Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 59:2
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid [his] face from you, that he will not hear.
2. your iniquities have separated ] Lit. “have been separating.” The expression is that used of the firmament in Gen 1:6; it implies that guilt has been a permanent cause of alienation between Israel and its God.
have hid his face ] i.e. caused Him to withdraw His favour (cf. ch. Isa 8:17). Instead of “his face,” the Hebr. has simply “face” as in Job 34:29. Various explanations are offered of this peculiar expression; perhaps the easiest is that “the Face” had come to be used absolutely of the face of God.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
But your iniquities – That is, the sins which the prophet had specified in the previous chapter, and which he proceeds further to specify in this.
Have separated – The word used here ( badal) conveys the idea of division, usually by a curtain or a wall Exo 26:33; Eze 42:20. Thus the firmament ( raqya, expanse) is said to have divided or separated ( mabedyl) the waters from the waters Gen 1:6. The idea here is, that their sins were like a partition between them and God, so that there was no contact between them and him.
And your sins have hid his face from you – Margin, Made him hide. The Hebrew word here is in Hiphil, meaning to cause to hide. Kimchi and Aben Ezra understand it as causing him to hide his face; Vitringa as hiding, his face. The metaphor, says Vitringa, is not taken from a man who turns away his face from one because he does not choose to attend to what is said, but from something which comes between two persons, like a dense cloud, which hides one from the other. And, according to this, the idea is, that their sins had risen up like a thick, dark cloud between them and God, so that they had no clear view of him, and no contact with him – as a cloud hides the face of the sun from us. A similar idea occurs in Lam 3:44 :
Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud,
That our prayers should not pass through.
But it seems to me more probable that the Hiphil signification of the verb is here to be retained, and that the idea is, that their sins had caused Yahweh to hide or turn away his face from their prayers from an unwillingness to hear them when they were so deeply immersed in sin. Thus the Septuagint, On account of your sins he has turned away his face ( apestrepse to prosopon) from you, so that he will not have mercy ( tou me eleesai). It is universally true that indulgence in sin causes God to turn away his face, and to witchold mercy and compassion. He cannot pardon those who indulge in transgression, and who are unwilling to abandon the ways of sin (compare the notes at Isa 1:15).
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 59:2
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God,–
Sin separates God and men
I.
A DREADFUL EVIL THAT THIS PEOPLE WAS UNDER. Separation from God.
II. THE PARTY AT WHOSE DOOR THE BLAME LIES, they who have made the breach.
III. THE PROCURING CAUSE OF THIS EVIL, your iniquities. (T. Boston.)
The dreadful efficacy of sin
I. WHAT IS THAT SEPARATION WHICH SIN MAKES BETWIXT GOD AND SOULS? Not a local separation, for He is not far from every one of us, for in Him we live, etc.
1. In it there is something negative; i.e the Lord denies them the influences of His grace, countenance and fellowship.
2. There is something positive in it: sin kindles a fire against the soul.
(1) There is a standing controversy God has against sinners (Amo 3:3).
(2) There is a pursuing of this controversy against the sinner; some positive outgoings of Gods anger against the soul.
II. THE GREATNESS OF THE EVIL OF SEPARATION FROM GOD, which many go so light under. Alas! many reign like king Saul, when God departed from him; but how sad a thing this is, will appear if we consider–
1. What God is. Everything in God speaks terror to those that are separated from Him.
(1) God is the chief good; and therefore to be separated from God is the chief evil.
(2) God is all-sufficient in Himself, and to the creatures. The enjoyment of Him makes truly happy; therefore to be separated from Him is a dreadful evil.
(3) The omnipotence of God.
(4) The absoluteness of God.
(5) God is eternal.
2. All created things are empty and unsatisfactory.
3. To be separated from God is the saddest plague out of hell.
4. It is a very hell to be separated from God.
5. Those that continue in a state of separation from God, have no quarter to which they can turn for comfort in an evil day.
III. HOW SIN MAKES THIS SEPARATION BETWIXT GOD AND A SOUL.
1. There is a guilt of sin, whereby the sinner is bound over to misery for his sin.
2. There is the stain of sin. (T. Boston.)
Sin the great separator
I. SIN SEPARATES MAN FROM GOD AS TO PLACE. Of course it remains true of every inhabitant of earth, and even of hell, that God is not far from every one of us. But sin has blunted, has even destroyed the sense of His nearness, has led men to feel as though He were far distant. As a mans iniquities increase God seems farther and farther from him, until at last he feels that heaven is too distant for him to reach, and God too far off to hear his prayers.
