Isaiah 59 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Material addressed to the years around 540 to 500 BC, near the end of the Babylonian exile and the difficult first decades back in the land, drawing on prophecies begun by Isaiah of Jerusalem in the 700s BC
Location
Judah and Jerusalem, a small territory in the southern hill country of the land of Israel, with the ruined capital city about 30 miles inland from the Mediterranean coast
Audience
Judean Jews who had lived through the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation to Babylon, and their descendants who returned to a broken city under Persian rule
Situation
The prophet answers the complaint that God has failed to rescue his people, insisting instead that their own corruption is what separates them from him. He then catalogues the community's dishonesty and violence, describes God arming himself like a warrior when no human champion steps forward, and promises a redeemer who will come to those who turn from wrongdoing.
Key Background
The list of failures here is heavily legal, naming false testimony, courts that never reach a verdict, and rulings twisted for a price, which reflects a society where justice was decided by elders sitting at the city gate rather than by professional judges, so a corrupt local elite could make honest appeal impossible. The image of God putting on a breastplate and helmet borrows from ancient Near Eastern portrayals of a god going out to battle for his people, a picture usually reserved for war with foreign enemies but here turned toward injustice inside the community. The mention of a covenant with God's spirit and words placed in the mouths of descendants echoes the language of formal treaties, in which terms were recited and passed on to later generations.
Look — Yahweh's hand is not too short to rescue, his ear is not too dull to hear.
No — it's your that have built a wall between you and your God. Your have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.
Your hands are smeared with blood, your fingers with corruption. Your lips speak lies, your tongue mutters
No one argues a case with justice, no one pleads honestly. They trust in they speak worthlessness; they conceive trouble and give birth to disaster.
They hatch eggs and weave spider webs. Whoever eats their eggs dies; crack one open — a venomous snake slithers out.
Their webs can never become clothing; no one can cover themselves with what they make. Their works are works of disaster, and the grip of violence is in their hands.
Their feet run toward evil, they rush to spill innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of disaster; ruin and destruction mark their roads.
The road of — they don't know it. There is no justice in their paths. They have twisted their roads for themselves; no one who walks them knows
So justice stays far from us and never reaches us. We look for light but find only darkness, for brightness but walk in deep shadow.
We along the wall like the blind, stumbling like people without eyes. We trip at midday as if it were twilight; among the strong, we are like the dead.
We all growl like bears, we and like doves. We look for justice — nothing. For rescue — it stays far away.
Our have piled up before you, our failures testify against us. Our are always with us — we know our corruptions all too well.
Rebelling and denying Yahweh, turning away from following our God, speaking and revolt, conceiving and whispering lies from the heart.
Justice is driven back, and what's right stands far off. Truth stumbles in the square, and honesty cannot even enter.
Truth is nowhere to be found, and anyone who turns from evil makes themselves a target. Yahweh saw it — and it was wrong in his eyes that there was no justice.
He looked — and there was no one. He was appalled that no one would step in. So his own brought rescue for him, and his own justice held him up.
He put on justice as his armor, rescue as a helmet on his head. He dressed in vengeance as his clothing and wrapped himself in like a cloak.
According to what they've done, he will repay — fury to his enemies, payback to his foes, full payback to the distant
From the west they will fear the name of Yahweh, and from the rising sun, his — for he will come like a rushing river driven hard by the of
"A will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from rebellion," declares Yahweh.
"And as for me — this is my with them," says Yahweh. "My that is on you, and my words that I have put in your mouth — they will not leave your mouth, or the mouth of your children, or the mouth of your children's children," says Yahweh, "from now until forever."