Isaiah 50:1 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 50:1
Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.
to say (used with great latitude) · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
LORD
יְהוָ֗הYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
bill
סֵ֣פֶרSe.fer
H5612
properly · noun, common masculine singular construct
mother’s
אִמְּכֶם֙'i.me.Khem
H517
a mother (as the bond of the family) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine plural
divorcement
כְּרִית֤וּתke.ri.Tut
H3748
a cutting (of the matrimonial bond) · noun, common feminine singular construct
away
שִׁלַּחְתִּ֔יהָshi.lach.Ti.ha
H7971
to send away · verb, piel perfect, 1st person common singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
creditors
מִנּוֹשַׁ֔יmi.no.Shai
H5383
to lend or (by reciprocity) borrow on security or inter… · preposition + verb, qal active participle, masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix
sold
מָכַ֥רְתִּיma.Khar.ti
H4376
to sell · verb, qal perfect, 1st person common singular
iniquities
בַּעֲוֹנֹֽתֵיכֶם֙ba.'a.vo.no.tei.Khem
H5771
perversity · preposition + noun, common feminine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine plural
sold
נִמְכַּרְתֶּ֔םnim.kar.Tem
H4376
to sell · verb, niphal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural
transgressions
וּבְפִשְׁעֵיכֶ֖םu.ve.fish.'ei.Khem
H6588
a revolt (national · conjunction + preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine plural
mother
אִמְּכֶֽם'i.me.Khem
H517
a mother (as the bond of the family) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine plural
away
שֻׁלְּחָ֥הshu.le.Chah
H7971
to send away · verb, pual perfect, 3rd person feminine singular
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
Deuteronomy 32:30 How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?
Jeremiah 3:8 And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet he…
Matthew 18:25 But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be ma…
2 Kings 4:1 Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead; and thou knowe…
Nehemiah 5:5 Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters…
Isaiah 52:3 For thus saith the LORD, Ye have sold yourselves for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money.
Deuteronomy 24:1-4 When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanne…
Hosea 2:2-4 Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight,…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 50:1-3
Those who have professed to be the people of God, and yet seem to be dealt severely with, are apt to complain of God, and to lay the fault upon him, as if he had been hard with them. But, in answer to their murmurings, we have here,
I. A challenge given them to prove, or produce any evidence, that the quarrel began on God's side, Isa 50:1. They could not say that he had done them any wrong or had acted arbitrarily. 1. He had been a husband to them; and husbands were then allowed a power to put away their wives upon any little disgust: if their wives found not favour in their eyes, they made nothing of giving them a bill of divorce, Deu 24:1; Mat 19:7. But they could not say that God had deal…
Thus saith the Lord,.... Here begins a new discourse or prophecy, and therefore thus prefaced, and is continued in the following chapter:
where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? these words are directed to the Jews, who stood in the same relation to the Jewish church, or synagogue, as children to a mother; and so the Targum interprets "your mother" by "your congregation", or synagogue; who were rejected from being a church and people; had a "loammi" written upon them, which became very manifest when their city and temple were destroyed by the Romans; and this is signified by a divorce, alluding to the law of divorce among the Jews, Deuteronomy 24:1, when a man…
Where is that bill of divorcement? There are various interpretations of this passage, but very few of the commentators have understood the Prophet's meaning. In order to have a general understanding of it, we must observe that union by which the Lord everywhere testifies that his people are bound to him; that is, that he occupies the place of a husband, and that we occupy the place of a wife. It is a spiritual marriage, which has been consecrated by his eternal doctrine and sealed by the blood of Christ. In the same manner, therefore, as he takes us under his protection as a early beloved wife, on condition that we preserve our fidelity to him by chastity; so when we have been false to him,…
The Church Fathers
"Did my hand reap the crop? And did it drop?" that is, Is it tired and weakened? He is inspired by what happens to the harvesters, from whose hands the ears escape. For he teaches, through these words, that it is from them that the cause of their afflictions derives and not from him.
But Joseph was sold into Egypt, because Christ was going to come to those to whom it was said: For your sins you have been sold. And therefore, He redeemed them with His own blood, who had sold themselves by their own sins. But Christ, who was sold, is held by the assumption of the condition, not by the price of guilt, because He Himself did not commit sin. Therefore, He contracted our debt, not His own money; He took away the handwriting, removed the lender, stripped off the debtor: He alone paid what was owed by all.
Hear what the prophet says: "You have been sold for your sins, and for your iniquities I sent your mother away." You see, therefore, that we are all creatures of God. But each one is sold for his own sins and, for his own iniquities, separates from his Creator. We, therefore, belong to God insofar as we have been created by him. But we have become slaves of the devil insofar as we have been sold for our sins. Christ came, however, and "bought us back" when we were serving that lord to whom we sold ourselves by sinning. And so [Christ] appears to have recovered as his own those whom he created; to have acquired as people belonging to another, indeed, those who had sought another Lord for themselves by sinning.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Ship — No one writer in the whole range of Greek and Roman literature has supplied us with so much information concerning the merchant-ships of the ancients as St. Luke in the narrative of St. Paul’s voyage…
Divorce · FIGURATIVE — FIGURATIVE
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).
This disputation shows that God was not forced to give Israel up, and therefore he could take the nation back as his people if he desired.
50:1 God was not at fault for the people’s problems; it was their sin that brought about their exile (see also 59:1-15). • Jerusalem—the mother city of Judah (Ps 87:5-6)—was destroyed, and the people of Judah were taken into exile in 586 BC.
