Isaiah 53

Chap. 53 contains a more minute explanation and statement of what is said in general in chap. 52: 13-15. For convenience, it may be regarded as divided into the following portions:

1. An expression of amazement and lamentation at the fact that so few had embraced the annunciation respecting the Messiah, and had been properly affected by the important statements respecting His sufferings, His death and His glorification (verse 1). The prophet laments that so few had credited what had been spoken, and that the power of God had been revealed to so few in consequence of the coming and the work of the Messiah.

2. A description of His rejection, His sufferings, His death (verses 2-10). Here the prophet describes the scene as actually passing before his eyes. He speaks as if he himself were one of the people—one of the Jewish nation—who had rejected Him and who had procured His death. He describes the misapprehension under which it was done, and the depth of the sorrow to which the Messiah was subjected, and the design which Jehovah had in view in these sufferings.

His appearance and rejection are described (verses 2, 3). He is as a root or shrub that grows in a parched soil without beauty; He is a man of sorrows, instead of being, as they expected, a magnificent prince; He has disappointed their expectations, and there is nothing that corresponded with their anticipations, and nothing, therefore, which should lead them to desire Him. He is, therefore, rejected and despised. The design for which He endured His sorrows is stated (verses 4-6). He was thought by the people to be justly put to death, and they judged that God had judicially smitten and afflicted Him (verse 4). But this was not the cause. It was because He had borne the sorrows of the nation, and was wounded for their sins (verses 4, 5). They had all gone astray, but Jehovah had caused to meet on Him the iniquity of all. The manner of His sufferings is described (verses 7, 8). He was patient as a lamb; was taken from prison and cut off. The manner of His burial is described (verse 9). It was with the rich. The reason why He was thus buried, and why His grave was thus distinguished from that of malefactors was, that in fact He had been holy and had done no evil. God, therefore, took care that that fact should be marked even in His burial, and though He died with malefactors, yet, as the purpose of the atonement did not require ignominy after death, He should not be buried with them. The design for which all this was done is stated (verse 10). It was that His soul might be made an offering for sin, and that it was thus well pleasing or acceptable to God that He should suffer and die.

3. The result of His sufferings and humiliation, the reward, the glorification, is described (verses 10-12). He should see a numerous spiritual posterity, and should be abundantly satisfied for all His pains and sorrows (verses 10, 11). By the knowledge of Him, a great number should be justified and saved (verse 11). He should be greatly honored, and should proceed to the spiritual conquest of all the world (verse 12). Barnes.

This chapter is so full a description of our blessed Saviour’s sufferings that it looks more like a history than a prophecy; and might with more reason be suspected to be a copy drawn from His life than not to be a description of it. But this Scripture was in being long before our Lord was born, and was in the keeping of His enemies; of those who hated and despised Him, and at last put Him to a shameful death; and were at once the preservers and the fulfillers of the prophecy. Bp. Sherlock.—It is certain that both ancient and modern Jews interpret it of the Messiah. Dean Alliz.

This is the clearest and strongest of all the prophecies of the Old Testament. It is an advantage which it possesses, that it is intermixed with no other subject. It is entire, separate and uninterruptedly directed to one scene of things. The application of it also to the evangelical history is plain and appropriate. Here is no double sense, no figurative language but what is sufficiently intelligible to every reader of every country. Paley.

From that prophet, justly called evangelical, who was the first commissioned to lift up the veil that covered the mystery of our redemption and to draw it forth to open view from beneath the shade of Jewish ceremonies and types, through which it had been hitherto but faintly discerned, we have a description of that great propitiatory sacrifice whereby our salvation has been effected, as plain as it is possible for language to convey it. Matthew (8 : 17) and Peter (1 Epistle 2 : 24) directly recognize the prophecy as applied to Christ ; and yet more decisive is the passage, in Acts 8 : 35, in which the eunuch reading this very chapter, and demanding of Philip, of whom speaketh the prophet this ? it is said, that Philip began at the same Scripture, and preached unto Him Jesus. Abp. Magee.

In Isa. 53 it is the prophet who comes at once as priest and king ; and the way from the unobserved activity of the prophet is represented as leading to glory and dominion through the deepest humiliation and scorn of the atoning death. The priesthood is unquestionably included in verse 10, the kinghood in verse 12. The expressions and figures have an Old Testament character, and thus are true to nature and full of poetic life. The thoughts are clear, and constitute the Gospel, the New Testament in the Old. For One who in this way unites in Himself the three theocratic offices, prophet, priest and king, is the specific close of the old covenant. Such an One is nowhere to be found but in Jesus Christ ; in Him found in most perfect fulness. Auberlen.

1. Who hath believed our report ?

It is to be remembered that the scene of this vision is laid in the midst of the work of the Redeemer. The prophet places himself in vision where he has a view of the Messiah. He sees Him a sufferer, despised and rejected. He sees that few come to Him, and embrace Him as their Saviour. He recalls the " report" and the announcement which he and other prophets had made respecting Him ; he remembers the record which had been made centuries before respecting the Messiah ; and he asks with deep emotion, as if present when the Redeemer lived and preached, who had credited what he and the other prophets had said of Him ? The mass had rejected it all. The passage, therefore, had its fulfilment in the events connected with the ministry of the Redeemer, and in the fact that He was rejected by so many. The Redeemer was more successful in His work as a preacher than is commonly supposed, but still it is true that by the mass of the nation He was despised ; and true that the announcement which had been made of His true character and work was rejected. Barnes.

In all these villages and cities there are a great many men who treat the whole system of positive Christianity, both doctrine and ordinance, with indifference. They never acknowledge any acquaintance with Revelation, in the street, nor invite it to their houses, till that one guest pushes in which they hold at bay as long as medicine and fear can do it ; and then, inconsistently enough, they ask in, to meet that dark stranger on the way to the graveyard, the minister of the risen Christ, whom they had disowned all their lives. Now, no believer in the reality of his faith, whether he be minister or layman, can look this strange problem in the face without painfully asking the question again and again, What does it mean ? What can break up this strange unconcern ? F. D. H.

