Isaiah 57:20

But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(20) The wicked are like the troubled sea . . .—The promise of healing is, however, not unconditional. The acceptance of peace requires calmness; but for the wicked, whose thoughts are restlessly seething with evil ripening into act, this true peace is, in the nature of the case, impossible. We note the recurrence of the watchword of Isaiah 48:22, as indicating the close of another section of the prophecy. The MSS. and versions present a curious variation in Isaiah 57:21 : some “saith Jehovah,” some “God,” some “the Lord God.” It would almost seem as if transcribers and translators had shrunk from the prophet’s boldness in claiming God as in some special sense his God. It has a parallel, however, in Isaiah 7:13, and may be noted, accordingly, as one of the characteristic touches common to the two parts of Isaiah. The “Sea” of which Isaiah speaks may possibly have been the Dead Sea, casting up its salt bituminous deposits.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

57:13-21 The idols and their worshippers shall come to nothing; but those who trust in God's grace, shall be brought to the joys of heaven. With the Lord there is neither beginning of days, nor end of life, nor change of time. His name is holy, and all must know him as a holy God. He will have tender regard to those who bring their mind to their condition, and dread his wrath. He will make his abode with those whose hearts he has thus humbled, in order to revive and comfort them. When troubles last long, even good men are tempted to entertain hard thoughts of God. Therefore He will not contend for ever, for he will not forsake the work of his own hands, nor defeat the purchase of his Son's blood. Covetousness is a sin that particularly lays men under the Divine displeasure. See the sinfulness of sin. See also that troubles cannot reform men unless God's grace work in them. Peace shall be published, perfect peace. It is the fruit of preaching lips, and praying lips. Christ came and preached peace to Gentiles, as well as to the Jews; to after-ages, who were afar off in time, as well as to those of that age. But the wicked would not be healed by God's grace, therefore would not be healed by his comforts. Their ungoverned lusts and passions made them like the troubled sea. Also the terrors of conscience disturbed their enjoyments. God hath said it, and all the world cannot unsay it, That there is no peace to those who allow themselves in any sin. If we are recovered from such an awful state, it is only by the grace of God. And the influences of the Holy Spirit, and that new heart, from whence comes grateful praise, the fruit of our lips, are his gift. Salvation, with all its fruits, hopes, and comforts, is his work, and to him belongs all the glory. There is no peace for the wicked man; but let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, and he will abundantly pardon.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

But the wicked - All who are transgressors of the law and who remain unpardoned. The design of this is to contrast their condition with that of those who should enjoy peace. The proposition is, therefore, of the most general character. All the wicked are like the troubled sea. Whether prosperous or otherwise; rich or poor; bond or free; old or young; whether in Christian, in civilized, or in barbarous lands; whether living in palaces, in caves, or in tents; whether in the splendor of cities, or in the solitude of deserts; All are like the troubled sea.

Are like the troubled sea - The agitated (נגרשׁ nigrâsh), ever-moving and restless sea. The sea is always in motion, and never entirely calm. Often also it lashes into foam, and heaves with wild commotion.

When it cannot rest - Lowth renders this, 'For it never can be at rest.' The Hebrew is stronger than our translation. It means that there is no possibility of its being at rest; it is unable to be still (יוּכל לא השׁקט כי kı̂y hasheqēṭ lo' yûkal). The Septuagint renders it, 'But the wicked are tossed like waves (κλυδωνισθήσονται kludōnisthēsontai), and are not able to be at rest.' The idea, as it seems to me, is not exactly that which seems to be conveyed by our translation, that the wicked are like the sea, occasionally agitated by a storm and driven by wild commotion, but that, like the ocean, there is never any peace, as there is no peace to the restless waters of the mighty deep.

Whose waters - They who have stood on the shores of the ocean and seen the waves - especially in a storm - foam, and roll, and dash on the beach, will be able to appreciate the force of this beautiful figure, and cannot but have a vivid image before them of the unsettled and agitated bosoms of the guilty. The figure which is used here to denote the want of peace in the bosom of a wicked man, is likewise beautifully employed by Ovid:

Cumque sit hibernis agitatum fluctibus aequor,

Pectora sunt ipso turbidiora mari.

