For they persecute [him] whom thou hast smitten; and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded.
Ver. 26. For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten] Christ was "stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted," Isaiah 53:4. Him they persecuted to the death, and abused, when he was at the greatest under, with bitter taunts and Satanical sarcasms; so the pagans and Papists dealt by the dying martyrs; and so profane persons and malicious miscreants do still by God's poor afflicted; falling as cursed curs upon the dog that is worried; and as when a deer is shot the rest of the herd push him out of their company: so here. Now, if it could be said of Mithridates, that he hated such as maliciously persecuted virtue forsaken of fortune; much more may we think doth God abhor such cruel criminals as are here spoken of. See Isa 47:6 Oba 1:1 Zechariah 1:15 .
And they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded] Narrationes contexunt, they frame discourses to the grief of thy wounded ones, pouring into their wounds not oil, or balsam, but vinegar, or salt water, Heb. they number, or cipher up the grief; that is, saith one, they study and devise new ways of torturing them, so that he who would speak of them all, must keep a remembrance of their number.