Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 58:1
Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.
1. Cry aloud ] lit. Cry with the throat, with the full power of the voice.
shew my people their transgression &c.] The function of the true prophet as distinguished from the false; see Mic 3:8, a verse which seems to have been in the prophet’s mind.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Cry aloud – Margin, With the throat; that is, says Gesenius, with open throat, with full voice coming from the throat and breast; while one who speaks low uses only the lips and tongue 1Sa 1:13. The Chaldee here introduces the word prophet, O prophet, cry aloud. The Septuagint renders it, Cry with strength. ( en ischui).
Spare not – That is, do not spare, or restrain the voice. Let it be full, loud, and strong.
Lift up thy voice like a trumpet – Speak loud and distinct, so that the language of reproof may be heard. The sense is, the people are insensible and stupid. They need something to rouse them to a sense of their guilt. Go and proclaim it so that all may hear. Speak not in whispers; speak not to a part, but speak so earnestly that their attention will be arrested, and so that all shall hear (compare the notes at Isa 40:9). And show my people. This either refers to the Jewish people in the time of the prophet; or to the same people in their exile in Babylon; or to the people of God after the coming of the Messiah. Vitringa supposes that it refers to the nominally Christian Church when it should have sunk into the sins and formalities of the papacy, and that the direction here is to the true ministers of God to proclaim the sins of a corrupt and degenerate church. The main reason assigned by him for this is, that there is no reference here to the temple, to the sacrifices, or to the idolatry which was the prevailing sin in the time of Manasseh. Rosenmuller, for a similar reason, supposes that it refers to the Jews in Babylon. But it has already been remarked (see the analysis to the chapter), that this reason does not appear to be satisfactory.
It is true that there is no reference here to the temple or to sacrifices, and it may be true that the main sin of the nation in the time of Manasseh was idolatry; but it is also true that formality and hypocrisy were prominent sins, and that these deserved reproof. It is true that while they adhered to the public forms of religion, the heart was not in them; and that while they relied on those forms, and were surprised that the divine favor was not manifested to them on account of their observance, there was a good reason why that favor was witcheld, and it was important that that reason should be stated clearly and fully. It is probable, therefore, that the reference here is to the times of the prophet himself, and that the subject of rebuke is the formality, hypocrisy, and prevalent sins of the reign of Manasseh.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 58:1-4
Cry aloud, spare not
Cry aloud
Cry with the throat.
Crying with the throat or from the lungs is here opposed to a simple motion of the lips and tongue (1Sa 1:13). The common version, Cry aloud, is therefore substantially correct, though somewhat vague. The LXX in like manner paraphrases it . J.D. Michaelis reads, as loud as thou canst. The positive command is enforced by the negative one, spare not, as in Is
54:2. The loudness of the call is intended to suggest the importance of thesubject, and, perhaps, the insensibility of those to be convinced. The prophet here seems to turn away from avowed apostates to hypocritical professors of the truth. (J. A. Alexander.)
Conviction before comfort
When our Lord Jesus, promised to send the Comforter, He added, When He is come, He shall convince; for conviction must prepare for comfort, and must also separate between the precious and the vile, and mark out those to whom comfort doth not belong. God had appointed this prophet to comfort His people (Isa 40:1); here He appoints him to convince them, and show them their sins. (M. Henry.)
The minister must be faithful
He must be vehement and in good earnest, must cry aloud, and not spare. Not spare them, nor touch them with his reproofs as if he were afraid of hurting them, but search the wound to the bottom; lay it bare to the bone; not spare himself, or his own pains, but cry as loud as he can. Though he spend his strength, and waste his spirits; though he get their ill-will by it, and get himself into an ill-name; yet he must not spare. The trumpet doth not give an uncertain sound, but, though loud and shrill, is intelligible. So must his alarms be, giving them warning of the fatal consequences of sin (Eze 33:3-4). (M. Henry.)
National sins protested against
I. TESTIFY AGAINST SOME OF THE PREVAILING SINS AND CRYING ABOMINATIONS OF THIS LAND.
1. Pride.
2. Luxury.
3. Pleasure.
4. Gluttony.
5. Drunkenness.
6. Swearing.
7. Sabbath-breaking.
8. Lying.
9. Avarice.
10. Adultery and fornication.
11. Profane contempt of holy things.
12. The evil passions which agitate the bosoms of men, and which receive the sanction of a large portion of the community–not as casual evils, but as principles of action, and tests of what is called highmindedness and honour. Some of the most prevailing of these, when stripped of their specious coverings, and exhibited in their proper character, are–ambition, envy, malice, and revenge.
13. Flagrant insincerity., and wicked abuse of professed acts of public worship.
14. Hardened impenitence.
II. URGE WITH FAITHFULNESS AND IMPARTIALITY THE SENTENCE OF GOD DENOUNCED UPON EACH. (R. Shittier.)
Selfish piety
Selfish piety is the popular piety of this age and land.
I. IT IS VERY EARNEST. The piety, of Israel at this time seems to have been anything but a dull and inactive power; it was very busy.
1. It was earnest in study. They seek Me daily, etc. (Isa 58:2).
2. It is earnest in prayer. They ask of Me the ordinances of justice, etc.
3. It is earnest in its self-sacrifice. It endures lastings and self-mortifications (Isa 58:3).
4. It is earnest in its churchism. Ye fast for strife and debate, etc. It would seem that the Israelites were divided into religious parties or factions, some professing to be more orthodox than others. There was a rivalry, therefore, in their devotion; one tried to excel the other, and the competition ran so high that they began to smite each other with the fist.
5. It is earnest in its professions. They made their voice to be heard on high.
II. IT IS TERRIBLY REPREHENSIBLE. The prophet is here called upon to Cry aloud, spare not, etc.
1. It is an insult to God. He abhors the sacrifice where not the heart is found. This selfish piety is the most abhorrent of all impieties.
2. It is pernicious to souls. This selfish piety inflicts incalculable injury upon its possessor: it warps the judgment, it deadens the conscience, it awakens false hopes generates diseased affections and dehumanizes the man. Nor is the injury confined to the possessor himself. (Homilist.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER LVIII
This elegant chapter contains a severe reproof of the Jews on
account of their vices, particularly their hypocrisy in
practising and relying on outward ceremonies, such as fasting
and bodily humiliation, without true repentance, 1-5.
It then lays down a clear and comprehensive summary of the
duties they owed to their fellow creatures, 6, 7.
Large promises of happiness and prosperity are likewise annexed
to the performance of these duties in a variety of the most
beautiful and striking images, 8-12.
Great temporal and spiritual blessedness of those who keep holy
the Sabbath day, 13, 14.
NOTES ON CHAP. LVIII
Verse 1. Cry aloud, spare not] Never was a louder cry against the hypocrisy, nor a more cutting reproof of the wickedness, of a people professing a national established religion, having all the forms of godliness without a particle of its power. This chapter has been often appointed to be read on political fast days for the success of wars carried on for – God knows what purposes, and originating in – God knows what motives. Politically speaking, was ever any thing more injudicious?
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The prophet having in the foregoing chapter noted and censured divers gross miscarriages of the Jews, proceeds upon the same subject in this chapter, and in Gods name expostulates with them for other misdemeanours.
Spare not; forbear not to speak whatsoever I command thee for the conviction of this people.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. aloudHebrew, “withthe throat,” that is, with full voice, not merely from the lips(1Sa 1:13). Speak loud enough toarrest attention.
my peoplethe Jews inIsaiah’s time, and again in the time of our Lord, more zealous forexternals than for inward holiness. ROSENMULLERthinks the reference to be to the Jews in the captivity practisingtheir rites to gain God’s favor and a release; and that hence,sacrifices are not mentioned, but only fasting andSabbath observance, which they could keep though far away fromthe temple in Jerusalem. The same also applies to their presentdispersion, in which they cannot offer sacrifices, but canonly show their zeal in fastings, c. Compare as to our Lord’stime, Mat 6:16 Mat 6:23;Luk 18:12.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet,…. These words are directed to the prophet; and so the Targum expresses it,
“O prophet, cry with thy throat;”
and so it is in the original, “cry with the throat” d, which is an instrument of speech; and it denotes a loud, strong, vehement cry, when a man exerts his voice, and as it were rends his throat, that he may be heard; as well as it shows the intenseness of his spirit, and the vehemence of his affections, and the importance of what he delivers; and this the prophet is encouraged to do, and “spare not”, the voice, throat, or his lungs, nor the people neither he was sent unto; or, “cease not”, as the Targum, refrain not from speaking, “cease not crying”; so Ben Melech: “lift up thy voice like a trumpet”; like the voice or sound of a trumpet, which is heard afar, and gives an alarm; and to which the Gospel ministry is sometimes compared, Isa 27:13 all which shows the manner in which the ministers of the word should deliver it, publicly, boldly, with ardour and affection; and also the deafness and stupidity of the people which require it:
and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins; by whom are meant the professing people of God, the present reformed churches, as distinguished from the antichristian ones, spoken of in the preceding chapter; who yet are guilty of many sins and transgressions, which must be showed them, and they must be sharply reproved for; and particularly their coldness and deadness, formality and hypocrisy in religious worship; their “works not being perfect” before God, or sincere and upright, as is said of the Sardian church, which designs the same persons, Re 3:1. In the Talmud e the words are thus paraphrased, “shew my people their transgression”; these are the disciples of the wise men, whose sins of error or ignorance become to them presumptuous ones; “and the house of Jacob their sins”; these are the people of the earth, or the common people, whose presumptuous sins become to them as sins of ignorance.
