_Oppressed, he did humble himself,_ _Nor opened his mouth--_ _As a lamb to the slaughter is led,_ _As a sheep 'fore her shearers is dumb--_ _Nor opened his mouth._ _By tyranny and law was he taken;_[214] _And of his age who reflected,_ _That he was wrenched_[215] _from the land of the living,_ _For My people's transgressions the stroke was on him?_ _So they made with the wicked his grave,_ _Yea, with the felon_[216] _his tomb._ _Though never harm had he done,_ _Neither was guile in his mouth._ V. _But Jehovah had purposed to bruise him,_ _Had laid on him sickness; So_[217] _if his life should offer guilt offering,_ _A seed he should see, he should lengthen his days._ _And the purpose of Jehovah by his hand should prosper,_ _From the travail of his soul shall he see,_[218] _By his knowledge be satisfied._ _My Servant, the Righteous, righteousness wins he for many,_ _And their guilt he takes for his load._ _Therefore I set him a share with the great,_[219] _Yea, with the strong shall he share the spoil:_ _Because that he poured out his life unto death,_ _Let himself with transgressors be reckoned;_ _Yea, he the sin of the many hath borne,_ _And for the transgressors he interposes._ Let us now take up the interpretation strophe by strophe. I. Ch. lii. 13-15. When last our eyes were directed to the Servant, he was in suffering unexplained and unvindicated (ch. l. 4-6). His sufferings seemed to have fallen upon him as the consequence of his fidelity to the Word committed to him; the Prophet had inevitably become the Martyr. Further than this his sufferings were not explained, and the Servant was left in them, calling upon God indeed, and sure that God would hear and vindicate him, but as yet unanswered by word of God or word of man. It is these words, words both of God and of man, which are given in Isaiah ch. lii. 13-liii. The Sufferer is explained and vindicated, first by God in the first strophe, ch. lii. 13-15, and then by the Conscience of Men, His own people, in the second and third (liii. 1-6); and then, as it appears, the Divine Voice, or the Prophet speaking for it, resumes in strophes iv. and v., and concludes in a strain similar to strophe i.