Isaiah 45:10

Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What begettest thou? or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth?

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(10) Woe unto him . . .—The implied argument is that men accept the accident of birth without questioning father or mother as to that which lay beyond the control of either. Should they not a fortiori accept what God orders for nations and individual men?

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

45:5-10 There is no God beside Jehovah. There is nothing done without him. He makes peace, put here for all good; and creates evil, not the evil of sin, but the evil of punishment. He is the Author of all that is true, holy, good, or happy; and evil, error, and misery, came into the world by his permission, through the wilful apostacy of his creatures, but are restrained and overruled to his righteous purpose. This doctrine is applied, for the comfort of those that earnestly longed, yet quietly waited, for the redemption of Israel. The redemption of sinners by the Son of God, and the pouring out the Spirit, to give success to the gospel, are chiefly here intended. We must not expect salvation without righteousness; together the Lord hath created them. Let not oppressors oppose God's designs for his people. Let not the poor oppressed murmur, as if God dealt unkindly with them. Men are but earthen pots; they are broken potsherds, and are very much made so by mutual contentions. To contend with Him is as senseless as for clay to find fault with the potter. Let us turn God's promises into prayers, beseeching him that salvation may abound among us, and let us rest assured that the Judge of all the earth will do right.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Wo unto him that saith unto his father ... - It is wicked and foolish for a son to complain of his father or mother in regard to his birth, or of his rank and condition of life. Probably the idea is, that if a child is by his birth placed in circumstances less advantageous than others, he would have no right to com plain of his parents, or to regard them as having acted improperly in having entered into the marriage relation. In like manner it would be not less improper, certainly, to complain of God who has brought us into existence by his own power, and who acts as a sovereign in the various allotments of our lives. The design is to rebuke the spirit of complaining against the allotments of Providence - a spirit which perhaps prevailed among the Jews, and which in fact is found everywhere among people; and to show that God, as a sovereign, has a right to dispose of his creatures in the manner which he shall judge to be best. The passage proves:

1. That man is formed by God, and that all his affairs are ordered by him as really as the work of the potter is moulded by the hands of the workman.

2. That God had a design in making man, and in ordering and arranging his circumstances in life.

3. That man is little qualified to judge of that design, and not at all qualified to pronounce it unwise, anymore than the clay could charge him that worked it into a vessel with want of wisdom; and,

4. That God is a sovereign, and does as he pleases. He has formed man as he chose, as really as the potter moulds the clay into any shape which he pleases. He has given him his rank in creation; given him such a body - strong, vigorous, and comely; or feeble, deformed, and sickly, as he pleased; he has given him such an intellect - vigorous, manly, and powerful; or weak, feeble, and timid, as he pleased; he has determined his circumstances in life - whether riches, poverty, an elevated rank, or a depressed condition, just as he saw fit; and he is a sovereign also in the dispensation of his grace - having a right to pardon whom he will; nor has man any right to complain.

This passage, however, should not be adduced to prove that God, in all respects, moulds the character and destiny of people as the potter does the clay. Regard should be had in the interpretation to the fact that God is just, and good, and wise, as well as a sovereign; and that man is himself a moral agent, and subject to the laws of moral agency which God has appointed. God does nothing wrong. He does not compel man to sin, and then condemn him for it. He does not make him a transgressor by physical power, as the potter moulds the clay, and then doom him for it to destruction. He does his pleasure according to the eternal laws of equity; and man has no right to call in question the rectitude of his sovereign dispensations.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

10. If it be wrong for a child, born in less favorable circumstances, to upbraid his parents with having given him birth, a fortiori, it is, to upbraid God for His dealings with us. Rather translate, "a father … a woman." The Jews considered themselves exclusively God's children and were angry that God should adopt the Gentiles besides. Woe to him who says to one already a father, Why dost thou beget other children? [Horsley].

