Woe unto them that decree iniquitous decrees, and to the writers that prescribe oppression,
The verse opens a woe on people who did their damage with a pen. They were lawmakers and clerks who wrote injustice into the law books. This is not a riot or a robbery. It is a legal system. The woe asks what God does when the law that should protect the weak becomes the tool that ruins them.
These men held the highest office in the nation. That office is what makes the charge so grave.
The last of these disciplinary punishments is given in Isaiah 10. Here (vv. 1-4) the sin is the unrighteousness of the judges. They stood in the place of God Himself, and were called Elohim or gods (Psalm 82:6). But they gravely misrepresented His character and wronged His people, especially the defenceless.
The evil here is not lawlessness. It is injustice given legal form — drafted, decreed, filed. One writer, meeting the same evil in another passage, turned it into a question for God.
He puts a question that seems bold to the point of rashness. But it is only an appeal to the righteousness which, through all his searching, he knows well is in the One who is Supreme. Can He go on as if in partnership with a throne of iniquity that makes wickedness into law?
The oppressor could point to the paperwork and call himself lawful.
Verse 2 names the victims: the needy, widows, the fatherless. Commentators say judges owe such people active defence.
Rather than favour the wicked, the judges ought to judge on behalf of the poor and needy. They should defend them from the persecution of the wicked, and deliver them from the hands of cruel oppression. The same call is needed today in many of our courts of justice. It is needed even in the professing church of God, where those in outward honour are too often guilty of oppressing ordinary people.
This woe completes a run of denunciations over the nation. The prophet had already found that the same word applied to himself.
The prophet tells us of his conversion. He saw "the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up"... What was the immediate effect of His glory upon him? "Then said I, Woe is me!" It was a wonderful interlude of grace to the prophet. He had been pronouncing woe upon every form of wrongdoing in Israel (Isaiah 5:8, 11, 18, 20-22). He still had to complete the solemn sevenfold denunciation of it in Isaiah 10:1... Now he has to pronounce it upon himself: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips… for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."
The man qualified to say "woe" to corrupt judges was the man who had first said it about himself.
Isaiah 10:1-4 closes a sequence of blows. None of them produced repentance.
God does not crush His people even when He strikes them. He leaves some consolation. Yet His people take up their pride again (chapter 10:1-4). At last God calls in the great instrument of His anger (chapter 10:5, etc.). The Assyrian is the rod of His wrath.
The refrain about God's hand returns four times. Others trace the rising pressure through it: "there seems to be an increase of severity as we proceed" (F. B. Hole).
Verse 3 puts three questions to the lawmakers. What will you do? Where will you flee? Where will you leave your wealth?
The highest will be brought lowest. It will go worst with those who least should have turned their high position and great power into greed that dishonours God, and into the oppression of the weak and wretched.
Having abandoned God, they find that "He would be no refuge for them in that hour of distress" (F. B. Hole).
- Pen — they wrote the sin down. Decrees turned wickedness into law, so the oppressor could call himself lawful.
- Position — these judges stood in God's own place. Their crooked verdicts told the nation a lie about His character.
- Prey — the targets had no defender. Judges owed them active rescue, and courts still owe it today.
- Pattern — this is the last woe of seven, and the last of four chastenings. Each blow grew heavier, and the people refused every one.
- Payday — when judgment comes they have no refuge and no wealth left. The highest position brings the lowest fall.
to turn away the poor from judgment, and to take away the right from the afflicted of my people; that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless!
Isaiah's woe falls on men who ran the courts and used them as a weapon. They stripped the poor of their legal rights and made widows and orphans their plunder — so does God notice when injustice is legal?
The charge is not aimed at street criminals. It falls on the bench, on men who held an office that came from God.
In verses 1-4 the sin is the unrighteousness of the judges. They stood in the place of God Himself, and were called Elohim, or gods (Ps. 82:6). Yet they badly misrepresented His character and wronged His people, especially the defenceless… The highest will be brought lowest. It will go worst of all with those who least should have turned their high position and great power to greed that dishonours God, and to oppression of the weak and wretched.
A judge stands in God's own place. So his greed does more damage than an ordinary man's. The office was meant to show what God is like. Instead it told a lie about Him.
Rulers hold office for a purpose, and Scripture spells it out. When they protect the powerful instead, they have not just failed the job. They have reversed it.
Then comes the call that sets out the purpose of their appointment: "Defend the poor and the fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and the needy; rescue them from the hand of the wicked." If they had done this they would have represented God well, for He cares for the poor and the needy… But the spoilers of the widow and the orphan have often been honoured, and still are honoured, by the rulers of this world. All they need is enough wealth and power to get noticed. Their victims cry in vain — except to God.
Where human courts shut their doors, one court stays open.
The verse names exactly two classes of victim: widows and the fatherless. These are the very two God has taken as titles for Himself.
He is high over all: the great, the mighty, the awesome God. But He has a heart for the widow and the fatherless. They are helpless people, stripped of every earthly and natural support — the grieving, broken-hearted widow and the orphan left all alone. God thinks of such people and cares for them in a very special way. They have a claim on His loving heart and mighty hand. "A Father of the fatherless, and a Judge of the widow is God in His holy habitation."
So these men were not simply robbing people with no protector. They were robbing God's own. The words "of my people" in the verse show He had not let go of them.
This is not a complaint found only in Isaiah. It runs from Proverbs through the prophets to James, and ends at the Lord's coming.
All through the Word of God we are told to remember the poor with kindness, and God gives some wonderful promises to those who obey these gracious words. See Proverbs 19:17; 22:9; 28:27; Ps. 41:1. Oppression of the poor is a sin which God specially marks. See Isaiah 3:14, 15; 10:2; Ezek. 18:11-13; Amos 2:6; 5:11; James 2:6. When the Lord comes He will remember the poor and deliver them. See Ps. 72:4, 12, 13; 113:7; Isaiah 11:4.
This charge does not stay in ancient Judah. Commentators on Psalm 82 bring it right into our own day, and not only against governments.
Instead of favouring the wicked, the judges ought to judge on behalf of the poor and needy. They should defend them from the persecution of the wicked and deliver them from the hands of cruel oppression. We need this same call today in many of our courts of justice, and even in the professing church of God, where those in outward honour are too often guilty of oppressing the common people.
The woe lands wherever someone with standing uses it against someone without it.
- Office — Judges stood in God's place and were even called gods. That is why their greed "badly misrepresented His character."
- Reversal — God gave authority to defend the poor and fatherless. Here it becomes the tool that robs them.
- Ownership — The victims are "of my people." God calls Himself Father of the fatherless and Judge of the widow, so touching them means touching Him.
- Record — Oppression of the poor is "a sin which God specially marks." The trail runs from Proverbs and the Psalms through the prophets to James.
- Reckoning — "The highest will be brought lowest." When the Lord comes, He will remember the poor and deliver them.