In the preceding verse, we are told what the Servant of God had _not_, viz., anything which could have attracted the natural man who had no conception of the inward glory, and as little of the cause why the Divine appears in the form of a Servant and a sufferer. Here we are told what He had, viz.: everything to _offend_ and _repulse_ him to whom the arm of the Lord had not been revealed,--the full measure of misery and the cross. Instead of "the most unworthy among men," the text literally translated has: "one ceasing from among men" (חדל in the signification "ceasing" in Ps. xxxix. 5), _i.e._, one who ceases to belong to men, to be a man, exactly corresponding to "from man," and "from the sons of men," in the sketch, ver. 14, and to: "I am a worm and no man," in Ps. xxii. [Pg 280] The explanation: "Forsaken by men, rejected of men," is opposed by the _usus loquendi_, and by these parallel passages.--"A man of pains"--one who, as it were, possesses pains as his property. There is a similar expression in Prov. xxix. 1: "A man of chastenings"--one who is often chastened. "An acquaintance of disease,"--one who is intimately acquainted with it, who has, as it were, entered into a covenant of friendship with it. The passive Participle has no other signification than this, Deut. i. 13, 15, and does not occur in the signification of the active Participle "knowing."--There is no reason for supposing that disease stands here _figuratively_. It comprehends also the pain arising from wounds, 1 Kings xxii. 34; Jer. vi. 7, x. 19; and there is so much the greater reason for thinking of it here, that החלי in ver. 10, evidently refers to the חלי in this place. As an acquaintance of disease, the Lord especially showed himself in His _passion_. And then _every sorrow_ may be viewed as a disease; every sorrow has, to a certain degree, disease in its train. On Ps. vi., where sickness is represented as the consequence of hostile persecution, Luther remarks: "Where the heart is afflicted, the whole body is weary and bruised; while, on the other hand, where there is a joyful heart, the body is also so much the more active and strong." הסתיר always means "to hide;" the whole phrase occurs in chap. l. 6, in the signification "to hide the face." מסתר is the Participle in _Hiphil_. In the singular, it is true, such a form is not found any where else; but, in the Plural, it is, Jer. xxix. 8. In favour of the interpretation: "Like one hiding His face from us," is the evident reference to the law in Lev. xiii. 45: "The leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent and his head bare, _and the beard he shall have covered over_, and shall cry: Unclean, unclean,"--where that which the leper crieth forms the commentary upon the symbolical act of the covering. They covered themselves, as a sign of shame, as far as possible, in order to allow of breathing, up to the nose; hence the mention of the beard. In my Commentary on the Song of Solomon i.