II. SIN SEPARATES MAN FROM GOD AS TO CHARACTER.
III. SIN SEPARATES MAN FROM GOD AS TO WILL. Separation of will is the most complete of all kinds of separation. Continents and oceans may divide men, and yet they may be one in heart and aim.
IV. SIN SEPARATES MAN FROM GOD AS TO INTEREST. It is to the interest of the sinner that there should be opportunity for indulgence in sin, that the punishment of sin should be removed, that the restraints of virtue should be broken down. We may well rejoice that Gods interest is with all that is the opposite of this. It is Gods aim that sin should be destroyed. Hence by fearful sufferings He brands it with disgrace. But God in His wonderful love has taken means to destroy this separation, and to draw us back to Him. (Homilist.)
The tragic schism
When separation comes to pass, the force of disseverment and alienation can only be that of sin.
1. He who is the spring of life can know neither impoverishment nor limitation, and the changes and fluctuations of the universe can no more project themselves into His being than the casting of a leaf or the shedding of a blossom from the tree can impair the vital force entrenched in its roots. The heathen man will sometimes say, The gods are growing old; they are not so ready in helping their worshippers as when we were young. An eternal Spirit is secure against such an innuendo. His arm is not shortened that it cannot save.
2. And there can be no failure of care for our welfare or slackening off in His inclination to help us. Unless God be a fiction of the brain He must be predisposed to save and succour the people He has formed for Himself. The age-long impulse by which He draws men to religion is a sufficient proof of that. When we take into account what God really is, the chief mystery of the world is that any prayer in it should go unanswered, and the mystery is one with the mystery of iniquity itself. It was no wonder that He whose everlasting home had been in the bosom of infinite love should marvel at that which is so commonplace to us–unbelief. What a side-light does this cast upon the terrible significance of sin! It is the one thing which keeps God and His creatures apart.
3. The conditions of modern business life are sometimes adduced as an excuse for the waning spirit of prayer and the outfading consciousness of Divine help. If business does unfit its votaries for realizing Gods presence and power, it can only be for one of three reasons, all alike bearing the taint of sin and justifying the declaration of the prophet. You seek unlawful ends in business, or you seek lawful ends by unlawful means, or the methods of conducting business tend to kindle within you unlawful passions.
4. We are sometimes ready to put down this tragic schism to the progress of scientific thought. Mens hearts are petrified by the new dogma that the order of the universe is unalterable, along with its godless corollary, that to pray is to fritter away time, strength, and vital force, and to vex ones own soul. Let the difficulties raised by the new science be freely allowed. Upon even devout minds these views of the uniformity of Nature and her methods, be they proven or unproven, may so act as to check the temper of prayerfulness. Temptation does take on intellectual forms as it addresses itself to thinking people. If a child were to find out that his fathers estate had been signed over to trustees, and that for a certain term of years that father could not be altogether a free agent in providing for the wants of his household, all immediate expenditure being determined by some outside authority, and if on that ground the child were to break off relations with his father, would not that be the mark of a mean, depraved, repulsive character? Supposing that God had made Nature His plenipotentiary, or trustee, and for the time being had surrendered His own power of answering supplication for temporal benefits, it would surely be base in us to use that as a plea whereby to justify ourselves in restraining prayer before Him.
5. The problems of temperament are sometimes brought in to explain this tragic schism. Men palliate their callousness to prayer and their misgivings concerning its benefits by putting them down to deficiency of sentiment or imagination, matter-of-factness, poverty of the religious instinct, congenital disability answering to colour blindness in the physical realm. It is assumed, upon very slender proof, that a peculiar poise of the faculties disqualifies for enthusiastic spiritual beliefs. It may be allowed that from the intellectual standpoint people are variously endowed and equipped; but a mans religious history is not determined by the quality, condition, or specialized habits of the brain. It is simply impossible for a man to have capacity for common truth, practical righteousness, philanthropy, family life and friendship and yet to have no capacity for converse, with God, whose nature is the spring and animating principle of all these qualities. Man is religious by constitution and irreligious only by errancy of habit and practical life. Does prayer seem barren and God unresponsive and heaven very far off? It can only be explained by our lack of oneness with the Divine will and law.
6. The inscrutable methods of Gods sovereignty are sometimes adduced to explain away this ominous separation referred to by the prophet. Now and again occasions arise when the Lord does seem to withdraw Himself from HIS people. There are inexplicable factors in Gods dealings with us, but those factors belong chiefly to the sphere of providence rather than to that of grace. More often than not, it is sin which veils God and His goodness from the sad, breaking, woe-begone heart, and we shall not get out of the gloom by closing our eyes to the explanation and assuming that this terrible silence of the Most High, this apparent indisposition to help, at the mere thought of which the heart sickens and faints, is one of the decrees of His unsearchable sovereignty.
