Isaiah 59
Jehovah’s coming spells retribution for deceivers and predators but deliverance for those who repent.
1 Surely Jehovah’s hand has not become too short to save,
nor his ear dull of hearing!
2 It is your iniquities that separate you from your God;
your sins hide his face, so that he does not hear you.
Those who continue to worship Jehovah though “not in truth or in righteousness” (Isaiah 48:1); who persist in oppressing others and desecrating the Sabbath (Isaiah 58:3-4, Isaiah 58:3-4, 13); who reject Jehovah’s servant who confronts them with these things—his hand that he sends to deliver them (Isaiah 50:2; 58:1)—such persons increasingly harden their hearts and grow more alienated until they disqualify themselves from participating in Jehovah’s restoration of his people (Isaiah 6:9-10).
Their unrepented sins and iniquities remain with them, cutting them off from Jehovah’s presence (Isaiah 48:18-19).
3 For your palms are defiled with blood,
your fingers with iniquity;
your lips speak guile, your tongue utters duplicity.
4 None calls for righteousness;
no one sues for an honest cause.
They rely on empty words, deceitfully spoken;
they conceive misdeeds, they beget wickedness.
Perhaps without realizing how far they have drifted into apostasy,
Jehovah’s people pursue a pattern of wickedness until they become irredeemable: “Though you pray at length, I will not hear—your hands are filled with blood” (Isaiah 1:15).
That pattern is of the archtyrant—the lips that speak guile and the tongue that utters duplicity.
It is not of Jehovah’s servant, who exemplifies righteousness and is forthright of speech (Isaiah 45:19).
By now, Jehovah’s alienated people have decided which exemplar they want to emulate, with inevitable consequences to follow (vv 9-11; Isaiah 63:18-19).
The “empty words deceitfully spoken” that Jehovah’s apostate people rely on, and the “misdeeds” or “oppression” (‘amal) they conceive in their hearts, have become so habitual that their entire lives are compromised by evil: “The godless utter blasphemy; their heart ponders impiety: how to practice hypocrisy and preach perverse things concerning Jehovah, leaving the hungry soul empty, depriving the thirsty [soul] of drink. And rogues scheme by malevolent means and insidious devices to ruin the poor, and with false slogans and accusations to denounce the needy” (Isaiah 32:6-7; cf. 29:15).
http://www.isaiahexplained.com/59#commentary