Trist. i. x. 33

The agitation and commotion of the sinner here referred to, relates to such things as the following:

1. There is no permanent happiness or enjoyment. There is no calmness of soul in the contemplation of the divine perfections, and of the glories of the future world. There is no substantial and permanent peace furnished by wealth, business, pleasure; by the pride, pomp, and flattery of the world. All leave the soul unsatisfied, or dissatisfied; all leave is unprotected against the rebukes of conscience, and the fear of hell.

2. Raging passions. The sinner is under their influence. and they may be compared to the wild and tumultuous waves of the ocean. Thus the bosoms of the wicked are agitated with the conflicting passions of pride, envy, malice, lust, ambition, and revenge. These leave no peace in the soul; they make peace impossible. People may learn in some degree to control them by the influence of philosophy; or a pride of character and respect to their reputation may enable them in some degree to restrain them; but they are like the smothered fires of the volcano, or like the momentary calm of the ocean that a gust of wind may soon lash into foam. To restrain them is not to subdue them, for no man can tell how soon he may be excited by anger, or how soon the smothered fires of lus may burn.

3. Conscience. Nothing more resembles an agitated ocean casting up mire and dirt, than a soul agitated by the recollections of past guilt. A deep dark cloud in a tempest overhangs the deep; the lightnings play and the thunder rolls along the sky, and the waves heave with wild commotion. So it is with the bosom of the sinner. Though there may be a temporary suspension of the rebukes of conscience, yet there is no permanent peace. The soul cannot rest; and in some way or other the recollections of guilt will be excited, and the bosom thrown into turbid and wild agitation.

4. The fear of judgment and of hell. Many a sinner has no rest, day or night, from the fear of future wrath. His troubled mind looks onward, and he sees nothing to anticipate but the wrath of God, and the horrors of an eternal hell. How invaluable then is religion! All these commotions are stilled by the voice of pardoning mercy, as the billows of the deep were hushed by the voice of Jesus. How much do we owe to religion! Had it not been for this, there had been no peace in this world. Every bosom would have been agitated with tumultuous passion; every heart would have quailed with the fear of hell. How diligently should we seek the influence of religion! We all have raging passions to be subdued. We all have consciences that may be troubled with the recollections of past guilt. We are all traveling to the bar of God, and have reason to apprehend the storms of vengeance. We all must soon lie down on beds of death, and in all these scenes there is nothing that can give permanent and solid peace but the religion of the Redeemer. Oh! that stills all the agitation of a troubled soul; lays every billow of tumultuous passion to rest; calms the conflicts of a guilty bosom; reveals God reconciled through a Redeemer to our souls, and removes all the anticipated terrors of a bed of death and of the approach to the judgment bar. Peacefully the Christian can die - not as the troubled sinner, who leaves the world with a bosom agitated like the stormy ocean but as peacefully as the gentle ripple dies away on the beach.

How blest the righteous when they die,

When holy souls retire to rest I

continued...

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

20. when it cannot rest—rather, "for it can have no rest" (Job 15:20, &c.; Pr 4:16, 17). English Version represents the sea as occasionally agitated; but the Hebrew expresses that it can never be at rest.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Their minds are restless, being perpetually hurried and tormented with their own lusts and passions, and with the horror of their guilt, and the dread of the Divine vengeance due unto them, and ready to come upon them.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest,.... Disturbed by winds, storms, and hurricanes, when its waves rise, rage, and tumble about, and beat against the shore and sand, threatening to pass the bounds fixed for it. In such like agitations will the minds of wicked men be, through the terrors of conscience for their sins; or through the malice and envy in them at the happiness and prosperity of the righteous, now enjoyed, upon the downfall of antichrist; and through the judgments of God upon them, gnawing their tongues for pain, and blaspheming the God of heaven, because of their plagues and pains, Revelation 16:9,

whose waters cast up mire and dirt; from the bottom of the sea upon the shore; so the hearts of wicked men, having nothing but the mire and dirt of sin in them, cast out nothing else but the froth and foam of their own shame, blasphemy against God, and malice against his people.

Geneva Study Bible

But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it {z} cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.

