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.
Where ... mother's divorcement. Zion is 'the mother;' the Jews are the children; and God the Husband and Father (Isaiah 54:5; Isaiah 62:5; Jeremiah 3:14). Gesenius thinks God, means by the question, to deny that He had given 'a bill of divorcement' to her, as was often done on slight pretexts by a husband (Deuteronomy 24:1), or that He had "sold" His and her 'children,' as a poor parent sometimes did (Exodus 21:7; 2 Kings 4:1; Nehemiah 5:5) under pressure of his "creditors;" that it was they who sold themselves through their own sins. Maurer, not so well, explains, 'Show the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom, etc.; produce the creditors to whom ye have been sold: so it will be seen that it was not from any caprice of mine, but through your own fault your mother has been put away and you sold' (Isaiah 52:3). She antithesis between "I have sold you" and 'for (i:e., by reason of) your own iniquities ye have sold yourselves,' or (Hebrew, nimkartem (H4376)) 'ye are sold,' shows the sense is, 'I have never given your mother a regular bill of divorcement, I have merely 'put her away' for a time, and can therefore, by my right as her husband still, take her back on her submission. I have not made you, the children, over to any creditor to satisfy a debt: I therefore still have the right of a father over you, and can take you back on repentance, though as rebellious children you have sold yourselves to sin and its penalty' (1 Kings 21:25).
The bill of your mother's divorcement, whom - rather, 'the bill with which I have put her away' (Maurer). So the Septuagint, Vulgate, Chaldaic, Arabic, and Syriac.