Isaiah 59:1

The chapter begins with “Behold”, calling the people to attention before God answers a complaint that had been growing among them. Times were hard, rescue was slow in coming, and some had begun to wonder whether God could still save them, or whether he was listening at all. A psalm gives voice to the same cry: “Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?” (Psalm 44:23–24). The chapter before this one had exposed fasting and worship that went hand in hand with oppressing the poor (Isaiah 58), and Isaiah 59 explains why such a people found heaven silent.

God answers with two pictures taken from the human body. His hand stands for his power to act. The Hebrew yâd is the ordinary word for a hand, and with a preposition (“by the hand of”) it marks anyone through whom something is done, so in Scripture a hand is the reach of a person’s power. The verb qâtsar means to be short or to cut short, and it is also the word for reaping a harvest. A shortened hand is one that can no longer reach far enough to help. God says his hand is as long as it ever was. He uses the same picture in Numbers 11:23, where he asks Moses, “Is the LORD’S hand waxed short?” Jeremiah says it in prayer: “there is nothing too hard for thee” (Jeremiah 32:17).

His ear stands for his attention. The verb kâbad means to be heavy, and a heavy ear is a dull one, the ear of someone who hears poorly or has stopped paying attention. God’s ear is as keen as ever. “He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:4), he is the God who hears prayer (Psalm 65:2), and all things lie open before his eyes (Hebrews 4:13).

Hand and ear put God’s power and his attention into terms we can grasp, and the two halves of the verse say the same thing from two sides: he is able to save, and he is ready to hear. Once that is settled, there is only one place left to look for the trouble, and verse 2 names it.

“But” turns from God to the people. Isaiah uses two words for what they have done. “Iniquities” is ʻâvôn, from a root meaning to bend or twist. It names perversity, and the same word covers the guilt that comes with the wrong and the punishment it deserves. “Sins” is chaṭṭâʼâh, from the verb chaṭâʼ, to miss the mark or go astray. It is the common word for sin, and it is also the word for the sin offering, the sacrifice made for sin. Between them the two words take in the whole of their wrongdoing.

The verb “separated” is bâdal, to divide, set apart or sever. Their sins stand between them and God like a dividing wall. The second line gives the same truth in another picture: their sins “have hid his face from you”. God’s face, pânîym, stood in Israel for his favour and his presence, as in the priestly blessing, “The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee.” When God hides his face, he withdraws that favour.

Behind this lies the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai, which promised blessing for obedience and warned of curses for disobedience, among them the loss of his favour and presence (Deuteronomy 28). Behind it also lies who God is. “Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness” (Psalm 5:4), and Habakkuk says he is “of purer eyes than to behold evil” (Habakkuk 1:13). Jeremiah told his own generation, “your sins have withholden good things from you” (Jeremiah 5:25). The same barrier stands before every one of us, for “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

“For” brings in the evidence. Isaiah names four parts of the body, and through them the whole person: hands and fingers for what the people do, lips and tongue for what they say.

“Your hands are defiled with blood.” The verb gâʼal means to soil, stain, pollute or desecrate, and their hands carry the guilt of bloodshed. This takes in murder itself, and the prophets also speak of blood when the weak are crushed by bribed courts and oppression. Amos condemns oppression and bribery in the courts (Amos 5:12) and the selling of the poor (Amos 2:6–7), and Micah condemns rulers who judge for reward (Micah 3:9–11). “Your fingers with iniquity” uses ʻâvôn again, the word of verse 2, and reaches down to the fine work of the hand.

“Your lips have spoken lies.” The verb dâbar is the everyday word to speak, and Strong’s suggests that its first sense is to arrange. “Lies” is sheqer, falsehood, a lie, deception, and it can also mean something empty that disappoints. Falsehood had become ordinary speech.

