Isaiah 50

Isaiah 50:1-11 . THE JUDGMENTS ON ISRAEL WERE PROVOKED BY THEIR CRIMES, YET THEY ARE NOT FINALLY CAST OFF BY GOD.

1. Where . . . mothers divorcement--Zion is "the mother"; the Jews are the children; and God the Husband and Father ( Isaiah 54:5 , 62:5 , Jeremiah 3:14 ). GESENIUS thinks that God means by the question to deny that He had given "a bill of divorcement" to her, as was often done on slight pretexts by a husband ( Deuteronomy 24:1 ), or that He had "sold" His and her "children," as a poor parent sometimes did ( Exodus 21:7 , 2 Kings 4:1 , Nehemiah 5:5 ) under pressure of his "creditors"; that it was they who sold themselves through their own sins. MAURER explains, "Show the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom . . . ; produce the creditors to whom ye have been sold; so it will be seen that it was not from any caprice of Mine, but through your own fault, your mother has been put away, and you sold" ( Isaiah 52:3 ). HORSLEY best explains (as the antithesis between "I" and "yourselves" shows, though LOWTH translates, "Ye are sold") I have never given your mother a regular bill of divorcement; I have merely "put her away" for a time, and can, therefore, by right as her husband still take her back on her submission; I have not made you, the children, over to any "creditor" to satisfy a debt; I therefore still have the right of a father over you, and can take you back on repentance, though as rebellious children you have sold yourselves to sin and its penalty ( 1 Kings 21:25 ).
bill . . . whom--rather, "the bill with which I have put her away" [MAURER].

2. I--Messiah.
no man--willing to believe in and obey Me ( Isaiah 52:1 Isaiah 52:3 ). The same Divine Person had "come" by His prophets in the Old Testament (appealing to them, but in vain, Jeremiah 7:25 Jeremiah 7:26 ), who was about to come under the New Testament.
hand shortened--the Oriental emblem of weakness, as the long stretched-out hand is of power ( Isaiah 59:1 ). Notwithstanding your sins, I can still "redeem" you from your bondage and dispersion.
dry up . . . sea--( Exodus 14:21 ). The second exodus shall exceed, while it resembles in wonders, the first ( Isaiah 11:11 Isaiah 11:15 , 51:15 ).
make . . . rivers . . . wilderness--turn the prosperity of Israel's foes into adversity.
fish stinketh--the very judgment inflicted on their Egyptian enemies at the first exodus ( Exodus 7:18 Exodus 7:21 ).

3. heavens . . . blackness--another of the judgments on Egypt to be repeated hereafter on the last enemy of God's people ( Exodus 10:21 ).
sackcloth--( Revelation 6:12 ).