Isaiah 50
1Yahweh says, “Where is the bill of your mother’s divorce, with which I have put her away? Or to which of my creditors have I sold you? Behold, you were sold for your iniquities, and your mother was put away for your transgressions. 2Why, when I came, was there no one? When I called, why was there no one to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it can’t redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea. I make the rivers a wilderness. Their fish stink because there is no water, and die of thirst. 3I clothe the heavens with blackness. I make sackcloth their covering.” 4The Lord Yahweh has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with words him who is weary. He awakens morning by morning, he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. 5The Lord Yahweh has opened my ear. I was not rebellious. I have not turned back. 6I gave my back to those who beat me, and my cheeks to those who plucked off the hair. I didn’t hide my face from shame and spitting. 7For the Lord Yahweh will help me. Therefore I have not been confounded. Therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I won’t be disappointed. 8He who justifies me is near. Who will bring charges against me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. 9Behold, the Lord Yahweh will help me! Who is he who will condemn me? Behold, they will all grow old like a garment. The moths will eat them up. 10Who among you fears Yahweh and obeys the voice of his servant? He who walks in darkness and has no light, let him trust in Yahweh’s name, and rely on his God. 11Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who adorn yourselves with torches around yourselves, walk in the flame of your fire, and among the torches that you have kindled. You will have this from my hand: you will lie down in sorrow.
Introduction
Isaiah 50
In this chapter, I. Those to whom God sends are justly charged with bringing all the troubles they were in upon themselves, by their own wilfulness and obstinacy, it being made to appear that God was able and ready to help them if they had been fit for deliverance (Isa 50:1-3). II. He by whom God sends produces his commission (Isa 50:4), alleges his own readiness to submit to all the services and sufferings he was called to in the execution of it (Isa 50:5, Isa 50:6), and assures himself that God, who sent him, would stand by him and bear him out against all opposition (Isa 50:7-9). III. The message that is sent is life and death, good and evil, the blessing and the curse, comfort to desponding saints and terror to presuming sinners (Isa 50:10, Isa 50:11). Now all this seems to have a double reference, 1. To the unbelieving Jews in Babylon, who quarrelled with God for his dealings with them, and to the prophet Isaiah, who, though dead long before the captivity, yet, prophesying so plainly and fully of it, saw fit to produce his credentials, to justify what he had said. 2. To the unbelieving Jews in our Saviour's time, whose own fault it was that they were rejected, Christ having preached much to them, and suffered much from them, and being herein borne up by a divine power. The "contents" of this chapter, in our Bibles, give this sense of it, very concisely, thus: - "Christ shows that the dereliction of the Jews is not to be imputed to him, by his ability to save, by his obedience in that work, and by his confidence in divine assistance." The prophet concludes with an exhortation to trust in God and not in ourselves.
Cross-references: Isa 50:1 · Isa 50:4 · Isa 50:5 · Isa 50:6 · Isa 50:7 · Isa 50:10 · Isa 50:11