Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament · Isaiah Chapter 64

The following clause gives the reason for this; ו being very frequently the logical equivalent for kı̄ (e.g., Isaiah 3:7 and Isaiah 38:15). The justification of this wish, which is forced from them by the existing misery, is found in the incomparable acts of Jehovah for the good of His own people, which are to be seen in a long series of historical events. Isaiah 64:3 (4.). “For from olden time men have not heard, nor perceived, nor hath an eye seen, a God beside Thee, who acted on behalf of him that waiteth for Him.” No ear, no eye has ever been able to perceive the existence of a God who acted like Jehovah, i.e., really interposed on behalf of those who set their hopes upon Him. This is the explanation adopted by Knobel; but he wrongly supplies נוראות to יעשׂה , whereas עשׂה is used here in the same pregnant sense as in Ps. 22:32; Psalms 37:5; 52:11 (cf., gâmar in Psalms 57:3; Psalms 138:8). It has been objected to this explanation, that האזין is never connected with the accusative of the person, and that God can neither be heard nor seen. But what is terrible in relation to שׁמע in Job 42:5 cannot be untenable in relation to האזין . Hearing and seeing God are here equivalent to recognising His existence through the perception of His works. The explanation favoured by Rosenmüller and Stier, viz., “And from olden time men have not heard it, nor perceived with ears, no eye has seen it, O God, beside Thee, what (this God) doth to him that waiteth for Him,” is open to still graver objections. The thought is the same as in Psalms 31:20, and when so explained it corresponds more exactly to the free quotation in 1 Corinthians 2:9, which with our explanation there is no necessity to trace back to either Isaiah 42:15-16, or a lost book, as Origen imagined (see Tischendorf's ed. vii. of the N.T. on this passage). This which no ear has heard, no eye seen, is not God Himself, but He who acts for His people, and justifies their waiting for Him (cf., Hofmann, Die h. Schrift Neuen Testaments, ii. 2, 51). Another proof that Paul had no other passage than this in his mind, is the fact that the same quotation is met with in Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians (ch. 34), where, instead of “those that love Him,” we have “those that wait for Him,” a literal rendering of למחכּה־לו . The quotation by Paul therefore by no means leads us to take Elohim as a vocative or וגו יעשׂה as the object, although it must not be concealed that this view of the passage and its reference to the fulness of glory in the eternal life is an old rabbinical one, as Rashi expressly affirms, when he appeals to R. Jose (Joseph Kara) as bondsman for the other (see b. Sanhedrin 99 a). Hahn has justly objected to this traditional explanation, which regards Elohim as a vocative, that the thought, that God alone has heard and perceived and seen with His eye what He intends to do to His people, is unsuitable in itself, and at variance with the context, and that if וגו יעשׂה was intended as the object, אשר ( את ) would certainly be inserted. And to this we may add, that we cannot find the words Elohim zūlâth e khâ (God beside Thee) preceded by a negation anywhere in chapters 40-66 without receiving at once the impression, that they affirm the sole deity of Jehovah (comp. Isaiah 45:5, Isaiah 45:21). The meaning therefore is, “No other God beside Jehovah has ever been heard or seen, who acted for ( ageret pro ) those who waited for Him.” M e chakkēh is the construct, according to Ges. §116, 1; and ya‛ăsēh has tsere here, according to Kimchi ( Michlol 125 b) and other testimonies, just as we meet with תעסה four times (in Genesis 26:29; Joshua 7:9; 2 Samuel 13:12; Jeremiah 40:16) and ונעשׂה once (Joshua 9:24), mostly with a disjunctive accent, and not without the influence of a whole or half pause, the form with tsere being regarded as more emphatic than that with seghol.

(Note: In addition to the examples given above, we have the following forms of the same kind in kal: ימּצה (with tiphchah) in Jeremiah 17:17; תּראה (with tsakpeh) in Daniel 1:13, compare תּגלּה (with athnach) in Leviticus 18:7-8, and תגלּה (with the smaller disjunctive tiphchah) in Leviticus 18:9-11; ינקּה (with athnach) in Nahum 1:3; אזרה (with tsakeph) in Ezekiel 5:12. This influence of the accentuation has escaped the notice of the more modern grammarians (e.g., Ges. §75, Anm. 17).)

