Oh, that you would burst from the heavens and come down!
    How the mountains would quake in your presence! (NLT)

Let’s remind ourselves that Isaiah’s prayer (one of the great intercessory prayers in the Bible) runs from 63:7-64:12. In a sermon on these two chapters, the Bible teacher David Pawson made the observation that this was Isaiah’s response to seeing the vision of Jesus coming as Judge in chapter 63:1-6. Judgment begins at the house of God, and he pleads for the salvation of God’s sinful people.

Barry Webb puts today’s verse in its context:

‘The intercessor is Isaiah himself. He stands in the prophetic tradition of intercessory prayer which goes right back to Moses. And like Jesus he prays with prophetic vision, not just for himself and his own generation, but for future generations as well. There is much to discourage him in the history of his people. They have always been marked by rebellion, harness of heart, wandering, and spiritual torpor (63:10,17;64:7). Their hold on the land God gave them has always been tenuous; their spiritual weakness has made them easy prey for their enemies (63:18; 64:10-11). And Isaiah sees little prospect of them changing in the future; their sinfulness is too ingrained. Hence the cry at the very centre of the prayer, Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down… (64:1). Intercession glorifies God because it is an expression of utter dependence upon him. It recognizes that we need to be delivered as much from ourselves as from our enemies, and that deliverance of this radical kind can be found only in God. It is his gift, not our achievement.’ ‘Isaiah’, p.241.