Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Isaiah · About this commentary
Your Iniquities Have Separated
Isaiah 59:1-21
1 Behold, Yahweh’s hand is not shortened, that it can’t save; nor his ear dull, that it can’t hear. · WEB
The problem is located precisely, a nation gropes along a wall at noon, and God finds nobody to send.
Behold, Yahweh's hand is not shortened, that it can't save; nor his ear dull, that it can't hear Isaiah 59:1.
The two explanations available for unanswered prayer are ruled out first: he is not unable and he is not deaf.
But your iniquities have separated you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear Isaiah 59:2.
The third explanation. Nothing is wrong with the hand or the ear; something is standing between.
They hatch adders' eggs and weave the spider's web. He who eats of their eggs dies; and that which is crushed breaks out into a viper Isaiah 59:5.
Two images of futile industry with a sting. The eggs are lethal either way — eat one and die, break one and get a snake — and the web is dealt with in the next verse: their webs won't become garments. All that spinning, and nothing anyone can wear.
Their feet run to evil... Desolation and destruction are in their paths. They don't know the way of peace Isaiah 59:7–8.
Paul quotes these verses in the chain establishing universal guilt Romans 3:15–17.
We grope for the wall like the blind. Yes, we grope as those who have no eyes. We stumble at noon as if it were twilight Isaiah 59:10.
The pronouns have changed to we, and the chapter becomes a confession. The image is of people feeling along a wall in full daylight — the light is not the problem.
We all roar like bears and moan sadly like doves Isaiah 59:11.
Two noises, one angry and one grieving, and neither is speech.
Truth has fallen in the street, and uprightness can't enter Isaiah 59:14.
Truth lying in the road, stepped over. And uprightness cannot get through the gate, which is where the courts sat.
He who departs from evil makes himself a prey Isaiah 59:15.
The sharpest sentence in the chapter. In a society this far gone, the man who stops participating becomes the target — honesty is not merely difficult but dangerous.
He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor. Therefore his own arm brought salvation to him Isaiah 59:16.
God looks for someone to stand in the gap, as Moses had Psalms 106:23, and finds nobody. The verb rendered wondered is one of astonishment, and it is used of God.
What follows from the absence is not abandonment of the plan. He does it himself, with his own arm — which is the arm the fifty-third chapter said was revealed in a servant Isaiah 53:1.
He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head Isaiah 59:17.
God arms himself, and Paul hands the same equipment to the church Ephesians 6:14–17.
A Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from disobedience in Jacob Isaiah 59:20. Paul quotes it at the end of his argument about Israel Romans 11:26.
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