Isaiah chapter 01

ISAIAH.

CHAPTER 1.

“ The Lord hath Spoken.”

WE now look at the writings of the prophets as they have been preserved and compiled in our common Bible. There might be some advantage in taking them in chronological order ; that is, in the order in which they were produced from reign to reign. But the greater advantage on the whole will lie in taking them just in the order in which they occur— beginning with Isaiah and ending with Malachi.

“ Isaiah, son of Amos,” emerges frequently upon the scene as a personal actor in the life of the nation. We have no account of how he was called, or where or when his ministry commenced. Any glimpses we get of him are always in Jerusalem ; and the beginning of his prophecy informs us that his prophetic work covered the reigns of “ Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.” We are probably correct in assuming that he was an inhabitant of Jerusalem, and that he belonged to a priestly family.

W e find him dealing with the king on more than one occasion— in the days of Ahaz on an occasion of great political agitation (Isaiah 7.3-7) ; and in the days of Hezekiah, on the occasion of great national peril (2 Kings xviii., xix. ; Isaiah xxxvi., xxxvii.). On the other hand, his duty sometimes involved great personal humiliation, as when he was commanded (Is. xx. 2) “ Loose the sackcloth from off thy loins and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot, and the Lord said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and Ethiopia, so shall the King of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners and the Ethiopians captives young and old, naked and barefoot, with their buttocks uncovered to the shame of Egypt.”

His personal participations in the events of his time might be interesting, but the spirit of God has not seen fit to favour us with particulars of these. It is the messages that came through him from God to which prominence is given, and it is to these we now propose to give some attention. It is characteristic of the scriptures—(and one of the many marks of their divinity)—that little is made of the men, except where they are notable as examples of obedience ; and everything made of the divine words of which they were the vehicle. As Paul expresses it, “ We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God, and not of us ” (2 Cor. iv. 7).

The written prophecies of Isaiah open grandly. There is an appeal to heaven and earth to listen. “ Hear, 0 heavens, and give ear, O earth.” Why this supreme attention ?

“ For the Lord hath Spoken.”

All-sufficient for such a challenge certainly. What greater occurrence could there be in human experience than a message from God ? This is the event of which the whole Bible is the literary incorporation. This is the fact which gives it its value, and apart from which, it would be but a piece of literary lumber. It is the fact constantly insisted on, in the Bible itself, as instanced in the impressive declaration by Paul in the words, “ God at sundry times and divers manners, spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets.” It is the one fact which above all others is the most systematically, and insidiously, and resolutely assailed in our day—in every way and by every class of enemy—the vulgar, shallow, braw­ling blasphemer, of course, but besides him, the polished professor of science, the elegant and speculative critic of ancient documents, and the well-bred occupants of high-salaried pulpits originally erected in its defence. The adverse current is strong, but successful resistance is not impossible. The Bible is its own witness against the theories of all kinds that would quench its light. No man of discernment can make himself thoroughly acquainted with it without feeling that its testimony that God speaks by it is true.

It is not uncommon to meet this contention by saying, “ True, God speaks by the Bible, but He speaks in many other ways as well. He speaks everywhere : He speaks in everything.” Distressed inexperience is liable to be silenced by this manoeuvre (for it is only a manoeuvre where it is not honest muddle or flat falsehood). Distressed inexperience feels there is something wrong in a speech apparently so sweet, and yet it cannot put its finger on the flaw. The flaw lies in the changed sense of the word “ speaks.” When the Bible says that God has spoken, it means a speaking as direct as when one man speaks to another. “ Thou testifiedst against them by thy Spirit in thy prophets ” “ not by the will of man, but as moved by the Holy Spirit ” (Neh. ix. 30 ; 2 Pet i. 21)—a speaking, therefore, by inspiration ; or, as men say, by miracle. Thus only can the purpose of God be declared, for how are we to know His purpose and His will if He did not tell us. The stars are silent; the sea is silent ; the woods are silent, our hearts are silent, concerning these. How can we know if He speak not ?

