Isaiah 57: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chapter opens with people who do right dying unnoticed, and says they enter peace, while no one sees that they are taken away from coming trouble. God then brings a long accusation against people who worship idols under trees and on hills, kill their children as offerings, set up pagan signs in their homes, and send envoys to foreign powers; their idols will not save them when they cry out, but whoever trusts God will inherit the land. The final section says God, who lives in the high and holy place, also lives with the humble and crushed in spirit, will not stay angry forever, and will heal and comfort the one he struck. It closes with peace announced to those far off and near, and the statement that the wicked have no peace.

Claim by Claim

1. 57:1
   • The righteous one perishes.
   • No one takes it to heart.
   • Men of faithful loyalty are gathered away.
   • No one understands that the righteous is gathered away from before the evil.
2. 57:2
   • He enters into peace.
   • They rest on their beds.
   • Each one walks in his uprightness.
3. 57:3
   • The speaker commands them to draw near.
   • He calls them sons of a sorceress.
   • He calls them the offspring of an adulterer and of a woman who played the harlot.
4. 57:4
   • He asks against whom they are amusing themselves.
   • He asks against whom they open the mouth wide and stick out the tongue.
   • He asks whether they are not children of transgression.
   • He asks whether they are not offspring of falsehood.
5. 57:5
   • They inflame themselves among the terebinths, or among the gods; the word carries both senses.
   • They do this under every green tree.
   • They slaughter the children in the valleys.
   • They do this under the clefts of the rocks.
6. 57:6
   • Her portion is among the smooth stones of the wadi.
   • Those stones are her lot.
   • She poured out a drink offering to them.
   • She offered up a grain offering.
   • He asks whether he should be consoled over these things.
7. 57:7
   • She set her bed on a high and lofty mountain.
   • She went up there to offer sacrifice.
8. 57:8
   • She set up her memorial behind the door and the doorpost.
   • She uncovered herself apart from him.
   • She went up.
   • She made her bed wide.
   • She cut an agreement for herself with them.
   • She loved their bed.
   • She gazed on a hand, or on nakedness; the word is ambiguous.
9. 57:9
   • She went to the king with oil.
   • She increased her perfumes.
   • She sent her envoys far off.
   • She lowered herself down to Sheol.
10. 57:10
    • She grew weary with the length of her way.
    • She did not say that it was hopeless.
    • She found renewal of her strength.
    • Therefore she did not grow weak.
11. 57:11
    • He asks whom she dreaded and feared, so that she lied.
    • She did not remember him.
    • She did not lay it to her heart.
    • He asks whether he has not kept silent, even from long ago.
    • She does not fear him.
12. 57:12
    • He will declare her righteousness.
    • He will declare her works.
    • Her works will not profit her.
13. 57:13
    • When she cries out, let her collected idols deliver her.
    • The wind will carry them all away.
    • A breath will take them.
    • The one who takes refuge in him will inherit the land.
    • The one who takes refuge in him will possess his holy mountain.
14. 57:14
    • It will be said: build up, build up, clear the way.
    • It will be said: remove the stumbling block from the way of my people.
15. 57:15
    • The high and lofty One says this.
    • He dwells forever.
    • His name is Holy.
    • He dwells in the high and holy place.
    • He dwells with the crushed and lowly of spirit.
    • He does this to revive the spirit of the lowly.
    • He does this to revive the heart of the crushed.
16. 57:16
    • He will not contend forever.
    • He will not be angry perpetually.
    • Otherwise the spirit would faint before him.
    • Otherwise the souls he has made would faint.
17. 57:17
    • He was angry because of the iniquity of his unjust gain.
    • He struck him.
    • He hid himself.
    • He was angry.
    • He went on turning away in the way of his own heart.
18. 57:18
    • He has seen his ways.
    • He will heal him.
    • He will lead him.
    • He will restore comforts to him and to his mourners.
19. 57:19
    • He creates the fruit of the lips.
    • The LORD says: peace, peace, to the one far off and to the one near.
    • He will heal him.
20. 57:20
    • The wicked are like the tossing sea.
    • The sea cannot be still.
    • Its waters cast up mire and mud.
21. 57:21
    • My God says there is no peace for the wicked.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

57:1

Two things in this verse read oddly in English. "Takes it to heart" is a Hebrew idiom for paying attention to something and drawing a conclusion from it, not for being emotionally moved. And the last clause is genuinely ambiguous in Hebrew: it can mean the righteous are gathered away *before* a disaster arrives, or that they are removed *from the presence of* evil people. Translations divide.

