Isaiah 50:3

3 I can make the sky turn dark, as if it were in mourning for the dead."

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 The Lord says, "Do you think I sent my people away like a man who divorces his wife? Where, then, are the papers of divorce? Do you think I sold you into captivity like a man who sells his children as slaves? No, you went away captive because of your sins; you were sent away because of your crimes.

2 "Why did my people fail to respond when I went to them to save them? Why did they not answer when I called? Am I too weak to save them? I can dry up the sea with a command and turn rivers into a desert, so that the fish in them die for lack of water.

3 I can make the sky turn dark, as if it were in mourning for the dead."

4 The Sovereign Lord has taught me what to say, so that I can strengthen the weary. Every morning he makes me eager to hear what he is going to teach me.

5 The Lord has given me understanding, and I have not rebelled or turned away from him.