broadness. i.e. (concrete) the ear (from its form in ma… · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
heavy
כָבְדָ֥הkha.ve.Dah
H3513
to be heavy · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person feminine singular
hear
מִשְּׁמֽוֹעַmi.she.Mo.a'
H8085
to hear intelligently (often with implication of attent… · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct
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
Jeremiah 32:17 Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for the…
Isaiah 50:2 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 ha…
Numbers 11:23 And the LORD said unto Moses, Is the LORD’s hand waxed short? thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or not.
Isaiah 65:24 And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.
Genesis 18:14 Is any thing too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son…
Isaiah 58:9 Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the y…
Matthew 13:15 For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should se…
Hebrews 7:25 Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 59:1-8
The prophet here rectifies the mistake of those who had been quarrelling with God because they had not the deliverances wrought for them which they had been often fasting and praying for, Isa 58:3. Now here he shows,
I. That it was not owing to God. They had no reason to lay the fault upon him that they were not saved out of the hands of their enemies; for, 1. He was still as able to help as ever: His hand is not shortened, his power is not at all lessened, straitened, or abridged. Whether we consider the extent of his power or the efficacy of it, God can reach as far as ever and with as strong a hand as ever. Note, The church's salvation comes from the hand of God, and that has not waxed we…
Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save,.... It is not for want of power in the Lord, that he has not as yet destroyed the enemies of his people, antichrist, and the antichristian states, and saved them out of their hands, and made them to triumph over them; or brought on the glorious state of the church, and fulfilled the promises of good things, suggested in the latter part of the preceding chapter. His hand is as long as ever, and as able to reach his and their enemies in the greatest height of power, or at the greatest distance, and to do every good thing for them; his power is as great as ever, and not in the least abridged or curtailed.
Neither his ear heavy, tha…
Behold, the hand of Jehovah is not shortened. This discourse closely resembles the preceding one; for, after having torn off the mask from hypocrites, who vainly boasted of themselves, and after having shown that the punishment inflicted on them was just, he now replies to other objections. Hypocrites are wont to accuse God either of weakness or of excessive severity. He shows, therefore, that he does not want either power or will to save his people, but that he is prevented by their wickedness from exercising his kindness towards them; and therefore that they do wrong in blaming God, and in uttering those slanders against him, when they ought, on the contrary, to accuse themselves.
The wor…
The Church Fathers
(Chapter 59, Verses 1, 2) Behold, the hand of the Lord is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither is His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear. (Chapter 70) Is the Lord's hand shortened, that He cannot save, or His ear heavy, that He cannot hear? But your sins have separated you from your God, and because of your sins, He has turned His face away from you, so that He will not show mercy. I could do what I said I would do: You will be confident in the Lord, and He will lift you up to the good things of the land, and He will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob your father, before the completion. For my hand is not shortened, nor is it contracted, that I cannot stretch it out to deliver my people: nor do I have deaf ears, that I cannot hear. From this it is shown that the ears of the Lord, which listen to the righteous and do not listen to sinners, are in no way similar to our ears, which equally hear the spoken word of either justice or injustice; but your sins, like a certain wall in the middle, separate you and God. And so, the Savior in His passion made both one (Ephesians 2), and by breaking down the middle wall of partition, He destroyed enmity in His flesh, so that the blood of Christ might unite those whom the wall of sin had divided. He opened the door of paradise, which had been closed for a long time (Genesis 3), and He extinguished the fiery sword with His own blood, so that the thief might hear: Today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43). And what follows: And because of your sins, He turned His face away from you; to not hear, or to not show mercy, he demonstrates this, that he was not able to bear the stench of sins and their iniquities, but he turned his face away, so as to not see their shamefulness, and he would immediately be forced to strike. In the psalm, when the sinner desiring to see the face of the Lord says: How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? (Ps. XII, 1). And elsewhere: Show your face, and we shall be saved. (Ps. LXXIX, 4).
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
The Lord alone can and will usher in his salvation. Like a warrior, he will break into the world to avenge himself on his enemies and to vindicate his holy people.
59:1-8 The people complained that the Lord could not rescue them, but the real problem was that they had not repented (59:20) and were still living in sin.
59:1 not too weak: The delay in their rescue could not be attributed to an inherent weakness in the Lord.
Rashi on Isaiah 59:1
Behold, the hand of the Lord is not too short Your failure to be delivered is not due to the shortness of My hand.
