Isaiah 1:15

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(15) When ye spread forth your hands.—The words point to the attitude of one who prays, as was the manner of Jews, Greeks, and Romans (“tenditque ad sidera palmas,” Virg., Æn., xii. 196), standing, and with hands stretched out toward heaven. (Comp. Luke 18:11-13.)

When ye make many prayers.—The Pentateuch contains no directions for the use of forms of prayer beyond the benediction of Numbers 6:23-26, and two forms connected with the Passover in Deuteronomy 26:5-10; Deuteronomy 26:13-15. The “eighteen prayers” for daily use belong to the later Rabbinic stage of Judaism. It lies in the nature of the case, however, that first a real, and then an ostentatious devotion would show itself in the use of such forms, possibly, as in Psalm 119:164, “seven times a day.” In Proverbs 27:14; Proverbs 28:9, which belong to the reign of Hezekiah, and may, therefore, indirectly represent Isaiah’s teaching, we have the warnings of the wise as to the right use of such forms.

Your hands are full of blood.—Literally, bloods, as implying many murderous acts. The words point to the guilt of judges and princes, such as that described in Hosea 4:2. Life was sacrificed to greed of gain, or lust, or vindictiveness. To the prophet’s eye those hands, stretched upwards in the Temple by some, at least, of the king’s ministers and judges, were red with the blood of the slain. (Comp. Isaiah 59:3.)

Benson Commentary

Isaiah 1:15. When ye spread forth your hands — When ye pray with your hands spread abroad, as the manner was; I will hide mine eyes from you — I will take no notice of your persons or requests. Your hands are full of blood — You are guilty of murder and oppression, and of other crying sins, which I abhor, and have forbidden under pain of my highest displeasure.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

1:10-15 Judea was desolate, and their cities burned. This awakened them to bring sacrifices and offerings, as if they would bribe God to remove the punishment, and give them leave to go on in their sin. Many who will readily part with their sacrifices, will not be persuaded to part with their sins. They relied on the mere form as a service deserving a reward. The most costly devotions of wicked people, without thorough reformation of heart and life, cannot be acceptable to God. He not only did not accept them, but he abhorred them. All this shows that sin is very hateful to God. If we allow ourselves in secret sin, or forbidden indulgences; if we reject the salvation of Christ, our very prayers will become abomination.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Ye spread forth your hands - This is an expression denoting the act of supplication. When we ask for help, we naturally stretch out our hands, as if to receive it. The expression therefore is equivalent to 'when ye pray, or implore mercy.' Compare Exodus 9:29; Exodus 17:11-12; 1 Kings 8:22.

I will hide mine eyes ... - That is, I will not attend to, or regard your supplications. The Chaldee Paraphrase is, 'When your priests expand their hands to pray for you.'

Your hands ... - This is given as a reason why he would not hear. The expression full of blood, denotes crime and guilt of a high order - as, in murder, the hands would be dripping in blood, and as the stain on the hands would be proof of guilt. It is probably a figurative expression, not meaning literally that they were murderers, but that they were given to rapine and injustice; to the oppression of the poor, the widow, etc. The sentiment is, that because they indulged in sin, and came, even in their prayers, with a determination still to indulge it, God would not hear them. The same sentiment is elsewhere expressed; Psalm 66:18 : 'If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me;' Proverbs 28:9 : 'He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination;' Jeremiah 16:10-12; Zechariah 7:11-12; Proverbs 1:28-29. This is the reason why the prayers of sinners are not heard - But the truth is abundantly taught in the Scriptures, that if sinners will forsake their sins, the greatness of their iniquity is no obstacle to forgiveness; Isaiah 1:18; Matthew 11:28; Luke 16:11-24.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

15. (Ps 66:18; Pr 28:9; La 3:43, 44).

spread … hands—in prayer (1Ki 8:22). Hebrew, "bloods," for all heinous sins, persecution of God's servants especially (Mt 23:35). It was the vocation of the prophets to dispel the delusion, so contrary to the law itself (De 10:16), that outward ritualism would satisfy God.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

When ye spread forth your hands; when you pray with hands spread abroad, as the manner was; of which see Exodus 9:29,33 Job 11:13, &c.

I will hide mine eyes from you; which is a gesture of contempt and loathing. I will take no notice of your persons or requests.

Your hands are full of blood; you are guilty of murder, and oppression, and other crying sins, which I abhor, and have forbidden, under pain of mine highest displeasure.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And when ye spread forth your hands,.... That is, in prayer, this being a prayer gesture: hence the Targum paraphrases it,

"and when the priests spread out their hands to pray for you.''

I will hide mine eyes from you; will not look upon them, nor regard their prayer; see Lamentations 3:42.

yea, when ye make many prayers; as the Scribes and Pharisees did in Christ's time, and thought to be heard for their much speaking, like the Gentiles, Matthew 6:7.

I will not hear; so as to give an answer, or fulfil their requests: the reason follows,

your hands are full of blood; of the prophets of the Lord, of Christ and his followers, whom they put to death.

Geneva Study Bible

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full {x} of blood.

