The vision of Isaiah the son of Amos, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
The opening line of Isaiah is a title page: a man, a message, a subject, and a span of years. It tells us that what follows was seen, not thought up. And it ties the whole prophecy to one people at one time.
This first verse is not the heading of chapter one only. It covers the whole collection. Later prophecies in the book carry their own dates.
The title... gives unity to the entire collection, unlike the particular dates found in Isaiah 6:1; 7:1; 14:28; 20:1. In keeping with all this, the first chapter is more general in character than any other in the book. With deep feeling it charges the people, the capital and the sanctuary with the worst ingratitude.
Two Hebrew words stand behind the office. Each says something different about the prophet.
The word translated "prophet" in the Old Testament comes from a word meaning "bubbling or pouring forth." It points to God's action in inspiring him. "Seer" points to the vision that marked such a man out. The meaning this word carries in Scripture rises far above its ordinary use among the nations, just as the living and true God rises above the demons. Those demons worked behind the idols that the nations worshipped and their prophets interpreted.
Some have tried to soften "vision" into human intuition. One writer answers with a simple test:
Intuition, as the word is normally used, does not mean the same thing as "vision" in the prophets. Did Nahum pour out the burden of Nineveh by intuition? Did Isaiah give his predictions about God's people and the nations by intuition?
The verse gives his father's name and almost nothing else. The book adds little more, though his two sons carried names that were messages.
We know very little about his personal life. Jewish tradition claims he was related to King Uzziah. He must have come from a leading family, since he could go in freely before the kings of Judah, Ahaz and Hezekiah, and likely the others too. The book tells us he was married. He had two sons who bore prophetic names. The first was Shear-Jashub ("a remnant shall return"), which showed that God would leave a remnant of His people. The second was Maher-shalal-hash-baz, which means "hurrying to the spoil, rushing to the prey" — a prophecy of the coming, threatening invasion by Assyria.
His own name carries the theme of the book, and explains the place it holds in the rest of Scripture:
The name Isaiah means "Jehovah saves" or "Jehovah is salvation." He has rightly been called the prophet of the gospel. The New Testament quotes this great book directly, and hints at it, more often than any other prophetic book.
The verse names its own subject. That settles a long-running question about how to read the book.
Some people say that the prophet Isaiah is full of the Church of God... But to give even a shadow of proof for this, they take "Jerusalem" to mean the Church, the "house of David" to mean the Church, "Zion" to mean the Church, and I don't know what else to mean the Church. As far as I can see, they have no authority at all for doing so. But the book of Isaiah is headed with the words "concerning Judah and Jerusalem." So while the Holy Spirit, in writing the Scriptures, may weave in most precious truths that we can now take up and use for our own building up, it is clear that the plain teaching of these Scriptures refers to the nation and people of Israel, and not to the Church of God.
Naming Judah does not shrink the prophecy to one tribe. Jerusalem was the capital of all the tribes, so God speaks past the split:
Chapter 1:1 tells us Isaiah's vision concerns Judah and Jerusalem. Since Jerusalem is the true capital of all the tribes, God brushes aside the division that had happened. Again and again He prophesies of Israel's glory — and Israel here covers the whole twelve tribes.
The four reigns do more than date the book. Good kings ruled — yet read what the prophet says about the people.
The first verse shows that Isaiah's ministry was in the southern kingdom and ran through four reigns. Three of the kings named did mostly what was right, and one of them stood out. Only one — Ahaz — turned aside and did evil. Yet the prophet's opening words reveal a sad state of departure and rebellion among the people... They were sinful and marked by iniquity, evil-doing, corruption and alienation. All this went on while God-fearing kings were on the throne.
- Vision. The book opens with something seen, not reasoned out. God gave the seer what no intuition could supply.
- Man. Scripture tells us little about Isaiah, son of Amoz. Even his sons' names carry the message.
- Name. "Jehovah is salvation" — the name spells out the theme. No other prophecy is quoted so often in the New Testament.
- Scope. The subject is Judah and Jerusalem. Reading the church into Zion or the house of David has no warrant here.
- Times. Four reigns, three of them mostly good — yet the people rebelled. A good throne cannot make a faithful heart.
