to strike (lightly or severely · verb, hophal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural
revolt
סָרָ֑הsa.Rah
H5627
apostasy · noun, common feminine singular absolute
more
תּוֹסִ֣יפוּto.Si.fu
H3254
to add or augment (often adverbial · verb, hiphil imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural
head
רֹ֣אשׁrosh
H7218
the head (as most easily shaken) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
sick
לָחֳלִ֔יlo.cho.Li
H2483
malady · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
heart
לֵבָ֖בle.Vav
H3824
the heart (as the most interior organ) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
faint
דַּוָּֽיda.Vai
H1742
sick · adjective, masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Daniel 9:8-11 O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee.
Ezekiel 24:13 In thy filthiness is lewdness: because I have purged thee, and thou wast not purged, thou shalt not be purged from thy filthiness any more,…
Jeremiah 5:3 O LORD, are not thine eyes upon the truth? thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refuse…
Revelation 16:8-11 And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.
Isaiah 31:6 Turn ye unto him from whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted.
Jeremiah 5:31 The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end th…
Zephaniah 3:1-4 Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city!
Isaiah 33:24 And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 1:2-9
We will hope to meet with a brighter and more pleasant scene before we come to the end of this book; but truly here, in the beginning of it, every thing looks very bad, very black, with Judah and Jerusalem. What is the wilderness of the world, if the church, the vineyard, has such a dismal aspect as this?
I. The prophet, though he speaks in God's name, yet, despairing to gain audience with the children of his people, addresses himself to the heavens and the earth, and bespeaks their attention (Isa 1:2): Hear, O heavens! and give ear, O earth! Sooner will the inanimate creatures hear, who observe the law and answer the end of their creation, than this stupid senseless people. Let the lights o…
Why--rather, as Vulgate, "On what part." Image from a body covered all over with marks of blows (Psa 38:3). There is no part in which you have not been smitten.
head . . . sick, &c.--not referring, as it is commonly quoted, to their sins, but to the universality of their punishment. However, sin, the moral disease of the head or intellect, and the heart, is doubtless made its own punishment (Pro 1:31; Jer 2:19; Hos 8:11). "Sick," literally, "is in a state of sickness" [GESENIUS]; "has passed into sickness" [MAURER].
John Gill on Isaiah 1:5
Why should ye be stricken any more? .... Or "for what are ye stricken again" (a)? with afflictions and chastisements, with which God smites his people by way of correction for their sins, Isaiah 57:17 and the sense is, either that they did not consider what they were afflicted for, that it was for their sins and transgressions; they thought they came by chance, or imputed them to second causes, and so went on in sin, and added sin to sin; to which sense the Targum, Jarchi, and Kimchi, incline: or the meaning is, that the chastisements that were laid upon them were to no purpose; had produced no good effect, were of no avail, and unprofitable to them; and which is mentioned as an aggravation…
Isaiah calls the kings and the leaders the heads and the priests and teachers the heart. For what the heart is to the body, the priests and teachers are for the people, and what the head is for the body, the kings and leaders are for their subjects.
It shows utter contempt when, even with retributions, [the Israelites] do not become better. But even this is a kind of benefit—to be chastised. For they would have to admit that God not only condemned and rewarded but was also forgiving sinners. And certainly he was coaxing them with rewards and also chastising them with fear of punishments.