“Your tongue hath muttered perverseness.” The verb hâgâh means to murmur, to utter a low sound, and from there to ponder. It is the same verb used of the blessed man who meditates on God’s law day and night (Psalm 1:2). There the godly murmur over God’s word, and here the tongue murmurs over wrong. “Perverseness” is ʻevel, wrong, injustice or iniquity. Lies are false words spoken aloud, while muttered perverseness is wrong turned over and spoken low, the speech of people who plot and grumble.

Verse 4 widens the view from hands and tongues to the whole community. “None calleth for justice.” The verb qârâʼ means to call out, to address, to proclaim. Nobody raises a voice for what is right, whether from fear, apathy or because they share the guilt. “Nor any pleadeth for truth.” Truth here is ʼĕmûwnâh, from a root meaning firmness. It is faithfulness and reliability, and it is often translated “faithfulness” or “truth”. When nobody will plead for it, a people has lost the firm ground it stood on.

“They trust in vanity, and speak lies.” “Vanity” is tôhûw, from a root meaning to lie waste: emptiness, desolation, nothing at all. It is the word for the earth “without form” in Genesis 1:2. The emptiness they leaned on may have been idols, ritual without heart, alliances with foreign powers or their own schemes. Isaiah had long since shown them where strength lay: “In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). Trust placed in emptiness soon shows in speech, and so the lies follow.

Verse 5 turns to two creatures everyone in Judah knew. “They hatch cockatrice’ eggs.” The verb bâqaʻ means to split, cleave or break open, here of eggs cracking as they hatch, and the same verb comes back at the end of the verse in “breaketh out”. The cockatrice, tsephaʻ, is a venomous serpent, an adder or viper, and Strong’s links its name to the snake thrusting out its tongue as it hisses. Venomous snakes were common in the land and greatly feared. The people brood over their schemes the way a serpent keeps her eggs, and what comes out is deadly.

“He that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.” Whoever takes in what they produce dies of it, and whoever tries to stamp it out finds a viper breaking loose. Either way the poison spreads, because sin carries death in it from the start: “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Proverbs says that “he that is perverse in his ways shall fall at once” (Proverbs 28:18). The serpent has stood for deadly evil since the garden (Genesis 3:1–7), and John the Baptist called the religious leaders of his day a “generation of vipers” (Matthew 3:7).

“And weave the spider’s web.” The spider is ʻakkâbîysh, a name probably drawn from a root meaning to entangle, and the web is qûwr. A web is fine and intricate work, and it catches prey, but it tears at a touch. Their plans are woven to trap others, and they are also all the cover they have.

“Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood.” These people hurry toward wrong, eagerly and without hesitation. Proverbs lists among the things the LORD hates “an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief” (Proverbs 6:18), the same heart and feet that appear in this verse. The word for blood, dâm, is here the life of someone who has done no wrong. Israel’s law made provision “that innocent blood be not shed in thy land” (Deuteronomy 19:10), because shedding it defiled the land and cried out for justice. In Isaiah’s day it may have meant unjust executions, murders, and even the sacrifice of children.

“Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity.” The word for thoughts, machăshâbâh, means a contrivance, an intention or a plan. The word for iniquity here is ʼâven, which means trouble and wickedness and carries a sense of nothingness and vanity, so their plans are wicked and come to nothing. Their violence begins inside. Jesus says that “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders” (Matthew 15:19), and before the flood God saw “that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).

“Wasting and destruction are in their paths.” “Wasting” is shôd, desolation or ravage, and “destruction” is sheber, a breaking or ruin. Wherever they go, homes and lives are left broken. God’s call through Isaiah had been to “seek judgment, relieve the oppressed” (Isaiah 1:17).

“The way of peace they know not.” The way is derek, a road worn by walking and so a course of life. Peace is shâlôwm, a state of completeness, soundness, welfare, peace and safety, the life God promised his covenant people when they obeyed him (Deuteronomy 28:1–14). These people have lost even the road that leads there.

