Ivan Friesen explores how the interpretation of the book of Isaiah is carried out and lived out today in faith communities where the Bible is the bedrock of faith and life. Such an interpretation combines the concerns of pastoral care with the distress and uncertainty of prophetic action.
The commentary groups the sixty-six chapters of Isaiah into six distinct but continuous parts. Each part may be explored as one might explore the room of a house. The furnishings (themes) in each room are different, but the decor (structure) of the house combines to lend to the book an overall unity of purpose. The architecture of the book as a whole has distinct features that include words of judgment as well as words of promise announcing a new day dawning. In this new day dawning, there are strong elements of a messianic hope.
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The book of Isaiah begins by inviting the reader to understand that it is written as a vision. The vision may refer to the whole book or to part of it or to only the first chapter; this issue need not distract us. What should attract our attention concerns the vision that Isaiah saw (1:1), described as a word in 2:1 and as an oracle in 13:1. In each case the prophet saw something. We are given the substance of what was seen by means of written, verbal communication.
The vision concerns Judah and Jerusalem (the Southern Kingdom). The vision looks beyond Judah and Jerusalem, across no manās land to Israel (the Northern Kingdom), across international borders to neighboring states, and beyond these states to the power centers of the Nile and the Euphrates (in the introduction see āLight to the Nationsā). But it returns again and again to Judah and Jerusalem as sign and symbol of Godās activity and to the response of Godās people to that activity.
The first chapter presents a picture of the Lordās children in full-scale rebellion. The rebellion against God centers on a mixture of ethical transgression and wrong worship in equal parts. Dire consequences flow from this rebellion. But beyond rebellion and consequences comes the call to repentance and the promise that redemption flows from repentance. This picture of rebellion, repentance, and redemption serves as a prologue to the first part of the book (chaps. 1-12) and to the book as a whole.
OUTLINE
The Lordās Rebellious Children, 1:1-15
1:1-3
Rebellion
1:4-6
Woundedness
1:7-9
Devastation
1:10-15
Wrong Worship
Repentanceand Redemption, 1:16-31
1:16-20
Call to Repentance
1:21-23
Greed Has Displaced Justice
1:24-26
Threat and Promise
1:27-31
Redemption Versus Rebellion
EXPLANATORY NOTES
The Lordās Rebellious Children 1:1-15
Two summons call the reader to attention, each beginning with the verb Hear (Å”amaā). The first (1:2) calls on heaven and earth to witness Israelās rebellion against the Lord and to announce the consequences of this rebellion (1:2-9). The focus lies on the Lordās children (rebellious and wounded) and their land (devastated). The second summons (1:6), addressed to Israelās rulers and people, describes the root cause of the rebellion as religious and ethical (1:10-15).
1:1-3 Rebellion
The vision commences with a brief introduction (1:1). The recipient of the vision is a son of Amoz named Isaiah. This prophet lived and worked during the reigns of four Judean kings in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. The first of these four kings was Uzziah (783-742) and the last Hezekiah (715-687; Childs: 11).
The introduction leads immediately into a summons of heavens and earth (1:2). The summons may be compared to a lawsuit in which witnesses are served with a subpoena to appear in court. The prophets sometimes depict the Lord in litigation with his people (Hillers: 124-42; cf. Deut 32; Isa 1:2-3; Mic 6:1-8; Jer 2:4-13). In Isaiah 1:2-3 and in Deuteronomy 32, for example, there are similar words and phrases (Rignell: 140-58). Both Isaiah and Deuteronomy call heaven and earth to witness (Isa 1:2; Deut 32:1). Both regard Israel as foolish and senseless (Isa 1:3; Deut 32:6). This suggests that Isaiah stands in solidarity with Moses, calling heavens and earth as witnesses to Godās raising up of a people and to this peopleās failure to understand the One who sustained them (cf. Delitzsch, 1:55-59).
The opening scene of the book centers on rebellion against God and defines this rebellion as not knowing God. Knowing God, in the book of Isaiah, means understanding God in relationship to his people, characterized much like the relationship between parents and children in a family. As in human families, the relationship in Godās family has social, economic, spiritual, and legal facets, all of them overlapping.
Not knowing God means rebellion; it means rejecting the relationship. It may mean, in fact, accepting only part of the relationshipāthe spiritual part, for example (see 1:10-15). But knowing God in the broader sense means accepting the relationship in its fullness.
With knowledge of God as its topic, 1:3 is made up of two sets of parallel lines that are deftly joined by the association of know (yadaā) at the beginning of line 1 (in the Hebrew text) and at the end of line 1. Israel is compared unfavorably to an ox and a donkey, loyal and faithful animals.
1:4-6 Woundedness
From rebellion the scene shifts to terminal illness and woundedness. Both, unattended by the usual remedies, follow on the rebellion described in the first scene. The compact images here describe an apostate people as diseased and afflicted with festering wounds. Rebellion against God wreaks havoc and destroys wholeness.
Although scholars have tried to link this rebellion historically to events in 734 BC or 701 BC, it is difficult to make a convincing case for one or the other (see the synopsis of history in the second half of the eighth century BC in Hayes and Irvine: 17-49). The more productive lines of inquiry are literary and theological. The word children in 1:4 continues the reference to the children in 1:2. Rebellion in 1:2 now focuses on forsaking the Lord: apostasy. This apostasy, defined as sin (
otsā), is missing the goal of right living and right worship. And apostasy entails guilt, injury, and destruction.
Rebellion is depicted as abandoning the Lord, which results in estrangement from the Lord. Instead of a āholy nationā (Exod 19:6) or a āgreat nationā (Deut 4:7-8), Israel is a sinful nation (Isa 1:4).
