Isaiah 59

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¹Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, That it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy, That it cannot hear. ✦ ²But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear. ✦ ³For your hands are defiled with blood, And your fingers with iniquity; Your lips have spoken lies, Your tongue has muttered perversity. ✦ ⁴No one calls for justice, Nor does any plead for truth. They trust in empty words and speak lies; They conceive evil and bring forth iniquity. ✦ ⁵They hatch vipers’ eggs and weave the spider’s web; He who eats of their eggs dies, And from that which is crushed a viper breaks out. ✦ ⁶Their webs will not become garments, Nor will they cover themselves with their works; Their works are works of iniquity, And the act of violence is in their hands. ✦ ⁷Their feet run to evil, And they make haste to shed innocent blood; Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; Wasting and destruction are in their paths. ✦ ⁸The way of peace they have not known, And there is no justice in their ways; They have made themselves crooked paths; Whoever takes that way shall not know peace. ✦ ⁹Therefore justice is far from us, Nor does righteousness overtake us; We look for light, but there is darkness! For brightness, but we walk in blackness! ✦ ¹⁰We grope for the wall like the blind, And we grope as if we had no eyes; We stumble at noonday as at twilight; We are as dead men in desolate places. ✦ ¹¹We all growl like bears, And moan sadly like doves; We look for justice, but there is none; For salvation, but it is far from us. ✦ ¹²For our transgressions are multiplied before You, And our sins testify against us; For our transgressions are with us, And as for our iniquities, we know them: ✦ ¹³In transgressing and lying against the Lord, And departing from our God, Speaking oppression and revolt, Conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. ✦ ¹⁴Justice is turned back, And righteousness stands afar off; For truth is fallen in the street, And equity cannot enter. ✦ ¹⁵So truth fails, And he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him That there was no justice. ✦ ¹⁶He saw that there was no man, And wondered that there was no intercessor; Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him; And His own righteousness, it sustained Him. ✦ ¹⁷For He put on righteousness as a breastplate, And a helmet of salvation on His head; He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, And was clad with zeal as a cloak. ✦ ¹⁸According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay, Fury to His adversaries, Recompense to His enemies; The coastlands He will fully repay. ✦ ¹⁹So shall they fear The name of the Lord from the west, And His glory from the rising of the sun; When the enemy comes in like a flood, The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. ✦ ²⁰“TheRedeemer will come to Zion, And to those who turn from transgression in Jacob,” Says the Lord. ✦ ²¹“Asfor Me,” says the Lord, “this is My covenant with them: 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 descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants’ descendants,” says the Lord, “from this time and forevermore.” ✦

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.

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