Thus saith the LORD, Where is the {a} bill of your mother's divorcement, {b} whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it {c} to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.

(a) Meaning, that he has not forsaken her, but through her own opportunity as in Ho 2:2.

(b) Who would declare that I have cut her off: meaning, that they could show no one.

(c) Signifying, that he sold them not for any debt or poverty, but that they sold themselves to sins to buy their own lusts and pleasures.

Wesley's Notes

50:1 Thus saith the Lord - The scope of this and the next chapter , is to vindicate God's justice and to convince the Jews that they were the causes of their own calamities. Behold - You can blame none but yourselves and your own sins, for all your captivities and miseries.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

CHAPTER 50

Isa 50:1-11. The Judgments on Israel Were Provoked by Their Crimes, yet They Are Not Finally Cast Off by God.

1. Where . mothers divorcement-Zion is "the mother"; the Jews are the children; and God the Husband and Father (Isa 54:5; 62:5; Jer 3:14). Gesenius thinks that God means by the question to deny that He had given "a bill of divorcement" to her, as was often done on slight pretexts by a husband (De 24:1), or that He had "sold" His and her "children," as a poor parent sometimes did (Ex 21:7; 2Ki 4:1; Ne 5:5) under pressure of his "creditors"; that it was they who sold themselves through their own sins. Maurer explains, "Show the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom . ; produce the creditors to whom ye have been sold; so it will be seen that it was not from any caprice of Mine, but through your own fault, your mother has been put away, and you sold" (Isa 52:3). Horsley best explains (as the antithesis between "I" and "yourselves" shows, though Lowth translates, "Ye are sold") I have never given your mother a regular bill of divorcement; I have merely "put her away" for a time, and can, therefore, by right as her husband still take her back on her submission; I have not made you, the children, over to any "creditor" to satisfy a debt; I therefore still have the right of a father over you, and can take you back on repentance, though as rebellious children you have sold yourselves to sin and its penalty (1Ki 21:25).

bill . whom-rather, "the bill with which I have put her away" [Maurer].

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

50:1-3 Those who have professed to be people of God, and seem to be dealt severely with, are apt to complain, as if God had been hard with them. Here is an answer for such murmurings; God never deprived any of their advantages, except for their sins. The Jews were sent into Babylon for their idolatry, a sin which broke the covenant; and they were at last rejected for crucifying the Lord of glory. God called on them to leave their sins, and prevent their own ruin. Last of all, the Son came to his own, but his own received him not. When God calls men to happiness, and they will not answer, they are justly left to be miserable. To silence doubts concerning his power, proofs of it are given. The wonders which attended his sufferings and death, proclaimed that he was the Son of God, Mt 27:54.