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After the long period governed by לוּא has thus been followed by the retrospect in Isaiah 64:3 (4.), it is absolutely impossible that Isaiah 64:4 (5 a) should be intended as an optative, in the sense of “O that thou wouldst receive him that,” etc., as Stier and others propose. The retrospect is still continued thus: “Thou didst meet him that rejoiceth to work righteousness, when they remembered Thee in Thy ways.” צדק ועשׂה שׂשׂ is one in whom joy and right action are paired, and is therefore equivalent to לעשׂות שׂשׂ . At the same time, it may possibly be more correct to take צדק as the object of both verses, as Hofmann does in the sense of “those who let what is right be their joy, and their action also;” for though שׂוּשׂ ( שׂישׂ ) cannot be directly construed with the accusative of the object, as we have already observed at Isaiah 8:6 and Isaiah 35:1, it may be indirectly, as in this passage and Isaiah 65:18. On pâga‛ , “to come to meet,” in the sense of “coming to the help of,” see at Isaiah 47:3; it is here significantly interchanged with בּדרכי ך of the minor clause bidrâkhekhâ yizk e rūkhâ , “those who remember Thee in Thy ways” (for the syntax, compare Isaiah 1:5 and Isaiah 26:16): “When such as love and do right, walking in Thy ways, remembered Thee (i.e., thanked Thee for grace received, and longed for fresh grace), Thou camest again and again to meet them as a friend.”

But Israel appeared to have been given up without hope to the wrath of this very God. Isaiah 64:4 (5 b). “Behold, Thou, Thou art enraged, and we stood as sinners there; already have we been long in this state, and shall we be saved?” Instead of hēn ‛ attâh (the antithesis of now and formerly), the passage proceeds with hēn ' attâh . There was no necessity for ' attâh with qâtsaphtâ ; so that it is used with special emphasis: “Behold, Thou, a God who so faithfully accepts His own people, hast broken out in wrath.” The following word ונּחטא cannot mean “and we have sinned,” but is a fut. consec., and therefore must mean at least, “then we have sinned” (the sin inferred from the punishment). It is more correct, however, to take it, as in Genesis 43:9, in the sense of, “Then we stand as sinners, as guilty persons:” the punishment has exhibited Israel before the world, and before itself, as what it really is (consequently the fut. consec. does not express the logical inference, but the practical consequence). As ונחטא has tsakeph, and therefore the accents at any rate preclude Shelling's rendering, “and we have wandered in those ways from the very earliest times,” we must take the next two clauses as independent, if indeed בה ם is to be understood as referring to בדרכי ך . Stier only goes halfway towards this when he renders it, “And indeed in them (the ways of God, we sinned) from of old, and should we be helped?” This is forced, and yet not in accordance with the accents. Rosenmüller and Hahn quite satisfy this demand when they render it, “ Tamen in viis tuis aeternitas ut salvemur ;” but ‛ ōlâm , αἰών , in this sense of αἰωνιότης , is not scriptural. The rendering adopted by Besser, Grotius, and Starck is a better one: “( Si vero ) in illis ( viis tuis ) perpetuo ( m ansissemus ), tunc servati fuerimus ” (if we had continued in Thy ways, then we should have been preserved). But there is no succession of tenses here, which could warrant us in taking ונוּשׁע as a paulo-post future; and Hofmann's view is syntactically more correct, “In them (i.e., the ways of Jehovah) eternally, we shall find salvation, after the time is passed in which He has been angry and we have sinned” (or rather, been shown to be guilty). But we question the connection between בהם and רדכיך in any form. In our view the prayer suddenly takes a new turn from hēn (behold) onwards, just as it did with lū' (O that) in Isaiah 64:1; and רדכיך in Isaiah 64:5 stands at the head of a subordinate clause. Hence בהם must refer back to ונחטא קצפת (“in Thine anger and in our sins,” Schegg). There is no necessity, however, to search for nouns to which to refer בּהם . It is rather to be taken as neuter, signifying “therein” (Ezekiel 33:18, cf., Psalms 90:10), like עליהם , thereupon = thereby (Isaiah 38:16), בּהן therein (Isaiah 37:16), מהם thereout (Isaiah 30:6), therefrom (Isaiah 44:15). The idea suggested by such expressions as these is no doubt that of plurality (here a plurality of manifestations of wrath and of sins), but one which vanishes into the neuter idea of totality. Now we do justice both to the clause without a verb, which, being a logical copula , admits simply of a present sumus ; and also to ‛ ōlâm , which is the accusative of duration, when we explain the sentence as meaning, “In this state we are and have been for a long time.” ‛ Olâm is used in other instances in these prophecies to denote the long continuance of the sate of punishment (see Isaiah 42:14; Isaiah 57:11), since it appeared to the exiles as an eternity (a whole aeon), and what lay beyond it as but a little while ( m its‛âr , Isaiah 63:18). The following word ונוּשׁע needs no correction. There is no necessity to change it into ונּתע , as Ewald proposes, after the lxx καὶ ἐπλανήθημεν (“and we fell into wandering”), or what would correspond still more closely to the lxx (cf., Isaiah 46:8, פשׁעים , lxx πεπλανήμενοι ), but is less appropriate here, into ונּפשׁע (“and we fell into apostasy”), the reading supported by Lowth and others. If it were necessary to alter the text at all, we might simply transpose the letters, and read וּנשׁוּע , “and cried for help.” But if we take it as a question, “And shall we experience salvation - find help?” there is nothing grammatically inadmissible in this (compare Isaiah 28:28), and psychologically it is commended by the state of mind depicted in Isaiah 40:27; Isaiah 59:10-12. Moreover, what follows attaches itself quite naturally to this.

