The margin of the Revised Version gives the best rendering-' His soul shall make an offering for sin.' The word employed for offering means a trespass offering, and carries us at once back to the sacrificial system. The trespass offering was distinguished from other offerings. The central idea of it seems to have been to represent sin or guilt as debt, and the sacrifice as making compensation. We must keep in view the variety of ideas embodied in His sacrifice, and how all correspond to realities in our wants and spiritual experience. Now there are three points here:
a. The representation that Christ's death is a sacrifice. Clearly connecting with whole Mosaic system--and that in the sense of a trespass offering. Christ seems to quote this verse in John 10:15, when He speaks of laying down His life, and when He declares that He came to give His life a ransom for many.' At any rate here is the great word, sacrifice, proclaimed for the first time in connection with Messiah. Here the prophet interprets the meaning of all the types and shadows of the law.
That sacrificial system bore witness to deep wants of men's souls, and prophesied of One in whom these were all met and satisfied.
b. His voluntary surrender.
He is sacrifice, but He is Priest also. His soul makes the offering, and His soul is the offering and offers itself in concurrence with the Divine Will. It is difficult and necessary to keep that double aspect in view, and never to think of Jesus as an unwilling Victim, nor of God as angry and needing to be appeased by blood.
c. The thought that the true meaning of His sufferings is only reached when we contemplate the effects that have flowed from them. The pleasure of the Lord in bruising Him is a mystery until we see how pleasure of the Lord prospers in the hand of the Crucified.
