Isaiah 59:15 and the chapters following are surely the best picture of the Atonement that no one pays attention to, much like Proverbs 8:22-31 in regard to the Trinity and creation.

The Breach That Requires Atonement/Reconciliation

Let’s jump right into it, though we will have to lay a foundation in Isaiah 59:1-2.

Behold, Yahweh’s hand is not shortened, that it can’t save;
nor his ear dull, that it can’t hear.
But your iniquities have separated you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you,
so that he will not hear.

Think about the problem here. Yahweh can save, but our sins have gotten in the way of his salvation. This is strange because one of the problems God saves us from is our sins. For example, after committing adultery with Bathsheba and murdering her husband Uriah, David does not only ask for mercy (Ps. 51:1-2), but he also cries out, “Create in me a clean heart” (Ps. 51:12).

Still, under the Law of Moses, as the apostle Paul points out, “The one who does [the laws] will live by them” (Rom. 10:5). An anonymous Christian writer, sometime in the early second century, pointed out:

As long then as the former time endured, He permitted us to be borne along by unruly impulses, being drawn away by the desire of pleasure and various lusts. This was not that He at all delighted in our sins, but that He simply endured them; nor that He approved the time of working iniquity which then was, but that He sought to form a mind conscious of righteousness, so that being convinced in that time of our unworthiness of attaining life through our own works, it should now, through the kindness of God, be vouchsafed to us; and having made it manifest that in ourselves we were unable to enter into the kingdom of God, we might through the power of God be made able. (“Epistle to Diognetus,” ch. 9)

This Christian from 1,900 years in our past explains why God put Israel through the rigors of the Law of Moses and the punishments for failing to live up to its demands. Adam was not enough. Israel had to drive it home to us that it is a rare human being that lives righteously. (Let’s remember that Job, Daniel, Joseph, the prophets, and some few others lived faithful to God under the Old Covenant.) He wanted the whole human race to know that we can only enter the Kingdom of God by the power of God. (In the same way as a rich man can only overcome the deceitfulness and temptations of riches by the power of God [Matt. 19:23-26].)

When you are done reading my blog post, go back to this link, and you will love his poetic description of what God did as described here by Isaiah.

Isaiah 59:3-14 goes on to describe the problem of sin in the same exquisite and painful detail that Romans 3 does, but let’s jump to the solution, the method of God’s atonement.

The Solution

Isaiah 59:15-16 has to be one of the most fascinating comments in the Bible.

Yahweh saw it,
and it displeased him that there was no justice.
He saw that there was no man,
and marveled that there was no intercessor.

God says something very similar in Ezekiel 22:30-31:

“I sought for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I would not destroy it; but I found no one. Therefore I have poured out my indignation on them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. I have brought their own way on their heads,” says the Lord Yahweh.

As is typical with the words “no one” and “everyone,” God means “almost no one” here. Jeremiah stood before God in Jerusalem, warning its citizens and pleading for Jerusalem until God told him to stop praying for them (Jer. 7:16; 14:11). He gives the reason for this in Ezekiel 14:14 (and repeats it in 14:20):

“Son of man, when a land sins against me by committing a trespass, and I stretch out my hand on it, and break the staff of its bread and send famine on it, and cut off from it man and animal—though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver only their own souls by their righteousness,” says the Lord Yahweh.

I know we’re off on a rabbit trail, but if you think God always means “no one,” rather than “almost no one” or “hardly anyone,” when he says “no one,” you will be constantly confused by the Bible, wondering who the “generation of the righteous” is (Ps. 14:5) when there was “no one who does good, no, not one” just 2 verses earlier (Ps. 14:3).

Okay, back to Isaiah 59. God says that there was no intercessor, but this is prophecy. This is not the time of sending his people into captivity in Babylon, when he told them he was cutting off the land even if Noah, Daniel, and Job lived there. In Isaiah 59, God had a different response to the lack of an intercessor.

Therefore his own arm brought salvation to him;
and his righteousness sustained him.
He put on righteousness as a breastplate,
and a helmet of salvation on his head.
He put on garments of vengeance for clothing,
and was clad with zeal as a mantle.
According to their deeds,
he will repay as appropriate:
wrath to his adversaries,
recompense to his enemies.
He will repay the islands their due. (Isa. 59:16-18)

Again, this is prophecy. Under the Old Testament, God had a physical, earthly nation with physical enemies, all of whom were figures of the heavenly kingdom and the spiritual forces of darkness that are our real enemies. When Isaiah says that God will repay wrath to his adversaries, he is not talking about Moab and Babylon nor any other earthly enemies. He was talking about principalities, authorities, dominions, and powers in the heavenly realm.

Thus, the result of God’s personal warfare on his enemies …

So they will fear Yahweh’s name from the west,
and his glory from the rising of the sun;
for he will come as a rushing stream,
which Yahweh’s breath drives. (Isa. 59:19)

That is the result. These are all big, booming, shake-the-heavens kind of words. God rises up; he puts on a breastplate (righteousness), a helmet (salvation), and he puts on “garments of vengeance.” The result is that everyone fears his name from the west to the east. It is “a rushing stream” being driven along by the breath of the Lord.

Whoo! It’s a wild storm in the heavenlies. On earth, though, it is quiet; the storm is unseen.

“A Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from disobedience in Jacob,” says Yahweh.

On earth, the Creator quietly slipped into his creation.

Hold that thought. When Paul quotes this verse in Romans 11:26, he says that God will “turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” That’s a different idea than that he will come to those who have already turned from ungodliness. This is because Paul was quoting the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

I am not going to address this discrepancy because it is irrelevant to this description of the Atonement in Isaiah. My position is that the Holy Spirit meant to say what he said through Isaiah, and he meant to say what he said through Paul. I can’t do anything about the fact that the way he adjusted what Isaiah said was through a Greek translation made by Jews in Egypt before Jesus was born. God does what he does, and I try to learn from his actions, not correct them nor misrepresent them.

Back to that thought: The Creator’s entrance into his creation was not completely unheralded. Sages from Persia saw signs in the sky and traveled to Jerusalem to greet the King of the Universe. Messengers from heaven announced the King’s birth to shepherds on a nearby hill.

Most of those in Jerusalem, the city of the great King (Ps. 48), had no idea.

The Results

And thus began the fulfillment of a promise made some 700 years earlier by Yahweh, the God of Israel, that he would put on garments of vengeance and crush his enemies. For his people, he would …

“As for me, this is my covenant with them,” says Yahweh. “My Spirit who is on you, and my words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your offspring, nor out of the mouth of your offspring’s offspring,” says Yahweh, “from now on and forever.” (Isa. 59:21)

After the Creator crushed his enemies, there came a new covenant, a covenant that would forever change those who entered into covenant with God through the Redeemer who came to Zion. In the next post, we’ll talk about the crushing of God’s enemies, the way-over-my-head parts and the parts I understand. We’ll also move on to Isaiah 60 and start enjoying the prophetic promises of God that are given there.

We speak wisdom, however, among those who are full grown, yet a wisdom not of this world nor of the rulers of this world who are coming to nothing. But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds for our glory, which none of the rulers of this world has known. For had they known it, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory, but as it is written, “Things which an eye didn’t see, and an ear didn’t hear, which didn’t enter into the heart of man, these God has prepared for those who love him.” But to us, God revealed them through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. (1 Cor. 2:6-10).