Isaiah 50:1

This remarkable chapter contains the beginning of what is called "The Third Servant Song," although the word "servant" does not appear in it. Isaiah 42:1-4; Isaiah 49:1-6; and Isaiah 52:13-53:12, are reckoned as the three, along with what is written here. "The first two songs emphasized the Servant's mission; the third one, however, treats of his obedience, and of his steadfast endurance under persecution. Because of the song's description of the growing hostility toward the Servant, North entitled it: `The Gethsemane of the Servant.'"[1]

Some, of course, dispute the fact that the chapter is principally a reference to Our Saviour's patience under shameful persecutions and trials; but Barnes has listed the following reasons why the passage could not possibly refer to anyone else except Jesus Christ:

"(1) The words of Isaiah 50:6 cannot be applied to anyone else except Christ. (2) The Messianic meaning of the chapter has almost unanimously been upheld throughout the centuries by the Christian Church. (3) All that is here said of humiliation, submission, patience, and trust in God applies eminently to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to no other one. (4) The closing part which promises terrible vengeance upon his foes cannot be applied to anyone except our Lord. (5) In Luke 18:31,32, our Lord specifically mentioned prophecies recorded in this chapter, flatly declaring that `all these things shall be accomplished unto the Son of man.'"[2]

The reason listed by Barnes as the fifth in the above list is alone sufficient to justify the conclusion that this chapter is Messianic.

The chapter naturally divides into two parts, Isaiah 49:1-3 and Isaiah 49:4-11.

Isaiah 50:1-3

"Thus saith Jehovah, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, wherewith I have put her away? of which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities were ye sold, and for transgressions was your mother put away. Wherefore, when I came was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it 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 make sackcloth their covering."

It is acutely distressing to this student that many respected commentators use this passage to declare that God never divorced the Southern Israel, namely Judah, whereas the passage teaches the opposite. Of course, God divorced Israel, as absolutely proved by the prophet Hosea in his symbolical marriage with adulterous Gomer. Read my exposition of Hosea in Vol. 2 of my series on the minor prophets; and there is utterly no way to restrict the application of the divorce that put away Gomer to the Northern Israel alone. Yes, Hosea mentioned God's triple betrothal to Jezreel, but that referred to the New Israel of the Church of God, and not to the old adulterous nation of Israel.

We are glad indeed that Kelley discerned the truth on this passage. See footnote 3.

"Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement ...?" (Isaiah 50:1). "This does not mean, however, that no divorce occurred. Israel was indeed sent away (Malachi 2:16)."[3] By the same token, the passage does not mean that Israel was not sold; what is meant by both of these metaphors is that "The bill of Israel's divorcement showed that Israel's shameful wickedness was the reason behind it, and not some capricious action on the part of God; and that Israel was indeed sold for iniquities! They sold themselves! The first part of Isaiah 50:1 is the equivalent of God's merely asking Israel to "look at the record!" Note what the latter half of Isaiah 50:1 emphatically states as fact:

"Behold, for your iniquities were ye sold, and for your transgressions was your mother put away (divorced)."

The plain thrust of this passage is, as stated by Jamieson, "God is saying, It was not from any caprice of mine, but through your own fault that your mother was put away, and that you were sold."[4]

Of course, in the case of Gomer in Hosea, her husband did indeed buy her back from a life of adultery and slavery. He brought her back home indeed, but not as a wife. See Hosea 3:3.

We agree with Cheyne that these first three verses appear to be another echo of the question raised in the previous chapter (Isaiah 49:14), in which the people were critical of God Himself and inclined to blame the Lord with their troubles. "This looks like a second reply on God's part to that complaint."[5]

"Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer? ..." (Isaiah 50:2). "The Messiah is the speaker here and in the following verses; he complains of the inattention and unbelief of the Jewish people."[6] Cheyne believed that, "`When I came' can be a reference only to Jehovah,"[7] because of the power claimed by the speaker in the same verse; but we believe that the problem is solved in the truth that Christ the Messiah is indeed God come in the flesh. Therefore, we have here a prophecy of the Incarnation, that indeed being the only occasion when God "came" to men in the person of his Son; and this, of course, is an implied prophecy of the Virgin Birth as well, that being the only means by which God could indeed have become a man. The Incarnation and the Virgin Birth are interdependent twin wonders, neither of them being possible without the other. No unbeliever has ever suggested that God could have entered our earth life as a man by any other device whatever except by the Virgin Birth. That is the reason, apparently, for God's mentioning both together in Isaiah 7:14: "Behold THE VIRGIN shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (God with us)."

The wonders God mentioned in Isaiah 50:2,3 may suggest some of the great wonders performed in the Exodus; but evidently far greater powers are in view here. In Revelation 6:12 reveals that on the occasion of the final judgment the sun will become black as sackcloth. "The Egyptian plague of darkness (Exodus 10:21,22) is not adequate to the expressions used here. God means to assert his power to have all nature in total darkness if he so chooses, a power necessarily belonging to him who said, `Let there be light; and there was light.'"[8]

The concluding eight verses of the chapter are often referred to as, "A soliloquy of the Servant of Jehovah,"[9] the Messiah. We shall look at these verses one at a time.