again. He was laden with disease and pains; but these
sufferings, the wages of sin, were not inflicted upon Him on account
[Pg 282] of His own sins, but on account of our sins, so that the
horror falls back upon ourselves, and is changed into loving admiration
of Him. _Beck_ remarks: "Properly speaking, they had not become sick or
unfortunate at all; this had _a priori_ been rendered impossible by the
vicarious suffering of the Son of God; but since they deserved the
sickness and calamity, the averting of it might be considered as a
healing." But this view is altogether the result of embarrassment.
Disease is the inseparable companion of sin. If the persons speaking
are subject to the latter, the disease cannot be considered as an evil
merely threatening them. If they speak of their diseases, we think, in
the first instance, of sickness by which they have already been seized;
and the less obvious sense ought to have been expressly indicated. In
the same manner, the healing also suggests hurts already existing. But
quite decisive is ver. 6, where the miserable condition clearly appears
to have already taken place.--According to the opinion of several
interpreters, by diseases, all inward and outward sufferings are
figuratively designated; according to the opinion of others,
_spiritual_ diseases, sins. But even from the relation of this verse to
the preceding, it appears that here, in the first instance, diseases
and pains, in the ordinary sense, are spoken of; just as the blind and
deaf in chap. xxxv. are, in the first instance, they who are naturally
blind and deaf.--Disease and pain here cannot be spoken of in a sense
different from that in which it is spoken of there. Diseases, in the
sense of _sins_, do not occur at all in the Old Testament. The
circumstance that in the parallel passage, vers. 11 and 12, the bearing
of the _transgressions_ and _sins_ is spoken of, does not prove
anything. The Servant of God bears them also in their consequences, in
their punishments, among which sickness and pains occupy a prominent
place. Of the bearing of outward sufferings, [Hebrew: nwa Hli] occurs
in Jer. x. 19 also. If the words are rightly understood, then at once,
light falls upon the apostolic quotation in Matt. viii. 16, 17: [Greek:
pantas tous kakos echontas etherapeusen, hopos plerothe to rhethen dia
Esaiou tou prophetou legontos. autos tas astheneias hemon elabe kai tas
nosous ebastase]; and this deserves a consideration so