John Gill Commentary Isaiah 50:6

"I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting." — Isaiah 50:6 (ASV)

I gave my back to the smiters
To Pontius Pilate, and those he ordered to scourge him, (Matthew 27:26) and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair ;
of the beard; which, is painful, so a great indignity and affront. The Septuagint renders it, "and my cheeks to blows"; (eiv rapismata) , a word used by the evangelists when they speak of Christ being smitten and stricken with the palms of men's hands, and seem to refer to this passage, (Mark 14:65) (John 18:22) (Micah 5:1) : I hid not my face from shame and spitting ;
or from shameful spitting; they spit in his face, and exposed him to shame, and which was a shameful usage of him, and yet he took it patiently, (Matthew 26:67) ,

these are all instances of great shame and reproach; as what is more reproachful among us, or more exposes a man, than to be stripped of his clothes, receive lashes on his bare back, and that in public? in which ignominious manner Christ was used:

or what reckoned more scandalous, than for a man to have his beard plucked by a mob? which used to be done by rude and wanton boys, to such as were accounted idiots, and little better than brutes ^F24 ; and nothing is more affronting than to spit in a man's face. So Job was used, which he mentions as a great indignity done to him, (Job 30:10) .

With some people, and in some countries, particular places, that were mean and despicable, were appointed for that use particularly to spit in. Hence Aristippus the philosopher, being shown a fine room in a house, beautifully and richly paved, spat in the face of the owner of it; at which he being angry, and resenting it, the philosopher replied, that he had not a fitter place to spit in ^F25 .

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FOOTNOTES:

• F24: "------------barbam tibi vellunt Lascivi pueri", Horace. "Idcirco stolidam praebet tibi vellere barbara Jupiter?" Persius, Satyr. 2.
  
• F25: Laertius in Vita Aristippi.