Isaiahchapter 50
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Speaks with:Deuteronomy 32×1Jeremiah 3×1Matthew 18×1Isaiah 59×1Numbers 11×1Isaiah 66×1
Summary
Chapter summary
Jehovah opens with two questions: where is the mother's bill of divorcement, and is his hand shortened that it cannot redeem? Israel was sold for its own iniquities, not by divine failure; the God who dries up the sea and clothes the heavens with blackness retains full power to deliver. At verse 4 the third Servant Song begins: the Servant speaks with a taught tongue to sustain the weary, his ear opened morning by morning, and he is not rebellious, he gives his back to the smiters and his cheeks to them that pluck off the hair, hiding not his face from shame and spitting. Setting his face like a flint, he declares his justifier near while adversaries wear out like a moth-eaten garment. The close divides hearers: those who fear Jehovah trust him in darkness; those who kindle their own fire lie down in sorrow.
Context
Prophecy · Isaiah — Isaiah overview
- A. 1–3 Where Is the Bill of Your Mother's Divorcement?
- B. 4–9 I Gave My Back to the Smiters, My Face to Shame
- C. 10–11 Walking in Darkness, or by Sparks of Your Own Kindling
The outline
A.Where Is the Bill of Your Mother's Divorcement?vv. 1 to 3
Read vv. 1 to 3 →B.I Gave My Back to the Smiters, My Face to Shamevv. 4 to 9
Read vv. 4 to 9 →C.Walking in Darkness, or by Sparks of Your Own Kindlingvv. 10 to 11
Read vv. 10 to 11 →
The world behind this chapter
Isaiah 50The history
The opening is legal and specific. A man could dismiss his wife only by handing her a written certificate of divorce, and a debtor could be forced to hand children over to a creditor in payment. God asks to see the paperwork: where is your mother's certificate of divorce, whom did I sell you to? No document exists, because there was no divorce and no sale. You sold yourselves for your iniquities, he says — which in that legal world was also a real thing a desperate man did.
The servant's training is described as a daily lesson. The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to the weary; he wakens me morning by morning, he wakens my ear to hear as the learned. That is a pupil in a teacher's household, up at dawn for the day's recitation, every day, for years.
The suffering is described by the specific humiliations of that culture, not by generic violence. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from shame and spitting. Plucking a man's beard was a calculated insult in the Near East, since the beard was the sign of adult male dignity, and spitting in the face was the standard public act of contempt.
Against it, one hard image: I have set my face like a flint. Flint is the stone tool-makers used because it does not crumble; it fractures cleanly and keeps an edge.
The chapter ends with a small, sharp parable of self-help. Who among you fears the LORD and walks in darkness with no light? Let him trust in the name of the LORD. And then the alternative: all of you who kindle a fire and walk in the light of your own fire and the sparks you have lit — you will lie down in sorrow. A man in the dark can wait for dawn, or he can strike a torch and travel by the light of a handful of sparks.
What it meant to them
The exiles' theory about themselves was that God had thrown them away. The chapter answers with a court challenge and then with a question about power: is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem? Have I no power to deliver?
And the servant's answer to the beating is not defiance but confidence in a verdict: he is near who justifies me; who will contend with me? Let us stand together. He goes to a beating like a man going to a trial he knows he wins.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66 (NICOT)
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Isaiah 50. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.