Isaiah

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1:2a "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken".

 

The precise point of this introductory apostrophe is not obvious. There are various possibilities:

 

a. A figure for the rulers and people of Israel.

 

b. The literal heavens and earth; e.g. Dt. 4:26; 30:19; 31:28; 32:1.

 

c. A poetic figure for the Land of Israel and the Heaven which controls its destiny; e.g. Jer. 2:12; 6:19; 22:29; Ez. 36:4,6; Mic. 1; 2; 6:2.

 

d. Angels and men, the powers of heaven and of the surrounding nations; Ps. 50:4.

 

There seems to be really little support for the first of these alternatives, made popular long ago by Daubuz.

 

Almost certainly the allusion in this verse is to Dt. 32:1, for Kay (Speaker's Comm.) supplies a list of no fewer than twenty-four verbal contacts between Dt. 32 and Is. 1. And the theme of Dt. 32 — Israel cast off, Gentiles accepted, then Israel restored — is the theme of Isaiah begun in this chapter.

 

1:2b "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me."

 

The Hebrew phrasing also means: I have made great and exalted children — a hint of the remarkable prosperity of Israel before Ahaz came to the throne. "Rebelled" (transgressed) sums up in a word how Jeshurun had waxed fat and kicked (Dt. 32:15).

 

Here is the Father of Israel complaining of his "stubborn and rebellious son" (Dt. 21:18), fit only to be stoned and hung on a tree. Remarkably, this example of God's indictment of His own son is the only application in all the Scriptures of this austere commandment. But in chapter 53 and in the New Testament, especially Gal. 3:13, it is God's sinless Son, the true Firstborn, who takes this curse upon himself.

 

What a contrast with Israel's beginnings at Sinai: "A kingdom of priests, and an holy nation...All that the Lord hath spoken will we do" (Ex. 19:6,8).

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1:3 "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider."

 

For the first, but by no means for the last time, Isaiah reveals himself as an animal lover; 11:6,7; 30:24; 46:1; 53:7; 65:25.

 

There is a telling contrast here. Instead of seeking God as a father (v.2: "children"), Israel cannot even rise to the level of the animals. Ox and ass recognize their master, on the sabbath as on other days (Lk. 13:15), but Israel did not acknowledge its Father, not even on the sabbath (v. 13).

 

These quiet humble creatures give service and obedience, as a lesson to Israel. And not these only, for in obedience to the control of the Creator "the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming" (Jer. 8:7); and so also did the vast variegation of creatures that came to Noah and his ark (Gen. 7:9). "But my people know not the judgment of the Lord."

 

Long after Isaiah, in an unexpected sense his appreciative words of ox and ass proved true, when the Son of God was laid in a manger (Lk. 2:7). And at that time also, God's people did not know, nor consider, although it was told them in a variety of ways.

 

Here at the outset is the startlingly true feature which Isaiah shares with all the other prophets (except perhaps Daniel) — that every separate section of the prophecy has relevance to the prophet's own time, but with a fuller and more important force it also ranges forward to the Messiah, either in his first or his later advent. This double aspect of these long chapters it is hoped to emphasize repeatedly as the study proceeds.

 

1:4 "Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward."

 

The appeal to heavens and earth to take notice of the declension of a chosen people now becomes more detailed. The fourfold catalogue of condemnation is introduced by a sorrowful divine "Alas!" They are a nation, a people, a seed, sons who are sinful, a burden of iniquity, evildoers, corrupters.

 

Israel, designated at Sinai "a holy nation" (Ex. 1 9:6) are now (as indeed they had shown themselves whilst still at Sinai) "a sinful nation", a people bearing no burden of divine message to the world but instead a massive burden of their own sins — "a heavy burden too heavy for me" (Ps. 38:4) — which only their God can bear away: "the Lord God...bearing iniquity and transgression and sin" (Ex. 34:7). In later times, to those "weary and heavy laden" God's Son made the offer of an exchange. Taking their burden of sin on himself he substituted an easy yoke and a light burden of Christian service (Mt. 11:28).

 

At this time, however, this "sanctified nation" shows itself to be "a seed of evil doers", that is, they really are evil, this is their normal characteristic (cp. 65:23; 57:4; Mt. 3:7). Israel are become in character like their strong and savage enemies (14:20), and like the Amorites whom they had displaced centuries before when their cup of iniquity was full (Gen. 15:16). Now let Israel prepare for a comparable overthrow, and for the same reason, now intensified.

 

Yet even now all was not lost. As in the time of Elijah two centuries earlier a faithful remnant of seven thousand had kept the nation in existence, so now "the holy seed shall be the substance thereof" (6:13), "a seed whom the Lord hath blessed" (61:9).

 

But such hopefulness was all that faith had to hold on to. Moses, despairing, had given due warning: "I know that after my death ye shall utterly corrupt yourselves" (Dt. 31:29). So they made haste to prove him a true prophet, and thus they so continued.

 

In ancient days men had evolved a similar pattern: "The earth was corrupt before God (that is, in its worship)", and for that reason the Creator resolved to "destroy all flesh" — in one form or another this word of pitiless reprobation comes five times (Gen. 6:11,1 2,13,17). And now in Isaiah's time God brought into being "the waster (s.w.) to destroy" (54:16).

 

And not only then, for when the Son of God came on the scene with authority far surpassing that of Isaiah, there was the same corruption, or worse, and the same destruction, indeed worse, became inevitable.

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1:5a "Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more:"

 

The opening phrase here is ambiguous. It may mean "Wherefore?", or (assuming ellipsis) "Upon what part?", as though the body of the nation were already completely covered with stripes and contusions divinely administered (v.5b,6). This masochist nation is a glutton for punishment — and also to this day, wilfully preferring the gruelling retribution meted out to wilfulness, in preference to a humble subjection to the will of God, with the blessing of His fellowship.

 

Why be "stricken any more"? From the sin of the golden calf (Ex. 32:7,8) the story was ever the same. Moses warned against the piling up of retribution: "I will punish you seven times more for your sins...I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins" (Lev. 26:18,21). Again and again judgment is to be multiplied against them, as many places in this strong chapter foretell. But the student needs to be warned against the often-repeated howler that judgment is promised for a period of 7 x 360 years. This is an outrageous blunder which should never have been made, for the simple reason that the word "times" is not in the Hebrew text. The repeated phrase (v. 18,21,24,28) simply means "sevenfold" (B.S. 4.08).

 

This expostulation by Isaiah was later to be matched by Ezekiel's: "Why will ye die, O house of Israel?" (18:31). But in Isaiah's day, as in Ezekiel's, the people took no notice. Revolt continued (31:6; 59:1 3). Things went from bad to worse.

 

In the times of Jesus, revolt against Rome was trivial compared with the revolt against God, so again they were stricken. "O that they were wise...that they would consider their latter end!" (Dt. 31:29).

 

Nor in the time of "their latter end" is the situation changed. Offered healing with the stripes of the stricken Messiah (53:4), they still specialize in self-justification and revolt against the God of their fathers.

 

Even those in Christ need to take notice of the warning here, for it is echoed in Rev. 22:18: "If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book." There is no obvious resemblance to the English text of Isaiah 1:5, but the LXX text has an unmistakable similarity. The "revolt" then need not be directly against God in heaven but may achieve the same evil result by man-handling God's revelation.

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1:5b,6 "the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it: but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment."

 

Prosperous and mighty and egotistical Uzziah, king of Judah, was not content with the prosperity and the honours God had poured upon him. He would fain be a Melchizedek King-priest, as David had been (2 Sam. 6; Ps. 110). Yet when he took on him the right of a priest to burn incense before the Lord, divine indignation smote him with leprosy, so that he spent the rest of his days not in the holiness of the courts of the Lord but in a lazar house. As a result his son, Jotham and, for some years, his grandson Ahaz acted as regents (it is this fact, not accurately detailed in the record, which makes the chronology of this period such a headache).

 

The stricken leprous king became a token of the spiritual decay of the nation, specially when Ahaz came to the throne: "The whole head (2 Chr. 26:19) is sick, the whole heart faint." Almost every phrase in this gruesome description uses the Hebrew terminology of leprosy, as used elsewhere with reference to Job (2:7) and to Hezekiah (Is. 38:9; 53:4,5,6) and to David (Ps. 38:3,7; 41:3), all of whom were lepers at some time in their experience.

