer, submissively yielding to be shorn of their personal comfort when the time comes for patient endurance. The husband, or perhaps the wife, is removed, little children are taken away, property is shorn off, and health is gone. Sometimes the shears cut off the mans good name; slander follows; comforts vanish. Well, it may be that you are not able to glorify God to any very large extent except by undergoing this process.
2. The sheep is itself benefited by the operation of shearing. Before they begin to shear the sheep the wool is long and old, and every bush and briar tears off a bit of the wool, until the sheep looks ragged and forlorn. If the wool were left, when the heat of summer came the sheep would not be able to bear itself. So when the Lord shears us, we do not like the operation any more than the sheep do; but first, it is for His glory; and secondly, it is for our benefit, and therefore we are bound most willingly to submit. There are many things which we should like to have kept which, if we had kept them, would not have proved blessings but curses. A stale blessing is a curse.
3. Before sheep are shorn they are always washed. If the Good Shepherd is going to clip your wool, ask Him to wash it before He takes it off; ask to be cleansed in spirit, soul and body.
4. After the washing, when the sheep has been dried, it actually loses what was its comfort. You also will have to part with your comforts. The next time you receive a fresh blessing call it a loan. A loan, they say, should go laughing home, and so should we rejoice when the Lord takes back that which He had lent us.
5. The shearers take care not to hurt the sheep: they clip as close as they can, but they do not cut the skin. When they do make a gash, it is because the sheep does not lie still: but a careful shearer has bloodless shears. The Lord may clip wonderfully close: I have known Him clip some so close that they did not seem to have a bit of wool left, for they were stripped entirely.
6. The shearers always shear at a suitable time. It would be a very wicked, cruel, and unwise thing to begin sheep-shearing in winter time. Have you ever noticed that whenever the Lord afflicts us He selects the best possible time?
7. It is with us as with the sheep, there is new wool coming. Whenever the Lord takes away our earthly comforts with one hand, one, two, three, He restores with the other hand, six, a score, a hundred; we are crying and whining about the little loss, and yet it is necessary in order that we may be able to receive the great gain. If the Lord takes away the manna, as He did from His people Israel, it is because they have the old corn of the land of Canaan to live upon. If the water of the rock did not follow the tribes any longer, it was because they drank of the Jordan, and of the brooks.
III. LET US ENDEAVOUR TO IMITATE THE EXAMPLE OF OUR BLESSED LORD WHEN OUR TURN COMES TO BE SHORN. (C H. Spurgeon.)
Eastern sheep-shearing
Those who have seen the noise and roughness of many of our washings and shearings will hardly believe the testimony of that ancient writer Philo-Judaeus when he affirms that the sheep came voluntarily to be shorn He says: Woolly rams laden with thick fleeces put themselves into the shepherds hands to have their wool shorn, being thus accustomed to pay their yearly tribute to man, their king by nature. The sheep stands in a silent inclining posture, unconstrained under the hand of the shearer. These things may appear strange to those who do not know the docility of the sheep, but they are true. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Lying still under the Divine hand
I went to see a friend, the other day, who has had a great number of sore affliction, yet I found her singularly cheerful and content; and when I was speaking with her about the matter, she said, I have for years enjoyed perfect submission to the Divine will, and it was through what I heard you say. So I asked her, What did I say? She replied, Why, you told us that you had seen a sheep that was in the hands of the shearers, and that, although all the wool was clipped off its back, the shears never cut into its flesh; and you said that the reason was because the sheep was lying Perfectly still. You said, Lie still, and the shears will not cut you; but if you kick and struggle, you will not only be shorn, for God has resolved to do that, but you will be wounded into the bargain. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted; he was sorely punished for our sins. But there is another translation, which seems to be more emphatical, and more agreeable to the Hebrew text; It (to wit, our iniquity last mentioned, or the punishment of all our sins) was exacted or required, (as this word most properly and frequently signifies, of which see my Latin Synopsis. Gods justice expected and required satisfaction from us for our sins; which, alas! we could not make to him,)
and he was afflicted or punished; he bore the guilt and punishment of our sins in his body upon the tree, as is said, 1Pe 2 24; or, as others render this last word, and he answered, i.e. became our surety, or undertook to pay the debt, and to suffer the law in our stead, and for our sake.
Yet he opened not his mouth; he neither murmured against God for causing him to suffer for other mens sins, nor reviled men for punishing him without cause, nor used apologies or endeavours to save his own life; but willingly and patiently accepted of the punishment of our iniquity.
Is dumb; bears the loss of its fleece or life without any such clamour or resistance as other creatures use in such cases.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
7. oppressedLOWTHtranslates, “It was exacted, and He was made answerable.”The verb means, “to have payment of a debt sternly exacted”(Deu 15:2; Deu 15:3),and so to be oppressed in general; the exaction of thefull penalty for our sins in His sufferings is probably alluded to.
and . . . afflictedor,and yet He suffered, or bore Himself patiently, c.[HENGSTENBERG and MAURER].LOWTH’S translation, “Hewas made answerable,” is hardly admitted by the Hebrew.
opened not . . . mouthJer 11:19 and David in Psa 38:13;Psa 38:14; Psa 39:9,prefiguring Messiah (Mat 26:63;Mat 27:12; Mat 27:14;1Pe 2:23).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,…. He was injuriously treated by the Jews; they used him very ill, and handled him very roughly; he was oppressed and afflicted, both in body and mind, with their blows, and with their reproaches; he was afflicted, indeed, both by God and men: or rather it may be rendered, “it was exacted”, required, and demanded, “and he answered” u, or “was afflicted”; justice finding the sins of men on him, laid on him by imputation, and voluntarily received by him, as in the preceding verse, demanded satisfaction of him; and he being the surety of his people, was responsible for them, and did answer, and gave the satisfaction demanded: the debt they owed was required, the payment of it was called for, and he accordingly answered, and paid the whole, every farthing, and cancelled the bond; the punishment of the sins of his people was exacted of him, and he submitted to bear it, and did bear it in his own body on the tree; this clearly expresses the doctrine of Christ’s satisfaction:
yet he opened not his mouth; against the oppressor that did him the injury, nor murmured at the affliction that was heavy upon him: or, “and he opened not his mouth”; against the justice of God, and the demand that was made upon him, as the surety of his people; he owned the obligation he had laid himself under; he paid the debt, and bore the punishment without any dispute or hesitation: “he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb”; or, “as a sheep to the slaughter, and as an ewe before her shearer” w; these figurative phrases are expressive, not only of the harmlessness and innocence of Christ, as considered in himself, but of his meekness and patience in suffering, and of his readiness and willingness to be sacrificed in the room and stead of his people; he went to the cross without any reluctance, which; when there was any in the sacrifice, it was reckoned a bad omen among the Heathens, yea, such were not admitted to be offered x; but Christ went as willingly to be sacrificed as a lamb goes to the slaughter house, and was as silent under his sufferings as a sheep while under the hands of its shearers; he was willing to be stripped of all he had, as a shorn sheep, and to be slaughtered and sacrificed as a lamb, for the sins of his people:
so he opened not his mouth: not against his enemies, by way of threatening or complaint; nor even in his own defence; nor against the justice of God, as bearing hard upon him, not sparing him, but demanding and having full satisfaction; nor against his people and their sins, for whom he suffered; see 1Pe 2:23.
