The remarkable expression 'acquainted with grief' seems to carry an
allusion to the previous clause, in which men are spoken of as
despising and rejecting the Servant. They left Him alone, and His only
companion was 'grief'--a grim associate to walk at a man's side all his
days! It is to be noted that the word rendered 'grief' is literally
sickness. That description of mental or spiritual sorrows under the
imagery of bodily sicknesses is intensified in the subsequent terrible
picture of Him as one from whom men hide their faces with disgust at
His hideous appearance, caused by disease. Possibly the meaning may
rather be that He hides His face, as lepers had to do.
Now probably the 'sorrows' touched on at this point are to be
distinguished from those which subsequently are spoken of in terms of
such poignancy as laid on the Servant by God. Here the prophet is
thinking rather of those which fell on Him by reason of men's rejection
and desertion. We shall not rightly estimate the sorrowfulness of
Christ's sorrows, unless we bring to our meditations on them the other
thought of His joys. How great these were we can judge, when we
remember that He told the disciples that by His joy remaining in them
their joy would be full. As much joy then as human nature was capable
of from perfect purity, filial obedience, trust, and unbroken communion
with God, so much was Jesus' permanent experience. The golden cup of
His pure nature was ever full to the brim with the richest wine of joy.
And that constant experience of gladness in the Father and in Himself
made more painful the sorrows which He encountered, like a biting wind
shrieking round Him, whenever He passed out from fellowship with God in
the stillness of His soul into the contemptuous and hostile world. His
spirit carrying with it the still atmosphere of the Holy Place, would
feel more keenly than any other would have done the jarring tumult of
the crowds, and would know a sharper pain when met with greetings in
which was no kindness. Jesus was sinless, His sympathy with all sorrow
was thereby rendered abnormally keen, and He made others' griefs His
own with an identification born of a sympathy which the most
compassionate cannot attain. The greater the love, the greater the
sorrow of the loving heart when its love is spurned. The intenser the
yearning for companionship, the sharper the pang when it is repulsed.
The more one longs to bless, the more one suffers when his blessings
are flung off. Jesus was the most sensitive, the most sympathetic, the
most loving soul that ever dwelt in flesh. He saw, as none other has
ever seen, man's miseries. He experienced, as none else has ever
experienced, man's ingratitude, and, therefore, though God, even His
God, 'anointed Him with the oil of gladness above His fellows,' He was
'a Man of Sorrows,' and grief was His companion during all His life's
course.