Isaiah 59

Read the chapter

¹Behold, the Lord’s hand is not so short That it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear. ✦ ²But your wrongdoings have caused a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. ✦ ³For your hands are defiled with blood, And your fingers with wrongdoing; Your lips have spoken deceit, Your tongue mutters wickedness. ✦ ⁴No one sues righteously and no one pleads honestly. They trust in confusion and speak lies; They conceive trouble and give birth to disaster. ✦ ⁵They hatch vipers’ eggs and weave the spider’s web; The one who eats of their eggs dies, And from what is crushed, a snake breaks out. ✦ ⁶Their webs will not become clothing, Nor will they cover themselves with their works; Their works are works of wrongdoing, And an act of violence is in their hands. ✦ ⁷Their feet run to evil, And they hurry to shed innocent blood; Their thoughts are thoughts of wrongdoing, Devastation and destruction are in their paths. ✦ ⁸They do not know the way of peace, And there is no justice in their tracks; They have made their paths crooked, Whoever walks on them does not know peace. ✦ ⁹¶Therefore justice is far from us, And righteousness does not reach us; We hope for light, but there is darkness, For brightness, but we walk in gloom. ✦ ¹⁰We grope for the wall like people who are blind, We grope like those who have no eyes. We stumble at midday as in the twilight; Among those who are healthy we are like the dead. ✦ ¹¹All of us growl like bears, And moan sadly like doves; We hope for justice, but there is none; For salvation, but it is far from us. ✦ ¹²For our wrongful acts have multiplied before You, And our sins have testified against us; For our wrongful acts are with us, And we know our wrongdoings: ✦ ¹³Offending and denying the Lord, And turning away from our God, Speaking oppression and revolt, Conceiving and uttering lying words from the heart. ✦ ¹⁴Justice is turned back, And righteousness stands far away; For truth has stumbled in the street, And uprightness cannot enter. ✦ ¹⁵Truth is lacking, And one who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey. Now the Lord saw, And it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. ✦ ¹⁶And He saw that there was no one, And was amazed that there was not one to intercede; Then His own arm brought salvation to Him, And His righteousness upheld Him. ✦ ¹⁷He put on righteousness like a breastplate, And a helmet of salvation on His head; And He put on garments of vengeance for clothing And wrapped Himself with zeal as a cloak. ✦ ¹⁸According to their deeds, so will He repay: Wrath to His adversaries, retribution to His enemies; To the coastlands He will deal retribution. ✦ ¹⁹So they will fear the name of the Lord from the west And His glory from the rising of the sun, For He will come like a rushing stream Which the wind of the Lord drives. ✦ ²⁰“A Redeemer will come to Zion, And to those in Jacob who turn from wrongdoing,” declares the Lord. ✦ ²¹“As for Me, this is My covenant with them,” says the Lord: “My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring’s offspring,” says the Lord, “from now and forever.” ✦

Tap any verse for its study page. Underlined terms mark a concept, person, or place; ✦ marks verses with cross-references.

Where this chapter connects

Jer 5 ·11 Isa 59 ·8 Isa 1 ·6 Ezek 22 ·6 Isa 63 ·6 Rom 3 ·5 Jer 7 ·5 Isa 5 ·5

Christ at the center

Isaiah sees him most clearly: the virgin's son Immanuel, the child on David's throne, the shoot from Jesse, the light to the nations, and above all the Suffering Servant pierced for our transgressions (ch. 53).

How Isaiah 59 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.

Resources, by level

Lay

★ Start hereVideoBibleProject — video overviews & word studiesBibleProject · 5–10 min · Free · evangelical
Free animated overviews of every book of the Bible, plus themes and Hebrew/Greek word studies — the best visual on-ramp to any book. (Biblical-theology, broadly evangelical, not distinctly Reformed.)
★ Start hereAudioThrough the WordThrough the Word · ~10 min/chapter · Free · evangelical
A clear ~10-minute audio teaching for every one of the Bible's 1,189 chapters — the most systematic free way to study chapter by chapter.

Pastoral

SermonChuck Smith — C2000 SeriesChuck Smith · Free · evangelical
Free verse-by-verse audio through the entire Bible from the founder of Calvary Chapel.

Seminary

★ Start hereCommentaryThe Book of Isaiah (NICOT)John N. Oswalt · Paid · evangelical
The standard evangelical commentary on Isaiah — thorough and devotionally warm.

Commentaries & study tools

VideoBibleProject — Isaiah videosBibleProject · Lay · Free · evangelical
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
VideoWatch teaching on Isaiah 59YouTube · Lay · Free
Sermons and chapter teaching from across YouTube.
CommentaryEnduring Word — Isaiah 59David Guzik · Lay · Free · evangelical
Readable, verse-by-verse exposition of the whole chapter.
CommentaryMatthew Henry on IsaiahMatthew Henry · Pastoral · Free · evangelical
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
ReferenceBlue Letter Bible — Isaiah 59Blue Letter Bible · Seminary · Free
Interlinear, lexicon, and study tools across the chapter.

← Isaiah 58 Isaiah 60 →