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 such a pitch. How both of these go hand in hand is seen from Ps. xxii. These interpreters are, farther, wrong in this respect, that they refer the pretended figurative expression solely to the lowliness and humility of the Messiah, and not, at the same time, to His _sufferings_ also. Thus, among the ancient interpreters, it was viewed by _Jerome_: "The horrid appearance of His form is not thereby indicated, but that He came in humility and poverty;" and among recent interpreters by _Martini_: "The sense of the passage does not properly refer to the deformity of the face, but to the whole external weak, poor, and humble condition." But, for that, the expression is by far too strong. Mere lowliness is no object of horror (comp. 1 Cor. i. 23, according to which it is the _Cross_ which offends the Jews); it does not produce a deformity of the countenance; it cannot produce the effect that the Servant of God should, as it were, cease to be a man. All this suggests an unspeakable _suffering_ of the Servant of God, and that, moreover, a suffering which, in the first instance, [Pg 268] manifested itself upon His own holy body. _Farther_--We must also take into consideration that the _sprinkling_, in ver. 15, has for its background the shedding of blood, and is the fruit of it, at first concealed. If any doubt should yet remain, it would be removed by the subsequent detailed representation of that which is here given in outline merely. The sole reason of that narrow view is, that interpreters did not understand the fundamental relation of the section under consideration to the subsequent section; that they did not perceive that, here, we have in a complete sketch what there is given in detail and expansion.--Ver. 15. The verb נזה occurs in very many passages, and signifies in _Hiphil_, everywhere, "to sprinkle." It is especially set apart and used for the sprinkling with the blood of