1Why, the LORD’s hand is not too short to rescue,
nor His ear too dull to hear.
2But your crimes have parted
you from your God,
and your offenses have hidden His face
from you, so He does not hear.
3For your palms are stained with blood
and your fingers with crime.
Your lips speak lies,
and your tongue utters wrong doing.
4There is none who sues in righteousness
or comes to court in good faith.
They trust in emptiness and speak falsehood,
conceive trouble and bring forth vice.
5Viper’s eggs they hatch,
and a spiderweb they weave.
Who eats their eggs will die,
and when crushed an asp is hatched.
6Their webs become no garment,
and none covers up with what they make.
What they make are deeds of vice,
and the work of outrage in their palms.
7Their feet run to evil
and hurry to shed innocent blood.
Their devisings, devisings of vice,
wrack and ruin upon their paths.
8The way of peace they do not know,
and there is no justice where they go.
They make their courses crooked—
who treads on them knows not peace.
9Therefore is justice far from us,
and vindication does not reach us.
We hope for light, but, look, darkness,
for brightness, but we go in gloom.
10We grope the wall like blind men,
like the eyeless we grope.
We stumble at noon as at twilight,
among the robust like dead men.
11All of us growl like bears,
and like doves we ever moan.
We hope for justice but there is none,
for rescue,—it is far from us.
12For many are our crimes before You,
and our offenses bear witness against us.
For our crimes are with us,
and our misdeeds, we know them.
13Rebelling and denying the LORD
and falling back from our God,
speaking oppression and waywardness,
conceiving in the heart and uttering lying words.
14And justice is made to fall back,
and vindication stands off afar,
for truth stumbles in the square,
and honesty cannot come in.
15And truth is not to be found,
who turns from evil is despoiled.
And the LORD saw, and it was evil in His eyes,
for there was no justice.
16And He saw that there was no man,
and He was appalled, for none intervened.
But His own arm gave Him victory,
and His triumph stayed Him up.
17And He donned triumph as His armor
and victory’s helmet on His head.
And He donned clothes of vengeance as a garment,
and wrapped round zeal like a robe.
18As for their deserts, as for that, He requites,
wrath for His foes, just deserts for His enemies,
to the coastlands He exacts just deserts.
19And they shall fear from the west the LORD’s name,
and from the sun’s rising His glory.
For He shall come like a pent-up river,
for the LORD’s breath drives it on.
20And a redeemer shall come to Zion,
and to those who turn back from crime in Jacob—
21“As for Me, this is My covenant with them,” said the LORD, “My spirit that is upon you and My word that I put in your mouth—they shall not depart from your mouth and from the mouth of your seed and from the mouth of the seed of your seed,” said the LORD, “from now and for all time.”
CHAPTER 59 NOTES
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2. hidden His face. The Hebrew merely says “face,” but the clear reference is to God. The first two verses of this chapter are a strong articulation of a basic idea of prophetic theology: if you want to know why God appears to be absent, allowing the people of Israel to suffer grievously at the hands of its enemies, the explanation is that God has withdrawn His presence because of the people’s offenses. Thus, one should not imagine that God in any way lacks the capacity to rescue Israel or to hear its prayers (verse 1); rather, the lack of divine intervention is solely the consequence of the people’s own actions.
4. There is none who sues in righteousness. While the verb used generally means “to call” or “to call out,” the parallel term in the second verset, nishpat, “comes to court,” suggests a judicial meaning, and that is the understanding of most biblical scholars.
5. Viper’s eggs . . . / a spiderweb. These two metaphors drawn from two of the more disagreeable members of the animal kingdom suggest two different negative consequences of the miscreant’s acts—respectively, lethally poisonous effects and flimsy, useless insubstantiality.
7. Their feet run to evil. The function of the two lines of poetry that constitute this verse is to spell out in explicit moral terms the meaning of the metaphors of viper and spiderweb.
9. Therefore is justice far from us. These words initiate a new prophecy. Instead of the preceding castigation of the evildoers first in the second person and then in the third person, this text speaks in the first-person plural on behalf of a people plunged in disaster, for whom God will dramatically intervene (verses 16–20). The hook, surely visible to the eye of the editor, that connects the two prophecies is the pronouncement about the lack of justice at the beginning of the second prophecy.
10. like blind men, / like the eyeless. This line neatly illustrates how in the second verset in lines of biblical poetry some sort of epithet (or often metaphor) is substituted for the standard term (here, “blind”) that appears in the first verset. “Eyeless” (more literally, “no-eyes”) concretizes the condition of blindness. The line is also an elegant chiasm: we grope—blind men—the eyeless—we grope.
the robust. The Hebrew ʾashamnim appears only here, so the proposed meaning, linking it with the root sh-m-n, which can mean either “healthy” or “fat,” is conjectural.
12. For many are our crimes before You. This, and what follows to the end of verse 15, is perfectly in accord with the theological notion of alienating God through evil actions that is expressed in verses 1–2, but here it constitutes a collective confession of sin.
14. for truth stumbles in the square. Since the square is the chief public place of the ancient city, usually facing the gates where courts of justice were held, the implication is that the entire society has violated the principles of justice.
16. And He saw that there was no man. At this point the prophet offers a new notion of God’s saving power: the society is so thoroughly given over to injustice that there is scarcely hope that anyone will emerge who can turn things around, and consequently God Himself decides that He must intervene.
17. And He donned triumph as His armor. The prophet now draws on the ancient Canaanite imagery of the warrior-god, which appears with some frequency in biblical poetry.
18. As for their deserts, as for that. The Hebrew preposition keʿal is unusual, but the sense reflected in the translation seems likely, if not certain.
wrath for His foes, just deserts for His enemies. All this continues the representation of God as a fierce warrior. If elsewhere in the Isaian corpus the enemies of Israel are conceived as God’s instrument, they have, after all, devastated, exiled, and subjugated the covenanted people, and in doing so they have become God’s enemies, on whom He will now wreak vengeance.
19. they shall fear. This translation agrees with Blenkinsopp that the verb is stronger than “revere,” the choice of several modern versions: God the warrior, sweeping over vast regions like a torrential river, inspires fear from east to west.
20. to those who turn back from crime in Jacob. Despite the idea of a unilateral divine initiative of rescue articulated in verses 16ff., here at the end the prophecy asserts that the redemption will come only for those who turn back to God.
said the LORD. This attribution of divine speech is introduced here to mark the end of the prophecy.
21. As for Me. What follows the prophecy is a prose epilogue. Some understand it as a formal conclusion to the whole section running from chapter 56 through chapter 59.
My spirit that is upon you. The “you” is singular, but the claim that it refers to the prophet, with “your seed” indicating his disciples, is questionable. Similar formulations in Deuteronomy and elsewhere clearly indicate the spirit of God that will continue to invest the covenanted people for all time, and there is no warrant for the use of “seed” in the sense of “disciple” rather than as a term for biological offspring. “Seed” in precisely this sense repeatedly figures in the covenantal promises to Abraham.