Isaiah 57
Isaiah 57 opens on a death that goes unmourned: The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come (v. 1). The good are dying and the world barely notices - and the prophet reads in it a hidden mercy: they are being spared something. They enter into peace (v. 2). It is a sober, quiet beginning, and it sets the chapter's deepest concern: who finds rest, and who does not.3
From there the prophet turns and the tone hardens into rebuke. He names a people who have left the living God for idols on every green hill and under every spreading tree, and he describes that turning in the language of a love betrayed - a bed set on a high place, a covenant made with strangers, messengers sent far off to court other gods. Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way (v. 10), he says: they have exhausted themselves chasing what cannot save, and still will not call it hopeless. It is the oldest human story - the heart pouring its worship into things that take everything and give nothing back.1
And then, with no transition the reader expects, the indictment becomes invitation: Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people (v. 14). The God who has every reason to turn away instead clears the road home. The chapter rises to its summit in verse 15, where the One who inhabiteth eternity declares that He dwells not only in the high and holy place but with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit. It ends with peace held out to the far and the near alike - and with a final line that refuses to be softened: There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked (v. 21).2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Isaiah 57:1-2The Righteous Is Taken Away from the Evil to Come
1The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. 2He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.
The chapter begins not with thunder but with a quiet grief: The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart (v. 1). The good are dying, and no one is paying attention. Merciful men are taken away, and no one stops to consider what it means. There is a particular sorrow here that the prophet feels and the world does not - the loss of the faithful in a careless age, slipping out of the world while everyone is busy with other things. But Isaiah does not leave it as bare tragedy. He reads a mercy hidden inside it: the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. Their death is not abandonment; it is a gathering in before the storm. They are spared something - a worse day they will not have to see. And the next verse turns the grave itself toward rest: He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness (v. 2). Death, for the one who walked uprightly, is not the troubled sea the chapter will describe at its end; it is a bed, a place of rest, an entering into peace. The same word - peace - that the wicked will be denied in verse 21 is here held out to the faithful even in death. The chapter's two destinies are set from its very first lines.
Isaiah 57:3-10A Love Turned Away
3But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore. 4Against whom do ye sport yourselves? against whom make ye a wide mouth, and draw out the tongue? are ye not children of transgression, a seed of falsehood. 5Enflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks? 6Among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion; they, they are thy lot: even to them hast thou poured a drink offering, thou hast offered a meat offering. Should I receive comfort in these? 7Upon a lofty and high mountain hast thou set thy bed: even thither wentest thou up to offer sacrifice.
The tone turns abruptly. From mourning the righteous, the prophet wheels to summon the guilty: But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore (v. 3). The names are deliberately scalding. To call them sons of the sorceress and seed of adultery is to say their whole way of life descends from unfaithfulness - that idolatry runs in them like a family trait. And he exposes their posture toward the things of God: Against whom do ye sport yourselves? against whom make ye a wide mouth, and draw out the tongue? (v. 4). The picture is of open mockery - the gaping mouth, the lolling tongue, the jeer. Isaiah forces the question they have not asked themselves: against whom are you doing this? When a people mocks faithfulness and flaunts its rebellion, it is not really sneering at the prophet or at the dwindling righteous; it is making a wide mouth at God Himself. The charge lands: are ye not children of transgression, a seed of falsehood. The mockery is not harmless swagger; it is the outward face of a heart that has fastened itself to a lie.
Now the prophet names the worship itself, and the images are grim. They are enflaming themselves with idols under every green tree (v. 5) - the spreading trees of the high places, the favored shrines of pagan worship, where desire and devotion ran together. Worse, they are slaying the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks - the horror of child sacrifice, the ultimate inversion of worship, in which the gift demanded is a son or a daughter. Their devotion has run all the way to the bottom. Among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion (v. 6): they have chosen as their inheritance the polished stones of a streambed set up as idols, pouring out drink offerings and grain offerings to lifeless rock. And then God's aching question: Should I receive comfort in these? Could He possibly be pleased, take any solace, in a people who have handed His worship to stones and spent their own children on the altars of nothing? Verse 7 lifts the scene to the heights: Upon a lofty and high mountain hast thou set thy bed: even thither wentest thou up to offer sacrifice. The mention of a bed set on the high place begins to fuse two images that the next verses will press together - idol-worship and adultery, a covenant love given away.
8Behind the doors also and the posts hast thou set up thy remembrance: for thou hast discovered thyself to another than me, and art gone up; thou hast enlarged thy bed, and made thee a covenant with them; thou lovedst their bed where thou sawest it. 9And thou wentest to the king with ointment, and didst increase thy perfumes, and didst send thy messengers far off, and didst debase thyself even unto hell. 10Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way; yet saidst thou not, There is no hope: thou hast found the life of thine hand; therefore thou wast not grieved.
