Isaiah 59:1 - Meaning and Application

The prophet here corrects the mistake of those who complained against God because they did not receive the deliverance they had often fasted and prayed for, as in Isaiah 58:3. He shows, first, that the fault was not with God. They had no reason to blame him for not saving them from their enemies.

God was still as able to help as ever. His hand is not shortened, meaning his power has not become weaker, smaller, or less effective. His power can still reach as far and act as strongly as before. The church’s salvation comes from God’s hand, and that hand has not grown weak. When God asked Moses, “Has the Lord’s hand become short?” (Numbers 11:23), the answer was no, and it is still no. Neither the passing of time, nor powerful enemies, nor weak human helpers can limit God’s power. It is the same for him to save with many or with few.

God was also still as ready and willing to help as ever when his people prayed. His ear is not heavy, so that it cannot hear. Even though he hears many prayers and has heard them for a long time, he is still as willing to listen as he always was. He still delights in the prayer of the upright, and the promises he has given are still “yes” and “amen,” completely sure. More is implied here than is said directly. God is not only able to hear, he is quick to hear. He answers even before his people call, as in Isaiah 65:24. So if prayers are not answered and the salvation we wait for does not come, the reason is not that God is tired of hearing prayer. It is that we are tired of praying. The problem is not that his ear is heavy when we speak to him, but that our ears are heavy when he speaks to us.

The prophet then shows that the trouble was their own doing. They were blocking their own blessing and standing in their own way. God was moving toward them in mercy, and they were holding him back. “Your iniquities have kept good things from you” (Jeremiah 5:25).

Sin does great harm. First, it keeps God’s mercy from coming down to us. It is like a dividing wall between us and God. By nature, there is already a great distance between God and man, but sin made that distance worse. It set them against each other. Sin justly provokes God and wrongly turns man away from God, so it separates between them and God. He is their God, at least by their profession, and that makes sin even worse, because it separates people from the One they claim to serve. Sin hides his face from us, which means his displeasure is great (Deuteronomy 31:17). It moves him to withdraw his gracious presence and to withhold the signs of his favor and help. Sin is deeply sinful because it pulls the creature away from loyalty to the Creator. It is also deeply harmful, because it separates us from God and so cuts us off from all good and exposes us to all evil (Deuteronomy 29:21). That is the very heart of the curse.

Second, sin keeps our prayers from rising to God. It makes him hide his face so that he will not hear, as he has said in Isaiah 1:15. If we cherish sin in our hearts and give ourselves permission to keep it, God will not hear our prayers (Psalm 66:18). We cannot expect his favor while we keep insulting him.

To justify God in hiding his face and continuing his dispute with them, the prophet then goes on to show, in the verses that follow, how many and how serious their sins were, as he had been told to do in Isaiah 58:1. It is a dark list of charges against them, and any one of them would have been enough to separate them from a just and holy God. We can group these charges into proper heads.

We must begin with their thoughts, because all sin starts there. Their thoughts are thoughts of evil, as in Isaiah 59:7. Their plans and schemes are wicked. They are always working out some wrong, always figuring out how to satisfy some shameful desire (Isaiah 59:4). They conceive mischief in their minds, form it in their purpose, and settle it in their resolve, and then they bring forth iniquity, carrying it out once it is ready. Even if the act comes after struggle, because providence opposes them and conscience checks them, they still take pride and pleasure in it once they succeed. It is like James 1:15, when desire conceives and gives birth to sin.

This is also described in Isaiah 59:5 as hatching a viper’s egg and weaving a spider’s web. Their thoughts and plans are aimed at something either foolish or harmful. At best, they are vain, like a spider’s web. The spider works hard, but when it is done, the result is weak and useless. It is a poor thing, easily swept away, and it adds no real value. That is what worldly people often busy their minds with, building imaginary hopes and delighting in made-up pleasures. Like the spider in Proverbs 30:28, they cling skillfully, but they cannot hold what they reach for.

