John Calvin Commentary Isaiah 59:10

"We grope for the wall like the blind; yea, we grope as they that have no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the twilight; among them that are lusty we are as dead men." — Isaiah 59:10 (ASV)

We grope for the wall like the blind. He explains the same thing using different expressions. Because of the grievous complaints heard among the people, he determined to omit nothing suited to describe their calamities.

It is perhaps as a concession that he mentions these things, as if he had said, “Our affairs are reduced to the deepest misery, but we ought primarily to consider the cause, for we have deserved all this and far worse.”

But it is not a probable interpretation that spiritually dull persons are stirred to reflect on their evil actions. For although they are readily disposed to complain, the devil stupefies them, so that the signs of God’s anger do not awaken them to repentance.

The Prophet alludes to the metaphor he employed in the preceding verse, when he said that the people were in darkness and obscurity and found no escape. His meaning is that they lack counsel and are overwhelmed by such deep anguish that they have no solace or refuge.

When a lighter evil presses upon us, we look around and hope to find some means of escape. But when we are overpowered by heavier distresses, despair takes from us all ability to see or to judge. For this reason, the Prophet says that they have been thrown into a labyrinth and are “groping.”

We stumble. This same idea is expressed, and even in a more aggravated form, by this statement: if they move a foot, various stumbling blocks meet them on every side, and indeed, there is no relief for their distresses, as if day had been changed into night.

In solitary places as dead men. By “solitary places” I understand either gulfs or ruinous and barren regions. In this passage, I willingly follow Jerome’s version, who derives the word אשמנים (ashmannim) from אשם (asham), ”to be desolate.” The Jews, who choose to derive it from שמן (shaman), to be fat, appear to me to argue idly, and to have no solid ground for their opinion. They think that it denotes men, because שמן (shemen) denotes “ointment,” and say that this word is used for describing the Gentiles. But the true meaning of the Prophet is that the Jews have been reduced to a wilderness, so that, excluded from human society, they resemble the dead and have no hope of escape.