Isaiah 64:4 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 64:4
For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.
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
1 Corinthians 2:9-10 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for t…
Psalms 31:19 Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before th…
James 5:7 Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath lo…
Isaiah 25:9 And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him…
Psalms 130:5 I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.
Colossians 1:26-27 Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints:
Genesis 49:18 I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD.
Ephesians 3:17-21 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 64:1-5
Here, I. The petition is that God would appear wonderfully for them now, Isa 64:1, Isa 64:2. Their case was represented in the close of the foregoing chapter as very sad and very hard, and in this case it was time to cry, "Help, Lord; O that God would manifest his zeal and his strength!" They had prayed (Isa 63:15) that God would look down from heaven; here they pray that he would come down to deliver them, as he had said, Exo 3:8. 1. They desire that God would in his providence manifest himself both to them and for them. When God works some extraordinary deliverance for his people he is said to shine forth, to show himself strong; so, here, they pray that he would rend the heavens and come…
perceived by the ear--Paul (Co1 2:9) has for this, "nor have entered into the heart of man"; the virtual sense, sanctioned by his inspired authority; men might hear with the outward ear, but they could only by the Spirit "perceive" with the "heart" the spiritual significancy of God's acts, both those in relation to Israel, primarily referred to here, and those relating to the Gospel secondarily, which Paul refers to.
O God . . . what he . . . prepared--rather, "nor hath eye seen a god beside thee who doeth such things." They refer to God's past marvellous acts in behalf of Israel as a plea for His now interposing for His people; but the Spirit, as Paul by inspiration shows, contemplated fu…
For since the beginning of the world men have not heard "For never have men heard" - St. Paul is generally supposed to have quoted this passage of Isaiah, Co1 2:9; and Clemens Romanus in his first epistle has made the same quotation, very nearly in the same words with the apostle. But the citation is so very different both from the Hebrew text and the version of the Septuagint, that it seems very difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile them by any literal emendation, without going beyond the bounds of temperate criticism. One clause, "neither hath it entered into the heart of man," (which, by the way, is a phrase purely Hebrew, עלה על לב alah al leb, and should seem to belong to the proph…
The Church Fathers
He has shown the justice of mercy. For the mercy of God is not without judgment, nor is his judgment lacking in mercy. On that account he adds the provision of his mercy to those who are patient and acting justly.… He compares not their sin but their righteousness with an unclean rag. Now if it is their righteousness that is compared with this, it is because their sin does not have anything with which it can be compared.
The brightness of the true light will not be able to be seen by the unclean sight, and that which will be happiness to minds that are bright and clean will be a punishment to those that are stained. Therefore, let the mists of earth's vanities be shunned, and let your inward eyes be purged from all the filth of wickedness, that the sight may be free to feed on this great manifestation of God. For to the attainment of this we understand what follows to lead.
Do not thou then, O thou who hast denied the things which are seen, ask what kind of riches thou wilt receive in exchange for thy poverty, but be thou in earnest only to forsake thy poverty, and to hasten to possess them. Now what these riches are, and unto what they are like, Paul explaineth not unto thee, nor of what kind they are, for there is nothing which can be compared with them, nor how much they are, because they cannot be measured. "That which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, and what hath not gone up in the heart of man, is what God hath prepared for them that love Him"; and the greatness of the reward is made manifest by these and such like words.
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
Reward Of Saints, The · Is inestimable — Is inestimable
Waiting Upon God · They who engage in: Shall receive the glorious things prepared by God for them — They who engage in: Shall receive the glorious things prepared by God for them
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).
For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear,.... Not only the things unexpected, undesired, and undeserved, had been done for the Lord's people of old; but there were other things, unheard of and unseen, which God, in his secret counsels, had prepared for them; and for which reason his appearance in his providential dispensations was the more to be desired and entreated. The Apostle Paul has cited this passage in 1 Corinthians 2:9 and applied it to Gospel times, and to evangelical truths, which are not discoverable by the light of nature; had there not been a revelation from God, the ears of men had never heard them, nor the eyes of men ever seen them:…
From of old they have not heard. This verse confirms what has been already said, that believers do not here ask anything strange or uncommon, but only that God may shew himself to be to them what he formerly shewed himself to be to the fathers, and that he may continue to exercise his kindness, and that, since he has been wont to assist his people, and to give them undoubted tokens of his presence, he may not cease in future to cause his strength and power to shine forth more and more brightly. He represents believers as praying to God in such a manner that they strengthen themselves by the remembrance of the past, and betake themselves; with greater courage to God's assistance.
Eye hath no…
After the long period governed by לוּא has thus been followed by the retrospect in Isa 64:3 (4.), it is absolutely impossible that Isa 64:4 (5a) should be intended as an optative, in the sense of "O that thou wouldst receive him that," etc., as Stier and others propose. The retrospect is still continued thus: "Thou didst meet him that rejoiceth to work righteousness, when they remembered Thee in Thy ways." צדק ועשׂה שׂשׂ is one in whom joy and right action are paired, and is therefore equivalent to לעשׂות שׂשׂ. At the same time, it may possibly be more correct to take צדק as the object of both verses, as Hofmann does in the sense of "those who let what is right be their joy, and their action…
You smote him who rejoiced and worked righteousness Heb. פָּגַעְתָּ. Comp. (I Kings 2:34) “and he fell (וַיִּפְגַּע) upon him and slew him.” You removed from us and slew the righteous, who would rejoice to work righteousness, and with the ways of Your mercies, they would mention You in their prayer.
behold,...You When You became wroth with us for all that we would sin. through them of old we were saved; with their prayer. [Rashi according to Parshandatha; Printed editions are erroneous.]
we would be saved A present tense [i.e., a continual procedure.]
