Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 50

Where is the bill ...? — The thought seems suggested by Isaiah 49:14, but expands in a different direction. Both questions imply a negative answer. Jehovah had not formally repudiated the wife (Judah) whom He had chosen (Deuteronomy 24:1) as He had done her sister Israel (Jeremiah 3:8; Hosea 2:2). He had no creditors among the nations who could claim her children. On the law of debt which supplies the image, compare Exodus 21:7; 2 Kings 4:1; Nehemiah 5:5. The divorce, the sale, were her acts and not His.

Wherefore, when I came...? — The "coming" of Jehovah must be taken in all its width of meaning. He came in the deliverance from Babylon, in a promise of still greater blessings, in the fullest sense, in and through His Servant, and yet no one came to help in the work or even to receive the message. (Compare to Isaiah 63:3.)

Not that He needed human helpers. In words that remind us, in their sequence, of the phenomena of the plagues of Egypt, the prophet piles up the mighty works of which He is capable. These words are echoed in Revelation 6:12; Revelation 8:9; Revelation 8:12.

The Lord God ... —A new section begins in the form of an abruptly introduced soliloquy. As in Isaiah 49:4, the speaker is the Servant of Jehovah, not Isaiah, though we may legitimately trace in what follows some echoes of the prophet’s own experience. The union of the two names Adonai Jahveh (or Jehovah) indicates, as elsewhere, a special solemnity.

The tongue of the learned. —Better, of a disciple, or, well-trained scholar.

That I should know how to speak. —Better, that I should know how to sustain (or, refresh) the weary with a word.

He awakens. —The daily teaching of the morning communion with God is contrasted by implication with the dreams and night visions of a less perfect inspiration. An illustration, perhaps a conscious fulfilment, may be found in Mark 1:35; Luke 4:42.

To hear as the learned. —Read disciples, as before. The true Servant is also as a scholar, studious of the Master’s will, as are other scholars.

The Lord God. — Jehovah Adonai, as before. The Servant continues his soliloquy. What has come to him in the morning communings with God is, as in the next verse, that he too is to bear reproach and shame, as other disciples had done before him. The writer of Psalm 22:7, the much-enduring Job (Job 30:10), the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 20:7), were but foreshadowings of the sufferings that should fall on him.

And all this the true Servant-Scholar accepts willingly, because it is his Father’s will. Here again we cannot fail to trace the influence of Isaiah’s words in all our Lord’s utterances as to His passion (Mark 10:34; Luke 18:32).

The Lord God will help me.—That one support gives to the suffering Servant an indomitable strength. (Ezekiel 3:9 for the phrase.)