The first clause is to be read in immediate connection with the
preceding verse. The Servant was of absolute sinlessness, and yet the
Divine Hand crushed and bruised Him. Certainly, if we think of the
vehemence of prophetic rebukes, and of the standing doctrine of the Old
Testament that Israel was punished for its sin, we shall be slow to
believe that this picture of the Sinless One, smitten for the sins of
others, can have reference to the nation in any of its parts, or to any
one man. However other poetry may lament over innocent sufferers, the
Old Testament always takes the ground: 'Our iniquities, like the wind,
have carried us away.' But mark that here, however understood, the
prophet paints a figure so sinless that God's bruising Him is an
outstanding wonder and riddle, only to be solved by regarding these
bruises as the stripes by which our sins were healed, and by noting
that 'the pleasure of the Lord' is carried on through Him, after and
through His death. What conceivable application have such
representations except to Jesus? We note, then, here:--
1. The solemn truth that His sufferings were divinely inflicted. That
is a truth complementary to the other views in the prophecy, according
to which these sufferings are variously regarded as either inflicted by
men ('By oppression and judgment He was taken away') or drawn on Him by
His own sacrificial act ('His soul shall make an offering for sin'). It
was the divine counsel that used men as its instruments, though they
were none the less guilty. The hands that 'crucified and slew' were no
less 'the hands of lawless men,' because it was 'the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God' that 'delivered Him up.'
But a still deeper thought is in these words. For we can scarcely avoid
seeing in them a glimpse into that dim region of eclipse and agony of
soul from which, as from a cave of darkness, issued that last cry:
'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani?' The bruises inflicted by the God, who
made to meet on Him the iniquities of us all, were infinitely more
severe than the weales of the soldiers' rods, or the wounds of the
nails that pierced His hands and feet.