BOOK 23 OF 66 · MAJOR PROPHETS · KING JAMES BIBLE

Isaiah 59

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Isaiah 59 Overview

Isaiah explains that the LORD’s hand is not too short to save; sin has separated the people from God, society is saturated with violence and injustice, no human intercessor appears, so the LORD Himself arms as a divine warrior and promises a Redeemer and enduring Spirit-word covenant.

IsaiahBook

59Chapter

21Verses

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Before you read Isaiah 59

Coming from

The people complain that God ignores their fasting, but Isaiah exposes exploitation and strife beneath religious performance; true fasting loosens oppression, feeds the hungry, shelters the poor, and restores communal life.

In this chapter

Leads into

Zion is told to arise and shine because the LORD’s glory has come; nations and kings stream to her light, dispersed children return, wealth arrives, former oppressors bow, and the LORD becomes her everlasting light.

Key understandingExplore deeper

The chapter begins by rejecting the idea that God is powerless. The barrier is moral rebellion, and the ultimate answer comes from God’s own intervention.

The interpretive center of Isaiah 59 is the chapter’s own movement: sin disrupts fellowship and public justice. Read its poetry, signs, historical references, and later biblical connections from that center rather than treating isolated phrases as detached slogans.

Major truths in this chapterExplore deeper

Sin disrupts fellowship and public justice

Hands, lips, courts, roads, and thoughts are all implicated in corruption.

Human systems cannot rescue themselves from deep injustice

Truth falls in the street and the LORD sees there is no adequate intercessor.

God Himself provides redemption

The divine warrior acts, and a Redeemer comes to Zion with the Spirit and word continuing among the covenant people.

Connections to the rest of ScriptureExplore deeper

Romans 3:15-17

Paul quotes Isaiah 59:7-8 in his universal indictment of human sin.

Romans 11:26-27

Paul cites Isaiah 59:20-21 in discussing the Deliverer coming from Zion and Israel’s salvation.

Ephesians 6:14-17

Paul’s armor imagery echoes Old Testament divine-warrior texts including Isaiah 59:17.

What is clear, and where care is neededExplore deeper

Do not say God is unwilling or unable to save because prayer seems unanswered.

The chapter explicitly denies weakness in God and confronts unrepented sin.

Do not turn the armor image first into individual self-help.

In Isaiah, the LORD Himself puts on righteousness and salvation to intervene as warrior.

Read Isaiah 59 watching for…

the unshortened hand of the LORD

sins creating separation

truth fallen in the street

the LORD putting on armor

the Redeemer and Spirit-word covenant

Chapter outline3 sections

1-8Sin separates the people from God, and violence and falsehood fill their ways 9-15The people confess darkness, injustice, and truth fallen in the street 16-21The LORD sees there is no intercessor, brings salvation by his own arm, and promises his Spirit

Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:

But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.

For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.

None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.

They hatch cockatrice' eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.

Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works: their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.

Their 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.

The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.

Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.

We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.

We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us.

For our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against us: for our transgressions are with us; and as for our iniquities, we know them;

In transgressing and lying against the LORD, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.

And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.

Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment.

And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him.

For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head; and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloke.

According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries, recompence to his enemies; to the islands he will repay recompence.

So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him.

And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD.

As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever.

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Isaiah 59:16

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