Isaiah 50:3
I clothe the heavens in black and make sackcloth their covering.”
BSB
ASV
I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.
KJV
I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.
And what follows: I will clothe the heavens in darkness, and its covering will be like sackcloth; or everything that is above us, let us understand as heaven, just as those flying creatures that are in the air are called celestial; and the opposing powers are said to be celestial, which move between heaven and earth. Or certainly, the heavens are clothed in darkness when they are covered with clouds. According to what is written: Who covers the heavens with clouds, and gives rain to the earth (Psalm 147:8).
I clothe the heavens with blackness,.... With gross and thick darkness; perhaps referring to the three days' darkness the Egyptians were in, Exo 10:12, or with thick and black clouds, as in tempestuous weather frequently; or by eclipses of the sun; there was an extraordinary instance of great darkness at the time of Christ's crucifixion, Mat 27:45. and I make sackcloth their covering; that being black, and used in times of mourning; the allusion may be to the tents of Kedar, which were covered with sackcloth, or such like black stuff.
We suppose the prophet Isaiah to say something of himself in these verses, engaging and encouraging himself to go on in his work as a prophet, notwithstanding the many hardships he met with, not doubting but that God would stand by him and strengthen him; but, like David, he speaks of himself as a type of Christ, who is here prophesied of and promised to be the Saviour.
I clothe the heavens with blackness - With the dark clouds of a tempest - perhaps with an allusion to the remarkable clouds and tempests that encircled the brow of Sinai when he gave the law. Or possibly alluding to the thick darkness which he brought over the land of Egypt (Exo 10:21; Grotius). In the previous verse, he had stated what he did on the earth, and referred to the exhibitions of his great power there.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Revelation 6:12And when I saw the Lamb open the sixth seal, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black like sackcloth of goat hair, and the whole moon turned blood red,
leads to
Immediately after the tribulation of those days: ‘The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will…
Before them the earth quakes; the heavens tremble. The sun and moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness.
I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke.
But in those days, after that tribulation: ‘The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light;
The sun and moon will grow dark, and the stars will no longer shine.
Through
Matthew 27:45From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.
leads to
And in that day, declares the Lord GOD, I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the daytime.
From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.
It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over all the land until the ninth hour.