Arm of the Lord. There is nothing within the compass of God’s love to bestow of which Christ is not the giver. There is nothing Divine that is done in the heavens and the earth of which Christ is not the doer. The representation of Scripture is uniformly that He is the activity of the Divine nature ; that He is the energy of the Divine will ; that He is, to use the metaphor of the Old Testament, " the arm of the Lord"—the forthputting of God’s power ; that He is, to use the profound expression of the New Testament, the word of the Lord, cognate with and the utterance of the eternal nature ; the light that streams from the central brightness, the river that flows from the else sealed fountain. As the arm is to the body and as is the word to the soul, so is Christ to God—the eternal Divine utterance and manifestation of the Divine nature. And, therefore, to talk about anything that a man can need and anything that God can give as not being given by Christ is to strike at the very foundation not only of our hopes, but at the whole scheme of revealed truth. He is the giver of heaven and everything else the soul requires. A. M.

2. Instead of directly answering the questions of verse 1, showing who or how many, the prophet quietly assumes the truth which the questions imply, and proceeds to assign the occasion. He speaks in the name of the Jewish people who were contemporaries of Christ during His earthly life. They thought the nation needed a mighty conqueror to place Judah at the head among human kingdoms. In such a Messiah they would have seen all beauty and comeliness. In the lowly Jesus they saw none. H. C.—Blinded by their prejudices, they could not bring themselves to believe that the prediction that the Messiah should wield a sceptre was fulfilled in one who held only a reed ; that the prediction that the Messiah should wear a diadem was fulfilled in one who was crowned only with thorns ; or that the prediction that the Messiah should occupy a throne was fulfilled in one who occupied only a cross. The event, which ought to have corrected their error and suggested to them the true interpretation, instead of leading them to spiritual ideas of His character and reign, only drove them to the mad extreme of contempt, crucifixion and rejection. Symington.

There is no beauty that we should desire Him. He does not come with the regal pomp and splendor which it was supposed He would assume. He is apparently of humble rank; He is poor; He has few attendants; and He has disappointed wholly the expectation of the nation, and is not such a prince as they had desired. In regard to the personal appearance of the Redeemer, it is remarkable that the New Testament has given us no information. There was evidently design in this; and the purpose was probably to prevent any painting, statuary or figure of the Redeemer that would have any claim to being regarded as correct or true. They evidently intended that His image should not be set up as an object of worship; and designed probably that the view of Him as a man should be comparatively obscured in the contemplation of Him as Divine. As it stands in the New Testament, there is just the veil of obscurity thrown over this whole subject which is most favorable for the contemplation of the incarnate Deity. We are told that He was a man; we are told also that He was God; and the image to the mind’s eye is as obscure in the one case as the other; and in both we are directed to His moral beauty, His holiness and benevolence, as objects of contemplation, rather than to His external appearance or form. Barnes.

3. Rejected. Behold what a return Israel made for benefits! They slew their Benefactor, rendering evil for good, death for life. Him who had raised their dead, healed their lame, cleansed their lepers, opened the eyes of their blind, they nailed on the wood; they hung up on the tree Him who spread out the earth; they pierced with nails Him who laid the foundations of the world; they bound Him who absolved sinners; they gave Him vinegar and gall to taste who offered the food and drink of life and righteousness; they marred His hands and feet who had brought healing to theirs; they closed His eyes who had opened theirs; they committed Him to the sepulchre who raised up the dead, not only before His Passion, but even while hanging on the cross. Creation, in amazement, said, “What is this new mystery?” Alexander, of Alexandria.

All the rationalistic subterfuges by which this description is applied to the Jewish nation suffering for the heathen, or to the company of the prophets suffering for the nation, are overthrown by this single word, the Man of sorrows, which can only be applied to a person. M. Renan evidently feels this. Accordingly, he applies this passage to some one of those unknown righteous men whose blood crimsoned the streets of Jerusalem at the taking of that city. Read and judge. The sin of the world expiated, the designs of God accomplished, eternal intercession made by — some righteous man put to death by Nebuchadnezzar! This interpretation is the note of despair. Godet.

4-6. The great emphasis of this part is laid on the vicarious nature of the sufferings. Seven times is that asserted in these few verses. Bearing our sicknesses, weighted with our pains, pierced for transgressions of ours, crushed for sins of ours, punished that we might have peace, scourged for our healing, and the object on whom fell in concentrated weight the iniquity (the sin with its guilt and consequences) of us all—what can be plainer than this accumulation of statement? Is there any worthy explanation other than the recognition that the prophet declares the sufferings of the Servant to be the consequence of the people’s sins? Whether we regard His bearing of these to include their removal or simply their endurance, there can be no doubt that the innocence of the sufferer is contrasted with the estimate of His guilt formed by falsely judging men, nor that His sufferings are represented as, in the fullest sense, vicarious. The Hebrew puts emphasis in verse 5 on the possessive pronouns “our,” and brings them into contrast with the emphatic “He.” But not only did He suffer by reason of others’ sins, but His sufferings had power to redeem and deliver. Such strange virtue was in His chastisement or punishment that it secured peace for us sinners. So effectual were the strokes which fell on Him that His wounds were our healing. Here is the great wonder which is set forth by these significant juxtapositions of “He” and “we,” “our” and “His.” The sin with its consequences which was ours becomes, by some undisclosed mystery of love and power, His, and the bruises, chastisements and stripes that were His become, by some undisclosed mystery of efficacy and unity, the reasons for our peace and health. A. M.

It is by Christ’s suffering for sins that we, in some manner, are delivered from sin. It is by His death that we are made to live. His teachings were of superhuman wisdom and authority; His example was of spotless perfection; but it is His bitter passion, His tasting of death, His cross, which are everywhere set forth—whether in the Old Testament, in the form of the bleeding lamb, or in the New Testament, in the form of didactic statement—as the one reason and method of man’s restoration. W. Adams.

If Christ will pluck away eternal judgment for the world, He must bleed for it. So great a salvation must tear a passage into the world by some tragic woe—without shedding of blood there is no remission. This blood—oh, it is this that has a purifying touch, working lustily, as the Divine word conceives, on all the stains of our sin, washing us, making us clean, sprinkling even our evil conscience. This tragic power of the cross takes hold, in other words, of all that is dullest, and hardest, and most intractable, in our sin, and moves our palsied nature, all through, in mighty throbs of life. And this is Christianity; meeting us just where we most require to be met. Christ is a great bringer on for us because He suffers for us. Christianity is a mighty salvation because it is a tragic salvation. With a fall and an overspreading curse at the beginning, and a cross in the middle, and a glory and shame at the end, where souls struggle out, through perils, and pains, and broken chains, or bear their chains away unbroken still and still to be—how moving, and mighty, and high must be the sentiment of it! Oh, how grandly harrowing is that joy, how tremulous in tragic excitement is that song of ascription, roaring as a sea-surge round the throne—“unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His blood!” H. B.