Hear, [ye] heavens, and give ear, [thou] earth! for Jehovah hath spoken I have nourished and brought up children; and they have rebelled against me.
Isaiah's book opens with a courtroom, not a prediction. God calls heaven and earth to listen while He describes the children He raised. The charge is not one scandal. It is settled ingratitude — and the verse asks why a people God nourished should end up like this.
The verse names its source before it names the crime. This is not Isaiah's opinion. Every prophet spoke with the same high authority, and Isaiah stands first in the line.
The prophets all alike spoke with the highest authority. Take the first of them: "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the LORD has spoken" (Isa. 1:2).
Isaiah did not invent this opening. Moses used the same call at the start of his last song, and Isaiah takes it up again.
So Moses, who gave the law, called the heavens and the earth to listen in his song (Deut. 32:1). He proclaimed the name of Jehovah. He also set before the people a searching look into the future, which by divine power took in the failure and ruin of Israel… Here it is the dark picture of their sins. What a protest from God and for God! Heaven and earth are summoned to hear the complaint against His people.
Another writer points to what that call says about the size of the message.
Moses began his song by calling heaven and earth to hear the words of his mouth. What he was about to say concerned indeed heaven and earth. Isaiah too began his book with the same call (Isa. 1:2).
The word "children" carries weight. It names a real bond between God and a whole nation. Writers also mark how that bond differs from being born of God.
As a nation, God gave special care to His people Israel. He nourished them and protected them. He disciplined them for their sins, and forgave them when they turned back to Him. Despite all God's goodness and care, Israel rebelled against His authority and worshipped idols… All people are God's offspring (Acts 17:29), since we all come from Adam, into whom God breathed the breath of life. But that is very different from the new birth, which brings us into God's family as His children.
The charge names no single reign. Isaiah served under four kings, and some of them were good. The problem was never one bad season.
The opening appeal of the prophet is to the conscience. Every reader can see it. Through Isaiah, Jehovah charges His people with ungrateful, enormous, and lasting rebellion. It is all the worse because the charge is plainly general… True, no one can point to one particular period, or to one outbreak of unusually vicious evil. Even that, however sad, would not be as hopeless as a settled state of alienation.
The timing sharpens it further. The rot described here was not the fruit of a wicked court.
Three of the kings mentioned did mostly what was right, and one of them stood out. Only one — Ahaz — turned aside and did evil. Yet the prophet's opening words reveal a sad state of departure and rebellion among the people… They were sinful and marked by iniquity, evil-doing, corruption, and alienation. All this went on while God-fearing kings were on the throne.
Later in the book, faith reaches back to this verse. The relationship the rebellion broke becomes the ground of the prophet's appeal.
The very first words of Isaiah's prophecy were, "The LORD has spoken: 'Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.'" So then, Jehovah had taken the place of Father to Israel. The prophet's faith counted on that, and he based his appeal on it.
God says this about Himself. So a parent grieving over a wayward child is not describing anything God has not felt.
He has a Father's heart, He knows what it is to bring up children; as we read in Isaiah 1:2: "Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me." He knows every feeling that stirs a parent's heart.
- Spoken — The verse rests on the words "the LORD has spoken." The prophets claimed no authority of their own. Isaiah leads that line.
- Reared — God's complaint starts with His own kindness. He nourished and brought up a whole nation, and that care shows how deep the ingratitude runs.
- Heard — God calls heaven and earth to listen, as Moses did in his song. The failure of God's people is too large a matter for Israel alone.
- Rebelled — The charge is general, not tied to one bad king. The decay ran on while God-fearing kings reigned. That marks settled alienation, not a passing slip.
- Reclaimed — The Father-relationship the rebellion insulted is the ground Isaiah later pleads on. It also tells every grieving parent that God has felt what they feel.
The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; Israel doth not know, my people hath no intelligence.
God opens His case against His people by calling heaven and earth to listen, then points them to their own farmyard for the proof. The animals know who owns and feeds them; the people God calls His own do not.
The complaint follows a pattern set long before. What makes the charge sting is the contrast drawn from the stable.
So the law-giver in his song (Deuteronomy 32:1) called the heavens and the earth to give ear, as he proclaimed the name of the LORD. … Heaven and earth are summoned to hear the complaint against His people. The dullest of their own beasts of burden put them to shame. God's correction did as little good as His gracious training.