d “clama in gutture”, Pagninus, Montanus; “exclama gutture”, Junius Tremellius “exclama pleno gutture”, Piscator; “clama pleno gut ture”, Cocceius. e T. Bab. Metzia, fol. 33. 2.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
As the last prophecy of the second book contained all the three elements of prophetic addresses – reproach, threat, and promise – so this, the first prophecy of the third book, cannot open in any other way than with a rehearsal of one of these. The prophet receives the commission to appear as the preacher of condemnation; and whilst Jehovah is giving the reason for this commission, the preaching itself commences. “Cry with full throat, hold not back; lift up thy voice like a bugle, and proclaim to my people their apostasy, and to the house of Jacob their sins. And they seek me day by day, and desire to learn my ways, like a nation which has done righteousness, and has not forsaken the right of their God: they ask of me judgments of righteousness; they desire the drawing near of Elohim.” As the second prophecy of the first part takes as its basis a text from Micah (Mic 2:1-4), so have we here in Isa 58:1 the echo of Mic 3:8. Not only with lisping lips (1Sa 1:13), but with the throat (Psa 115:7; Psa 149:6); that is to say, with all the strength of the voice, lifting up the voice like the shophar (not a trumpet, which is called , nor in fact any metallic instrument, but a bugle or signal horn, like that blown on new year’s day: see at Psa 81:4), i.e., in a shrill shouting tone. With a loud voice that must be heard, with the most unsparing publicity, the prophet is to point out to the people their deep moral wounds, which they may indeed hide from themselves with hypocritical opus operatum , but cannot conceal from the all-seeing God. The of does not stand for an explanatory particle, but for an adversative one: “their apostasy … their sins; and yet (although they are to be punished for these) they approach Jehovah every day” ( with m ahpach under the first , and pasek after it, as is the general rule between two like-sounding words), “that He would now speedily interpose.” They also desire to know the ways which He intends to take for their deliverance, and by which He desires to lead them. This reminds us of the occurrence between Ezekiel and the elders of Gola (Eze 20:1.; compare also Eze 33:30.). As if they had been a people whose rectitude of action and fidelity to the commands of God warranted them in expecting nothing but what was good in the future, they ask God (viz., in prayer and by inquiring of the prophet) for m ishp e te tsedeq , “righteous manifestations of judgment” i.e., such as will save them and destroy their foes, and desire qirbath ‘Elohm , the coming of God, i.e., His saving parousia . The energetic futures, with the tone upon the last syllable, answer to their self-righteous presumption; and is repeated, according to Isaiah’s most favourite oratorical figure, at the close of the verse.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| A Charge against the People. | B. C. 706. |
1 Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God.
When our Lord Jesus promised to send the Comforter he added, When he shall come he shall convince (Joh 16:7; Joh 16:8); for conviction must prepare for comfort, and must also separate between the precious and the vile, and mark out those to whom comfort does not belong. God had appointed this prophet to comfort his people (ch. xl. 1); here he appoints him to convince them, and show them their sins.
I. He must tell them how very bad they really were, v. 1. 1. He must deal faithfully and plainly with them. “Though they are called the people of God and the house of Jacob, though they wear an honourable title and character, by which they are interested in many glorious privileges, yet do not flatter them, but show them their transgressions and their sins, be particular in telling them their faults, what sins are committed among them, which they do not know of, nay, what sins are committed by them which they do not acknowledge to be sins; though in some things they are reformed, let them know that in other things they are still as bad as ever. Show them their transgressions and their sins, that is, all their transgressions in their sins, their sins and all the aggravations of them,” Lev. xvi. 21. Note, (1.) God sees sin in his people, in the house of Jacob, and is displeased with it. (2.) They are often unapt and unwilling to see their own sins, and need to have them shown them, and to be told, Thus and thus thou hast done. 2. He must be vehement and in good earnest herein, must cry aloud, and not spare, not spare them (not touch them with his reproofs as if he were afraid of hurting them, but search the wound to the bottom, lay it bare to the bone), not spare himself or his own pains, but cry as loud as he can; though he spend his strength and waste his spirits, though he get their ill-will by it and get himself into an ill name, yet he must not spare. He must lift up his voice like a trumpet, to make those hear of their faults that were apt to be deaf when admonition was addressed to them. He must give his reproofs in the most powerful and pressing manner possible, as one who desired to be heeded. The trumpet does not give an uncertain sound, but, though loud and shrill, is intelligible; so must his alarms be, giving them warning of the fatal consequences of sin, Ezek. xxxiii. 3.
II. He must acknowledge how very good they seemed to be, notwithstanding (v. 2): Yet they seek me daily. When the prophet went about to show them their transgressions they pleaded that they could see no transgressions which they were guilty of; for they were diligent and constant in attending on God’s worship–and what more would he have of them? Now,
1. He owns the matter of fact to be true. As far as hypocrites do that which is good, they shall not be denied the praise of it; let them make their best of it. It is owned that they have a form of godliness. (1.) They go to church, and observe their hours of prayer: They seek me daily; they are very constant in their devotions and never omit them nor suffer any thing to put them by. (2.) They love to hear good preaching; They delight to know my ways, as Herod, who heard John gladly, and the stony ground, that received the seed of the word with joy; it is to them as a lovely song, Ezek. xxxiii. 32. (3.) They seem to take great pleasure in the exercises of religion and to be in their element when they are at their devotions: They delight in approaching to God, not for his sake to whom they approach, but for the sake of some pleasing circumstance, the company, or the festival. (4.) They are inquisitive concerning their duty and seem desirous only to know it, making no question but that then they should do it: They ask of me the ordinances of justice, the rules of piety in the worship of God, the rules of equity in their dealings with men, both which are ordinances of justice. (5.) They appear to the eye of the world as if they made conscience of doing their duty: They are as a nation that did righteousness and forsook not the ordinances of their God; others took them for such, and they themselves pretended to be such. Nothing lay open to view that was a contradiction to their profession, but they seemed to be such as they should be. Note, Men may go a great way towards heaven and yet come short; nay, may go to hell with a good reputation. But,
2. He intimates that this was so far from being a cover or excuse for their sin that really it was an aggravation of it: “Show them their sins which they go on in notwithstanding their knowledge of good and evil, sin and duty, and the convictions of their consciences concerning them.”
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
ISAIAH – CHAPTER 58
THE CHALLENGE OF JEHOVAH TO A THOUGHTLESS PEOPLE
(Isa 58:1 to Isa 66:24)
CONDITIONS FOR DIVINE ACCEPTANCE AND BLESSING
In this final section of Isaiah’s prophecy considerable stress is laid on practical righteousness, (comp. Rom 12:2; Jas 1:25-26). Outward conformity to religious rules and regulations, without the devotion, adoration, and worship of a loving and joyful heart, is not acceptable before God. Until the heart-attitude toward God is right ALL ELSE IS FUTILE!
Vs. 1-3b: SIN MUST BE CONDEMNED
1. Here, as in 40:1 and 49:1, is a two-fold command wherein Isaiah is to “cry out” against the sins of His people (vs. 1); their rejection is the just reward of their faithlessness, (Isa 50:1; Isa 59:12).
2. Their actions are ritualistic and hypocritical (vs. 2) – outward; not from the heart.
a. With brazeness they enter God’s courts as though they delight to know His ways, (comp. Isa 1:11; Tit 1:16).
b. They act as if they were a righteous nation that had never forsaken the law of its God, (Isa 1:4; Isa 48:1; Isa 59:13; Jer 7:8-11).
c. Outwardly, they show great delight in drawing near to God, and ask Him to deal righteously with them, (Isa 29:13).
3. They have even dared complain of Jehovah’s UNFAIRNESS! (vs. 3).
a. He has not seen their fastings – which were certainly designed to impress Him, (Mal 3:14; Luk 18:12).
b. Nor has He taken knowledge of their humility, wherein they afflicted their own souls – such as, they thought, should obligate Him to bestow special favor upon them.
c. Fools still imagine that, somehow, they can obligate God by self-prescribed pieties designed to win the commendation of men!
Vs. 3c-5: CAN THEY POSSIBLY VIEW THIS AS TRUE FASTING?
1. God answers their complaint: He has not been pleased with them because they have PLEASED THEMSELVES, while oppressing those who served them (vs. 3c; Rom 15:1-3; Isa 3:13-15) – extorting from them a full days’ labor, which was contrary to the law, (Lev 16:29).
2. This self-prescribed fasting of theirs only made them quarrelsome; it was not such as to make their voice heard on high, (vs. 4; Isa 59:2; Isa 59:6; Joe 2:12-14).
3. How could they imagine that God would be pleased with such a mechanical fast as theirs – one which used their religion as an instrument for oppression? (vs. 5).
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
1. Cry with the throat. This chapter has been badly divided; for these words are connected with what goes before; and therefore, if we wish to understand the Prophet’s meaning, we ought to read them as if there had been no separation. The Prophet has testified that the people shall be punished in such a manner as to leave some hope of peace, and next has threatened that the wicked, who by indolent pride endeavor to escape from God, shall have continual war. He now confirms that doctrine, and informs them that God has given him this command, to “cry with the throat,” that is, to use a common expression, ( a plein gosier) “at the full stretch of the voice.”
Why is this? It is to make known to the people their sins He does not speak merely of the stretch of the voice, but means by it that keenness and severity of language which hypocrites especially need, as if God were throwing thunderbolts against them from heaven; for they are delighted with their vices, if they be not severely reproved and dragged forth to the light, or rather if they be not violently thrown down.
When he adds, Spare not, it is a mode of expression very frequently employed by Hebrew writers, such as, “I cry, and am not silent.” (Psa 22:2) It is equivalent to a common expression, ( Crie sans espargner,) “Cry without sparing.” We have said that the Prophet does not speak of the mere sound of the voice, but means a severe and harsh reproof, which is very necessary to be sharply used towards hypocrites. For instance, if the prophets merely spoke of the Law of the Lord, and showed what is the rule of a good and holy life, and recommended the worship of God, and likewise reproved vices, but. without employing any vehemence of language, what impression would they produce on hypocrites, whose conscience is lulled in such a manner that they cannot be aroused but by applying spurs? And so a simple manner of teaching would not be enough, unless they were sharply attacked, and the thunderbolts of words were launched against them.
Paul also, imitating the prophets, after having condemned all mankind, breaks out with greater vehemence against those who made some profession of holiness and abused God’s patience. “Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the Law, and boastest in God, and knowest his will, and approvest what is excellent, being instructed out of the Law; and trustest that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of those who are in darkness, an instructor of fools, a teacher of the ignorant, having the form of knowledge and of truth by the Law. Thou therefore that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou who preachest that men ought not to steal, dost thou steal? (Rom 2:17) Against such persons he threatens the judgment of God and terrible vengeance, because they have abused his goodness, and vainly boast of his name.
Thus the Prophet, in this passage, sharpens his pen expressly against the Jews, who gloried in the name of God, and yet proudly rose up against him. This is the method, therefore, that ought to be followed against hypocrites, who hold out an empty show of holiness; at least, if we wish to discharge our duty in a proper and useful manner. As the Lord exercised the prophets in this kind of combat, so we must be exercised in it at the present day; so that we must not hold our peace, or give them a slight reproof, but must exclaim against them with all our might.