5. By His stripes.** How literally this was applicable to the Lord Jesus it is unnecessary to attempt to prove. This could not be mere conjecture. How could Isaiah, seven hundred years before it occurred, conjecture that the Messiah would be scourged and bruised? It is this particularity of prediction compared with the literal fulfilment which furnishes the fullest demonstration that the prophet was inspired. In the prediction nothing is vague and general. Nothing has the aspect of mere conjecture. All is particular and minute, as if he saw what was done and was describing a real transaction, and the description is as minutely accurate as if he was describing what was actually occurring before his eyes. Barnes.

Yes, “by His stripes we are healed.” It is not a question of words and names, but of Divine realities, of a mystery of righteousness and love, not too dim for us to adore. He, our God and our Second Adam, whose representative Headship was real through one of His natures, and infinitely efficacious through the other, stood in our place, as our Sin-offering, and by a Passion both physical and spiritual inflicted on Him as our substitute, made satisfaction to the claims of Divine justice, and harmonized its action with that of Divine mercy. So much we can see through a glass darkly; enough to guide each Christian’s life, enough to illuminate his death. Bp. Jeune.

6. Our sin is charged upon us collectively in common: “we have all gone astray.” Distributively: “every one to his own way.” We all agree in turning aside from the right way of pleasing and enjoying of God; and we disagree, as each one hath a by-path of his own, some running after this lust, some after that, and so are not only divided from God, but divided from one another, while every one maketh his will his law. T. Manton.

Laid on Him. He was human—He was Divine. In His own person was the tangential point between the two natures which sin had sundered. Immediately related was He to the parties between whom reconciliation needs to be effected. He shared the nature of both. He was the mediator between God and man—man’s advocate, priest, intercessor, representative and God’s image and representative too. He was the God-man. W. Adams.

“The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all,” that He might Himself bear it. The result of His bearing it is given in this passage so far forth as respects the welfare of His people. It is under God the means of their salvation. His chastisement brings their peace; His stripes, their healing. His being bruised suffices instead of their suffering the penalty of their own sins. The same views are reiterated in the words (verse 8), “For the transgression of My people was He stricken;” and (verse 10), “When His soul shall make a sin offering;” and (verse 11), “By the knowledge of Himself shall the righteous one, My servant, insure justification to many, for He shall bear their iniquities;” and (verse 12) where His magnificent spoils of victory appear as His reward for pouring out His soul even unto death, and for His “bearing the sins of many.” We cannot be too grateful for these amplified, varied and yet marvellously coincident and unanimous declarations to the effect of vicarious atonement—Christ suffering for His people, to make the free pardon of their sins possible without peril to the majesty of the law they have broken. And here it cannot be said too emphatically that these numerous, various, yet equivalent forms of expression are all borrowed from the Hebrew sacrificial system, and therefore must be interpreted in the light of that system. They all assume that this great system was instituted of God for the purpose of illustrating to the human mind the vital law of God’s kingdom, that suffering must first be borne by some innocent being for the guilty before he can be forgiven. God requires some adequate expression to be made of His displeasure against sin before it is safe for Him to pardon. He must not give the least occasion to His moral subjects to suppose Him indifferent to their sinning. The infliction of suffering is the natural even if not the only possible means by which He can express His abhorrence of sin and His regard for law and obedience. Hence in this great illustrative sacrificial system, the Lord selected those animals which best personify innocence, gentleness, meekness—e.g., lambs, goats, heifers, bullocks, doves; and made them the symbols of the suffering, atoning “Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.” They must die; their blood must be poured forth publicly, solemnly, in sacred symbol; and then be sprinkled upon the guilty, or upon the altar before God. So those animals bore the sins of the people. The system does imply to a certain degree a transfer of suffering from the one who deserved to another who did not deserve it; or in other words, the actual endurance of suffering even unto death by some innocent being as a condition precedent to pardon for the guilty—precedent, that is, to the actual taking away of sin, considered as a fact which in the eye of law demands God’s displeasure and His infliction of penalty. Such is the sense required for this class of terms in this chapter, by the genius and the varied phraseology of the Hebrew sacrificial system. It should be added also that the New Testament sustains this view most amply, showing—e.g., that “the Son of man came to give His life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28); “Who gave Himself a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:6); “who is the Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world” (John 1:29); “who His ownself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, by whose stripes we are healed” (1 Pet. 2:21). H. C.

All other sin offerings were only types and shadows of Christ’s; that which He offered by offering Himself was the substance, the true and real sacrifice, which expiated the sins of the world; indeed, the chief end of all the sacsacrifices of the Jews was to put them in mind of that which Christ was to offer for them; and so to give them occasion to exercise their faith, and put their confidence in Him for pardon and salvation. Bp. Beveridge.—And this is the grand foundation of the Christian’s confidence, that he has a High Priest who filleth all things; one of a Divine nature and dignity; one who, instead of all other sacrifices, offered Himself as the end and crown of all; by Himself He purged our sins, not by the blood of animal victims; other priests offered first for themselves; but He had no need, being “holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners.” They were ever changing, they followed each other like shadows, and they were but shadows, He the eternal substance; their offerings had no virtue of their own to remove an atom of guilt; His one offering of Himself, once for all, has forever perfected them that are sanctified. R. Hall.

