Even though men have shamed him, he seeks honor with God. With Yahweh’s guidance, the servant will speak with the learned (v. 4) and not be confounded (Jesus as a boy in the temple and later verbal “tests” from the Pharisees and Sadducees). Honor before Yahweh is more important than the attempts of men to shame him.
Culture: The culture of the ancient Mediterranean world was strongly shame based. Shame is not mere embarrassment but extreme social disjunction. It is the loss of honor. Malina and Rohrbaugh describe how this principle operated in Mediterranean culture:
All human groups enculturate their members into internalized sanctions that keep those members from disrupting the group. The sanctions available to humans run from anxiety to shame to guilt. Every society, it seems, emphasizes one of these while the other two step into the background. Traditionally, Enlightenment Western society has been a guilt-oriented society. On the contrary, the primary social sanction of first-century Mediterranean society was shame. The positive side of anxiety is a sense of security, of shame is honor, of guilt is a sense of having done nothing wrong.
Thus, when the suffering servant endures shame, it is a serious affront. The physical marks of a lash could heal faster than the shamed one’s reputation. This is why the servant emphasizes the shame rather than the physical pain. It was considered the worse treatment of the two. Nevertheless, honor comes in serving Yahweh. It is that ultimate contrast between “masters” that is the point here.