The language of betrayed marriage now becomes explicit, and it is the most painful image in the chapter. Thou hast discovered thyself to another than me (v. 8) - God speaks as a husband whose spouse has uncovered herself to a stranger. They have set up their pagan tokens in the most intimate places of the house, behind the doors also and the posts; they have enlarged the bed and made a covenant with their lovers; they loved that bed. The idolatry is not pictured as a cold legal breach but as a love torn away from where it belonged and lavished on others. Verse 9 follows the betrayal outward into exhausting diplomacy: they go to the king with ointment, pile up perfumes, send messengers far off to court foreign powers and foreign gods, debasing themselves down even unto hell. And then the prophet's most penetrating observation: Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way; yet saidst thou not, There is no hope (v. 10). They have worn themselves out on this long road of idolatry and intrigue - and still will not admit it is hopeless. They have just enough false vitality left - thou hast found the life of thine hand - to keep from despairing, keep from grieving, keep from turning. This is the deepest tragedy of a misplaced love: it exhausts the heart and never lets it confess that the chase was empty.
Isaiah 57:11-14Take Up the Stumblingblock
11And of whom hast thou been afraid or feared, that thou hast lied, and hast not remembered me, nor laid it to thy heart? have not I held my peace even of old, and thou fearest me not? 12I will declare thy righteousness, and thy works; for they shall not profit thee. 13When thou criest, let thy companies deliver thee; but the wind shall carry them all away; vanity shall take them: but he that putteth his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain; 14And shall say, Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people.
God presses a searching question: And of whom hast thou been afraid or feared, that thou hast lied, and hast not remembered me, nor laid it to thy heart? (v. 11). At the root of their unfaithfulness is a fear of the wrong things - they have dreaded human powers and foreign kings enough to lie and to forget God, while never letting the thought of Him reach their hearts. There is a quiet pathos in the next line: have not I held my peace even of old, and thou fearest me not? God's long patience - His silence, His withholding of judgment - has been mistaken for indifference, even for absence; they stopped fearing Him because He did not strike. Now He warns that their record will not save them: I will declare thy righteousness, and thy works; for they shall not profit thee (v. 12). Whatever righteousness they imagine they have will be exposed as worthless when weighed. And He turns their idols loose to do what idols do: When thou criest, let thy companies deliver thee (v. 13) - let the whole collection of gods they have gathered try to save them in the day of trouble. But the wind shall carry them all away; vanity shall take them. The idols are weightless; a breath scatters them. Over against that emptiness stands a promise that turns on a single word - trust: he that putteth his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain. The whole difference between the two destinies is where a person finally rests their weight.
Then the chapter does the thing that makes it unforgettable. After a relentless indictment - betrayal, child sacrifice, mockery, lies - the very next word is not a sentence of doom but a command to build a road home: Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people (v. 14). The doubled cry - cast ye up, cast ye up - is the language of roadwork, of raising a highway and clearing the path so the people can return. It echoes the great opening of this part of Isaiah, where a voice cried to prepare the way and make a highway in the desert. And notice who removes the obstacle. The people did not clear it; God says take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people. He calls them my people still - after everything - and He Himself orders the road made smooth so they can come back. This is the hinge of the chapter, and it reveals the heart driving the whole rebuke: the indictment was never the goal. It was always meant to lead here, to a cleared road and an open way. God does not expose the empty road in order to abandon the traveler; He exposes it in order to bring them home by a better one.
Isaiah 57:15-21I Dwell With Him That Is of a Contrite Spirit
15For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. 16For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made. 17For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart.
Here the chapter reaches its summit, and the language could hardly climb higher: For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy (v. 15). Three titles stacked one on another lift the eye as far up as it can go - God is high, lofty, the One whose dwelling is eternity itself, the One whose very name is Holy. He is set apart, exalted, beyond all reach. And then, in the same sentence, the descent: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit. The word also carries the whole astonishment. He dwells in the high and holy place - and also He dwells with the crushed. The God too great for the heavens to hold chooses a second address: the broken human heart. And He names His purpose there with great tenderness - to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. He does not come to the lowly to crush them further; He comes to revive them, to breathe life back into spirits that have been emptied out. This is the great paradox the chapter has been building toward: the height of God and the lowness of the broken are not opposites that keep them apart; they are exactly what draws Him near. The high One stoops, and where He stoops, the crushed come back to life.
God now opens the reason for His mercy, and it is rooted in His knowledge of how frail we are: For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made (v. 16). His anger against sin is real - the chapter has not pretended otherwise - but it is not endless, and the reason is mercy: if God pressed His wrath without limit, the spirit would fail, the very life He made would be crushed out entirely. He remembers that these are the souls which I have made. The Maker will not finally destroy what He has formed; His mercy is the mercy of a Creator toward His own creation. Verse 17 looks back honestly at the discipline that came before: For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart. God names the sin - covetousness, the grasping heart that idolatry always feeds - and He does not soften the fact that He struck and withdrew. And He notes the bleak result: even under discipline, the people went on frowardly, kept going their own willful way. The smiting did not, by itself, turn them. Something more than judgment will be needed to bring them back - and the next verse is where that something appears.
18I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners. 19I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the LORD; and I will heal him. 20But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. 21There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.