 

The call of Isaiah (ch.6) probably took place shortly before his proclamation, in this first chapter, of Israel's sin. The language of leprosy is employed there (6:5) also. But it remains an unsolved problem why that account of his dedication as a prophet should come where it does, and not before ch.1.

 

In later years, after Uzziah's long reign had come to an end, the leprosy of Hezekiah became Isaiah's figure for the nation's moral corruption; for this, see on ch.53 especially.

 

In this language of sickness and disease there is a special irony in that Hosea was to use the same figure in mockery about the entire kingdom:

 

"When Ephraim saw sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb (a nickname for Tiglath-pileser III?): yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound" (Hos. 5:13).

 

This attempt of the lamb to make friends with the lion ended in Ahaz's time with the ravaging of the northern kingdom and in the humiliation of Jerusalem — an Assyrian garrison in the temple court.

 

In those decadent days no heed was given to the prophet's heartfelt appeal:

 

"Come, and let us return to the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up" (Hos. 6:1). It was to need the godly lead of Hezekiah to turn this exhortation into practice (6:2).

 

How long would it be before God's people would come to recognize that very often sin supplies its own punishment?:

 

"They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices" (Prov. 1:30,31).

 

"Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backsliding shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter; that thou hast forsaken the Lord" (Jer. 2:19).

 

And, knowing this, the prophets echoed the blood-curdling threat of Moses' prophecy:

 

"And the Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever, and with an in­flammation,... with the boils of Egypt and with tumours, festering sores and the itch from which you cannot be cured" (Dt. 28:22,27 N.I.V.).

 

The time was to come when Jesus would borrow Isaiah's language with special reference to the spiritual rescue of his sin-stricken people and indeed of all kinds of men. The good Samaritan, "despised and rejected of men," came to the stricken wayfarer and "bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine." The gospel has three of these terms in common with Isaiah (Lk. 10:34). Thus, again, Isaiah's words reach beyond his own day.

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1:7,8 "Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city."

 

These verses make the placing of this chapter 1 against its historical background an acute problem. The rest of this prophecy suggests a time of prosperity and complacent formal worship of Jehovah such as hardly fits the time of Ahaz or of Hezekiah (though it has been suggested that it was the last of the 66 chapters to be written, just as in a modern book the foreword is written last of all).

 

However, the obvious reference of verses 7,8 is to the irresistible Assyrian invasion in the days of Hezekiah, when the Land was plundered and its cities destroyed, and only Jerusalem was left intact in the midst of a sea of desolation — and it a city of Sodom, saved only because of its "ten righteous", as verse 9 goes on to explain.

 

It may be, then, that chapter 1 describes the religious decline in the last years of Uzziah's reign (and Jotham's regency — he was a good man but evidently without the personality to influence the nation; 2 Kgs. 15:32-35). Verses 7,8 are to be read as a prophecy of an impending well-deserved judgment.

 

What a contrast there is with the almost unique prosperity of Uzziah's reign! (2 Chr. 26:10). Instead, widespread desolation! "The cities shall be wasted without inhabitant...the land utterly desolate" (6:11). "In that day shall his (Judah's) strong cities be as forsaken places in the wood and on the mountain top...there shall be desolation" (17:9 R.V.).

 

In his well-known inscription on the Taylor Prism, Sennacherib boasted about the capture of "forty-six of his (Hezekiah's) strong walled towns and in­numerable smaller villages."

 

The people were to witness all this, and be helpless: "strangers (29:5) devour your land in your presence" — "so that thou shalt be mad for the sight of thine eves which thou shalt see" (Dt. 28:34). This burning of cities would be the penalty for apostasy (so Dt. 13:16 had foretold), and so it came to pass in due course — "confused noise...garments rolled in blood...burning and fuel of fire" (Is. 9:5).

 

It was to be (so v. 10 says explicitly) a judgment such as God brought on Sodom, and for a like reason. Here the reader of the Hebrew text encounters the earliest examples of Isaiah's powerful (but untranslatable) play on words. No writer in Holy Scripture was more addicted to the pun than was Isaiah — (not in fun, however, but in deadly earnest). The word for "your land" (adamah) suggests Admah, one of Sodom's sister cities; and 'besieged' (n'tzurah) is a reminder of Tzoar, where Lot could have found refuge (Gen. 19:22; Dt. 29:23). This latter word, whilst meaning "besieged", also means "pre­served" — highly appropriate here, for Jerusalem turned out to be the only city preserved from the savagery of Sennacherib's warriors. Not for nothing is the holy city referred to here as "the daughter of Zion," for Zion was the temple mount (contrast modern identifications!) and the inhabited city was its "daughter."

 

It is tempting to look for a further fulfilment of this promise of a surviving Jerusalem with reference to A.D.70. But this will not do, for then it was the holy city which felt the worst brunt of the well-deserved judgment.

 

However, in the last days the parallel will be very close, for then when the holy city has its righteous king, godless peoples will set themselves "against the Lord and against His anointed" (Ps. 2; Ez. 38), and will find themselves laughed to scorn by "the Lord whose fire is (then) in Zion" (31:9). But, as v.10 here intimates, there will be salvation only because of a faithful remnant amongst the godless holy people.

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1:9 "Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom and we should have been like unto Gomorrah."

 

How like the beginning of Psalm 124 are these words: "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side..." This Song of Degrees is almost certainly included here because of its relevance to the exciting days of king Hezekiah: "Then the waters (of Assyrian invasion; Is. 8:7) had overwhelmed us...then the proud waters had gone over our soul. Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped." How like Sennacherib's boastful language this is: "Hezekiah the Jew...like a caged bird shut up within Jerusalem, his royal city" (Taylor Prism).

 

Isaiah uses the title: Lord of hosts. This may refer to the heavenly host of stars (Gen. 2:1; Dt. 4:19), or to the heavenly host of angels (1 Kgs. 22:19; Josh. 5:14), or the hosts of Israel (Ex. 12:41). "Hosts of glorified saints" has been another popular interpretation, but indeed it is not easy to find clear Biblical support for this view. In the present instance the most appropriate reference is to hosts of angels, for the picture of a Jerusalem saved from destruction almost requires allusion to the angel of the Lord who annihilated the Assyrian besiegers (37:36). So also does the Sodom context here (Gen. 19:Iff).

 

There is here also the first clear mention of Isaiah's doctrine of a faithful remnant. Even though most of his prophesying is concerned with the days of godly king Hezekiah, the consistent picture is of that good man's wholesome influence affecting only a small minority of the nation. Many went along with his religious reformation in a formal sort of way but with little of the godly zeal which constantly animated their king. The "remnant" allusions make an impressive sequence:

 

3:10 "Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him... Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him..."

 

4:3 "He that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem."

 

5:17 "There the lambs shall feed after their manner, and the waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat."

 

6:12,13 "A great forsaking in the midst of the land. But yet in it shall be a tenth ... so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof."

 

7:3 Isaiah's son of sign is called Shear-jashub, "a remnant shall return." See also 10:21-23.

 

28:5 "In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory...unto the residue of his people."

 

29:19 "The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel."

 

Joel 2:32 and Mic. 5:7,8 are other contemporary pronouncements in harmony with Isaiah.

 

Later prophets were to lament even more bitterly the rarity of simple faith: Jer. 5:1; Ez. 22:30.

 

By his repeated personal pronouns "we...we..." Isaiah identified himself very emphatically with this godly minority. The rest were no better than Sodom and Gomorrah. There was the same blatant shamelessness: "They declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not" (3:9). His language echoed Moses' vigorous bitter anticipation of his people's declension and judgment: "the plagues of that land, and the sickness which the Lord hath laid upon it...like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger" (Dt. 29:22,23). Isaiah knew his Bible, and recognized that the time was ripe for some of its prophecies to come to pass.

 

More than 700 years later Paul studied his copy of Isaiah and discerned a further fulfilment in his own day when again in the ranks of Israel only a remnant showed faith in God's Messiah, and — thanks to a vigorous, almost violent, Judaist counter-reformation — as the years passed that remnant sadly decreased. Yet even as he quoted the words in his Epistle to the Romans (9:29), he took comfort from the fact that the ranks of the faithful were being made up by believing Gentiles who "attained unto the righteousness which is of faith."