u “exigebatur, et ipse respondit”, Gataker; “exigitur poena, et ipse affligitur”, Junius Tremellius “quum illa exigebatur, ipse affligebatur”, Piscator; “exigebatur, et ipse submittebatur”, Cocceius. w – “sicut ovis—-sicut ovis foemina”, Gataker; “ut agnus—-et ut agna”, Cocceius; “instar ovis—-et ut agna”, Vitringa. x Macrob. Satnrnal. I. 3. c. 5. Plin. Nat. Hist. I. 8. c. 45.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The fourth turn describes how He suffered and died and was buried. “He was ill treated; whilst He suffered willingly, and opened not His mouth, like the sheep that is led to the slaughter-bench, and like a lamb that is dumb before its shearers, and opened not His mouth.” The third pers. niphal stands first in a passive sense: He has been hard pressed (1Sa 13:6): He is driven, or hunted (1Sa 14:24), treated tyrannically and unsparingly; in a word, plagued ( vexatus ; compare the niphal in a reciprocal sense in Isa 3:5, and according to the reading in Isa 29:13 in a reflective sense, to torment one’s self). Hitzig renders the next clause, “and although tormented, He opened not His mouth.” But although an explanatory subordinate clause may precede the principal clause which it more fully explains, not example can be found of such a clause with (a retrospective) explaining what follows; for in Job 2:8 the circumstantial clause, “sitting down among the ashes,” belongs to the principal fact which stands before. And so here, where (from which comes the participle , usually met with in circumstantial clauses) has not a passive, but a reflective meaning, as in Exo 10:3: “He was ill treated, whilst He bowed Himself (= suffered voluntarily), and opened not His mouth” (the regular leap from the participle to the finite). The voluntary endurance is then explained by the simile “like a sheep that is led to the slaughter” (an attributive clause, like Jer 11:19); and the submissive quiet bearing, by the simile “like a lamb that is dumb before its shearers.” The commentators regard as a participle; but this would have the tone upon the last syllable (see Isa 1:21, Isa 1:26; Nah 3:11; cf., Comm. on Job, at Job 20:27, note). The tone shows it to be the pausal form for , and so we have rendered it; and, indeed, as the interchange of the perfect with the future in the attributive clause must be intentional, not quae obmutescit , but obmutuit . The following words, , do not form part of the simile, which would require tiphtach , for nothing but absolute necessity would warrant us in assuming that it points back beyond to , as Rashi and others suppose. The palindromical repetition also favours the unity of the subject with that of the previous and the correctness of the delicate accentuation, with which the rendering in the lxx and Act 8:32 coincides. All the references in the New Testament to the Lamb of God (with which the corresponding allusions to the passover are interwoven) spring from this passage in the book of Isaiah.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
Vs. 7-9: CONTRASTING ATTITUDES
1. Though perfectly innocent, the Suffering Servant is unresisting and uncomplaining, (vs. 7).
a. See what oppression and afflictions are heaped upon Him! (Isa 50:6; Mat 26:68-68; Joh 19:1-7; Mat 27:27-31). Yet, He utters no word of complaint, and offers no resistance, (vs. 7a).
b. Brought as a lamb to the slaughter, He is silent as a sheep before her shearers – opening not His mouth, (vs.. 7b).
c. only when “adjured by the living God”, and when silence would have implied the withdrawal of His claim to deity, did He speak before the Council (Mat 26:63-64), and before Pilate (Joh 18:33-37; Joh 19:10-12 a); Herod heard not a single syllable from His lips! (Luk 23:8-9).
d. Thus, it is evident that He accepted the cross willingly – out of love for His Father and for a lost world, (Psa 40:8; Heb 5-8-9; Gal 1:4; Gal 2:20).
2. The grand purpose of the Servant’s suffering was misunderstood by all, (vs. 8).
a. With a solemn prophetic reticence, the treatment He is to receive, at the hands of sinful men, is described as being: “taken away”, “cut off” and “stricken” – carefully veiled language which suggests the sudden and violent end that He is to meet.
b. Though it is clear that His death will involve nothing short of judicial murder, Isaiah leaves in obscurity the actual agents through which it is to be accomplished; it is sufficient to know that man’s end will be accomplished only through such wresting of the law as is flagrantly unjust, and through the blind instruments of a higher, over-ruling and providential power, (Act 2:22-24; 1Pe 1:18-21; Rev 13:8).
c. And Isaiah clearly foresees a wholesale blindness as to the PURPOSE of the Servant’s death; He will die misunderstood, despised and alone – that we might not have to take that journey in lonely solitude, (Mat 26:56; Mar 14:50; Psa 22:1; Mat 27:46; Mar 15:34; Psa 23:4; Heb 13:5-6).
3. In such minute detail, and with such unwavering precision, does the prophet describe the crucifixion and burial of Jesus Christ that He could only have written under the power of divine illumination and direction, (vs. 9; 2Pe 1:21).
a. It was as a sinner, and with sinners, that He was to be crucified – and so did wicked men intend to deal with His corpse.
b. But, because He had never sinned (in word or deed), divine providence so over-ruled their wicked designs that loving hands took Him down from the cross and laid him in a rich man’s new tomb, (Mat 27:57-60).
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
7. He was punished. Here the Prophet applauds the obedience of Christ in suffering death; for if his death had not been voluntary, he would not have been regarded as having satisfied for our disobedience. “As by one man’s disobedience,” says Paul, “all became sinners, so by one man’s obedience many were made righteous. (Rom 5:19) And elsewhere, “He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” (Phi 2:8) This was the reason of his silence at the judgmentseat of Pilate, though he had a just defense to offer; for, having become answerable for our guilt, he wished to submit silently to the sentence, that we might loudly glory in the righteousness of faith obtained through free grace.
As a lamb shall he be led to the slaughter. We are here exhorted to patience and meekness, that, following the example of Christ, we may be ready to endure reproaches and cruel assaults, distress and torture. In this sense Peter quotes this passage, showing that we ought to become like Christ our Head, that we may imitate his patience and submissiveness. (1Pe 2:23) In the word lamb there is probably an allusion to the sacrifices under the Law; and in this sense he is elsewhere called “the Lamb of God.” (Joh 1:29)
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
OUR SAVIOURS SUFFERINGS AND SUBMISSION
Isa. 53:7. He was oppressed, &c.
The whole field of Scripture is of infinite value, yet the Christian peculiarly prizes those parts of it wherein Christ, the hidden treasure, the one pearl of great price, is most fully exhibited to the view. This chapter holds a first rank in His esteem, because here, long before our Redeemers incarnation, He was evidently set forth crucified. Isaiah here discourses of Him with a pathetic tenderness and minuteness of detail, as if he had been an eyewitness of His sufferings. Had he stood with John at the cross, or watched with Mary at the sepulchre, he could scarcely have presented a more vivid and touching picture of the sufferings of Christ and the glory by which they were followed. The purport of the chapter is, that the Messiah would devote Himself as a voluntary sacrifice, a real and effectual expiation, suffering the heaviest woes and all the bitterness of death, in concurrence with the gracious intention of Jehovah, and for the salvation of rebellious men.
I. THE OVERWHELMING NATURE OF THE REDEEMERS SUFFERIN
The suffering of Christ in Gethsemane was not bodily pain; physically he was in health and vigour, at the prime of life, and in the flower of His age. The torture of the cross was before Him, with all the preliminary accumulation of woe; but I cannot think that the mere apprehension of these will sufficiently account for what He endured. His mind had long been familiar with the death that He was to die, and He knew and had predicted His speedy resurrection to a glorious life. Now, it seems impossible that an event, however painful, which was to be immediately succeeded by fulness of joy, could have thrown Him into such mysterious agony of mind. In after times, martyrsmen and womenhad to entertain the prospect and undergo the infliction of death in forms as lingering and dreadful as His; and they anticipated and endured with cheerfulness, joy, magnanimity, rapture Some other cause must certainly be found for Christs darkness and distress of mind, distinct from the mere apprehension of the cross.
The seat of His suffering was the soul. But it is again and again affirmed that He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners; that He was without spothad no speck or stain of guilt upon His conscience. He could not therefore be oppressed by any feeling of personal demerit. He had no frailty, no defect; He had never erred in thought, word, or deed; He had no conscious deficiencies to oppress Him, nothing to acknowledge and confess with shame, no necessity to pray for mercy, no iniquity to fill Him with terror at the thought of God: in spite of all this, however, His soul was troubledwas exceeding sorrowful, even unto deathoverpowered and beset with bitter anguish.
I know of no principle on which this mental suffering of a perfectly innocent and holy being can be rationally accounted for, except that which refers it to the fact of His being a sacrificial and propitiatory victim. His soul was made an offering for sin, &c. Can any account be given on this ground of the causes and nature of His extraordinary mental agony and terror?
The Scriptures, I think, seem to refer to three sources of this distress and anguish.
There was some mysterious conflict with the great adversary of God and man, from whose tyranny He came to redeem us. When discomfited in the Temptation, the Devil, it is said, departed from Him for a season, and in Gethsemane he seems to have returned, for it was then, as Christ Himself expressed it, the hour of the power of darkness. The combined forces of the bottomless pit were brought against Him, and in some way, impossible to be explained, overwhelmed Him with darkness, discomposed His spirit, and alarmed His soul by infamous suggestions.
Then it is also said, that it pleased the Father to bruise Him and to put Him to grief, that Jehovah made His soul an offering for sin; that He called for the sword, and awoke it against the Shepherd, and pierced and smote Him. Here was some mysterious infliction direct from the hand of God, some wonderful withdrawal of His countenance and complacency, or at least of their sensible manifestation; fire descended from heaven to consume the sacrifice.