In 1 Cor. 15:3 Paul tells us “that Christ died,” not Jesus. It is a great truth, that the man, our Brother, Jesus, passed through the common lot, but that is not what Paul says here, though he often says it. What he says is that “Christ died.” Christ is the name of an office, into which is condensed a whole system of truth, declaring that it is He who is the Apex, the Seal, and ultimate Word of all Divine revelation. It was the Christ that died; unless it was, the death of Jesus is no gospel. “He died for our sins.” Now, if the apostle had only said “He died for us,” that might conceivably have meant that, in a multitude of different ways of example, appeal to our pity and compassion and the like, His death was of use to mankind. But when he says “He died for our sins,” I take leave to think that that expression has no meaning, unless it means that He died as the expiation and sacrifice for men’s sins. In what intelligible sense could Christ “die for our sins” unless He died as bearing their punishment and as bearing it for us? And then, finally, “He died and rose . . . according to the Scriptures,” fulfilling the Divine purposes revealed from of old. To the fact that a man was crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem, “and rose again the third day,” which is the narrative, there are added these three things—the dignity of the Person, the purpose of His death, the fulfilment of the Divine intention manifested from of old. And these three things turn the narrative into a gospel. A. M.

The death of Christ may be described as an expiation for sin, for it was a Divine act which renders the punishment of sin unnecessary. It was a representative death. It may be described as a ransom. It was a satisfaction to the righteousness of God. It was a sacrifice for sin. It was a propitiation for sin. R. W. Dale.—The very nature and essence of the sufferings and death of Christ is that they are an expiation for sin. This is the very idea of a sacrifice. It is its exhaustive definition. It is the thing itself, and not a deduction or inference from it. This is the fact and not a theory about it. H. B. Smith.

We shall never understand the royalty of Jesus unless we begin with His sufferings, nor shall we understand His sufferings unless we see them in the light of that awful but most blessed word, “The Lord hath made to light on Him the iniquity of us all.” No cross, no crown, is as true for the master as for His servants. A Christ who did not die for sinners, and bear their sins in His own body on the tree, is an impotent Christ, whose death is of no moment, and followed by no sway over hearts. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” That is not true unless the death be the sacrifice for the world’s sin. Then, and only then, is its issue dominion over souls redeemed, and enthronement by the Father’s side, with the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession and His enemies for His footstool, and all power wielded in the hands that bear the print of the nails. “He was wounded for transgression of ours.” Therefore He is our King and our Lord. He bore on His meek head the sins of us all. Therefore God crowns Him, and we should crown Him, Lord of all. A. M.

Jesus often declared that He was under this law of sacrifice. He must give His life for men in labor and suffering, and finally in the death on the cross, before He could be glorified. This was the necessity to which Divine love had subjected Him. His dying for men took its solemn meaning from the fact that He had lived for them. He was giving His life every day of His ministry in a sense far deeper than we have ever fully fathomed yet. He gave the things that really make up life—His sympathy, His personal influence and the helpful offices of love and kindness. Sacrifice is the fruit of love, and it is the nature of love to give. The essence of sacrifice, therefore, is giving. It cannot be deprivation or loss, as some suppose, else God would be incapable of sacrificial love, since He is not capable of deprivation or loss. He who loves, gives. God is the greatest giver, since He loves most, and this giving is sacrificial. His greatest gift to the world is the life of Jesus in humanity, whose law was the law of sacrifice. “God so loved the world that He gave,” is the keynote of all that the Gospel teaches of the sacrifice of God in Christ. G. B. Stevens.

The one grand central fact which makes the Christian system the supreme and gracious “power” that it is, is God giving Himself to men. It is Infinite Love stirring itself and reaching out to our race, voluntary, unprompted, unsought, unbought, unbargained for. Even human love, in all our common habitations, has this for its secret charm, the mystical beauty of its blessing, that it gives itself. Love takes of its own and puts it away, parting with it at whatever cost or pain to itself for the good of some other soul. All the interchanges of unselfish affection and friendly sacrifice which play to and fro between one heart and another, ranging down in their celestial order from the archangel to the slave, have the “Word made flesh,” and crucified for their source and pattern. That was the fountain gift—unpurchased grace. The coarse cradle, the homeless years in Galilee, the Sermon on that mount which became the pulpit of all centuries, the parables which illuminated the whole natural world with supernatural significations, the miracles of patient gentleness which sought to break open by acts of mercy to men’s bodies a pathway to a better healing for their disordered souls, the agonies of the garden, the opening of the gates of the everlasting morning on the third day—these are only the magnificent particulars of the one inestimable Free Gift. Christianity is gratuity, through and through. F. D. H.

Verses 7-9. The third section sets forth the patient silence of the sufferer. Here the prophet speaks. The “we” does not occur, but we hear of “My people.” First, the silent submission of the sufferer is set forth, with a pathos which has touched the hearts of all generations, by the two aspects of the one figure of the lamb. It is “led to the slaughter” unresisting. So He willingly yields to violence and death. It lets itself be shorn without a bleat. So He accepts all suffering without a murmur, and is silent, not in obstinacy, but submission. A. M.—The submission is as complete as the suffering is unfathomable. Here, for the first time, sin is deplored, judged—condemned by the human conscience as God judges and condemns it; for the pain of sin is endured with full acquiescence in the holy will of Him who has inflicted it. This is what constitutes the cost of this sacrifice; it is not the amount of suffering which is included in it, it is the spirit in which this suffering has been accepted and borne. In it God has received the most perfect homage offered to His holiness; and if, in consideration of this offering, He now gives pardon, such pardon would not tend to the increase of sin upon the earth. Where pardon is received, it can have no other effect than the rupture of the will with sin, or, as the apostle says, death to sin. Consequently it is here that God meets all hearts which desire, at the same time, peace and holiness, reconciliation with Him and the destruction of sin, the removal of condemnation and the agreement of their will with the Divine will. Godet.

7. As a lamb which is led to be killed is patient and silent, so was He. “As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, 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 amid 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 (11:19), “but I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter.” Barnes.

Verses 8 and 9 present many difficulties, but, on the whole, the general drift is clear. The hideous prostitution of the forms of justice to murder is declared as the agency which slew the patient sufferer. “By oppression and judgment”—that is, by oppression which assumed the guise of a judicial act—“He was taken.” That is a summary of all the parody of forms of judicial procedure in Christ’s passion. And sad and passing strange was the fact that, of all the multitudes of contemporaries who saw the meek beauty of His life, not one comprehended why He died, or read the open secret of His vicarious sufferings. The blindness of those who stand beside the world’s great ones reached its tragic climax when the Lamb of God was slain. A. M.

