Isaiah 64:9

9 You must not be exceedingly angry, Yahweh, and you must not remember iniquity forever! Look! Behold, now! We all [are] your people!

Isaiah 64:9 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 64:9

Be not wroth very sore, O Lord
They knew not how to deprecate the displeasure of God entirely; having sinned so greatly against him, they were sensible they deserved his wrath; but entreat it might not be hot and very vehement, and carried to the highest pitch, which would be intolerable: neither remember iniquity for ever;
to afflict and punish for it, but forgive it, for not to remember sin is to forgive it; and not inflict the deserved punishment of it, but take off and remove the effects of divine displeasure, which as yet continued, and had a long time, as this petition suggests; and therefore suits better with the present long captivity of the Jews than their seventy years' captivity in Babylon. Behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people;
look upon all our troubles and distresses, and upon us under them, with an eye of pity and compassion; and consider that we are thy people, not only by creation, but by covenant and profession; even everyone of us; or we are all the people thou hast, the Jews looking upon themselves to be the special and peculiar people of God, and the Gentiles as having no claim to such a relation; this is the pure spirit of Judaism. The Targum is,

``lo, it is manifest before thee that we are all of us thy people.''

Isaiah 64:9 In-Context

7 And there is no one who calls on your name, who pulls himself up to keep hold of you, for you have hidden your face from us, and melted us into the hand of our iniquity.
8 Yet now Yahweh, you [are] our father; we [are] the clay and you [are] our {potter}, and we all [are] the work of your hand.
9 You must not be exceedingly angry, Yahweh, and you must not remember iniquity forever! Look! Behold, now! We all [are] your people!
10 {Your holy cities} have become a wilderness; Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.
11 {Our holy and beautiful temple}, where our ancestors praised you has {been burned} [by] fire, and all our precious objects have become ruins.
Scripture quotations marked (LEB) are from the Lexham English Bible. Copyright 2012 Logos Bible Software. Lexham is a registered trademark of Logos Bible Software.