 

Paul quoted from the Septuagint version which has "seed" for "remnant". Although, according to the earthly part of the promise made to Abraham "thy people Israel are as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant shall return" (Is. 10:22). It is they who were, and are, the true seed.

 

In the last days, that remnant is to be represented by God's two witnesses described in Revelation 11 as fulfilling to Israel the function of Law and Prophets. Again, a faithful remnant. "And their dead bodies lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified". The fulfilment of these words is not far away.

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1:10-15 "Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah ... To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them … And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood."

 

Here are the reasons for the impending judgment. It is possible that the preceding attack by the prophet provoked a vigorous self-righteous rejoinder from the religious leaders of the day, and this attempt at justification — a catalogue of feasts observed, ceremonies kept, and sacrifices offered — was forthwith torn to shreds by the in­dignant prophet of the Lord.

 

"Hear the word of the Lord...give ear unto the law of our God" are two ways of saying the same thing. The spoken word of the inspired man of God is the law of God every bit as much as the law which was brought down from the mount.

 

But there was little hope that Isaiah's expostulation would be heeded, for these were "rulers of Sodom and people of Gomorrah." The sin of Sodom was "pride (in refusing rebuke), fulness of bread (a gross materialism), and abundance of idleness (a spirit unwilling to bestir itself in duty to God)" (Ez. 16:49). All these symptoms were there in Isaiah's day, and again in the time of Christ, and again in the twentieth century.

 

The tirade against "the multitude of your sacrifices unto me" is, of course, not a denunciation of the temple sacrifice as such but of the complacent spirit of formality in which these religious rites were carried through. Amos and Micah, contemporary prophets, were also withering in their exposure of this decay of spirit (Amos 5:21-24; Mic. 6:7,8). And a psalm, probably added to the temple service in the time of Hezekiah, enshrined the exhortation in a perpetual reminder (50:7-15).

 

The people of God are come to a sorry pass when they have a mind to give more attention to the forms of their religion than to its inner meaning. The multitude of sacrifices had ceased to be rejoiced in as a medium by which God's merciful forgiveness was received. Instead they had become a kind of bribe to the Almighty as a way of bespeaking His favour and help in emergency.

 

"I delighted not in the blood of bullocks." But later there was to be a sacrifice in which God took special pleasure: "Behold my servant, whom I uphold: mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth" (42:1). But not so the nation: "There is no beauty that we should desire him"(53:2).

 

"Who hath required this (all this sacrificing) at your hands?" Who, indeed? Not I, the Lord, but your self-important priests. Thus "ye trample my courts," driving animals to the altar, but with no sense of the holiness of the place or of the occasion.

 

Thus it was in later days also. In almost the last of the days of his flesh, an indig­nant Jesus drove animals out of his Father's house. An end to this soulless formality! He would rather have the sincere Hosanna of children. And he went on to tell a parable of a vineyard, the story taken straight out of Isaiah's prophecy. And he foretold the treading-down of temple and city by Gentiles — an inevitable retribution (Mt. 21:12-15,33ff; Is. 5:1-7; Lk. 21:24).

 

Item by item, the elaborate formality of temple ritual, void of a spirit of true worship, was scornfully castigated by the prophet:

 

Meal-offering — vain, meaningless (N.I.V.).

 

The burning of incense — an abomination; it is the term reserved in the Old Testament for the most repugnant forms of debased heathenism.

 

Special feasts and holy days — the Almighty cannot stomach them; His soul hates them; in His sight they are so much iniquity.

 

Holy posturing in worship He turns away from in disgust.

 

Formal prayers going on and on — He stops His ears to the noise of them.

 

Holy hands consecrated in worship (Ex. 29:9 mg.) — He sees them as defiled with bribery (v. 23) and smeared with the blood of murdered victims.

 

What a contrast with the impassioned call to "weeping and fasting and mourning" which contemporary Joel was to urge on his people in the time of the impending Assyrian crisis! (1:14; 2:15ff).

 

But would reformation come? There is nothing harder to budge than self-satisfied formalism in the religion of either temple or ecclesia.

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1:16,17 "Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from my eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow."

 

This relatively short passage is the only explicit positive exhortation in all this chapter. But how effective its terse phrases are! And how sound its psychology! "Put away evil...cease to do evil...put away evil from before mine eyes", for "the eyes of the Lord are in every place" (Pr. 15:3). The drastic immediate decision to forsake wrong ways (after the spirit of "if thy hand offend thee, cut it off"; Mk. 9:43-48) has its positive counterpoise: "Learn to do well...seek ...judgment", where the verbs imply a patient deliberate application to a new and better way of life.

 

And since the language of the preceding verses seems to be directed at the priests of the nation ("vain oblations...new moons...ye spread forth your hands...full of blood..."), the exhortation: "Wash you, make you clean" follows appropriately enough, for every priestly ministration was to be preceded by the washing of hands and feet (Ex. 30:19-21).”I will wash my hands in innocency: so will I compass thine altar" (Ps. 26:6 — a psalm of David and Jesus, the King-Priests).

 

"Wash you, make you clean" was all the more needful because the prophet addressed his reproach to a spiritually leprous people (Lev. 14:9). The very words seem to be borrowed from David's contrite confession of his own moral leprosy — "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow" (Ps. 51:7); these are words which carry the profound insight that here is a cleansing the sinner can achieve only if God does it for him.

 

But this regeneration is helped on by a steady application to righteous ways — help to the oppressed, the fatherless, and the widow. The first of these should perhaps be: "set right the oppressor" . How Isaiah (and his contemporary, Micah; 3:9-11) felt it needful to harp on the duty to ensure just judgement and fair treatment for all classes and especially those whom hard circumstance laid open to injustice and oppression (v.23; 5:23,7; 10:2). There must have come in many abuses of this sort when Uzziah was stricken and "shut up", and Jotham weak, and Ahaz corrupt. Yet the explicit warnings of Moses' law went by default (Ex. 22:22-24; Dt. 10:18).

 

Indeed, there have been few epochs in which it was not necessary to urge the "pure religion and undefiled" which cares for the fatherless and the widows (Jas. 1:27). Yet it needs to be remembered that the apostle James was not stress­ing this Christian concern as a fundamental duty. His word for "religion" does not describe the essence of the dedicated life but its ABC, not the flesh and juice of the fruit but its rind. The life of care for the needy is only the beginning of Christian duty and consecration.

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1:18-20 "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

 

Now, after rebuke and exhortation comes the divine appeal (as in Mic. 6:2,3). The idea of God and men remonstrating and arguing with each other is truly remarkable, but not unique. Abraham spent long persuasion beating down God's price for Sodom (Gen. 18:23-32). At the burning bush Moses stuck his toes in against a redeeming return to Egypt, but was overborne (Ex. 4:1-17). Job demand­ed the opportunity to argue his case with the Almighty (23:3-7), but when he got it he crumpled up before the heavenly majesty. More than once Isaiah offered on God's behalf a court case between the Almighty and the people He was at logger­heads with (e.g. 43:26,9,10).

 

But in this instance, "let us reason together" is not as even-handed as it sounds, for the Hebrew verb means "reprove" (so translated in many places); when Paul "reasoned" (with Felix) of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come in Acts 24:25, using the LXX word from this passage, there was (one may be sure) a strong element of reproof.

 

Isaiah's antitheses are impressive: "sins scarlet...white as snow...red like crimson ...as wool." This is an effect he is good at; cp. 3 :24; 22:1 2,13. Crimson suggests "hands full of blood" (v.15). Scarlet may allude to the vivid robes of the nation's un­principled princes (cp. 2 Sam. 1:24). With a neat play on words that the prophet is also very fond of, "scarlet" is unnecessarily put into an intensive plural: shamin, so as to suggest shanaim, double. They are to see themselves as doubled-dyed in sin.

 

The New Testament continues this play on words most effectively, for the LXX word here is one of double meaning. It also suggests palm-trees. Accordingly the Apocalypse has a picture of the redeemed in white robes washed in the blood of the Lamb, and greeting their Saviour with palms in their hands (Rev. 7:9,14).

 

Yet another play on words is in the phrase: "sins...red like crimson," for it is hardly possible to read this Hebrew word for "red" without being reminded of Adam through whom sin came into the world.

