And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear your hands are full of blood.
Judah kept the whole religious calendar — sacrifices, incense, new moons, feasts — and then lifted their hands to pray. God's answer is to look away, which raises two questions: why does He refuse to hear, and can that refusal ever end?
God Himself had commanded the worship listed in these verses. That is what makes His refusal so startling.
They were offering sacrifices and burnt offerings. They brought offerings and incense. They observed new moons, sabbaths, appointed feasts and assemblies, and spread out their hands with many prayers. Were not these things right, as ordered through Moses? Yes, they were. Yet God called all of it a weariness to Him and an abomination in His sight. The reason appears in verses 16 and 17: their ceremonial exactness was only a decent exterior covering a mass of moral evil and uncleanness.
Zeal was not their problem, and more praying did not help.
They did not lack zeal in religion. They did look for a remedy for the clear problems of their day, but their remedies were worse than useless. Divine privileges only made their moral state more alarming and intolerable. Only Jehovah's mercy kept them from the doom of Sodom; morally they were Sodom already. So their sacrifices, feasts, and assemblies were all the more offensive to Him. He felt that their tread profaned His courts, and He refused to hear their many prayers. There was no real repentance, no trembling at His word, but a religious veil over utter and shameless wickedness.
The reason God gives is not vague displeasure. He names what those hands had done.
Jehovah called the leaders of the people "rulers of Sodom," because of the corruption among them. Because of the violence He said, "your hands are full of blood."
Isaiah later returns to the same charge and states the principle behind the hidden face. God's silence is never weakness on His side.
"Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear." And what a picture follows in the verses just after! "For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity..."
The verse turns from history into self-examination the moment we ask God to act in our own day.
And can God not intervene again in answer to the cries of His people? He can, blessed be His name... He has set a limit to the tides of evil, and it is our part to pray. And yet the question ought to be raised in many of our hearts as to whether we are ready and fit to pray.
The New Testament sets the same standard for lifted hands. The ESV reads "lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling"; the older wording quoted below says "doubting."
But right moral condition still stands — "raising up holy hands, without anger and doubting," or perhaps "reasoning." The holiness meant here is godly integrity, not the holiness of a person set apart... A man who knew of evil in himself that he had not judged should not take so solemn a part, or any part, in the assembly.
The warning is not only for ancient Israel.
Let us never forget one thing. With God, right moral condition matters far more than ceremonial exactness in Judaism, or even correct church procedure in Christianity. If careful church correctness encourages moral carelessness, it becomes an abomination to God.
The hidden face is not the last word. The next verses call for a washing that is real, not ritual.
Yet Jehovah stoops to call them to repentance and to the fruits that suit it. The language draws on the ceremonial washings so familiar to the Jews, but moral reality is the point... God can tolerate evil nowhere, least of all in His people. They must therefore stop doing evil and learn to do good, proving it in ordinary daily life. But He adds a gracious invitation that He and they should reason together. Soon they would find where the fault lay, and with whom is the grace that is willing to wash the foulest clean.
- Hands raised. God Himself had commanded Judah's worship, yet He calls it weariness. Their exactness was only a decent exterior over a mass of moral evil.
- Hands stained. The charge is specific: violence and blood. Privilege did not soften the verdict; it made the state more alarming.
- Eyes hidden. God's ear is not dull and His hand is not short — sins made the separation and hid His face.
- Hands examined. Before we ask God to act, we must ask if we are fit to pray. Holy hands mean godly integrity: evil judged, not carried into the assembly.
- Hands washed. The washing God asks for is moral, not ritual: stop the evil, learn to do good. Then comes His invitation to reason together — His grace washes the foulest clean.
Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; -- cease to do evil,
Isaiah's hearers were busy with worship — sacrifices, feasts, prayers — but God did not want a better ceremony. He tells them to wash, which raises the question of the whole chapter: how can such people make themselves clean?
The problem was not lack of religious effort. It was religion laid over a life God could not look at.
They had plenty of religious zeal. They also looked for a remedy for the obvious troubles of their day. But their remedies were worse than useless. Their divine privileges only made their moral state more shocking and unbearable. Apart from the Lord's mercy they were close to the doom of Sodom. Morally they were Sodom already. So their sacrifices, feasts, and assemblies were all the more hateful to the Lord. He felt their tread profaned His courts, and He refused to hear their many prayers. There was no real repentance and no trembling at His word — only a religious veil over open and shameless wickedness.