Matthew Poole's Commentary

As it were an absurd and impudent thing for a child to quarrel with his parents, either simply for begetting him, or for begetting him of this or that sex, contrary to his desire; no better is it for any persons to quarrel with God the Maker and

Father of all things, as God is called, 1 Corinthians 8:6, for disposing of them and their affairs by his providence as he sees fit, and otherwise than they desire or expect; as. the Jews quarrelled with God for bringing them into captivity, and the Babylonians for translating the empire from them to the Persians.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Woe unto him that saith unto his father, what begettest thou?.... That quarrels with him, and complains of him, because he was not of the other sex, or not so wise, or so rich, or so handsome, as others:

or to the woman; disdaining to call her mother:

what hast thou brought forth? equally as absurd and impious it was in the Jews to quarrel with Christ for his conversation with sinners, and the reception of them; or for the regeneration of such persons; or to find fault with God for the conversion of the Gentiles, and resent it, and be angry at it, as they were; see Romans 10:19.

Geneva Study Bible

Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What begettest thou? or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth?

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

10. The impropriety of contending with God exhibited in a still more repellent light. The words “his” and “the” are not expressed in Hebrew; simply “a father,” “a woman.” “The rudest and most outrageous intrusion into an unspeakably delicate and sacred relationship” (Delitzsch).

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 10. - Woe unto him that saith unto his father, etc.! A change is made in the metaphor, the relationship of a father and his child being substituted for that of a potter and his clay. What would a man think of a child murmuring against his parent for not having made him stronger, handsomer, cleverer? Would not such a child be regarded as most unnatural, and as deserving to have woe denounced upon him? Isaiah 45:10

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The promise is now continued in the third strophe (Isaiah 45:9-13), and increases more and more in the distinctness of its terms; but just as in Isaiah 29:15-21, it opens with a reproof of that pusillanimity (Isaiah 40:27; cf., Isaiah 51:13; Isaiah 49:24; Isaiah 58:3), which goes so far to complain of the ways of Jehovah. "Woe to him that quarreleth with his Maker - a pot among the pots of earthenware? Can the clay indeed say to him that shapeth it, What makest thou? and thy work, He hath no hands? Woe to him that saith to his father, What begettest thou? and to the woman, What bringest thou forth?" The comparison drawn between a man as the work of God and the clay-work of a potter suggested itself all the more naturally, inasmuch as the same word yootseer was applied to God as Creator, and also to a potter (figulus). The word cheres signifies either a sherd, or fragment of earthenware (Isaiah 30:14), or an earthenware vessel (Jeremiah 19:1; Proverbs 26:23). In the passage before us, where the point of comparison is not the fragmentary condition, but the earthen character of the material ()'adâmâh), the latter is intended: the man, who complains of God, is nothing but a vessel of clay, and, more than that, a perishable vessel among many others of the very same kind.

(Note: The Septuagint reads shin for sin in both instances, and introduces here the very unsuitable thought already contained in Isaiah 28:24, "Shall the ploughman plough the land the whole day?")

The questions which follow are meant to show the folly of this complaining. Can it possibly occur to the clay to raise a complaint against him who has it in hand, that he has formed it in such and such a manner, or for such and such a purpose (compare Romans 9:20, "Why hast thou made me thus")? To the words "or thy work" we must supply num dicet (shall it say); pō‛al is a manufacture, as in Isaiah 1:31. The question is addressed to the maker, as those in Isaiah 7:25 are to the husbandman: Can the thing made by thee, O man, possibly say in a contemptuous tone, "He has no hands?" - a supposition the ridiculous absurdity of which condemns it at once; and yet it is a very suitable analogy to the conduct of the man who complains of God. In Isaiah 45:10 a woe is denounced upon those who resemble a man who should say to his own father, What children dost thou beget? or to a wife, What dost thou bring forth? (techı̄lı̄n an emphatic, and for the most part pausal, fut. parag., as in Ruth 2:8; Ruth 3:18). This would be the rudest and most revolting attack upon an inviolably tender and private relation; and yet Israel does this when it makes the hidden providential government of its God the object of expostulation.