He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted. Lowth, after Cyril, translates, 'It was exacted ( nigas (H5065)), and He was made answerable' ( na`ªneh (H6031)). The former verb means, to have payment of a debt sternly exacted (Deuteronomy 15:2-3), and so to be oppressed in general; the exaction of the full penalty for our sins in His sufferings is probably alluded to.
And he was afflicted, yet he - or, and yet He suffered, or bore Himself submissively and, etc. (Hengstenberg and Maurer.) Lowth's translation, 'He was made answerable,' is hardly admitted by the Hebrew х `aanaah (H6031)], which is not used elsewhere, of legal responsibility. Symmachus and Vulgate ('ipse voluit') support, 'He suffered submissively:' 'He submitted Himself.' The Niphal has the reflective meaning (cf. Philippians 2:8).
Opened not his mouth - Jeremiah in Jeremiah 11:19, and David in Psalms 38:13-14; Psalms 39:9, prefiguring Messiah (Matthew 26:63; Matthew 27:12; Matthew 27:14; 1 Peter 2:23). In this verse the one and only point of comparison is to the sheep's voiceless endurance of shearing; not that Christ's suffering is from this to be regarded as not penal and sacrificial, because the sheep is not spoken of as being killed. But what the sheep is in being sheared, that Christ was in being killed.