Thus saith Jehovah The heavens are my throne, and the earth is my footstool what is the house that ye will build unto me? and what is the place of my rest?
The last chapter of Isaiah opens with a question, and God aims it at people busy building. Before He says a word about their offerings, He measures their building plans against the size of the One they mean to house.
Both images carry a fixed meaning through Scripture. A footstool marks where a king rests his feet, and it marks what lies under his power.
A footstool usually goes with a throne. The earth is the footstool of God's throne in the heavens (Isaiah 66:1; Matthew 5:35). It is a symbol of "the place of rest". David had it on his heart to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and for the "footstool" of God. There God could find rest among His people, and there His people were to worship Him (1 Chronicles 28:2; Psalm 99:5). It is also a symbol of "subjection to power": the Lord Jesus must reign until all His enemies are made His footstool.
The question about a house is not about size or cost. God points to His own hand as the maker of everything a builder could use.
Heaven is His throne, earth is His footstool. What can man do worthily for Him to rest in? He needs nothing of human resources. His own hand has made all these things, and next to them man's greatest efforts are tiny indeed. Isaiah spoke these words in full view of the magnificent temple Solomon built.
Read on its own, the verse could sound as if God never wanted a house at all. Commentators say otherwise.
God did not refuse the house. King David longed to build it for His glory, and God let his son Solomon build it. Nor will God go without a sanctuary in the middle of Israel in the glorious land. Through Ezekiel He has described it in detail, with the feasts, sacrifices, priests and furnishings (Ezekiel 40 – 48).
Centuries later Stephen used this verse against people who prized the temple.
Stephen's words cut right to the heart of the matter: "the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands." He also quotes their own Scriptures to show it. Is God to be contained in a small part of what His own hands have created? Israel had already rejected and crucified the One who held undeniable rights over the temple. How can they speak so piously about the house while rejecting its true owner?
Some writers read the verse as forward-looking as well as historical. They hear in it a hint that Israel will build a house again — and that God will refuse it.
I have said that the sacrifice and offering would be restored. Prophecy notes this, although God will completely reject their re-establishment. Isaiah 66 says, "All these things my hand has made" — a hint that the temple will be restored. But then it says, "this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word" (that is, the remnant).
Kelly draws the same line, and names what makes such a building worthless: sin is not settled by stonework.
They will trust in the house they are at last allowed to build in Jerusalem. So they must prove again that an unbelieving, idolatrous heart desecrates a temple. That is not how sin is settled between God and the sinner. Earthly splendour in such circumstances is only gilding over wickedness. The heart must be purified by faith in order to worship acceptably.
God asks the question so that He can answer it. Once we admit how great He is, attention moves off the building and onto the person standing in front of it.
Isaiah 66 opens on a very lofty note. The earth is only the footstool of Jehovah's feet, for the heavens are His throne. Once we see this, we know that no house built for Him on earth is anything but a small matter. What is a great matter is the right spiritual state and attitude in man. By nature man is sinful and estranged from God.
- Throne — God sits in heaven, and the earth is only the stool at His feet. The picture measures His authority, not His address.
- Footstool — One image, two meanings: the place where God rests among His people, and the place where Christ will put every enemy under His feet.
- House — God accepted Solomon's temple, and He described a future sanctuary through Ezekiel. The rebuke falls on trusting the building, not on building it.
- Owner — Stephen turned this verse into a charge: they praised the house and rejected the One who owns it.
- Heart — Once you face how great God is, no building impresses Him. He looks instead for the person who is humble, contrite, and trembling at His word.
Even all these things hath my hand made, and all these things have been, saith Jehovah. But to this man will I look to the afflicted and contrite in spirit, and who trembleth at my word.
God answers a people busy building for Him by telling them where His throne is. Then He names the one person on earth He will look at — and it is not the temple builder.
Since the whole creation came from His hand, nothing inside it can be a gift that impresses Him.
It was not Stephen nor Luke, but Isaiah who declared that the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands. And he said it while the "exceedingly magnificent" temple Solomon built stood in full view. Heaven is His throne, earth is His footstool. What can man do that is worthy for Him to rest in? He needs nothing from human resources. His own hand has made all these things, and next to them man's greatest efforts are tiny.
Having ruled out the building, God names what He does regard. Note that where older translations read "poor and of a contrite spirit," the ESV reads "humble and contrite in spirit."
The Lord looks to the heart and not to formal worship and sacrifice, and the same holds in the testimony of the Lord Jesus. It is "the poor in spirit" (Isaiah 66:2) — the same words spoken of Moses in Numbers 11, and Christ's first blessing in Matthew 5.
The word "poor" here needs a definition.
There was always a remnant preserved for God, and even in those times there were some He could look to. Let us notice their features: "him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at My word." Being "poor" here does not refer to financial circumstances. It refers to humility of spirit. It speaks of deep need along with sorrow at the surrounding conditions.
The last mark in the verse is easy to misread. Trembling here is not fright before a harsh God.
Let us not miss the word "trembles." It is not the dread of a slave. It is a sense of the greatness of the One who speaks to us, and of the seriousness of disobeying His voice.
One writer turns this into a test we can apply to ourselves.
On the other hand, it is the holy Word of God that speaks with authority to our hearts and consciences. Are we "trembling" at His Word, and trying to order our lives by it? Or do we try to adjust God's Word to our behaviour once we have already drifted from it to some degree?
Commentators also read the chapter as pointing forward. A temple will rise again in Jerusalem, built by people who have not settled the real issue with God.