Now, when the modern enemies of the Bible say that God speaks everywhere, they do not mean this kind of speaking, con­cerning which they really mean that God speaks nowhere. They mean that, as God has made everything, everything is the expression of His mind, and therefore a speaking of His mind. There is a certain kind of truth in this way of putting matters, but in the way and with the purpose for which it is put, it is practically a false statement. All nature is truly an expression of divine ideas, for the divine idea was the antecedent out of which by power it all sprang. But this is not the kind of idea that is in question when we say that God has spoken by the prophets. The kind of idea in question is not the abstract conception that preceded the formation of natural objects as an architect’s plan precedes a house, but the current present conscious idea of the divine mind in relation to human affairs. If we look at a tree, we look at the expression of a divine idea, but it is only the idea of a tree, which is of no use to us in answer to the question, “ What does God purpose with us ? What would He have us to do ? ” So with everything else : flowers, lakes, valleys, mountains, seas, golden sunsets, our own frames and feelings ; they tell us of the wisdom in which they have their origin. But they tell us nothing of what we want to know as to what that wisdom designs concerning ourselves. That wisdom alone can tell us—not by trees and mountains and feelings, but by message—the express message of instruction which we desire. This message, the Bible tells us, God has given us at the “ sundry times ” and in ** the divers manners ” recorded therein.

When the philosophers in question say, God has done this everywhere in everything, they mock our understanding and utter a lie. What can a stone, a lichen, a mouse, fresh air, a storm, tell us of the purpose of God ? If a stone is the expression of a divine idea, it is only a stone idea, and we want something higher than a stone. If a flower express a divine idea, it is only an idea that goes no further than a flower, and what we want is the divine thoughts concerning Himself and ourselves. These we cannot gather from the works of nature or our own dark minds. We have to have them communicated direct from the presence of the Great Divine Thinker. This has been done in the events and sayings recorded in the Bible. The men who send us to nature deny this. They send us where all is darkness and would prevent our access to where all is light. They act like the man who would refer us to the house built by an architect for an answer to a question which we wish to put to the architect himself.

The book of Isaiah, we perceive, opens with the grand announcement, “The Lord hath spoken.” The announcement is made as a prelude to a particular thing that is to be said : “I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against me.” Whom does he mean ? We are not long left in doubt. We might have supposed he meant the race of Adam in general. It comes closer home than that. “ The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master’s crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.” It is the people concerning whom He said by another prophet : “ You only have I known of all the families of the earth,” and by Moses, “ The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself above all the nations of the earth.”

“ The Lord hath spoken ” by Isaiah, and this is the subject of His speech : the chosen people, delivered from Egypt ; and the message, their condemnation : “Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, the seed of evil doers : children that are corrupters : they have forsaken the Lord : they have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger : they are gone away backward.”

In these two features, we touch governing elements of the Bible which have much to do both with determining its meaning and demonstrating its divinity. The Bible is pre-eminently a book of the Jews, not only in its being instrumentally written by Jews about Jews, but in its being concerned with the future of the Jews and the destiny of mankind through and in connection with them. The feature comes out in the primordial promise to their ancestor Abraham : “ In thee and in thy seed, shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” It shines in the description of Christ as “ the seed ” of Abraham (Gal. iii. 16) ; and as the son of Abraham, the son of David (Matt. i. 1) ; and as the King of the Jews (Matt, xxvii. 37). It comes out strongly in the description of the hope of the Gospel as the hope of Israel (Acts xxviii. 20), and in the statement of Paul before Agrippa, that the twelve tribes served God day and night in hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers (Acts xxvi. 6-7).