8. And as for His generation [the body of His contemporaries, the mass of those who were living at the time] who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of My people as a curse for them? The rendering here given is that of Dr. Alexander, which is also substantially that of Dr. Dillmann. It agrees with that of the American Appendix in making the entire clause one continuous sentence, which renders the sense clearer, and differs from it simply in preferring a direct to a relative construction of the closing words, “to whom the stroke was due.” The rendering of these words in the Revised Version, adopted from the Authorized Version, “was He stricken,” assumes an unusual and doubtful form of the Hebrew pronoun. The generation that witnessed the crucifixion, or heard of it at the time, failed to comprehend that this was a vicarious death suffered by Him to make atonement for the transgressions of the true people of God, who obtain salvation by His cross. The margin of the Revised Version, “and His life who shall recount?” puts a meaning upon the words which they will not bear; while the text of the Authorized Version, “who shall declare His generation?” introduces a thought foreign to the passage, whether the reference be to His miraculous birth or to His eternal pre-existence. W. H. G.

9. And they made His grave with the wicked, and with the rich [American Appendix, a rich man] in His death. By a striking providence, a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, provided Him an honorable burial in his own rock-hewn tomb (Matt. 27:57-60). The close coincidence between prophecy and fact, in points so far beyond the range of human sagacity, may well confound gainsayers, and put sceptical critics upon their sharpest devices to break its force. The reason assigned for this honor in His burial is His innocence. H. C.

It was intended to cast the highest possible indignity on the Messiah; not only to put Him to death, but even to deny Him the privilege of an honorable burial, and to commit Him to the same grave with the wicked. How remarkably was this fulfilled! As a matter of course, since He was put to death with wicked men, He would naturally have been buried with them, unless there had been some special interposition in His case. He was given up to be treated as a criminal; He was made to take the vacated place of a murderer—Barabbas—on the cross; He was subjected to the same indignity and cruelty to which they were; He died in the same manner; and it was evidently designed also that He should be buried in the same manner, and probably in the same grave. Thus in John 19:31 it is said that the Jews, because it was the preparation, in order that their bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath day, “besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away;” intending evidently that they should be treated alike; that their death should be hurried in the same cruel manner; and that they should be buried in the same way. Who can but wonder at the striking accuracy of the prediction! And with the rich in His death. The sense here is, that after His death He should be with a man of wealth, but without determining anything in regard to His moral character. The exact fulfilment of this may be seen in the account which is given of the manner of the burial of the Saviour by Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph was a rich man. He begged the body of Jesus. He took the body, and wound it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, a tomb hewn out of rock—that is, a grave designed for himself; such as a rich man would use; and where it was designed that a rich man should be laid. He was embalmed with myrrh and aloes “about a hundred pound weight,” in the mode in which the rich were usually interred. How different this from the interment of malefactors! How different from the way in which He would have been buried if He had been interred with them as it had been designed! And how striking and minutely accurate this prophecy in circumstances which could not possibly have been the result of conjecture! How could a pretended prophet, seven hundred years before the event occurred, conjecture of one who was to be executed as a malefactor and with malefactors, and who would in the ordinary course of events be buried with malefactors—how could he conjecture that he would be rescued from such an ignominious burial by the interposition of a rich man, and buried in a grave designed for a man of affluence and in the manner in which the wealthy are buried? Barnes.

10. Here begins the account of the Messiah’s exaltation. All the previous sufferings were to have an end in the erection of God’s kingdom upon earth. A.—The death of Christ, regarded with reference to the human actors in this deed of blood, was an act of criminal violence and injustice; but viewed with reference to the Divine counsel and the gracious design of the Lord Jesus, it was the ransom price of the world’s redemption—it was the atoning sacrifice by which the pardon of sin and everlasting life were secured for all the children of

God. “Therefore doth My Father love Me,” said the Saviour, “because I lay down My life for My sheep.” It was in this sense that it pleased the Lord to bruise His incarnate Son—not that He took pleasure in His sufferings, but in the work of redemption which He was thus effecting. W. H. G.

The transcendent worth of that obedience which Christ rendered, or that oblation which He offered, the power which it possessed of counterbalancing a world’s sin, lay in this, that He who offered these, while He bore a human nature, was a Divine person; not God only, for as such He would never have been in the condition to offer; nor as man only, for then the work of His offering could never have reached so far; but that He was God and man in one person indissolubly united, and in this person performing all those acts—man, that He might obey and suffer and die, God that He might add to every act of His obedience, of His suffering, of His death an immeasurable worth, steeping in the glory of His Divine personality all of human that He wrought. Christ was able so summarily to pay one debt, because He had another and a higher coin in which to pay it than that in which it had been contracted. It was contracted in the currency of earth; He paid it in the currency of heaven. Trench.

He shall see His seed. The ultimate thought of the verse is that because the Messiah gave up His life as a sin offering, He shall be rewarded with a people indefinitely numerous and a reign of peace and love indefinitely vast and glorious, in all which the Father will rejoice, for this is His pleasure, and this work shall therefore prosper in Messiah’s hand. Hengstenberg has well said that this “seed” are the many nations whom He shall sprinkle (52:15); the same whom He takes as His spoil (53:12); whom He justifies (verse 11), and for whom He intercedes (verse 12). H. C.—The sublime joy which is to fill and replenish the mind of Christ is to issue from the success of His redemptive work. That work is emphatically “the pleasure of the Lord,” not merely His will, His determined purpose, but the object on which He looks with supremest complacency, and from which He draws a Divine delight! In this respect, in the gathering of a great and peculiar joy from the work of salvation, the Father and the Son are One. Binney.

11. The only satisfactory construction is the passive one which makes the phrase mean by the knowledge of Him upon the part of others; and this is determined by the whole connection to mean practical, experimental knowledge, involving faith and a self-appropriation of the Messiah’s righteousness, the effect of which is then expressed in the following words. All mistake and doubt as to the nature of the justification here intended, or of the healing mentioned in verse 6, or of the cleansing mentioned in chap. 52:15, is precluded by the addition of the words, and He shall bear their iniquities. The introduction of the pronoun makes a virtual antithesis, suggesting the idea of exchange or mutual substitution. They shall receive His righteousness, and He shall bear their burdens. A.

