Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Isaiah 59:8 - 59:8

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Isaiah 59:8 - 59:8


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Their whole nature is broken up into discord. “The way of peace they know not, and there is no right in their roads: they make their paths crooked: every one who treads upon them knows no peace.” With דֶּרֶךְ, the way upon which a man goes, the prophet uses interchangeably (here and in Isa 59:7) מְסִלָּה, a high-road thrown up with an embankment; מַעְגָּל (with the plural in ı̂m and ôth), a carriage-road; and נְתִיבָה, a footpath formed by the constant passing to and fro of travellers. Peaceable conduct, springing form a love of peace, and aiming at producing peace, is altogether strange to them; no such thing is to be met with in their path as the recognition of practice of right: they make their paths for themselves (לָהֶם, dat. ethicus), i.e., most diligently, twisting about; and whoever treads upon them (bâh, neuter, as in Isa 27:4), forfeits all enjoyment of either inward or outward peace. Shâlōm is repeated significantly, in Isaiah's peculiar style, at the end of the verse. The first strophe of the prophecy closes here: it was from no want of power or willingness on the part of God, that He had not come to the help of His people; the fault lay in their own sins.