7. This separation is often veiled from us by the illusions of the senses and the pomps of this present evil world. It needs much courage and sobriety of mind to realize the perils with which it is fraught. The form assumed by our personal sin may be so secret and subtle that it is easy for us to think that, in our case at least, this is not the malign force which separates from God and makes His presence fleeting as a dream. We have not been guilty perchance of glaring, flagitious, anti-social transgressions which provoke the reproaches of those who watch our behaviour. Yet spiritual sins may cleave to us which work portentous mischief in the religious life. (T. G.Selby.)
Visions which lure to destruction
Near the source of one of the great rivers of the East there stands a Buddhist monastery of widespread fame, built on the edge of a beetling cliff. In the chasm beneath clouds are often seen floating, upon which the pilgrims who have climbed to the shrine look down. Under certain conditions of the sun and atmosphere a magnificent phenomenon appears. The sun, greatly enlarged and begirt with coruscations of prismatic splendour, is reflected upon the screen of vapours. From the central disc shafts of gold and purple and violet pulse and throb. The devotees call the sight the glory of Buddha, and when the prismatic marvel appears, half mad with religious frenzy, they cast themselves into the palpitating mass of colour, falling unconscious suicides into the grim gulf below, to which only vultures and jackals can approach. And the separating chasm between ourselves and God is often filled up with a meretricious pomp that disguises its tragedies, and men are again and again betrayed into self-destruction. Perhaps it is a vision of the world with its wealth and power that scintillates there, the gorgeous phantoms which passed before the eye on the mount of the temptation. All the hues of Vanity Fair shimmer beneath our feet, and we think surely we may plunge into the iridescence that seems to beckon us. Or it may be the glory of Nature spreads itself athwart the yawning gulf. She interposes the magic of her shows, entices with the glory of her stately order, usurps the nimbus of a factitious sovereignty, and takes the very place of God Himself. The gulf dividing from God is hidden by her enchantments. Or, the rainbow glories of an aesthetic religion veil the deep moral separation. Men sometimes commit ethical suicide under the cover of an ornate worship. We cultivate art, music, the devices that enthral the senses, and call the product piety, forgetting that we are in no sense at one with God. Pageants superimpose themselves upon unwelcome facts, and underneath the circles of deceitful splendour there gape gulfs of deep and irretrievable perdition. If sin is ignored, unconfessed, unforsaken, if unflattering truths are obstinately disguised, we shall find at last that our capacity for communion with God is lost and our doom is an abyss from which there can be no uplifting. (T. G. Selby.)
Inconspicuous sins may hinder communion with God
Pathologists found difficulty in identifying the bacillus of an epidemic that has become sorrowfully familiar to us; not only because it was one of the tiniest of all microscopic organisms, but chiefly because it could not be stained with the dyes used in studying other minute forms of life. Yet what a messenger of sorrow and death it was! This hideous trifle brought swift and cruel separation to husband and wife, parent and child, lover and friend, and put the silence and deep gloom of the grave between thousands of victims and the sweet sunny homes in which they would fain have tarried. Now some sins have a criminal dye put upon them by statutory, law, are branded by the damnatory force of public opinion, or show red like crimson because of the disintegrating influence they begin to exert at once upon the individual and the society to which he belongs. Other sins do not stand out in conspicuous colours. Men have no apparent interest in describing them as atrocities. Unless we are watchful and cultivate keen spiritual perceptions, these more obscure forms of sin are apt to elude our consciousness. And yet they may separate between us and our God. (T. G. Selby)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 2. His face] For panim, faces, I read panaiv, his face. So the Syriac, Septuagint, Alexandrian, Arabic, and Vulgate. panai, MS. Forte legendum panai, nam mem, sequitur, et loquitur Deus; confer cap. lviii. 14. “We should perhaps read panai; for mem follows, and God is the speaker.” – SECKER. I rather think that the speech of God was closed with the last chapter, and that this chapter is delivered in the person of the prophet. – L.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Have separated; have been as a thick wall between God and you; have set him at a great distance, Pro 15:29.
Have hid his face: this may be put synecdoehically for the whole person; and the prophet speaking of God by an anthropopathy, may understand his presence; and then it is, hath made him hide or withdraw his presence, as one that turns away his face from some noisome thing; or rather his favour, that though you cry to be delivered out of Babylon, yet you shall not find that favour.