(x) He shows that where men are given to evil, deceit, cruelty and extortion, which is meant by blood, there God will show his anger and not accept them though they seem holy, as in Isa 59:3.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

15. your hands (“spread forth” in the attitude of prayer) are full of blood] a symbol of cruel wrongs perpetrated or tolerated, including the guilt of actual murder (Isaiah 1:21).

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 15. - I will hide mine eyes, etc. A time comes when the wicked are alarmed, and seek to turn to God; but it is too late. "Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me" (Proverbs 1:28). When ye make many prayers; literally, multiply prayer. Full of blood (comp. ver. 21). Actual bloodshed may be pointed at, as the murder of Zechariah (2 Chronicles 24:21), and the fate which befell Isaiah himself, according to the tradition, would seem to show. But cruelty and oppression, producing poverty and wretchedness, and tending to shorten life, are no doubt also included (comp. Micah 3:10, 11). These were the special sins of the time (see vers. 17, 23). Isaiah 1:15

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Their self-righteousness, so far as it rested upon sacrifices and festal observances, was now put to shame, and the last inward bulwark of the sham holy nation was destroyed: "And if ye stretch out your hands, I hide my eyes from you; if ye make ever so much praying, I do not hear: your hands are full of blood." Their praying was also an abomination to God. Prayer is something common to man: it is the interpreter of religious feeling, which intervenes and mediates between God and man;

(Note: The primary idea of hithpallel and tephillah is not to be obtained from Deuteronomy 9:18 and Ezra 10:1, as Dietrich and Frst suppose, who make hithpallel equivalent to hithnappel, to throw one's self down; but from 1 Samuel 2:25, "If a man sin against a man, the authorities right him" (וּפללו אלהים: it is quite a mistake to maintain that Elohim cannot have this meaning), i.e., they can set right the relation which he has disturbed. "But if one sin against Jehovah, who shall mediate for him (מי יתפּלּל־לו, quis intercedat pro eo)?" We may see from this that prayer is regarded as mediation, which sets right and establishes fellowship; and hithpallel signifies to make one's self a healer of divisions, or to settle for one's self, to strive after a settlement (sibi, pro se, intercedere: cf., Job 19:16, hithchannen, sibi propitium facere; Job 13:27, hithchakkah, sibi insculpere, like the Arabic ichtatta, to bound off for one's self).)

it is the true spiritual sacrifice. The law contains no command to pray, and, with the exception of Deuteronomy 26, no form of prayer. Praying is so natural to man as man, that there was no necessity for any precept to enforce this, the fundamental expression of the true relation to God. The prophet therefore comes to prayer last of all, so as to trace back their sham-holiness, which was corrupt even to this the last foundation, to its real nothingness. "Spread out," parash, or pi pērēsh, to stretch out; used with Cappaim to denote swimming in Isaiah 25:11. It is written here before a strong suffix, as in many other passages, e.g., Isaiah 52:12, with the inflection i instead of e. This was the gesture of a man in prayer, who spread out his hands, and when spread out, stretched them towards heaven, or to the most holy place in the temple, and indeed (as if with the feeling of emptiness and need, and with a desire to receive divine gifts) held up the hollow or palm of his hand (Cappaim: cf., tendere palmas, e.g., Virg. Aen. xii. 196, tenditque ad sidera palmas). However much they might stand or lie before Him in the attitude of prayer, Jehovah hid His eyes, i.e., His omniscience knew nothing of it; and even though they might pray loud and long (gam chi, etiamsi: compare the simple Chi, Jeremiah 14:12), He was, as it were, deaf to it all. We should expect Chi here to introduce the explanation; but the more excited the speaker, the shorter and more unconnected his words. The plural damim always denotes human blood as the result of some unnatural act, and then the bloody deed and the bloodguiltiness itself. The plural number neither refers to the quantity nor to the separate drops, but is the plural of production, which Dietrich has so elaborately discussed in his Abhandlung, p. 40.

(Note: As Chittah signified corn standing in the field, and Chittim corn threshed and brought to the market, so damim was not blood when flowing through the veins, but when it had flowed out-in other words, when it had been violently shed. (For the Talmudic misinterpretation of the true state of the case, see my Genesis, p. 626.))

The terrible damim stands very emphatically before the governing verb, pointing to many murderous acts that had been committed, and deeds of violence akin to murder. Not, indeed, that we are to understand the words as meaning that there was really blood upon their hands when they stretched them out in prayer; but before God, from whom no outward show can hide the true nature of things, however clean they might have washed themselves, they still dripped with blood. The expostulations of the people against the divine accusations have thus been negatively set forth and met in Isaiah 1:11-15 : Jehovah could not endure their work-righteous worship, which was thus defiled with unrighteous works, even to murder itself. The divine accusation is now positively established in Isaiah 1:16, Isaiah 1:17, by the contrast drawn between the true righteousness of which the accused were destitute, and the false righteousness of which they boasted. The crushing charge is here changed into an admonitory appeal; and the love which is hidden behind the wrath, and would gladly break through, already begins to disclose itself. There are eight admonitions. The first three point to the removal of evil; the other five to the performance of what is good.