🕊️WEB · Isaiah 30:11
What does Isaiah 30:11 mean?
"Get out of the way. Turn away from the path. Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.”"
— Isaiah 30:11 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come forever and ever.
For it is a rebellious people, lying children, children who will not hear Yahweh’s law;
who tell the seers, “Don’t see!” and to the prophets, “Don’t prophesy to us right things. Tell us pleasant things. Prophesy deceits.
Get out of the way. Turn away from the path. Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.”
Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel, “Because you despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and rely on it;
therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking comes suddenly in an instant.
He will break it as a potter’s vessel is broken, breaking it in pieces without sparing, so that there won’t be found among the broken pieces a piece good enough to take fire from the hearth, or to dip up water out of the cistern.”
Explanation
Isaiah 30:11 records the actual words of the people of Judah as they speak to God's prophets. In plain language, they are saying: "Stop preaching to us. Quit telling us the right way to live. We don't want to hear about God's holiness anymore — leave us alone." It is a blunt rejection of truth, spoken by people who no longer want to be confronted with God's standards or reminded of who He is.
The context is found earlier in Isaiah 30, and even more clearly in verses 9-10, which set up this quotation. The southern kingdom of Judah, facing the threat of Assyria, decided to seek a political and military alliance with Egypt rather than trust God for protection. Isaiah, speaking on God's behalf, warned them this was a rebellious, self-destructive path. The people's response was not repentance but irritation — they told the prophets and seers, "Don't prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions" (v. 10), and then, in verse 11, they demanded that the seers stop mentioning "the Holy One of
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