This passage looks at the problem of affliction, not so much from the human

standard as from the Divine.  No problem is raised by the words 'all their

affliction', for man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards.  The

wonder of this text is found in the remainder of the passage, 'in it all, He

too, was afflicted'.  Isaiah is referring to Israel's early history, and a

passage in Exodus comes to the mind.  While it is not a verbal parallel, as a

different Hebrew word is used, yet to limit human sorrow to the dimensions of

one word is to attempt an impossibility.

'And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of My people

which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their

taskmasters; For I Know Their Sorrows' (Exod. 3:7).

This 'knowledge' (Heb. yada) is most intimate in its character (Gen. 4:1), it

is the result of experience (Exod. 6:7; 7:5); and the personal and

experimental nature of this knowledge is most blessedly set forth in the work

of the Saviour.  He was:

'A Man of sorrows, and acquainted (Heb. yada) with grief' (Isa. 53:3).

'By His knowledge (Heb. daath, substantive of yada) shall My righteous

Servant justify many; For he Shall Bear Their Iniquities' (Isa. 53:11).

When Jehovah said: 'I know their sorrows', it was a knowledge deeper than

that of mere observation.  It was the knowledge of personal acquaintance.

Isaiah makes the Saviour's 'knowledge' synonymous with 'bearing iniquity'.

The word 'sympathy' expresses this relationship and is actually the Greek

word translated 'touched with the feeling of', in Hebrews 4:15.  To the words

of our text, Isaiah adds:

'And the Angel of His Presence saved them' (Isa. 63:9).

This 'Angel of His Presence' speaks precious things of fellowship, of a God

near at hand and not afar off, of One Who though the Almighty Creator, was

yet One Who could 'grieve' over the waywardness and the misery of His

creatures.  Let us take comfort from the thought that, if our hearts are

distressed at the folly and the wickedness that surround us and alas, within

us, we are but glimpsing a fraction of the sorrow of a groaning creation that

is known, experimentally known, by the Lord of Glory.  The only way to prove

that God actually enters into the suffering of humanity and does not remain

aloof and unmoved, is to examine the Scriptures and discover how far such

feelings are attributed to God and how far these statements are to be

accepted at their face value.  A God afar off, dwelling in isolated Majesty,

unmoved by the waywardness and folly of man, allowing His laws to work quite

regardless of consequences, could hardly be said to 'grieve' or to 'wish He

had never made man'.  Such language if once admitted, with all the margin

allowable for the use of 'figurative language', must shatter for ever the

barrier that human wisdom has erected between God and His creatures.  No

reader who has spent many years in walking through this vale of tears needs

any human commentary upon the meaning of grief, and will probably find

counterparts in his own experience to the grief of Joseph's brethren when

their brother made himself known to them (Gen. 45:5), or of Jonathan's grief

for David at the treatment meted out to him by Saul (1 Sam. 20:34).  Yet

there are some who would attempt to modify the force of the passage where

grief is attributed to God Himself: