First Isaiah (Chapters 1-39)

The Book of Isaiah opens with a cry of lament over what is happening to Judah (the southern kingdom under Uzziah).  In 742, Isaiah had a vision of the Lord, "high and lifted up, and His train filled the Temple," a vision he described in Chapter 6.  Isaiah is overcome with awe and fear, for he "is a man of unclean lips," and he lives among "a people of unclean lips, and [his] eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." 

Isaiah's reaction is the same as that of St. Peter in the New Testament when he realizes who Jesus is:  "Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man!"  But the Lord Almighty sends an angel with a burning coal to cleanse Isaiah's "unclean lips," for He wants to send Isaiah to a people "ever hearing but never understanding; ever seeing, but never perceiving." 

Isaiah's question is "How long, O Lord?" [will this go on?]  And the Lord answers:  Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitants, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away, and the land is utterly forsaken....

The Lord's message through Isaiah begins with Chapter 1, and it is sorrowful indeed.  The little kingdom of Judah has already been invaded by her sister Israel and its alliance, Syria, in an effort to make Judah join the coalition against the powerful Assyrians.  When Ahaz came to power in 742, he was in a quandary---remain independent and submissive to Assyria or join in rebellion with the other two, called Ephraim (Israel) and Damascus (Syria) in the text?

Isaiah's words are spoken both to the nation and to "the rulers."  He tells them that God will not accept their "meaningless sacrifices" and the "trampling of my courts" in the Temple because their hands are "full of blood."  Instead, Yahweh wants them to "seek justice, encourage the oppressed; defend the cause of the fatherless and plead the case of the widow."  Isaiah cries out for a national turning back to God, Who "will teach us His ways, so that we may walk in His paths."  When that happens, when moral corruption is cleansed, then and then only will God "judge between nations and will settle disputes for many peoples":

They will beat their swords into plowshares

and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not take up sword against nation,

nor will they train for war anymore.

 

Isaiah warns the king to "stop trusting in man" and to instead restore righteousness in the land:  The Lord enters into judgment against the elders and leaders of his people:  "It is you who have ruined my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses.  What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?" declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

 

The Lord Himself will restore righteousness to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to those who are left after the land has been purified:  He will cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of fire (4:4).  Anyone familiar with the New Testament will recognize here a reference to the fire of the Holy Spirit, who will "convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment (Jn. 16). 

 

People talk about the 'wrath of God,' as though God is an out-of-control despot like the cruel dictators of our day.  But there is a passage in first Isaiah which is more descriptive of the "punishment" that comes to a people whose main concern is to "add house to house and join field to field till no space is left:"

 

Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard:

I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed;

I will break down its wall,

and it will be trampled.

I will make it a wasteland,

neither pruned nor cultivated,

and briers and thorns will grow there.

I will command the clouds

not to rain on it.

 

When the Israelites first left Egypt and traveled through the wilderness, the Lord protected them with "a pillar of fire by night and a covering cloud by day."  Throughout all of Scripture, God is described as a "shield," "a wall," "a hedge of protection" around His people.  When they despise His protection, His sheltering Presence in their lives, the natural forces of destruction all around them are free to enter their lives.  Once that happens, "...their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust/ for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel" (5:24).

As in Jesus' parable of the sower, the seed does not take root in a nation in pursuit of greed and power, so its GNP will wither and die; it will be overrun by its enemies when it no longer 'dwells in the shelter of the Most High' (Ps. 91).

Tomorrow, I begin with Chapter 7 of First Isaiah.