(z) Their evil conscience always torments them and therefore they can never have rest, Isa 48:22.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

20, 21. Their peace is contrasted with the eternal unrest of the wicked. For the image cf. Judges 13.

when (for) it cannot rest] as Jeremiah 49:23.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 20. - The wicked are like the troubled sea. A striking metaphor, but one which occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament, and once only in the New (Jude 1:13). The sea's restless action well expresses the unquiet of the wicked; and the mud and mire that it casts up resembles their evil thoughts and evil deeds. "There is no peace" for such persons, either bodily or spiritual, either in this world or the world to come. Isaiah 57:20

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

But when the redemption comes, it will divide Israel into two halves, with very different prospects. "Creating fruit of the lips; Jehovah saith, 'Peace, peace to those that are far off, and to those that are near; and I heal it.' But the wicked are like the sea that is cast up for it cannot rest, and its waters cast out slime and mud. There is no peace, saith my God, for the wicked." The words of God in Isaiah 57:19 are introduced with an interpolated "inquit Jehova" (cf., Isaiah 45:24, and the ellipsis in Isaiah 41:27); and what Jehovah effects by speaking thus is placed first in a determining participial clause: "Creating fruit (נוב equals נוּב, נוב, keri ניב) of the lips," καρπὸν χείλεων (lxx, Hebrews 13:15), i.e., not of His own lips, to which בּורא would be inapplicable, but the offering of praise and thanksgiving springing from human lips (for the figure, see Psychol. p. 214, trans.; and on the root נב, to press upon forward): "Jehovah saith shâlōm, shâlōm," i.e., lasting and perfect peace (as in Isaiah 26:3), "be the portion of those of my people who are scattered far and near" (Isaiah 43:5-7; Isaiah 49:12; compare the application to heathen and Jews in Ephesians 2:17); "and I heal it" (viz., the nation, which, although scattered, is like one person in the sight of God). But the wicked, who persist in the alienation from God inherited from the fathers, are incapable of the peace which God brings to His people: they are like the sea in its tossed and stormy state (נגרשׁ pausal third pers. as an attributive clause). As this cannot rest, and as its waters cast out slime and mud, so has their natural state become one of perpetual disturbance, leading to the uninterrupted production of unclean and ungodly thoughts, words, and works. Thus, then, there is no peace for them, saith my God. With these words, which have even a more pathetic sound here than in Isaiah 48:22, the prophet seals the second book of his prophecies. The "wicked" referred to are not the heathen outside Israel, but the heathen, i.e., those estranged from God, within Israel itself.

The transition form the first to the second half of this closing prophecy is formed by ואמר in Isaiah 57:14. In the second half, from Isaiah 57:11, we find the accustomed style of our prophet; but in Isaiah 56:9-57:11a the style is so thoroughly different, that Ewald maintains that the prophet has here inserted in his book a fragment from some earlier writer of the time of Manasseh. But we regard this as very improbable. It is not required by what is stated concerning the prophets and shepherds, for the book of Ezekiel clearly shows that the prophets and shepherds of the captivity were thus debased. Still less does what is stated concerning the early death of the righteous require it; for the fundamental idea of the suffering servant of Jehovah, which is peculiar to the second book, is shadowed forth therein. Nor by what is affirmed as to the idolatrous conduct of the people; for in the very centre (Isaiah 57:4) the great mass of the people are reproached for their contemptuous treatment of the servants of Jehovah. Nor does the language itself force us to any such conjecture, for Isaiah 53:1-12 also differs from the style met with elsewhere; and yet (although Ewald regards it as an earlier, borrowed fragment) it must be written by the author of the whole, since its grandest idea finds its fullest expression there. At the same time, we may assume that the prophet described the idolatry of the people under the influences of earlier models. If he had been a prophet of the captives after the time of Isaiah, he would have rested his prophecies on Jeremiah and Ezekiel. For just as Isaiah 51:18. has the ring of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, so does Isaiah 57:3. resemble in many respects the earlier reproaches of Jeremiah (compare Jeremiah 5:7-9, Jeremiah 5:29; Jeremiah 9:8, with the expression, "Should I rest satisfied with this?"); also Jeremiah 2:25 (נואשׁ), Jeremiah 2:20; Jeremiah 3:6, Jeremiah 3:13 ("upon lofty mountains and under green trees"); also the night scene in Ezekiel 23.