16 For you are our father, though Abraham has no knowledge of us, and Israel gives no thought to us: you, O Lord, are our father; from the earliest days you have taken up our cause.
Be not very angry, O Lord, and do not keep our sins in mind for ever: give ear to our prayer, for we are all your people.
The Lord, the King of Israel, even the Lord of armies who has taken up his cause, says, I am the first and the last, and there is no God but me.
Is this your answer to the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is he not your father who has given you life? He has made you and given you your place.
Have we not all one father? has not one God made us? why are we, every one of us, acting falsely to his brother, putting shame on the agreement of our fathers?
His sons come to honour, and he has no knowledge of it; they are made low, but he is not conscious of it.
Let this then be your prayer: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.
Being conscious that you have been made free from that foolish way of life which was your heritage from your fathers, not through a payment of things like silver or gold which come to destruction, But through holy blood, like that of a clean and unmarked lamb, even the blood of Christ: Who was marked out by God before the making of the world, but was caused to be seen in these last times for you, Who through him have faith in God who took him up again from the dead into glory; so that your faith and hope might be in God.
And you are to say to Pharaoh, The Lord says, Israel is the first of my sons:
A son gives honour to his father, and a servant has fear of his master: if then I am a father, where is my honour? and if I am a master, where is the fear of me? says the Lord of armies to you, O priests, who give no value to my name. And you say, How have we not given value to your name?
But I said, How am I to put you among the children, and give you a desired land, a heritage of glory among the armies of the nations? and I said, You are to say to me, My father; and not be turned away from me.
He who made the arm of his glory go at the right hand of Moses, by whom the waters were parted before them, to make himself an eternal name;
The living are conscious that death will come to them, but the dead are not conscious of anything, and they no longer have a reward, because there is no memory of them.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Isaiah 63
Commentary on Isaiah 63 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 63
In this chapter we have,
So that, upon the whole, we learn to embrace God's promises with an active faith, and then to improve them, and make use of them, both in prayers and praises.
Isa 63:1-6
It is a glorious victory that is here enquired into first and then accounted for.
In this representation of the victory we have,
Isa 63:7-14
The prophet is here, in the name of the church, taking a review, and making a thankful recognition, of God's dealings with his church all along, ever since he founded it, before he comes, in the latter end of this chapter and in the next, as a watchman upon the walls, earnestly to pray to God for his compassion towards her in her present deplorable state; and it was usual for God's people, in their prayers, thus to look back.
Isa 63:15-19
The foregoing praises were intended as an introduction to this prayer, which is continued to the end of the next chapter, and it is an affectionate, importunate, pleading prayer. It is calculated for the time of the captivity. As they had promises, so they had prayers, prepared for them against that time of need, that they might take with them words in turning to the Lord, and say unto him what he himself taught them to say, in which they might the better hope to prevail, the words being of God's own inditing. Some good interpreters think this prayer looks further, and that it expresses the complaints of the Jews under their last and final rejection from God and destruction by the Romans; for there is one passage in it (ch. 64:4) which is applied to the grace of the gospel by the apostle (1 Co. 2:9), that grace for the rejecting of which they were rejected. In these verses we may observe,