learn to do well seek judgment, gladden the oppressed, do justice to the fatherless, plead for the widow.
God has just told a religious nation that He hates their feasts and sacrifices. Now He says what He wants instead: not better worship, but justice for people who have no one to defend them.
Stop first, then start
God puts the two halves of His demand in a fixed order. One writer, commenting on the call to wash and put away evil, ties it to the conscience:
That is the serious matter. Have a good conscience before God. If you do not, you blind yourselves before God blinds you. God distinguishes between actions. No one can learn to do good before he stops doing evil. No one can have light in the conscience without first leaving what wounds the conscience.
That order is not a delay tactic. It is how God teaches anyone at all:
Separation from evil is always insisted upon throughout the Bible. It is especially stressed as a prime necessity for the godly soul in days of ruin. By it one gives a visible proof of the activity of a divine nature that hates evil and loves good and desires to obey and honour the Lord. "Cease to do evil; learn to do well" (Isa. 1:16, 17); this is always God's order. The first step is to separate from evil and then God will teach that one His will and will show him the next step.
What doing good turns out to mean
The list that follows the command is not ceremonial at all. God had refused their feasts, and then named what He was after instead:
Study the prophets, the greater and the minor, and you will find that their ministry always had this one end. It was to bring the people into moral conformity with God. Because this was missing, the time came when even their sacrifices and feasts were an abomination. However carefully they tried to carry out the temple worship, God would not accept it. These are the terrible words from the lips of Isaiah, "Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates." Then he tells them what the Lord requires: "seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause." Again, "Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?" (Isa. 1 and 58).
The fatherless and the widow
Two of these duties name people who have no one to speak for them. Writing on the laws God gave Israel about the same two groups, one commentator explains why they head the list:
God next commends the helpless to their hearts. Of all the helpless ones who appeal to our compassion, the widow and the fatherless surely have the first claim. So God surrounds them here with the powerful defence of His own arm. If anyone afflicted them, he would be killed, and his own wife and children would be left a widow and orphans. All through Scripture God marks out these two groups as the special object of His care, so they should be the object of our compassionate concern. So James says, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." (James 1:27.)
The verse says "seek justice" before it names the fatherless. Another writer, on a psalm with the same demands, holds justice and pity together:
But this cared for, they must show Him also on His salvation side, in His regard for the poor, the weak, the defenceless, and the oppressed. "Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute." It must still be justice: pity for the poor must never violate it. There was a special commandment about this (Ex. 23:3). Yet his poverty should still make him an object of special and tender interest.
Where the verse touches us
Much of Isaiah 1 belongs to Israel. One writer says this call does not stay there:
God can tolerate iniquity nowhere, least of all in His people. So they must cease from evil and learn to do well, proving it in the ways of ordinary life… In the earlier of these verses there is much that we can freely take to ourselves now. God's unchanging principle is to join repentance to faith, and to insist on suitable works and ways in everyone He draws to Himself. The words apply in a special way to believers who shirk responsibility and trifle with a clear conscience.
Summary
- Cease. Drop the evil first; a conscience with a wound in it cannot take in light.
- Learn. Doing good has to be learned, and God keeps the order: leave the evil, then learn the good.
- Seek. God answered rejected sacrifices with a call for justice; the prophets aimed at people in moral conformity with God.
- Defend. The fatherless and the widow have the first claim on compassion. God surrounds them with the defence of His own arm.
- Prove it. The call reaches everyone God draws to Himself, and ordinary daily life is where it shows.