15 Look down from heaven, and see from the habitation of your holiness and of your glory: where are your zeal and your mighty acts? the yearning of your heart and your compassion is restrained toward me.
Look down from your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless your people Israel, and the ground which you have given us, as you swore to our fathers, a land flowing with milk and honey.
"How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned within me, My compassion is aroused.
> To you I do lift up my eyes, You who sit in the heavens.
Turn again, we beg you, God of hosts. Look down from heaven, and see, and visit this vine,
He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; and he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a mantle.
But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and closes his heart of compassion against him, how does the love of God remain in him?
Because of the tender mercy of our God, Whereby the dawn from on high will visit us,
In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bore them, and carried them all the days of old.
But will God in very deed dwell on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens can't contain you; how much less this house that I have built!
Awake, awake, put on strength, arm of Yahweh; awake, as in the days of old, the generations of ancient times. Isn't it you who did cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the monster? Isn't it you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yes, these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end, on the throne of David, and on his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from henceforth even forever. The zeal of Yahweh of Hosts will perform this.
Who is like Yahweh, our God, Who has his seat on high, Who stoops down to see in heaven and in the earth?
Lord, where are your former loving kindnesses, Which you swore to David in your faithfulness?
"Will the Lord reject us forever? Will he be favorable no more? Has his loving kindness vanished forever? Does his promise fail for generations? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he, in anger, withheld his compassion?" Selah.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Isaiah 63
Commentary on Isaiah 63 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 63
In this chapter we have,
So that, upon the whole, we learn to embrace God's promises with an active faith, and then to improve them, and make use of them, both in prayers and praises.
Isa 63:1-6
It is a glorious victory that is here enquired into first and then accounted for.
In this representation of the victory we have,
Isa 63:7-14
The prophet is here, in the name of the church, taking a review, and making a thankful recognition, of God's dealings with his church all along, ever since he founded it, before he comes, in the latter end of this chapter and in the next, as a watchman upon the walls, earnestly to pray to God for his compassion towards her in her present deplorable state; and it was usual for God's people, in their prayers, thus to look back.
Isa 63:15-19
The foregoing praises were intended as an introduction to this prayer, which is continued to the end of the next chapter, and it is an affectionate, importunate, pleading prayer. It is calculated for the time of the captivity. As they had promises, so they had prayers, prepared for them against that time of need, that they might take with them words in turning to the Lord, and say unto him what he himself taught them to say, in which they might the better hope to prevail, the words being of God's own inditing. Some good interpreters think this prayer looks further, and that it expresses the complaints of the Jews under their last and final rejection from God and destruction by the Romans; for there is one passage in it (ch. 64:4) which is applied to the grace of the gospel by the apostle (1 Co. 2:9), that grace for the rejecting of which they were rejected. In these verses we may observe,