After all the wrath and willfulness, the turn is breathtaking in its grace: I have seen his ways, and will heal him (v. 18). God has watched the whole sorry road - the idolatry, the exhaustion, the stubbornness - I have seen his ways - and His response is not to abandon but to heal. He will lead the wanderer, restore comforts to him and to his mourners, gathering up even those who grieve. Then comes the chapter's great word, repeated for emphasis like a blessing pronounced twice: I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the LORD; and I will heal him (v. 19). God Himself creates the praise that answers Him - the fruit of the lips - and the word He sets on those lips is peace, spoken twice and flung in both directions: to the far off and to the near. Whoever they are, however distant they have wandered or however close they have stayed, the peace reaches them. And the verse closes as it must, with the promise that has now sounded three times in three verses: I will heal him. The God who smote (v. 17) is the God who heals (vv. 18-19); the wounding was never the last word. Healing was.
The chapter will not end without its other edge, and it draws it sharply. Against all this peace stands the condition of those who will not turn: But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt (v. 20). It is one of the most exact images in Scripture for a life without God. The sea cannot be still; it is forever heaving, restless, churning - and what it throws up from its depths is mire and dirt. So with the wicked: there is no rest in them, no settled peace, only an inner agitation that keeps surfacing the filth at the bottom. Their unrest is not a punishment arbitrarily imposed from outside; it is the nature of the life they have chosen, a sea that by its own restlessness can never come to peace. And then the final line, blunt and unsoftened, the verdict the whole book returns to: There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked (v. 21). It is the deliberate counterweight to verse 19. Peace, peace to the far and the near - but no peace to the wicked, because peace is found only in turning, only in the contrite and humble heart God revives, never in the hardened one. The door has been thrown wide; but a door is no use to the one who will not come through it.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Isaiah 57 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and the classical commentators side by side - useful for dakka (v. 15, the “contrite” that means crushed or pulverized) and for the phrase shokhen ad (v. 15, “inhabiteth eternity,” the One who dwells perpetually), and for the recurring word shalom (vv. 19, 21) that opens and closes the chapter's final movement.
- Isaiah 57 ↔ Matthew 5 · Matthew 11 · Ephesians 2Intertextual BibleTraces the chapter's threads into the New Testament - the high God who dwells with the contrite (v. 15) read beside the One meek and lowly in heart (Matt. 11:29) who blessed the poor in spirit and the mourning (Matt. 5:3-4), and the peace to the far and the near (v. 19) read beside Christ who preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh (Eph. 2:17).
- Isaiah 57 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Isaiah 57 - the righteous “taken away from the evil to come” (v. 1), the imagery of idolatry as marital betrayal in verses 5-9, the clearing of the road in verse 14, and the much-discussed description of God as the One who “inhabiteth eternity” and dwells with the crushed in spirit (v. 15).
Where this echoes in Scripture
The Righteous Is Taken Away from the Evil to Come
- Isaiah 53:3He is despised and rejected of men... and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.The supremely righteous One whose death the world laid not to heart - the deepest echo of verse 1.
- Revelation 14:13Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord... that they may rest from their labours.The rest the upright enter at death (v. 2) - named a blessing for those who die in the Lord.
- Psalm 116:15Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.What verse 1 insists the world overlooks - that the death of the faithful is anything but unnoticed by God.
- 2 Kings 22:20thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace, and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place.The mercy of being taken away before the evil to come (v. 1) - spoken to faithful Josiah.
A Love Turned Away
- Jeremiah 2:13they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.The same exchange as verses 5-10 - leaving the living God for things that cannot hold what they promise.
- Hosea 2:5I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax.The marriage-betrayal image of verses 7-8 - covenant love handed away to other lovers.
- Isaiah 55:2Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not?The weariness of verse 10 - labour poured out on what cannot satisfy.
- Romans 1:25Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.The heart of the rebuke in verses 3-8 - worship redirected from the Maker to the made.
Take Up the Stumblingblock
- Isaiah 40:3-4Prepare ye the way of the LORD... every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.The road-building cry of verse 14 - the same summons to clear and raise a highway for the returning people.
- Isaiah 51:12-13who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die... and forgettest the LORD thy maker?The misplaced fear of verse 11 - dreading mortal powers while forgetting the everlasting God.
- Psalm 37:9those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.The promise of verse 13 - the land and the holy mountain inherited by those who trust.
- Romans 9:33Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingblock and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.The stumblingblock God removes from His people’s road (v. 14) - an image the New Testament takes up again.
I Dwell With Him That Is of a Contrite Spirit
- Psalm 51:17The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.The contrite spirit God dwells with (v. 15) - the broken heart He receives rather than rejects.
- Matthew 5:3-4Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.The humble and the mourning of verse 15 blessed by name - the high God come near to the lowly.
- Ephesians 2:17And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.The peace to the far and the near of verse 19 - the apostle’s words for what Christ accomplished.
- Matthew 11:28-29Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden... for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest.The reviving of the humble (v. 15) and the rest the troubled sea cannot find (v. 20) - offered in person.
- John 14:27Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.The peace of verse 19 deepened - a stilling of the troubled heart the world cannot give.