Isaiah 50:3

3 I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth 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 saith Jehovah: Where is the bill of your mother's divorce, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, through your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.

2 Wherefore did I come, and there was no man? I called, and there was none to answer? Is my hand at all shortened that I cannot redeem, or have I no power to deliver? behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make rivers a wilderness; their fish stink because there is no water, and die for thirst.

3 I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.

4 The Lord Jehovah hath given me the tongue of the instructed, that I should know how to succour by a word him that is weary. He wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the instructed.

5 The Lord Jehovah hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not away back.