Scripture Daily

Context No. 745 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 59:1-16: in context

1Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it can’t save; nor his ear dull, that it can’t hear. 2But your iniquities have separated you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. 3For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies. Your tongue mutters wickedness. 4No one sues in righteousness, and no one pleads in truth. They trust in vanity and speak lies. They conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity. 5They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web. He who eats of their eggs dies; and that which is crushed breaks out into a viper. 6Their webs won’t become garments. They won’t cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of iniquity, and acts of violence are in their hands. 7Their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Desolation and destruction are in their paths. 8They don’t know the way of peace; and there is no justice in their ways. They have made crooked paths for themselves; whoever goes in them doesn’t know peace. 9Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness doesn’t overtake us. We look for light, but see darkness; for brightness, but we walk in obscurity. 10We grope for the wall like the blind. Yes, we grope as those who have no eyes. We stumble at noon as if it were twilight. Among those who are strong, we are like dead men. 11We all roar like bears and moan sadly like doves. We look for justice, but there is none, for salvation, but it is far off from us. 12For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we know them: 13transgressing and denying the LORD, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. 14Justice is turned away backward, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has fallen in the street, and uprightness can’t enter. 15Yes, truth is lacking; and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. 16He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor. Therefore his own arm brought salvation to him; and his righteousness sustained him.

Isaiah 59 opens by clearing God of a charge people quietly make when heaven seems silent. The LORD's hand is not too short to save, the prophet says, nor his ear too dull to hear. The problem is not on his end. Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he does not hear. Then comes a long, unsparing catalog of the sins, bloody hands and lying lips and crooked paths, followed by an honest confession from the people themselves: we grope for the wall like the blind, we stumble at noon as if it were dusk, truth has fallen in the street and cannot get up.

And then the chapter turns on a line that is almost startling. The LORD looked, and there was no justice, and it displeased him. He saw that there was no one, and was appalled that there was no intercessor, no one willing to stand in the gap between the people and their ruin. So, the prophet says, his own arm brought him salvation, and his own righteousness upheld him. When God searched for a human being to step into the breach and found not one, he did not walk away. He stepped in himself. The rescue no one else would attempt, he undertook with his own arm.

God looked for someone to stand in the gap, found no one, and stepped in himself. Where have I decided God is not listening, when the silence is my own, and have I forgotten the arm that saves when no one else will?

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