Isaiah 59

The first word is Behold: look here, not at a weak God. Hand and ear are whole. Salvation is not stalled by divine inability.

The same Lord who answered “Here I am” to a true fast (58:9) has not gone deaf. If he does not save, the cause is not a shortened arm. The verse still invites a people to come; the next verse will name what blocks the coming.

Calvin: hypocrites accuse God of weakness or excessive severity. He shows he does not want power or will to save, but is prevented by their wickedness. Behold is emphatic, as if pointing with the finger. Supply the contrasts: his hand was never broken, his ear never grown dull.

God is always like himself, not wearied in doing good, power not diminished. We hinder the entrance of his grace. The slander belongs on our side of the line.

Separation is made; it is not original distance of a God who never cared. Iniquities have done what a dull ear did not. Hidden face is the effect of sins still present.

Classical Arminians: the wall can be named and, under grace, confessed (vv. 12–13). God is not the one who moved house. A people who stop hiding their sins may find the face no longer hidden. The verse is diagnosis meant to be used.

Calvin: they cannot say God has changed. The whole blame lies with themselves; they refuse to receive his assistance. Our sins alone deprive us of grace and cause separation. Sometimes frowardness grows so as to shut the door against benefits, as if driving him far away.

He always does good to the unworthy, yet he does not listen to the prayers of the wicked. The prophet accuses the people of rejecting benefits and making a divorce that turns aside the ordinary course of grace.

Wesley: perverse words are contrary to God’s word, every way contrary to his will. Hands, fingers, lips, tongue—four witnesses, no spare part.

Blood here is violence and extortion in Judah. The list can still be dropped. Lying lips are chosen speech; muttering can stop. Grace that commands a true fast (58:6–7) now names why the fast failed.

Calvin brings forward actions so they cannot evade. He speaks in the second person as God’s advocate, not ranking himself with the wicked. Blood does not mean murders everywhere, but cruelty, extortion, violence against the poor by king and nobles. Fingers say not even the smallest part is free from unjust violence.

From hands to lips—falsehood, perjury, craft. Second-table crimes prove contempt of God. Cruelty and treachery proceed from that contempt.

Wesley: none seek to redress these wrongs; rapines and frauds with impunity. Conceiving and bringing forth denote the whole contrivance and perfecting of wickedness.

This is Isaiah’s legal square, not ours. Empty pleas are a chosen craft. Conceiving mischief is a pregnancy they can still refuse to carry to term. Redress was possible; silence consented.

Calvin: no study of what is right; no one opposes injustice of the strong against the weak. Whoever permits what he can hinder does in some sense command it; silence is a sort of consent. Extreme confusion when no one rises for justice.

They heap perverse reliances and harden themselves. Wickedness conceived inwardly is brought forth when occasions appear. They prepare crimes by long meditation. Paul will later quote the next lines as a mirror of nature without the Spirit (Rom 3:15–17).

Wesley: cockatrice eggs—venomous designs put in practice. Web—plots that weave nets with pains and artifice, yet come to nothing, as a spider’s web is swept away.

Hatching is work. The eggs are not assigned in the womb of the sky; they are warmed on purpose. Crushing one only yields a viper—the whole nest is poison. It would be better not to hatch such eggs at all.

Calvin: not only women but venomous beasts, so that everything from them is deadly. As a viper cannot lay an egg that is not venomous, they throw out nothing but poison. Spider webs: barren of anything good, they deceive even by the appearance of virtues.

Works manifest corrupt nature, and they contribute nothing toward kindness or faith. Whoever has to do with them will find them destructive.

Wesley: their contrivances shall not be able to cover or defend them. Webs fail as garments; violence stays in the hands.

The cover they wove will not hide them from the God whose face their sins already hid (v. 2). Works of iniquity remain works. A people can still strip the web and take the true fast’s covering (58:7).

Calvin repeats: everything they attempt is useless to mankind; they shrink from kindness. Abandoned minds devote themselves to evil so that no advantage can be expected. We were born to assist neighbors; those only skillful to do mischief are savage beasts, not to be called men.

No man will cover himself with their works; in their texture nothing solid. They are devoted to iniquity. Violence is in the hands—the same hands already defiled with blood.

Wesley: they meditate on little else. In what way or work soever they are engaged, it tends to ruin. Feet, thoughts, highways—motion, mind, and map.

Running is eagerness, not fate. Innocent blood is Judah’s violence. Paul cites this in Romans 3 to show the world under sin; Isaiah first aimed it at a covenant people who could still stop running.

Calvin: extreme wickedness—fear of God shaken off, every cruelty and outrage. They run because they hasten with excessive keenness. Hands, tongues, now feet: no part of the body free from crime. Wasting and destruction wherever they go, like wild beasts that devour and leave nothing.

Pliny said Domitian’s arrival was a savage beast; so violent men drive others from the road. Paul justly quotes this of all who are under their own nature (Rom 3:15–17).

