Isaiah 59:4, commentary and pictures

Isaiah 59:1-15 is a description of the present state and condition of the nation, and this verse belongs to that description, helping to explain its calamity. It means that no one calls for justice nor pleads and stands up for truth, but people trust in what is vain and empty, speak lies, conceive mischief and harm, and bring forth iniquity, wrongdoing and sin. It describes people who have forsaken, forgotten and turned away from God to choose other gods and follow their own corrupt ways until God has turned from them, so that their iniquity separates them and leaves them alienated from God. That corrupt condition is shown in trampling upon the law of God and breaking His everlasting covenant, and in the surrounding verses in bloodshed, corrupt actions and perverse speech. Such injustice and deceit explain why judgment and justice are absent and why the people wait for light but remain in darkness.

It describes the character of the priests and rabbis who opposed Jesus: through false reasoning they trusted in vanity, spoke lies and conceived mischief, misleading many who were convinced Jesus was the Son of God. They did this by repeating the prophecies of the Messiah reigning gloriously with dominion and then making contemptuous comparisons between that glory and the humble appearance of Jesus, thus perverting the very words of prophecy so as to sanction error. Isaiah 59 belongs with Isaiah 60, Isaiah 61 and Isaiah 62 in defining the work of Christ, who comes to save people ruled by Satan's power, to work out the purposes planned in the counsels of heaven, and to set in right light God's vineyard which unrighteous scribes and Pharisees had worked.

It prophesies iniquity abounding at the end of all things and the state of the world just prior to the second coming of the Lord, when through continual transgression men have transgressed the law and broken the everlasting covenant given on condition of obedience. At that time the world will come more and more under the sway of seducing spirits as men turn away from God and His righteous government, and men professing godliness will indulge their own traits of character unless conscientiously under the control of God. That dreadful condition calls for deep humility on the part of God's people and for everyone to ask if he is prepared for the day of God and able to stand the trying test before him, and it carries the call to put evil away, stop doing wrong and learn to do good. The sinful condition it describes applies to drinking liquor and to supporting its sale, which contribute to sin and iniquity, with those who enable them accountable to God for the harm that follows. People marked by the lies and perversity it describes are embodied in false shepherds who withhold saving truth, speak contemptuously of God's law, and refuse to investigate Scripture fairly while accepting falsehoods.