No-Fault Sin Text: Isaiah 50:1-3
Introduction: The Courtroom of Covenant
We live in an age that has mastered the art of blame-shifting. It is the age of the no-fault divorce, the victim mentality, and the therapeutic excuse. When things go wrong, when relationships shatter, when societies crumble, the first instinct of modern man is to look for a scapegoat, a systemic cause, a nebulous "they" who are responsible for the mess. But this is nothing new. This is the oldest trick in the book, first performed by our parents in the Garden when Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. The one party no one wants to indict is the one staring back from the mirror.
Into this culture of excuse-making, the prophet Isaiah speaks a word from God that is as sharp as a surgeon's scalpel. The people of Judah are in exile, or headed there, and they are feeling abandoned. They feel like a wife unjustly put away by her husband, or like children sold into slavery by an indebted father. They have constructed a narrative in which they are the victims and God is, at best, negligent and, at worst, capricious and unfaithful. They are putting God in the dock.
But God turns the tables. He summons them to His courtroom, not as the defendant, but as the prosecuting attorney and the judge. He cross-examines His people with a series of devastating rhetorical questions that are designed to dismantle their entire case. He is not the one who has broken the covenant. He is not the one who has been unfaithful. The problem is not with His ability to save or His willingness to love. The problem, He declares with blunt finality, is their sin. Their predicament is not a result of divine impotence or divine infidelity, but of their own iniquities and transgressions.
This passage is a powerful refutation of all attempts to blame God for the consequences of our rebellion. It is a declaration of His covenant faithfulness, His sovereign power, and His righteous judgment. It forces us to confront the real source of our miseries and points us to the only true solution, which is not a change in God's character, but a repentance of our own.
The Text
Thus says Yahweh, "Where is the certificate of divorce By which I have sent your mother away? Or to which of My creditors did I sell you? Behold, you were sold for your iniquities, And for your transgressions your mother was sent away. Why was there no man when I came? When I called, why was there none to answer? Is My hand so short that it cannot ransom? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, I dry up the sea with My rebuke; I make the rivers a wilderness; Their fish stink for lack of water And die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness And make sackcloth their covering.”
(Isaiah 50:1-3 LSB)
The Unproduced Documents (v. 1)
God begins His case with a demand for evidence.
"Thus says Yahweh, 'Where is the certificate of divorce By which I have sent your mother away? Or to which of My creditors did I sell you? Behold, you were sold for your iniquities, And for your transgressions your mother was sent away.'" (Isaiah 50:1)
God uses two legal and domestic metaphors that every Israelite would have understood perfectly: divorce and debt-slavery. Under the Mosaic Law, if a man divorced his wife, he had to give her a written certificate of divorce (Deuteronomy 24:1). This was a legal document that formally severed the union. God's first challenge is this: "Produce the document." He is saying, "If I have divorced you, where is the paperwork?" The question is rhetorical because no such document exists. God has not initiated a final, legal, covenantal divorce from His people. Their feeling of abandonment does not correspond to the legal reality. God is a covenant-keeping God, and though He may discipline His people for their spiritual adultery, He has not ultimately cast them off.
The second question is equally pointed: "Or to which of My creditors did I sell you?" In the ancient world, a man deep in debt might be forced to sell his children into servitude to pay it off. God's point is one of absolute sovereignty. To whom could the God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills possibly be in debt? He has no creditors. He is beholden to no one. He is never a victim of circumstance. Therefore, if Israel has been "sold" into the slavery of exile, it cannot be because God was weak, or cornered, or forced into it by some higher power. Both of these excuses, that God has abandoned them or that God was powerless to help them, are demolished.
Having shown what did not happen, God then declares what did happen. "Behold, you were sold for your iniquities, And for your transgressions your mother was sent away." The responsibility is laid squarely at their own feet. The transaction was not a sale to a creditor, but a self-sale into bondage. They sold themselves through their own sin. The terms here are precise. "Iniquities" points to the twisted, perverse nature of their hearts, their inner crookedness. "Transgressions" refers to their outward acts of rebellion, their crossing of the lines God had drawn. Their internal corruption led to external rebellion, and the result was exile. This was not an accident; it was a consequence. It was the predictable and just result of their covenant-breaking.
