Yesaya 53:3

53:3 He was despised and rejected by people, ¹ 

one who experienced pain and was acquainted with illness;

people hid their faces from him; ² 

he was despised, and we considered him insignificant. ³ 

Yohanes 19:2-3

19:2 The soldiers ⁴  braided ⁵  a crown of thorns ⁶  and put it on his head, and they clothed him in a purple robe. ⁷  19:3 They ⁸  came up to him again and again ⁹  and said, “Hail, king of the Jews!” ¹⁰  And they struck him repeatedly ¹¹  in the face.

[53:3]  ¹ tn Heb “lacking of men.” If the genitive is taken as specifying (“lacking with respect to men”), then the idea is that he lacked company because he was rejected by people. Another option is to take the genitive as indicating genus or larger class (i.e., “one lacking among men”). In this case one could translate, “he was a transient” (cf. the use of חָדֵל [khadel] in Ps 39:5 HT [39:4 ET]).

[53:3]  ² tn Heb “like a hiding of the face from him,” i.e., “like one before whom the face is hidden” (see BDB 712 s.v. מַסְתֵּר).

[53:3]  ³ sn The servant is likened to a seriously ill person who is shunned by others because of his horrible disease.

[19:2]  ⁴ tn Grk “And the soldiers.” The conjunction καί (kai, “and”) has not been translated here in keeping with the tendency of contemporary English style to use shorter sentences.

[19:2]  ⁵ tn Or “wove.”

[19:2]  ⁶ sn The crown of thorns was a crown plaited of some thorny material, intended as a mockery of Jesus’ “kingship.” Traditionally it has been regarded as an additional instrument of torture, but it seems more probable the purpose of the thorns was not necessarily to inflict more physical suffering but to imitate the spikes of the “radiant corona,” a type of crown portrayed on ruler’s heads on many coins of the period; the spikes on this type of crown represented rays of light pointing outward (the best contemporary illustration is the crown on the head of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor).

[19:2]  ⁷ sn The purple color of the robe indicated royal status. This was further mockery of Jesus, along with the crown of thorns.

[19:3]  ⁸ tn Grk “And they.” The conjunction καί (kai, “and”) has not been translated here in keeping with the tendency of contemporary English style to use shorter sentences.

[19:3]  ⁹ tn The words “again and again” are implied by the (iterative) imperfect verb ἤρχοντο (hrconto).

[19:3]  ¹⁰ tn Or “Long live the King of the Jews!”

[19:3]  sn The greeting used by the soldiers, “Hail, King of the Jews!”, is a mockery based on the standard salutation for the Roman emperor, “Ave, Caesar!” (“Hail to Caesar!”).

[19:3]  ¹¹ tn The word “repeatedly” is implied by the (iterative) imperfect verb ἐδιδοσαν (edidosan).