Isaiah 59:3-13

3 For your hands are stained with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips speak lies, your tongue muttereth unrighteousness:

4 none calleth for justice, none pleadeth in truthfulness. They trust in vanity, and speak falsehood; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.

5 They hatch serpents' eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.

6 Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works; their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.

7 Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths;

8 the way of peace they know not, and there is no judgment in their goings; they have made their paths crooked: whoso goeth therein knoweth not peace.

9 Therefore is justice far from us, and righteousness overtaketh us not: we wait for light, and behold darkness; for brightness, [but] we walk in obscurity.

10 We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at midday as in the twilight; amongst the flourishing we are as the dead.

11 We roar all like bears, and mourn grievously like doves: we look for judgment, and there is none; for salvation, [but] it is far from us.

12 For our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us; and our iniquities, we know them:

13 in transgressing and lying against Jehovah, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.

Isaiah 59:3-13 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO ISAIAH 59

As the former chapter declares the hypocrisy and formality of professors of religion; this expresses the errors and heresies, immorality and profaneness, which shall prevail before the spiritual reign of Christ, or the latter day glory begins; which is so fully described in the next chapter. Reasons are given of God's withdrawing his presence from a professing people, which were not want of power and readiness in him, but their own sins and transgressions, Isa 59:1,2 which are enumerated, such as murder, rapine, lies Isa 59:3-8 for which the judgments of God were upon them, darkness, distress, and misery, of which they were sensible, Isa 59:9-11 and confess their sins and transgressions, Isa 59:12,13 and lament their wretched state and condition, which was displeasing to God, Isa 59:14,15 who is represented as appearing for their salvation; moved to it by their want of help, and the oppression of their enemies, in which he shows his power, justice, zeal, grace, and goodness, Isa 59:16-18 the consequence of which shall be the conversion and salvation of many, owing to the efficacy of the divine Spirit, and to the spiritual coming of the Redeemer, Isa 59:19,20, and the chapter is closed with a promise of the continuance of the Spirit of God, and the Gospel of Christ in his church, unto the end of the world, Isa 59:21.

Footnotes

• [a]. Lit. 'faithfulness.'
• [b]. Lit. 'emptiness.'
• [c]. Perhaps 'vipers'.' But the viper's egg is not laid before it is hatched.
• [d]. Or 'rectitude,' 'justice.'
• [e]. Or 'judgment,' i.e. 'just judgment,' and so in vers. 11,14,15.
• [f]. Or 'at,' 'along.'
• [g]. Others, 'in desolate places.'
• [h]. Or 'denying.'
• [i]. Lit. 'from after.'