'The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah
and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings
of Judah. I Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath
spoken: I have nourished and brought up children, and they have
rebelled against Me. 3. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his
master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.
4. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers,
children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have
provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away
backward. 5. Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more
and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. 6. From
the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it;
but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been
closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. 7. 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. 8. 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. 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.... 16. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your
doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; 17. Learn to do well;
seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for
the widow. 18. 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 be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. 19. If ye be willing
and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. 20. But if ye refuse
and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the
Lord hath spoken it.'--ISAIAH 1,1-9; 16-20.
The first bars of the great overture to Isaiah's great oratorio are
here sounded. These first chapters give out the themes which run
through all the rest of his prophecies. Like most introductions, they
were probably written last, when the prophet collected and arranged his
life's labours. The text deals with the three great thoughts, the
_leit-motifs_ that are sounded over and over again in the prophet's
message.
First comes the great indictment (vs. 2-4). A true prophet's words are
of universal application, even when they are most specially addressed
to a particular audience. Just because this indictment was so true of
Judah, is it true of all men, for it is not concerned with details
peculiar to a long-past period and state of society, but with the broad
generalities common to us all. As another great teacher in Old
Testament times said, 'I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or
thy burnt-offerings, to have been continually before me.' Isaiah has
nothing to say about ritual or ceremonial omissions, which to him were
but surface matters after all, but he sets in blazing light the
foundation facts of Judah's (and every man's) distorted relation to
God. And how lovingly, as well as sternly, God speaks through him! That
divine lament which heralds the searching indictment is not unworthy to
be the very words of the Almighty Lover of all men, sorrowing over His
prodigal and fugitive sons. Nor is its deep truth less than its
tenderness. For is not man's sin blackest when seen against the bright
background of God's fatherly love? True, the fatherhood that Isaiah
knew referred to God's relation to the nation rather than to the
individual, but the great truth which is perfectly revealed by the
Perfect Son was in part shown to the prophet. The east was bright with
the unrisen sun, and the tinted clouds that hovered above the place of
its rising seemed as if yearning to open and let him through. Man's
neglect of God's benefits puts him below the animals that 'know' the
hand that feeds and governs them. Some men think it a token of superior
'culture' and advanced views to throw off allegiance to God. It is a
token that they have less intelligence than their dog.
There is something very beautiful and pathetic in the fact that Judah
is not directly addressed, but that verses 2-4 are a divine soliloquy.
They might rather be called a father's lament than an indictment. The
forsaken father is, as it were, sadly brooding over his erring child's
sins, which are his father's sorrows and his own miseries. In verse 4
the black catalogue of the prodigal's doings begins on the surface with
what we call 'moral' delinquencies, and then digs deeper to disclose
the root of these in what we call 'religious' relations perverted. The
two are inseparably united, for no man who is wrong with God can be
right with duty or with men. Notice, too, how one word flashes into
clearness the sad truth of universal experience--that 'iniquity,'
however it may delude us into fancying that by it we throw off the
burden of conscience and duty, piles heavier weights on our backs. The
doer of iniquity is 'laden with iniquity.' Notice, too, how the awful
entail of evil from parents to children is adduced--shall we say as
aggravating, or as lessening, the guilt of each generation? Isaiah's
contemporaries are 'a seed of evil-doers,' spring from such, and in
their turn are 'children that are corrupters.' The fatal bias becomes
stronger as it passes down. Heredity is a fact, whether you call it
original sin or not.
But the bitter fountain of all evil lies in distorted relations to God.
'They have forsaken the Lord'; that is why they 'do corruptly.' They
have 'despised the Holy One of Israel'; that is why they are 'laden
with iniquity.' Alienated hearts separate from Him. To forsake Him is
to despise Him. To go from Him is to go 'away backward.' Whatever may
have been our inheritance of evil, we each go further from Him. And
this fatherly lament over Judah is indeed a wail over every child of
man. Does it not echo in the 'pearl of parables,' and may we not
suppose that it suggested that supreme revelation of man's misery and
God's love?
