Thus saith Jehovah Where is the bill of your mother's divorce, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, through your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.
Isaiah 50 turns from promise back to Israel's present state, and God opens with two questions: where is the divorce paper, and who is the creditor? Neither one exists, and that answer puts the blame back on the people.
The verse uses two scenes from ordinary life. A husband dismisses his wife with legal papers. A father in debt sells his children to a creditor. God asks Israel to produce either document. One writer reads the questions against the background of exile and a ruined homeland:
The chapter opens with Jehovah reminding Israel of this. They are scattered and held captive by other nations, and their land lies empty. Yet none of that means Jehovah has treated them lightly. He is not like a heartless man putting away his wife, or a pagan father selling his child to pay his debts. It is through no lack of love on Jehovah's part that they have been set aside. Their own sins have separated them from Jehovah and brought them into captivity.
God does not only deny the two pictures as facts. His character rules them out. A husband who divorces acts out of displeasure. A father who sells his children acts out of his own need. Neither motive fits God:
This was no mean-hearted man taking wretched pleasure in sending away a wife who displeased him. This was no selfish parent meeting his own needs at his children's expense.
Another writer answers the creditor question with a single stroke — God has no debts to settle:
"Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you?" No — the Lord is not so poor: "Behold, for your iniquities have you sold yourselves; and for your transgressions is your mother put away."
One writer links the missing paper to Paul's answer about whether God has cast His people away:
This prophetic strain now ceases, for in Isaiah 50:1 we return to the existing state of the people, estranged from their God. This was not from God's side but from theirs. If He had issued a bill of divorce against them, it would have been permanent. They would have been rejected (Rom. 11:1) — and to that Paul answers, "By no means!" The fact was that they had sold themselves into disaster by their many transgressions.
Commentators differ on how far to press the picture. Others say a real divorce did take place, though the people brought it on themselves. Israel "had the place of nearness to Jehovah" pictured by the marriage bond. She was unfaithful, "and in consequence she was divorced, becoming a widow and desolate under the righteous dealing of God" (William Kelly).
One writer traces the distance back to a promise Israel broke:
The people had not continued in the "all things" of the law. They had not reflected the "light," as they had bound themselves to do, and they were therefore removed from the divine presence... "What communion has light with darkness?" we may ask again. Iniquity and transgressions must estrange from God. If Israel walk in the darkness of corrupted nature, they must walk outside the presence of God.
Older translations read the second half of the verse as "you have sold yourselves." One writer follows that idea of selling oneself through the rest of the Bible:
In Romans 7:14 the "wretched man" cries out, "I am of the flesh, sold under sin." The Greek word used here for "sold" is piprasko. When it describes a person, it means "to sell into slavery." In the Greek Old Testament it pictures selling oneself to sin: of Ahab in 1 Kings 21:20, 25; in 2 Kings 17:17; see also Isaiah 50:1 and 52:3. So Paul may have had these in mind
after_note: DELETE when he cried in desperation, "I am sold under sin." But this is not the experience of the apostle Paul only. It is the condition of us all, though we may discover it only when the light of the Gospel shines upon our fallen state.
Later, once the covenant bond is renewed, the Lord looks back on Jerusalem's past in a surprising way:
When the Lord has brought her to Himself in the bonds of the covenant, He does not refer to her former state as one of divorcement, but rather of widowhood. That is, He does not call to mind the shame, but rather the sorrow, of her former condition. Though it may be divorcement and shame (Isa. 50:1), yet the Lord will not remember it as such... Does it not sweetly and movingly tell us that with our God there is forgetting as well as forgiving?... We see this in Isaiah 54. There the Lord, re-married to Jerusalem, looks back in pity on her widowhood, and not in anger on her divorce.
- No paper. God asks for the divorce certificate and the creditor's name. Neither exists. He never dismissed His people, and He never owed anyone a debt.
- No poverty. He is not a husband acting on displeasure or a father selling children to cover his own need.
- No excuse. The sale was their own: they sold themselves, and their sins made the distance between them and God.
- No exception. The same word for being sold under sin describes every one of us, until the light of the gospel shows it.
- No permanence. No bill was ever issued, so the setting aside is not final. In the end God remembers the sorrow of it, not the shame.
Wherefore did I come, and there was no man? I called, and there was none to answer? Is my hand at all shortened that I cannot redeem, or have I no power to deliver? behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make rivers a wilderness; their fish stink because there is no water, and die for thirst.
Isaiah 50 opens with God answering a charge He was never guilty of. Israel thought He had thrown them away. He answers that they sold themselves. Then verse 2 presses harder. When He came, why was no one there? Had His hand grown too short to save?
The verse opens with a question that looks back one line. Verse 1 asks Israel to produce their mother's divorce certificate, or to name the creditor God sold them to. There is neither.
This was no harsh man taking a miserable pleasure in sending away a wife who displeased him. This was no selfish parent meeting his own needs at his children's expense. And the proof of their rebellion appears in verses 2 and 3... No one heeded His coming or answered His call, though ever since the days of Pharaoh He had already proved what He was for His people.
The proof of the break is not God's coldness. It is the silence that met Him when He came.
The One asking "was there no man?" is the same One who dries up the sea.
Here is Jehovah Himself, come to them as a Saviour, but there is no response. They do not recognise Him. They do not credit Him with power to redeem. And we know well when this happened. One came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. The power of God was in His hand, and He used it for them without holding back. Still they would not believe that He had come to them in grace.
So the coming and the calling of this verse point to the days of Jesus. The question is not decoration. It names a real arrival that met a real refusal.
The empty answer did not catch Him off guard. He knew what He would find before He came.
