Isaiah 64:6 - Meaning and Application

As we have Jeremiah's Lamentations, so here we have Isaiah's lament. Both speak about the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, that is, the Babylonians, and about the sin of Israel that led to it. The difference is that Isaiah saw it far ahead and mourned it by the Holy Spirit's help, while Jeremiah saw it happen.

In these verses, God's people, in their suffering, confess and grieve over their sins. In doing this, they show that God's judgment is right, and they admit they do not deserve his mercy. They also make good use of their trouble and prepare for deliverance. Since they are under God's rebuke for sin, they have nothing left to trust except his pure mercy and its continued help. Among themselves there is no one to save, uphold, stand in the gap, or plead for them. They are all stained by sin, so they are unfit to intercede, and they are careless and weak in duty, so they are unable to do it well.

There was a widespread corruption of morals among them (Isaiah 64:6). They say, "We are all as an unclean thing," or like a ceremonially unclean person, someone covered with leprosy who had to stay outside the camp. The whole nation was like one under ceremonial pollution, not allowed into the tabernacle courts, or like a person suffering from a terrible disease, covered from head to foot with wounds and bruises (Isaiah 1:6). By sin, we become not only under God's justice, but also hateful to his holiness. Sin is that detestable thing the Lord hates and cannot bear to look at.

Even "all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags." The best people among us are stained this way. Compared with their ancestors, who rejoiced and did what was right (Isaiah 64:5), even the most righteous among us are only like filthy rags, fit to be thrown away. The best of them is like a thorn bush. The best of our actions are stained this way too. There is not only general corruption in behavior, but also a general failure in worship. Even what looks like sacrifices of righteousness, when examined closely, are torn, lame, and sick, and so they offend God like filthy rags. If we depend on our actions as our righteousness, and think to earn God's favor by them, they are filthy rags, they cannot cover us, and they only defile us. True repentant people cast away their idols as filthy rags (Isaiah 30:22), because they see them as foul. Here they admit that even their righteousness would be foul in God's sight if he dealt with them by strict justice. Our best duties fall so far short of God's rule, and sin clings to them so much, that they are like filthy rags. When we want to do good, evil is still present with us. The sin mixed into our holy things would ruin us if we were under the law.

There was also a great coldness in their prayer life (Isaiah 64:7). The nation's guilt had filled up the measure, and nothing was being done to lessen it. Prayer was almost ignored, "There is no one who calls on your name, no one who seeks you for grace to reform us and remove sin, or for mercy to relieve us and remove the judgments our sins have brought." People often become so bad because they do not pray; compare (Psalm 14:3, Psalm 14:4). It is a bad sign for any people when prayer is restrained among them.

Even if someone did call on God's name now and then, it was done carelessly. "There is no one who stirs himself to take hold of God." To pray is to take hold of God by faith, to hold on to his promises and his gracious words, and to plead them with him. It is to hold on as someone who fears God is leaving and begs him not to go, or as one who has lost him and asks for his return. It is also like a wrestler who grips the one he wrestles with, as Jacob's descendants wrestle with God and prevail. Yet when we take hold of God, it is really like a boatman using a hook to grab the shore, as if he were pulling the shore to him, while in fact he is pulling himself toward the shore. So prayer is not meant to bring God to us, but to bring us to God.

Those who want to prevail with God in prayer must stir themselves up to do it. All that is within us must be used in this duty, and even that is not too much. Our thoughts must be fixed, and our affections must burn. We must wake up the gifts God has given us by seriously considering how important the work is and by giving our minds fully to it. But how can we expect God to come to us in mercy when no one does this, when those who claim to intercede are only half-hearted? Their troubles were the fruit of their own sins and of God's wrath. Because they were all as an unclean thing, they all faded away like a leaf (Isaiah 64:6). They did not only wither and lose their beauty, but they also fell and dropped off, like leaves in autumn. Their religion withered, and they became dry and lifeless. Their prosperity withered too and came to nothing. They fell to the ground, becoming weak and despised. Then their sins, like the wind, carried them away into captivity, just as autumn winds blow faded leaves off the trees and then sweep them away (Psalm 1:3, Psalm 1:4). Sinners are first blasted, then carried off, by the harsh wind of their own sin. It dries them out and then destroys them.

God also brought their trouble on them in his wrath (Isaiah 64:7). "You have hidden your face from us," they say. He had shown displeasure and given them no help. When they had made themselves unclean, it was no wonder that God turned his face away in disgust. Yet that was not all: "You have consumed us because of our iniquities." This is the same complaint found in (Psalm 90:7, Psalm 90:8), "We are consumed by your anger." The word also means "melted." God had put them in the furnace, not to destroy them as worthless dross, but to melt them like gold, so they could be purified and made new.

Still, they claim their relation to God and humbly appeal to it (Isaiah 64:8). "But now, O Lord, you are our Father." Though they had acted very badly and ungratefully toward him, they still owned him as their Father. And though he had corrected them, he had not rejected them.

However foolish and careless we are, however poor and despised, and however much our enemies trample on us, still you are our Father. So we return to you in repentance, like the prodigal son who rose up and went back to his father. We come to you in prayer, because from whom else should we expect help and rescue but from our Father? The anger we are under is the anger of a Father, and he will be reconciled. He will not keep his anger forever.