 

But what a transformation (or, rather, transfiguration; Mk. 9:3) is promised here that these red, red sins shall themselves be "as white as snow...as wool"!

 

The echoes of leprosy language again ring on the ear, for the leper, cleansed with "scarlet and hyssop", was to "wash his flesh in water, and be clean" (Lev. 14:4,9) — as David's sin-leprosy psalm has it: "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow;" and as the snow comes from heaven (55:10) so it is emphasized that the proffered transfiguration will be God-sent, God-given, and not of a man's own manufacture.

 

There is a strange rabbinic fable that on the Day of Atonement the goat to be sent away into the wilderness had a scarlet fillet of the sins of Israel tied to its horns. Every year this scarlet material turned white (here, clearly, is the influence of Isaiah 1:18), but for the last forty years before the destruction of the temple (that is, from the crucifixion of Jesus) nothing of that kind happened!

 

The Almighty's appeal is very moving: "Be willing and obedient'' — Come! Hear! (the same words as in 28:12c) — then, instead of your Land being devoured (v.7), "ye shall eat the good of the Land," precisely as the opening promises of Lev. 26 and Dt. 28 abundantly declare.

 

"But if ye refuse and rebel", as Israel did with stubbornness and deliberate obstinacy (Ex. 16:28; Ps. 78:10; 81:11; Dt. 1:26), what retribution could be ex­pected but that they be "devoured" by the horrors of war?

 

Nor was this threat to be taken as a mere explosion of pious indignation from a godly man deploring his nation's waywardness, "The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it" (this is Isaiah's constantly repeated emphasis); (34:16; 40:5; 45:23; 48:3; 58:14), and therefore it is a word of truth and power. So repentance must be prompt and real.

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1:21-23 "How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water: Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them."

 

Although A.V. encourages the reader to take this first chapter at one bite, there is actually a distinct break at this point, even though the two sections are both in the same strain. Isaiah has returned to the attack. He is not willing that his people should plunge headlong into judgment without having very clear and blunt warning. To think that the matchless appeal of v. 16-20 should evoke no response, but indifference! Isaiah proceeds to paint the picture in bold contrasting colours.

 

Jerusalem was formerly a faithful city, a city of truth. But now there is no spirit of loyalty. Like Hosea's Gomer, she is following her own selfish evil inclination to harlotry. What a contrast with the woman of corrupt life who came anointing Jesus with her tears and was told. "Thy faith hath saved thee"! (Lk. 7:50).

 

Jerusalem had been full of wholesome ways and righteous living, aye, and the Glory of the Lord as well (1 Kgs. 8:10,11). But now David's city was become like Gibeah of Saul. If righteousness came in to lodge, this was turned into a vile oppor­tunity for sexual lawlessness and murder. The city of peace, the city of Melchizedek, king of righteousness, was now corrupted. In Ahaz's days the decline went on at express speed, and later on even the godliness of Hezekiah could make little impact on the majority. The faithful remnant has always been a remnant.

 

Besides adultery (v.21), both literal and in spirit, there was also adulteration (v.22). Standards of truth and honest dealing were shamelessly and deliberately distorted, precisely as happens in this equally shameless twentieth century. The silver of their redemption became dross (a Hebrew word which echoes "backsliders"). "Thy hucksters (LXX) mix wine and water" — the words hint at the most sordid trickery. The only other occurrence of this disreputable Greek word is when Paul uses it (2 Cor. 2:17) to disclaim corrupt methods in his preaching, at the same time implying just such a charge against his Judaistic adversaries. Yet when Paul was removed from the scene, the early church, already on a very slippery slope, proceeded literally to mix the wine of the Lord's memorial with water. The in­tention may have been to symbolize the piercing of the Lord's side on the cross. But instead, by that change and their corruption of Christian truth they unwittingly brought themselves under Isaiah's censure.

 

Specially the prophet went for his contemporaries, the administrators. With another characteristic pun he denounced the princes as unprincipled. They were "companions of thieves, loving gifts," that is, taking bribes in order to acquit the lawless. Instead of giving special care to orphans and widows, they were hungry for "rewards" (baksheesh) — the Hebrew here has another juggle with words: receiving bribes instead of offering peace offerings. Contemporary Micah has a sequence of similar indictments (2:2; 3:11; 7:3). In the last of these passages there is specific anticipation of Pilate being bribed to help forward the condemnation of Jesus.

 

In a trenchant little parable of a house cleansed of its evil spirit (Mt. 12:43-45) Jesus foretold how Isaiah's words would have a further reference to the moral decay of the nation in the first century. And because the warnings were not heeded, all came to ruin.

 

Already in the present day Israel has defected from its early idealism. Already faction and materialism make people cynical, and they give no heed to their own prophet. How long before judgment overtakes them?

[Resource Manager]

1:24-27 "Therefore saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies: And I will turn my hand upon them and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin: And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city. Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness."

 

The triple Name of God, here introducing a threat of divine action, is specially im­pressive. The first — Adonai — very rarely has the definite article, as here. It is noteworthy that here and in the four other similar occurrences in Isaiah (3:1; 10:16,23; 19:4) it is always followed by "Lord of hosts" (with its emphasis on angelic activity) and by a pronouncement of impending retribution. "The mighty One of Israel", an infrequent title, suggests the role of God as the powerful leader of the flock of Israel.

 

He declares His intention to gain peace of mind, comfort, by avenging Himself on His enemies, His adversaries. Here is yet another sample of Isaiah's characteristic paronomasia, for comfort is nacham, and avenge is naqam, the comfort that comes from getting one's own back. And the enemies are God's own children (v.2,4).

 

There is double meaning behind the divine intention to "turn mine hand upon Israel." This means hard discipline for the good of his people (v.26,28). There is to be affliction but with a purpose, that out of it shall come much blessing. "I will bring my hand again" (the RVm. reading) might even imply more than one divine action against Israel (cp. Ex. 21:27). The figure of the smelter (v.22a) is very telling, especially if the very slight Hebrew emendation is accepted: "I will purge away thy tin in a furnace."

 

In practical terms this meant a reformation among the nation's leaders, a toning up of the standards of administration to be "as at the first," as in the wholesome days of Samuel and David. There might even be allusion to the days of Melchizedek (cp. "the city of righteousness"; v.26; Jer. 33:16 and contrast the earlier references to Sodom).

 

The outcome could hardly be more reassuring, for Jerusalem to be "called the city of righteousness, the faithful city." The common idiom: "thou shalt be called" belongs specially to Isaiah (both Proto- and Deutero; 10 occurrences, spread through the 66 chapters). This is to be the settled character of the New Jerusalem. The first of these two names is inescapably Messianic when the Holy City is ruled by its Priest-King as in the days of Melchizedek (Jer. 33:15,16). And "faithful city" implies holding tenaciously to the Lord through the direst trouble. This was to happen in Hezekiah's day, when Jerusalem was the only city not devastated by the Assyrians. The same will happen again, to the glory of God in the near future, but only when once again faithfulness and righteousness dwell there, fostered by the Messiah whom God has set on His holy hill of Zion (Ps. 2:1-6). Then "Zion's con­verts (LXX: captivity) shall be redeemed with righteousness." In Hezekiah's day 200,000 came streaming back from Assyria after the decimation of Sennacherib's army (see Part 1 ch.33. "The return of the captives"). Isaiah foretells that in Messiah's day there will be a comparable return from Egypt (19:18-25).

 

Zion will be "redeemed with judgment," as in the days of the Exodus.

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1:28-31 "And the destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed. For they shall be ashamed of the oaks ye have desired and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen. For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water. And the strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them."

 

Here comes a dramatic switch from reassurance for the faithful remnant to an equally firm promise of drastic action against apostasy. It is possible to infer that the religious perversion now specially inveighed against was a recrudescence of ancient Canaanite sex-worship under a more respectable Israelite disguise — a re-enacting of Adam and Eve in their garden nakedness (lXX uses the word Paradise). There, under a tree of life, these perverts gave themselves to enjoyment, and called it Paradise Restored. They "sacrificed in gardens"; there they "sanctified themselves and purified themselves (note the irony) behind one (special) tree, enflaming themselves with idols under every green tree...a man and his father go in unto the same maid, to profane my holy name" (57:5; 65:3; 66:17; Am. 2:7). These, Amos hints, were the old Amorite practices. But though they felt themselves tall as a cedar and strong as an oak (like the sons of Anak), God destroyed them. And God now promises a comparable fate for these corrupted men and women of Israel.

