World English Bible
- Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it can’t save; nor his ear dull, that it can’t hear.
- But your iniquities have separated you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
- For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies. Your tongue mutters wickedness.
- No one sues in righteousness, and no one pleads in truth. They trust in vanity and speak lies. They conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity.
- They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web. He who eats of their eggs dies; and that which is crushed breaks out into a viper.
- Their webs won’t become garments. They won’t cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of iniquity, and acts of violence are in their hands.
- Their feet run to evil, and they hurry to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Desolation and destruction are in their paths.
- They don’t know the way of peace; and there is no justice in their ways. They have made crooked paths for themselves; whoever goes in them doesn’t know peace.
- Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness doesn’t overtake us. We look for light, but see darkness; for brightness, but we walk in obscurity.
- We grope for the wall like the blind. Yes, we grope as those who have no eyes. We stumble at noon as if it were twilight. Among those who are strong, we are like dead men.
- We all roar like bears and moan sadly like doves. We look for justice, but there is none, for salvation, but it is far off from us.
- For 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:
- transgressing and denying the LORD, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
- Justice is turned away backward, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has fallen in the street, and uprightness can’t enter.
- Yes, truth is lacking; and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice.
- He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor. Therefore his own arm brought salvation to him; and his righteousness sustained him.
- He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head. He put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a mantle.
- According to their deeds, he will repay as appropriate: wrath to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies. He will repay the islands their due.
- So they will fear the LORD’s name from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun; for he will come as a rushing stream, which the LORD’s breath drives.
- “A Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from disobedience in Jacob,” says the LORD.
- “As for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the LORD. “My Spirit who is on you, and my words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your offspring, nor out of the mouth of your offspring’s offspring,” says the LORD, “from now on and forever.”
Isaiah 59
Yesterday, Isaiah asked what true fasting looks like. Today he shows us a society that has refused the answer.
The chapter begins with a question people still ask in times of trouble: Why has God not acted? Isaiah will not let us imagine that God has become weak or hard of hearing. Instead, he takes us into the street. Lies are spoken in court. Innocent blood is shed. Someone who turns away from evil becomes a target. The people wait for light, yet stumble at noon.
That image is unsettling. They do not lack daylight; they cannot find their way within it. Isaiah is describing more than private guilt or a shortage of good advice. When truth is pushed out of public life, even a community that knows the right words can lose the ability to walk in peace. His language of pleading and justice would have touched ordinary life in an ancient city, where disputes and judgments shaped whether the vulnerable could live safely.
Then Isaiah changes voices. The prophet no longer says they; he says we. “Our sins testify against us.” This does not mean every person bears the same blame. It means no one can heal a broken common life merely by standing at a distance from it. Confession begins when we stop treating injustice as someone else’s problem.
Yet the deepest turn comes when God looks for an intercessor and finds none. The Hebrew word for intercessor comes from the same root used of the servant who “made intercession for the transgressors” in Isaiah 53:12. Read together, the chapters give Christians a startling picture of Christ: the one who stands in the breach does not merely denounce the guilty from safety. He bears their sin. And the God who comes wearing righteousness as armor does not leave evil unanswered.
Notice the clothing. The people weave webs that cannot cover them; God clothes himself for the work they could not do. In Ephesians 6:14–17, believers are told to put on righteousness and salvation. We are not handed armor so that we may avenge ourselves. We are called to stand in what God has done, telling the truth and refusing to abandon our neighbors to the dark.
The chapter ends where much of its harm began: at the mouth. Lips that spoke lies give way to God’s words, carried by his Spirit from one generation to the next. His covenant promise is not simply that our children will inherit our beliefs. It is that he can give them—and us—a truer way to speak and live.
Further reading: Isaiah 53:12; Ephesians 6:14–17; Romans
11:26–27.
Hymn: “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing.”
Prayer: Lord, show us where we have grown used to falsehood. Give us courage to confess, to seek justice, and to trust your Redeemer. Put your words in our mouths, and teach us to walk in your light. Amen.