The Unanswered Call (v. 2a)
God continues His indictment by pointing out their willful deafness to His calls for repentance.
"Why was there no man when I came? When I called, why was there none to answer?" (Isaiah 50:2a)
This is the tragedy of a rebellious heart. God did not remain distant. He came. He sent prophet after prophet, Isaiah being one of them, to woo His people back. He called to them, pleading with them to return. The coming of God through His prophets was an act of grace. He did not have to warn them. He could have simply brought judgment. But He called. And the response was silence. A defiant, stubborn silence.
This is not the silence of ignorance, but of insolence. It is the picture of a husband calling to his wife, and she pointedly refuses to answer. It is the picture of a father calling his son, and the son puts his fingers in his ears. "There was no man" does not mean the land was empty. It means there was no man of faith, no one willing to stand up and answer God's call, no one to intercede, no one to lead the people in repentance. The leadership was corrupt, and the people loved to have it so. God came looking for a response, for a flicker of faith, and He found nothing but spiritual vacancy.
The Unquestioned Power (v. 2b-3)
Having established their guilt, God now moves to dismantle their final, unspoken accusation: that perhaps He was simply not powerful enough to save them from their enemies.
"Is My hand so short that it cannot ransom? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, I dry up the sea with My rebuke; I make the rivers a wilderness; Their fish stink for lack of water And die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness And make sackcloth their covering.” (Isaiah 50:2b-3)
God answers their implicit charge of weakness with a thunderous declaration of His cosmic power. "Is my hand so short?" This is a classic biblical idiom for a lack of power. God's hand, His agent of action in the world, is never too short. His power to ransom and deliver is absolute. To prove it, He points to His resume. He reminds them of the Exodus, the foundational act of their redemption. "I dry up the sea with My rebuke." This is a direct reference to the parting of the Red Sea. The God who can command the oceans with a word has not suddenly become feeble.
His power is not limited to the past. He speaks in the present tense. He makes the rivers a wilderness. He can turn sources of life into places of death. The fish die and stink because He withholds the water. This is total, sovereign control over the natural world. He then moves from the waters to the heavens. "I clothe the heavens with blackness And make sackcloth their covering." He can turn day into night. He can make the sky itself go into mourning. This is the power that was on display in the plague of darkness over Egypt and would be on display again at the crucifixion of His Son.
The argument is overwhelming. The God who can deconstruct and reconstruct the entire cosmos at will is not going to be thwarted by the Babylonian army. The problem is not a lack of power in His hand, but a lack of faith in their hearts. They are in exile not because God's arm was too short to save, but because their necks were too stiff to repent.
The Servant Who Answers
This passage leaves Israel in a desperate state. They have sinned. They have refused to answer God's call. They are without excuse. If the story ended here, it would be a story of pure judgment. But this is not the end of the story. This chapter is one of the great "Servant Songs" of Isaiah. And just a few verses later, we hear the voice of the one who did answer the call.
Where there was "no man" to answer, the Servant says, "The Lord Yahweh has given Me the tongue of disciples... He awakens My ear to listen as a disciple" (Isaiah 50:4). Where Israel was rebellious, the Servant says, "I was not rebellious, I did not turn back" (Isaiah 50:5). The one who came and found no man to answer was the eternal Son. And when He came in the flesh, He was the one man who answered perfectly. Jesus Christ is the true Israel, the faithful Son who obeyed where Adam and Israel failed.
And what was the result of His perfect answer? He was sold, not for His own iniquities, for He had none, but for ours. He was sent away, not for His transgressions, but for ours. He was handed over to creditors, as it were, taking our infinite debt upon Himself so that it might be paid in full. On the cross, the heavens were clothed in blackness, and the land was covered in sackcloth, as the Father poured out the rebuke for our sin upon His own Son.
God's hand was not too short to ransom. The price of that ransom was the blood of His Son. And His power to deliver was demonstrated when He raised that Son from the dead. Therefore, the call comes to us today. When God comes to us in the gospel, when He calls us to repent and believe, we must not be like ancient Israel, who gave only a defiant silence. We must look to the Servant, the Lord Jesus, and see that our iniquities have been paid for. We must answer His call, not with excuses, but with faith. For all who do, He proves that His hand is mighty to save, and He will deliver us not into exile, but into His everlasting kingdom.