Guilt and ill desert are personal qualities, and cannot be transferred from one to another. The transgressor alone is ill deserving and blameworthy. But the consequences of guilt may pass over to another; the sufferings which would be a proper expression of the evil of sin may be assumed by another. And this was done by the Redeemer. He suffered in the place of sinners, and for their sake. He stood between the stroke of justice and the sinner, and received the blow Himself. He intercepted, so to speak, the descending sword of justice that would have cut the sinner down, and thus saved him. He thus bore their iniquities. It is in connection with this that men become justified; and it is only by the fact that He has thus borne their iniquities that they can be regarded as righteous in the sight of a holy God. It is not by any merit of theirs; not by any work of righteousness which they have done; it is only by His merits, and by the righteousness which He has thus wrought out for them. He endured the consequences or results of sin; we partake of the consequences or the results of His sufferings and death in our behalf. This is the great cardinal doctrine of justification; the peculiarity of the Christian scheme; the glorious plan by which lost men may be saved, and by which the guilty may become pardoned and be raised up to endless life and glory. Barnes.

Out of this death of scorn and agony come fruits of magnificent reward; the knowledge of Him avails to justify many because He has borne their iniquities. He sees of the travail of His soul, and is satisfied. The salvation of a great multitude that no man can number is His everlasting glory! H. C.—The number of the saved is represented in Scripture as so exceedingly great that even Christ Himself at the last, with all His mighty love for sinners, is satisfied. All this immense multitude redeemed from among men owe all their salvation, all their happiness and glory, to one sacrifice only, one offering once offered, “the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” The blood of Jesus Christ it describes as so efficacious, so precious, that its virtue extends to all believing sinners in all ages of the world. C. Bradley.—Estimate the throngs who shall grace the Saviour’s triumph when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, and behold the fulfilment of the inspired promise, “He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.” Measure, if you can, the tides of joy which shall flow through the Redeemer’s breast forever. B. B. E.

12. Poured out His soul unto death. It can never be forgotten, without a dismemberment of the living gospel, that Jesus Christ “laid down” His own life. No man had power to take it from Him. He offered it because it was for this purpose He came into the world. His death was as diverse from ours as His life was superior to ours. It was not an accident or fortune, but the completion of His priestly office. His self surrender to His foes was not suicide, but sacrifice. To say that He lived our complete exemplar is to tell but one half the story; He died as one who came “to make atonement for the sins of the people.” It is not before the completion of that sacrificial work, as Paul says, but after it that “being reconciled to God by the death of His Son, we shall be saved by His life.” Interior.

Our dear Lord, when He died, died because He willed to do so. He was man, and therefore He could die; but He was not man in such fashion as that He must die. In His bodily frame was the possibility, not the necessity, of death. And that being so, the very fact of His death is the most signal proof that He is Lord of death as well as of life. He dies not because He must, He dies not because of faintness and pain and wounds. These and they who inflicted them had no power at all over Him. He chooses to die; and He wills it because He wills to fulfil the eternal purpose of Divine love, which is His purpose, and to bring life to the world. His hour of weakness was His hour of strength. They lifted Him on a cross, and it became a throne. In the moment when death seemed to conquer Him, He was really using it that He might abolish it. When He gave up the ghost, He showed Himself Lord of death as marvellously and as gloriously as when He burst its bands and rose from the grave. Thou didst overcome the sharpness of death when Thou didst willingly bow Thy head to it, and didst die, not because Thou must, but because Thou wouldest. A. M.

It is a throne of honor to which our Saviour is raised; a throne of honor to which heaven and earth and hell do and must bow. The sun hides his awful head, the earth trembles, the rocks rend, the graves open and all the frame of nature doth homage to their Lord in this secret but Divine pomp of His crucifixion. And while ye think His feet and hands despicably fixed, behold, He is powerfully trampling upon hell and death and setting up trophies of His most glorious victory, and scattering everlasting crowns and sceptres unto all believers. Bp. H.

At last it came, that hour so awful, when on the head of the only righteous One, the Lord made to meet the sins of us all; and beneath the first feeling of the burden His soul grew sorrowful even unto death. It was not merely that the prophet sealed His testimony with His blood, but the Priest became a Victim, and in order to earn His crown, the King of saints became the King of martyrs. He laid down His life for the sheep, He made His soul an offering, and to the types and shadows of a thousand years gave significance, and to every troubled conscience strong consolation, by shedding that blood, without which there could have been no remission, but which, now that it is shed, insures a cleansing from all and any sin. Come and see Him—see Him in our place, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities—see Him drinking our cup and paying our penalty—see Him in the death-grapple with our enemies, vanquishing the devil, but apparently carried captive by the grave—see Him disarming even this grim enemy, and ascending most glorious on high—see Him there, a Priest upon His throne, dispensing the dearly purchased pardons, the repentance and remission—see Him still the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, and hearken to the adoring hosts of heaven as they cry, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing!” Hamilton.

The cross is the throne of the King. A sacrificial death is the true work of the Messiah of law, prophecy and psalm; and because He did not come down from the cross, therefore is He crowned with glory and honor in heaven, and rules over grateful and redeemed hearts on earth. The midday darkness was nature divinely draped in mourning over the sin of sins, the most tragic of deaths. It was a symbol of the eclipse of the Light of the world; but ere He died it passed, and the sun shone on His expiring head, in token that His death scattered the darkness and poured day on our sad night. The solemn silence was broken at last by that loud cry, the utterance of strangely blended consciousness of possession of God and abandonment by Him, the depths of which we can never fathom. But this we know, that our sins, not His, wove the veil which separated Him from His God. Such separation is the real death. Where cold analysis is out of place, reverent gratitude may draw near. Let us adore, for what we can understand speaks of a love which has taken the iniquity of us all on itself. Let us silently adore, for all words are weaker than that mystery of love. A. M.—Calvary is holy ground, and we must take the shoes from our feet. We can only admire and adore. There never was witnessed such a scene in the universe before—the infinite holiness and goodness of God sounded to their depths, the whole moral energy of the Godhead in action. Well might the angels stoop from their heights and desire to look into this mystery; well might there be silence, the silence of profound admiration, in heaven; well might the sun be darkened, the earth convulsed and the very dead startled, when moral elements were at work on a scale of infinite grandeur before which the earth, the sea and the sky, and all material things, dwindle into littleness as mirrors of the glory of God. Thornwell.

