Isaiah 50:3

3 I clothe the heavens [with] blackness, And sackcloth I make their covering.

Isaiah 50:3 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 50:3

I clothe the heavens with blackness
With gross and thick darkness; perhaps referring to the three days' darkness the Egyptians were in, ( Exodus 10:12-23 ) , or with thick and black clouds, as in tempestuous weather frequently; or by eclipses of the sun; there was an extraordinary instance of great darkness at the time of Christ's crucifixion, ( Matthew 27:45 ) and I make sackcloth their covering;
that being black, and used in times of mourning; the allusion may be to the tents of Kedar, which were covered with sackcloth, or such like black stuff. The fall of the Pagan empire, through the power of Christ and his Gospel, is signified by the sun becoming black as sackcloth of hair, ( Revelation 6:12 ) . Jarchi interprets this parabolically of the princes of the nations, when the Lord shall come to take vengeance upon them; as Kimchi does the sea, and the rivers, in the preceding verse, of the good things of the nations of the world, which they had in great abundance, and should be destroyed.

Isaiah 50:3 In-Context

1 Thus said Jehovah: `Where [is] this -- the bill of your mother's divorce, Whom I sent away? Or to which of My creditors have I sold you? Lo, for your iniquities ye have been sold, And for your transgressions Hath your mother been sent away.

2 Wherefore have I come, and there is no one? I called, and there is none answering, Hath My hand been at all short of redemption? And is there not in me power to deliver? Lo, by My rebuke I dry up a sea, I make rivers a wilderness, Their fish stinketh, for there is no water, And dieth with thirst.

3 I clothe the heavens [with] blackness, And sackcloth I make their covering.

4 The Lord Jehovah hath given to me The tongue of taught ones, To know to aid the weary [by] a word, He waketh morning by morning, He waketh for me an ear to hear as taught ones.

5 The Lord Jehovah opened for me the ear, And I rebelled not -- backward I moved not.