It is also said that our iniquities were laid upon Him, and that, in some sense, He bore the curse and penalty of transgression. I need hardly say, that we reject the notion that He literally endured the punishment of sin; this would have been impossible, since that includes actual remorse, and Christ could never feel that He was a sinner, though He was treated as if He were; nor would it have consisted with the nature of the Gospel and the display of mercy, since, the penalty literally exacted, mercy would be impossible, and the sinner might demand his release from justice. Still there was suffering in the mind of Christ, flowing into it from human guilt; His pure mind had such an apprehension of sin, such a view of all its vile and malignant properties; its possible attributes and gigantic magnitude so rose and spread before Him, that He started in amazement from the dreadful object, and trembled, and was terrified exceedingly; sin was laid upon Him, and it sank and crushed. Him, and, in some sense, its poison and bitterness entered into His soul. The conclusion to which I am led, I confess, is this, that while I deem it impossible for Jesus to have endured that literal remorse, which is the natural and direct punishment of sin, yet I do think that His agony of mind was the nearest to this which it was possible for Him to experience. He was so affected by the pressure of sin on all sides, that He felt something like the terror, anguish, and agitation of a burdened conscience and a wounded spirit. His mind was in a tempest when His agony was at its height; it wrought upon His frame till His sweat was blood; the arrows of God seemed to have entered into His soul, He had all the appearance of a sinner stricken for his sins. I again repeat, that this could not literally be the case; I can only say that it was the nearest to it that Christ could feel or God inflict; and I see not that there is any more mystery in something of this nature being felt, than in the fact of a perfectly pure and spotless being suffering at all.T. Binney, LL.D.: Sermons, Second Series, pp. 157162.
As it was no common sufferer who is here pointed out, so they were no common sufferings He endured. He was oppressed. Who? The brightness of the Fathers glory! We are so constituted as to be more affected by the afflictions of distinguished men than by those of the multitude; our sympathy is awakened when princes endure great reverses and hardships; when sickness clouds the royal brow, and death enters the pavilion of the mighty, whence we are ready to imagine every care is excluded. But here you have the extreme of greatness in conjunction with the extreme of suffering. HE was oppressed!
The union and combination of various forms of suffering is implied: despised, rejected, Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Described as bearing griefs, carrying sorrows, stricken and smitten of God, afflicted, wounded, bruised, subjected to chastisement and stripes, and here oppressed. It did not suffice that He was shorn as a sheepstripped and deprived of His riches, ornaments, and comforts; but His life is demanded. He is brought to the slaughter.
1. He suffered at the hand of God. Smitten of God. Voluntarily standing in the sinners place, He must endure the first penalty of sin. In nothing is the righteous displeasure of God against sin more displayed, His determination to visit us to the uttermost more exemplified, than in the sufferings of Christ. He, even He, must be smitten with the sharp sword of sin-avenging justice (Zec. 13:7). It would seem as though all the former executions of justice had only been inflicted as with a sword asleep, or in the scabbard, compared with what Jesus felt. Against Him it was awakened, unsheathed, and made to descend with unmitigated force and severity.
2. He suffered at the hand of man. It was much that He was to be a Man of sorrows, but more that He was despised and rejected of men. He who was ready to relieve every burden and break every yoke, was Himself afflicted by those whom He came to redeem. He who would not so much as break a bruised reed, was oppressed through the whole course of His life. Contempt, reproach, and persecution were the requitals for His acts of mercy (Mat. 12:22; Mat. 12:24; Mat. 9:2-3; Joh. 5:8-9; Joh. 5:16).
Let this console His suffering disciples, that they only follow the footsteps of the Prince of sufferers; they only drink of His cup. Let them examine, and they will find that the very grief that oppresses them oppressed Him. Be consoled by the consciousness of sharing His sympathy, and by the certain prospect of sharing His triumph. The cross, the grave, the stone, the seal, the Roman guard, and the watchful Sanhedrim were in His case all in vain; and He has promised that the rebuke of His people shall be taken away.
3. He suffered from the assaults of hell (Luk. 22:53). The temptation in the wilderness, the agony in the garden, and the sufferings of the cross were all connected with Satanic agency. Satan will not fail to trouble even where he despairs to conquer.
II. THE SILENT SUBMISSION WITH WHICH CHRIST ENDURED SUFFERING.
He is brought as a lamb, &c. The lamb goes as quietly to the slaughter as to the fold. By this similitude the patience of Christ is exemplified, not that He was absolutely silent, for more than once He replied to the falsehoods and slanders of His enemies; but it refers to His patience, submission, and moral fortitude. From the beginning to the end He was in a perfect calm; as in His external behaviour, so in His internal frame and temper of soul. Not one repining thought against God, not one revengeful thought against man, ruffled His spirit.
What were the principles that supported Him? Pity for the world that knew not its Saviour; love for the Church He came to redeem; conformity of sentiment with the mind and will of His Father; devout anticipation of the happy results that should flow from His sufferings; the joy that was set before Himthe joy of saving souls.
III. THE PROPER RESULTS IN US OF OUR CONTEMPLATION OF THE SUFFERINGS AND SUBMISSION OF OUR SAVIOUR.
1. Faith in His sacrifice.
2. Imitation of His example.
3. Devout remembrance of His love.
4. Exultant anticipation of His glory.
Samuel Thodey.
A SACRAMENTAL MEDITATION
Experimental piety does not exempt us from sufferings, but it teaches us how to bear them, especially when we contemplate a suffering Saviour (Heb. 12:3). Let us take our stand once more by the cross of Christ, and we shall find our grief absorbed in the grief of Jesus, and as we look upon His sufferings, the remembrance of our own will be forgotten.
I. Let us meditate upon the nature and extent of His sufferings. They were anticipated, voluntary, vicarious, unparalleled.
II. Let us muse upon the salutary lessons which Christs sufferings teach. 1. The immeasurableness of His love (Joh. 15:9).
2. The enormity of our sins.
3. The debt of gratitude we owe to Jesus.
4. The spirit we should evince in suffering.
Renew your vows of perpetual fealty, and seal them at this sacramental board.A. Tucker.
CHRISTS SILENCE UNDER SUFFERING
(Sermon before the Lords Supper.)
Isa. 53:7. He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth.
I. The fact that Christ was silent under His sufferings.
1. He was silent before man. He was oppressed and afflicted, mocked and reviled by wicked men, yet He did not justify Himself before man. This is true
(1.) When He was taken prisoner.
(2.) In His trial before Caiaphas.
(3.) In His trial before Pilate.
(4.) Upon the cross.
2. Christ was silent before God.
(1.) In the garden; how He was bruised there (Luk. 22:44). He might have said, This is no cup of mine; let them drink it that filled it by their sins. But no; He only cries that it may pass from Him. Prayer is the cry of one who feels no right to demand.
(2.) On the cross. There God hid His face from Him. Yet. did He say it was unjust? No.
II. The reasons why Christ was silent under His sufferings
1. Because He knew His sufferings were all infinitely just. He was a substitute in the room of sinners.
2. Because He would keep His part of the covenant. Before the world was He entered into covenant with His Father, that He would stand as a substitute for sinners; and therefore when He did come to suffer, His very righteousness sustained and restrained Him.
3. Because of His love. Love to perishing sinners made the Son of God enter into covenant with His Father to bear wrath in their stead. The same love made Him keep the covenant He had made. It was love that tied His tongue, &c.
4. Because He sought His Fathers glory. It is more glorifying to God when sin is punished in His own Son than when it is punished in the poor worms that committed it.
III. The broken bread represents the silent sufferings of Christ
I set before you the plainest and simplest picture of the silent sufferings of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. In that night in which He was betrayed He took bread. Why bread?
1. Because of its plainness and commonness. He did not take silver, or gold, or jewels, to represent His body, but plain bread, to show you that when He became a surety for sinners, He did not come in His original glory, with His Fathers angels (Heb. 2:16).
2. He chose bread to show you that He was dumb, and opened not His mouth. When I break the bread it resists notit complains notit yields to my hand. So it was with Christ. Some of you believe not. You do not consent to take this silent Lamb as a sin-offering for your soul. Either you do not feel your need of Him, or you have not faith to look to Him. But if you do not truly look to Him, be not so rash, so daring, so inconsistent as to take the bread and wine. You say: It was my sin that lay so heavy on His heart, &c. Come, then, to the broken bread and poured-out wine; feed on them; appropriate Christ in them; and whilst you feed on the emblems of the silent Lamb, do this in remembrance of Jesus.R. M. MCheyne.