He came knowing the full state of man as he was: sin ripe and complete in him, wholly evil and wretched. The fall had worked itself out in him, with all its effects here, and that is where it had left him. Then, right in the middle of all this, He took man's nature — without sin, but exposed to all the suffering. And He says, in perfect grace, "Here I am among you."
Why ask such a question at all? Look first at what man had already proved about himself.
It had been well proved that man had no power to deliver himself. Every try he made, even with God's help, only tightened the chains that bound him. Each one made his miserable and ruined condition plainer still... He could do nothing for himself, and his neighbour could not give him the slightest help.
So the shortage was never in God's hand. Man could not save himself, and would not believe the One who could.
The proof God offers is drawn from creation itself — water and sky obey Him. But the writers notice something startling in that comparison.
See how, in the words of the prophet, He questions Himself about this great work. He asks Himself, "Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem?"... All of this He could do without any "strong crying and tears" on His part, without any agony and bloody sweat. He had only to speak, and it was done.
Drying up a sea costs Him a word. Redeeming costs Him agony and tears.
The chapter sets the two side by side, and that is what separates it from Isaiah 53.
This fiftieth chapter shows the Lord suffering at the hands of men. That makes it very different from Isaiah 53, which speaks of His atoning sufferings from the hand of God. In this chapter we see Him as the One who in wonderful love "came" and "called" to His unfaithful people, but no one answered His call. He was the Controller of all creation, yet they scorned Him and put Him to shame.
The verse asks two things: can He redeem, and has He power to deliver? The answer lies in who it was that came.
But who was it that came? He who had power to redeem and to deliver, who had all nature at His command as its Creator and Lord.
- Cause — The separation was never God's doing. Israel sold themselves; the silence that met His coming is the evidence.
- Coming — The One who came was Jehovah Himself, arriving as Saviour among His own, and they did not know Him.
- Knowledge — He came with full knowledge of what man had become, and said in grace, "Here I am among you."
- Capacity — The shortened hand is a fiction. Man proved he could not save himself; God's power was never the problem.
- Cost — Drying up seas takes only a word. Redemption took strong crying and tears. That is why this chapter shows the Controller of creation scorned by the people He came to save.
I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.
Isaiah 50 opens with God answering an accusation. Israel acted as if He had divorced their mother and sold them off. Their own sins did it. Verse 3 closes His reply with a third display of raw power over creation. Yet the same voice, a few lines later, offers His back to those who beat Him.
The chapter is God's reply to a people who acted as though He could not help. One writer treats verses 2 and 3 as the evidence against them. The proof is what God had done for Israel ever since the days of Pharaoh.
"Look, you sold yourselves for your own sins, and your mother was sent away for your own wrongdoing" (v. 1). And the proof of their rebellion appears in verses 2, 3. "Why did I come, and there was no man? I called, and there was none to answer? Is my hand at all shortened, that I cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver? behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness: their fish stink, because there is no water, and die for thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering." His coming, His call was unheeded, though He had already, since the days of Pharaoh, proved what He was on behalf of His people.
Sackcloth was coarse dark cloth worn in mourning. Scripture later uses the same image of a blackened sun. One commentator reads it as the collapse of the highest authority on earth, and points back to this verse.
"The sun became black as sackcloth of hair." The sun symbolises the supreme governing authority (Gen. 37:9; Rev. 12:1). "Black as sackcloth of hair" means the darkening power of Satan. It points to the supreme authority of earth — on which all depended — in a state of complete collapse (Isa. 50:3; Ezek. 7:18). The darkening of the heavenly bodies is a terrible disaster in the physical world, and so the figure is apt here.
Verse 3 sounds like the Creator. A few lines later the same speaker is struck and spat on. One writer asks who could say both.
Who could say this but a Divine Being: "I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering"? And who but that same Being, now become man, could say this? He was a man of perfect lowliness, dependence and obedience: "The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I did not turn back. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the hair. I did not hide my face from shame and spitting." These are the words of the only perfect man who ever lived, the Lord Jesus.
The verse answers a question about power to redeem. Yet drying seas and blackening heavens turn out to be the cheap works.
It cost Him everything to do this work, and no one but Himself could have undertaken it. He is the One who made the worlds, but the making of the worlds was a small affair compared with the work of redemption... All this could be done without any "strong crying and tears" (Heb. 5:7) on His part, without any agony and bloody sweat (Luke 22:44). He had only to speak, and it was done (Gen. 1).
Verse 3 and verse 4 sit side by side. The One who blackens the heavens has an ear that wakes each morning to listen.
It is He who speaks like this through the prophet. In the grace of His humiliation He unites things that seem to contradict each other: the power and wisdom of an almighty Saviour, and the lowly obedience of His creature man... That is one side. Now hear how the same voice continues: "The Lord Jehovah has given me the tongue of one who is taught, so that I know how to speak a timely word to the one who is weary. He wakens morning by morning; He wakens my ear to hear as a learner."
This chapter puts a Deliverer and a victim on the same page.
It was easy enough to recognise the voice of Israel's Deliverer and God in the words, "I clothe the heavens with blackness and I make sackcloth their covering. At my rebuke I dry up the sea." But who is it that says, "I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheek to those who pulled out the hair. I did not hide my face from shame and spitting" (Isa. 50)? Of course, we find the key to the riddle in the New Testament: we know and believe that it is Christ and Him crucified.
- The charge — Israel acted as though God's hand was too short to save; verse 3 is part of His answer.
- The proof — He points to what He can do to sea, river and sky: power over creation was never lacking.
- The Speaker — The voice that blackens the heavens is the voice that a few lines later is struck and spat on.
- The cost — Darkening the sky took only a word. Redemption cost Him everything: strong crying, tears and agony.
- The contrast — Almighty power and a listening, obedient ear meet in one Person. That is the riddle the New Testament solves in Christ.