When I wept
Because of the sins of his people imputed to him; the hardness and unbelief of the Jews that rejected him; their impiety and profaneness in polluting the temple with their merchandise: he wept at the grave of Lazarus, and over the city of Jerusalem, on account of the blindness of its inhabitants, and the ruin coming upon them; and in his prayers at different times, especially in the garden and on the cross, which were offered up with strong crying and tears; see ( John 11:35 ) ( Luke 19:41 ) ( Hebrews 5:7 ) ;
[and chastened] my soul with fasting;
or "my soul [being] in fasting" {y}. The Targum renders it, "in the fasting of my soul"; the word "chastened" is supplied from ( Psalms 35:13 ) ; and "soul" is put for the body, or for the whole person. Christ fasted forty days and nights in the wilderness; and often, through neglect of himself, and multiplicity of business, in preaching, and in healing diseases, was without food for some time: he seems to have been fasting the day that he suffered, when he made atonement for sin; and so answered the type on the day of atonement, when every man was to afflict his soul with fasting, ( Leviticus 16:29 ) ; hence the Jews taunting at him gave him gall for his meat, and vinegar for his drink, ( Psalms 69:21 ) ; and it follows,
that was to my reproach;
if he ate and drank, he was charged with being a glutton and a winebibber; and if he wept and fasted, as John his forerunner did, they reproached him with madness, and having a devil, ( Matthew 11:18 Matthew 11:19 ) ( Mark 3:20 Mark 3:21 ) ; and, as may be reasonably supposed, after this manner;
``can this poor creature, that weeps, and mourns, and fasts, be thought to be the Son of God, a divine Person, as he makes himself to be, and his followers believe he is?''and so the blind Jews reason to this day.