Isaiah 43:22-28

Jehovah effects this deliverance for His own sake, not in return for any service He has received at the hands of Israel. The argument of the section is difficult to follow, especially in the part which speaks of sacrifice. Two questions present themselves: (a) does Jehovah upbraid His people with their neglectof ritual, or does He assert His own indifferenceto it? and (b), is the reference to the whole course of Israel's history or merely to the period of the Exile? The answer to (b) seems determined by the consideration that if understood of the history as a whole the statement is inconsistent with fact. Although the prophet undoubtedly takes a dark view of Israel's past religious condition (Isaiah 43:27), we cannot suppose that he charges it with disregard of the externals of religion. Whatever faults Israel had been guilty of, it had not been slack in the performance of ritual (see ch. Isaiah 1:10 ff.). Now if we limit the reference to the Exile, the idea of an implied reproach (a) must be abandoned, because the suspension of the sacrificial system was in the circumstances inevitable. In other words, the main thought here is expressed in the second half of Isaiah 43:23 more clearly than in the first halves of Isaiah 43:23. At the same time this hardly amounts to a repudiation of sacrifice in principleon the part of Jehovah. The truth appears to be that the prophet directs attention to the simple fact that during the Exile sacrifice had not been offered; whether Israel was to blame for this or not is immaterial to his argument. He has in his view the prevailing ideas of the time as to the normal attitude of a people to its God; and he shews how inadequate these are to explain Jehovah's relation to Israel. The natural and proper thing was for a nation to invoke the name of its God, and to honour Him with costly and laborious rites. Israel has done none of these things, it has only burdened Jehovah with its sins; yet Jehovah proves Himself to be its God by forgiving its iniquities and undertaking its cause against its enemies.