Isaiah 53:3

Not only did the Servant fail to attract his contemporaries (Isaiah 53:2); there was that in his appearance which excited positive aversion. He is represented as one stricken with loathsome and disfiguring disease, probably leprosy (see on Isaiah 53:4), so that men instinctively recoiled from him in horror and disgust.

He is despised and rejected of men Better, Despised and man-forsaken, i.e. one with whom men refuse to associate, or, perhaps, one who renounces the hope of human fellowship. The corresponding verb is used by Job when he complains of the estrangement of his friends: "my kinsfolk have failed" (ch. Isaiah 19:14).

For sorrows … grief, read pains … sickness. Although both words may be used tropically of mental suffering, it is plain that in the figureof this verse and the following they are to be taken in their literal sense.

and we hid &c.] More literally, and as one from whom there is a hiding of the face; his appearance was such as to cause men involuntarily to cover their face from the sight of him. The expression is similar to another phrase of Job's: "I am a spitting in the face" (Isaiah 17:6). For the idea cf. Job 19:19; Job 30:10. Leprosy is again suggested. The rendering of LXX. and Vulg. "and as one who hid his face from us" is grammatically defensible, but conveys a wrong idea; the Servant "hid not his face from shame and spitting" (ch. Isaiah 50:6).

esteemed him not (lit "reckoned him not"), held him of no account.