Wesley: they live in continual contentions. No justice, equity, faith, or integrity. Crooked roads are made, not merely found.

57:21 already said there is no peace for the wicked; here they manufacture the crookedness. Knowing the way of peace remains a possibility under grace—the true fast loosed yokes (58:6). Treading their road is a choice with a stated end: no peace.

Calvin summons them to judgment by the second table: no sincerity, no kindness, without natural affection. Cruelty deprives them of the justice by which society is maintained. If every person rush on his neighbors, there is open war.

Isaiah addresses Jews who thought themselves holier; Gentiles are included. He speaks of all not renewed by the Spirit. Paul quotes it to show what men are whom God has forsaken. The prophet excepts himself as regenerated; viewed in nature, no man is excepted.

Wesley: justice here is deliverance. God doth not defend our right nor revenge our wrong because of these outrages. The therefore is moral, not mechanical.

The voice shifts to we. Hope for light is not mocked as impossible; darkness is what their violence purchased. A people who hoped can still name why the dawn of 58:8 did not break. Gloom is the harvest of refused justice.

Calvin: after painting depravity, he shows severe chastisements are richly deserved. Judgment far off: they were the most wretched, without God as protector. Justice: God defending and revenging injuries. Therefore: do not blame God as if he acted unjustly; they had insulted his majesty in many ways.

Vain to expect the condition changed for the better until they ascribe calamities to themselves. He always endeavors to bring his people to repentance. Darkness sits down when they promised themselves alleviation.

Wesley: he compares their captivity to men dead without hope of recovery. Noon-stumble is judgment in broad daylight.

Grope is what a people does when they will not see. The confession can become sight if they keep talking through v. 13 instead of stopping at the groan.

Calvin: they are destitute of counsel, overwhelmed by anguish, no solace. When lighter evil presses we look around; heavier distress takes ability to judge. A labyrinth: groping. Various stumbling-blocks if they stir a foot. Solitary places as dead men—a wilderness, shut out from society, resembling the dead.

“Noon”—no alleviation; day changed into night. The tokens of anger do not always awaken; the devil stupifies complainers. Isaiah describes calamity so they will consider the cause.

Wesley: oppressing governors made the wicked roar like bears, and the good mourn like doves. Hope for salvation is still on their lips; it is far because of what vv. 12–13 will admit.

Growl and moan are not yet repentance, but they are not silence. Justice and salvation were the right things to hope. Far is a measured word—58:8–9 had promised nearness if the yoke came off.

Calvin: two classes who cannot silently endure—some howl fiercely, others moan like doves (as Hezekiah, 38:14). Both without avail; condition not better. He repeats: in vain they looked for judgment and salvation. It is by our own fault that we are wretched and waste away till converted to God.

We may moan and howl, but no alleviation without repentance. No end of afflictions so long as we provoke wrath and do not desire with the whole heart to be reconciled.

Wesley: transgressions of a high nature, much of man’s will against light—rebellious sins. Multiplied against thee, so thou art justly provoked to deny help. Testify as witnesses. Are with us—still unforgiven. We know—we are convinced of them.

Arminian readers treasure this we know. Conviction is a grace-enabled seeing. Sins that testify can still be confessed rather than carried. The knowledge is not yet healing (57:18), but it is the door the hidden face (v. 2) was waiting on.

Calvin: they act unjustly in accusing God of cruelty. The huge mass of iniquities towers to heaven. Before thee: he descends into himself and acknowledges the righteous judgment hidden from men who flatter themselves. God does not need many proofs; our sins hold us convicted.

Men assume shapes to appear righteous; they carry iniquities they cannot extricate, as sin kept watch at Cain’s door. “We know” is not yet a heart affected unto repentance, but conscience that binds them so that caviling is vain. Isaiah speaks in the first person as one of a diseased body.

Wesley: lying and transgressing are one—they broke the Sinai engagement. Departing—turning from God to idols. Speaking—talking of little else but how to oppress neighbors and apostatize. Uttering—contriving in the heart, then speaking. From the heart with men; with God, often only from the lip.

The list is theirs to own. Turning back is a direction that can still reverse. Heart-lies named are the opposite of the true fast’s poured-out soul (58:10). Next, 59:14–21 will show the Lord himself putting on righteousness when no intercessor is found.

Calvin enumerates classes of sins to arouse acknowledgment. Hardened by stripes, they still murmur. “Lied to Jehovah” is treacherous revolt, not a few faults—universal, like fugitives. They invent mischief and are imbued with falsehood; to utter a lie from the heart is worse than thoughtless deceit.

Such reproofs offend the proud who imagine they are holy. Pastors, seeing the Church corrupt, must make strenuous opposition. The confession of vv. 9–13 is the prophet’s way of bringing a puffed people low so they cease to find fault with God—and so that, in the next range, mercy may be promised without despair.