57:2

"Beds" here is standard Hebrew language for the grave: the dead are spoken of as lying down, sleeping, or resting in their beds. The verse is describing burial, not a night's sleep.

57:3

Calling someone the child of a sorceress or a prostitute makes no claim about their actual parents. In Hebrew insult, "son of" or "offspring of" means "one who belongs to that class of person", so, roughly, "you people of magic and betrayal." From here through verse 13 the prophet describes the nation's worship of other gods in the language of a wife's adultery. This is a stock image in the prophets: the bond between God and the nation was spoken of as a marriage, so worshiping other gods is spoken of as sleeping around.

57:4

Making a wide mouth and sticking out the tongue were rude, mocking gestures, the same kind of insult a sneer is today.

57:5

Large trees, oaks and terebinths, marked open-air shrines, and the worship carried out at them often involved ritual sex, which is why the language here is sexual. The Hebrew word for these trees is almost identical to the word for gods, which is why the King James translators read it as "idols" rather than "oaks." Killing children in the valleys refers to child sacrifice, practiced in the ravines outside Jerusalem, particularly the Valley of Hinnom.

57:6

"Share" and "lot" are the ordinary words for the plot of land each Israelite family was allotted as its permanent inheritance, the same words used elsewhere to say that God himself is a person's portion. The line is bitter: these smooth water-worn stones, apparently set up in dry streambeds as objects of worship, are all the inheritance you will get. A drink offering was wine poured out on the ground or on an altar; a grain offering was flour, grain or baked bread presented rather than an animal.

57:7

Hilltop shrines, "high places", were the usual sites for worship of gods other than the LORD. "Bed" carries both senses at once: the couch set up at such a shrine, and the adultery image running through the passage.

57:8

Israelites were instructed to write God's commands on the doorposts of their houses, so setting up some other token in that exact spot is the sting of the accusation. The end of the verse is obscure in Hebrew: the key word can mean "hand," or "monument, marker, pillar," or serve as a euphemism for the male sex organ, so translators divide between "you gazed on their nakedness" and "you looked on the monument." "Made a deal" translates the word for a covenant, a formal, binding agreement, the same word used for the agreement between God and Israel.

57:9

The Hebrew word here is *melek*, "king," but written with the same consonants as *Molech*, the name of a god associated with child sacrifice; ancient and modern readers have gone both ways. On the first reading this is a diplomatic mission to a foreign ruler, with olive oil and perfume as the customary gifts; on the second it is worship. "The world of the dead" is Sheol, the shadowy place beneath the earth where all the dead were thought to go.

57:10

The Hebrew of the middle of this verse reads literally "you found the life of your hand," a phrase that occurs nowhere else and is not fully understood. It is usually taken to mean finding renewed strength or vigor.

57:12

This is said with a bite. God will hold up their so-called good deeds for everyone to see, and everyone will see they are worth nothing.

57:13

The word behind "the crowd of idols you have collected" simply means "your collection" or "your assembled ones," and could refer either to a hoard of images or to a set of foreign allies. The same Hebrew word means both wind and breath, so "the wind will carry them off" and "one puff of breath will take them away" are the same image twice. "The land" is the territory promised to Israel; "my holy mountain" is the temple hill in Jerusalem, also called Zion.

57:14

Ahead of a king's journey or a returning procession, road crews would clear stones and pile up an embanked track across low ground. Isaiah uses this repeatedly as an image for preparing for the people's return home.

57:15

"Holy" in Hebrew means set apart, belonging to a different order of things, rather than "morally excellent"; the name is a statement about separateness. The word rendered "crushed" ("contrite" in older English) literally means broken into pieces.

57:16

"Bring my case against" translates a courtroom term: to press a lawsuit or accusation against someone. In the second half, "spirit" and "lives" both translate words that also mean breath, the breath God put into human beings at their making. The point is that under unending anger that breath would simply run out.

57:17

Hiding the face is a fixed idiom for withdrawing attention and favor, the opposite of turning your face towards someone, which meant acceptance and goodwill.

57:18

When someone was very sad, friends came and cried out loud with them.

57:19

"The fruit of the lips" means the words a person speaks, here words of praise. "Far off" and "near" likely means the Israelites carried away to distant lands and those still at home. The word for peace is shalom, which means safety and wholeness, not just quiet.

57:20

"Mire" is deep, sticky mud. The picture is a sea that keeps churning and never settles.