God is their Father, first, by creation. He gave them life, formed them into a people, and shaped them as he pleased. So they say, "We are the clay, and you are our potter" (Jeremiah 18:6). Because of that, they will not argue with him, whatever he chooses to do with them. Even more, they hope he will deal kindly with them. He made them, so he can remake them. He can shape them anew, even though they have ruined and spoiled themselves. "We are all like an unclean thing," but we are still the work of your hands, so cleanse us from our uncleanness and make us fit for the purpose you made us for. "We are the work of your hands, so do not forsake us" (Psalm 138:8).

Second, God is their Father by covenant, his solemn promise relationship with them. They plead this in Isaiah 64:9: "See, we ask you, we are all your people, all the people you have in the world who openly profess your name." People around them know them as God's people, and so their suffering reflects on him. The help their case needs is expected from him. They belong to him, and a people should seek its own God (Isaiah 8:19). "We are yours, save us" (Psalm 119:94). When God corrects us in his providence, it is good to hold tightly to our covenant relation with him.

They are also earnest with God for the turning away of his anger and the forgiveness of their sins (Isaiah 64:9). "Do not be very angry, Lord, and do not remember our sin forever." They do not directly ask for the removal of the trouble they are under. On that, they leave themselves in God's hands. But they do pray that God would be reconciled to them, so they can be at peace whether the affliction stays or goes. They ask that his anger would not rise to the full, but would be softened by a father's kindness and compassion. They do not say, "Lord, do not correct us," because correction may be needed. They say, "Do not correct us in your anger, and not in your hot displeasure." It is only a little wrath that makes God hide his face.

They also pray that he would not deal with them according to the full desert of their sin: "Do not remember iniquity forever." Sin is so evil that it deserves to be remembered forever, and that is exactly what they beg God not to do. Those who are truly humbled under God's hand fear most the terror of his wrath and the bitter results of their own sin. They see these as the sting of death.

They then bring before God a very sad picture of their condition and the ruins they are suffering under. First, their own houses were in ruins (Isaiah 64:10). The cities of Judah had been destroyed by the Chaldeans, and their people were carried away. No one was left to repair them or even notice them, so they were quickly becoming complete wastelands. "Your holy cities are a wilderness." They are called holy cities because the people were a kingdom of priests to God. These cities had synagogues where God was worshiped, and that is why they grieve over their ruins and bring this into their prayer. They are not mainly pleading that these were fine, rich, or ancient cities, but that they were holy cities, places where God's name was known, confessed, and called on. Their beauty had been spoiled. They were no longer inhabited or visited as before. "They have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land" (Psalm 74:8).

It was not only the smaller towns that had become deserted. Even Zion was a wilderness, and Jerusalem itself, the city of David, lay in ruins. Jerusalem had once been beautiful in its setting and the joy of the whole earth. Now it had become deformed, a scorn and disgrace to the whole earth, a heap of rubble. See what destruction sin brings on a people. An outward claim to holiness will not protect them. Holy cities, if they become wicked cities, are the first to be turned into a wilderness (Amos 3:2).

Second, God's house was in ruins (Isaiah 64:11). This is what they mourn most of all, that the temple was burned with fire. But they had been warned, as soon as it was built, what their sin would do to it (2 Chronicles 7:21). "This house, which is high, will become an astonishment." Notice how deeply they grieve over the temple's ruin.

It was their holy and beautiful house. It was a magnificent building, but what made it most beautiful in their eyes was its holiness. That is why its defilement was the saddest part of its destruction. What hurt them most was that the sacred services once carried out there had stopped.

It was also the place where their fathers praised God with sacrifices and songs. What a sorrow that what had been the glory of their nation for so many years should lie in ashes. Their present loss of the songs of Zion was made even heavier by the fact that their fathers had so often praised God with them. In their prayer, they appeal to God by reminding him that it was the house where he had been praised, and they also remind him of his covenant with their fathers by speaking of those fathers' worship.

Along with the temple, all their pleasant things were laid waste, all the things they loved and used in God's service. This included not only the temple furniture, such as the altars and the table, but especially the Sabbaths, the new moons, and all their religious feasts, which they once kept with joy, along with their ministers and solemn meetings. All of these were ruined. God's people count their holy things as their most delightful things. Take away worship and the means of grace, and you have laid waste all their pleasant things. What more do they have?

Here we also see how God and his people share and exchange interests. When they speak of the cities where they live, they call them your holy cities, because they belong to God. When they speak of the temple where God dwelt, they call it our beautiful house and its furniture our pleasant things, because they had truly embraced it and all its interests. If we devote all our concerns to God's service, and if we keep all his concerns close to our hearts, then we may safely leave both with him, for he will bring both to completion.

They end with a loving plea, humbly reasoning with God about their ruined state (Isaiah 64:12). “Will you keep yourself back for these things? Can you stay silent when you see your temple destroyed? Can you look on without acting? Has the jealous God forgotten his zeal?” As Psalm 74:22 says, “Rise up, O God, and defend your own cause.” Lord, you are insulted and blasphemed. Will you say nothing and ignore it? Should the greatest insults against heaven go unpunished?

When people mistreat us, we can keep silent, because revenge does not belong to us and we can leave our cause with God. But when God’s honor is attacked, it is right to expect him to speak in defense of his name. His people do not tell him what to say. Their prayer is, as in Psalm 83:1, “Do not stay silent, O God,” and in Psalm 109:1, “Do not be silent, O God, whom I praise.” They ask him to speak to convict his enemies and to comfort and help his people.

For good people, it is a deep sorrow to see God’s sanctuary laid waste, with nothing being done to restore it. But God has said that he will not keep arguing forever. So his people can trust that their troubles will not last to the limit or forever. They will be light, and they will last only for a moment.