Isaiah 64:5

The people who ask the question in Isa 64:5 do not regard themselves as worthy of redemption, as their self-righteousness has been so thoroughly put to shame. "We all became like the unclean thing, and all our virtues like a garment soiled with blood; and we all faded away together like the leaves; and our iniquities, like the storm they carried us away." The whole nation is like one whom the law pronounces unclean, like a leper, who has to cry "tâmē, tâmē "as he goes along, that men may get out of his way (Lev 13:45). Doing right in all its manifold forms (tsedâqōth, like Isa 33:15, used elsewhere of the manifestations of divine righteousness), which once made Israel well-pleasing to God (Isa 1:21), has disappeared and become like a garment stained with menstruous discharge (cf., Eze 36:17); (lxx ὡς ῥάκος ἀποκαθημένης = dâvâ, Isa 30:22; niddâh, Lam 1:17; temē'âh, Lev 15:33). ‛Iddı̄m (used thus in the plural in the Talmud also) signifies the monthly period (menstrua). In the third figure, that of fading falling foliage, the form vannâbhel is not kal (= vannibbōl or vannibbal; Ewald, 232, b), which would be an impossibility according to the laws of inflexion; still less is it niphal = vanninnâbhel (which Kimchi suggests as an alternative); but certainly a hiphil. It is not, however, from nâbhēl = vannabbel, "with the reduplication dropped to express the idea of something gradual," as Bttcher proposes (a new and arbitrary explanation in the place of one founded upon the simple laws of inflexion), but either from bâlal (compare the remarks on belı̄l in Isa 30:24, which hardly signifies "ripe barley" however), after the form ויּגל (from גּלל) ויּסך (from סכך), or from būl, after the form ויּקם, etc. In any case, therefore, it is a metaplastic formatio…

This chapter goes on with that pathetic pleading prayer which the church offered up to God in the latter part of the foregoing chapter. They had argued from their covenant-relation to God and his interest and concern in them; now here, I. They pray that God would appear in some remarkable and surprising manner for them against his and their enemies (Isa 64:1, Isa 64:2). II. They plead what God had formerly done, and was always ready to do, for his people (Isa 64:3-5). III. They confess themselves to be sinful and unworthy of God's favour, and that they had deserved the judgments they were now under (Isa 64:6, Isa 64:7). IV. They refer themselves to the mercy of God as a Father, and submit themselves to his sovereignty (Isa 64:8). V. They represent the very deplorable condition they were in, and earnestly pray for the pardon of sin and the turning away of God's anger (Isa 64:9-12). And this was not only intended for the use of the captive Jews, but may serve for direction to the church in other times of distress, what to ask of God and how to plead with him. Are God's people at any time in affliction, in great affliction? Let them pray, let them thus pray.

64:5-6 constant sinners . . . infected and impure with sin: See also 59:1-15. The only hope for salvation and transformation is through Jesus Christ (see Rom 7:25–8:11).