Isaiah 50 Bible study: Morning by morning

The chapter opens with "The LORD says" (50:1), and what he says begins with two questions: "Where is the bill of your mother’s divorce, with which I have put her away? Or to which of my creditors have I sold you?" (50:1) (tap divorce). The same verse answers with a reason: "Behold, you were sold for your iniquities, and your mother was put away for your transgressions" (50:1). The verse doesn't name the mother or the children. Then more questions: "Why, when I came, was there no one? When I called, why was there no one to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it can’t redeem? Or have I no power to deliver?" (50:2). The LORD answers with what his hand does: "Behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea. I make the rivers a wilderness" (50:2), and "I clothe the heavens with blackness. I make sackcloth their covering" (50:3). In Hebrew blackness is qadrut, which the Hebrew Bible has only here. The WEB closes the LORD's words at the end of 50:3. In the whole chapter the WEB has ten questions, and six of them are the LORD's, in 50:1-2.

Isaiah 50:6→leads toLuke 18:31-33

In Isaiah 50 a voice that doesn't give its name says, "I gave my back to those who beat me, and my cheeks to those who plucked off the hair. I didn’t hide my face from shame and spitting" (Isaiah 50:6), and "For the Lord GOD will help me" (Isaiah 50:7). On the way to Jerusalem Jesus "took the twelve aside" (Luke 18:31) and said, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all the things that are written through the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be completed" (Luke 18:31). "For he will be delivered up to the Gentiles, will be mocked, treated shamefully, and spit on" (Luke 18:32). "They will scourge and kill him. On the third day, he will rise again" (Luke 18:33). Jesus doesn't name Isaiah or any one prophet here, so setting Isaiah 50:6 beside his words is a reading. Some hear Isaiah 50:6 among "all the things that are written through the prophets concerning the Son of Man" (Luke 18:31), since Jesus names being spit on among them. Others read Jesus's words of the prophets as a whole, without pointing to Isaiah 50, and read Isaiah 50:6 of the one who speaks in Isaiah 50:4-9, saying nothing more. These notes pick neither reading, and don't say who speaks in Isaiah 50:4-9.

לִמּוּדlimmudsay lim-MOOD

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "taught", and among its senses, "taught, as disciples". Strong's: "instructed". "The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of those who are taught" (50:4), and "he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught" (50:4): the word twice in one verse, first with the tongue and then with the ear. The Hebrew Bible has it six times, and four are in Isaiah: "Seal the law among my disciples" (Isaiah 8:16), the two here, and "All your children will be taught by the LORD" (Isaiah 54:13). The chapter on Isaiah 8 studies it.