co-ordinate two _apodoses_,--and the
transition from the 2d to the 3d person remains unaccounted for.
[Hebrew: wmM] "to be desolated" is then transferred to the spiritual
desolation and devastation, and receives the signification "to be
horrified," "to be shocked."--Who the many are that are shocked and
offended at the miserable appearance of the Servant of God, appears
from chap. xlix. 4, according to which the opposition to the Servant of
God has its seat among the covenant people; farther, from the contrast
in ver. 15 of the chapter before us, according to which the respectful
surrender belongs to the _Gentiles_; and farther, from chap. liii. 1,
where the unbelief of the former covenant-people is complained of; from
vers. 2-4, where even the believers from among Israel complain that
they had had difficulty in surmounting the offence of the Cross.
[Hebrew: mwHt], properly "corruption," stands here as _abstractum pro
concreto_, in the signification, "corrupted," "marred." As to its form,
it is in the _status constructus_ which, in close connections, can
stand even [Pg 267] before Prepositions. From the corresponding
[Hebrew: Hdl aiwiM] in chap. liii. 3, it appears that the Preposition
stands here only for the sake of distinctness, and might as well have
been omitted. The [Hebrew: mN] serves for designating the distance,
"from man," "from the sons of men," so that He is no more a man, does
no more belong to the number of the sons of men. The correctness of
this explanation appears from chap. liii. 3, and Ps. xxii. 7: "I am a
worm and no man." As regards the sense of the whole parenthesis, many
interpreters remark, that we must not stop at the bodily disfiguration
of the Servant of God, but that the expression must, at the same time,
be understood figuratively. Thus, Luther says: "The Prophet does not
speak of the form of Christ as to His person, but of the political and
royal form of a Ruler, who is to become an earthly King, and does not
appear in royal form, but as the meanest of all servants; so that no
more despised man than He has been seen in the world." But the Prophet
evidently speaks, in the first instance, of the bodily appearance only;
and we can the less think of a figurative sense, that bodily
disfiguration forms the climax of misery, and that, in this _part_, the
_whole_ of the miserable condition is delineated. Even the severe
inward sufferings are a matter of course, if the outward ones have
risen to suc