The picture fits people who lived with livestock. For the lesson, God sends them to the yard behind their own house.
Isaiah 1:3 was addressed to a people of pastoral habits. It was not yet the day of great manufacturing cities. Every man owned oxen and donkeys. So the LORD tells His people to go to their own stockyards and learn a lesson there. "The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand." These are not the most intelligent farm animals. Even so, they are a rebuke to man.
Knowing, in this verse, means knowing whose you are. Man's failure there comes from unbelief, not from a weak mind.
These beasts at least know who they belong to. Man does not: in the stupidity of his unbelief he fails to see that his owner and master is God.
The crib is the feeding trough, and that is the second half of the rebuke. It starts at the dinner table and does not stop there.
The donkey knows who feeds it, "but my people do not understand." The beast knows whose hand its good things come from, but not man! Yet, as Paul told the men of Lystra in Acts 14:17, God has never left Himself without witness. He has done men good, giving rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling men's hearts with food and gladness. But do men acknowledge His hand? … If men fail to own God in His lesser gifts, what is their attitude toward the overwhelming gift of His Son? Is Christ valued?
Isaiah's people kept up their religion. It did not fool God. The ignorance had further to fall — and even so, it does not get the last word.
"Israel does not know, my people do not understand," is the LORD's weighty conclusion. When it comes to grateful recognition of the hand that fed them, He finds the children of His covenant lower than the beasts that perish (Isaiah 1). … He tests hearts. He saw that they did not really know Him just as clearly when they were diligently waiting in His courts as when they openly paraded their shame. … This national ignorance reached its lowest depth when, not knowing what they did, they crucified the Son of God. … Yet God has promised and provided this for the house of Israel and the house of Judah: in the days to come, all that nation, from the smallest to the greatest, shall truly know the LORD.
The charge did not end with Isaiah's generation. Later, God's own Son stood among the people.
Isaiah, in his day, said, "The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know." That word might now be said with far greater emphasis. Jesus the Son of God was among them. Did they know Him? They did not. They had not the sense of a donkey!
- Know — the courtroom. God calls heaven and earth as witnesses. The verdict comes from the cattle shed: the dullest beasts of burden put God's people to shame.
- Know — the owner. The animal has grasped one thing man misses: whose he is. Man's failure is not weak intelligence but unbelief about his own Owner and Master.
- Know — the crib. The donkey traces its food to a hand. Rain and fruitful seasons are God's standing witness. Will a man who never thanks Him for a meal value the gift of His Son?
- Know — under religion. The nation was busy in God's courts and still did not know Him. That ignorance was of the heart, and it sank lowest when they crucified the Son of God.
- Know — the promise. The God who brings the charge also pledges the cure. A day is coming when all that nation, from the least to the greatest, will truly know the LORD.
Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that corrupt themselves! They have forsaken Jehovah; they have despised the Holy One of Israel; they are turned away backward.
God's opening words through Isaiah are not about one bad king or one bad year. They are a verdict on a whole people He had raised as His own children. The charge comes in layers: what they are, what they did, and who they turned their backs on. The last name in that list, the Holy One of Israel, carries the answer as well as the accusation.
The charge is broad on purpose. It does not point to one moment of unusual wickedness. One writer says this makes it worse, not milder:
Everyone who reads Isaiah can see that through him the LORD charges His people with ungrateful, huge, and lasting rebellion. It is all the worse because the charge is plainly general... True, no one can point to one particular period, or to one outbreak of unusually vicious sin. But even that, however sad, would not be as hopeless as a settled state of alienation. Their corruption went hand in hand with the contempt they showed to Him Who had always watched over them with a patience and tender mercy as perfect as His righteousness.
Two verses earlier God calls them children He nourished and brought up. Verse 4 shows what those children became. One writer marks the gap between a family name and a family likeness:
As a nation, God gave His people Israel special care. He nourished and protected them, disciplined them for their sins, and forgave them when they turned to Him in repentance. Despite all God's goodness and care, Israel rebelled against His authority and gave their worship to idols. They were "offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly" (verse 4). These are plainly not the marks of true children of God, of those who are born of God and belong to His family.
God chooses one name for Himself here. It measures the distance between Him and what they had become:
The name "Holy One of Israel" implies that the God of Israel is completely separated from all evil, for His eyes are too pure to look at evil. The seraphim say the same when they call out before His throne: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts."
That title is Isaiah's signature name for God, and it does not stay on the side of judgment only:
Isaiah calls Him "the Holy One of Israel" all through the book. This title of the Lord, who deals with His people in judgment and in mercy, appears twenty-five times in Isaiah... The Holy One of Israel is the LORD; He is the Redeemer of His people. "Our Redeemer—the LORD of hosts is his name—is the Holy One of Israel" (47:4).
They had turned away, and that drift had a history behind it. One writer sets the sigh in this verse against the height Israel once stood at:
In Isaiah's day we hear the sigh of Israel's God... The foolish people threw away all they enjoyed in the golden days of Solomon, so that they might "enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin."
The verse is easy to read as a report on one unusually bad nation. One writer presses it further:
Do not think, dear reader, that all this was written only as the history of one unusually corrupt people. Oh no; by it God wants to show us what the human heart is — my heart, your heart — even when God has poured out all His care on us. The human heart is completely corrupt; good does not exist in it; and so it is impossible to get any good out of it.
Isaiah's opening charge is severe. It is not God's last word to this nation:
The first chapter gives a true picture of Israel as a sinful nation, weighed down with sin (Isa. 1:4). Despite all their sins, God will step in to purge away their dross and take away all their sin: "Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent, by righteousness" (Isa. 1:25-27).
- Nourished — God raised them as children and cared for them without a break. The charge stands against the background of that kindness.
- Corrupted — the family name stayed, but the family likeness was gone. Offspring of evildoers is not what a child of God looks like.
- Provoked — they offended the Holy One, who is completely separated from all evil. That is why sin against Him cannot be waved through.
- Backward — this is not one bad moment but a settled state of alienation. A slow, steady slide is more serious than a single outbreak of wickedness.
- Redeemed — the title that condemns them, Holy One of Israel, is also Isaiah's name for their Redeemer. The chapter that opens with this charge ends with Zion redeemed.
Why should ye be smitten any more? ye will revolt more and more the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
Isaiah opens with a question from God, not a verdict, put to a people already covered in the marks of His discipline. Why keep striking them, when every blow has only brought more rebellion?
The prophecy does not begin with prediction. It opens with God pleading, and His charge covers the whole nation, not one bad reign.
The opening appeal of the prophet is to the conscience. No reader can avoid seeing that through Isaiah the Lord charges His people with ungrateful, enormous, and persistent rebellion. It is all the more terrible because it is plainly general... In themselves they were hopelessly evil... One outbreak of unusually vicious evil, however sad, would not be as desperate as a continuous state of alienation. Their corruption went hand in hand with contempt for Him. He had always watched over them with a patience and tender mercy as perfect as His righteousness. Yet each time He disciplined them, they revolted more.
God had tried two things with this people: gentle training and hard discipline. Kelly sets the results side by side.
The dullest of their own beasts of burden put them to shame. God's chastenings were as useless as His gracious training. The nation as a body was diseased and repulsive from head to foot. Medicine and treatment were completely ignored.
That patience ran a long time first. In governing the nation, God forgave again and again, "till He was compelled to judge, and say 'why should you be stricken any more?'" One writer names the pattern that drained the discipline of all effect: "restoration after chastisement only gave them further opportunity for sin until the cup ran over" (The Bible Treasury).
The image runs from the crown down. Sickness at the top, weakness at the centre, and in the next verse open wounds everywhere. One writer names the disease, and the only One who can cure it.
Long before, the Spirit of God had made known the leprous condition of the people... This describes the leper perfectly: wounds, bruises and sores, as he wanders as an outcast toward even greater suffering. Here then Israel's Messiah, the same who spoke in Exodus, "I am the Lord, your Healer," meets His poor, unclean people.
Kelly names what makes the case so grave. Israel "felt nothing about their disgusting wounds and deadly disease, suffered at the hands of the One Who loved them. He was ready to heal, but their hard indifference treated His readiness as worthless" (William Kelly).
Commentators read the head-to-foot sweep as more than rhetoric. It measures how far the damage reaches.
The Holy Spirit is dealing with the question of sin, that evil nature which belongs to the whole race of Adam. Sin does not affect us only in part... The cross has brought this fully to light. Before the cross the Lord could give the law its full moral force as forbidding certain acts... but the cross has shown that man's whole condition is sinful. Who can read words like "Away with this Man!" and "Crucify Him!" and not feel that the cross brought out the true nature of sin as the law never could?
If the disease runs this deep, more punishment cannot cure it. One writer says so plainly, then names the only power that can:
The creature that has proved itself able to withstand such arguments and persuasions as these cases show, has proved itself to be beyond the reach of all moral influence. Hell itself would not cure him or deter him. Man is incorrigible and incurable. Again, we may say with Isaiah, "Why should you be stricken any more? you will revolt more and more." Sovereign grace and power must come in. If God does not have a seed, it will all be Sodom.
A note on wording: these writers quote an older translation, which reads the second line as a statement — "you will revolt more and more" — where the ESV asks a second question. Bellett's closing words also point forward in the chapter. The prophet who calls the nation hopeless records the mercy that kept it alive: God left a small remnant, or Israel would have gone the way of Sodom and Gomorrah (An Outline of Sound Words).
- Diagnosis. God is reasoning with a conscience here, not just passing sentence. His complaint is settled, nationwide rebellion, not one bad season.
- Depth. Sick head, faint heart, no sound spot from sole to crown — the disease is the whole man, not a damaged part of him.
- Deadlock. God tried kindness and correction. Israel refused both. More blows would only bring more revolt, so the striking stops.
- Deliverance. Man is beyond the reach of pressure, so only sovereign grace can act. The Healer Himself comes to meet the leprous nation.
- Discipline. God had forgiven again and again until the cup ran over, which is the warning inside the mercy: patience has a limit.
From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in him; wounds, and weals, and open sores they have not been dressed, nor bound up, nor mollified with oil.
Isaiah opens by putting God's people under a doctor's examination. The report finds one wound running from head to foot, and nobody treating it — so who can heal such a case?
The prophet is not describing a nation with trouble in a few places. He describes a patient with nothing healthy left, and with sores nobody has treated.
God's chastenings were as useless as His gracious training. The whole nation was diseased and loathsome from head to foot. No one gave it medicine or treatment.
God has already struck, and striking again would achieve nothing. Yet the chapter does not end in despair.
Isaiah 1 begins with a testimony to the sad condition of the people. They were all wounds and corruption. It was useless to chastise them any more. Their ceremonies were an abomination to Jehovah. He desired righteousness. Still, the prophecy calls the people to repentance, and promises that blessing will follow it.
The verse names three treatments the wounds never got: pressing out, binding up, softening with oil. Oil was the ordinary medicine of the day.
People applied it to wounds or bruises to soothe them. Isa. 1:6.
So the tragedy is not only the disease but the refusal of treatment, offered by the very One whose hand had wounded them.
Israel felt nothing of their loathsome wounds and fatal disease, which came from the hand of Him who loved them. Their callous indifference treated His readiness to heal as nothing.
The picture reaches past one nation to fallen human nature.
Suppose there had been one string in man's fallen nature that could have answered to God's touch. He would have developed eternal harmonies out of that string. Suppose there had been any fibre in what is born of the flesh that was untainted and holy and subject to the will of God. In that fibre there would have been a basis of life, and God's cultivation would have grown it into a glorious kingdom for Him. But there was none.
Others aim the verse straight at the reader.
You don't like it, but the fact remains, you are a poor, loathsome leper in God's sight. You don't believe it; that does not alter the fact. From the crown of your head to the soles of your feet there is not one sound spot about you.
One story turns the verse around. A traveller lies half dead on the road, and a Samaritan does what Isaiah says nobody did: he binds the wounds and pours on oil.
Here is a helpless man with nothing to commend him. He has no power even to resist. "But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine." That is the way of the Lord's love to the needy one. He saw what man was in himself, and it brought Him to the cross. He came to bring life and comfort to the needy on earth, pouring oil and wine into our death wounds, and recovering us from our lost condition. The needy one is cured where he suffered.