Among the Jews at the end of the age, the same state of things will come back. It will draw out this rebuke from their own prophet again. They will trust in the house they are at last allowed to build in Jerusalem. So they must prove all over again that an unbelieving, idolatrous heart desecrates a temple. Sin cannot be settled between God and the sinner this way. Earthly splendour in such circumstances is only gilding over wrongdoing. It is real hypocrisy. In unbelief they may try to restore "all these things that have been." But God has a dispute with the people over idolatry and over the rejected Messiah, and that sin is not yet judged. His chosen ones own their sins and look for the new order He will create in honour of the Messiah. The heart must be purified by faith before worship can be acceptable.
Commentators connect this verse with Job, where the same principle runs to its end.
Job's prayer was effective because he was now right with God, and not only right with his friends. We have the plain statement, "The Lord also accepted Job." The man who condemned and rejected himself stands accepted before God. This has always been God's way. We find testimonies to it in other Old Testament scriptures — for instance, Isaiah 57:15 and Isaiah 66:2. But we have to move on to the New Testament to find the basis on which the acceptance rests. The character of the acceptance that is ours today is found in these words: "accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:6).
- Throne — Heaven is His seat and earth His footstool; His hand made everything you could ever build with.
- Look — Because no building can hold Him, He turns His gaze to a person instead: the heart, not the ceremony.
- Poor — Not lack of money, but deep need and humility, with sorrow over the state of things around us.
- Tremble — Not dread of punishment, but a sense of who is speaking. The test: do we bend our lives to the Word, or bend the Word to our lives?
- Accepted — The one who condemns himself is the one God receives. The New Testament names the ground: accepted in the Beloved.
He that slaughtereth an ox, smiteth a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, breaketh a dog's neck; he that offereth an oblation, [it is as] swine's blood; he that presenteth a memorial of incense, [is as] he that blesseth an idol. As they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations,
A rebuilt temple, a busy altar, and a God who refuses every offering — Isaiah 66 opens with worship that looks correct but counts as crime. So what makes an offering acceptable, when the same act can be obedience or murder?
Commentators read the chapter as looking ahead to a temple standing again in Jerusalem, built by human hands alone. That setting explains why God refuses the sacrifices offered in it.
Isaiah 66 speaks of the judgment that introduces it, and so gives us more historical details. The temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem (v. 6), but Jehovah does not own it, because man alone has a hand in building it. He does not acknowledge the sacrifices offered in it either. He looks to the meek and contrite spirit.
The building itself cannot fix what is wrong inside the builders.
They trust in the house they are at last allowed to build in Jerusalem. So they must prove again that an unbelieving, idolatrous heart desecrates a temple. This is not the way to settle sin between God and the sinner. Earthly splendour in such circumstances is only gilding over iniquity. It is real hypocrisy... Faith must purify the heart before worship can be acceptable.
The shock of the verse is that God Himself once commanded every act it names. Killing an ox, offering a lamb, burning incense — none of these were pagan inventions.
This is a solemn word. Killing an ox for a sin-offering or a burnt offering was once a religious act, acceptable to God. But when God does not delight in it, and man chooses to do it anyway, the moral guilt is such that it counts as murder before God! God Himself gave exact directions for mixing the incense, and without it Aaron could not appear before the Lord — he would die. Yet for a man to burn that incense is as if he blessed an idol!
There is an order in the way God judges an offering.
Jehovah has respect to the person before his offering. If it is a wicked person, how could his sacrifice be anything but an abomination? So in Isaiah 66:1-4 we read of the Jews in the last days who have turned away from God. They may trust in the temple they build, where once the Lord of glory filled it. They may sacrifice a lamb, offer a grain offering, and present a memorial of incense. But He who looks for the afflicted and contrite who tremble at His word sees them as no better than a dog's neck, or pig's blood, or blessing an idol. Worse still is bringing a sacrifice with a wicked aim, as superstition does.
Translators have divided over this verse. Some print the words "is like" in italics, because the translators supplied them. Take them out, and the verse says something different.
Houbigant, Bishop Lowth, Horsley, De Wette and others leave out the words of comparison that the Authorised Version adds in italics. In their judgement those added words spoil the true sense. Their translation makes the verse point to ritual observance joined with open wickedness and the abominations of the nations. Otherwise the statement is that their ungodliness turned their acts of worship into so many horrors.
The second half of the verse names the root: they chose their own ways. Verse 4 gives God's answer, a punishment shaped to fit the crime. The words quoted below come from an older English translation of that verse.
The judgment of God on this guilty nation takes the form of a delusion. There had been wars, plagues and famines, but now something that dulls their feelings. Under the earlier troubles they might have wept and cried to the Lord, as they often did in the times of the Judges. But now God will simply delude them. Apart from the eternal judgment, what is more terrible than "I also will choose their delusions"? And this comes because when God called, no one answered.
Writers press the verse beyond Israel.
This was God's estimate of His own ordinances of worldly worship, when the people He gave them to used them corruptly and wilfully. So what must be the guilt of bringing in an order of things that God has clearly set aside?... Everywhere people approve and set up forms and rituals of worship that suit only a worldly sanctuary and a worldly people.
- Chosen — they chose their own ways, and every failure in this verse grows out of that choice.
- Built — God does not own a temple raised by human effort alone. Splendour only gilds over the sin underneath.
- Reversed — acts God once commanded count as murder and idolatry when man chooses them and God takes no delight in them.
- Weighed — God weighs the person before the offering. A wicked worshipper brings nothing but an abomination.
- Answered — God answers their chosen way with a chosen judgment: delusion. Writers press the same warning on any worship God has set aside.