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.