Isaiah 1 - Introduction

Isaiah 1:2-31. The Lord's Controversy with His People

The passage falls into two main divisions:

2 Samuel 1:2; 2 Samuel 1:2. The moral and religious issues involved in the great dispute between Jehovah and Israel.

(i) Isaiah 1:2. Jehovah has discovered rebellion and ingratitude in the sons whom He has reared and brought to honour. This fact, disclosed to the spiritual perception of the prophet, is the basis of the whole subsequent argument.

(2) Isaiah 1:4. The prophet, in his own name, presses home the charge of rebellion; the divine accusation being "translated into passionate invective and threatening by the prophet" (Delitzsch) (Isaiah 1:4). The evidence of Israel's sin is seen in the calamities of the land; why should they invite further chastisement by persistent disobedience? (5 8). It is of the Lord's mercy that they are not utterly consumed, like the Cities of the Plain (9).

(3) Isaiah 1:10. Does Israel imagine that Jehovah can be propitiated by costly rites and offerings? Nay, the whole system of ritual worship as practised by them is an intolerable insult to Him (10 15). The prophet's invective is aimed at a deep-seated fallacy of the popular religion. In opposition to this mistaken notion he demands moral reformation and public righteousness as the only service acceptable to God (16 f.).

(4) Isaiah 1:18. The conclusion of the argument. Jehovah summons the nation to a trial at law, and submits the alternative: prosperity as the reward of obedience, or destruction as the penalty of continued rebellion.

ii. Isa 1:21-31. The necessity for a purifying judgment. This is the prominent idea in the second division of the chapter, but the connexion of thought is less obvious than in the first. The keynote is struck in

(1) Isaiah 1:21. A dirge over the decay of civic virtue in Jerusalem (21 23), followed by a threat of judgment (24 f.), and a picture of the city restored to its pristine purity (26).

(2) Isaiah 1:27. The operation of the judgment is shewn to be twofold: the deliverance of a converted remnant (27), and the annihilation of apostates (28). And a further consequence will be a demonstration of the vanity of nature-worship and idolatry (29 31).

The chapter, entitled by Ewald -The Great Arraignment," stands worthily as the introduction to Isaiah's prophecies. Its leading ideas the breach between Jehovah and Israel, the inefficacy of mere ritual, the call to national repentance, the certainty of a sweeping judgment are those which underlie not only Isaiah's teaching, but also that of all the pre-Exilic prophets; and these elementary principles are here presented with a force and clearness unrivalled m the Old Testament. Certain resemblances, both in thought and expression, to the -Song of Moses" (Deuteronomy 32) have been noted by commentators, but the inference that this discourse is in any sense an imitation of that poem is on every ground to be rejected. The passage is probably a summary of several public discourses; these, however, have been worked up into a literary unity, and there is perhaps a presumption that the original oracles belong to one and the same period of the prophet's activity.

What that period was cannot, however, be determined with certainty. Critical opinion seems to gravitate more and more to the view that the first part of the chapter (Isaiah 1:2) belongs to the time of Sennacherib's campaign (b.c. 701). This conclusion is based chiefly on the historical allusions in Isaiah 1:7. But it is not quite clear that the expressions there used might not apply to the Syro-Ephraimitish invasion of circa735; and there are one or two general considerations which plead for the earlier date. (1) A presentation of fundamental prophetic ideas so fresh and powerful as this points to the beginning rather than the close of Isaiah's career. (2) It is difficult to read the whole chapterin the light of Sennacherib's invasion. It would be surprising if a series of discourses uttered during that crisis should contain only a pair of doubtful indications of their historical setting. It is admitted, moreover, that the allusions to idolatry (29 ff.) are more naturally understood of the reign of Ahaz than of that of Hezekiah, and no counter argument can fairly be drawn from the assiduous worship of Jehovah referred to in 10 ff. (3) The tone and teaching of the chapter closely resemble the prophecies uttered by Isaiah in the earliest portion of his public work (ch. 2 5). On the whole it seems not improbable that the passage is a résuméof the principal themes of Isaiah's early ministry, compiled shortly after the attack by Rezin and Pekah (see on ch. 7). Fortunately the interpretation of the chapter is but little affected by the question of its date.