Isaiah 50:1-3

Thus saith the Lord, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement?

Jehovah and unfaithful Israel

These Israelites went to the only kind of law with which they were familiar, and borrowed from it two of its forms, which were not only suggested to them by the relations in which the nation and the nation’s sons respectively stood to Jehovah, as wife and as children, but admirably illustrated the ideas they wished to express.

(1) There was the form of divorce, so expressive of the ideas of absoluteness, deliberateness and finality--of absoluteness, for throughout the East power of divorce rests entirely with the husband; of deliberateness, for in order to prevent hasty divorce the Hebrew law insisted that the husband must make a bill or writing of divorce instead of only speaking dismissal; and of finality, for such a writing in contrast to the spoken dismissal, set the divorce beyond recall.

(2) The other form which the doubters borrowed from their law, was one which, while it also illustrated the irrevocableness of the act, emphasized the helplessness of the agent--the act of the father who put his children away, not as the husband put his wife in his anger, but in his necessity, selling them to pay his debts and because he was bankrupt.

(3) On such doubts God turns with their own language--“I have indeed put your mother away, but where is the bill that makes her divorce final, beyond recall? You indeed were sold, but was it because I was bankrupt! To which, then, of My creditors (note the scorn of the plural) was it that I sold you? Nay, by means of your iniquities did ye sell yourselves, and by means of your transgressions were ye put away. But I stand here, ready as ever to save, I alone. If there is any difficulty about your restoration it lies in this, that I am alone, with no response or assistance from men.” (Prof. G. A. Smith, D.D.)

The sinner’s responsibility

I. THE SINNER’S MISERABLE CONDITION.

1. Separated from God.

2. Sold under sin.

II. THE OCCASION OF IT. Not the will of God, but his own love of sin, and his consequent disregard of God’s offers of deliverance from sin and sorrow. (J. Lyth, D.D.)

Israel self-ruined

Those who have professed to be the people of God, and yet seem to be severely dealt with, are apt to complain of God, and to lay the fault upon Him, as if He had severely dealt with them. But in answer to their murmurings, we have here--

I. A CHALLENGE TO PRODUCE ANY EVIDENCE THAT THE QUARREL BEGAN ON GOD’S SIDE (Isaiah 50:1).

II. A CHARGE THAT THEY WERE THEMSELVES THE AUTHOR OF THEIR RUIN. “Behold, for your iniquities,” etc.

III. A CONFIRMATION OF THIS CHALLENGE AND THIS CHARGE (Isaiah 50:2).

1. It Was plain that it was their own fault that they were cast off, for God came and offered them His helping hand, either to prevent their trouble or to deliver them out of it, but they slighted Him and all the tenders of His grace.

2. It was plain that it was not owing to any lack of power in God that they were led into the misery of captivity, and remained in it, for He is almighty. They lacked faith in Him, and so that power was not exerted on their behalf. So it is with sinners still. (M. Henry.)