After the indictment comes the sentence (vs. 5-8). Perhaps 'sentence'
is not altogether accurate, for these verses do not so much decree a
future as describe a present, and the deep tone of pitying wonder
sounds through them as they tell of the bitter harvest sown by sin. The
penetrating question, 'Why will ye be still stricken, that ye revolt
more and more?' brings out the solemn truth that all which men gain by
rebellion against God is chastisement. The ox that 'kicks against the
pricks' only makes its own hocks bleed. We aim at some imagined good,
and we get--blows. No rational answer to that stern 'Why?' is possible.
Every sin is an act of unreason, essentially an absurdity. The
consequences of Judah's sin are first darkly drawn under the metaphor
of a man desperately wounded in some fight, and far away from
physicians or nurses, and then the metaphor is interpreted by the plain
facts of hostile invasion, flaming cities, devastated fields. It
destroys the coherence of the verses to take the gruesome picture of
the wounded man as a description of men's sins; it is plainly a
description of the consequences of their sins. In accordance with the
Old Testament point of view, Isaiah deals with national calamities as
the punishment of national sins. He does not touch on the far worse
results of individual sins on individual character. But while we are
not to ignore his doctrine that nations are individual entities, and
that 'righteousness exalteth a nation' in our days as well as in his,
the Christian form of his teaching is that men lay waste their own
lives and wound their own souls by every sin. The fugitive son comes
down to be a swine-herd, and cannot get enough even of the swine's food
to stay his hunger.
The note of pity sounds very clearly in the pathetic description of the
deserted 'daughter of Zion.' Jerusalem stands forlorn and defenceless,
like a frail booth in a vineyard, hastily run up with boughs, and open
to fierce sunshine or howling winds. Once 'beautiful for situation, the
joy of the whole earth,... the city of the great King'--and now!
Verse 9 breaks the solemn flow of the divine Voice, but breaks it as it
desires to be broken. For in it hearts made soft and penitent by the
Voice, breathe out lowly acknowledgment of widespread sin, and see
God's mercy in the continuance of 'a very small remnant' of still
faithful ones. There is a little island not yet submerged by the sea of
iniquity, and it is to Him, not to themselves, that the 'holy seed' owe
their being kept from following the multitude to do evil. What a
smiting comparison for the national pride that is--'as Sodom,' 'like
unto Gomorrah'!
After the sentence comes pardon. Verses 16 and 17 properly belong to
the paragraph omitted from the text, and close the stern special word
to the 'rulers' which, in its severe tone, contrasts so strongly with
the wounded love and grieved pity of the preceding verses. Moral
amendment is demanded of these high-placed sinners and false guides. It
is John the Baptist's message in an earlier form, and it clears the way
for the evangelical message. Repentance and cleansing of life come
first.
But these stern requirements, if taken alone, kindle despair. 'Wash
you, make you clean'--easy to say, plainly necessary, and as plainly
hopelessly above my reach. If that is all that a prophet has to say to
me, he may as well say nothing. For what is the use of saying 'Arise
and walk' to the man who has been lame from his mother's womb? How can
a foul body be washed clean by filthy hands? Ancient or modern
preachers of a self-wrought-out morality exhort to impossibilities, and
unless they follow their preaching of an unattainable ideal as Isaiah
followed his, they are doomed to waste their words. He cried, 'Make you
clean,' but he immediately went on to point to One who could make
clean, could turn scarlet into snowy white, crimson into the lustrous
purity of the unstained fleeces of sheep in green pastures. The
assurance of God's forgiveness which deals with guilt, and of God's
cleansing which deals with inclination and habit, must be the
foundation of our cleansing ourselves from filthiness of flesh and
spirit. The call to repentance needs the promise of pardon and divine
help to purifying in order to become a gospel. And the call to
'repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ,' is
what we all, who are 'laden with iniquity,' and have forsaken the Lord,
need, if ever we are to cease to do evil and learn to do well.
As with one thunder-clap the prophecy closes, pealing forth the eternal
alternative set before every soul of man. Willing obedience to our
Father God secures all good, the full satisfaction of our else hungry
and ravenous desires. To refuse and rebel is to condemn ourselves to
destruction. And no man can avert that consequence, or break the
necessary connection between goodness and blessedness, 'for the mouth
of the Lord hath spoken it,' and what He speaks stands fast for ever
and ever.