8 Be not very angry, O Lord, and do not keep our sins in mind for ever: give ear to our prayer, for we are all your people.
You are turning things upside down! Is the wet earth the same to you as the one who is forming it? will the thing made say of him who made it, He made me not: or the thing formed say of him who gave it form, He has no knowledge?
Cursed is he who has an argument with his Maker, the pot which has an argument with the Potter! Will the wet earth say to him who is working with it, What are you doing, that your work has nothing by which it may be gripped?
Up! go down to the potter's house, and there I will let my words come to your ears. Then I went down to the potter's house, and he was doing his work on the stones. And when the vessel, which he was forming out of earth, got damaged in the hand of the potter, he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make it. Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, O Israel, am I not able to do with you as this potter does? says the Lord. See, like earth in the potter's hand are you in my hands, O Israel.
But, O man, who are you, to make answer against God? May the thing which is made say to him who made it, Why did you make me so? Or has not the potter the right to make out of one part of his earth a vessel for honour, and out of another a vessel for shame? What if God, desiring to let his wrath and his power be seen, for a long time put up with the vessels of wrath which were ready for destruction: And to make clear the wealth of his glory to vessels of mercy, which he had before made ready for glory, Even us, who were marked out by him, not only from the Jews, but from the Gentiles?
For you are our father, though Abraham has no knowledge of us, and Israel gives no thought to us: you, O Lord, are our father; from the earliest days you have taken up our cause.
Keep these things in mind, O Jacob; and you Israel, for you are my servant: I have made you; you are my servant; O Israel, I will not let you go out of my memory.
Be certain that the Lord is God; it is he who has made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep to whom he gives food.
<JOD> Your hands have made me, and given me form: give me wisdom, so that I may have knowledge of your teaching.
Your hands made me, and I was formed by you, but then, changing your purpose, you gave me up to destruction. O keep in mind that you made me out of earth; and will you send me back again to dust?
And you are to say to Pharaoh, The Lord says, Israel is the first of my sons:
And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and yours is the heritage by the right of God's undertaking given to Abraham.
The Lord, who has taken up your cause, and who gave you life in your mother's body, says, I am the Lord who makes all things; stretching out the heavens by myself, and giving the earth its limits; who was with me?
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Isaiah 64
Commentary on Isaiah 64 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 64
This chapter goes on with that pathetic pleading prayer which the church offered up to God in the latter part of the foregoing chapter. They had argued from their covenant-relation to God and his interest and concern in them; now here,
And this was not only intended for the use of the captive Jews, but may serve for direction to the church in other times of distress, what to ask of God and how to plead with him. Are God's people at any time in affliction, in great affliction? Let them pray, let them thus pray.
Isa 64:1-5
Here,
Isa 64:6-12
As we have the Lamentations of Jeremiah, so here we have the Lamentations of Isaiah; the subject of both is the same-the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans and the sin of Israel that brought that destruction-only with this difference, Isaiah sees it at a distance and laments it by the Spirit of prophecy, Jeremiah saw it accomplished. In these verses,