Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they [are] men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH.
Ver. 8. Hear now, O Joshua, the high priest] Hear a sermon of Christ, the fountain of all this mercy bestowed upon thee, and yet further promised unto thee. Hear for thyself, hear for thy whole society. Thou and thy fellows, thy fellow friends, the rest of the priests, thy fellows in service, though inferior in office (for there was a subordination of priests, both before the temple, Numbers 3:6,10 1 Chronicles 23:4,5, and under the temple, 2Ch 35:8-9), types also of Christ, and partakers of the benefit, 1 Timothy 6:2 .
For they are men wondered at] Erant omnibus probrosi, saith Calvin, They departed from evil, and thereby made themselves a prey, Isaiah 59:15, they were for signs and for wonders in Israel, Isaiah 8:18, hissed and hooted at, Psalms 71:7, as those that affected to be singular and seraphical. They think it strange, saith St. Peter, to his holy converts, that you run not with them to the same excess of riot, 1 Peter 4:4; speaking evil of you, as if you were no better than madmen, Isaiah 59:15, robbed of your right minds, as the word signifieth. It is a French proverb, He that would have his neighbour's dog hanged gives out that he is mad. The primitive persecutors used to put Christians into bears' and dogs' skins, or ugly creatures, and then bait them; so graceless persons put the saints of God into ugly conceits, look upon them as strange creatures, and then speak and act against them. In our wretched days, as the Turks count all fools to be saints, so people account all saints to be fools; and the more zealous among them monsters and miscreants. As for Athanasius and Marcellus, who have impiously blasphemed against God, and have lived as wicked miscreants, and are thereupon cast out of the Church, and condemned, we cannot receive them to the honour of episcopacy, said those fourscore bishops in the mock synod of Sardis. And Bede testifieth of the ancient Britons immediately before their destruction by the Saxons, that they were come to that height of wickedness, as to cast reproach upon the professors of religion, as upon the worst of men. Doth not St Paul say as much, 1 Corinthians 4:9, We are made a theatre, or are set upon the stage for a laughing stock unto the world, and to angels, and to men?
For behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH] The same that grew out of the root of Jesse, when that goodly family was sunk so low, as from David the king to Joseph the carpenter. See Isaiah 4:2; Isaiah 11:1; Isaiah 45:8; Isa 53:1 Jeremiah 33:15, where the Chaldee for Branch rendereth it Messiah, as here also he doth; and some have observed that themagh, a branch, is, by transposition of letters, the same with Masciach, Messias; Samech and tsadde being near akin, and of the same sound almost. A servant Christ is called by reason of his mediatorship, taking upon him the form of a servant; yea, of a faulty servant that was to be beaten; yea, that being cruelly beaten, was brought forth to the people with an Ecce homo, "Behold the man," John 19:5 "Behold," saith God here, "I will bring forth my servant the Branch"; bring him forth out of the bosom of his Father, out of the womb of his mother, out of the types of the law.