It might be objected, “If the Lord commands his servants to reprove the sins of the people, to whom he promises peace, he undoubtedly intended to leave to them the hope of salvation. And yet it is certain that those words are addressed to the reprobate, against whom he had formerly declared war.” I reply, believers were at that time reduced to a small number; for there were few who embraced the peace that was offered to them. Accordingly, when Isaiah holds out the hope of approaching peace, he has his eye on that little flock; when he threatens war, his aim is to terrify the multitude, who were estranged from God and despised his warnings; for the state of the people was such, as we have formerly seen, (Isa 1:21) that scarcely any pure or sound morality remained.
And to the house of Jacob their iniquity. With good reason does he call them “the house of Jacob,” when the greater part of the people were corrupted. And we ought carefully to observe this distinction: that the prophets sometimes address the multitude at large, and sometimes limit their discourse to a few believers. Nor is it without witty and bitter mockery that he gives the designations of “his people” and “children of Jacob” to those who had degenerated from their stock and had basely revolted from the faith of the fathers. The concession made is therefore ironical; as if he had said that there is no privilege which hinders them from hearing what they deserve.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
UNSPARING REPROOF
Isa. 58:1. Cry aloud and spare not, &c.
Faithful dealing always objected to: called fault-finding, indulging in personalities, &c. The old cry is still heard, Prophesy unto us smooth things. O for the prayer (Psa. 139:23).
I. ISRAELS SINFULNESS. A whole catalogue of sins (Isa. 56:10-12; Isa. 57:5; Isaiah 59). In the face of these appalling sins and fiendish cruelties and wrongs, they profess themselves saints (Isa. 58:2). The sham and hypocrisy of all this is emphasised by the word yet, which strikes a contrast between their religiousness and their sins, and declares their religiousness a sham (Isa. 58:5; Isa. 57:12).
What a striking parallel between the state of Israel then and of England now.
1. We pose as a righteous nation! Yet look at our national sins.
(1.) Social wrongs, greed of place and wealth, so that the state to which the needy has been reduced has been declared to be one in which we sit on a volcano.
(2.) Social impurity, with its abounding immorality and fiendish crime.
(3.) Murder as a trade. It may be slow, but sure; and, as in Israels case, it is the slaying of children!
(4.) Intemperance. It is computed that we have 800,000 drunkards, and that for every 1 we spend on Christian missions, we spend 130 in drink!
(5.) Idolatry. Everything being sacrificed to worldliness, fashion, custom, public opinion, &c. No nation sins with more determined step, or with more brazen face!
2. Not only is our national religiousness deceptive, but there is also very much that is sham in the Churches of our land. Formalism, cant, rant, self-delusion. Many seem to be righteous, and think they delight in religious duties, &c. What wilful blinking of the truth! What religiousness without religion! No wonder that to many religion is a synonym for shamkeenly noticed by the worldly, and a grievous hindrance to those who would join Gods people, &c.
II. ISRAEL REPROVED.Israels sins must be reproved plainly, earnestly, faithfully, fearlessly, and publicly. So with us to-day.
1. Sin must be reproved plainly. Show transgressions and sinspoint them out, show how they abound, &c. Some say No, you only make it worse; you emphasise sins, quicken the imaginations, and fire the heart with it. So in the Church. Some harm, but much good. Must reprove with Bible-plainnesscall by right names; with Bible-clearnessspeak of awful consequences. Examples: Elijah, John the Baptist, Christ, Luther, John Knox, Wesley, &c.
2. Faithfully. Spare not. Some object that we hurt the feelings, offend, frighten, &c. But we must not spare high or low, &c.; we must probe deep, wound, fill with anguish, &c.
3. Earnestly. Cry aloud. Let men feel that every Christian feels it his commission to reprove sin, &c. Fearlessly. Regard no consequences. Be not timid, hesitating, daunted, for such reprovers never give conviction.
5. Publicly. Like a trumpet of proclamation, loud and authoritative, that the sound of the reproof may be deep and stirring; go far and wide, and create and sustain public opinion in reference to these sins. There is much apparent boldness around us, but alas! how much shirking of the solemn duty.
6. In the true prophetic spirit. Under the burden of souls as David (Psa. 119:53; Psa. 119:136); Jeremiah; Christ weeping over Jerusalem; Paul, &c. In the spirit of wisdom and power (Mic. 3:8). We must catch the mantle of Elijah! We must possess the tongue of the Baptist! In the spirit of saving grace (Isa. 61:3). Not only all preachers of the Word, but Sunday-school teachers, tract distributors, fathers and mothersall must cry aloud, &c.
The gracious conclusion God makes to this matter (Isa. 58:6-12; Isa. 65:1; Isa. 65:15). Spoken to the same people, and by the same God. Spoken to us as well. The painfulness of the probing of Divine truth is only to prepare for the removal of sin, and the pouring in of healing balm. Let us search our ways, &c. Return to the Lord, &c. (Lam. 3:40).D. A. Hay.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
E. WHOLENESS TO THE WISE WHO KEEP CONVENANT WITH THE LORD, CHAPTER 58
1. HEARKEN
TEXT: Isa. 58:1-5
1
Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and declare unto my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins.
2
Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways: as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God, they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near unto God.
3
Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold in the day of your fast ye find your own pleasure, and exact all your labors.
4
Behold, ye fast for strife and contention, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye fast not this day so as to make your voice to be heard on high.
5
Is such the fast that I have chosen? the day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to Jehovah?
QUERIES
a.
Why is the prophet not to spare in his crying?
b.
How could they smite on a fast day?
PARAPHRASE
Shout this message to the whole nation. Do not relent when they try to justify themselves. Shout clearly to the nation this warning so the wise will acknowledge their sin and hypocrisy. Most of the people go right on tramping into the courts of the Temple daily as if they really were sincere in knowing My will. They pretend they are concerned about righteousness and obeying My commandments. On the one hand they say they want Me to give them holy guidelines for living because they enjoy doing them. And on the other hand they say, Why should we afflict our souls in fasting and obedience since it appears Jehovah is not taking notice of our righteousness and rewarding us?
Hearken to what I have to say, says the Lord: I know exactly why you fast! The truth is that you are not really afflicting your souls in penitence when you fast. You use your fasts to indulge yourselves in carnal pleasures and to defraud the poor and powerless. You do not prepare your mind and heart to worship God when you fast. Your indulgence and oppression cause you to bicker and fight one another when you are pretending to fast! Do you actually think this is the kind of fasting I have commanded? Is this what you think I call afflicting ones soul? Do you think by such an outward show of extreme humiliation (bowing yourself double like a reed and lying down on a bed of sackcloth and ashes) that you can hide your hypocrisy? Is this what you call fasting? Do you believe I will accept your hypocrisy?
COMMENTS
Isa. 58:1-3 a HAUGHTINESS: Isaiah is told to cry a throaty call. The Hebrew words kera vegaron mean literally, call with the throat. The Jerusalem Bible translates, Shout for all you are worth. Apparently the Lord knew there would be a few in Judah who would hearken to the prophets call and wisely repent. There were some who would become covenant-keepers. Presently, however, the majority of people were covenant-breakers. Not only so, they were hypocrites as well. The Hebrew word thakhesek, translated spare not, means do not withhold. The point is that Isaiah is not to hold back declaring the hypocrisy of the majority even when they may appear to be righteous by their great show of religiosity or their attempts to justify themselves (as in verse three) or by their threats against the prophet himself. Isaiah is to become a shophar (rams horn or trumpet, the instrument used to sound a warning).
For the most part, the nation went right on, day after day, haughtily tramping into the courts of the Temple (cf. Isa. 1:12 ff), pretending to seek Jehovah and pretending to find satisfaction in obeying His appointed fast days. Publicly they have a finely practiced facade of not being caught disobeying the rituals and ordinances of the Law. They have put on an ostentatious show. Then they reasoned that Jehovah should reciprocate with goodness toward them (material goodness, no doubt) and judgments upon their enemies. It appears they think they have fooled God with their outward show and now expect Him to reward them accordingly. They took pleasure in their religiosity because they had deceived themselves into thinking Jehovahs righteousness could be compromised by their hypocrisy. They believed they could have their sin and Jehovahs blessing at the same time. But obviously, Jehovah had not responded to their sham-fasting as they had expected. He had not healed the social depravity of the day; He had not removed the growing threat of Assyrian or Babylonian invasion of their country. They had so thoroughly calloused their own consciences they blamed Jehovah for what was very evidently about to befall them. They accuse God of insensitiveness, of carelessness and unconcern. Usually, the hypocrite plays his part so well, he fools himself more than anyone else. These haughty hypocrites had so deceived themselves they were incredulous that God should not be impressed with their self-righteousness!
Isa. 58:3 b5 HYPOCRISY: Now Jehovah exposes the hypocrisy of their religiosity. Jehovah makes it plain that He does indeed know what they are doing! They are not fasting to afflict their souls. While they pretend to fast, they are really indulging in their favorite occupationmaking money. The Hebrew words atzevyekem negoshu are from root words that literally mean, grieve and oppress respectively, but translated labors and exact respectively. Obviously, these people were not gathering at fasts to grieve and oppress their own souls so they must have been plotting business deals that would grieve and oppress one another or the poor.
A word about fasting may be in order here. The Hebrew word used for fast in the Pentateuch is innah and means literally to afflict (the soul) (cf. Lev. 16:29). The Hebrew word most often used after the Pentateuch (and not used in the Pentateuch) is tzum meaning literally to abstain. Both words are used in verse three. Actually, fasting was commanded in the Law of Moses only once (Lev. 16:29) and that on the Day of Atonement. Apparently, the Hebrew people amplified this command and extended it to most any time of sorrow or need for repentance. The nation and individuals were capable of fasting with proper motives (cf. 1Sa. 7:6; 2Sa. 1:12; Jdg. 20:26; 1Ki. 21:12-29; Psa. 109:24; Jer. 36:9; Est. 4:1-3; Est. 4:16; Neh. 1:4). The Jewish people who came back from the captivities had doubts about the efficacy of so many fasts and inquired of the prophets and priests whether they should keep them all or not (cf. Zec. 7:1-6; Zec. 8:13). In Isaiahs day these fasts were being exploited for mercenary purposes.
The fasts, rather than providing an opportunity for men to abstain from worldly pursuits, afflict their souls and concentrate on Gods holiness, provided opportunities for them to haggle, strive, contend, argue and even physically strike one another over profiteering. Leupold visualizes these verses: The prophet follows them to their place of assembly on a fast day. There, off in a corner, two men are not evaluating their own conduct and that of their nation; they are not seeking the face of God in true repentance. They are carrying on a business transaction. Or . . . while they are publicly engaged in holy exercises, at home the laborer who is working for them is slaving under heavy burdens and is being oppressed.
