I gave my back to the smiters,.... To Pontius Pilate, and those he ordered to scourge him, Mt 27:26and 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, Mr 14:65: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, Mt 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 ; and nothing is more affronting than to spit in a man's face.