So the verse leaves a person with two needs at once. One Person meets both.
Our Lord's words in Luke 5:31-32 are familiar to all: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." Man is here shown to be both diseased and guilty. As the first, he needs healing; as the second, he needs pardon. The Son of God is both Physician and Saviour, and besides Him there is no other.
- Diagnosis — The report is total, not partial: no sound spot from sole to head, with the sores left open.
- Discipline — Blows had already fallen and achieved nothing, so more striking was pointless.
- Neglect — Nobody pressed out, bound up or softened the wounds with oil. Yet the One who wounded them stood ready to heal.
- Depth — Fallen nature keeps no untainted fibre for God to build a recovery on.
- Doctor — Christ does what Israel left undone. He pours in the oil and binds the wounds: Physician for the disease, Saviour for the guilt.
Your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers eat it up in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
Verse 7 lays out the evidence against God's people: fields stripped, towns burned, foreigners feeding off the land while the owners stand and watch. The question the verse forces is not who did the damage, but why God let it happen — and whether anything is left.
The verse moves from open country to the cities. One writer traces the same movement, ending with Zion left unprotected.
The nation as a body was diseased and sickening from head to foot, and no one gave it any treatment. Country and town were a waste and a scene of destruction. Strangers ate up the ground. The daughter of Zion no longer enjoyed that holy fortress. She was left in distress and alone, like a city under siege.
A ruined land was never meant to be normal for Israel. The ruin said something about the people, not about the soil.
Look at famine in that land which the Lord had promised would flow with milk and honey for His chosen people! But this was sure proof that His chosen people had been unfaithful. So all this evil state — the sorrows of the land and the captivity of her children — shows Israel as they now are, suffering for their unfaithfulness under the righteous displeasure of the Lord. Their cities are ruined and empty of people. The land is completely desolate. The Lord has removed her children far away, and there is a great forsaking in the middle of the land. Only one reason explains their sorrows in every period.
The burned cities were God's discipline. But notice what that discipline produced.
All this had brought upon them the heavy hand of God in discipline and disaster, yet without any reforming effect, as verses 5-9 show. Vivid word pictures bring home to the people their terrible state.
The same writer says this pattern holds everywhere. Punishment on its own softens no one.
We never find that God's dealings in judgment change people for the better. In Egypt God dealt with Pharaoh, increasing the severity of His strokes. Was his heart softened? No, it was hardened.
Long before Isaiah, Moses set out what would follow if Israel refused to listen.
In Deuteronomy 28 Moses warns Israel in great detail and with great seriousness. If they would not listen to His voice, the Lord would send curses on them. Those curses would consume Israel off the land and chase them elsewhere, so that they became a horror, a proverb and a byword among all nations. In Deuteronomy 29 Moses pictures all the nations asking why the Lord had made the holy land such a waste, and why the anger was so fierce. The answer is this: Israel abandoned the covenant of the Lord for false gods, so the curse fell, and He uprooted them from their land in great anger.
The desolation described here did not stay in Isaiah's century either.
Cities would be ruined and the place of worship destroyed. The land would become so desolate that even their enemies would be shocked. The people of Israel would be scattered among the nations. They would not lose their identity, but they would be persecuted without mercy wherever they went. All this has taken place.
One thing alone kept the ruin from being total, and it was not Israel's strength.
Though He struck them, they were only hardened, and rebelled more and more. Outward disasters achieved nothing. He had allowed things to go so far that only His mercy held back a destruction as merciless as the one that fell on the doomed cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. How very few were left!
One writer sees the same pattern repeating long after Isaiah.
This is always God's way. Again and again in the past He had kept a small remnant for Himself while most people turned away. He has done so through the church's history. He is doing so today.
The wasted land is not the last word. The chapter sets out two ways blessing could come, and says which one will happen.
Still, the people are called to repentance, and promised that blessing would follow it. That is the place prophecy gives them. But God knew the people: they and their rulers were wicked and corrupt. So God declares what will happen. He will carry out judgment, and so cleanse the people and set up blessing again. Two great principles are laid down. Blessing is offered on repentance; but in fact blessing will be brought in by judgment.
