Isaiah 53:9

The unrelenting antipathy which the Servant experienced through life is continued even after his death, and expresses itself in the manner of his burial.

And they(R.V.) made his grave with the wicked The subject is indefinite, the construction being equivalent to a passive: "And his grave was made" &c. "With the wicked" need not imply that a special burial-ground was set apart for them as a class, but only that such persons were buried ignominiously and away from the family sepulchre, like Absalom (2 Samuel 18:17). From Jeremiah 26:23 (cf. 2 Kings 23:6) it appears that it was a disgrace to be buried among the "common people." In this case the "wicked" probably means the notoriously wicked, criminals, apostates, and such like. With these the Servant was numbered because his calamities had seemed to mark him out as a heinous sinner in the sight of God.

and with the rich in his death This clause must express the same idea as the preceding. To take the two antithetically: "they meant his grave to be with the wicked, but he was with the rich in his death" (Delitzsch) is utterly unwarrantable. It is, no doubt, somewhat difficult to justify this sense of "rich" as synonymous with "wicked" from O.T. usage, although it might perhaps be suggested by the common identification of poverty with piety. This explanation, however, is not quite satisfactory, and several emendations have been proposed, such as "the oppressor" (עָשׁוֹקִ for עָשִׁיר), "the defrauder" (עָשִׁיק, Aramaic), "evil-doers" (עֹשֵׂי רַע).

in his death lit. "in his deaths." The use of the plural is variously explained. Some find in it an intimation of the collective character of the subject spoken of under the name of the Servant; but even if the Servant be a collective idea, it is inconceivable that the writer should have here abandoned the personification which he has so strictly maintained throughout. Nor is it any relief to say that it means "in his state of death." It is better to read the singular with the LXX. There is, however, another reading found in a few MSS. and adopted by many commentators, according to which the clause would form a perfect parallelism with the first line:

"And with the rich (or oppressor, &c.) his sepulchral mound." But the word bâmâh(high-place) is not elsewhere used in this sense.

because he had done no violence &c.] Render with R.V. although ("in spite of the fact that") &c. as in Job 16:17. With this assertion of his innocence the narrative of the Servant's career reaches its conclusion. While absolute sinlessness is not explicitly predicated of him, but only freedom from "violence" and "deceit," yet the image of the lamb led to the slaughter, and his patient resignation to the will of God, strongly suggest that the prophet had in his mind the conception of a perfectly sinless character.