I. There never was such a sufferer. II. There never were such sufferings. III. There never was such conduct under suffering.I. E. Page.
THE SHEEP BEFORE THE SHEARERS
Isa. 53:7. As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, &c.
I. Consider our Saviours patience under the figure of a sheep before her shearers. Our Lord was dumb and opened not his mouth
1. Against his adversaries. He did not accuse one of them of cruelty or injustice.
2. Against any one of us. No doubt he looked across the ages; for that eye of His was not dim, even when bloodshot on the tree, and He might have looked at your indifference and mine, at our coldness of heart and unfaithfulness, and He might have left on record some such words as these: I am suffering for those who are utterly unworthy of my regard; their love will be a very poor return for mine, &c. But there is not a hint of such a feeling, not a trace of it.
3. Against His Father.
4. Against the severity of the punishment of our sins. I see in this complete submission; a complete absorption in His work [1647]
[1647] He had never been slow of speech when He could bless the sons of men, but He would not say a single word for Himself. Never man spake like this Han, and never man wag silent like Him. Was this singular silence the index of His perfect self-sacrifice? Did it show that He would not utter a word to stay the slaughter of His sacred person, which he had dedicated as an offering for us? Had He so entirely surrendered Himself that He would not interfere in His own behalf, even in the minutest degree, but be bound and slain an unstruggling, uncomplaining victim. Was this silence a type of the defencelessness of sin? Nothing can be said in palliation or excuse of human guilt; and, therefore, He who bore its whole weight stood speechless before His judge. Is not patient silence the best reply to a gainsaying world? Calm endurance answers some questions infinitely more conclusively than the loftiest eloquence. The best apologists for Christianity in the early days were martyrs. The anvil breaks a host of hammers by quietly bearing their blows. Did not the silent Lamb of God furnish us with a grand example of wisdom? Where every word was occasion for new blasphemy, it was the line of duty to afford no fuel for the flame of sin. The ambiguous and the false, the unworthy and the mean, will ere long overthrow and confute themselves, and therefore the true can afford to be quiet, and finds silence to be its wisdom. Evidently our Lord, by His silence, furnished a remarkable fulfilment of prophecy. A long defence of Himself would have been contrary to Isaiahs prediction. By His quiet He conclusively proved Himself to be the true Lamb of God.Spurgeon.
II. View our own case under the same metaphor. We can go, and do go, as sheep under the shearers hands. Just as a sheep is taken by the shearer, and its wool is all cut off, so doth the Lord take His people and shear them, taking away all their earthly comforts at times, and leaving them bare as shorn sheep. I wish when it came to our turn to undergo this shearing operation it could be said of us as of our Lord. I fear that we open our mouths a great deal, and make no end of complaint.
1. A sheep rewards its owner for all his care and trouble by being shorn. There is nothing else that I know of that a sheep can do. Some of Gods people can give to Christ a tribute of gratitude by active service, and they should do so gladly every day of their lives; but many others cannot do much in active service, and about the only reward they can give to their Lord is to give up their fleece by suffering when He calls upon them to suffer; submissively yielding to be shorn of their personal comfort when the time comes for patient endurance (H. E. I. 157, 158).
2. The sheep is itself benefited by the operation of shearing. So when the Lord shears us, we do not like the operation any more than the sheep do; but it is for His glory, and for our benefit, and therefore we are bound most willingly to submit (H. E. I. 204212).
3. Before sheep are shorn they are always washed. Whenever a trial threatens to overtake you, before it actually arrives you should ask the Lord to sanctify you. If He is going to clip the wool, ask Him to wash it before He takes it off; ask to be cleansed in spirit, soul, and body.
4. After the washing, and the sheep has dried, it actually loses what was its comfort. It is thrown down, and you see the shearers; you wonder at them, and pity the poor sheep. It will happen to you that you shall lose what is your comfort. Will you recollect this? Because the next time you receive a fresh comfort you must say, this is a loan.
5. The shearers, when they are taking the wool off the sheep, take care not to hurt the sheep. They clip as close as they can, but they do not cut the skin. Be ye sure that when the Lord is clipping and shearing us He will not hurt us; He will take our comforts away, but He will not really injure us, or cause a wound to our spirits. If ever the shears do make us bleed, it is because we kick, because we struggle.
6. The shearers always shear at a suitable time. It would be a very wicked, cruel, and unwise thing to begin sheep-shearing in winter time. Whenever the Lord afflicts us He selects the best possible time.
7. When God takes away our mercies He is ready to supply us with more. It is with us as with the sheep, there is new wool coming. Whenever the Lord takes away our earthly comforts with one hand, one, two, three, He restores with the other hand six, twelve, scores, a hundred; He takes away by spoonfuls, and He gives by cartloads; we are crying and whining about the little loss, and yet it is necessary in order that we may be able to receive the great mercy.
III. Imitate the example of our blessed Lord when our turn comes to be shorn. Let us be dumb before the shearerssubmissive, quiescent, even as He was.C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 1543.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(7) He was afflicted . . .More accurately, He let himself be afflicted, as implying the voluntary acceptance of the suffering.
Opened not his mouth.The silence of absolute acquiescence, as in Psa. 38:14; Psa. 39:9.
As a lamb to the slaughter.It is suggestive, as bearing both on the question of authorship, and that of partial fulfilment, that Jeremiah (Jer. 11:19) appropriates the description to himself. In our Lords silence before the Sanhedrin and Pilate it is allowable to trace a conscious fulfilment of Isaiahs words (Mat. 26:62; Mat. 27:14). (Comp. 1Pe. 2:23.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
7. He was oppressed, etc. This verse expresses the treatment he received and his conduct under it.
He opened not his mouth The prophet observes the scene in perspective vision, and so uses the future in the words. He will not open his mouth. The prophetic past thus employs the future tense. The silence of Messiah under cruelties is, not unaptly, compared to that of the innocent lamb a comparison much maintained throughout the New Testament. (See case of Jesus before Pilate.)
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘He was oppressed, yet he humbled himself,
And did not open his mouth,
As a lamb who is led to the slaughter,
And as a sheep which before her shearers is dumb,
Yes, he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away,
And as for his generation,
Who among them considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living.
For the transgression of my people was he stricken.’
A fuller explanation is now given of how the Servant would suffer. Not only would He face the woes of this world, He would face oppression from the authorities. The word ‘oppression’ has behind it the sense of taskmasters and of pressure. He will be treated roughly by the authorities. Yet He would ‘humble’ Himself, He would allow Himself to be afflicted. And He would make no complaint. He would humbly allow them to lead Him off to the slaughter like a lamb, without complaint He would allow them to shear Him like a sheep. That is, whatever He was to face, He would submit to it without argument or protest. He would knowingly submit to the will of Yahweh. ‘Lo, I come to do your will, O my God’ (Heb 10:7; Heb 10:9)
Here was an essential part of the atonement. This was why no animal sacrifice could finally avail for sin. For such sacrifice was involuntary on the part of the victim. But this was to be a voluntary sacrifice, made by One Who knew what was coming and voluntarily went forward to His death. He went forward in obedience (Heb 5:8), saying ‘Lo I come to do your will, O my God’ (Heb 10:4-10) thus becoming the perfect sacrifice for sin (Heb 5:9; Heb 10:10).
But the purpose of His oppressors was that ‘He might be cut off out of the land of the living’. No more vivid description of death could be given. He would yield His life to death. It is quite clear from Isaiah’s emphasis on all this that he too recognised why in the end animal sacrifices could not suffice except as a temporary expedient. They lacked the necessary constituent of the voluntary will.
‘By (or ‘from’) oppression and judgment He was taken away.’ The idea behind ‘otser (oppression) is forcible enclosure and restraint. Thus in Pro 30:16 the womb is ‘enclosed’ or ‘restrained’ and therefore barren. Compare Gen 16:2. But the verbal root means to hold back, hinder and therefore detain, imprison, retain, shut up, forcibly restrain. Combined with ‘judgment’, which probably has in mind the place of judgment, or those who judge, or the due process of law, it clearly indicates forcible legal restraint of one form or another with a view to trial. In Proverbs 24 11 ‘taken away’ means taken away to death (compare Eze 33:4) and this is probably the meaning here especially when related to ‘cut off out of the land of the living’. So the Servant will run foul of the authorities sufficient for them to decide to sentence Him to death.
