Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Isaiah 53:7
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
The fourth turn describes how He suffered and died and was buried. "He was ill treated; whilst He suffered willingly, and opened not His mouth, like the sheep that is led to the slaughter-bench, and like a lamb that is dumb before its shearers, and opened not His mouth." The third pers. niphal stands first in a passive sense: He has been hard pressed ( Sa1 13:6): He is driven, or hunted ( Sa1 14:24), treated tyrannically and unsparingly; in a word, plagued (vexatus; compare the niphal in a reciprocal sense in Isa 3:5, and according to the reading נגשׂ in Isa 29:13 in a reflective sense, to torment one's self). Hitzig renders the next clause, "and although tormented, He opened not His mouth." But although an explanatory subordinate clause may precede the principal clause which it more fully explains, not example can be found of such a clause with (a retrospective) והוּא explaining what follows; for in Job 2:8 the circumstantial clause, "sitting down among the ashes," belongs to the principal fact which stands before. And so here, where נענה (from which comes the participle נענה, usually met with in circumstantial clauses) has not a passive, but a reflective meaning, as in Exo 10:3 : "He was ill treated, whilst He bowed Himself (= suffered voluntarily), and opened not His mouth" (the regular leap from the participle to the finite). The voluntary endurance is then explained by the simile "like a sheep that is led to the slaughter" (an attributive clause, like Jer 11:19); and the submissive quiet bearing, by the simile "like a lamb that is dumb before its shearers." The commentators regard נאלמה as a participle; but this would have the tone upon the last syllable (see Isa 1:21, Isa 1:26; Nah 3:11; cf., Comm. on Job, at Job 20:27, note). The tone shows it to be the pausal form for נאלרמה, and so we have rendered it; and, indeed, as the interchange of the perfect with the future in the attributive clause must be intentional, not quae obmutescit, but obmutuit. The following words, פּיו יפתּח ולא, do not form part of the simile, which would require tiphtach, for nothing but absolute necessity would warrant us in assuming that it points back beyond רחל to שׂה, as Rashi and others suppose. The palindromical repetition also favours the unity of the subject with that of the previous יפתח and the correctness of the delicate accentuation, with which the rendering in the lxx and Act 8:32 coincides. All the references in the New Testament to the Lamb of God (with which the corresponding allusions to the passover are interwoven) spring from this passage in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah 53:8
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