1i. " Indignation " (ke-tzeph)—from breaking out into anger. Both words are of discipline, but I suppose khe-mah (heat of anger) rather stronger.
11. Ne-ga,"stroke," not "sore," see margin.
This is wonderful; but the comparison of it with Job (taking both as expressive of character) is full of interest and instruction. Every expression of Job's suffering seems concentrated, with less loquacity, with this remarkable difference- there seems the sense of sin with the confidence of help, and that all His desire was before God. Job's heart was pride, which he wished was before God, and it was to bring to remembrance. What Christ was bearing is manifest, but He bore it in Himself. We may wonder indeed, and be astonished at Christ, when there was none to take pity on Him. The reproaches of them that reproached God fell on Him, because He was faithful unto Him, and of Him, and the bruisings of God's wrath fell upon Him because He was to pour out His soul unto death for these very sinners, and at once; for when all men deserted Him, and even His lovers and kinsmen stood afar off, His enemies surrounding Him, then it was also that, as to suffering, God also forsook Him and wrath had its course. It was this, as we have seen indeed, He deprecated in Psa. 22, and this was felt as in verse 3, though the very opposite to being charged as unrighteousness, as in Job. The comparison of this with Job is very full of instruction, see verse 6; he thought to stand in his strength with God, but see the Spirit of Christ in us, verses 9 and 2. Compare also verses 18 and 15, with Psa. 23:1.
Note these confessions are individual; Christ's entering into them in grace is another thing, which He surely did, in the whole depth of them, and for the Remnant.
Messiah, on the arrows of Jehovah piercing the people, makes confession of sin in their behalf; as being His. Then they are arrows of correction, yea, as Christ taking them in Himself. All is done—they stick fast in Him, not the people. Jehovah bruises Him—His soul is the butt for the arrows of wrath-Jehovah must deliver. It is quite another thing now- He must by virtue of this cry, deliver—He cannot smite again, but as smiting Christ, and this cry being the testimony that He in love has borne it, is the necessary witness of sufficiency. It is His cry as smitten. The thundercloud spent, must roll away—it could do no more afterward—and be discharged in blessings on those for whose sake the stroke was borne, which spent, as it were, its power. The cry raised which drew forth the love, the recognition of righteousness in Him who placed it to the account of those for whom He bore the stroke willingly, drawn out against their evil—He felt what the stroke of God was. In none else could it have been so honored. As for earthly enemies, they were little matter here, but He would be open, as though the sinner before Jehovah, and declare this the Lord's perfection—not conceal but bear the stroke and justify; compare verses 18 and 20. The position and character under the imputation of, and making the sin His, in the midst of enemies, of reproach, is most deeply instructive as to the position and character of Christ. In Psa. 39 it is therefore viewed as correction by the Spirit of Christ in the nation or Remnant.