Rhetorically the Lord asks, Do you think this is the kind of fast I would approve? Their humility was mockery. The long, tender rush-was easily bent double without breaking and furnished a graphic figure for the bent-over false humility of these hypocrites. Jesus described the false humility of the fasting hypocrites of His day as skuthropos (Greek for sad, dejected, sullen, morose). Jesus said the hypocrites of His day made their normal faces to disappear (aphanizousin, Gr.) so they might put on faces (hopos phanosin) of fasting, (Mat. 6:16-18). These men of Isaiahs day were extreme in their pretentions even to spreading under themselves a bed of sackcloth and ashes. But none of it fooled God! Let every man who reads this be forever impressed with thisGod is not mocked! Religious ritual (no matter how scriptural and orthodox and correct) if it is coerced, psyched, or played-at, if the heart is not right, is an abomination to God! We cannot put on a sad face and fool God; we cannot put on a happy face and fool God; we cannot put on any face and fool God!
QUIZ
1.
How emphatic is Isaiah to be in crying his message to the nation?
2.
What made these people continue to haughtily pretend to worship Jehovah?
3.
What made them criticize God for not being aware of their religiosity?
4.
What was fasting originally instituted for?
5.
How were these people profaning the matter of fasting?
6.
What should we all learn about pretending from this passage?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
LVIII.
(1) Cry aloud . . .Literally, with the throat, i.e., with no faint whisper as from stammering lips, but with full strength of voice. The work of the preacher of repentance is not to be done slightly or by speaking smooth things (comp. Eze. 13:10-15). The trumpet of the next clause emphasises the thought yet further.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
1, 2. Cry aloud Literally, with open, full throat. It is an alarm-cry that is called for, against sins common, indeed, in the prophet’s time, but peculiarly common just as the Messiah’s advent approaches.
Spare not Lay on reproach without stint or reserve.
Lift up like a trumpet Earnestly show up Jewish iniquities to the extreme end, notwithstanding they pretend to be very religious.
They seek me daily They make ado about it; pretend great delight in justice, as if they were indeed a righteous nation; as if their professed delight in approaching God were real.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
God’s Call To Isaiah and To Each of His Servants ( Isa 58:1 ).
Isa 58:1
“Cry aloud, spare not,
Lift up your voice like a trumpet,
And declare to my people their transgressions,
And to the house of Jacob their sins.”
God calls on Isaiah, and on each of His messengers, to act as a town-crier in declaring openly to His people their transgressions and sins without fear or favour. They are to speak with the voice of a trumpet as God did at Sinai (Exo 19:16). This is the God of Sinai coming to speak to His people again and call them back to the covenant. They are to bellow their message out as over a loudspeaker, and expose their rebellion and sinfulness. They are not to spare their listeners. The message is too important for that.
The basic idea behind ‘transgressions’ is rebellion. Their hearers are rebelling against the Sinai covenant. They need to be aware that their behaviour demonstrates that they are rebels against God and rebels against that covenant. The word for sin means to miss the goal, to fail to do what is right. They are missing out on their covenant responsibilities.
‘The house of Jacob.’ ‘Jacob’ is often used when the bad side is being brought out. It is the pre-transformation name. But it is also the name of the one who was chosen from birth in contrast with his brother Esau, and the name used because Isaiah has dropped the use of the name Israel once the Servant was established as ‘Israel’.
The same message came later to Ezekiel when he was warned that it he did not seek to turn the sinner from his way, he himself would be blood-guilty (Eze 33:8). And it is equally true today.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Explanation of True Righteousness under the Mosaic Law – Isa 58:1-14 shows us that the Mosaic Law had been forsaken by the children of Israel. They were religious, with their golden calves built by Jeroboam, and their temple rituals, but their heart was far from God. In Isa 58:1-5 God reproves them for their false religious duties. They were making sacrifices to the Lord, but they had lost the true meaning of righteousness. In Isa 58:6-7 the Lord explains to them the meaning of true righteousness, much as Jesus did in His Sermon on the Mount to the New Testament Jews who were confused by the religious Pharisees. In these two verses, God summaries the heart of the Mosaic Law by telling them to love their neighbor. Finally, in Isa 58:8-14 the Lord repeats the blessings of the Law which Moses gave in Deuteronomy 28.
Isa 58:1 Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.
Isa 58:2 Isa 58:3 Isa 58:3
Isa 59:1-2, “Behold, the LORD’S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”
The phrase “we have afflicted our soul” is found a number of times in the Old Testament (Lev 16:29; Lev 16:31; Lev 23:27; Lev 23:29; Lev 23:32, Num 29:7, Isa 58:3; Isa 58:5; Isa 58:10). It is generally understood to mean to abstain from food and drink, as well as “wearing sackcloth, mourning, and prayer,” as described in Psa 35:13, “But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into mine own bosom.” [84]
[84] John E. Hartley, Leviticus, in Word Biblical Commentary: 58 Volumes on CD-Rom, vol. 4, eds. Bruce M. Metzger, David A. Hubbard and Glenn W. Barker (Dallas: Word Inc., 2002), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 3.0b [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2004), notes on Leviticus 16:29-31.
Isa 58:4 Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high.
Isa 58:5 Isa 58:5
Isa 61:2, “To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD , and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;”
Isa 58:6-9 The Fast that God has Chosen – Comments – Compare Isa 58:6-9 to Isa 61:1-3. The nation of Israel had not been letting the captives go free; rather, they had been bringing the people into bondage; but Jesus will come and set the captives free.
Isa 58:6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
Isa 58:7 Isa 58:8 Isa 58:8
Isa 1:5-6, “Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.”
During the time of Isaiah the prophet, the nation of Israel was living in deception. They kept their religious practices (Isa 58:2-3), but were confused as to why they found no deliverance. Even their fastings were of no value in God’s eyes (Isa 58:4). This is because their hearts were filled with sin and they mistreated their neighbours. Jesus described the Pharisees as “whited sepulchers” (Mat 23:27), and this is an accurate description of such a people. They performed their religious duties, but mistreated one another from a sinful heart.
Isa 58:9 Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity;
Isa 58:9
Pro 6:13, “He winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his feet, he teacheth with his fingers;”
Isa 58:10 And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday:
Isa 58:11 Isa 58:11
“Behold, My hand is upon thee to bless thee and to accomplish all My good purpose. For this hour I have prepared thy heart; and in My kindness I will not let thee fail. Only relinquish all things into My hands; for I can work freely only as ye release Me by complete committal both of thyself and others. Even as was written of old: ‘Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass’ (Psa 37:5). I will be thy sustaining strength; and My peace shall garrison thy mind. Only trust Me that all I do is done in Love. For adversities must of necessity come. They are part of the pattern of life’s pilgrimage for every individual; and who can escape them? But I say unto thee, that for those who walk in Me, and for those who are encircled by the intercessory prayers of My children, I shall make of the suffering, yea, I shall make of the trials a steppingstone to future blessing.” [85]
[85] Frances J. Roberts, Come Away My Beloved (Ojai, California: King’s Farspan, Inc., 1973), 63.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Israel’s Redemption – The chapters that follow the prophecy of Christ’s sufferings in Isa 53:1-12 tell the children of God to rejoice; for Christ has given them the victory over sin, death and the grave. However, these chapters speak of Christ’s redemption from the perspective of the nation of Israel rather than from the perspective of the Gentiles; for the book of Isaiah contains prophecies of the future destiny of Israel. Later in redemptive history, the Church will be grafted into these prophecies as members of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
A Sharp Reproof of Hypocrisy
v. 1. Cry aloud, v. 2. Yet they seek Me daily, v. 3. Wherefore have we fasted, v. 4. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, v. 5. Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? v. 6. Is not this the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bands of wickedness, v. 7. Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
SECTION VI. PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS AND WARNINGS, FOLLOWED BY A CONFESSION AND A PROMISE (Isa 58:1-14; Isa 59:1-21.).
EXPOSITION
Isa 58:1-12
FORMALISM REBUKED AND INSTRUCTIONS GIVEN WITH RESPECT TO FASTING. As in the last section, so here, the prophet’s eye seems to rest upon his contemporaries rather than upon the exiles; and to note the vices of the time, which have a general resemblance to those rebuked in Isa 1:1-31. The whole Law seems to be in force, and the People to make a show of keeping it, and to complain that they are not properly rewarded for their religiousness. God tears the mask from their face, and shows the difference between true religion and the pretence of it.
Isa 58:1
Cry aloud; literally, cry from the throat; “a plein gosier,” as Calvin says. The command is addressed to the prophet by Jehovah, who will have him warn the people in such sort as to compel their attention. Lift up thy voice like a trumpet (comp. Hos 8:1; Joe 2:1). The trumpet gives a note of alarm. Show my people their transgression; i.e. “show them how they are especially offending me at this time” (see Mic 3:8).
Isa 58:2
They seek me daily, and delight to know my ways (compare the picture drawn in Isa 1:11-15). We have there exactly the same representation of a people honouring God with their lips, but whose hearts are far from himzealous in all the outward forms of religion, even making “many prayers” (Isa 1:15), but yet altogether an offence to God. They are not conscious hypocritesquite the reverse; they are bent on “doing righteousness,” on not forsaking God’s ordinance, on continually “approaching” him; but they are wholly without a proper sense of what religion isthey make it a matter of outward observance, and do not understand that it consists in the devotion of the heart. That did righteousness, and forsook not; rather, that hath done righteousness, and hath not forsaken. The righteousness is, of course, forensic legal righteousness-the offering of the appointed sacrifices, the abstaining from unclean meats, the avoidance of external defilement, the payment of vows, the observance of the one appointed fast, and the like. They ask of me the ordinances of justice. Either “they claim at God’s hands righteous judgments on their enemies” (Delitzsch); or “they demand of God a fidelity to his covenant engagements correspondent to their own (assumed) fidelity to theirs.” They take delight in approaching to God. So the LXX; the Vulgate, Calvin, Vitringa, and Kay. Others prefer to render, “they desire the approach of God” (Knobel, Delitzsch, Cheyne); i.e. they desire that he will come to help them against their foes.