From this element of divine truth, there has been a great departure. It is imagined that God has done with Israel and has taken on the Gentiles. There is the merest ingredient of truth in this view. Though the Jews have been driven into dispersion, it is only as a temporary hiding of God’s face : they are not finally cast off. They have been sent into affliction among the Gentiles, only in punishment of centuries of disobedience, and they will in the end return to restoration and favour, as Paul in Rom. xi. 11-15, 25-29 declares in harmony with all the prophets (Deut. xxx. 3-5 ; Isaiah xi. 11-12 : lx. 1-14 ; Jer. xxiii. 5-8 : xxx. 18-22 ; Ezek. xxxvii. 21 ; Dan. xii. 1 ; Hosea iii. 4-5 ; Joel iii. 1-3 ; Amos ix. 11-15 ; Obad. i. 17 ; Micah vii. 15-20 ; Nahum i. 15 ; Hab. iii. 13-19 ; Zeph. iii. 18-20 ; Hag. ii. 21-23 ; Zech. ii. 10-13 ; Mal. iii. 4-6).

It is expressly declared in Ezek. xxxix., that this will be a matter of understanding among the nations of the earth when the finality is reached : “ The heathen (i.e., the nations) shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity. Because they trespassed against me, therefore hid I my face from them and gave them into the hands of their enemies, so fell they all by the sword. But now will I bring again the captivity of Jacob and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel ’’ (verses 23-25).

That they are not cast off in the final sense God solemnly avers, thus : “ Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have spoken.                                                       .

Considerest thou not what this people have spoken. The two families which the Lord hath chosen (Israel and Judah), he hath even cast them off. . . . Thus saith the Lord, If those ordinances (of heaven and earth) depart from before me, then shall the seed of Israel also cease from being a nation before me for ever. If heaven above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out, then will I also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done ” (Jer. xxxii. 42 : xxxiii. 24 : xxxi. 36,37).

As for the position of the Gentiles, that has indeed been one of favour since Christ sent Paul 1,800 years ago : but the extent of the favour has been misunderstood. It is not that they have been placed in Israel’s position, but that they have been invited to become heirs of their good things on condition of compliance with the terms which Israel rejected. This is to be discerned in Christ’s words to Paul in sending him : “ To the Gentiles now I send thee to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God that they may receive remission of sins and inheritance among all them that are sanctified through the faith that is in me ” (Acts xxvi. 17-18) ; also in Paul’s definition of the matter in his letter to the Ephesians : “ That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel ” (Eph. 3.6)—not all Gentiles, but those Gentiles who should come within the conditions in the belief and obedience of the Gospel. To such in Ephesus he says : “Ye were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, ye who were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ ” (ii. 12-13). As regards other Gentiles, who had not submitted to the Gospel, he says : “Walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened and being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart ” (Eph. iv. 18).

It is evident that it is only a selected class among the Gentiles that are called to Israel’s privilege.

It is further evident that this selected class change their position in the process of their selection, and ceasing to be Gentiles, become adopted Israelites : “Ye are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints of the household of God ” (ii. 19), so that “ he is a Jew who is one inwardly,” though he be not a Jew by natural descent (Rom. ii. 29). Though a wild olive by nature, such a transformed Gentile has been grafted upon the good olive tree (Rom. xi. 24), and remembers in modesty that he bears not the root but the root him, and that he stands in this favoured position by faith, and is in danger of losing it if he fall from his steadfastness (verses 18-20).

So that the position of the Gentiles under the Gospel is very different from what loose popular theology supposes. What God has done in making advances to the Gentiles by apostolic hands has not been to adopt them en masse in place of Israel. What He has done cannot be better defined than in the words of Peter : “ God hath visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name ” (Acts 15. 14). Gentiles are still Gentiles and Jews are still Jews : but Gentiles may become adopted heirs of Israel’s promises by conformity to the requirements of the Gospel, while as for the Jews, as a body, they are subject to blindness “ till the fulness of the Gentiles is gathered in,” after which, as a body, the Jews will be restored to favour (Rom. xi. 25-26).