The parallel questions at the beginning of 1:5 ask in a plaintive way why the people (addressed in 1:4) invite new punishment by continuing their rebellion. What follows does not answer the questions; rather, it is a description of the seriousness of the apostasyānot beyond repair, perhaps, but deep and dangerous (1:5b-6).
1:7-9 Devastation
In another scene shift, envisioning the consequences of rebellion, the imagery moves from woundedness to a land devastated and desolate. The text reads like captions for a photographic essay of a battlefield, the daughter of Zion alone in the center of the ruined land [Zion, p. 457], Sodom and Gomorrah represent the epitome of death and destruction (1:9; cf. Gen 18-19). Standing between life and death, as it were, are a few survivors, a remnant. So hope rests on the slenderest of reeds, a remnant, and yet it is the Lord who keeps hope alive, who kindles new hope.
1:10-15 Wrong Worship
The address to the leaders and people of Judah and Jerusalem as if they are the leaders and people of Sodom and Gomorrah moves the poetry toward a climax. At the center of the peoplesā rebellion lies satisfaction with sheer quantity of sacrifices (1:10-11), toleration of offerings to God coexisting with wrongdoing toward people (1:12-13), and practicing prayer and violence simultaneously (1:14-15).
It is surely true that the law prescribes sacrifices and offerings (Lev 1-7) and presupposes prayer (cf. Gen 25:1). The prophets, however, opposed a formal external worship carried on dutifully but without an interior ethical consciousness about doing the right thing (cf. de Vaux, 1961b: 454-56). Such an ethical consciousness was not limited to a rigorous personal ethic; it included also and especially a vigorously effective and articulate social ethic.
Isaiah expresses the deep emotion that God feels when his people offer superficial worship that fulfills the letter of the law but not its spirit. Does this mean that Godās answer to prayer is conditional on the character of the petitioner (Isa 1:15)? Without repentance, prayer serves as a convenient tool in the hands of unscrupulous operators while remaining ineffective as spiritual armor.
At the core of the prophetic protest lies a revulsion for the mere repetition of worship that ignores ethical issues. This revulsion for sacrifice as a substitute for truth and justice places Isaiah in solidarity with Hosea (6:4-6), Amos (5:21-25), Micah (6:6-8), and Jeremiah (7:21-26). This aversion to wrong worship anticipates Jesusā teaching that reconciliation needs to take place if worship is to be credible (Matt 5:21-26).
Repentance and Redemption 1:16-31
The analysis of rebellion in the first part of the chapter provokes a call to repentance and the promise of redemption in the second part. A call to repentance opens the section (1:16-20). This is followed by the complementary themes of indictment and judgment (1:21-23, 24-26). A statement of promise tempered by further threat and punishment closes the chapter (1:27-31).
1:16-20ā¢ā¢Call to Repentance
The call to repentance may be arranged in three stanzas (1:16-17, 18, 19-20). The call commences with a staccato-like sequence of nine plural imperative verbs (1:16-17). The first five imperatives (Wash yourselves, ā¦ learn to do good) refer to cleansing that flows out of right worship. This cleansing is not merely ceremonial holiness but also ethical holiness (NHBD: 265). The last four imperatives (seek justice ā¦ plead for the widow) refer to equity that flows out of right living (cf. Brueggemann, 1998a:18-19).
Following the initial call to repentance is a call to be decisive about the fact that sins can be cleansed (1:18). The comparison of sins to words indicating redness alludes to blood-stained hands. This is also suggested by the use of the same Hebrew root for the words blood (damim) in 1:15 and for being red (yaādimu) in 1:18.
People and leaders are faced with a choice (1:19-20). As in Deuteronomy 30:15-20 the choice is between life and death (Brueggemann, 1998a:20). Willingness and obedience means yielding to the call to repentance and the appeal to reason. The consequence is eating the good of the land, a settled and peaceful life (cf. Delitzsch, 1:82). Refusal and rebellion, on the other hand, means spurning repentance and reason. The consequence of this choice is to be eaten by the sword, an allusion to the ravages of war. The imprimatur at the end of 1:20 gives the highest possible authority to the call to repentance.
1:21-23 Greed Has Displaced Justice
An indictment of the once-faithful city, now described as a prostitute, echoes the reference to daughter Zion in 1:8. Isaiah, along with Jeremiah (3), Ezekiel (16), and Hosea (1-3), illustrates Israelās moral defection by pointing to prostitution. It is clear that prostitution as moral defection represents personal degradation. But Isaiahās revulsion for prostitution should not obscure his outrage concerning murder, thievery in high places, and bribery among the population as a whole. These represent the failure of society to provide justice and security for its people. Such injustices on a social plane are equal to prostitution on a personal plane. Since the powerless are not protected, society falls into ruin.
1:24-26 Threat and Promise
Now the mood shifts from indictment to threat moderated by promise. A messenger formula introduces this warning (1:24a). The names of God in the messenger formula are striking: Lord, LORD of hosts, Mighty One of Israel (RSV). They impress upon the reader the authority of the address that follows. This address stretches over seven lines, beginning with a threat (1:24b) but continuing with purification (1:25) and concluding with restoration (1:26a). My translation seeks to preserve the force of the Hebrew text:
24bAlas, I will console myself on my enemies;
1
let me avenge myself on my foes.
2
25Let me turn my hand against you;
3
I will smelt away your dross as with lye;
4
let me remove all your alloy.
5
26aLet me restore your judges as at the start,
6
and your counselors as in the beginning.
7
The intent of the Lordās judgment is purification and restoration so that the ci...
Table of contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Abbreviations
Contents
Series Foreword
Authorās Preface
Introduction to Isaiah
Part 1 (Isaiah 1-12): Testimony and Teaching
Part 2 (Isaiah 13-27): The Nations and the Whole Earth