Isa 58:3
Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? The fasting’ spoken of is probably that of the great Day of Atonement. the only fasting commanded in the Law (Le 16:29, 31). Other fasts were from time to time appointed by civil or ecclesiastical authority (1Ki 21:9, 1Ki 12:2 1Ki 20:3; Joe 1:14; Joe 2:12, Joe 2:15); but they were rare, and do not seem to be here intended. Still, the lesson is general, and would apply to all occasions of fasting. The Jews of the time expected, it would seem, some special definite result, in the way of victory or relief, to follow from their observance of the Atonement fast. As it did not follow, they regarded themselves as ill used, and accordingly made complaint. Their feelings approached to those of the Vedic worshippers, who regarded their religious observances as “not merely pleasing. the god who was the object of them, but as laying him under a binding obligation, and almost compelling him to grant the requests of the worshipper”. Afflicted our soul These are the exact words of Le 16:29, 31, by which the fast of the great Day of Atonement was instituted. And thou takest no knowledge; rather, no notice. In the day of your fast ye find pleasure. Delitzsch and Mr. Cheyne render, “ye carry on business,” which accords better with the clause which follows. The great Day of Atonement was, like the sabbath, a day on which no work was to be done (Le 16:29). The Jews, while priding themselves on their observance of the day, did not really observe it in this particular. And exact all your labours; i.e. “require of your servants and subordinates all the services that they have to render on other days.” Days of religious observance, even under the Law, were always intended to be days of kindly forbearance towards the poor, of the remission of burdens, or even of the actual giving of relief.
Isa 58:4
Ye fast for strife and debate. Delitzsch explains, “When fasting, they are doubly irritable and ill tempered; and this leads to quarrelling and strife, even to striking with angry fists.” This is quite a possible explanation. Or there may have been two parties, one for, the other against, fasting; and those who practised fasting may have done it, as some preached Christ, “of envy and strife” (Php 1:15)to provoke the opposite side. Ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high; i.e. “ye must not fast as ye do at present, if ye would have your voices heard in heaven.” God will not hear the prayer of which such a fast is the accompaniment.
Isa 58:5
Is it such a fast that I have chosen, etc.? Do you suppose that such can be the fast commanded by me in the Lawa fast which is expressly called “a day for a man to afflict his soul”? Is afflicting one’s soul simply bowing down one’s head as a bulrush, and making one’s couch on sackcloth and ashes? Surely it is much more than this. (On the employment of “sackcloth and ashes” in fasting, see Est 4:3; Dan 9:3; Jon 3:6.)
Isa 58:6
Is not this the fast that I have chosen? This passage, as Dr. Kay observes, “stands like a homily for the Day of Atonement.” Such homilies are found in the uninspired Jewish writings, and are conceived very much in the same spirit. The Jews call the true fast “the fasting of the heart.” To loose the bands of wickedness. To set free those whom wicked persons have wrongfully imprisoned or entangled. To undo the heavy burdens; literally, to untie the thongs of the yoke. The liberation of a man’s slaves, or of Jews captive among the heathen (Neh 5:8), is probably intended. To let the oppressed (literally, the bruised) go free. Remission of debts and restoration of pledges (Neh 10:31; Eze 18:7) are, perhaps, the acts pointed at.
Isa 58:7
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry? In the early Christian Church almsgiving was connected with fasting by law. It was also accepted as a moral axiom that “fasting and alms were the wings of prayer.” Cast out; or, homeless LXX.). That thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh. Their “flesh” were not merely their near kindred, but their countrymen generally (see Neh 5:5).
Isa 58:8
Then. When thou hast taken this advice to heart, and adopted it, and made it the rule of thy conduct. Upon such a change in thee, all good things shall follow. Thou shalt have no more to complain of unanswered prayers or covenant promises left in abeyance (see the comment on Isa 58:2 and Isa 58:3). Shall thy lightbreak forth; i.e. thy glorious, time shall begin (comp Isa 50:1). Thine healthrather, thine healing; the “healing of thy bruise,” or thy recovery from the low estate to which thy sins have brought thee downshall spring forth speedily; i.e. shall soon manifest itself; and the result will be twofold:
(1) thy own righteousness will go before theewill be, as it were, thy vanguard; and
(2) The glory of the Lord; i.e. the glory which he will confer upon thee, will follow thee up, and be, as it were, thy rearguard (comp. Isa 52:12).
Isa 58:9
If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke (comp. Isa 58:6). The putting forth of the finger. The pointing of the finger at any one in scorn. And speaking vanity; rather, speaking evil, or plotting evil, against others.
Isa 58:10
If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry; i.e. not merely giving him bread, but giving him sympathy and compassion with it. Then shall thy light rise in obscurity (comp. Psa 112:4, “Unto the godly there riseth up light in the darkness;” and see above, Psa 112:8).
Isa 58:11
The Lord shall guide thee continually; i.e. “direct thee in all thy pathsteach thee the way that thou shouldst walk in.” In drought. In time of spiritual depression and weariness. Make fat thy bones; i.e. sustain thy strength. Thou shall; be like a watered garden (comp. Jer 31:12).
Isa 58:12
They that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places. Thy descendants shall restore all that has fallen into decay in Israel, whether it be cities or customs. They shall restore “breaches” of every kind, and bring back the old paths for thee to walk in. The restoration of the ruined cities of Judah may be glanced at, but is far from exhausting the writer’s meaning (comp. Isa 61:4).
Isa 58:13, Isa 58:14
A STRICT OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH ENJOINED. While the fasting of the day only required to be spiritualized, the sabbath observance needed both spiritualizing and increased strictness. From 2Ch 36:21 we learn that the sabbatical years had been little observed during the later Jewish kingdom; and it would Seem from the present passage (comp. Jer 17:21-23) that even the observance of the sabbath itself had been neglected. Not that the neglect was total. The sacrifices proper to the sabbath were duly offeredthe “solemn assembly” was duly called and attended (Isa 1:13); but during the rest of the day business flowed in its usual coursethe complete sanctification of the entire day was set aside. We find a similar laxity prevalent after the return from the Captivity (Neh 10:31; Neh 13:15, Neh 13:16).
Isa 58:13
If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath; i.e. treat it with reverence, as if it were “holy ground” (Exo 3:5; Pro 4:27). From doing thy pleasure; rather, from doing thy businessthe same expression as in Isa 58:3. It is by “business,” not by pleasure, that the sabbath was polluted both in the time of Jeremiah (Jer 17:21-23) and of Nehemiah (Neh 10:31, etc.). And call the sabbath a delight. This is the spiritualization of the sabbath”to call” and feel it “a delight,” a real satisfaction to the soul, not a weariness (Amo 8:5), as it was to many. And shalt honour him; rather, and shalt honour it; i.e. the sabbath, which is made masculine here, as in Isa 56:2. The sabbath was to be honoured by men not pursuing their own ordinary ways, or engaging in their regular business, or even carrying on their ordinary everyday talk. Literally, the command is, not to “speak words;” but no Jews were ever such strict sabbatarians as to understand this as prohibiting all speech on the sabbath. Some have held that sabbatical talk should be scanty, limited, restrained as much as possible; but even for this there is no warrant. It is the quality, rather than the quantity, of the words uttered that is of real importance.
Isa 58:14
Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord. Then shall communion with Jehovah become a real pleasure to thee. The acts of worship shall not be done merely from a sense of duty, because commanded, but because they are congenial to the soul of the worshipper. A right use of the sabbath will help to form in men habits of devotion, which will make religion a joy and a delight to them. I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth; i.e. “I will give thee a prominent position in the earth, and cause thee to occupy its high places, and hear rule over many nations.” Something more than a “taking triumphal possession of Palestine” is evidently pointed at (see Deu 32:13). And feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father. The world itself was the “heritage of Jacob,” since in him and his seed “all the families of the earth were to be blessed” (Gen 28:14). Israel, having laid aside its formalism, and turned to God sincerely. keeping fast and sabbath as God would have them kept, not in the letter, but in the spirit, would enter upon the promised heritage, and occupy the position originally assigned to it. Israel’s rejection of the gospel made the mixed Christian Church the inheritress of the old promises.
HOMILETICS
Isa 58:3-7
Rightful and wrongful fasting need to be carefully distinguished.
Among wrong kinds of fasting may be noticed the following.
I. PURELY FORMAL FASTING IS WRONG. The fasting that consists in mere abstinence from food, without any accompaniment of prayer or meditation or almsgiving, has in it nothing religious, and is an indifferent act, unless it be viewed as in some sort a pious exercise. Viewed in this light, it is a delusion and a snarean encouragement to men to make all their religion formal, and to trust in mechanical acts as having a power to justify and to save. That which was indifferent in itself becomes wrong through the ill results to which it leads.
II. FASTING FOR OSTENTATION‘S SAKE IS STILL MORE WRONG. In the time of our Lord’s ministry there were persons among the Jews who, when they fasted, purposely made themselves “of a sad countenance, that they might appear unto men to fast” (Mat 6:16). Their sole object was to attract attention, and obtain a reputation for asceticism in religion beyond their contemporaries. They looked to making a gain out of godliness, and were so far successful that our Lord says, “They had their reward.” Men accounted them holier than others, and respected them accordingly, whereas their ostentatious fasting deserved no respect.
III. FASTING FOR STRIFE AND DEBATE IS ALSO WRONG. Wherever the practice stirs up “strife and debate,” it is for men to ask themselves whether such “strife and debate” are their incentives for maintaining it or no. If they fast for other, sufficient. reasons, it may well be that there is no call upon them to relinquish the practice, because it calls forth oppositioneven violent and bitter opposition. Christ declared that he “came not to bring peace on earth, but a sword” (Mat 10:34). Whatever is good is sure to be evil spoken of. But, on the other hand, opposition may be courted, may be the real end and aim of those who head the movement. The Jews in Isaiah’s time “fasted for strife and debate;” it is not impossible that Christians may do so now. But if they do, this is certainly not such a fast as is acceptable to the Almighty, or such as will cause the voices of those who keep it to be heard on high.
Rightful fastingsuch fasting as both the Old and the New Testaments allow and requirehas also certain tolerably distinct characteristics.
I. RIGHTFUL FASTING MUST BE UNOSTENTATIOUS. “Thou, when thou fastest,” says our blessed Lord, “anoint thy head, and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast.” There must be no desire to obtain the praise of men by the observance; there must be no parade of it; so far as possible, it must be done “in secret.” Then, and then only, will the “Father, which seeth in secret, reward it openly” (Mat 6:17, Mat 6:18).
