Isaiah 59:12

12 For our crimes multiply before you, our sins testify against us; for our crimes are present with us; and our sins, we know them well:

Isaiah 59:12 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 59:12

For our transgressions are multiplied before thee
Not only an increase of immorality among the people in common, but among professors of religion; and as their transgressions are committed against the Lord, so they are in his sight taken notice of and observed by him, are loathsome and abominable to him, and call aloud for his judgments on them: and our sins testify against us;
God is a witness against us, in whose sight our sins are done; and our consciences are witnesses against us, which are as a thousand witnesses; and there is no denying facts; our sins stare us in the face, and we must confess our guilt: or, "our sins answer against us" ^F3; as witnesses called and examined answer to the questions put, so our sins, being brought as it were into open court, answer and bear testimony against us; or it must be owned, our punishment for our sins answers to them; it is the echo of our sins, what they call for, and righteously comes upon us: for our transgressions are with us;
or, "on us" ^F4; in our minds, on our consciences, loading us with guilt; continually accusing and condemning us; are manifest to us, as the Targum; too manifest to be denied: and as for our iniquities, we know them;
the nature and number of them, and the aggravating circumstances that attend them; and cannot but own and acknowledge them, confess, lament, and bewail them; an enumeration of which follows.

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FOOTNOTES:

F3 (wnb htne wnytajx) "peccata nostra respondit contra nos", Montanus; "id ipsum respondit contra nos", Cocceius; "even everyone of them", so Junius & Tremellius; "peccatorum nostrorum quodque", sic
F4 (wnta) "super nos", Munster.

Isaiah 59:12 In-Context

10 We grope for the wall like the blind; like people without eyes we feel our way; we stumble at noonday as if it were dusk, we are in dark places like the dead.

11 We growl, all of us, like bears and moan pitifully like doves; we look for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us.

12 For our crimes multiply before you, our sins testify against us; for our crimes are present with us; and our sins, we know them well:

13 rebelling and denying ADONAI, turning away from following our God, talking about oppression and revolt, uttering lies which our hearts have conceived.

14 Thus justice is repelled, righteousness stands apart, at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public court, and uprightness cannot enter.