By the servant who was first sent we must understand Moses, but they beat him, and sent him away empty, because “they angered Moses in the tents.” [Ps 106:6]
There follows: “And again he sent unto them another servant, and they wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled.”
This other servant means David and the other Psalmists, but they wounded Him in the head and shamefully handled him, because they despised the songs of the Psalmists, and rejected David himself, saying, “What portion have we in David?” [1 Kings 12,16]
It goes on: “And he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some.”
By the third servant and his companions, understand the band of the prophets. But which of the prophets did they not persecute? In these three kinds of servants, as the Lord Himself elsewhere pronounces, may be included in a figure all the doctors under the law, when He says, “that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me.” [Luke 24:44]
Reproduced in full. Translation: Oxford 1841 (Newman), public domain (Public domain).