Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
Here follows the explanation of the sorrows and contempt which He endured, as has been just described-namely, His being our Sin-bearer, and so suffering the penalty of our sins; which, however, the Jews did not comprehend, but thought that it was His own sin which He suffered for.
Surely he hath borne our griefs - literally, 'But yet (akeen) He hath taken (or borne) our sickness' - i:e., they who despised Him because of His human infirmities ought rather to have esteemed Him on account of them: for thereby "Himself took OUR infirmities" (bodily diseases). So Matthew 8:17 quotes it. The repetition of the same words as in Isaiah 53:3 - "grief ... sorrows:" chaalaayeenuw (H2483) ... mak'obeeynuw (H4341) - marks the vicarious appropriation of the full penalty of our sin by the Redeemer. In the Hebrew ( naasa' (H5375)) for "borne," or took, there is probably the double notion, He took on Himself vicariously (so Isaiah 53:5-6; Isaiah 53:8; Isaiah 53:12), and so He took away. His perfect humanity, whereby He was bodily afflicted for us, and in all our afflictions (Isaiah 63:9; Hebrews 4:15), was the ground on which He cured the sick of our human sicknesses; so that Matthew's quotation is not a mere accommodation. See note 42 of Archbishop Magee, 'Atonement.' The word Himself in Matthew implies a personal bearing on Himself of our maladies, spiritual and physical, which included as a consequence His ministration to our bodily ailments. These latter are the reverse side of sin. His bearing on Him our spiritual malady involved with it His bearing sympathetically, and healing, the outward, which is its fruit and its type. Hengstenberg rightly objects to Magee's translation 'taken away' instead of "borne," that the parallelism to "carried" would thereby be destroyed. Besides, the Hebrew word elsewhere, when connected with sin, means to bear it and its punishment (Ezekiel 18:20). Matthew elsewhere also sets forth Christ's vicarious atonement (Matthew 20:28). Nasa is the term here used, with an allusion to the sin offering, Leviticus 10:17; the scape goat, Leviticus 16:22; and Aaron as mediating high priest, Exodus 28:38; so Ezekiel typically, Ezekiel 4:5-6; Lamentations 5:7: cf. as to Christ, John 1:29; Hebrews 9:28; 1 Peter 2:24: cf. also this Isaiah 53:11-12, end.
And carried our sorrows - literally, 'and (as for) our sorrows, He carried them' ( cªbaalaam (H5445)). The notion of substitution strictly. "Carried," namely, as a burden. "Sorrows," i:e., pains of the mind: as "griefs" refer to pains of the body (Psalms 32:10; Psalms 38:17). Matthew 8:17 might seem to oppose this: "And bare our sicknesses." But he uses "sicknesses" figuratively for sins, the cause of them. Christ took on Himself all man's "infirmities," so as to remove them: the bodily by direct miracle, grounded on His participation in human infirmities; those of the soul by His vicarious suffering, which did away with the source of both. Sin and sickness are ethically connected as cause and effect (Isaiah 33:24; Psalms 103:3; Matthew 9:2; John 5:14; James 5:15).
Yet we did esteem him stricken - judicially (Lowth) - namely, for His sins; whereas it was for ours. 'We thought Him to be a leper' (Jerome, Vulgate), leprosy being the direct divine judgment for guilt (Leviticus 13:1-59, as it was in the case of Miriam; Numbers 12:10; Numbers 12:15; and Uzziah, 2 Chronicles 26:18-21). Smitten of God - by divine judgments.
And afflicted - for His sins: this was the point in which they so erred (Luke 23:34; Acts 3:17; 1 Corinthians 2:8). He was, it is true, "afflicted," but not for His sins.