While the Bible is a book of the Jews, it condemns the Jews in a manner that would be inexplicable apart from the divine origination at the root of its authorship. Those who regard the Bible as a piece of human literature, and the national movement behind it as a human movement, must find it difficult to suggest even a plausible explanation of a circumstance so foreign to human nature in all its developments, in all countries, and races, and ages. All literature speaks well of the people among whom it originates, but here, it is literally from beginning to end that this book of the Jews condemns the Jews. At the very start, it exhibits them as mutinous and discontented under Moses—actually before they left Egypt : “ Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians ” (Ex. xiv. 12). When they had just left, and before they crossed the Red Sea, they are represented as saying to Moses, “ Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness ? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt ? ” When they got across the Red Sea and found themselves in the barren desert between Elim and Sinai, " the whole congregation murmured against Moses and said unto him, Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt. . . . Ye have brought us forth into this wilder­ness to kill the whole assembly with hunger.”

When they reached the border of the land of promise and had received the report of the spies, they wept for vexation, and proposed to stone Moses and appoint a captain in his place and return to Egypt (Num. xiv. 1-4). About forty years afterwards, when they were just about to enter the land, Moses addressed these words to them, “ Understand that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this land to possess it for thy righteousness. Remember and forget not how thou provokedst the Lord thy God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt until ye came unto this place, ye have been rebellious against the Lord ” (Deut. ix. 6-7 : xxxi. 27). David testifies of them that they were “ a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their hearts aright and whose spirit was not steadfast with God ” (Psa. lxxviii 8). The testimony of the prophets, as contained in their writings, is one unbroken denunciation of them throughout. It may be taken as summed up in a single verse in Isaiah xxx. : “ Go write it before them on a table and note it in a book, that it may be (a testimony) for the time to come for ever and ever, that this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord ” (verses 8-9).

So with the New Testament : Christ told them they were of their father the devil (Jno. viii. 44), and that their leaders were hypocrites and blind guides, and he apostrophised them in these terrible words: “ Fill ye up, then, the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell ? Wherefore behold I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues and persecute them from city to city, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zecharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar ” (Matt, xxiii. 32-35). Stephen speaks in the same strain (Acts vii. 52-53); and also Paul (Acts xiii. 45-46 : xxviii. 25, 28).

This fact, thoroughly thought out, does more than anything else to prove the divine character of the Bible. As water can rise no higher than the level of its source, so no human book can rise higher than a human authorship. Deference to man is the characteristic of all literature ; but here is a book that not only defers not to man but condemns man in every relation except that of submission to God. The explanation is supplied in the phrase that occurs about two thousand times in the Bible : “ Thus saith the Lord God.”

The whole of the first chapter of Isaiah is in this vein of reproof: “ From the sole of the foot unto the crown of the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores ” (verse 6). The result : “ Your country is desolate ; your cities are burnt with fire ; your land, strangers devour it in your presence. . . . Except the Lord of Hosts had left us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom : and we should have been like unto Gomorrah ” (verses 7-9). That is, but for the presence of a small minority of faithful men, whom God, as in the days of Elijah, had “ reserved for himself ” as His purpose required, the state of the land would have been as bad as Sodom. Apart from these, Irrael had become as Sodom. The rest of the people were to God as the inhabi­tants of Gomorrah. Catching up this idea, the Spirit of God proceeds to address them as Sodom and Gomorrah : “ Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom ; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah ” (verse 10).

What He has to say to them is remarkable in more ways than one. God had enjoined sacrifices by the law of Moses. He is to chide them now—not for withholding these sacrifices, but for bringing them : "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 to 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.”

