For he shall grow up, &c.— But he groweth up before him, as a tender shoot, and as a branch out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness, that we should gaze upon him, and no beauty, &c. "Would you hear the cause of so great unbelief? It is this. Though he shall come before Israel, as the promised tender shoot, as the root and branch of Jesse's stock, (chap. Isaiah 11:1; Isaiah 11:10. Jeremiah 23:3.) yet, not appearing in the form of a tall, leafy, flourishing tree, but withered and shrivelled, as shrubs which grow up without water, disclaiming all pretensions to worldly greatness and riches and power, which is the form and comeliness that the Jews seek after, he shall not be received by his own. He, who was once the object of their desire, their hope, their delight, shall be no more desired by them, but rejected for want of that external beauty which they thought to find in him. This in plain words is the true reason of their dislike. He shall be despised and rejected of men, as he shall be a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; coming in a poor, suffering condition. Because he shall be a hiding of faces from us,"—(a phrase for one in grief, a mourner, or a leper, who was wont to cover the lip, or all under the nose, Ezekiel 26:16-18. Leviticus 13:45 where the Targum has it, covering his beard, or face, as a mourner covers himself, and Kimchi on 2 Samuel 15:30 reads, "Such was the custom of mourners to cover themselves.") "He shall be despised, and we shall make no account of him."
Isaiah 53:4. Surely he hath borne our griefs— "And yet his sorrows are none of them the punishment of his faults, but ours. They are truly our griefs, and our sorrows; they are our due, though he bears them like a sacrifice in our stead, and for this cause is thought by us to be as one stricken with a leprosy, or to be marked out for an example of God's displeasure." The Hebrew word נגוע naguang, or stricken, is rendered quasi leprosus, by the Vulgate, Aquila, Symmachus, and the later Jewish commentators, Instead of, yet we did esteem, &c. we may read, when we did, &c.