‘And as for His generation, who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people was He stricken.’ ‘His generation’ here is probably to be taken in the sense of His contemporaries (see Gen 6:9 b). To the majority of them His death would not be looked on as important. They would move on to another day. Injustice was not uncommon, and it did not directly affect them. But says Isaiah, it did affect them because He was stricken because of the transgressions of these very people (literally ‘because of the transgressions of my people the plague to him.’) The word ‘stricken’ is read in. But to be stricken with something plague-like outwardly suggests God’s anger against the subject. Here the point is that God’s antipathy to sin was averted from His people by being directed at the Servant.
All this adds further significance to the ‘lamb led to the slaughter’. While those words did not directly refer to sacrifice that meaning is beginning to be imported. If He was stricken for the transgressions of His people (compare Isa 53:5), and all their sins were made to meet on Him (Isa 53:6), He is beginning very much to look like a sacrificial offering (see Isa 53:10). Furthermore, in Israel any lamb slaughtered within the vicinity of Jerusalem had to be brought as an offering to the Temple.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Isa 53:7. He was oppressed, &c. It was exacted, and he engaged for, or, and he answered it, and opened not his mouth, &c. Or, The debt was demanded, &c. Chandler: who remarks, that thus the learned L’Empereur renders the word niggas, as we also do in ch. Isa 58:3. “God insisted on an adequate punishment for maintaining the honour of his laws, which was impaired by so general a defection; and this person, of whom I have been speaking, is made the sacrifice. And in all his sufferings he was not more a lamb for sacrifice, than he was a lamb for innocence, patience, and resignation, while he was treated as a sacrifice.”
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 970
CHRISTS BEHAVIOUR UNDER HIS SUFFERINGS
Isa 53:7. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened, not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
THE preaching of Christ crucified has in every age been the great means of converting men to God: nor is there any passage of Scripture, which may not, by a judicious exposition of it, be improved either for leading us to Christ, or for instructing us how to honour him in the world. But it is scarcely possible for any one to read the chapter before us, without having his thoughts led to Christ in every part of it. It is rather like a history than a prophecy, since every thing relating to him is so circumstantially described, and, instead of being enveloped in obscurity, is declared with the utmost plainness and perspicuity. The portion of it selected for our present consideration was signally honoured of God to the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch, who, on his return from Jerusalem, was reading it in his chariot: God sent his servant Philip to unfold to him the mysteries contained in it: and Philip, having at his request seated himself in the chariot with him, began at the same Scripture and preached unto him Jesus [Note: Act 8:27-28; Act 8:32; Act 8:35.]. May the same divine energy accompany our ministrations, while we lead your attention to that adorable Saviour, and point out to you both his sufferings, and his behaviour under them!
I.
Let us contemplate the sufferings of Jesus
At the first view of this passage we should be led to expatiate upon the greatness of our Redeemers sufferings: but there is a very important idea contained in it, which, though obscurely intimated in our translation, might with propriety be more strongly expressed: the prophet informs us that Jesus was to be afflicted in an oppressive manner, as a man is, who, having become a surety for another, is dragged to prison for his debts. This sense of the words would more clearly appear, if we were to translate them thus; It was exacted, and he was made answerable [Note: Bishop Lowth.].
Agreeably to this idea, instead of dwelling on the intenseness of his sufferings, we shall rather speak of them as vicarious.
We, by sin, had incurred a debt, which not all the men on earth or angels in heaven were able to discharge. In consequence of this, we must all have been consigned over to everlasting perdition, if Jesus had not engaged on our behalf to satisfy every demand of law and justice. When he saw that there was none able or willing to avert from us the miseries to which we were exposed, his own arm brought salvation to us [Note: Isa 59:16.]. As Paul, interposing for the restoration of Onesimus to the favour of his master whom he had robbed, said, If he hath robbed thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account; I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it, so did our Lord, as it were, address his Father on our behalf; that a full compensation being made for our iniquities, we might be restored to the divine favour.
Jesus having thus become our surety, our debt was exacted of him, and he was made answerable for it. The demands of justice could not be relaxed. However desirous the Father himself was that man should be spared, the honour of his government absolutely required that the violations of his law should be punished. On whomsoever guilt should be found, whether on the principal or the surety, it must be marked as an object of Gods utter abhorrence. Not even his only dear Son, if he should stand in the place of sinners, could be exempt from the penalty due to sin. Hence, when the time was come, in which Jesus was to fulfil the obligations he had contracted, he was required to pay the debt of all, for whom he had engaged; and to pay it to the very utmost farthing.
It was by his sufferings that he discharged this debt. Let us only call to mind the sentence originally denounced against sin, and we shall see that he endured it in all its parts. Were our bodies and our souls doomed to inconceivable misery? He sustained, both in body and soul, all that men or devils could inflict upon him. Was shame to be a consequence of transgression? Never was a human being loaded with such ignominy as he; the very abjects mocking him incessantly, and gnashing upon him with their teeth [Note: Psa 35:15-16.]. Were we to be banished from the presence of God, and to have a sense of his wrath in our souls? Behold, Jesus was bruised by the Father himself; and experienced such bitter agonies of soul, that the blood issued from every pore of his body; and he who had sustained in silence all that man was able to inflict, cried out by reason of the darkness of his soul, and the inexpressible torment that he suffered under the hidings of his Fathers face. Were we subjected to a curse? He was, by the special providence of God, doomed to a death, which had long before been declared accursed; and was given up into the hands of the Romans, in order that he might, in the strictest sense, be made a curse for us [Note: Crucifixion was not a Jewish, but a Roman punishment.]. Finally, had the decree gone forth, The soul that sinneth, it shall die? He filled up the measure of his sufferings by death, and effected our deliverance by giving his own life a ransom for us. It may be said indeed, that we had deserved eternal misery; whereas that which he endured was but for a time. This is true; nevertheless there was no defect in his payment; because his temporary sufferings were equivalent to the eternal sufferings of all the human race; equivalent, as far as related to the ends for which they were inflicted, to the honour of the divine perfections, and the equity of Gods moral government. Indeed, the value of his sufferings infinitely surpassed all that ever could have been endured by man: if the whole world of sinners had been suffering for millions of ages, the demands of the law would never have been satisfied; eternity itself must have been the duration of their torments: but the dignity of Christs nature, as God over all, stamped an infinite worth on all that he did and suffered. Hence his death was a full, perfect, and sufficient propitiation for the sins of the whole world: in the hour of his death he blotted out the handwriting that was against us, nailing it to his cross. Thus was our debt wholly cancelled; and there now remains no condemnation to them that believe in him.
Having this glorious end in view, he exhibited, throughout the whole of his sufferings, the most wonderful magnanimity in,
II.
His behaviour under them
Nothing can exceed the beauty and propriety of the images, by which our Lords patience is here illustrated. As a sheep, when the shearer is stripping it of its clothing, makes neither noise, nor resistance; and as a lamb sports about even while being driven to the slaughter, yea, and licks the very hand that is lifted up to slay it, so our blessed Lord endured all his sufferings silently, willingly, and with expressions of love to his very murderers.
Twice is his silence noticed in the text, because it indicated a self-government, which, under his circumstances, no created being could have exercised. The most eminent saints have opened their mouths in complaints both against God and man. Job, that distinguished pattern of patience, even cursed the day of his birth. Moses, the meekest of the sons of men, who had withstood numberless provocations, yet, at last, spake so unadvisedly with his lips, that he was excluded, on account of it, from the earthly Canaan. And even the Apostle Paul, than whom no human being ever attained a higher eminence in any grace, broke forth into revilings against Gods high-priest, who had ordered him to be smitten contrary to the law. But there was no guile in the lips of Jesus; nor did he ever once open his mouth in a sinful or unbecoming manner. On one occasion indeed he expostulates with his God and Father, My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me? But herein he did not express the smallest degree of impatience, or of murmuring against God. As a man, he could not but feel, and as a good man, he could not but bewail, the loss of the divine presence; and in this complaint he has shewn us the intenseness of his own sufferings, and the manner in which every good man ought to plead with God in an hour of distress and trouble. Nor did he ever utter any vindictive threatenings against his enemies. He foretold indeed the destruction which they would bring upon themselves when they should have filled up the measure of their iniquities: but this he did with tears and sorrow of heart, not to intimidate them, but to express his affection for them. His silence before the tribunal of Pilate was not a stubborn or scornful silence, but a meek and dignified resignation of himself to the will of his blood-thirsty enemies. How easily could he have retorted all their charges upon them, and put both his judge and his accusers to shame! But his time was come; and he would not but that all the prophecies should be accomplished in him. Moreover, when he was smitten unjustly before the very seat of justice, he made no other reply than this; If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou me? Thus, in the midst of all the cruelties and indignities that could be offered him, he never once uttered an angry, a vindictive, or an unadvised word.