 

It is noteworthy that, like their so-called "religion" the curses of judgment come coupled together: "transgressors and sinners...the strong and the doer of it...as tow, as a spark...destroyed together...they burn together." And the leaf of their tree of life fades away; and their garden withers because it has no refreshing moisture, no river of water of life (Gen. 2:6,10).

 

The text repeats the word asher, a double-meaning word which also suggests "happy" (the "grove" was called Asherah, the way to happiness). How appropriate all these details are after the earlier allusions to Sodom (v.9,10), which was "as the garden of the Lord" (Gen. 13:10).

 

A dramatic switch of pronouns (v. 29) brings the charge of base perversion home to Isaiah's people: "they...ye..." Ye are the people I speak about; take this warning to yourselves. But ensuing chapters suggest that in these pre-Hezekiah days the prophet's message was taken to heart only by a remnant of the nation.

 

There are shameful indications that in Israel today there is the same sex craziness and the same pursuit of "happiness." The same judgment hangs over them; they can be saved from it only by a faithful remnant.

 

In Speaker's Commentary, Kay draws attention to no less that 28 verbal contacts between this first chapter of Isaiah and Dt. 28-33, and another half-dozen references to Dt. 1. Is the point of this an implicit reminder that as the older faithless generation died in the wilderness so it will happen to these contemporaries of Isaiah, leaving the way for a great surge forward in godliness comparable to the new life of the nation which brought inheritance under Joshua-Jesus? But there is probably more to it than this.

[Resource Manager]

Chapter 2

 

2:1 "The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem."

 

Whatever doubts may exist as to precisely where chapter 1 belongs in Isaiah's writings, there can be no such doubt regarding ch.2-5. They certainly belong to the reign of Uzziah. The correspondences between these chapters and the historical details of Uzziah's time are too obvious to be accidental. 2 Chronicles 26 has an impressive picture of a nation at the height of prosperity (2:6-16) and wrapped in luxury (3:16-23). It is a period with strong emphasis not only on expanding commerce (2:16) but also on military preparation and dependence on human strength (2:7,15; 3:2). The phrase: "ships of Tarshish" (2:16) matches the implica­tion behind mention of the development of the port of Elath on the Red Sea (2 Kgs. 14:22). Uzziah's "engineers" (2 Chr. 26:15) are referred to as "cunning artificers" (3:3). Isaiah also makes sardonic reference to the way in which Uzziah's heart was "lifted up" (2:12,13,14; 2 Chr. 26:16). The frequent recurrence of "exalted, lifted up" (2:11,15,17; 3:16; 5:15) is specially significant. And the mention (6:1) of "the year that king Uzziah died" finally settles that ch.2-5 must precede that date.

 

2:2,3 "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. Many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem."

 

It will be useful first to establish that Mic. 4:1ff is a quotation from this Isaiah passage, and not vice versa:

 

1. Evidence has already been given that this part of Isaiah belongs to the reign of Uzziah. But Micah's prophesying began in Jotham's reign. Even allowing for Jotham's reign being a regency (see on 1:1), it is still possible to establish that the Micah quotation belongs to the later reign of Hezekiah, for its preceding verse (3:12) is explicitly said to belong to that reign, and the conjunction "But..." (4:1) comes in very strongly there.
    
   
2. In Isaiah 2 there is readily-recognized allusion to Ps. 72 in the phrases "the top of the mountains", "judge", "glory", "mountains and hills", "all nations". Since these references are spread throughout ch.2, they serve to bind the chapter into one unit.
    
   
3. The phraseology in these early verses of Isaiah 2 matches Isaiah's language in later parts of his prophecy — "the law shall go forth" (51:4), "judge, reprove" (11:3,4), "lifted up" (many times in Isaiah and not once in Micah).

 

It is interesting to note that in Zech. 8:22 that prophet combines Isaiah's "many peoples" with Micah's "strong nations". So evidently both of these prophecies were already in his Bible.

 

In Micah this heartening prophecy is set as a deliberate contrast to the judgment days when "Zion shall be ploughed as a field". And so also here, in spite of the inter­ruption made by the introductory words of verse 1. Here is reassurance for the faithful remnant, after the ominous threats at the end of ch.1.

 

But which “latter days" did Isaiah mean? There is obvious heart-warming reference to the wonderful new age of the Messiah. This has always been indisputably clear. Taken at their face value the words can have no other reference; and saints in Christ can surely never relax from the eager anticipation which they engender. At no time yet have nations evinced a wholesale glad enthusiasm for the worship of the God of Israel at Jerusalem. At no time yet have they contemptuously turned swords into plough shares and spears into pruning hooks.

 

Nevertheless the character of all Bible prophecy, and specially of these many eloquent chapters in Isaiah, requires that there be a more immediate reference of these lovely words to contemporary events.

[Resource Manager]

Nor is this difficult to trace. After the materialism of Uzziah's time and the corrup­tion of Ahaz's reign there would come not only the judgment of an Assyrian invasion but also the blessedness of a Hezekiah reformation. More than this, the impact made on all surrounding nations by the news that the God of Israel, and not Hezekiah's trivial army, had brought wholesale destruction to the invincible Assyrians would be such as to bring immense numbers of Gentiles from neighbour­ing lands to celebrate the glory of Jehovah and to learn with enthusiasm the religion centred in His temple on Mount Zion: "And many brought gifts unto the Lord to Jerusalem, and presents to Hezekiah king of Judah, so that he was magnified in the sight of the nations from henceforth" (2 Chr.32:23).

 

There was also a counterpart to this in the first century, after the resurrection of Jesus had routed the power of the great Enemy. Then the preaching of the gospel in "the last days" (Acts 2:17; Heb. 1:2), in "these last times" (1 Pet. 1:20), brought great numbers of Gentiles to worship the God of Israel with gladness. But that fulfil­ment was only partial, for then the men who held power in "the mountain of the Lord's house'" were openly hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

 

So today the faithful, and also many thousands of "Gentiles" on the fringe of the true faith in Christ, look for the day when the words of this glorious prophecy will take on an almost unbelievable reality.

 

The very phraseology points to fulfilment of the great promise made to David. Psalm 72 is quoted — "the top of the mountains" (v. 16), "the Lord's house established" (2 Sam. 7:13). In this respect there is clear connection with the great Immanuel prophecies: "Hear ye now, O house of David...upon the throne of David to order and establish it...a rod out of the stem of Jesse" (7:13; 9:7; 11:1).

 

More specifically, "the mountain of the Lord's house" describes the altar of the temple on Mount Zion. Harel, the mount of God, is the name Ezekiel gives to the altar in the temple he describes (43:15), a detail which has led many to assume a special altar-mountain in the age to come — this comes through failure to recognize the metonymy by which "mountain" is applied specially to the altar because it is sited on the mountain of God (Ez. 40:2). The meaning of Jerusalem is: The Lord will see (provide) peace'. Moriah means either The vision of the Lord' or 'the Lord is providing.' Jehovah-jireh means: 'The Lord will see or provide' (Gen. 22:14). Isaiah now describes this: "Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob", that is, Bethel where angels ascended and descended (Jn. 1:51: epi, with accusative), the altar which Jacob raised up on his return to the Land (Gen. 35:3). This is in striking contrast with the ziggurat and altar by which, after the Deluge, men sought to perpetuate their religion.

 

Physically the temple mount of Zion is not "in the top of the mountains" or "exalted above the hills", but it is approximately the same elevation as those round about. The words are meant spiritually and even politically, for in some places "mountain" is used for a nation; e.g. "Thou (the Lord in Zion) art more glorious...than the mountains of prey" (Ps. 76:4) — with reference to the near-by mountains upon which Sennacherib's army encamped; cp. also Jer. 51:25 (Babylon). The same idea is implicit in the contrast between the Lord's House being "exalted" and the triple use of the same word (v.12,13,14) with reference to the divine overthrow foretold for all forms of human vainglory which now are "exalted".

