Isaiah 63:15 - Meaning and Application

The praise that comes before this verse is really the opening of a prayer that continues to the end of the next chapter. It is warm, urgent, and full of pleading. It fits the time of the exile, and God had given promises and prayers to meet that time of need, so his people could bring his own words back to him. Some good interpreters think the prayer also reaches beyond that, to the later rejection of the Jews and their destruction by the Romans. One line in it, Isaiah 64:4, is used by the apostle to speak of the grace of the gospel (1 Corinthians 2:9), the grace they were rejected for refusing.

In these verses, we can see first the requests they make to God. They ask him to notice their condition and their longing for him: "Look down from heaven and see" (Isaiah 63:15). They know God already sees everything, but they ask him to look on them with mercy and concern. They want him to regard them as he once looked on Israel’s suffering in Egypt, just before delivering them. By asking him to look down and see, they are also appealing to his justice against their enemies, while trusting his mercy and wisdom to bring help in the right way (Psalm 25:18; Psalm 33:14).

They also ask him to act for their rescue (Isaiah 63:17). In effect, they say, "Return to us. Change your way toward us and do not keep acting against us in judgment. Return in mercy, and do not only give us a kind look, but your gracious presence with us." God’s people fear nothing more than when he seems to withdraw from them, and they long for nothing more than his return. They know that his presence is their true good.

Next come their complaints. First, they lament that they have been left to themselves, and that God’s grace has not recovered them (Isaiah 63:17). This is a serious question: "Why have you made us wander from your ways? Why have you hardened our heart so that we do not fear you?" Some take this as the speech of the openly wicked, who blamed God for their own sin and then asked why he still blamed them. That is truly evil, because it puts the blame for wickedness on God.

But it is better to take these words as the lament of faithful people who were grieving over the unbelief and stubbornness of the nation. They were not accusing God of causing sin. They were confessing that they had gone astray from God’s ways and that their hearts had become hard toward his fear, meaning either his reverent worship or the right fear that leads to obedience. They mourn that this is what their sins had brought them to, since God had justly left them to their own hardness. He had withdrawn his Spirit because they had grieved, provoked, and quenched him (Isaiah 63:10), and he had also dealt with them in judgment, as in the word, "Make the heart of this people dull" (Isaiah 6:9-10).

Their suffering had also become a cause of spiritual drift. Like David in his banishment, who felt as if he were being pushed toward serving other gods (1 Samuel 26:19), they found that affliction had made many of them dislike God’s service. When the rod of the wicked rests long on a people’s lot, they may be tempted to turn to sin (Psalm 125:3). So they grieve most over the spiritual harm in their suffering, because it pulls them away from God and from duty. Conscience is most troubled by judgments that damage the soul.

Second, they lament that they have been left in the hands of their enemies, and that God’s providence has not rescued them (Isaiah 63:18). It hurt them deeply that, in their captivity, most of them had lost their love for God’s worship and had grown hardened by their troubles. But it hurt them even more that they were shut out from the public worship of God. They did not complain so much that enemies had trampled their houses and cities as that they had trampled God’s sanctuary, because that was a direct insult to God and the loss of the comfort they valued most.

Then they plead with God for mercy and deliverance. They base their appeal on God’s own compassion and power, and those are always strong arguments in prayer. They ask, "Where are your zeal and your strength?" God’s zeal is his holy concern for his own glory and for the good of his people. His name is Jealous, and he is a jealous God. He also has the power to protect his glory and the welfare of his people against every enemy. So they are asking, in effect, why these things do not appear now, since they had appeared before. It cannot be that divine zeal, which is perfectly wise and just, has cooled, or that divine strength, which is limitless, has grown weak.

God’s people had experienced not only his zeal and power, but also the stirring of his deep compassion. That is, they had known a love so tender it moved within him like a strong feeling in a human heart (Hosea 11:8; Jeremiah 31:20). They ask, in effect, “Has God, who used to show so much mercy, now shut up his tender care?” (Psalm 77:9). It could never be so. We can build hopeful expectations for future mercy on the mercy we have already seen.

They also pleaded God’s relation to them as their Father (Isaiah 63:16). If he is their Father, then his tender mercies are not blocked, for a father may be displeased for a time, but love draws him back quickly. “You are our Father,” they say, “so your compassion will move toward us.” We should keep such thoughts about God in our hearts. However hard things look, God is still good, because he is our Father.

They admitted that if he were not their Father, they would be fatherless. Then they would cast themselves on the one who gives mercy to the fatherless (Hosea 14:3). It was the honor of their nation that Abraham and Israel were their fathers, Abraham being the friend of God, and Israel being the man who wrestled with God and prevailed (Matthew 3:9). But what use was that if they did not have God himself as their Father? Abraham and Israel could not help them now. They were long dead, unaware of the people’s distress, and unable to do them any further good. When a father is dead, his sons may rise to honor, but he does not know it (Job 14:21).

“But you, Lord, are our Father still,” they say, “the everlasting Father who never loses sight of us.” Earthly fathers may love dearly, but only God is the living Father who is never far away. For that reason, “our Redeemer from of old” is your name, the name by which we have always known you. From ancient times, God’s people have looked to him as the one who could right their wrongs and plead their cause. Some also take the sense to be this, that even if Abraham and Israel could not help them, God would. Those patriarchs lacked the compassion God has. The people were so ruined by sin that Abraham and Israel would not own them as children, yet they still ran to God as their Father. Abraham cast out Ishmael, and Jacob disowned Reuben and cursed Simeon and Levi; but God, in pardoning sin, is God and not man (Hosea 11:9).

They also pleaded God’s claim over them as their Lord and owner. “We are your servants,” they say, “so whatever service we can give belongs to you.” Because of that, they should not have served foreign kings or foreign gods. “Return for your servants’ sake,” they ask. Just as a father feels bound by love to protect his child, a master feels bound in honor to rescue his servant. They belong to him by the strongest ties and the warmest bonds. He has ruled over them, so he should now defend his own right. They are called by his name, so where else can they go for help? “We are yours, save us” (Psalm 119:94). They are his own tribes, not only his servants but also his tenants, owing him loyalty and praise. If they are the part of the world from which he receives worship, will he allow his own people to be abused?

They further pleaded that they had possessed the land of promise, and enjoyed the sanctuary’s blessings, for only a little while (Isaiah 63:18). From Abraham to David, and from David to the exile, the span was short compared with the promise of an everlasting inheritance in Canaan (Genesis 17:8; Matthew 1:17). They were the people of his holiness, set apart for him, yet they were quickly driven out. Still, they had brought this on themselves. Though they were God’s holy people in name, their wickedness had forced them out of the land.

Finally, they argued that those now holding the land were strangers to God. He had no service or honor from them. “You never ruled over them, and they were never called by your name,” they say. “Will God let those who have no relation to him trample on those who do?” Some take the line another way: “We have become like those over whom you never ruled and who were never called by your name.” In other words, they had fallen so low that they seemed rejected, despised, and trampled, as if they had never belonged to God at all. It was as though Saul’s shield had been thrown aside as worthless, even though he had once been anointed with oil. Yet the covenant that seems forgotten will be remembered again.