Isaiah 64:5-7

Thou meetest him that rejoiceth, &c.— Thou meetest with joy those who work righteousness; who in thy ways remember thee. Lo! thou art angry; for we have sinned; because of our deeds; for we have been rebellious: and we are all of us as a polluted thing; and like a rejected garment are all our righteous deeds: and we are withered away, like a leaf, all of us; and our sins, like the wind, have borne us away. There is no one that invoketh thy name, that rouseth himself up to lay hold on thee: therefore thou hast hidden thy face from us; and hast delivered us up into the hand of our iniquities. Lowth. The supplication interrupted by the earnest vow in the preceding verse is here repeated. The supplicants acknowledge their common apostacy from God, and general corruption; in the mean time praising and celebrating the conduct of divine Providence toward the true worshippers; which confession of their fault, and acknowledgment of the justice of the divine judgment, run through these verses. The 6th verse alludes to the leprosy, which was the highest degree of uncleanness among the Jews. The prophets frequently borrow their images from the received customs and ritual ceremonies of the nations, among which the distinction betwixt things clean and unclean makes no small figure; and under these images they frequently describe moral defects, and religious offences, as in the present passage; which immediately referring to the Jews, the word righteousness, or justifications, alludes to all those external ceremonies and services wherein they placed merit, and whence they hoped for justification. See Romans 10:3 and Vitringa.