[Resource Manager]

The picture of "all nations (Gentiles)" and "many peoples" converging as a wide smooth-flowing river sweeping on to Zion is a very lovely one. The word for "peoples" is that which in hundreds of places refers to Israel. Then in this instance, is it implied that these are Gentiles now become Jews in their religion? Or is the reference to the spiritual transformation which Israel is to experience? "Therefore they (the redeemed 'Jacob') shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord" (Jer. 31:12). The fall of Israel has meant the riches of the Gentiles, then how much more their fulness described here? (Rom. 11:12). Certainly there is a graphic contrast with the "trampling" of the courts of the Lord (1:12) which the prophet had already reprimanded.

 

There is also a remarkable parallel in the Psalms: "His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. I will make mention of Rahab (Egypt) and Babylon to them that know me: behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia; this man was born there. And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her: and the highest himself shall establish her" (87:1-5).

 

"Come ye, let us go up..." is a winning appeal taken up also by later prophets: "Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion unto the Lord our God" (Jer. 31:12; and so also 50:5). "Let us go speedily to pray before the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts...Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem" (Zech. 8:21,22 — and also v.23).

 

This widespread eagerness to learn about God is not only an almost incredible contrast with Isaiah's indignant apostrophe in ch.1: "Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah" (1:10), but also with the depraved indifference of the modern world. And the unexpected phrase: "He will teach us of his ways" implies an acknowledgement of innate in­ability to grasp all that He can teach. This humility is, of course, the necessary pre­requisite without which God can instruct neither man nor nation.

[Resource Manager]

2:4,5 "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD."

 

This amazing picture of the law of God established among Gentile nations had only a shadowy fulfilment in those halcyon years of divine blessing at the end of Hezekiah's reign. The immense sensation created throughout a wide area by the destruction of the Assyrian army begat amongst the Gentiles round about a deep respect for the God of Israel. However, this was but a small foreshadowing of the world-wide transformation certain to take place when Messiah rules. "Judge" and "rebuke" are repeated emphatically in the later prophecy about his reign (11:3,4 s.w.).

 

And so also regarding the beating of weapons of war into instruments of peace. This is what doubtless happened quite literally with weapons gathered from the devastated Assyrian camp outside Jerusalem. There would be a desperate need to do this in that burgeoning time of Jubilee prosperity promised by Isaiah (2 Kgs. 19:29,30).

 

But, of course, the real fulfilment of this gracious promise is yet to come, when Messiah abolishes war for ever. In the face of these words — "learn war no more" — it is not possible even to contemplate the position of a massive rebellion against Messiah's authority at the end of the millenial reign. ("Rev." H.A.W. p.229ff).

 

This matchless assurance of permanent peace is repeated, somewhat more obscurely, in another of Isaiah's Messianic prophecies: "All the armour of the armed man in the tumult, and the garments rolled in blood shall even be for burning and fuel of fire" (9:5). And so also in a psalm which is undoubtedly based on the destruction of Sennacherib's army: "He (the Lord) maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire" (Ps. 46:9). Contemporary Hosea has the same lovely promise: "In that day...I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them (Israel) to lie down safely" (Hos. 2:18).

 

Why, then should Joel demand the opposite of this: "Prepare war, wake up the mighty men...Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong" (Jl. 3:9,10)? This is the prophet's vision of the final frantic preparations for war (in Israel; v.12,16), before Messiah comes: "nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom."

 

But ultimately, they shall "learn war no more" — a sharp contrast with the un­precedented build-up of more efficient armaments which was actually going on in Israel at the very time Isaiah spoke this prophecy: 2 Chr. 26:11-15. Today Israel has been called "the world's fourth super-power", simply because of the dedication of nearly a half of its national income to the maintenance of a highly efficient war-machine which (as in Isaiah's day) is yet to prove disastrously futile (as foretold in 1:7).

 

 

[Resource Manager]

At this point Micah inserts his alluring picture of "every man under his vine and under his fig tree, none making them afraid" (Why, Isaiah, did you leave this out?), with the emphatic assurance: "for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it"; so this is not the pipe-dream of a pious prophet, it is bound to happen.

 

It is no easy problem, to resolve whether verse 5 is to be read as an appropriate conclusion to v. 1-4 or as a warning appeal introducing the sustained picture of judg­ment which fills the rest of the chapter.

 

There is one detail which makes the first of these options the more likely. That is the appeal: "O house of Jacob, come ye." There seems to be allusion to this in the promise of Jesus as the Messianic King: "The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever" (Lk. 1:32,33); cp. "the house of the God of Jacob" (Bethel) v.3.

 

There are also these considerations:

 

1. "Come ye" is a natural follow-on from the exhortation: "Come ye, and let us go up...", addressed by one glad Gentile nation to another. Thus the Gentile salvation in the first four verses is being used to provoke Israel to jealousy, precisely as Paul argues in Romans 11:11-14.
    
   
2. In Micah 4 the very close counterpart to this v.5 appears to be v.5 there: "For all the peoples (common word for Israel) will walk every one in the name of his God; but we (the faithful remnant, now fully justified) will walk in the (Covenant) Name of the Lord our God." Isaiah's corresponding phrase is: "in the light of the Lord", that is: the Shekinah Glory, as in 60:1: "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee;" cp. also Ps. 44:3, a Hezekiah psalm.

 

From the fact that Isaiah says: "Let us ..." it may perhaps be inferred that the prophet was including himself in the picture. He was proclaiming his personal faith in his own resurrection to share in the joy and tranquillity of the Messianic Age; cp. the similar confident expectation in 26:19: "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise."

[Resource Manager]

2:6-9 "Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers. Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots: Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their hands, that which their own fingers have made: And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not."

 

The appeal to "the house of Jacob" is ended. The prophet turns away, to take sides against them before his God. The "therefore" is a mistranslation. "Indeed, thou hast forsaken them...". There follows a series of very weighty reasons. The appeal of verse 5 had to be made, but it fell on deaf ears.

 

The first indictment here is that "they are filled from the East", whether with reference to importation of material prosperity via the port of Elath (2 Chr. 26:2) or to tribute received from conquered Arabians and Ammonites (26:7,8). It was a time of feverish progress towards a golden era. They never had it so good. But since "filled with" is left without its object, it could be that Isaiah the punster meant his reader to supply qesem, divination, to match qedem, the east, the land of impotent magic, also "soothsayers like the Philistines", in the west. Instead of exporting its own revelation, spiritual and divine in origin, Israel was always great at assimilating the religious futilities of other nations. When inaugurated, their temple had been "filled" with the Glory of the Lord (1 Kgs. 8:10,11). Their priests had "filled their hands" (Ex. 29:9 mg.) with what was to be dutiful service in the sanctuary, but now they preferred foreign mumbo-jumbo.

 

"Soothsayers like the Philistines" was a good jibe to take the minds of the prophet's contemporaries back to the days of Samuel when no amount of priestly hocus-pocus could save superstitious Philistines from their sorry plight (1 Sam. 6:2ff) under the stroke of Jehovah. And more recently stricken Ahaziah had depended pathetically on Baal-zebub, god of Ekron, and died just the same.

 

Also, although the wizardry brought in from the east in the time of Balaam (Num. 23:7) had proved impotent against them, they now hoped to find it powerful on their behalf! Such childishness! — and Isaiah implied as much by his phrase: "they strike hands (RV) with the children (babes) of strangers." Or, was this the making of marriage contracts with Gentiles? "Learn not the way of the heathen" was the constant warning of their spiritual mentors (Jer. 10:2); but, heedless, "they mingled with the heathen, and learned their works" (Ps. 106:35).

[Resource Manager]

Isaiah is withering about the elaborate futility of their prosperous civilization — not only full of divination but also full of silver and gold, full of horses and chariots, full of idols. Hosea, Amos, Micah all combine in exposure of this gross materialism, but there was no inclination to learn from this school of matchless prophets (Hos. 8:4; Am. 6:1-6; Mic. 5:10-15). "The valley of vision" provided authentic visions that were unpopular, so men took no notice. Warnings against Uzziah's glorying in armaments (2 Chr.26:11-15), in defiance of the express warning of Deuteronomy (17:16) went ignored. Dependence on the cherubim-chariot of the Lord was out-matched by a mighty array of military chariots and horses.