II. RIGHTFUL FASTING MUST BE NOT MERELY OUTWARD, BUT ALSO INWARD. “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness,” etc.? Unless fasting be with a spiritual object and accompanied by distinctly spiritual acts, it is absolutely vain and idle. Its natural spiritual concomitants are
(1) repentance (1Ki 21:27; Neh 9:1, Neh 9:2; Joe 2:12, Joe 2:13; Jon 2:5-10, etc.);
(2) prayer (Dan 9:3; Joe 2:17);
(3) almsgiving, and other acts of charity and mercy towards our fellow-men (Isa 58:5-7). To neglect such acts, and to regard the mere opus operatum of fasting as having any spiritual efficacy, is a most dangerous delusion, and one akin to the heresy of Montanus.
Isa 58:13
Rightful and wrongful keeping of the sabbath need to be distinguished.
I. The more worldly among the Jews were inclined to a mere perfunctory keeping of the sabbath. They shut up men’s religious duties on the day within the corners of the Levitical enactments; and considered that, if the legal sacrifices were offered, and the “holy convocation” held and duly attended, the rest of the day might be employed exactly as they pleased. They pursued their secular occupations on the sabbath day with all freedombought and sold, carried their corn, trod the wine-press, conveyed commodities from place to place, and engaged in every form of traffic and merchandise (Neh 13:15, Neh 13:16). This was the lowest theory of sabbath-observance propounded by any, and it received direct and severe condemnation from Jeremiah (Jer 17:21-23) and Nehemiah (Neh 13:15, Neh 13:16).
II. A second form of observance added to the Levitical enactments with respect to sacrifices and the “holy convocation,” an abstinence during the rest of the day from work of every sortan abstinence which was sometimes pushed to excess, as when it was interpreted to forbid self-defence in war (1 Macc. 2:34-38). These religionists were content to remain in a negation, and, so long as they preserved the sabbatical rest unimpaired, were fully satisfied in their consciences. Something of the same spirit, it is to be feared, still pervades certain parts of Christendom. Mere abstinence from worka negative “folding of the hands” appears to be thought acceptable to God; and the sabbath is given a morose aspect by the disallowance of occupations which are innocent, which conduce to cheerfulness, and which are in no way at variance with piety.
III. The third and only rightful form of observance, here touched by Isaiah, and more fully taught by our Lord (Mat 12:3-13), consists, in the first place, in “making the sabbath a delight.” It should be made a delight, both to ourselves and to others. God’s people should look forward to their sabbaths as times of refreshment and of “joy in the Lord”oases in the wilderness of life, glimpses and foretastes of heaven. Music should ]end its charm to them, intensifying and elevating devotion; the aid of other arts should be called in; churches should be aglow with floral beauty; preaching should be warm and heart-stirring; and the highest act of Christian worship should be viewed as the crowning perfection of the feast-day. In the next place, our Lord’s example should be followed, and his words remembered, “It is lawful to do good on the sabbath day.” Acts of mercy and loving-kindness to our fellow-men are pointed out by him as our best employment on the sabbath; it is the special day on which to visit the sick, to clothe the naked, to give our bread to the hungry, to relieve the oppressed, to carry the glad tidings of the gospel to the poor and ignorant. It is also a day part of which may well be devoted to the strengthening of family affection by oral or written communications with relations from whom the business of life commonly separates us, and also for kindly talk with our neighbours and friends. Without in any way secularizing the sabbath, we may give it a cheerful, kindly, friendly aspect, and cause it to be regarded in our families, not as a “dull time,” with difficulty to be “got through,” but, as it was intended to be, the crown of the weekthe special “day which the Lord hath made,” to the end that we should “rejoice and be glad in it” (Psa 118:24).
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON
Isa 58:1-12
True and spurious fasting.
Loudly, with all the strength of throat and as with trumpet-voice, the prophet is to cry and denounce the rebellion and the sins of the people.
I. THEIR FORMALITY AND HYPOCRISY, They consult Jehovah daily; they apply to the prophet or the oracle; they offer prayer. They profess to desire to know God’s ways, his commands, and his dealings with his people. Just as if they were a holy people, and were not really far in heart from God, they demand of him “judgments of righteousness;” i.e. manifestations of his pleasure as the God of the covenant, his approach as the God of justice. They adhered to the forms of religion, but the heart was not in them. Relying on those forms, they were surprised the Divine favour was not vouchsafed to them. “A hypocrite has no true and real delight in the service of God or in his truth; but, at the same time, there may be a great deal of professed interest in the ways of God. A great deal of busy and bustling solicitude about the order of religious services, the external organization of the Church, the ranks of a clergy, the claims of a liturgy. There may be a great deal of pleasure in theological discussion, in the metaphysics of theology, in the defence of what is deemed orthodoxy. There may be much pleasure in the music of devotion, in the pleasant voice of a preacher, in the triumphs of party, the advancement of our sect. But true religion is delight in religion itselfin the service of God as such, and because it is holy. It is pleasure, not even in the triumph of Christianity as a mere party measure, but in God as he is, his holy service and truth” (Barnes).
II. SPURIOUS FASTING. Formal fasting appears to have increased from the time of the Captivity. Another phrase for it was “humbling the soul” (Le 16:29, 31; 23:27, 32; Num 29:7; Num 30:13). In connection with this outward observance, they keenly pursue business ends, exacting the full tale of tasks. “Like Shylock, they demand the pound of flesh, at the same time that they may be most precise, punctual, and bigoted in the discharge of the duties of religion. If we desire to keep a fast acceptable to God, it should be such as shall make us kind, mild, benignant; such as shall take effect in the unbinding heavy burdens from the poor, and relaxing the rigidness of the claims we have on others.” Moreover, the fasting is connected with strife and contention; and so their prayers cannot rise to the seat of Jehovah (Isa 57:15). “Thou hast covered thyself with clouds, so that prayer may not pass through” (Lam 3:44).
“Their words fly up, their thoughts remain below;
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”
The inclination of the head, the sackcloth and the ashes,these make not the fast in the eyes of Jehovah. “It is not a mournful expression, a solemn dress, or a thin table that God so much regards. It is the heart, and not the stomach, that he would have empty; and, therefore, if a man carries a luxurious soul in a pining body, or the aspiring mind of a Lucifer on the hanging head of a bulrush, he fasts only to upbraid his Maker, and to disgrace his religion, and to heighten his final reckoning, till he becomes ten times more the son of perdition than those who own their inward love of sin by the open undissembled enmities of a suitable behaviour. Let a man not count himself to have fasted to any purpose, if by it he has not got ground of his corruption, in some measure supplanted his sin, and estranged his affections from the beloved embraces of sinful objects” (South).
III. THE TRUE FASTING. There was elaborate and merciful legislation for the protection of Hebrew slaves (Exo 21:2; Deu 15:12; Le 25:39); yet it appears to have become a dead letter, which called for severest castigation (Jer 34:8, etc.). “To loose the bands of wickedness,” to release those borne down by exactions contrary to the Law, to “untie the thongs of the yoke” (to free those detained beyond the legal time), to raise up the “crushed” (in the spirit of him who cherishes the crushed reed, Isa 42:3; Cheyne), this was the chosen fast of Jehovah. It was “to break bread to the hungry, and to bring miserable outcasts to their home” (cf. Eze 18:7, Eze 18:16). It was “to clothe the naked, and not to hide one’s-self from one’s own flesh.” It is known that from time to time, both in the Jewish and the Christian Churches, alms-giving has been exalted into a religion and a morality, instead of remaining the expression and fruit of a pure heart. None the less it may be true that at certain times the duty may stand in the forefront of piety, and the neglect of it leave the reproach of “worse than the infidel” on the conscience. Righteousness is not coincident with almsgiving; but almsgiving, like any other external act, may be perverted into a formalism (as we see from Mat 6:14). Charity must begin at home. The outcasts (Joe 3:2-8; Neh 5:8), and those of the same flesh (Neh 5:5), are especially those of one’s own house and country. “The condition of a truly religions fast is that it be attended with alms and works of charity. Amongst our other emptinesses, the evacuation of the purse is proper to this solemnity, and he that inflicts a thorough penance upon this, stops the fountain of luxury and the opportunities of extravagance. Charity is the grand seasoning of every Christian duty; it gives it a gloss in the sight of God, and a value in the sight of man; and he fasts properly whose fast is the poor man’s feast, whose abstinence is another’s abundance. God here roundly tells his people what is truly a fast and what is no fast in his esteemnot to abstain from bread, but to deal it to the hungry; “this is properly to fast. Not to wrap ourselves in sackcloth, but to cover and clothe our naked brother; this is to be humbled. Alms have so much the pre-eminence over prayer, that one is a begging of God, the other a lending to him” (South).
IV. PROMISES TO THE OBEDIENT. “Thy light shall break forth as the morning” (cf. Job 11:17). Like the spreading welcome light of” rosy-fingered dawn,” prosperity will come to gladden their hearts. “Thy new flesh shall quickly shoot forth.” Old wounds shall be healed, and the vital forces, which have been checked, shall resume their activity. “Thy righteousness shall go before thee.” Personal rectitude (Isa 1:27; Isa 33:5, Isa 33:6) shall be as a leader, conducting them in the paths of prosperity and peace; and in the rear of the host shall be Jehovah’s glory (Isa 52:12). Here, then, is joy, vigour, confidence, all connected with rightness; this rightness found, where alone it can be found, in mind and heart conformed to the Divine will. Prayer will be heard and answered (contrast Isa 58:2, Isa 58:4). A God distant and exiled will give place to one so near that a cry will bring his presence and his help. As the last note of despair is, “Where is our God?” the highest point of faith is reached by those who hear him say, “Here I am!” But God would ever be near, were it not for the “thick cloud” of sin between the heart and him. Only let the oppression and the contumely and the defilement of the tongue, reflected in the defilement of the mind, cease, and the better springs of the inner life will rise. When they rise, there will be blessing around one, and other lives will be gladdened; and, when this shall be, then “thy thick darkness shall be as noon;” life shall be a progress under Divine direction; there shall be refreshment, comfort, exhilaration, and restoration of the ruins of the past.J.
Isa 58:13, Isa 58:14
The claims of the sabbath.