Christ’s Character and Sacrifice the only Moving Power with Men. Outside the character revealed in Christ, apart from His act of costly sacrifice, there is no power in all that God is or has done to stir the soul to its depths, to awaken true gratitude, to subdue and melt the heart to penitence and love. For these effects all that God has done beside has ever been in vain. The constant miracle of the circling hosts of heaven, of the procession of seasons and harvests upon the earth have wrought no transforming change in man’s gazing soul. The sense of obligation that God has impressed upon man’s conscience through the law proclaimed on Sinai, the actual, terrible judgments with which in all time He has visited individuals, nations and the race, and the abundant kindly providences that He has scattered along the path of men in every generation, have all utterly failed to influence the human heart to submission and trust, or to stay the broad tide of human corruption. Resisted, forgotten or unheeded all! Only Christ crucified, revealing God in sacrifice, has proved a power adequate to reach, impress, subdue the human heart. The infinite God, suffering for man, voluntarily substituting Himself a sacrifice that man might not suffer the just due of sin, revealing thus to man by the immensity of the sacrifice, as nought beside could reveal, the inherent greatness of the soul, the vastness of its guilt and the fearfulness of the consequences of that guilt unpardoned, unremoved; revealing, too, a measure of love exceeding all thought, this it is which constitutes Christ the power of God, and this is the only adequate power of God Himself, to move human hearts to grief and trust and love. It was the vision of the crucified Son of God that broke down the proud, self-righteous spirit of the persecuting Saul and transformed him into the humble, loving, fervent preacher of the cross. The same vision of God in sacrifice for man, realized by faith, has wrought with similar transforming power, alike upon the few great souls chosen of God in successive generations to lead in the mighty movements of His Spirit, and upon the many who, in narrower, unknown spheres, have lived the life of faith in the Son of God and gone to their reward. The finished record of every saintly life, whether written or unwritten, testifies to this power of the cross of Christ as the only power of God to salvation, the only power that has subdued the unloving, unrenewed heart to childlike trust and love. And the history of Christ’s living ones to-day furnishes the same testimony, shows that the heart-melting, renewing power lies in the conviction wrought by the vision of the cross, the conviction of each uplooking soul, that Christ “loved me and gave Himself for me.” B.

Scriptural experience of sin, of its turpitude, of its guilt and of its power as an indwelling principle in our nature has never found moral equilibrium save in the sacrificial work of Christ. With every revival of religion, and in constant proportion to the depth and power of the prevalent religious experience, this doctrine of a blood-bought salvation has always been the more sharply emphasized in the prayers, the hymns and the expressed thoughts of God’s people. The cross as the meeting-place of infinite justice and love, as the fountain of inexhaustible streams of life and righteousness effected by sacrificial blood, has been the inspiration of all the heroic living and doing of the distinctively Christian type which has appeared in the course of human history. A. A. Hodge.

It is not easy to found a religion. It was not easy two thousand years ago, with Judaism and Greek philosophy and Roman law in possession of the world. But it was done. Jerusalem and Athens and the Eternal City surrendered. The cross and the open sepulchre mastered them. The barbaric nations were tamed into gentleness and loving loyalty, and upon the foundations of that ancient faith have been raised the walls of modern Christendom, dominant in Europe and America, and circling the globe with its missionary enterprise. The scorn of its foes has not withered its life nor have the unseemly contentions of its friends broken its power. How comes it? Because behind its creeds and sacraments, radiant and clear, rises the figure of the Christ of Bethlehem and Olivet, risen from the dead, regnant in the heavens, the incarnate Son of God. And upon the seas of modern controversy I see His pierced feet treading their wildness into eternal peace. Behrends.

Starr King, one of the most eloquent champions of the Socinians, paid the following tribute to the doctrine of the vicarious atonement: “It is embodied by the holiest of memories, as it has been consecrated by the loftiest talent of Christendom. It fired the fierce eloquence of Tertullian in the early Church, and gushed in honeyed periods from the lips of Chrysostom; it enlisted the life-long zeal of Athanasius to keep it pure; the sublimity of it fired every power, and commanded all the resources of the mighty soul of Augustine; the learning of Jerome and the energy of Ambrose were committed to its defence; it was the text for the subtle eye and analytic thought of Aquinas; it was the pillar of Luther’s soul, toiling for man; it was shapen into intellectual proportions and systematic symmetry by the iron logic of Calvin; it inspired the beautiful humility of Fenelon; fostered the devotion and self-sacrifice of Oberlin; flowed like molten metal into the rigid forms of Edwards’s intellect, and kindled the deep and steady rapture of Wesley’s heart. All the great enterprises of Christian history have been born from the influence, immediate or remote, which the vicarious theory of redemption has exercised upon the mind and heart of humanity.”

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The central miracle of Scripture and of all history is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. If there were not a single Gospel account of the fact, we should be compelled to believe it, on the testimony of the apostles in their preaching, and on the universal faith of the early and the persecuted Church. The preaching of the apostles, in the lifetime of eye-witnesses, was very largely of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, and no one can explain that preaching, nor the existence, the growth under severe trials, the faith, the unity, the persistence through ages of the living Church, without admitting the literal reality of the original and central miracle of the Christian system. We could not account for the inscriptions in the earliest tombs, nor for the lofty strains of the earliest hymns, if the resurrection of Christ was a myth. The martyr-faith would have been simply impossible. Packard.

The resurrection carried along with it a triple proof of the divinity of our Lord’s mission. It was the fulfilment of a prophecy, as well as the working of a miracle; that miracle wrought, and that prophecy fulfilled, in answer to a solemn and confident appeal made beforehand by Christ to this event as the crowning testimony to His Messiahship. In His resurrection the seal of the Divine acceptance and approval was put upon that great work of service and of sacrifice, of atonement and of obedience in our room and stead, which Jesus finished on the cross. Hanna.

