Isaiah64chapter 64

Isaiah 64:1-3

Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens: The prayer that closes chapter 63 breaks into its boldest request, oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, asking for the kind of visible, mountain-melting appearance Sinai once gave rather than a quiet answer. Verse 2 pictures the coming as fire that makes water boil, a name made known to adversaries so that the nations tremble, judgment and revelation joined in one appearing. Verse 3 grounds the plea in memory rather than invention, when thou didst terrible things which we looked not for, thou camest down, recalling a real precedent the older writers trace to Sinai and the exodus deliverances rather than asking for something God had never done. Delitzsch reads the rending of the heavens as the strongest verb the language has for divine intervention, torn open rather than merely parted.

Isaiah 64:4-5

For since the beginning of the world men have not heard: The prayer turns to the uniqueness of this God: since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him, language the older commentators connect to Paul's citation at 1 Cor 2:9 of what God has prepared for those who love him, though the wording differs enough that they debate how directly Paul draws on this verse rather than on a related saying. Verse 5 describes the God who meets the one who rejoices and works righteousness, those who remember him in his ways, and admits in the same breath, behold, thou art wroth, for we have sinned, waiting on God and confessing sin held together without contradiction. Barnes notes the verse's grammar is difficult in Hebrew and the versions differ, the general sense of long continuance in sin and the hope of being saved anyway carried across the difficulty. Gill reads in those is continuance, and we shall be saved as the confession that Israel's sin has been long, not sudden, and yet the plea for salvation still stands.

Isaiah 64:6-7

But we are all as an unclean thing: The confession reaches its plainest statement: we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, the good deeds themselves, not only the sins, named as unfit to stand before God, and we all do fade as a leaf, our iniquities like the wind carrying us away. The older writers read the filthy rags as ceremonially unclean cloth rather than mere dirt, a picture of something no washing restores by itself. Verse 7 names the deeper trouble beneath the confession, there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee, prayerlessness itself named as part of the sin, and thou hast hid thy face from us as its consequence. Henry reads the whole unit as the pattern of true repentance, sin owned without excuse and without measuring one kind of sin against another.

Isaiah 64:8-9

But now, O Lord, thou art our father: Against the confession just made, the prayer turns on a single word, but now, and reaches for the same fatherhood claimed at 63:16, we are the clay, and thou our potter, and we all are the work of thy hand, the figure used elsewhere in the book as a warning against the clay disputing with its maker, here turned into a plea rather than a rebuke. Verse 9 asks plainly, be not wroth very sore, neither remember iniquity for ever, grounding the request in nothing but belonging, we are all thy people. Delitzsch notes the potter figure carries both sides at once, the clay has no standing to complain and yet the potter is asked to remember what he himself has made and show it mercy on that ground. Gill reads the shift from confession to plea as the shape every true prayer of repentance takes, sin owned first and mercy asked second.

Isaiah 64:10-12

Thy holy cities are a wilderness: The prayer closes by naming the ruin plainly, thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation, the land and the city both named rather than left as generalities. Verse 11 grieves the temple by name, our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid waste, worship's own house counted among the losses. The chapter's closing lines ask whether the Lord will hold himself back and keep his peace under so much affliction, the same silence named at the prayer's opening now put to God directly and asked how long it will hold. Barnes reads the unanswered question as deliberate, the prayer left open rather than resolved, so that chapter 65's answer from God lands as a reply to a real question.