The wording sounds like Israel's ritual washings. But that is not what God is after, and He does not leave them to clean themselves alone.
Yet the Lord still stoops to call them to repentance and to the fruits that suit it. The wording comes from the ceremonial washings so familiar to the Jews. But moral reality is the point, as the next words make plain. God can tolerate iniquity nowhere, least of all in His people. They must therefore stop doing evil and learn to do good, proving it in the ways of ordinary life. But He also adds a gracious invitation: that He and they should reason together. Then they would soon find where the fault lay, and with whom is the grace that is willing to wash the foulest clean.
God aims this call at the heart, and He still makes it. Yet the washing it asks for is work He Himself takes up.
One thing is certain. Ordinary water could never remove the defilement of the Jew, or the blood-guilt of the Gentile (Job 9:30-31). And God's appeal still goes out: "O Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness, so that you may be saved. How long shall your wicked thoughts lodge within you?" (Jer. 4:14). "Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes" (Isa. 1:16)… But there can be no real national response until they look to Him whom they pierced. Then the Lord Himself will undertake their purification. He promised long ago: "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses" (Ezek. 36:25).
The verse ends where the next one begins, and the order cannot be swapped.
So the word is (vv. 16, 17): "Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean … cease to do evil, learn to do good." There is the weighty matter. Have a good conscience before God: if not, you become blind of yourselves before you are blinded by God. God distinguishes between actions. No one can learn to do good before ceasing from evil. No one can have light in the conscience without first leaving what wounds the conscience.
A common reply is that a person cannot leave what is wrong until he has found something better. The verse cuts that reply off.
Are you doing what you know to be wrong? Does anything tie you to what you admit is against Scripture? Then listen to the word of the Lord: "Cease to do evil." And be sure of this: once you obey this word, you will not stay in the dark about your path for long. It is sheer unbelief that makes us say, "I cannot cease to do evil until I find something better."
The verse is half of a pair. To treat the cleansing as the whole work is its own danger.
In the Old Testament God's people heard, "cease to do evil" and "learn to do good." In the New Testament we hear, "Abhor what is evil" and "hold fast to what is good," and the like (Isa. 1:16-17; Rom. 12:9). In Spirit-led, God-fearing souls these always go together. To rest in having separated from evil would be a real danger. It might soon lean toward greater evil, or end in cold and dry orthodoxy.
- Clean, not busier. Their worship was full and their lives were foul. More sacrifices could not answer a state that was Sodom under a religious veil.
- Clean in reality. The wording borrows Israel's ritual washings. God asks for a moral cleansing, shown in ordinary life.
- Clean by God. No water ever washed away such defilement. God promises to sprinkle clean water Himself and make His people clean.
- Clean first, then taught. No one learns to do good while the conscience is still wounded. Stop the evil, and light comes.
- Clean is not the finish. Ceasing and learning belong together. Stopping alone can drift into greater evil, or into dry orthodoxy.
learn to do well seek judgment, gladden the oppressed, do justice to the fatherless, plead for the widow.
God has just told a religious nation that He hates their feasts and sacrifices. Now He says what He wants instead: not better worship, but justice for people who have no one to defend them.
God puts the two halves of His demand in a fixed order. One writer, commenting on the call to wash and put away evil, ties it to the conscience:
That is the serious matter. Have a good conscience before God. If you do not, you blind yourselves before God blinds you. God distinguishes between actions. No one can learn to do good before he stops doing evil. No one can have light in the conscience without first leaving what wounds the conscience.
That order is not a delay tactic. It is how God teaches anyone at all:
Separation from evil is always insisted upon throughout the Bible. It is especially stressed as a prime necessity for the godly soul in days of ruin. By it one gives a visible proof of the activity of a divine nature that hates evil and loves good and desires to obey and honour the Lord. "Cease to do evil; learn to do well" (Isa. 1:16, 17); this is always God's order. The first step is to separate from evil and then God will teach that one His will and will show him the next step.
The list that follows the command is not ceremonial at all. God had refused their feasts, and then named what He was after instead:
Study the prophets, the greater and the minor, and you will find that their ministry always had this one end. It was to bring the people into moral conformity with God. Because this was missing, the time came when even their sacrifices and feasts were an abomination. However carefully they tried to carry out the temple worship, God would not accept it. These are the terrible words from the lips of Isaiah, "Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates." Then he tells them what the Lord requires: "seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause." Again, "Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?" (Isa. 1 and 58).