Indeed there was not only a submission, but a perfect willingness, on his part, to bear all that he was called to suffer. When first he became our surety, and it was proposed to him to assume our nature for that purpose, he replied, Lo, I come, I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart [Note: Psa 40:6-8.]. When Peter would have dissuaded him from subjecting himself to the miseries which were coming upon him, our Lord rebuked him with a just severity, as the very first-born of Satan; since none could more effectually do the part of Satan, than he, who should attempt to divert him from his purpose of suffering in the place of sinners. With great earnestness did he desire to eat the last passover with his disciples, and to be baptized with his bloody baptism; yea, and was greatly straitened till it should be accomplished. He might easily have escaped, when Judas with a band of soldiers came to apprehend him in the garden; but, notwithstanding he knew all things that were coming upon him, he voluntarily went up to them, and asked them, whom they sought: and, after lie had shewn them by one exercise of his power that he could easily have struck them all dead upon the spot, even as Elijah had done before him [Note: Joh 18:6.], he gave himself up into their hands, stipulating however for his disciples (as he had long since done in effect with his heavenly Father for us), If ye seek me, let these go their way. At the time of his death also, to convince the people that his nature was not exhausted, he with an exceeding loud voice committed his spirit into his Fathers hands, shewing thereby, that no man took his life from him, but that he laid it down of himself: and the evangelist particularly marked this by saying, He yielded up, or, as the word means, he dismissed his spirit [Note: Mat 27:50. .].
In the midst of all his sufferings he abounded in expressions of love to his very murderers. When he came within sight of that infatuated, that malignant city, instead of feeling any resentment, he wept over it, and pathetically lamented the invincible obstinacy which would shortly involve it in utter ruin. Many, even thousands of its blood-thirsty inhabitants, were interested in that intercessory prayer, which he offered on the very eve of his crucifixion; the blessed effects of which were fully manifested on the day of Pentecost. While he yet hanged on the cross, instead of accusing them to his Father, he prayed for them, and even pleaded their ignorance in extenuation of their guilt; Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And after he had risen triumphant from the grave, he still manifested the same unbounded compassion, directing his disciples to make the offers of salvation first to that very people, who had treated him with such consummate cruelty [Note: Luk 24:47.]; and to assure them, that the blood which they had shed was ready to cleanse them from the guilt of shedding it.
Such was the behaviour of our blessed Lord, every way suited to his august character, and calculated to promote the great ends of his mission: for while, by his sufferings, he paid the penalty that was due from us, and thus finished transgression, and made an end of sin, he fulfilled also the obedience which the law required, and brought in for sinners an everlasting righteousness [Note: Dan 9:24.].
This subject, replete with wonder, affords us,
1.
An occasion for thankfulness
Let us for a moment endeavour to realize our state before God. We have sinned against him: we have multiplied our transgressions: they are more in number than the stars of heaven, or the sands upon the sea shore. We owe to God a debt of ten thousand talents; and are unable to pay the least farthing towards it. What if we exert ourselves to serve God better in future? If we could live as angels in future, we could make no satisfaction for our past transgressions: the not continuing to increase our debt would not discharge the debt already incurred. But we cannot help adding to the score every day we live. What then should we do, if we had not a surety? Where should we hide ourselves from our creditor? How should we contrive to elude his search, or to withstand his power? Alas! our case would be pitiable indeed. But adored be the name of our God, who has laid help upon One that is mighty! Adored be that Jesus, who undertook to pay the price of our redemption, and who says, Deliver him from going down to the pit, for I have found a ransom [Note: Job 33:24.].
To view our situation aright let us consider ourselves, like Isaac, already devoted to death, and the arm of God himself uplifted to inflict the fatal stroke. When there seemed no prospect whatever of deliverance, mercy interposed to avert the impending ruin: and Jesus, like the ram caught in the thicket, offered himself in our stead [Note: Gen 22:13.]. And shall we be insensible to all his love? Will not the very stones cry out against us, if we should hold our peace? O then let them give thanks, whom the Lord hath redeemed, and delivered from the hand of the enemy.
But this subject affords us also,
2.
A pattern for our imitation
The delivering of us from destruction was by no means the only end of our Saviours suffering: he further intended to leave us an example, that we should follow his steps; that as he, when reviled, reviled not again, and when he suffered, threatened not, but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously; so we and all his disciples, should walk according to the same rule. And how excellent is such a disposition! how incomparably more glorious does Jesus appear, when giving his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair, and when he hid not his face from shame and spitting, than any of the heroes of antiquity riding in their triumphal car, and dragging captive princes at their chariot wheels! If then we would be truly great, let our first victory be over our own spirit. Let us possess our souls in patience, that, patience having its perfect work, we may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing. If our enemy hunger, let us feed him; if he thirst, let us give him drink; that by so doing we may heap coals of fire on his head, not to consume him, but to melt him into love. Let us not be overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good [Note: Rom 12:20-21.]. Difficult, no doubt, this conduct is: but can we want an inducement to it, when we reflect how Christ has loved us, and given himself for us? Should we think it much to forgive our fellow-servant a few pence, when we have been forgiven ten thousand talents? Let us remember that all our professions of faith, if we be destitute of this love, are vain and worthless. If we could speak with the tongues of men and angels, or had faith to remove mountains, or zeal to endure martyrdom, yet if we wanted the ornament of a meek, patient, and forgiving spirit, we should be only as sounding brass, or as tinkling cymbals. God has warned us, that, as the master seized his unforgiving servant, and cast him into prison till he should pay the utmost farthing; so will he also do unto us, if we forgive not from our hearts every one his brother their trespasses [Note: Mat 18:35.]. Let us then set Christ before our eyes: let us learn of him to forgive, not once, or seven times, but seventy times seven; or, to use the language of the Apostle, let us be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, even as God for Christs sake has forgiven us [Note: Eph 4:32.].
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Who that attends to these words, and beholds Jesus led forth to crucifixion can hesitate to apply them to the person of Christ, and to him only? Had Isaiah seen him led to Calvary; had he been pre sent to witness the taunts and reproaches of the multitude; had he heard all that passed before Pontius Pilate, and seen the events which followed; surely it were impossible that he could have then described the person and character of the Lord Jesus more fully than he hath here done. The expression being taken from prison and from judgment, is uncommonly striking, and plainly confirms the doctrine of his propitiatory offering. For being cast into prison, and taken from judgment, fully proves that in all this Jesus stood as the believer’s head, and not as a private character. Therefore, when he was cast in, the debt of his people was the cause; and his being taken out, is a plain proof that the prison keeper was paid, and the prisoner could no longer be left in confinement. If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed, Joh 8:36 . Making his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, received a literal accomplishment, in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, the honourable counsellor; and his being crucified between two thieves, as literally fulfilled the Prophet’s other prediction.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Isa 53:7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
Ver. 7. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, ] Heb., It, the punishment of our sin, was exacted; and he, being our surety, was afflicted. Or, It was exacted, and he answered, i.e., satisfied.
Yet he opened not his mouth.
He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.
And as a sheep before her shearer is dumb.
a In vita eius apud Surium.
b Acts and Mon., fol. 811.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Isaiah
THE SUFFERING SERVANT-III.
Isa 53:7 – Isa 53:9
In this section of the prophecy we pass from contemplating the sufferings inflicted on the Servant to the attitude of Himself and of His contemporaries towards these, His patience and their blindness. To these is added a remarkable reference to His burial, which strikes one at first sight as interrupting the continuity of the prophecy, but on fuller consideration assumes great significance.
I. The unresisting endurance of the Servant.
We recall the fact that this emphatically reduplicated phrase ‘opened not His mouth’ was verbally fulfilled in our Lord’s silence before each of the three authorities to whom He was presented, before the Jewish rulers, before Pilate, and before Herod. Only when adjured by the living God and when silence would have been tantamount to withdrawal of His claims, did He speak before the Sanhedrin. Only when silence would have been taken as disowning His Kingship, did He speak before Pilate. And Herod, who had no right to question Him, received no answer at all. Jesus’ lips were opened in witness but never in complaint or remonstrance. No doubt, the prophecy would have been as really fulfilled though there had been no such majestic silences, for its substance is patient endurance, not mere abstinence from speech. Still, as with other events in His life, the verbal correspondence with prophetic details may help, and be meant to help, to bring out more clearly, for purblind eyes, the true fulfilment. So we may meditate on the wonder and the beauty of that picture which the evangelists draw, and which the world has recognised, with whatever differences as to its interpretation, as the most perfect, pathetic, and majestic picture of meek endurance that has ever been painted.
