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.