shearers is dumb, so he opened not
his mouth," quadrates with no part of the Jewish history with which we
are acquainted. The mention of the "grave" and the "tomb," in the ninth
verse, is not very applicable to the fortunes of a nation; and still
less so is the conclusion of the prophecy in the twelfth verse, which
expressly represents the sufferings as voluntary, and the sufferer as
interceding for the offenders; "because he hath poured out his soul unto
death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin
of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

_________

* Bishop Lowth adopts in this place the reading of the seventy, which
gives smitten to death, "for the transgression of my people was he
smitten to death." The addition of the words "to death" makes an end of
the Jewish interpretation of the clause. And the authority upon which
this reading (though not given by the present Hebrew text) is adopted,
Dr. Kennicot has set forth by an argument not only so cogent, but so
clear and popular, that I beg leave to transcribe the substance of it
into this note:--"Origen, after having quoted at large this prophecy
concerning the Messiah, tells us that, having once made use of this
passage, in a dispute against some that were accounted wise amongst the
Jews, one of them replied that the words did not mean one man, but one
people, the Jews, who were smitten of God, and dispersed among the
Gentiles for their conversion; that he then urged many parts of this
prophecy to show the absurdity of this interpretation, and that he
seemed to press them the hardest by this sentence,--'for the
transgression of my people was he smitten to death.'" Now as Origen, the
author of the Hexapla, must have understood Hebrew, we cannot suppose
that he would have urged this last text as so decisive, if the Greek
version had not agreed here with the Hebrew text; nor that these wise
Jews would have been at all distressed by this quotation, unless the
Hebrew text had read agreeably to the words "to death," on which the
argument principally depended; for by quoting it immediately, they would
have triumphed over him, and reprobated his Greek version. This,
whenever they could do it was their constant practice in their disputes
with the Christians. Origen himself, who laboriously compared the Hebrew
text with the Septuagint, has recorded the necessity of arguing with the
Jews from such passages only as were in the Septuagint