But we gather only the most superficial of its lessons, if that is all that we find to say about it. For the main point for us to lay to heart is not merely the fact of that silent submission, but the motive which led to it. He opened not His mouth, because He willingly embraced the Cross, and He willingly embraced the Cross because He loved the Father and would do His will, because He loved the world and would be its Saviour,
That touching imagery of the dumb lamb has manifold felicities and significances beyond serving to figure meekness. And we are not forcing unintended meanings into a mere piece of poetic imagination when we note how remarkably the metaphor links on to that of strayed sheep in the preceding verse, or when we venture to recall John Baptist’s first proclamation of the Lamb of God, and Peter’s quotation of this very prophecy, and the continual recurrence in the Apocalypse of the name of The Lamb as the title of honour of ‘Him who sitteth on the throne.’ A kind of nimbus or aureole shines round the humble figure as drawn by the prophet.
II. The misunderstood end of the Servant’s life.
That unjust death by illegal violence under the mask of law was, further, wholly misunderstood by ‘His generation.’ We need not do more than remark in a sentence how that feature corresponds with the facts in regard to Jesus, and ask whether it does so on any other theory of ‘fulfilment.’ Neither friends nor foes had even the faintest conception of what the death of Jesus was or was to effect. And it is worth while to dwell for a moment on this, because we are often told that there is no trace of the doctrine of an atoning sacrifice in the Gospels, and the inference is drawn that it was an afterthought of the apostles, and therefore to be set aside as an excrescence on Christianity according to Christ. The silence of Jesus on that subject is exaggerated; but certainly no thought of His being the Sacrifice for the sins of the world was in the minds of the sad watchers by the Cross, nor for many a day thereafter. Is it not worth noting that precisely such a blindness to the meaning of His death had been prophesied eight hundred years before?
But the reason why this feature is introduced seems mainly to be to underscore the lesson, that those who exercised the violence which hurried the Servant from the land of the living were blind instruments of a higher power. And may we not also see in it a suggestion of the great solitude of sorrow in which the Servant was to die, even as He had lived in it? Misapprehended and despised He lived, misapprehended He died. Jesus was the loneliest man that ever breathed human breath. He gave up His breath in a more awful solitude than ever isolated any other dying man. Utterly solitary, He died that none of us need ever face death alone.
III. The Servant’s Grave.
If in the latter clause of Isa 53:9 we render ‘Because’ rather than ‘Although,’ we get the thought that the burial was a sign that the Servant, slain as a criminal, yet was not a criminal. The criminals were either left unburied or disgraced by promiscuous interment in an unclean place. But that body reverently bedewed with tears, wrapped in fine linen clean and white, softly laid down by loving hands, watched by love stronger than death, lay in fitting repose as the corpse of a King till He came forth as a Conqueror. So once more the dominant note is struck, and this part of the prophecy closes with the emphatic repetition of the sinlessness of the Suffering Servant, which makes His sufferings a deep and bewildering mystery, unless they were endured because of ‘our transgressions.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Isa 53:7-9
7He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He did not open His mouth;
Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
So He did not open His mouth.
8By oppression and judgment He was taken away;
And as for His generation, who considered
That He was cut off out of the land of the living
For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?
9His grave was assigned with wicked men,
Yet He was with a rich man in His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.
Isa 53:7 Like a lamb The sacrificial allusion is significant (cf. Joh 1:29 and 2Co 5:21).
He did not open His mouth This means the Servant did not attempt to defend Himself. There are several allusions to this in Jesus’ trials.
1. Jesus’ night trial before Caiaphas – Mat 26:63; Mar 14:61
2. Jesus’ trial before Pilate – Mat 27:12-14; Mar 15:5; Joh 19:9
3. Jesus before Herod the Tetrarch – Luk 23:9
Isa 53:8 For the transgression of my people This phrase shows that the term Servant in this context cannot be national Israel. The Servant dies (cf. Isaiah 8 d) for Israel.
This song/poem has several rare and unusual VERBALS.
1. Isa 52:15, what had not been told – Pual PERFECT (BDB 707, KB 765)
2. Isa 52:15, they will understand – Hithpolel PERFECT (BDB 106, KB 122)
3. Isa 53:4, smitten – Hophal PARTICIPLE (BDB 645, KB 697)
4. Isa 53:4, afflicted – Pual PARTICIPLE (BDB 776, KB 853)
5. Isa 53:5, pierced – Poal PARTICIPLE (BDB 319, KB 320)
6. Isa 53:5, crushed – Pual PARTICIPLE (BDB 193, KB 221)
7. Isa 53:7, led – Hophal IMPERFECT (BDB 384, KB 383)
8. Isa 53:8, considered – Polel IMPERFECT (BDB 967, KB 1319)
Isa 53:9 This verse describes so explicitly the crucifixion and burial of Jesus (cf. Mat 27:38-59), as does Psalms 22.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
oppressed: or, hard pressed.
opened not His mouth. Idiom for silence and submission. Compare 1Pe 2:22, 1Pe 2:23.
He is brought. Quoted in Act 8:32, Act 8:33.
a lamb. Compare Joh 1:36.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Isa 53:7-9
Isa 53:7-9
THE FOURTH STANZA
“He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who among them considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due. And they made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death; although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.”
This stanza is a return to the theme of suffering on the part of the Servant, stressing in the first verse (Isa 53:7) his silence in the face of accusers, mockers, and the “judges” of the tribunals before which he was arraigned.
“The Septuagint (LXX) renders part of this passage, as follows: He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is dumb, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away; who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth: because of the iniquities of my people he was led to death.
It is evident at once that the declarations of our version (American Standard Version) and the Septuagint (LXX) vary considerably. Isa 53:8, for example, in the Septuagint (LXX) states that it was Jesus’ judgment of innocence pronounced by Pilate which was “taken away” through mob violence and the humiliation of Jesus; but in the American Standard Version it is Jesus who is taken away. We believe that both renditions are correct, because both are true. When Philip encountered the Ethiopian eunuch on the road to Gaza (Act 8:29 ff), the portion of Isaiah which the eunuch was reading and which formed the basis of Philip’s preaching Jesus unto him evidently came from the LXX.
“As a lamb that is led to the slaughter …” (Isa 53:7). This is an agricultural simile based on the truth that a goat slaughtered in the traditional manner responds with blood-curdling cries that can be heard a mile away; but a sheep submits to the butcher’s knife silently. The same phenomenon occurs when the animals are sheared. Jesus submitted to the outrages perpetrated against himself, offering no more resistance than a lamb, either sheared or slaughtered.
“In his humiliation … his judgment was taken away …” (Isa 53:7, as in LXX), The verdict of Pilate was one of innocence; but, swayed by the yells of the bloodthirsty mob, Pilate took away his judgment and ordered his crucifixion.
“His generation who shall declare?” (Isa 53:7, LXX). There are two understandings of this, both of which may be right, for both are true. (1) “Who shall declare the number of those who share his life, and are, as it were, sprung from him? Who can count his faithful followers?
(2) Bruce, however, rendered the passage, “Who can describe his generation? Who indeed could describe that wicked generation which despised and murdered the Son of God? What a crescendo of shame was reached by that evil company who resisted every word of the Saviour of mankind, mocked him, hated him, denied the signs he performed before their very eyes, suborned witnesses to swear lies at his trials, rejected and shouted out of court the verdict of innocence announced by the governor of the nation, and through political blackmail, mob violence, and personal intimidation of the Procurator, demanded and achieved his crucifixion? Who could describe the moral idiocy of a generation that taunted the helpless victim even upon the cross, that gloated over his death, and that, when he rose from the dead, bribed the sixteen witnesses of it with gold to deny that it had indeed occurred? Who indeed can describe that generation?
Bruce further stated that between the times of Isaiah’s promised “Immanuel” (Isa 7:14) and Daniel’s “Son of Man” (Dan 7:15), and the personal ministry of Christ, “No one identified the Suffering Servant of Isaiah with the Davidic Messiah, except Jesus.
