A good man dies and nobody thinks anything of it. Isaiah says something was happening that none of them saw — and then, thirteen verses later, gives the two addresses at which God can be found. One of them is exactly where you would expect. The other is not.
A study in Isaiah 57 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 16 min read
The Righteous Perisheth, And No Man Layeth It To Heart
“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.”
Isaiah 57:1
The chapter opens on a funeral that nobody attended properly.
Twice in one verse Isaiah says what was missing, and both times it is a failure of attention rather than of feeling. No man layeth it to heart. None considering. The righteous man died and it was noted and filed, and nobody worked out what it meant.
And there is a second loss in the verse that is easy to read past: merciful men are taken away. The people going are specifically the kind ones. Isaiah is describing a society being quietly drained of its decent people — not martyred, not driven out, simply dying in the ordinary way and not being replaced — and nobody notices because each death, taken by itself, is unremarkable.
Then the interpretation, and it reverses the whole thing: the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.
What looked like the worst thing that could happen to a good man turns out to have been an extraction. Something is coming, and he has been taken out of its path. This does not make every death a rescue, and Isaiah is not offering a general theory of why good people die; he is saying that in this particular generation, with this particular judgment approaching, God was removing people before it arrived.
It is a hard comfort and it is a real one. The steady disappearance of good people from a community can be read two ways — as evidence that God is not paying attention, or as evidence that He is.
They Shall Rest In Their Beds
“He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.”
Isaiah 57:2
And here is what has become of them, in the plainest terms the Old Testament uses.
He shall enter into peace. They shall rest in their beds. The bed is the grave, and the verb is rest — which is the word Scripture reaches for again and again when it speaks about the dead. Job asked for it. David used it. Jesus said of Lazarus that he sleeps.
This is worth stating plainly, because it is one of the places where what the Bible says and what most people assume have drifted apart. Isaiah does not say the righteous man went somewhere and is now busy. He says he entered peace and is resting. There is no anxiety in it and no activity either — and, importantly, no suggestion that he is watching the evil to come from a better seat. He was taken away from it. He does not see it at all.
The last phrase belongs to him rather than to his grave: each one walking in his uprightness. That is how he lived, carried into the sentence about how he lies. Whatever else is true of that man, the last thing said about him is that he walked straight.
Under Every Green Tree
“But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore… Enflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks?”
Isaiah 57:3, 5
The tone changes without warning, and the contrast is the argument: the merciful are being taken away, and this is what is left.
Verse 5 names the worst of it in a subordinate clause, which is somehow more shocking than a whole chapter would be: slaying the children in the valleys. Child sacrifice was practised in the ravines outside Jerusalem, and Isaiah puts it in the same breath as the fertility rites under the trees because to him they are the same religion, and one of them ends where the other began.
The rest of the indictment is written as adultery, and it is sustained with real skill. A bed is set on a high mountain (v.7). A keepsake is put up behind the door (v.8) — the place where the household kept the words of the law, now holding a token of somebody else. The bed is enlarged. And in verse 9 the woman goes off with perfume to see a king, which drops the metaphor onto the actual policy: the diplomatic missions, the tribute, the alliances. The idolatry and the foreign policy are one behavior, and Isaiah has been saying so since chapter 30.
Wearied In The Greatness Of Thy Way
“Thou 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.”
Isaiah 57:10
This verse is a piece of observation so precise it is almost unkind.
Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way. The pursuit has worn her out. It is long, it takes everything, and she is exhausted — that much is admitted.
And then: yet saidst thou not, There is no hope. She never once said it was not working.
That is the whole mechanism of a life spent on something that cannot deliver, and Isaiah has spotted why it persists. It is not that she is deceived about the exhaustion; she can feel that. It is that thou hast found the life of thine hand — she keeps getting just enough. Some small return, some intermittent success, enough vitality to carry on — therefore thou wast not grieved. She never reached the point of despair that would have made her stop.
Chapter 16 said the same thing about Moab: weary on the high place, still climbing, praying and not prevailing. Isaiah keeps noticing that false religion is not lazy. It is tiring, and the tiredness is not enough to end it.
Have Not I Held My Peace?
“And 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?”
Isaiah 57:11
God asks two questions, and the second one explains everything.
Have not I held my peace even of old, and thou fearest me not? He kept quiet. He kept quiet for a long time. And the silence was read as absence — or, worse, as consent.
That is a remarkably candid thing for God to say about His own conduct. He is naming His patience as the very thing that made Him easy to disregard, and He is not defending it. Chapter 18 explained what the silence was — I will take my rest, and I will consider, like clear heat, like dew — but from the inside it looked like nothing at all, and Isaiah lets God acknowledge that it did.
And note the phrase in the first question: nor laid it to thy heart. Exactly what nobody did about the righteous man in verse 1. The same failure runs through the whole chapter — things happen, and nobody takes them in.
Take Up The Stumblingblock
“And shall say, Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people.”
Isaiah 57:14
The road crew is called out, and Isaiah has used this image before — the highway of chapter 11, the way prepared in chapter 40, the way of holiness in chapter 35.
But the instruction here is narrower and more practical than any of those. Take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people. Not build a road. Remove the thing on it.
