Bible Strands
Isaiah 59:10
Like the blind, we feel our way along the wall, groping like those without eyes. We stumble at midday as in the twilight; among the vigorous we are like the dead.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The speaker is the people of Israel describing their collective spiritual condition after justice and righteousness have fled. They address God and the community while confessing their moral blindness and inability to find salvation.
The words — נְגַשְׁשָׁ (ne.gash.shah) = we grope for, and כָּשַׁלְנוּ (ka.shal.nu) = we have stumbled.
The thread — The imagery of stumbling at noon like the blind appears in Deuteronomy 28:29 and Job 5:14, while the comparison to the dead is found in Lamentations 3:6.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that moral failure removes spiritual perception, making even daylight indistinguishable from darkness. It requires the reader to acknowledge that hope without righteousness yields only paralysis and isolation.
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
We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.
Cross-references
- Deuteronomy 28:29 and at noon you will grope about like a blind man in the darkness. You will not prosper in your ways. Day after day you will be oppressed and plundered, with no one to save you.
- Job 5:14 They encounter darkness by day and grope at noon as in the night.
- Lamentations 3:6 He has made me dwell in darkness like those dead for ages.
- Proverbs 4:19 But the way of the wicked is like the darkest gloom; they do not know what makes them stumble.
- Isaiah 8:15 Many will stumble over these; they will fall and be broken; they will be ensnared and captured.”
- Jeremiah 13:16 Give glory to the LORD your God before He brings darkness, before your feet stumble on the dusky mountains. You wait for light, but He turns it into deep gloom and thick darkness.
- Lamentations 4:14 They wandered blind in the streets, defiled by this blood, so that no one dared to touch their garments.
- Amos 8:9 And in that day, declares the Lord GOD, I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the daytime.
- John 11:9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? If anyone walks in the daytime, he will not stumble, because he sees by the light of this world.
- John 12:35 Then Jesus told them, “For a little while longer, the Light will be among you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going.