Bible Strands
Isaiah 50:1
This is what the LORD says: “Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce with which I sent her away? Or to which of My creditors did I sell you? Look, you were sold for your iniquities, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The LORD addresses the people, demanding they produce a legal divorce certificate for their mother or name a creditor to whom He sold them. This challenge occurs within a prophetic discourse that immediately follows with questions about God’s power to redeem and judge.
The words — The Hebrew term כְּרִיתוּת (ke.ri.Tut) literally means "a cutting off" or "divorce," while סֵפֶר (Se.fer) denotes a written scroll or record. Together they frame the covenant relationship in strict legal terminology.
The thread — The divorce certificate motif appears in Jeremiah 3:8, where God issues one to faithless Israel. The imagery of being sold for debt runs through Deuteronomy 32:30 and the debt-parable in Matthew 18:25.
Why it lands — The text establishes that exile resulted from personal iniquity rather than divine abandonment or weakness. It demands a clear-eyed acknowledgment of transgression as the prerequisite for understanding redemption.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Thus saith the Lord, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.
Cross-references
- Deuteronomy 32:30 How could one man pursue a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the LORD had given them up?
- Jeremiah 3:8 She saw that because faithless Israel had committed adultery, I gave her a certificate of divorce and sent her away. Yet that unfaithful sister Judah had no fear and prostituted herself as well.
- Matthew 18:25 Since the man was unable to pay, the master ordered that he be sold to pay his debt, along with his wife and children and everything he owned.
- 2 Kings 4:1 Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know that your servant feared the LORD. And now his creditor is coming to take my two children as his slaves!”
- Nehemiah 5:5 We and our children are just like our countrymen and their children, yet we are subjecting our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters are already enslaved, but we are powerless to redeem them because our fields and vineyards belong to others.”
- Isaiah 52:3 For this is what the LORD says: “You were sold for nothing, and without money you will be redeemed.”
- Deuteronomy 24:1 If a man marries a woman, but she becomes displeasing to him because he finds some indecency in her, he may write her a certificate of divorce, hand it to her, and send her away from his house.
- Hosea 2:2 Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not My wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adultery from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
- 2 Kings 17:17 They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire and practiced divination and soothsaying. They devoted themselves to doing evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger.
- Psalms 44:12 You sell Your people for nothing; no profit do You gain from their sale.