om the language of Nehemiah as to that of Isaiah. The
Ellipses: "the true cause of His death," "the importance and fruit of
His death," "the salvation lying behind it" (_Stier_), are very [Pg
292] hard, and the sense which is purchased by such sacrifices is
rather a common-place one, little suitable to this context, and to the
relation to chap. lii. 15.--"_For He was cut off from the land of the
living, for the transgression of my people, whose the punishment._" The
reason is here stated why the Servant of God receives so glorious a
reward; why, after He has been removed to God, a generation so
infinitely great is granted to Him. _He has deserved this reward by His
having suffered for the sins of His people, as their substitute._ The
first clause must not be separated from the second: "for the
transgression," &c. For it is not the circumstance, that the Servant of
God suffered a violent death at all, but that for the sin of His people
He took it upon Him, which is the ground of His glorification. [Hebrew:
ngzr] "to be cut off" never occurs of a quiet, natural death; not even
in the passage, quoted in support of this use of the word, viz., Psa.
lxxxviii. 6; Lam. iii. 54, but always of a violent, premature death.
The cognate [Hebrew: ngrz] also has, in Psa. xxxi. 23, the
signification of extermination. [Hebrew: lmv], poetical form for
[Hebrew: lhM], refers to the collective [Hebrew: eM]. Before it, the
relative pronoun is to be understood: for the sin of my people, whose
the punishment, _q.d._, whose property the punishment was, to whom it
belonged. _Stier_ prefers to adopt the most violent interpretation
rather than to conform and yield to this so simple sense, which, as he
says, could be entertained only by that obsolete theory of substitution
where one saves the other from suffering. Several interpreters take the
suffix in [Hebrew: lmv] as a Singular: "on account of the transgression
of my people, punishment was to Him." And passages, indeed, are not
wanting where the supposition that [Hebrew: mv] designates the
Singular, has some appearance of probability; but, upon a closer
examination, this appearance everywhere vanishes.[7] Moreover, as we
have already remarked, it is, on account of the sense, inadmissible to
separate the two clauses.--By [Hebrew: emi] "my people," the hypothesis
of the non-Messianic interpreters is set aside, that in [Pg 293] vers.
1-10 the _Gentiles_ are speaking. It is a single people to which the