[208] And not _our report_, or _something we caused to be heard_, as in the English Version,--מועהש is the passive participle of מעש, to hear, and not of השמיע, to cause to hear. The speakers are now the penitent people of God who had been preached to, and not the prophets who had preached. [209] _Tender shoot._ Masculine participle, meaning _sucker_, or _suckling_. Dr. John Hunter (_Christian Treasury_) suggests succulent plant, such as grow in the desert. But in Job viii. 16; xiv. 7; xv. 30, the feminine form is used of any tender shoot of a tree, and the feminine plural in Ezek. xvii. 22 of the same. The LXX. read παιδιον, _infant_. _Before Him_, i.e. Jehovah. Cheyne, following Ewald, reads _before us_. So Giesebrecht. [210] _Took for his burden._ _Loaded_ himself with them. The same grievous word which God uses of Himself in ch. xlvi. See p. 180. [211] There is more than _afflicted_ (Authorised Version) in this word. There is the sense of being _humbled_, punished for his own sake. [212] The possessive pronoun has been put to the end of the lines, where it stands in the original, producing a greater emphasis and even a sense of rhyme. [213] לנוכ Kūllanū so rendered instead of "all of us," in order to be assonant with the close of the verse, as the original is, which closes with kullam. [214] That is, by a form of law that was tyranny, a judicial crime. [215] Cut off violently, prematurely, unnaturally. [216] See p. 368. [217] The verbs, hitherto in the perfect in this verse, now change to the imperfect; a sign that they express the purpose of God. _Cf._ Dillmann, _in loco_. [218] _From the travail of his soul shall he see, and by his knowledge be satisfied._ Taking דעתוב with שבעי instead of with יצדיק. This reading suggested itself to me some years ago. Since then I have found it only in Prof. Briggs's translation, _Messianic Prophecy_, p. 359. It is supported by the frequent parallel in which we find _seeing_ and _knowing_ in Hebrew. [219] Some translate _many_, _i.e._, the many to whom he brings righteousness, as if he were a victor with a great host behind him. [220] Jer. xxiii. 5. [221] Hitzig (among others) held that it is the prophets who are the speakers of ver. 1, and that the voices of the penitent people come in only with ver. 2 or ver. 3. In that case מועתינוש would mean _what we heard from God_ (מועהש is elsewhere used for the prophetic message) and delivered to the people. This interpretation multiplies the dramatis personæ, but does not materially alter the meaning, of the prophecy. It merely changes part of the penitent people's self-reproach into a reproach cast on them by their prophets. But there is no real reason for introducing the prophets as the speakers of ver. 1.