Isaiah 49:4

Then I said,.... The Messiah said, by way of objection, in a view of what treatment he should meet with, or when entered on his work, and which he found by experience, what follows: I have laboured

Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the LORD, and my work with my God. Then I said. "I" - Messiah.

Then I said, by way of objection. Lord, thou sayest thou wilt be glorified by my ministry; but I find it otherwise. I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, without any considerable fruit of my word and works among the Israelites. My judgment; my right, the reward which by his promise and my purchase is my right. Judgment is oft put for that which is just or right, as , and in many other places. And so this clause agrees with the next; and the sense of both is this; Though I see no fruit of my labour among the Jews, and meet with nothing but contempt, and reproach, and ill usage from them; yet God sees my fidelity and diligence in my work, and he will give judgment for me, and my reward is laid up with and by him, which he will give me in due time.

Isaiah 49:4 Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain: [yet] surely my judgment [is] with the LORD, and my work with my God. Ver. 4. Then said I: I have laboured in vain.] I have done little more than preached my hearers to hell. The Pharisees and the lawyers "rejected the counsel of God against themselves"; they would not be forewarned to "flee from the wrath to come"; to "escape the damnation of hell." Our Saviour lost his sweet words upon them: so did the prophet Isaiah upon his untoward countrymen, who refused to be reformed, hated to be healed. Nothing was unconquerable to his pains, who had, as one saith of Jul. Scaliger, ‘ a golden wit in an iron body’ ; but this matter was not malleable: hence he spake to them to as little purpose as Bede did when he preached to a heap of stones. Hence his complaint: "Who hath believed our report?" He might haply hope at first, as holy Melanchthon did, that it was impossible for his hearers to withstand the evidence of the gospel: but after he had been a preacher a while, it is said he complained that ‘ old Adam was too hard for young Melanchthon.’ Rev. Mr Greenham, besides his public pains in season and out of season, was wont to walk out into the fields, and to confer with his neighbours as they were at plough. But Dry Drayton, the place where he was minister many years, though so often watered with his tears, prayers, and pains, was little the better for all: the generality of his parish remained ignorant and obstinate, to their pastor’ s great grief, and their own greater damage and disgrace. Hence the verses, “ Greenham had pastures green, But sheep full lean, &c.” He might well cry out, as many also do at this day, Eheu, quam pingui macer est mihi taurus in arvo! Our people, alas! are like Laban’ s lambs or Pharaoh’ s kine; they are even ministrorum opprobria. But if ministers toil all night and take nothing, it is to be feared, saith one well, that Satan caught the fish ere they came at their net. Yet surely my judgment is with the Lord.] He will do me right, and reward me howsoever. The physician hath his praise and pay, though his patient dies; the lawyer hath his fee, though his client’ s cause miscarry. Curare exigeris, non curationem, saith Bernard to a friend of his, It is the care, not the cure of your charge that is charged upon you. Jeremiah was impatient, and would preach no more; but that might not be. Mr Greenham left Dry Drayton, upon friends’ importunity, and moved to London, but he afterwards repented it. Latimer, speaking of a certain minister who gave this answer why he left off preaching, Because he saw he did no good, ‘ This,’ saith Latimer, ‘ is a naughty, a very naughty answer.’ Mr Fuller’ s Church Hist.

(4) Then I said.—The accents of disappointment sound strangely on coming from the lips of the true Servant; but the prophet had learnt by his own experience that this formed part of the discipline of every true servant of God, in proportion to the thoroughness of his service, and therefore it was not strange to him that the ideal Servant should also taste that bitterness. We find in the prophet of Anathoth a partial illustration of the law (Jeremiah 20:14). We find its highest fulfilment in the cries of Gethsemane and Golgotha, The sense of failure is surmounted only, as here, by looking to another judgment than man’s, and another reward (better than “work”). (Comp. 1 Corinthians 4:3.)

4. Although cast down for a moment by his want of success, he does not yield to despondency (cf. Isaiah 42:4), but leaves his cause in the hands of God. Then I said] R.V. But I said (with a certain emphasis on the “I”). my judgment] i.e. “my right,” as in ch. Isaiah 40:27. my work should be my recompence (R.V.); see ch. Isaiah 40:10.

Then I said - I the Messiah. In the previous verses he speaks of his appointment to the office of Messiah, and of his dignity.

4. This innermost holy Israel coming to an ideal personality, the Messiah, has wrought long and wearily with little apparent result. The world seems no better for his labours.