Two of these duties name people who have no one to speak for them. Writing on the laws God gave Israel about the same two groups, one commentator explains why they head the list:
God next commends the helpless to their hearts. Of all the helpless ones who appeal to our compassion, the widow and the fatherless surely have the first claim. So God surrounds them here with the powerful defence of His own arm. If anyone afflicted them, he would be killed, and his own wife and children would be left a widow and orphans. All through Scripture God marks out these two groups as the special object of His care, so they should be the object of our compassionate concern. So James says, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." (James 1:27.)
The verse says "seek justice" before it names the fatherless. Another writer, on a psalm with the same demands, holds justice and pity together:
But this cared for, they must show Him also on His salvation side, in His regard for the poor, the weak, the defenceless, and the oppressed. "Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute." It must still be justice: pity for the poor must never violate it. There was a special commandment about this (Ex. 23:3). Yet his poverty should still make him an object of special and tender interest.
Much of Isaiah 1 belongs to Israel. One writer says this call does not stay there:
God can tolerate iniquity nowhere, least of all in His people. So they must cease from evil and learn to do well, proving it in the ways of ordinary life… In the earlier of these verses there is much that we can freely take to ourselves now. God's unchanging principle is to join repentance to faith, and to insist on suitable works and ways in everyone He draws to Himself. The words apply in a special way to believers who shirk responsibility and trifle with a clear conscience.
- Cease. Drop the evil first; a conscience with a wound in it cannot take in light.
- Learn. Doing good has to be learned, and God keeps the order: leave the evil, then learn the good.
- Seek. God answered rejected sacrifices with a call for justice; the prophets aimed at people in moral conformity with God.
- Defend. The fatherless and the widow have the first claim on compassion. God surrounds them with the defence of His own arm.
- Prove it. The call reaches everyone God draws to Himself, and ordinary daily life is where it shows.
Come now, let us reason together, saith Jehovah though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
If ye be willing and hearken, ye shall eat the good of the land;
God has just called Judah to stop doing evil and to reason with Him. Now He sets out two roads, and this verse is the first: is its promise earthly or eternal, and may a preacher use it today?
The promise does not stand alone. It closes a call to repentance that reaches into ordinary life.
Yet Jehovah stoops to call them to repentance and to the fruits that match it. The wording clearly comes from the ceremonial washings the Jews knew so well, but moral reality is the point... God can tolerate iniquity nowhere, least of all in His people. They must therefore stop doing evil and learn to do good, showing it in the ways of ordinary life. But He adds a gracious invitation, that He and they should reason together... The call ends with His promise to help them if they were broken down and obedient. It ends too with His threat to devour them by the sword if they refused.
Verse 20 gives the other road: refuse and rebel. Both verses turn on one small word.
Notice too how "if" occurs in verses 19 and 20. The cleansing and blessing offered hinge upon obedience. To refuse and rebel brings judgment. Both the blessing and the judgment deal with matters of this life. The Old Testament says little about the life to come.
Why does God offer terms at all instead of simply passing sentence? The answer lies in how He governs the world.
God's government of the world has Israel at its centre and its immediate sphere. But we have to remember that grace must have a part in this government, or it would not be the government of God. It would be nothing but judicial condemnation, with no possibility of blessing.
To "eat the good of the land" came with terms. Israel held the land the way a tenant holds a lease, and the lease ran out — but the story does not end there.
Under law, they failed to meet the conditions that their continued enjoyment of earthly blessing depended on. So they failed to keep hold of it, even when God had given it to them so fully, in Joshua's day and in Solomon's. In days to come, grace will restore and save them. They will stand in grace, no longer holding their blessings on the terms of their own obedience. Yet their blessings — the blessings that belong to their calling and position — will still be earthly.
The verse ties a reward to conduct, so it is easy to read as a formula for earning salvation. Does obedience buy a place in heaven?
Israel's inheritance depended on their conduct. If they were willing and obedient, they were to eat the good of the land. Do you think — does anyone here think — that his obedience could get him to heaven? Could it win him that inheritance which is reserved in heaven for believers? If he does, he is very greatly mistaken. In thinking that way he is not obeying God; he is only disobeying Him. The one who trusts his own obedience or faithfulness is not trusting Christ at all. He is not really believing the gospel.
