Isaiah 53:12

Therefore will I, God the Father, the Spectator and Judge of the action or combat, divide him; give him his share; or, impart or give to him; for this word is oft used without respect to any distribution or division, as Deuteronomy 4:19, Deuteronomy 29:26, and elsewhere. A portion; which is very commodiously supplied out of the next clause, where a word which answers to it, the spoil, is expressed. With the great; or, among the great; such as the great and mighty potentates of the world use to have after a sharp combat and a glorious victory. Though he be a very mean and obscure person, as to his extraction and outward condition in the world, yet he shall attain to as great a pitch of glory as the greatest monarchs enjoy. He shall divide the spoil with the strong: the same thing is repeated in other words, after the manner of prophetical writers. The sense of both clauses is, that God will give him, and he shall receive, great and happy success in his glorious undertaking; he shall conquer all his enemies, and lead captivity captive, as is said, Ephesians 4:8, and Set up his universal and everlasting kingdom in the world. Because he hath poured out his soul unto death; because he willingly laid down his life in obedience to God's command, 1 Thessalonians 10:17,18, and in order to the redemption of mankind. Death is here called a pouring out of the soul, or life, either because the soul or life, which in living men is contained in the body, is turned out of the body by death; or to signify the manner of Christ's death, that it should be with the shedding of his blood, in which the life of man consists, Leviticus 17:11,14. He was numbered with the transgressors; he was willing for God's glory and for man's good to be reproached and punished like a malefactor, in the same manner and place, and betwixt two of them, as is noted with reference to this place, Mark 15:27,28. He bare the sin of many; which was said Isaiah 53:11, and is here repeated to prevent a mistake, and to intimate, that although Christ was numbered with transgressors, and was used accordingly, yet he was no transgressor, nor did submit to and suffer this usage for his own sins, but for the sins of others, the punishment whereof was by his own consent laid upon him. Made intercession for the transgressors; either,

1. By way of satisfaction; he interposed himself between an angry God and sinners, and received those blows in his own body which otherwise must have fallen upon them. Or,

2. In way of petition, as this word is constantly used. He prayed upon earth for all sinners, and particularly for those that crucified him, Luke 23:34; and in heaven he still intercedeth for them, not by a humble petition, but by a legal demand of those good things which he purchased for his own people by the sacrifice of himself, which, though past, he continually represents to his Father, as if it were present.