The Book of Isaiah

Hebrew Study

Explanation

The chapter opens by answering a complaint the people had voiced: God does not save, God does not hear. Not so, says Isaiah: "the LORD'S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear." The problem is not on God's side at all. "But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you." Sin, not divine weakness, is the barrier. Then God documents the sin in unsparing detail. Their hands are "defiled with blood," their lips speak "lies," their tongue mutters "perverseness." Justice has collapsed, "None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth." Their schemes are poison and entrapment, "cockatrice' eggs" and "the spider's web", deadly and useless at once, for "their webs shall not become garments." Violence marks their hands, and "their feet run to evil... to shed innocent blood." At last the summary: "The way of peace they know not... whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace." A life of sin cannot produce peace; it only breeds ruin, for the sinner and for everyone in his path.

Gospel Focus

Verse 2 is one of the clearest statements in the Bible of what sin actually does: it "separated between you and your God." This is the true human problem, not merely bad behavior, but a broken relationship, a wall of sin that hides God's face. And it explains unanswered prayer, "if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me" (Psalm 66:18). Paul reached for this very passage when he proved that all people, Jew and Gentile, are under sin, quoting verses 7-8 in Romans 3 to show that "the way of peace have they not known." Left to ourselves, none of us knows the way of peace. But this diagnosis sets up the glorious cure the chapter will reveal. The wall that sin built, God Himself would tear down. The One who is "our peace" (Ephesians 2:14), who "made peace through the blood of his cross" (Colossians 1:20), is the answer to a people who "know not" the way of peace. First we must see the wall for what it is: our sin separates us from God. Then we are ready for the Redeemer who comes to take it away.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Now the tone shifts from accusation to confession, and the people speak in the first person, owning their guilt. Because of their sin, "judgment is far from us... we wait for light, but behold obscurity." They describe their condition with painful honesty: "We grope for the wall like the blind... we stumble at noonday as in the night." Though it is broad daylight, they are lost as in the dark, "in desolate places as dead men." They "roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves," longing for a deliverance that stays "far off." Crucially, they do not blame God or circumstances; they name their own sin: "our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against us... as for our iniquities, we know them." They confess "transgressing and lying against the LORD, and departing away from our God." And they describe a society where "truth is fallen in the street," justice has collapsed, and doing right makes you a target, "he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey." Then the pivot begins: "the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment." God is watching, and He is about to act.

Gospel Focus

This confession is a model of true repentance. There is no minimizing, no excuse-making, no blaming God for the silence, "our sins testify against us... we know them." Genuine repentance owns the sin honestly, and only such honesty opens the door to grace: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins" (1 John 1:9). Notice too the accurate picture of what sin does: it blinds. The people "grope for the wall like the blind" and "stumble at noonday as in the night." Jesus said the same, "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" (Matthew 6:23), and He came as "the light of the world" precisely so that those who follow Him "shall not walk in darkness" (John 8:12). The despair of these verses, waiting for salvation that is "far off from us", is exactly the emptiness the gospel fills. When a soul finally stops making excuses and confesses, "we know them," it is standing at the very threshold where the Redeemer appears. The honest cry of the guilty is the sound God is waiting to answer.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

This is the great turning point of the chapter. God looks for a human deliverer and finds none: "he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor." In a world drowning in sin, no one could stand in the gap, no one could mediate, no one could save. So God does the unthinkable: He undertakes the rescue Himself. "Therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him." Salvation would come by God's own arm, not by any human effort. Then Isaiah pictures God dressing for battle. "He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head", the armor of a divine warrior, "and he put on the garments of vengeance... and was clad with zeal as a cloke." God arms Himself to repay evil, "fury to his adversaries, recompence to his enemies," so that His name and glory will be feared "from the west" to "the rising of the sun," across the whole earth. And when evil surges like a river, "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him", God's Spirit raises the battle-banner and turns the tide. When no one else could save, God saved.

Gospel Focus

This is the gospel in prophecy. Humanity's plight was total: "there was no man... no intercessor." No human being was righteous enough to bridge the gap between sinners and a holy God. So "his arm brought salvation", and we have already met "the arm of the LORD" in this book: it is the suffering Servant (Isaiah 53:1), Jesus Christ, God's own saving power come in flesh. God provided the very Intercessor the world lacked, for there is "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5), and now the risen Christ "ever liveth to make intercession" (Hebrews 7:25). This is the Oneness truth shining through: God did not send a separate deliverer to do what He would not; God Himself, manifest in Jesus, became the Man, the Intercessor, the Arm that saves. And the armor God wears here, "the breastplate" of righteousness and "the helmet of salvation," Paul places on us in Ephesians 6, we fight clothed in the very armor of God. When you had no way to save yourself and no one could do it for you, God stepped in and did it Himself. That is grace: salvation by God's own arm.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

After God's own arm brings salvation, the chapter names the Savior: "the Redeemer shall come to Zion." The deliverance God works by His arm arrives in the person of a Redeemer, a kinsman who buys His people back. But notice the condition of who receives Him: He comes "unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob." The Redeemer comes to the repentant, to those who do what the confession of verses 9-15 modeled, turning from sin. Then God seals it with a covenant, and the covenant's content is beautiful: "My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth." Two gifts, God's Spirit and God's word, are promised permanently, not only to this generation but "nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed... from henceforth and for ever." The salvation God accomplishes is not a passing rescue but a lasting covenant, His Spirit and His truth abiding on His people across all generations.

Gospel Focus

Paul quotes verse 20 directly and applies it to Jesus: "There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob" (Romans 11:26). The "Redeemer" who comes to Zion is Christ, the goel who buys His people back from the bondage of sin at the price of His own blood. And He comes "to them that turn from transgression", the same repentance-and-Redeemer pattern that runs through the whole gospel: turn from sin, and the Savior meets you. The closing covenant reads like a prophecy of Pentecost and beyond, God's "Spirit" poured out and His "words" abiding on His people forever. This is the new covenant Jesus secured: the Spirit given to dwell in believers, "he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever" (John 14:16), and the word of God that "liveth and abideth for ever" (1 Peter 1:23). The chapter that began with sin separating us from God ends with God's Spirit resting on us and His word in our mouths, unbroken from generation to generation. The wall of sin is gone; the Redeemer has come, and He has come to stay.