(Verse 5). In which way shall I strike you any longer, adding transgression? By this testimony we learn that the Lord strikes sinners in order to correct them, and that the punishment is not so much for retribution as for correction. The meaning is this: I cannot find any medicine that I can apply to your wounds; all your limbs are full of sores; I find no part of your body that has not been struck before. Or certainly in this way: I find no wounds by which I can break your stubbornness. For the greater the tortures are, the more impiety and injustice grows, or as Theodotion translated, the deviation, so that you may depart and deviate from the Lord. Such is that of Jeremiah: I have struck your children without cause: you have not received discipline (Jeremiah II, 30). Hence, he speaks angrily through Hosea: I will not visit your daughters when they commit fornication; and your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery (Hosea IV, 14). And in Ezekiel: My jealousy will depart from you, and I will no longer be angry with you (Ezek. 16:42). Of whom we also read in the Psalms: There is no firmament in their hands, and they are not laboring with men, nor will they be scourged with men (Ps. 73:4, 5). Every head is weary, and every heart mournful. The joy of the soul sometimes alleviates the pain of the body: but if mental distress accompanies physical illness, the weakness is doubled. Among the senses themselves, and all the members of the body, the head occupies the chief place, in which there is sight and smell, hearing and taste. Therefore, when the head aches, all the members are weak. And by metaphor, it teaches that from the leaders to the lowest of the people, from the learned to the ignorant masses, there is no health in anyone: but all unanimously consent in impiety with equal ardor. From the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, there is no soundness in it: wounds, bruises, and oozing sores. The translation has been maintained: from the feet to the head, that is, from the lowest to the highest, from the outermost to the innermost, they are pierced through the whole body. 'Wounds,' he says, 'and bruises, and oozing sores': for either bodies turn blue from beatings, or swell from blows, or gape with wounds. We ask, to what time should these things be adapted? After the Babylonian captivity, under Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, Israel returned to…
Dictionary and topics
Isaiah, The Book of — Consists of prophecies delivered (Isa. 1) in the reign of Uzziah (1-5), (2) of Jotham (6), (3) Ahaz (7-14:28), (4) the first half of Hezekiah’s reign (14:28-35), (5) the second half of Hezekiah’s…
Poetry — Has been well defined as “the measured language of emotion.” Hebrew poetry deals almost exclusively with the great question of man’s relation to God. “Guilt, condemnation, punishment, pardon,…
Depravity Of Man · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Diseases · Illustrative of sin — Illustrative of sin
Head · Liable to: Internal disease — Liable to: Internal disease
Rebellion Against God · Exhibited in: Revolting from him — Exhibited in: Revolting from him
Sick, The · FIGURATIVE — FIGURATIVE
Sickness · Illustrative of sin — Illustrative of sin
Sins, National · Pervade all ranks — Pervade all ranks
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
John Calvin on Isaiah 1:5
Why should ye be stricken any more? Some render it, Upon what? or, On what part? and interpret the passage as if the Lord had said that he had not another scourge left; because so various are the methods by which he has attempted to bring them back to the path of duty, that no other way of chastising them remains to be tried. But I prefer to render it Why? because this corresponds to the Hebrew word, and agrees better with the context. It is equivalent to phrases in daily use, To what purpose? For what object? [17] He means that the Jews have proceeded to such a pitch of wickedness and crimes, that it is impossible to believe that chastisements will do them any good; for when desperate men h…
In this v. a disputed question arises as to the words על־מה (מה, the shorter, sharper form of מה, which is common even before non-gutturals, Ges. 32, 1): viz., whether they mean "wherefore," as the lxx, Targums, Vulgate, and most of the early versions render them, or "upon what," i.e., upon which part of the body, as others, including Schrring, suppose. Luzzatto maintains that the latter rendering is spiritless, more especially because there is nothing in the fact that a limb has been struck already to prevent its being struck again; but such objections as these can only arise in connection with a purely literal interpretation of the passage. If we adopted this rendering, the real meaning wo…
God sent famine, war, disease, and death as punishment. In most cases, however, God wanted to change stubborn behavior rather than simply to punish. • As a result of their persistent rebellion, the people’s head is injured and their heart is sick. The nation was wounded physically from Assyrian aggression, while spiritually they were defiled and overtaken by sin (64:6).
Rashi on Isaiah 1:5
Why are you beaten... A person who was punished (lit. beaten) and repeats his sinhis friend admonishes him and says to him, For this you have been punished, yet you do not take heart to say, ‘For this I have been punished. I will not repeat it again.’ Here too, why are you beaten since you continue disobedience, to turn away from following the Omnipresent? Is not every head afflicted with illness and every heart with malaise? Why then do you not understand?