 

And men preferred to worship the work of their own hands, treating as a formality, of little help, the worship of the God of their fathers. For this apostasy (which they somehow reconciled with the maintenance of the temple service; 1:11-15) there was a common enthusiasm: the mean man and the great man alike bowed down before a futile materialism and a pantheon of helpless emptiness. In later days (e.g. 44:9ff) Isaiah was to put an even keener edge to the satire with which he exposed and censured all the inexcusable idolatry to which his nation was dedicated.

 

So Isaiah pleaded not for, but against his own people. Lord, "forgive them not!" — "And it was revealed in mine ears by the Lord of hosts, Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die" (22:14).

 

This is how things were in Israel in that far-off time. This is how things are, right now, in Israel. The idealism of Zionism has been eroded away by the irresistible appeal of western prosperity. They depend not on God but on the efficiency of their fighting forces. They produce one of the best tanks in the world, and blasphemously call it Merchavah, the chariot, the chariot of the Lord (s.w. 2 Kgs. 2:11; Ez. 1).

 

"Therefore forgive them not!"

 

And the New Israel glory in chariots of a different kind. Mean and great alike bow down before man-made things of superficial quality and glitter.

 

"Therefore forgive them not!"

 

Their Lord had not where to lay his head. He rode upon an ass.

[Resource Manager]

2:10-18 "Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low: And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan, And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up. And upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall, And upon ail the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures. And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols he shall utterly abolish."

 

After denunciation comes the threat of appropriate judgment. The loftiness and pride of men in the materialistic achievements of men is to be humiliated by the might of God.

 

The key passage is 2 Chr. 26:6-15, with its long impressive catalogue of the un­paralleled advances made by king Uzziah in agriculture and trade, in military might and success. For long years nothing could go wrong with his plans and projects. The golden age of Solomon began to look ordinary by comparison.

 

But not content with the blessing of such matchless prosperity, Uzziah began to consider himself to be the Melchizedek King-Priest promised to David (2 Sam. 7:12-16; Ps. 110:1 -4). He insisted on taking to himself the right to burn incense in the sanctuary before the Lord (on the Day of Atonement? Lev. 16:13). In the presence of the Glory even a true high priest must shroud himself in a cloud of incense "that he die not" (Lev. 16:13). But no amount of incense could save presumptuous Uzziah from the long drawn-out living death which was God's merciful judgment on him.

 

Josephus describes the outcome of this impiety in vivid terms: "In the meantime a great earthquake shook the ground, and a rent was made in the temple, and the bright rays of the sun shone through it, and fell upon the king's face, insomuch that the leprosy seized upon him immediately."

 

It may be taken as fairly certain that that earthquake was the cataclysm here described in Isaiah 2 (and also Zech. 14:5). And it seems a likely guess that it was not a shaft of sunlight through a broken roof but the Shekinah Glory of the Lord which left the king stricken with sin disease to the day of his death.

 

Isaiah has a tremendous piling up of language to describe the crash of judgment on this self-satisfied civilisation — "haughty (twice), exalted (twice), proud and lofty (twice), high (3 times), lifted up (3 times)." The might of God will cause all to be "humbled, bowed down (twice), brought low, made low."

 

And the tremendous drive and ability of Uzziah was replaced by the regency of his son Jotham, making futile attempts to emulate his father's grandeur (2 Chr. 27:3-6); and then by a weak and evil grandson Ahaz, so that in two generations the state and nation moved from its highest degree of prosperity and sophistication to a condition of pathetic weakness and corruption. (How like the decay of godless Britain!)

 

There is special denunciation of the nations' military might and defences. The "cedars of Lebanon" are a metonymy for "the house of the forest of Lebanon" (1 Kgs. 7:2,3; 10:17; Zech. 11:1,2), the mighty armoury built by Solomon.

 

"Oaks of Bashan" may be a similar allusion (see again Zech. 11:1,2), but in 2 Kgs. 24:15 the same word "oaks" is used figuratively for "the mighty of the land."

[Resource Manager]

The "high towers" and "fenced walls" make specific reference to the elaborate defences of Jerusalem which crashed in ruins in that mighty earthquake, when "at a place called En Rogel (at the south-east corner of Jerusalem) half the mountain broke off from the rest, on the west, and rolled itself four furlongs, and stood still at the east mountain" (Jos. Ant. 9.10.4). When this disaster happened it would bring to the mind of everybody Isaiah's prophecy that "the day of the Lord shall be...upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up." But these phrases probably referred also to the high places, the centres of false worship which were tolerated in competition with Jerusalem's temple. "The idols (the Hebrew means 'worthless things', not-gods) he will utterly abolish." "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. From whence cometh my help?" Not from the paganism exalted there but "from the Lord which made heaven and earth" (Ps. 121:1,2).

 

Yet another form of idolatry comes in for judgment: "the ships of Tarshish, and all the pleasant pictures." Solomon, Jehoshaphat, and Uzziah (1 Kgs. 9:26; 22:48; 2 Kgs. 14:22) had all attempted to boost the nation's prosperity with a fleet of merchantmen sailing east from Elath. Once again, as had happened in Jehoshaphat's reign, God's weather was to bring men's purposes to nought. If the epicentre of that earthquake was near the northern end of the Red Sea (the great rift valley), a mighty tidal wave (a tsunami) would wreck Uzziah's ships within minutes.

 

Context suggests that the "pleasant pictures" were elaborate figureheads in­stalled over the cutwater of these ships. The LXX translators, with their rendering "goddesses", evidently had this notion regarding an unusual Hebrew term.

 

The law of Moses had insisted that one of the two necessary tests by which to assess the worth of a prophet was: "Does that which he foretells come to pass? (Dt. 18:20-22). This could only be assessed if at the outset of his prophetic career the seer gave at least one short-term prophecy which would be seen to come true fairly soon. Accordingly most of the prophets, from Moses to the apostle John, will be found to have included short-term prophecies of this character in their writings. Thus the bonafides of these men of God were established (B.S. 4.01).

 

Isaiah was no exception to this general pattern. Here was his prophecy of Uzziah's earthquake before it actually happened, and then men knew for sure that there was nothing bogus about his pronouncements. In ensuing years, during the reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah, evidence was piled on evidence to prove the divine character of his inspiration.

 

It needs to be recognised, however, that to see in this sensational scripture only an anticipation of Uzziah's earthquake is to be content with less than the important purpose behind it. All such prophecies as this are double-purpose utterances. The real fulfilment is with reference to the Messiah. There are several indications of this:

 

1. It is called "the day of the Lord" which contemporary Joel applies to the great day of judgment at the end of the age: Jl. 1:15; 2:1,31; 3:14.
    
   
2. Also, "in that day" is a typical O.T./N.T. phrase identifying the day of Christ's glory; see, for example, the 18 occurrences in Zech. 12,13,14; and also Mt. 7:22; 2 Tim. 4:8; Am. 8:9ff; 9:11.
    
   
3. Verses 19,21 describe flight into "the clefts of the rocks" in search of safety. But in a massive earthquake, that is the very last thing that anyone thinks of doing. The instinctive reaction then is to get into the open. Nowhere else is safe. So reference to a literal earthquake can hardly be the complete explanation.
    
   
4. What is finally decisive is the two-fold NT. interpretation of this prophecy. Paul unmistakably applies the three-fold refrain to the Second Coming of Christ: "They that obey not the gospel...shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power" (v.10,19,21; 2 Th. 1:9). Also, the Sixth Seal (Rev. 6:15) describes the great men of the earth "hiding themselves in the dens and rocks of the mountains", using the language of v. 19,21. And since the Sixth Seal is certainly not about Uzziah's earthquake, and since any interpretation of it which disallows reference to the Second Coming is not worth a second thought, it becomes not just possible but necessary to read Isaiah 2:6-22 as foretelling the dramatic advent of the Messianic Kingdom: just as v. 1-5 must be so read) ("Rev." H.A.W. Ch. 14).

 

The devastation of mighty buildings (Mic. 5:11) and imposing armaments is thus clearly foretold here (as also in Ez. 39:9,10). And reliance on mighty sea-going ships is denounced. Is it necessary to issue a reminder that recent developments in modern warfare have made it shoutingly obvious that in any future war navy ships, mercantile marine, and tankers will have the flimsiest chances of survival? "Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind" (Ps. 48:7).

 

Defences stronger than Jericho's (Heb. 11:30) will crash in ruins (Dt. 28:52). "I (the Lord) will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour the palaces thereof" (Hos. 8:14). The Land of Israel is to suffer terribly in the days ahead. The godless materialism of its people calls for such a discipline.

