Isaiah 59:9, commentary and pictures

The verse pictures a people from whom right judgment stands far off and whom justice does not reach, who keep waiting for light and brightness yet stay in obscurity and walk in darkness. It describes the present state of the nation and gives the reason for its calamity. It belongs to a picture of a people in darkness in the midst of an unrighteous war. The chapter to which it belongs lays open the character of the priests and rabbis who misled the people concerning the Messiah.

That darkness came because the people forsook and forgot God, chose other gods and followed their own corrupt ways until God turned away from them. They had trampled upon the law of God and broken His everlasting covenant, which was given on condition of obedience, and had continued in transgression. They had despised the Sabbath. The verses around it point to iniquity, failure to seek justice or truth, deceit, and violence as the cause of this condition.

The verse also describes the state of the world just before the second coming, when the end of all things is at hand and iniquity abounds. At that time the world comes more and more under the sway of seducing spirits by turning away from God and His righteous government, while those professing godliness indulge their own traits of character and, unless conscientiously under the control of God, become self-indulgent and self-centered. The verse stands within the definition of Christ's work given in Isaiah 59 through 62, which was to save the people over whom Satan was exercising power, to work out the purposes planned in the counsels of heaven, and to set things in their right light after God's vineyard had been worked by unrighteous scribes and Pharisees. It is included among the present-truth messages in Isaiah 58 through 62 and is to be studied carefully.