The sad picture of humanity painted in that simile of a scattered flock
lays stress on the universality of transgression, on its divisive
effect, on the solitude of sin, and on its essential characteristic as
being self-willed rejection of control. But the isolation caused by
transgression is blessedly counteracted by the concentration of the sin
of all on the Servant. Men fighting for their own hand, and living at
their own pleasure, are working to the disruption of all sweet bonds of
fellowship. But God, in knitting together all the black burdens into
one, and loading the Servant with that tremendous weight, is preparing
for the establishment of a more blessed unity, in experience of the
healing brought about by His sufferings.
Can one man's 'iniquity,' as distinguished from the consequences of
iniquity, be made to press upon any other? It is a familiar and not
very profound objection to the Christian Atonement that guilt cannot be
transferred. True, but in the first place, Christ's nature stands in
vital relations to every man, of such intimacy that what is impossible
between two of us is not impossible between Christ and any one of us;
and, secondly, much in His life, and still more in His passion, is
unintelligible unless the black mass of the world's sin was heaped upon
Him, to His own consciousness. In that dread cry, wrung from Him as He
hung there in the dark, the consciousnesses of possessing God and of
having lost Him are blended inextricably and inexplicably. The only
approach to an explanation of it is that then the world's sin was felt
by Him, in all its terrible mass and blackness, coming between Him and
God, even as our own sins come, separating us from God. That grim
burden not only came on Him, but was _laid_ on Him by God. The same
idea is expressed by the prophet in that awful representation and by
Jesus in that as awful cry, 'Why hast Thou _forsaken_ Me?'
The prophet constructs no theory of Atonement. But no language could be
chosen that would more plainly set forth the fact of Atonement. And it
is to be observed that, so far as this prophecy is concerned, the
Servant's sole form of service is to suffer. He is not a teacher, an
example, or a benefactor, in any of the other ways in which men need
help. His work is to bear our griefs and be bruised for our healing.
'He was oppressed, yet He humbled Himself and opened not His mouth; as
a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her
shearers is dumb; yea, He opened not His mouth. 8. 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. 9. And they made His grave
with the wicked, and with the rich in His death; although He had done
no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth'--ISAIAH liii, 7-9. R.
V.
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.