And it is addressed to somebody. God is not clearing the obstacle Himself in this verse; He is telling people to. Which is a job worth taking seriously in any congregation, because the stumblingblock in a road is rarely put there on purpose, and the person who put it there is usually not the person tripping over it.
The Two Addresses
“For 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.”
Isaiah 57:15
This is the summit of the chapter and one of the greatest verses in the Bible, and its whole force is in a single word: also.
Look at the speaker first, because Isaiah takes his time over the titles. The high and lofty One. That inhabiteth eternity. Whose name is Holy. Three descriptions, and every one of them puts distance between Him and the reader — height, endless duration, and the holiness that made a prophet say woe is me in chapter 6.
Then He gives His address: I dwell in the high and holy place. Exactly as expected.
And then also. With him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.
Not instead. Not by visiting. He lives in both places at once, and the second residence is not a lesser one. The God who inhabits eternity keeps a second address in the interior of a broken person, and the verse is arranged so that you feel the whole weight of the first half before the second arrives.
And notice the qualification, because it is the only one given. Not the righteous. Not the learned. Not the priest. Contrite and humble — which are not achievements but the absence of a particular resistance. Ellen White puts her finger on what that resistance is: “The heart that has not fallen on the Rock is proud of its wholeness” (Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 162). And a few lines earlier, the reason people stay whole: “Men want a dignified religion. They desire to walk in a path wide enough to take in their own attributes” (same page).
Contrite means broken. The one condition for God taking up residence is the one thing nobody wants to be, and the chapter has just spent ten verses on a woman who was exhausted and would not say there was no hope.
Set this beside chapter 33, which asked who could dwell with the devouring fire. Isaiah 57 answers from the other direction. The question there was who can survive living with God. The answer here is that God has already moved in with the contrite — and the purpose is stated twice so that nobody mistakes it for judgment: to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. He does not go there to inspect. He goes there to bring somebody round.
I Will Not Contend For Ever
“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.”
Isaiah 57:16
And the reason given for the limit is not what anybody would guess.
God says He will not contend for ever — and the explanation is for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made. He stops because we cannot take it. Sustained opposition from God would simply extinguish the creature, and He knows the tolerances because He built them.
It is the same logic as the farmer at the end of chapter 28, who does not thresh for ever and does not put the cart wheel on the cumin. And it is the strongest possible argument against the idea that God’s anger is something that could run on indefinitely: He has stated, in writing, that He limits it, and He has given the reason, and the reason is the frailty of the people He made.
I Have Seen His Ways, And Will Heal Him
“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. I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners.”
Isaiah 57:17, 18
These two verses sit next to each other and the join between them is the most surprising thing in the chapter.
Verse 17 is a record of total failure. God was angry; He struck; He hid; the man went on frowardly in the way of his heart — carried straight on, unimproved by any of it. Every measure was tried and none of them worked.
Then verse 18 opens: I have seen his ways, and will heal him.
Read the conjunction carefully, because everything is in it. Not I have seen his ways, and therefore I am finished with him. I have seen his ways — the full account, the froward walking, the whole record of verse 17 — and will heal him. The seeing and the healing are in the same sentence, and the seeing comes first.
This is the same movement as chapter 19, where God said He would smite Egypt and heal it. Here it is applied to His own people and stated at even closer range: after the anger, after the hiding, after the man went on regardless — healing, leading, and comforts restored unto him and to his mourners. Even the people who were grieving over him get something back.
Peace To Him That Is Far Off
“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.”
Isaiah 57:19
I create the fruit of the lips. The praise that comes back to God is itself something He makes — He supplies the words as well as the reason for them.
And then the greeting, doubled: Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near. Two distances, one word, and the far one is named first.
Paul took this verse and built the argument of Ephesians 2 on it. Explaining how Gentiles came into a covenant they had no claim on, he says Christ “came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh” (Ephesians 2:17). The far ones are the Gentiles, the near ones are Israel, and Paul’s whole point is that the two groups got the identical greeting from the same mouth.
Which is where this book has been going since the mountain of chapter 2 and the ensign of chapter 11. Isaiah wrote peace, peace to the far and the near; seven centuries later an apostle quoted it to a room containing both, as the proof that the wall between them had come down.
The Troubled Sea
“But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”
Isaiah 57:20, 21
The chapter ends with the one condition the offer does not reach, and the image is exact.
The troubled sea, when it cannot rest. Not a sea being lashed by a storm from outside — a sea that cannot rest, whose own motion is the problem. And the result is not danger but sediment: whose waters cast up mire and dirt. Water that keeps moving cannot settle, and everything on the bottom stays suspended in it. Nothing ever clears.
Set it against the whole chapter and the design is plain. The righteous enter into peace and rest in their beds. The wicked cannot rest. The contrite are the address where God lives; the restless are the sea that will not settle long enough for anything to clear.
And the last line is not a threat but a statement of fact: there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. Not there will be none. There is none — now, already, whatever the arrangements look like from outside. It is the same verdict as the woman in verse 10 who was wearied in the greatness of her way and never said there was no hope. The peace was never being withheld. It was being refused, by people too tired to notice they were doing it.