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The people who ask the question in Isaiah 64:5 do not regard themselves as worthy of redemption, as their self-righteousness has been so thoroughly put to shame. “We all became like the unclean thing, and all our virtues like a garment soiled with blood; and we all faded away together like the leaves; and our iniquities, like the storm they carried us away.” The whole nation is like one whom the law pronounces unclean, like a leper, who has to cry “ tâmē , tâmē “as he goes along, that men may get out of his way (Leviticus 13:45). Doing right in all its manifold forms ( ts e dâqōth , like Isaiah 33:15, used elsewhere of the manifestations of divine righteousness), which once made Israel well-pleasing to God (Isaiah 1:21), has disappeared and become like a garment stained with menstruous discharge (cf., Ezekiel 36:17); (lxx ὡς ῥάκος ἀποκαθημένης = dâvâ , Isaiah 30:22; niddâh , Lamentations 1:17; t e mē'âh , Leviticus 15:33). ‛Iddı̄m (used thus in the plural in the Talmud also) signifies the monthly period ( menstrua ). In the third figure, that of fading falling foliage, the form vannâbhel is not kal (= vannibbōl or vannibbal ; Ewald, §232, b), which would be an impossibility according to the laws of inflexion; still less is it niphal = vanninnâbhel (which Kimchi suggests as an alternative); but certainly a hiphil. It is not, however, from nâbhēl = vannabbel , “with the reduplication dropped to express the idea of something gradual,” as Böttcher proposes (a new and arbitrary explanation in the place of one founded upon the simple laws of inflexion), but either from bâlal (compare the remarks on belı̄l in Isaiah 30:24, which hardly signifies “ripe barley” however), after the form ויּגל (from גּלל ) ויּס ך (from סכ ך ), or from būl , after the form ויּקם , etc. In any case, therefore, it is a metaplastic formation, whether from bâlal or būl = nâbhēl , like ויּשׂר (in 1 Chronicles 20:3, after the form ויּסר , from שּׂור = נשׂר , or after the form ויּרע , from שׂרר = נשׂר (compare the rabbinical explanation of the name of the month Bul from the falling of the leaves, in Buxtorf, Lex. talm. col. 271). The hiphil הבל or הביל is to be compared to האדים , to stream out red (= to be red); הארי ך , to make an extension (= to be long); השׁרישׁ , to strike root (= to root), etc., and signifies literally to produce a fading (= to fade away). In the fourth figure, עוננוּ (as it is also written in Isaiah 64:6 according to correct codices) is a defective plural (as in Jeremiah 14:7; Ezekiel 28:18; Daniel 9:13) for the more usual עונתינוּ (Isaiah 59:12). עון is the usual term applied to sin regarded as guilt, which produces punishment of itself. The people were robbed by their sins of all vital strength and energy, like dry leaves, which the guilt and punishment springing from sin carried off as a very easy prey.

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Universal forgetfulness of God was the consequence of this self-instigated departure from God. “And there was no one who called upon Thy name, who aroused himself to lay firm hold of Thee: for Thou hadst hidden Thy face from us, and didst melt us into the hand of our transgressions.” There was no one (see Isaiah 59:16) who had risen up in prayer and intercession out of this deep fall, or had shaken himself out of the sleep of security and lethargy of insensibility, to lay firm hold of Jehovah, i.e., not to let Him go till He blessed him and his people again. The curse of God pressed every one down; God had withdrawn His grace from them, and given them up to the consequences of their sins. The form ותּמוּגנוּ is not softened from the pilel ותּמגגנוּ , but is a kal like ויכוּננּוּ ekil in Job 31:15 (which see), מוּג being used in a transitive sense, as kūn is there (cf., shūbh , Isaiah 52:8; m ūsh , Zechariah 3:9). The lxx, Targ., and Syr. render it et tradidisti nos ; but we cannot conclude from this with any certainty that they read ותּמגּננוּ , which Knobel follows Ewald in correcting into the incorrect form ותּמגּנּוּ . The prophet himself had the expression m iggēn b e yad (Genesis 14:20, cf., Job 8:4) in his mind, in the sense of liquefecisti nos in manum , equivalent to liquefecisti et tradidisti ( παρέδωκας , Romans 1:28), from which it is evident that ביד is not a mere διά (lxx), but the “hand” of the transgressions is their destructive and damning power.

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