[Resource Manager]

2:19-22 "And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, tor fear of the LORD and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?"

 

This description of a great shaking of earth and sea by a manifestation of the Glory of the Lord is apparently taken up by Haggai (2:6), for the context there likewise alludes to "silver and gold" and to the Glory of the House of the Lord of hosts, where he will give peace. And, in turn, Haggai's word is taken up in Hebrews re­garding the "kingdom which cannot be moved" (Heb. 12:26-28). It is impressive to trace chain reactions of this kind through the writings of inspired men of God. It is a feature much more commonplace than is generally recognized.

 

This earthquake language runs through a number of other scriptures, clearly (in some instances) with reference to Uzziah's earthquake, yet all the time steering the attention of the reader to a yet greater occasion when God "ariseth to shake terribly the earth." There is no fun in the pun which/characteristically, Isaiah uses here: "When he ariseth to grind the ground."

 

Amos prophesied "two years before the earthquake" (1:1). He foretold how God would "make the day dark as night...calling for the waters of the sea and pouring them out upon the face of the Land" (5:8 — the devastating tidal wave of a tsunami). "Shall not the Land tremble for this?...it shall rise up wholly as a flood" (8:8). Micah likewise: "The Lord cometh forth out of his place...and will tread upon the high places of the Land. And the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft as wax before the fire..." (1:3,4).

 

Long years later, that great physical disaster was still talked about. Zechariah foretells an earthquake even more cataclysmic: "The mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof...and ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah" (14:4,5).

 

"When he ariseth to shake terribly the earth", men, even men who have engineered their own earthquake shocks with nuclear devices, will be filled with paralysing terror. There was a foretaste of this on that Easter morning when Jesus arose from the grave to shake terribly the earth (Mt. 28:2,4).

 

But when the last great divine intervention comes, men will be glad to cast away the not-gods, the worthless things, which they themselves have made and worshipped (the twentieth century is good at this), realising at last that such futilities are fit only for the totally blind, who are no better than moles underground or bats in the black recesses of remote caves.

 

It took the gospel to teach men in the first century that silver and gold, and the distractions men make from them to worship, are "corruptible things" (1 Pet. 1:18) with no power to redeem any man from anything. And until the Glory of the Lord is revealed, men will continue to reject Peter's assessment. And when that nerve-paralysing shock is sustained, men will flee to their own improvised shelters in "the clefts of the rocks" rather than rejoice in the marvel of a theophany out-matching that which was Moses' highest privilege when he was hidden in a cleft of the rock (s.w. Ex. 33:22 — here only).

 

Thus Isaiah's readers are called to share that experience of Moses, and to "cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils." "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord" (Jer. 17:5). In the time of Noah "all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, died" (Gen. 7:22), deserving no better fate.

 

"Cease ye" from such, is Isaiah's curt caustic imperative, for what was man framed from? — only from dust!

[Resource Manager]

Chapter 3

 

3:1-3 "For, behold the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water. The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, The captain of fifty, nd the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator."

 

The conjunction "For" requires that this prophecy be given the same two-fold application as chapter 2 — to the prophet's own time, and also to the Last Days.

 

The present tense: "doth take away" stresses an imminent fulfilment or the dramatic nature of the fulfilment when it comes. Uzziah himself, "the strength of the Lord," was taken away from public life, and so also was the help God had given him (2 Chr. 26:7).

 

"Stay" and "staff" are really the same word, masculine and feminine in form. In this case "the whole stay of bread and the whole stay of water" both link with Bethlehem, "house of bread" where also was a well whose waters were a memory of delight to David the fugitive. So here bread and water taken away may be a symbol of Israel bereft of good Davidic leadership (as certainly happened under Ahaz and seemed to happen in the time of Hezekiah's sickness, but didn't; 33:16; 55:1,3).

 

The masculine "stay" and feminine "staff" serve also to sum up the male and female sections of the nation, both under summary condemnation in this chapter (v.2-15, 16-24; and again in v.25,26).

 

The long catalogue of eleven classes of prominent men (v.2,3), and not twelve, as might be expected, suggests the figurative reference of verse 1 to the royal house, thus making up the twelve. In this context all the terms are used in condem­nation (as also, very obviously, in Rev. 6:15). Judge, prophet, and prudent man are all bluntly denounced in the parallel passage in Micah 3:5-9. The last of this trio is to be understood as a diviner, a specialist in phoney fortune-telling. The prophet is, of course, the false prophet — another phoney. And the judge is denounced for cynical perversion of judgement. For "eloquent orator" RV reads "skilful enchanter", an echo of 2:6 — the man educated in the art of charming, so in these last days the reference could well be to the spell-binding orator, clever but in­sincere. "Cunning artificer" harks back to the enthusiastic mention of the "engines engineered by the ingenious" to make Uzziah strong both for aggressive war and defence (2 Chr. 26.15).

 

The parallel between this prophecy and the Sixth Seal serves to emphasize the reference of that judgment not to pagans of the fourth century A.D. but to Israel in the twentieth. In this respect Rev. 6:15 is very striking. Would the apostle John be guided to apply to pagans long after his own day language which Isaiah says explicitly is about Jerusalem and Judah?

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3:4,5 "And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them. And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable."

 

The judgments of God may take more than one form. "Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child" (Eccl. 10:16). The writer of Ecclesiastes was, very probably, Uzziah — in his later life of repentance and exclusion from public life. He would live to see the regencies of Jotham and especially Ahaz making a thorough mess of the administration of what had been, under Uzziah himself, an efficient well-appointed kingdom. From now on, to the end of the kingdom of Judah, most of its kings were young or spiritually immature, or both. "Children were their oppressors, and women ruled over them" (v. 12).

 

"The child behaving himself proudly against the ancient" was specifically warned against in the Law of Moses (Lev. 19:32), but what would a reprobate like Ahaz care about that?

 

The word for "babes" — not to be taken literally, of course — is a most unusual one, deriving (probably) from a word for "gleaning grapes", the poor odds and ends of the vineyard crop — in human terms "riff-raff."

 

If a nation deserves this kind of leadership, God sees that it gets it. In the twentieth century the fine idealism which provided the early motive power for Zionism is now dissipated in contemptible indulgence in political chicanery and graft. Isaiah's prophecy is coming into its own again.

 

It is also true regarding the New Israel, that an ecclesia gets the leadership it deserves. The present generation has not been without its exemplification of this sorry truth.

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3:6-8 "When a man shall take hold of his brother of the house of his father, saying, Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler, and let this ruin be under thy hand: In that day shall he swear, saying, I will not be a healer; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: make me not a ruler of the people ... For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his glory."

 

There is a good deal of obscurity here, partly due to the allusive nature of the Hebrew text and partly through lack of fuller knowledge of the historical background.

 

"Thou hast clothing" is probably figurative, as also is the allusion to bread and water in verse 1. The over-all picture is one of a kingdom in a state of ruin and chaos, the kind of thing that came with alarming rapidity in the reign of Ahaz, who appears to have been one of the most wrong-headed and feckless kings to reign in Jerusalem. He made Judah naked, both religiously and politically (2 Chr. 28:19). The language here, so reminiscent of the despairing appeal made by the elders of Israel to Jephthah ("Be thou our ruler"; cp. Jud. 11:6), expresses the yearning of a segment of the nation for a more wholesome, more dependable government. Ahaz, himself co-opted to a regency, probably adopted the same device with his son Hezekiah, who from earliest days showed promise of godliness and dependability (see on 11:1-5). The conjunction here of "house" and "bread" suggests again an allusion to Bethlehem where Hezekiah was born (Mic. 5:2). But if this surmise is correct, then this prophecy, coming where it does, foretells the reluctance of the new boy-king to be so early associated with the responsibilities of a run-down country. "This ruin" echoes the summary of Ahaz's worthlessness: "they (the gods he worshipped) were the ruin (s.w) of him, and of all Israel" (2 Chr. 28:23).

 

Not only were the people dismayed and disgusted at the decay which came in so rapidly, but so also was their God. All this "provoked the eyes of his glory" — "I will set mine eye upon them for evil, and not for good...The eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom and I will destroy it..." (Am. 9:4,8).