He will not hear, i.e. he will not grant it; thus it is used Psa 45:12; Hos 5:15; See Poole “Isa 1:15“: see Jdg 10:13.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
2. hidHebrew, “causedHim to hide” (La 3:44).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Ver. 2 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God,…. Like a partition wall dividing between them, so that they enjoy no communion with him in his worship and ordinances; which is greatly the case of the reformed churches: they profess the true God, and the worship of him, and do attend the outward ordinances of it; but this is done in such a cold formal way, and such sins and wickedness are perpetrated and connived at, that the Lord does not grant his gracious presence to them, but stands at a distance from them:
and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear; or have caused him to hide himself; withdraw his gracious presence; neglect the prayers put up to him; deny an answer to them; or, however, not appear as yet for the deliverance and salvation of them, and bringing them into a more comfortable, prosperous, and happy condition.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
2. But your iniquities have made a separation. The amount of what is said is, that they cannot say that God has changed, as if he had swerved from his natural disposition, but that the whole blame lies with themselves; because by their own sins they, in some measure, prevent his kindness, and refuse to receive his assistance. Hence we infer that our sins alone deprive us of the grace of God, and cause separation between us and him; for what the Prophet testifies as to the men of his time is applicable to all ages; since he pleads the cause of God, against the slanders of wicked men. Thus God is always like himself, and is not wearied in doing good; and his power is not diminished, but we hinder the entrance of his grace.
It will be objected, that men cannot anticipate God by deserving well of him, and that consequently he must do good to those who are unworthy. I reply, this is undoubtedly true; but sometimes the frowardness of men grows to such an extent as to shut the door against God’s benefits, as if they purposely intended to drive him far away from them. And although he listens to no man without pardoning him, as we always bring before him supplication for the removal of guilt, yet he does not listen to the prayers of the wicked. We need not wonder, therefore, if the Prophet accuse the people of rejecting God’s benefits by their iniquities, and rendering him irreconcilable by their obstinacy, and, in a word, of making a divorce, which drives away or turns aside the ordinary course of grace.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(2) Have separatedi.e., have become, as it were, a middle wall of partition excluding them from the Divine presence.
His face.Better, the face. The Hebrew has neither article nor possessive pronoun, the substantive being treated almost as a proper name.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Isa 59:2 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid [his] face from you, that he will not hear.
Ver. 2. But your iniquities have severed, ] i.e., Have set you at a very great distance (hinted also by the redundance of speech that is here in the original), or rather defiance. Psa 5:5 Pro 15:29 ; Pro 29:13 Nothing intricates our actions more than our sins, which do likewise ensnare our souls, while they are as a wall of separation between God and us, Eze 43:8 and as an interstitium, such as is the firmament that divideth the upper and the lower waters. Gen 1:6
And your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.
a Mimus.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
iniquities. Hebrew. ‘avah. App-44. Same word as in verses: Isa 59:3, Isa 59:12. Not the same as in verses: Isa 59:6, Isa 59:7.
God. Hebrew. Elohim. App-4.
sins. Hebrew. chata’. App-44.
have hid His face. Compare Isa 45:15; Isa 54:8; Isa 57:17.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
your iniquities: Isa 50:1, Deu 32:19, Jos 7:11, Pro 15:29, Jer 5:25
hid: or, made him hide, Isa 57:17, Deu 31:17, Deu 31:18, Deu 32:20, Eze 39:23, Eze 39:24, Eze 39:29, Mic 3:4
Reciprocal: Gen 17:18 – before Exo 33:7 – afar off Num 32:23 – be sure your sin Deu 1:42 – for I am not Jos 7:4 – fled Jos 7:12 – the children Jdg 6:13 – why then Jdg 16:20 – the Lord 2Ki 5:27 – leprosy Ezr 5:12 – But after Psa 13:1 – wilt thou hide Psa 18:41 – General Psa 27:9 – Hide Isa 1:15 – when Isa 8:17 – hideth Isa 42:24 – General Isa 64:7 – hast hid Jer 21:2 – according Jer 29:4 – whom Lam 1:8 – hath Eze 8:18 – and though Eze 9:9 – The iniquity Hos 4:2 – swearing Mic 2:7 – is Hab 1:4 – for Mar 6:5 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Rather the problem was with them, not Him. It was their sins that had separated them from their holy Lord (cf. Gen 3:6; Gen 3:16; Jer 5:2-6; Hab 1:13; 1Jn 1:6).
The evidence to support Isaiah’s indictment follows.