I. THE HOLINESS OF THE SABBATH. “The prophet regards the fast-days as forms without authority and significance. All the more strict is his view of the claims of the sabbath” (Cheyne). It is emphatically a consecrated day, and the foot is to be turned aside from it as if it were holy ground, like that where Moses put the shoes from his feet (Exo 3:5). The foot, as instrument of travel, is to be “removed from evil” (Pro 4:27), and its “path is to be pondered” (Pro 4:1-27 :29). Selfish, merely human business, is not to be done on that day, which may be viewed as a part of that great duty of sacrifice which runs through the Law. The day was to be peculiarly Jehovah’s own. A particular temperance and modesty of the tongue was suitable to its observance. Falsehood (Hos 10:4; Job 15:13) would especially desecrate it. Scripture is especially strong on the significance of words. For they express the soul, and reflect in their expression influences of good or evil on the soul again. There should be reserve and economy of speech (a lesson disregarded too much in modern times), for an element of sin is certain to find its way into excessive loquacity (Pro 10:19; Ecc 5:3). A “tonguey man” almost means the same as a malicious talker (Psa 140:11). The regulation of the tongue may, therefore, in great part, be taken as the measure of spiritual self-control and sobriety, as the expression of the living sacrifice of the heart.
II. THE BLESSING ATTACHEDSPIRITUAL DELIGHT. Joy in Jehovah, the Eternal, is manifested to men in grace, in proportion as they approach him in obedience. “You shall no longer be left to barren ordinances and to unanswered prayers. No one has ever properly observed the sabbath who did not find as a consequence that he had increased pleasure in the existence, character, and service of Jehovah” (cf. Job 22:21-26; Psa 37:4, for the illustration of the principle involved). Triumphant possession of the land of promise. (For the phrase, see Deu 32:13; cf. Hab 3:19; Psa 18:1-50 :83; Amo 4:13. For the idea, see Isa 65:9; Eze 34:13, Eze 34:14; Eze 36:1-12.) The hills and fortresses of Palestine, so greatly beloved by the patriot-hearts of the prophets, shall be recovered by the people, once following the righteous moral lead of Jehovah.J.
HOMILIES BY W.M. STATHAM
Isa 58:2
Delight in God.
“Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways.” Religion is little if it is not delight in God. This is its true touchstone. It is what we love that constitutes an abiding test. If we do not feel at heart the blessedness of religion, we may discover that we are only seeking it for selfish safety, or for the world’s approval of a respectable name.
I. THE DAILY ORISON. We seek that which we desire; and how ingenious is love in finding words of communication and opportunities of intercourse of heart with heart! A look may carry with it prosperity and hope. Prayer is not in words, nor, let us remember, is it in thoughts; it is what we desire that we really pray for. Our wishes are our supplications. What your heart is eager after is the devotion that God sees. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts.” “They seek me daily.” Communion with God is not a cry in danger, or a beseechment in hours of special anxiety and necessity; it is an Enoch-like lifea “walk with God.”
II. THE DELIGHTFUL KNOWLEDGE. “Delight to know my ways.”
1. That they may follow God.
2. That they may see God in everything.
3. That they may please God.
4. That they may be prepared to live in him and with him for ever.W.M.S.
Isa 58:2
Practical godliness.
“As a nation that did righteousness.” No word occurs oftener in the Bible than this word “righteousness.” It is the granite foundations of God’s government. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” And it is this which is the salt of a nation. “Righteousness exalteth a nation.” There may be much sentimentality in human beings without the cardinal virtues; but, wanting these, all else is meretricious and hollow.
I. THE GLORY OF ISRAEL. They were not a large nation, nor were they in the strict sense a military people. But they had this high vantage-ground of influencethe God-given laws of Sinai, and the prophets of the Lord of hosts to counsel and reprove them. But their glory was not simply that they had the Law, or knew the Law, but that they did righteousness. And this was their true guerdon. Whilst they so lived they were safe, honoured, and happy. Their fall was from within. The armies of Rome only overthrew them because the nation’s heart was corrupt. The rotten fruit dropsthe storm only expedites its fall.
II. THE GLORY OF ANY NATION. This, and this alone, is glory. Not vast fleets and imposing armies, not a full exchequer and extensive colonies, but righteousness.
1. Equity in jurisprudence.
2. Honour in trade.
3. Justice to all and for all.
4. Purity in morals, or a right government of the passions.
5. Fairness to all other nations.W.M.S.
Isa 58:6
A religious fast.
“Is not this the fast that I have chosen?” Which? The contrast is seen in the inclusive words from the fourth to the ninth verses. God does not delight in outwardness. The mere mannerism of religion, or the head bowed as a bulrush, with sackcloth and ashes beneath, is hateful to the Most High.
I. FASTING IS TO BE REALLY RELIGIOUS. It is to “loose the bands of wickedness”to free one’s own soul from the last shackles of lust and selfishness, and to aid in liberating the souls of others. Religious effort is to deal directly with character, and not with the countenance; with the habits of evil, and not the ritual of ceremonies.
II. FASTING IS TO BE DEEPLY HUMAN. It is to care for our brethren in the world.
1. Many are heavily burdened. Care writes its lines on the anxious brow, and often the heart is grey while the hair is yet black.
2. Many are oppressed. Justice is the subject of bribery, and wealth lords it over poverty; moreover, slavery existed then, and has done till recent years, and the war against slavery has come from religious men.
3. Many are under varied yokes. Yokes of intemperance and pernicious habitof selfishness in its worst forms of cruelty to others.
4. Many are helplessly poor. Not through crime, or faults of their own, such as indolence and inebriety, but through sudden calamities and severe illnesses. We must feed the hungry and cover the naked.
5. Many are neglected by their own. The workhouse has received to its dull shelter those connected with the well-to-do and the well-born; or “relatives” have never been inquired after, sympathized with, or succoured. “And that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh.”
These words in Isaiah teach us that the ancient Law was not simply legal and ceremonial, and outwardly sacrificial, but social, moral, and religious in the highest degree. Such Law Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil.W.M.S.
Isa 58:8
The break of day.
“Then shall thy light break forth as the morning.” The hindrances to progress in God’s Church are not in Divine limitations, but in human perversions.
I. THE LIGHT IS THERE. We hide it under the bushel of our formalism and worldliness. Divine revelation gives ityea, keeps it alive; and it’ we remove the obstacles to its glory, it will burst forth. Many blame religion for the faults and formalities of nominally religious men.
II. THE REVELATION OF THIS LIGHT IS A MORNING. Mornings have often come alike in Jewish and Christian history. Isaiah awakened the Hebrew nation to a new life. Mediaevalism with its dark superstitions, the inquisition with its abhorrent cruelties, did not destroy Christianity. What has been well called the “morning of the Reformation” came. Look back now to Savonarola, and you will see what one man can do to herald a better day in darkest times. Then! Not by an accident in history, nor by an arbitrary decree of God; but by obedience to his Word and by the baptism of his Spirit. And beautiful as are all mornings, when the sun touches the clouds with gold, and fills the earth with splendour, and makes dancing sunshine on the sapphire sea, none are so beautiful as the mornings of new moral life for the world.W.M.S.
Isa 58:13
The sabbath ideal.
“Call the sabbath a delight.” It cannot be a holy day unless it is a happy day. For only souls that joy in God are really devout. Unless religious exercises have a charm for the soul, they are only routine; they are not religious.
I. A SEEMING CONTRADICTION. “Turn away thy foot from doing thy pleasure.” And again, “Not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure.” But there is no real contradiction. Many things are rightly enough pleasant to us in daily occupation and association; but things right in themselves may be wrong if indulged in under improper conditions; and the sabbath is to be holy unto the Lordand in the Christian dispensation it is called “the Lord’s day.” This is to dominate everything. Those who seek worldly pleasure upon this day hinder others from fellowship with God, and keep from that constancy of vision on heavenly things by which alone they can be indelibly impressed on the mind and the heart.
II. A SOLEMN OBLIGATION. It is a day that should be made pleasant, not merry nor mirthful, but full of all the highest and best enjoyments. Praise is pleasantit awakens a remembrance of mercy. Fellowship is pleasantit nerves the fainting soldier’s heart to look at his companions in arms, and it cheers the weary to hear of “the rest that remaineth.” Christian parents should take heed to this. Dulness and moroseness are not religion. Literature is none the less Christian that is well illustrated, and written with all the charm of an attractive style; and the church of God is none the less the house of the Lord and the gate of heaven, that the service is in itself cheerful and bright. There is no memory more potent for good than the remembrance of the happy sabbaths of our childhood. And service for others helps our joy; to call the sabbath a delight, we must be, if possible, givers as well as receiverslike Nehemiah, “cup-bearer of the King,” handing the living water to others.W.M.S.
Isa 58:1-12
Religion: its semblance, its substance, its reward.
I. THE SEMBLANCE OF RELIGION. It argues nothing whatever against religion that there is a great deal of hypocrisy in the world; indeed, the absence would be a more formidable argument than the presence of it. For men imitate that which is most worthy of esteem, and if nobody-pretended to be religious it would be fair to conclude that religion itself was of very small account. Imitation implies the respect, and indicates the value, which is attached to anything which is copied. It speaks well, therefore, for religion that men more often affect to be religious than they pretend to any other excellency. There may be:
1. Acts of devotion. “Seeking God daily””Approaching him” in the attitude and engagement of “prayer,” whether in the secret chamber, the family circle, or in the house of God.
2. Consultation of his Word. “Asking of God the ordinances of justice”the regular and systematic reading of Scripture.
3. Special acts of piety. Like that of fasting, which was not enjoined by Mosaic Law (except on one day in the year); or observing certain particular days as days of humiliation and devotion, or ostentatious deeds of beneficence. Concerning these outward shows of piety, it has to be observed:
(1) That, begun in insincerity, they may become positively pleasurable to those who practise them. There are many who always go through religious rites with labour and weariness of spirit; but there are others who find enjoyment in the ceremonies and services in which they engage. They may be said to delight in them (verse 2). Love of the artistic, fondness for distinction, or other earthly considerations, may account for this; but it is also an undeniable fact that many who do not please God with their observances do greatly please themselves.
(2) That it is the solemn and urgent duty of the minister of Christ to show the utter insufficiency of these things. He is to “cry aloud, and spare not, to lift up his voice like a trumpet,” to show those who pass for God’s people that, if they have nothing better to bring to the heart-searching God than hollow phrases, formal services, outward actions which are not animated by inward feeling, they are living in transgression and in sin (verse 1). He is to. insist upon it with utmost earnestness, that only they can worship God acceptably who worship him “in spirit and in truth;” and that if the semblance of piety be divorced from a holy and useful life (verse 4), it weighs nothing whatever in the balances of heaven (verse 5). Those who have the form of piety without the substance may consider themselves to be of the number of the faithful (verse 3); but they are miserably mistaken. God decisively and peremptorily rejects such empty formalities (verse 5); nay, they are positively offensive in his sight (Isa 1:13-15).