Commentators differ here. Kelly says the offer of cleansing in the verse before may be pressed on anyone. But verses 19 and 20, he holds, cannot be cut loose from Israel, since Christians have fuller and more direct appeals in the New Testament. Hole allows a preacher to use them, as long as he takes the eternal weight of the words from New Testament scripture, not from Isaiah. Either way, the word willing still stands. What does a willing sinner do?
Nothing could be plainer, and when a sinner feels his need of the Saviour and is ready to say "I will" to Him — to the Lord Jesus Christ — the great transaction is for ever done.
- The call — the promise follows a call to stop doing evil and learn to do good. God ties repentance to the offer.
- The "if" — verses 19 and 20 turn on the same word. Both the blessing and the judgment belong to this present life.
- The grace — grace must have a part even in God's rule of the world, or only condemnation would remain.
- The land — Israel held the land on the terms of obedience, and lost it. Grace will restore them one day on different terms, and their blessings will still be earthly.
- The will — no conduct buys the inheritance kept in heaven. But the sinner who is ready to say "I will" to Christ finds the transaction settled for ever.
but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken.
God has just offered Judah cleansing and blessing, on one condition. Everything turns on two small words: one "if" opens the land to them, the other opens the sword.
One writer points out that the offer of cleansing hangs on obedience, and that the outcomes named here belong to this life:
Notice too how "if" occurs in verses 19 and 20. The cleansing and blessing offered hinge on obedience. To refuse and rebel brings judgment. Both the blessing and the judgment concern this life, because the Old Testament says little about the life to come. Today's gospel preacher gladly and rightly uses these verses. Of course he points to the eternal results of accepting or refusing the offer, and he bases what he says on New Testament scripture.
This was not a new rule invented by Isaiah. It restates the terms God had already set for Israel in the land, where harvests themselves testified for or against the people:
But when Israel forgot the Lord and abandoned His precious commandments, the sky became like brass and the ground like iron. Barrenness, ruin, famine and misery were the sad companions of disobedience. How could it be otherwise? "If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land..."
The people God warns here were not irreligious. Their sacrifices were many, and that made their condition worse, not better:
They did not lack religious zeal. They did look for a cure for the clear problems of their day. But their cures were worse than useless. The privileges God gave them only made their moral state more alarming and unbearable. Only the Lord's mercy kept them from the doom of Sodom, yet morally they were already Sodom. So their sacrifices, feasts, and assemblies offended Him all the more. He felt that their feet defiled His courts, and He refused to hear their many prayers. There was no real repentance, no trembling at His word, but a religious veil over utter and shameless iniquity.
The same voice that offers cleansing also names the sword. The same writer follows the appeal to its end, then draws a careful line about how far a Christian may take these two verses:
The call ends with His promise to help them if they were broken down and obedient. It also ends with His threat to devour them by the sword if they refused. In the earlier verses there is much we can take to ourselves now. God's principle never changes: He joins repentance to faith, and He looks for fitting works and ways in all whom He draws to Himself... But there we must stop. Verses 19 and 20 cannot be cut off from their Jewish root. Christians have plenty of appeals, and more direct ones, in the New Testament.
Commentators differ in emphasis. Hole lets the gospel preacher draw an eternal application from the New Testament. Kelly keeps this promise and threat tied to Israel, though he applies the earlier invitation to us freely.
History settled the question of whether God meant it. Writing on the fall of Jerusalem, one writer sets the warning of Isaiah 1 beside what followed:
They did refuse and rebel. They ignored all His counsel and refused His correction. The sad and solemn result is recorded for us: the foe and the enemy entered the gates of Jerusalem. What the kings of the earth and all the people of the world would not have believed came to pass.
The verse does not end with the sword but with a signature. Prophets used that closing line again and again:
It is striking to remember how prophet after prophet spoke in this way: "Thus says the LORD," "The mouth of the LORD has spoken." They begin and end their whole prophecy with words like these.
- Two ifs. The cleansing and blessing offered hinge on obedience; to refuse and rebel brings judgment.
- Two outcomes. In Isaiah's setting both blessing and judgment concern this life — the good of the land, or the sword.
- Two hearts. Their refusal was not irreligion. Their sacrifices and feasts were a religious veil over shameless sin.
- Two records. They did refuse and rebel — and the enemy entered the gates of Jerusalem, as no one had believed possible.
- One voice. The prophets began and ended with "the mouth of the LORD has spoken." The threat is God's word, not Isaiah's.