Your Iniquities Have Separated
1 Behold, Yahweh’s hand is not shortened, that it can’t save; nor his ear dull, that it can’t hear. 2 But your iniquities have separated you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. 3 For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies. Your tongue mutters wickedness. 4 No one sues in righteousness, and no one pleads in truth. They trust in vanity and speak lies. They conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity. 5 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. 6 Their webs won’t become garments. They won’t cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of iniquity, and acts of violence are in their hands. 7 Their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Desolation and destruction are in their paths. 8 They don’t know the way of peace; and there is no justice in their ways. They have made crooked paths for themselves; whoever goes in them doesn’t know peace. 9 Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness doesn’t overtake us. We look for light, but see darkness; for brightness, but we walk in obscurity. 10 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. Among those who are strong, we are like dead men. 11 We all roar like bears and moan sadly like doves. We look for justice, but there is none, for salvation, but it is far off from us. 12 For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we know them: 13 transgressing and denying Yahweh, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. 14 Justice is turned away backward, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has fallen in the street, and uprightness can’t enter. 15 Yes, truth is lacking; and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. Yahweh saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. 16 He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor. Therefore his own arm brought salvation to him; and his righteousness sustained him. 17 He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head. He put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a mantle. 18 According to their deeds, he will repay as appropriate: wrath to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies. He will repay the islands their due. 19 So they will fear Yahweh’s name from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun; for he will come as a rushing stream, which Yahweh’s breath drives. 20 “A Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from disobedience in Jacob,” says Yahweh. 21 “As for me, this is my covenant with them,” says Yahweh. “My Spirit who is on you, and my words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your offspring, nor out of the mouth of your offspring’s offspring,” says Yahweh, “from now on and forever.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
7 Their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Desolation and destruction are in their paths. 8 They don’t know the way of peace; and there is no justice in their ways. They have made crooked paths for themselves; whoever goes in them doesn’t know peace.
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. Among those who are strong, we are like dead men.
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. We look for justice, but there is none, for salvation, but it is far off from us.
Two noises, one angry and one grieving, and neither is speech.
Justice is turned away backward, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has fallen in the street, and uprightness can’t enter.
Truth lying in the road, stepped over. And uprightness cannot get through the gate, which is where the courts sat.
Yes, truth is lacking; and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. Yahweh saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice.
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; and his righteousness sustained him.
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. He put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a mantle.
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,” says Yahweh.
Paul quotes it at the end of his argument about Israel Romans 11:26.
settled What this mark means