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.