Often, though, their thoughts are worse than useless, they are cruel. They hatch the eggs of an adder or viper, which are poisonous and produce dangerous creatures. That is what the thoughts of the wicked are like when they enjoy doing harm. If someone eats one of these eggs, meaning he is exposed to their harm, he is in danger. If one is crushed and seems about to be safe or useful, it breaks out into a viper. Such people are dangerous to deal with. Happy are those who have as little to do with them as possible. Even their spider’s web was made with a spiteful purpose, to trap flies and make prey of them. If they cannot do great harm, they will still do small harm.

Out of this great deal of wickedness in the heart, the mouth speaks. Yet people do not always speak all the evil they are carrying inside. To carry out their harmful plans more effectively, they hide them under smooth words (Isaiah 59:3). “Your lips have spoken lies,” and again, “They speak lies,” pretending kindness when they mean great harm. Or they spread slander and false accusations against those they dislike, so they damage their reputation in secret. They may even use false witnesses against them and take away their property or their lives. A false tongue is like sharp arrows and burning coals, and it does serious damage.

“Your tongue has muttered perverseness.” When they are too ashamed to speak their hatred openly, or too afraid of being exposed and embarrassed, they whisper it in secret. Backbiters are really whisperers. Their actions match their thoughts and words. They are guilty of shedding innocent blood, which is one of the worst crimes. “Your hands are defiled with blood” (Isaiah 59:3), because blood leaves a stain of guilt on the conscience, and nothing but the blood of Christ can cleanse it.

This was not just an accident or a moment of weakness under pressure. “Their feet run to evil” (Isaiah 59:7), meaning they hurry toward sin naturally and eagerly. Driven by malice and revenge, they rush to shed innocent blood, as if they were afraid of missing a chance to do something cruel (Proverbs 1:16; Jeremiah 22:17). “Wasting and destruction are in their paths.” Everywhere they go, they bring harm with them. Their whole way leads to ruin, and they do not care how much destruction they cause. They also thirst after blood, and their fingers are stained with other sins too (Isaiah 59:3). They cheat people out of their property and take whatever they can get their hands on.

“They trust in vanity” (Isaiah 59:4). They rely on dishonest tricks to make themselves rich, but those tricks will turn out to be empty. Their lies will end up deceiving them. The things they work so hard on are all works of sin. Their whole life is one long course of oppression and trouble-making. Violence is in their hands because violence fills their minds and hearts.

No one tries to stop these abuses or fix them (Isaiah 59:4). No one calls for justice, no one complains when God’s holy laws of justice are broken, and no one seeks help for those who are treated badly. Private people should help the public good by exposing hidden evil and giving rulers a chance to punish it. A nation is in a bad state when leaders govern badly and the people are content with it.

Truth is opposed, and no one stands up for it. No one has the courage or conscience to defend an honest cause against open fraud and wrong. The way of peace is ignored just as much as the way of truth. They do not know it, meaning they never think about what makes for peace. They make no effort to prevent quarrels, punish broken peace, or settle disputes among neighbors. They are strangers to everything quiet and peaceful, and they prefer what is loud and restless. “There is no judgment in their goings,” meaning they have no real sense of justice in how they act. They treat justice as unimportant and easily break through every restraint when it stands in the way of their greedy and malicious plans.

In all this, they act foolishly, very foolishly, and against their own best interests. Those who practice evil trust in empty things that will surely fail them (Isaiah 59:4). Their webs, woven with so much skill and effort, will not become clothes, and their own works will not cover or protect them (Isaiah 59:6). They may hurt others with their schemes, but they can never do real good for themselves through them. There is nothing to gain from sin, and that will be clear when the accounts are settled. Those paths of sin are crooked paths (Isaiah 59:8). They will only confuse those who walk in them, and they will never lead them where they think they are going. Even if people say they will have peace while they keep on sinning, they are fooling themselves, for they will not know peace.