What is the explanation of this apparent repudiation of the ordinances delivered at the beginning by the hand of Moses ? The glosses of modern interpretation would lead the reader off the track here. “ Commentators ” speak of Isaiah as “ the evangelical prophet,” and point to this chapter as a proof that he endeavoured to draw the nation away from the Mosaic ritual, and to lead them to what they call a higher form of divine service. That this is an entire misconception is evident before we get far into Isaiah—-not to speak of the entire body of the prophets whose aim was to bring Israel back to the obedience of the law. In Isaiah v., Israel’s crime is specified in these words : “ They have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.” It is not likely that while making such an accusation, Isaiah should be trying to encourage them in such a line of action by absolutely deprecating the offering of sacrifice and the observance of the sabbath. Isaiah meant no such thing Further on in his prophecy, he speaks of the sabbath in a very different sense, thus: “If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, holy of the Lord, honourable, and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, not finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words. Then thou shalt delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth ” (lviii. 13-14).

Whence then the deprecation of things that God Himself had enjoined ? The explanation is perfectly simple. It is contained in the words of Solomon : “ The prayer of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.” Solomon does not mean that the prayer of the righteous is therefore to be suspended. Why did God hate the new moons, the sabbaths, the burnt offerings of bullocks and rams and lambs that were in vogue in Isaiah’s day ? He tells us in the same chapter : “ Your hands are full of blood ... every one loveth gifts and followeth after rewards : they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them ” (verses 15, 23).

It was not the sacrifices as such, nor the sabbaths and monthly feasts as such, that God hated, but the observance of those things by men of wicked mind—men full of religious performance, but of merciless heart and dishonest principle. Therefore he proceeds to say (verse 15), “ When ye spread forth your hand (as in unctuous entreaty), I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear you.” The lesson for us moderns is strong. God has appointed the Gospel and the holding forth thereof, even if in much controversy, and submission to its ordinances in baptism and the breaking of bread, as the ground of our acceptance ; but these very things may be an intolerable nuisance to him in hands that are not pure, and hearts that are not humble and kind.

Were Isaiah’s condemnations uttered because Israel’s case was hopeless ? On the contrary, they are associated with advice and entreaty in the opposite direction : “Wash you: make you clean.: put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. Cease to do evil: learn to do well. Seek judgment: relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow : though they be 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 ” (verses 16-19).

Repentance, repentance — amendment, amendment — reform, reform—is the constant aim of divine expostulation. “ Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thought, and let him return unto the Lord God, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon ” (Isa. lv. 7). This also we are justified in applying in our own day with as much force as it was intended to have in the days of Isaiah. 

A man should never despair, and never abandon the effort to conform to the law of God, in Christ.

The Spirit of God foresaw that the appeal to Israel would be unavailing, except as regards the “ very small remnant ” before referred to. We have, therefore, a picture of Jerusalem’s unworthy state, a prediction of her overthrow, and a prophecy of her final restoration when the “ very small remnants ” of all generations are to be gathered together in one, immortalized, and established in possession of the land and of the whole earth. “ 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.” This would be considered unpatriotic and uncharitable language by modern standards, but it is the language of truth. If it is stern and unpleasing, the cause lies with the facts and not with the inspiration that delineates them. In such a state of things, what could we expect but the woe-message that follows :—

“ Therefore saith the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, the almighty one of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries and avenge me of mine enemies. And I will turn my hand upon thee and purely purge away thy dross and take away all thy tin ”—that is, remove by judgment the vile element of Israel’s population, which was nearly the whole of it. When this should be accomplished —a process involving centuries of affliction—restoration would take place : “ 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 four verses (28-31) that follow this statement may be taken, either as a continuation of verse 25 which describes the destruction of Israel, or as a description of the punishment that awaits the respon­sible wicked at the resurrection era that witnesses the redemption of Zion with judgment. They probably refer to the former, though their position would indicate the latter. It is no uncommon thing for a subject to be resumed after having been left for a moment to intro­duce something by way of contrast or antithesis. The verses would suit either application, because both applications are the same in moral essence. The verses are as follows:—

"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 which ye have desired—(that is, trees for the conduct of idolatrous worship underneath)—and ye shall be confounded for the gardens which ye have chosen—(for similar purposes)—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.”