With the resurrection stands or falls Christ’s whole work for our redemption. If He died, like other men, then we have no proof that the cross was anything but a martyr’s cross. His resurrection is the proof of His completed work of redemption. It is the proof—followed as it is by His ascension—that His death was not the tribute which for Himself He had to pay, but the ransom for us. His resurrection is the condition of His present activity. If He has not risen, He has not put away sin; and if He has not put it away by the sacrifice of Himself, none has, and it remains. We come back to the old dreary alternative: if Christ be not risen, your faith is vain, and our preaching is vain. Ye are yet in your sins, and they which have fallen asleep in Christ with unfulfilled hopes fixed upon a baseless vision—they of whom we hoped, through our tears, that they live with Him—they are perished. For, if He be not risen, there is no resurrection; and if He be not risen, there is no forgiveness; and if He be not risen, there is no Son of God; and the world is desolate, and the heaven is empty, and the grave is dark, and sin abides, and death is eternal. If Christ be dead, then that awful vision is true, “As I looked up into the immeasurable heavens for the Divine Eye, it froze me with an empty bottomless eye socket.” There is nothing between us and darkness, dedespair, death, but that ancient message, “I declare unto you the Gospel which I preach, by which ye are saved if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was raised the third day according to the Scriptures.” Well, then, may we take up the ancient glad salutation, “The Lord is risen;” and turning from these thoughts of the disaster and despair that that awful supposition drags after it, fall back upon the sober certainty, and with the apostle break forth in triumph, “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” A. M.

Jesus Christ, risen from His grave—arrayed in His glorious manhood—is seated on the throne of heaven. He is the mid-point—the centre of the great empire of living souls. He is in communication, constant and intimate, with myriads of beings to whom, by His death, and by His triumph over death, and by His enduring and exhaustless life, He is made wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Yes, to believe in the risen Jesus is to live beneath a sky which is indeed bright. This is to believe that He is alive forevermore, and that He has the keys of hell and of death. Liddon.

I have been used for many years to study the history of other times and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us, that Christ died and rose again from the dead. T. Arnold.

Made intercession for transgressors. The acceptance of His offering is made the basis of His heavenly intercession. It is this which is made the premise of that grand chapter in Hebrews when we are told that “now once in the end of the world hath He appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself;” and therefore He has entered “into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.” It is not the cradle of Bethlehem, but the cross of Calvary which gives Him His standing as our Advocate before the throne. Interior.—When we are bid to consider the “High Priest of our profession,” our thoughts are pointed back to the one great act by which Christ “hath offered one sacrifice for sins forever,” and up to the continuous work which, with ever-ready sympathy and ever-prevalent intercession, He carries on in the heavens, presenting there His Eternal Sacrifice, preparing a place for us because He is there, and sending down on us the fulness of the gifts which are His that they may be ours. The central point of our meditation and of our faith in the work of Christ is His Sacrifice and Intercession. He has come forth from the Father—His messenger to men; He has gone to the Father—our priest and forerunner with God. By both offices He completes His merciful mediation—the Christ whom it is our life and blessedness to set ever before us is the Christ who, Son of God, lived that He might declare God to men; and, Son of Man, died, that He might reconcile men to God—and Son of God, and Son of Man, ever liveth that He may pour heaven’s gifts upon earth, and at last lift earth’s children to heaven. “Wherefore—consider Jesus Christ, our Apostle and High Priest.” A. M.

Contrarieties Central and Harmonized in Christ. Christ is called the Son of David, yet David calls Him Lord; He was understood to claim equality with the Father—as man He had not where to lay His head; He took part with flesh and blood, yet thought it not robbery to be equal with God; He took the form of a servant, yet His proper form was the form of God; He tabernacled in the flesh, yet came down from heaven; He said that He could of His ownself do nothing, yet He is said to be the Lord of all; His mother is called Mary, yet He is over all, God blessed forever; He was born under the law and fulfilled the law, and yet in His own name gave a new and more perfect law, and brought in a new and everlasting righteousness; He was received into heaven out of the sight of His disciples, yet He is still with them, with any two or three of them always, and even to the ends of the earth; He was found in fashion as a man—and yet is the image of the invisible God; He hid not His face from shame and spitting, though He be the very brightness of the Father’s glory; He increased in stature, yet is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; He increased in wisdom, yet knew the Father even as the Father knew Him; He died at the mandate of a Roman governor, yet is the Prince of the kings of the earth; He could say, “The Father is greater than I,” yet also say, “I and My Father are one—he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father;” He said, in the time of His temptation, unto Satan, “It is written, ‘Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve,’” yet He also declared that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father; and of Him it is asserted that every knee should bow to Him, and every tongue confess that He is God, to the glory of God the Father. Henry B. Smith.

This chapter proves that the Redeemer died as an atoning sacrifice for men. He was not a mere martyr, and He did not come and live merely to set us an example. How could it be said of any martyr that he bore our griefs, that he was bruised for our iniquities, that our sins were made to rush and meet upon him, and that he bare the sin of many? And if the purpose of His coming was merely to teach us the will of God, or to set us an example, why is such a prominence here given to His sufferings in behalf of others? Scarcely an allusion is made to His example; while the chapter is replete with statements of His sufferings and sorrows in behalf of others. It would be impossible to state in more explicit language the truth that He died as a sacrifice for the sins of men; that He suffered to make proper expiation for the guilty. No confession of faith on earth, no creed, no symbol, no standard of doctrine, contains more explicit statements on the subject. And if the language here used does not demonstrate that the Redeemer was an atoning sacrifice, it is impossible to conceive how such a doctrine could be taught or conveyed to men.

This whole chapter contains the most full, continuous statement in the Bible of the design of the Redeemer’s sufferings and death. And after all the light which is shed on the subject in the New Testament; after all the full and clear statements made by the Redeemer and the apostles; still, if we wish to see a full and continuous statement on the great doctrine of the atonement, we naturally recur to this portion of Isaiah. If we wish our faith to be strengthened and our hearts warmed by the contemplation of His sufferings, we shall find no portion of the Bible better adapted to it than this. No man can study it too profoundly. No one can feel too much anxiety to understand it. Every verse, every phrase, every word, should be studied and pondered until it fixes itself deep in the memory, and makes an eternal impression on the heart. If a man understands this portion of the Bible, he will have a correct view of the plan of salvation. And it should be the subject of profound and prayerful contemplation till the heart glows with love to that merciful God who was willing to give the Redeemer to such sorrow, and to the gracious Saviour who for our sins was willing to pour out His soul unto death. Barnes.