- Ruin. The picture runs from open country to city walls. Outsiders eat up the farmland, towns burn, and Zion is left alone like a place under siege.
- Reason. God promised Israel milk and honey. A desolate land was proof of unfaithfulness, and one reason alone explains Israel's sorrows in every period.
- Refusal. The blows were God's discipline, but they reformed no one. As with Pharaoh, harder strokes only hardened the heart.
- Remnant. The ruin stopped short of Sodom's fate for one reason: God's mercy held it back, and He always keeps a small remnant for Himself.
- Restoration. Blessing is offered on repentance. But Isaiah 1 says it will come the other way — through judgment that cleanses.
And the daughter of Zion is left, as a booth in a vineyard, as a night-lodge in a cucumber-garden, as a besieged city.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Unless Jehovah of hosts had left us a very small residue, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto Gomorrah.
Isaiah opens his book with a nation beaten, burned and nearly emptied. Then he stops to say why anything is left at all — and the answer is about God, not about the survivors.
One commentator shows how narrow the escape was:
It grieved the LORD at His heart to see how great man's wickedness was in the earth, and to wipe him off the face of the ground. What was it now for Him to give up like this on the chosen people, full of disease and wounds? For though He struck them, they were only hardened, and rebelled more and more. Outward disasters failed completely. Yet He had let matters go so far that only His mercy held back destruction. It would have been as complete as the destruction that fell on the doomed cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. How very small the remnant!
The idea of a remnant — the few God leaves — starts where punishment has already failed:
It rests on this: man cannot be corrected. Man may smart and cry out under the rod, but he goes back to his badness again and again. The book of Judges illustrates this. And Isaiah 1 shows us that the idea of a remnant, as I have said, comes out of this. For the prophet there tells us that those brought up as loved children had rebelled. Afterwards, punished as disobedient children, they refused to repent. They were incorrigible. Whether played happy music or sad, they had no answer. And on this the Lord has only to act on the sovereignty of grace, or on the principle of a remnant.
Isaiah names God by a title, and that title first appears at a low point in Israel's story:
We do not meet with this name until 1 Samuel 1:3. It came in with prophetic testimony, faith taking hold of the LORD's glory when Israel had corrupted themselves and were in a weak and low state. … The same title occurs in the New Testament as the LORD OF SABAOTH, Romans 9:29 (in a quotation from Isaiah 1:9), and James 5:4.
Paul later quotes this verse and changes one word. Where Isaiah says a very small remnant, Paul says a seed:
Verse 29 [of Romans 9] quotes an earlier prophecy of Isaiah — from Isaiah 1:9, confirming the truth of mercy for a remnant only. Here "a seed" is spoken of — a small part. The verse quoted uses the term "a very small remnant." If the Lord had not preserved this feeble seed, Israel's destruction would have been as complete as that of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The whole weight falls on what God did, not on what the survivors were.
One writer traces this remnant forward to the nation it will become:
The true Israel, or the Israel of God, has at all times been only a remnant inside a nation that had turned away. And the true Israel will still be only a remnant when Israel becomes a nation again, settled once more in the land of their fathers. This last remnant will become the seed of the future nation, the "all Israel," which is to be saved (Romans 11:26). As it is written, "The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation."
(The closing line is quoted here in the ESV; older versions read "a little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation.")
One writer draws the line straight to the reader's own day:
Verse 9 reveals that only a small remnant existed that God could recognise. Had that remnant not been there, a judgment like that of Sodom and Gomorrah would have fallen on them. This is always God's way. Again and again in the past He had kept a small remnant for Himself in the middle of general departure. He has done so through the church's history. He is doing so today.
- Cause — Judgment had already fallen and reformed no one. The people would not be corrected, so God worked by grace, through a remnant.
- Gift — Nothing in the survivors explains their survival. God left them; without that, the ruin would have been as complete as Sodom's.
- Name — The title "the LORD of hosts" fits this moment. It is faith taking hold of God's glory when His people are weakest.
- Reach — Paul calls what God leaves a seed. The smallest remnant is the start of the nation yet to be saved.
- Result — This is God's constant method, not a one-off rescue. He has kept a remnant in every era of departure, and He does so still.