Christ did indeed identify himself as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah. “A Servant … who would give his life a ransom for many” (Mar 10:45). “How is it written of the Son of Man, that he should suffer many things and be set at naught”? (Mar 9:12). “How indeed, unless the Son of Man be also the Servant of the Lord”? Thus Jesus Christ himself affirmed that the Son of Man and the Suffering Servant are one and the same!
In our opinion, Isa 53:8, as in the American Standard Version is much weaker than the Septuagint (LXX); and that may have accounted for the fact of the New Testament quotation’s following the LXX. In our version, Isa 53:8 becomes a rather long sentence, stressing the fact that Christ died instead of the Old Israel, to whom the stroke was due. Of course, this is true enough; but if this indeed is the correct rendition, why was not the vicarious nature of Jesus’ death stated in the previous stanza? It is the “sufferings” which are discussed here? We may read it either way; and it is true either way!
“And they made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death …” (Isa 53:9). This is the most amazing prophecy in Isaiah. The significant fact is that the word “wicked” here is plural, and the words “rich man” are singular.
“Those who condemned Christ to be crucified with two malefactors on the common execution ground, `the place of a skull’ meant his grave to be with the wicked (of course, that is the reason why so many soldiers were assigned to the task of crucifixion; they would dig the graves. – J.B.C.), with whom it would naturally have been, but for the interference of Joseph of Arimathea. The Romans buried crucified persons with their crosses near the scene of their crucifixion.
This does not prophesy that Christ would be buried in two graves, but that “they” would make two graves. There is no way that this prophecy could have been fulfilled by one grave; two are absolutely required!
There is a great deal more than appears in the lines here. Jonah also, the great Old Testament type of Jesus, being the only one of the Old Testament specifically cited and identified as a type of Himself by the Lord, had two graves.
Isa 53:7-9 ACOUIESCENT GOODNESS: The Lords servant was utterly innocent and totally submissive. He said nothing to answer the charges of the Sanhedrin (Mat 26:63); He said nothing to answer the charges of Pilate (Mat 27:14); He did not answer Herods questions (Luk 23:9). Pilate declared Him innocent; the Sanhedrin could bring no true accusation against Him (Joh 18:19-24). Why did Jesus not argue His case? Would it have persuaded the Jews not to crucify Him even if He had? Jesus mission as a lamb to be slaughtered was unique! He was the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world (Joh 1:29)! He was the only Person ever with that mission. His death was preordained. He was the Lamb, foreordained from the foundation of the earth to be slain (cf. 1Pe 1:20; Rev 13:8; Act 2:23). He willingly gave up His life, no one took it from Him (cf. Joh 10:17-18; Joh 19:11; Heb 10:1-10; etc.). We are not obligated to follow His acquiescent surrender to be illegally executed without reasonable defense. We cannot die for the same reason He died! We should never, of course, take the law into our own hands resisting evil. We must, if the occasion arises, suffer unjust trial and death without personally and individually using force to overthrow crooked judges. But that does not mean we cannot use peaceful, rational means to insist that justice be done. The apostle Paul insisted on correcting injustices (cf. Act 16:35-39; Act 25:8-12, etc.); he also wrote that Christians should appeal to their civil governments to uphold justice (Rom 13:1-7).
The Servant was cut off from life in this world (cf. our comments on Dan 9:24-27 where the same phrase cut off is used in connection with the atoning death of the Messiah). And although there were a few plain announcements from Christ Himself that He was to die for the ransom of mans sins (cf. Joh 1:29; Mat 20:28; Mat 26:26-29; Joh 14:1-31; Joh 16:10; Joh 17:11), and many Old Testament types and prophecies (Luk 24:25-49), none of His contemporaries (not even His own disciples) would accept the doctrine that the Messiah was to die as a substitutionary sacrifice for mans sins. The O.T. has at least four plain prophecies that the Messiah will die (Isa 53:1-12; Dan 9:24-27; Zec 12:10 to Zec 13:1; Psa 22:1-31). Still, even those honest, courageous, Jewish fishermen and tax-collectors who confessed that He was the Son of the Living God, refused to accept the predictions of Jesus Himself that He was to die as a ransom (Mat 16:21-23; Mat 26:30-35; Mar 8:31-33; Mar 14:26-31; Luk 9:43-45; Luk 24:13 ff; Joh 12:27-36 [the crowd said, We have heard from the law that the Christ remains forever-does not die]; Joh 8:32-36). Isaiah graphically foretells that the Messiah would be slain as if He were a wicked person-a criminal-and yet, paradoxically, He would be buried in a rich mans grave. History records the exact fulfillment of this! Jesus was sentenced as a blasphemer by the Jews, a seditionist by the Romans and executed on a criminals cross between two thieves. But He was buried in the rock-hewn tomb of the rich man, Joseph of Arimathea.
It is rather astounding that not one of Jesus own generation comprehended that He was to die an atoning death. Especially since a few of them confessed that He was who He claimed to be, The Son of the Living God. The prophet, overwhelmed by the importance of the substitutionary atonement involved, falls back once more upon it as the only explanation of an outcome so strange. It was the Messiahs own people who had all the revelations of it in their Law and Prophets, and yet they are the ones who, at first totally rejected it; and ever since only a very small minority of Jews will accept it.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
yet: Mat 26:63, Mat 27:12-14, Mar 14:61, Mar 15:5, Luk 23:9, Joh 19:9, 1Pe 2:23
he is: Act 8:32, Act 8:33
Reciprocal: Lev 1:10 – of the flocks Lev 4:32 – a lamb Psa 38:13 – General Psa 39:2 – I was Jer 11:19 – I was Jer 31:18 – as a Mat 17:23 – they shall Mat 27:30 – General Mat 27:31 – and led Mar 12:7 – This Mar 14:53 – they led Mar 15:3 – but Joh 1:29 – Behold Joh 10:17 – General Rom 8:36 – as sheep 1Co 5:7 – Christ Jam 5:6 – and he 1Pe 1:19 – as Rev 5:6 – a Lamb
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Isa 53:7. He was oppressed By the intolerable weight of his sufferings, and he was afflicted By the most pungent pain and sorrow. Or, as the Hebrew , is rendered by Bishop Lowth and others, It was exacted, and he answered, or, was made answerable. Gods justice required satisfaction from us for our sins, which, alas! we were incapable of making, and he answered the demand; that is, became our surety, or undertook to pay our debt, or suffer the penalty of the law in our stead. Yet he opened not his mouth He neither murmured against God for giving him up to suffer for other mens sins, nor reviled men for punishing him without cause, nor used apologies or endeavours to save his own life; but willingly and quietly accepted the punishment of our iniquity, manifesting, through the whole scene of his unparalleled sufferings, the most exemplary patience and meekness, and the most ready and cheerful compliance with his heavenly Fathers will.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
53:7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he {k} opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.
(k) But willingly and patiently obeyed his father’s appointment, Mat 26:63, Act 8:32 .
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The Servant cast off 53:7-9
Isaiah continued the sheep metaphor, but applied it to the Servant, to contrast sinful people and their innocent substitute. Here it is not the sheep’s tendency to get lost but its non-defensive nature that is the characteristic feature. The prophet stressed the Servant’s submissiveness, His innocence, and the injustice that others would deal Him.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
In spite of God’s punishment for sin, the Servant would bear it without defending Himself (cf. Isa 42:2-3; Isa 49:4-9; Isa 50:5-7; Jer 11:18-20; Jer 12:1-3; Mat 26:63; Mat 27:12-14; Mar 14:61; Mar 15:5; Luk 23:9; Joh 19:9). He would allow others to "fleece" Him and even kill him without even protesting (cf. Act 8:32-33; 1Pe 1:18-19). Israel protested God’s shearing of her (Isa 40:27; Isa 49:14; Isa 63:15). He would not be a helpless victim but one who knowingly and willingly submitted to death (cf. Luk 9:51). Jeremiah used the same figure to describe himself-but as a naive person who did not know what would happen to him (Jer 11:19). The sheep metaphor is apt because the Israelites used lambs as sacrificial animals to cover their sins (cf. Gen 22:7-8; Exo 12:3; Exo 12:5; Lev 5:7; Joh 1:29).
"The servant . . . does nothing and says nothing but lets everything happen to him." [Note: David J. A. Clines, I, He, We and They: A Literary Approach to Isaiah 53, pp. 64-65.]
"All the references in the New Testament to the Lamb of God (with which the corresponding allusions to the passover are interwoven) spring from this passage in the book of Isaiah." [Note: Delitzsch, 2:323.]