only as such, only by His coming forward as a substitute for sinners, and not because He suffers for the guilt of others to which He remained a stranger. By this throwing the guilt upon the Servant of God, the condition of being without a shepherd is _done_ away with, the flock is gathered from its scattered condition. The wall of separation which was raised by its guilt, and which separated it from God, the fountain of salvation, is now removed by His substitution, and the words: "The Lord is my Shepherd," now become a truth, comp. John x. 4. Ver. 7. "_He was oppressed, and when He was plagued, He does not open His mouth, like a lamb which is brought to the slaughter, and as a sheep which is dumb before her shearers, and He does not open his mouth._" In these words, we have a description of the manner in which the Servant of God _bore_ such sufferings. It flows necessarily from the circumstance, that it was a vicarious suffering. The substitution implies that He took them upon Him spontaneously; and this has patience for its companion. First, the contents of ver. 6 are once more summed up in the word נגש, "He was oppressed:" then, this condition of the Servant [Pg 288] of God is brought into connection with His _conduct_, which, only in this connection, appears in its full majesty.--נגש is the Preterite in _Niphal_, and not, as _Beck_ thinks, 1st pers. Fut. _Kal_. For the Future would be here unusual; the verb has elsewhere the Future in _o_; the suffix is wanting, and the sense which then arises suits only the untenable supposition that, in vers. 1-10, the _Gentiles_ are speaking. The _Niphal_ occurs in 1 Sam. xiii. 6, of Israel oppressed by the Philistines; and in 1 Sam. xiv. 24, of those borne down by heavy toil and fatigue. נגש and נענה "to be humbled, oppressed, abused," do not, in themselves essentially differ; it is only on account of the context, and the contrast implied in it, that the same condition is once more designated by a word which is nearly synonymous. The words "and He" separate נענה from what precedes, and connect it with what follows. The explanation: "He was oppressed, but He suffered patiently," has this opposed to it, that the two _Niphals_, following immediately upon one another, cannot here stand in a different meaning. The idea of patience would here not be a collateral, but the main idea, and hence, could not stand without a stronger designation.--In יפתח, the real Future has taken the place of the ideal Past; it shows that the preceding Preterites are to be considered as prophetical, and that, in point of fact, the suffering of the Servant of God is no less future than His glorification. The _lamb_ points back to Exod. xii. 3, and designates Christ as the true paschal lamb. With a reference to the verse under consideration, John the Baptist calls Christ the Lamb of God, John i. 29; comp. 1 Pet. i. 18, 19; Acts viii. 32-35. But since it is not the vicarious character of