Isaiah59chapter 59

Isaiah 59:1-2

the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save: The opening line, Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, answers a doubt the exiled generation might raise about God’s power to deliver them. The fault named is not in God’s arm or God’s ear but in the relationship itself, your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. Henry reads the verse as clearing God’s ability from any charge before laying the charge where it belongs, on the people’s own sin, and Barnes notes the same turn from a question about power to an answer about guilt.

Isaiah 59:3-4

your hands are defiled with blood: Your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness catalogues the whole body organized for sin, hands, fingers, lips, tongue in turn. Verse 4 widens the charge from the body to the courts, none calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth, so that a legal system meant to correct wrong instead conceives mischief and brings forth iniquity. Gill reads the four members named in verse 3 as covering the full range of active sin, from what the hands do to what the tongue says, and Wesley notes the courts described in verse 4 have stopped functioning as courts at all.

Isaiah 59:5-6

weave the spider’s web: They hatch cockatrice’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web pairs two images of a work that looks purposeful but produces nothing but harm, an egg that kills if eaten and a web that cannot clothe anyone who tries to wear it. Gill identifies the cockatrice as the basilisk of ancient reputation, its egg deadly and its hatching a viper, the image of sin multiplying itself across generations. Verse 6 draws the moral directly, their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works, work built on iniquity offers no covering when it is needed most, which Calvin applies to any confidence built on human righteousness rather than God’s.

Isaiah 59:7-8

Their feet run to evil: Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood, together with the wasting and destruction in their paths at verse 8, supplies Paul's catalogue of universal sin almost word for word: Rom 3:15 renders their feet swift to shed blood, 3:16 keeps the destruction and misery in their ways, and 3:17 keeps the way of peace they have not known, all three drawn from these two verses. Calvin, writing after Paul's use of the passage was long established, reads Isaiah's own charge against Israel as the text Paul widens to every man, Jew and Gentile both, under sin. Barnes notes that Paul is not adapting the language loosely but quoting it as it stands, evidence that the New Testament writers treated the Old Testament's own words as sufficient for their argument.

Isaiah 59:9-11

we wait for light, but behold obscurity: The accusation shifts to confession here, we wait for light, but behold obscurity, the people joining the prophet's indictment against themselves rather than answering it. The images move from courtroom language to bodily helplessness, we grope for the wall like the blind, we stumble at noonday as in the night, and we roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves, sight, footing and voice all failing at once. Henry reads the darkness as both the judgment their sin has earned and the honest picture of what unforgiven guilt feels like from the inside, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note the shift from you to we as the turning point where the oracle becomes a shared confession rather than a one-sided charge.

Isaiah 59:12-13

our transgressions are multiplied before thee: Our transgressions are multiplied before thee moves the confession from feeling to counting, sins piled up and testified against the speakers by their own record. Verse 13 traces the sins to their root, in transgressing and lying against the Lord, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood, ending where sin always starts, in the heart. Wesley reads the list as moving deliberately from outward act to the inward source, so that the last clause names the workshop where all the others were made, and Clarke notes the same descent from deed to word to thought across the two verses.

Isaiah 59:14-15

truth is fallen in the street: Truth is fallen in the street pictures the place of public judgment, the gate where a city's elders once heard cases, now empty of the truth that used to be argued there. Justice standeth afar off names the same collapse from the other side, judgment turned away backward instead of forward toward a verdict, and verse 15 completes the picture with the incentive reversed, he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey, so that avoiding sin now costs a man rather than protecting him. Delitzsch reads the two verses as the low point of the chapter's indictment, and Barnes notes the Lord's own reaction closing the unit, it displeased him that there was no judgment, God himself supplying the outrage the courts no longer feel.

Isaiah 59:16

there was no intercessor: There was no intercessor is the hinge of the whole chapter, the Lord looking for a man who might step between his people and the judgment their sin had earned and finding none. Therefore his arm brought salvation unto him, the same arm named not shortened in verse 1, acting alone now because no mediator could be found among the people themselves. Henry reads the missing intercessor as the reason God's own arm must act, and Delitzsch notes that later Christian readers pressed the verse further, toward a mediator who did not fail where Israel's own could not be found, a reading he presents as theirs and not the verse's own claim.

Isaiah 59:17

he put on righteousness as a breastplate: He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head pictures the Lord himself arming for battle since no human intercessor could be found, adding the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloke. Paul draws directly on this verse for the believer's own armor, the breastplate of righteousness at Eph 6:14 and the breastplate of faith and love with the helmet the hope of salvation at 1 Thess 5:8, both echoing pieces the Lord wears first here. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read Paul as adapting God's own armor to the church's warfare rather than inventing new imagery, and Barnes notes that righteousness and salvation are named as pieces of armor because the fight that follows in the chapter is a fight for justice deferred too long.

Isaiah 59:18-19

fury to his adversaries: Fury to his adversaries, recompence to his enemies reaches all the way to the islands, the distant coastlands that stood for the furthest edge of the known world, making the recompense of verse 18 as wide as the offense had been. Verse 19 carries the same global reach forward, so shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun, before turning to the image of an enemy coming in like a flood met by the Spirit of the Lord lifting up a standard against him. Gill reads the flood and the standard as a single scene, an army advancing until a rallying banner turns the field, and Clarke notes that later readers have applied the verse devotionally to any overwhelming trouble met by the Spirit's own resistance, beyond its original setting in this oracle.

Isaiah 59:20

the Redeemer shall come to Zion: The Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob is quoted by Paul at Rom 11:26 as part of his own argument that so all Israel shall be saved, joined there with Isa 27:9's turning away of ungodliness from Jacob into one composite citation. The verse names Jacob as the one to whom the Redeemer comes, and Paul's use of it keeps that same referent rather than replacing it, Israel is not a figure for another people in either the prophet's sentence or the apostle's argument. Calvin reads the verse as Isaiah's own promise of a deliverer for his own nation, and Delitzsch notes that Paul's citation shows the New Testament reading the promise as still standing, not retired, when he wrote Romans.

Isaiah 59:21

this is my covenant with them: This is my covenant with them carries the promise into permanence, my spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed. The covenant binds Spirit and word together across three generations named in one sentence, the speaker, his seed, and his seed's seed, from henceforth and for ever closing the promise with no stated end. Henry reads the covenant as addressed first to the prophetic office and through it to the nation carrying God's word forward, and Barnes notes the pairing of Spirit and word here anticipates the covenant of the Spirit language the New Testament later develops for the church, named as a later development rather than this verse's own vocabulary.