“There is no judgment in their goings.” Judgment is mishpâṭ, justice and right order in the courts and in daily dealings, and their goings, maʻgâl, are the tracks they make as they go. “They have made them crooked paths.” The verb ʻâqash means to twist or make crooked, and the word for paths, nâthîyb, is a track, from a root meaning to tramp. They have trodden out their own winding ways, and the crookedness is their own work.

“Whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.” The verse ends where it began, with peace unknown, and now the warning reaches anyone who follows them. “There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked” (Isaiah 48:22). Wisdom’s ways are the opposite: “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace” (Proverbs 3:17). Jeremiah warned against prophets who cried “Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14).

When Paul shows in Romans that the whole world stands guilty before God, he gathers a chain of Old Testament verses (Romans 3:10–18). It opens with the psalm that says “there is none that doeth good” (Psalm 14:1–3), and it includes these very verses of Isaiah: “Their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known” (Romans 3:15–17). What Isaiah said of Judah, Paul says of every one of us, Jew and Gentile alike. The human heart left to itself runs this way, and we cannot make ourselves righteous. Then Paul turns at once to the answer, the righteousness of God that comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe (Romans 3:21–26).

Isaiah 59 goes on from here. The people confess their sin and admit that justice is far from them (Isaiah 59:9–15), saying “our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against us” (Isaiah 59:12–13). Then the LORD himself acts (Isaiah 59:15–20). “And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him” (Isaiah 59:16). The chapter ends with “the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob” (Isaiah 59:20) and with God’s covenant to put his Spirit and his words on his people (Isaiah 59:15–21). The hand of verse 1 is exactly as strong as God said, and in the end he stretches it out himself.

The New Testament shows us that saving hand at work in Jesus. The Word became flesh (John 1:14), and he was named Jesus because “he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Those who were once alienated and enemies in their minds by wicked works he has now reconciled through his death (Colossians 1:21–22), and those who were far off are made nigh by his blood (Ephesians 2:13). The separation of verse 2 is removed by the cross.

Each picture in these verses finds its answer in him. Our hands are defiled with blood, and his hands were pierced when “he was wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5) and “the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). His blood purges the conscience (Hebrews 9:14), and “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). Our feet hurry to shed innocent blood, and his own innocent blood was shed as he humbled himself and became obedient unto death (Philippians 2:5–8). Our lips speak lies, and he “did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22). He has the words of eternal life (John 6:68), and he teaches us to speak what builds others up (Ephesians 4:29).

Where none called for justice or pleaded for truth, he is himself “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) and is made unto us righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30), and anyone who is in him is a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17). The serpent’s eggs meet the promise that the woman’s seed would bruise the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15), and God will bruise Satan under the feet of his people shortly (Romans 16:20). On the cross Christ blotted out what stood against us and spoiled principalities and powers (Colossians 2:14–15). The egg that kills whoever eats it gives way to the living bread, of which a man may eat and live for ever (John 6:51). The webs that could never become garments give way to the righteousness “which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:9), and to robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14).

The way of peace that Judah lost is found in him. Isaiah had already named him the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), Paul says “he is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), and Zechariah sang of the dayspring from on high who would “guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79). Jesus himself says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth” (John 14:27). Through him we come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:15–16), for there is “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

When prayer feels unanswered, these verses keep us from blaming God’s weakness or his deafness. His hand still saves and his ear still hears. The right question is the one verse 2 raises, whether something in us stands between us and him. Sin we hold on to will dull our sense of his presence, and sin we confess he forgives, because Christ has already borne it.

The passage also calls us to look at the whole of life, as Isaiah did: what our hands do, what our lips say, what our minds plan, and where our feet are heading. We can bring our thoughts captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5) and set them on whatever is true, honest and just (Philippians 4:8). We can speak up for justice and truth where we live, as Isaiah’s generation would not. And because Christ is our peace, we can walk the way of peace that these verses mourn, on a straight path he has opened for us.