Isaiah 59:11

11 We all roar like bears and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgment, but there is none; for saving health, but it has withdrawn from us.

Isaiah 59:11 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 59:11

We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves
Some in a more noisy and clamorous, others in a stiller way, yet all in private: for the bear, when robbed of its whelps, goes to its den and roars; and the dove, when it has lost its mate, mourns in solitude: this expresses the secret groanings of the saints under a sense of sin, and the forlorn state of religion. The Targum paraphrases it thus,

``we roar because of our enemies, who are gathered against us as bears; all of us indeed mourn sore as doves:''

we look for judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far
from us;
we expect that God will take vengeance on our enemies, and save us; look for judgment on antichrist, and the antichristian states, and for the salvation of the church of God; for the vials of divine wrath on the one, and for happy times to the other; but neither of them as yet come; the reason of which is as follows.

Isaiah 59:11 In-Context

9 Therefore judgment has withdrawn from us, and righteousness has never overtaken us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.

10 We grope for the wall like the blind, and as if we had no eyes we walk by touch; we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in graves as dead men.

11 We all roar like bears and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgment, but there is none; for saving health, but it has withdrawn from us.

12 For our rebellions are multiplied before thee, and our sins have testified against us; for our iniquities are with us; and we know our sins:

13 To rebel and to lie against the LORD, and to depart away from our God; the speaking of libel and rebellion, to conceive, and to speak from the heart words of falsehood,