II. THE SUBSTANCE OF RELIGION. The teaching of the text is that real piety is to be found in such fear of God as will manifest itself in doing his holy will in all the relations of human life; such reverence for the Supreme as will constrain men to do what is right and good in all their dealings with their equals and their inferiors; such piety as bears the fruits of:
1. Peaceableness: the exact opposite of strife and smiting (verse 4).
2. Justice: loosing the bands of wickedness, letting the oppressed go free, etc. (verse 6).
3. Kindness: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc. (verse 7); practical recognition of the claims of the suffering humanity which we can pity and can succour (verse 10). This is “the fast,” this is the piety, which God has chosenthat love of God which shows itself in the love of our neighbour (Le Act 10:25, Act 10:37; Rom 12:20, Rom 12:21; Jas 1:27; Jas 2:14-26).
III. THE REWARD OF RELIGION. It is quite true, profoundly true, that real religion is its own reward. Well does the active servant of Jesus Christ beg to be continued in his holy work, saying-
“And I will ask for no reward,
Except to serve thee still.”
But God offers to us, and even presses on our acceptance, his ample and generous rewards for our genuine and faithful service. These are, under Christ:
1. Spiritual illumination (verse 8); being made to be the children of light and of the day, walking in the light of Divine truth, receiving the communications of the enlightening Spirit.
2. Soundness of soul, wholeness of heart and character”health” within (verse 8).
3. Divine guidance and protection. (Verses 8, 11.)
4. Communion with the living and present Saviour (verse 9).
5. Fruitfulness; ourselves being as a “watered garden” for beauty and productiveness (verse 11); and our work resulting in moral and spiritual restoration (verse 12).C.
Isa 58:13, Isa 58:14
The day of sacred rest.
The institution of the weekly sabbath is certainly one of the “water-marks” of revelation. It is not possible to conceive of anything more wise and beneficent than this provision for our bodily and spiritual well-being. Who can calculate the material or the moral benefit which it has conferred on the human race? Who can estimate the blessing it will have proved to humanity when time has run its course? Whether we regard it in the lower or in the higher aspect of the question, its value is simply inestimable. We may look at
I. THE GROUND OF ITS OBSERVANCE. The Jews had special reasons for honouring the day. Its observance was part of their statute law (Exo 20:8-11). But all mankind have reason enough for giving it a conspicuous place in their custom and their commandment.
1. It has its commencement at the very dawn of human history (Gen 2:2, Gen 2:3).
2. It was inculcated in the most solemn form, and enforced by the weightiest sanctions on the Hebrew people; and although it is not, on that account, binding on us as a Divine enactment, yet the fact that it was made of so much consequence in the judgment of the Divine Legislator, and had so large a part in the training of the healthiest and purest people the world has ever known, is a very strong argument in favour of its perpetuity: we may surely elect to continue that which we are not formally bound to adopt. We find a powerful reason for so doing in the text anal in similar passages, where we have the significant fact that:
3. It finds a prominent place in prophetic utterance. Inasmuch as the prophets were the strong and even vehement opponents of ceremonialism, and (as in the previous verses of this chapter) made everything of the moral and the spiritual, their testimony concerning the sabbath day has peculiar value. It points to a Divine intention that it should not pass away with the local, the rudimentary, the temporary, but hold its ground with the abiding and the permanent.
4. It was stated by our Lord to have been “made for man” (Mar 2:27).
5. In the new form of the “Lord’s day,” commemorating the crowning work not of creation but of redemption, it was honoured by the apostles of our Lord. We may, therefore, conclude, in the exercise of our reason, that it is the will of Christ that we should observe one day in seven as a day of sacred rest.
II. THE TRUE SPIRIT OF OBEDIENCE.
1. The spirit of self-renunciation. The Hebrew saint was to “turn away his foot from the sabbath, from doing his pleasure on God’s holy day;” i.e. he was to lay aside his customary labours, and to refrain from ordinary amusements on a day on which God asked for contemplation and worship. As Christians, we come to the conclusion that it is the will of our Saviour that we should give to him our homage, our docility, our sacred zeal; we therefore gladly forego the common engagements and enjoyments of our life, “not doing our own ways,” in order that we may do his will and gain his good pleasure.
2. The spirit of devotion. The corollary of the cheerful renouncement of our own business is the adoption of God’s worship and service as the appropriate engagement of the day. Quitting our home and shunning the mart and the place of amusement, whither should we go but to the house of the Lord, to the field of sacred usefulness? And how can we better spend our time or occupy our powers than in the manly, the lofty, the elevating engagements of devotion and sacred service? Then do we reach our highest mark, and most nearly attain the true standard of our manhood, the richest heritage of our race. Then do we “delight ourselves in the Lord;” then is God what he was to Abraham, and what he will be to us all when we receive the fulness of our inheritanceour “exceeding great Reward.”
3. The spirit of sacred joy. We shall “call the sabbath a delight,” shall find it so, and shall do our best to make it soto the children, to the employed, to the lonely and the confined, who can be visited and cheered in the quiet home, in the sick-chamber.
III. ITS LARGE REWARD.
1. In immediate spiritual enjoyment; in the gladness of heart with which the worship of God is anticipated (Psa 122:1); in the joy of holy fellowship and sacred song; in the happiness of domestic piety.
2. In the continuous spiritual blessedness to which it leads; for a true use of Christian privileges ends in the reconciliation of the soul to God, and in the possession of his abiding favour, in the lifelong friendship of Jesus Christ; there is daily, continual “delight in the Lord.”
3. In the realization of the kindest promises of God. To Israel was offered the excellency of “riding on the high places of the earth,” and being “fed with the heritage of Jacob.” To us, if we truly seek God’s face until we find his favour, is offered
(1) the guidance of an unerring finger and the protection of an almighty arm along all the path of life, whether along higher or lower levels;
(2) the exercise of a benign and gracious influence on human heartsan influence which will live when we are gone;
(3) entrance into the heavenly kingdom.C.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK
Isa 58:2
The offence of merely external religiousness.
“And [yet] me they consult daily, and to know my ways they desire: as a nation that hath done righteousness, and hath not forsaken the Law of God, they ask of me judgments of righteousness” (Cheyne). “The words point, to the incongruous union, possible in the reign of Manasseh, but hardly possible after the exile, of the formal recognition of Jehovah with an apostate life. Every phrase rings in the tone of an incisive irony, describing each element of a true devotion which the people did not possess” (Dean Plumptre). External worship is insufficient, a change of heart is needed; God asks what we have, and what we can do, only because through these things hearts can find expression.
I. CEREMONIES AND SYMBOLS ARE GOOD. Within due limits. We cannot conceive the sort of religion that may suit angels or pure spirits. Perhaps it has no ritual. But our religion must be that of spirits working through human bodies, and therefore it must have form. For man God instituted or recognized sacrifices. For some men he appointed Judaism. Heart-feeling may be strengthened by expression, but capacity of feeling may be exhausted by expression. There is a measure of truth in the saying that, for many persons, religions truth needs to be set in the picture-teaching of ceremonial. They are not wise who refuse to see value in organization and ordinances.
II. OBEDIENCE AND HEART–SERVICE ARE BETTER. Because the thing expressed must be better than the expression. Ceremony can have no moral value apart from the heart and the will (see Psa 40:6-8; Psa 51:16, Psa 51:17; Pro 15:8; Isa 1:11, Isa 1:12-16;Isa 66:3; Jer 7:22, Jer 7:23; Hos 6:6; Amo 5:21-24; Mic 6:6-8). We should not be able to conceive of God as a moral Being, if we were not sure that he puts obedience first; a father does; a king even does.
III. TRUE HEARTS ENDEAVOUR WISELY TO BLEND BOTH. They find out the practical value of well-ordered and well-kept religious habits. Three things occupy serious attention.
1. How to get good religious habits formed.
2. How to keep the forms instinct with life.
3. How to keep the forms within wise limitations.
Every man finds out that the “seen” is constantly endeavouring so to satisfy him that he shall cease to care for the “unseen.”
IV. IF WE CANNOT HAVE BOTH, WE MUST SACRIFICE THE FORM, NOT THE SPIRIT. There are times when it seems as if one must be sacrificed. The tone of an age may give extraordinary force to ceremonial; e.g. an age of decayed religion, such as the time of Christ; an aesthetic age such as ours is. Now it has become our duty to limit ceremonial to the efficient expression of spiritual life and feeling.R.T.
Isa 58:3, Isa 58:4
Selfishness spoiling religious habits.
“Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure.“ That is, you make your religion a mode of pleasing yourselves. You really enjoy your fastings. Two points may be illustrated and enforced. As introductory, it may be shown that externalism is the special temptation of a people who have been cured of idolatry. Pharisaic formalism is the evil that threatens a nation that rebounds from the notion of many gods to the idea of one, spiritual God. “Self” becomes, in a subtle way, the idol of men’s worship.
I. SELF–PLEASING IS AN END GAINED IN RELIGIOUS DUTIES. Those who give themselves heartily to the religious life do come positively to enjoy it. It is the Divine reward of their devotion that they find personal pleasure in their pious works and ways. What strikes us as a most marked contrast between the older and the new religious life is thisour fathers found their pleasure in their religion, while we find our pleasure in anything and everything but our religion. The irksomeness of religious services and religious works is the sure sign that we have little or no pleasure in these things. God does not give us this reward because our hearts and energies are not in such things. A kind of force and fear holds us to a round of engagement; relics of old association and of an old sense of duty, keep us to formal acts of worship; but when the heart is gone out of religious service joy goes too. The lost sense of pleasure is not the worst thing’ in our spiritual condition, but it may be one of the signs of the worst. Self-pleasure is God’s rewardis one of the proper ends of the pious life.
II. SELF–PLEASING MUST NOT BE THE END SOUGHT IN RELIGIOUS DUTIES. We need not dwell on the case of the hypocrite, who purposely seeks ends of his own in making his show of piety. It is more searching to deal with the case of the self-deceived, who mistakes the idea of religion, and thinks himself to be serving God when he is only gratifying himself; and with the case of those who act from divided motives, and are always in danger of making self-pleasing the ruling one. God is to be honoured, obeyed, and served for his own sake alone, no matter what a man may get or lose by his service. It is the sternest reproach of some professed followers of God, that “they feared Jehovah, but served their own gods;“ it would adapt the expression to modern mistakes if we read it, “They feared the Lord, but lived for ends of self-pleasing.” It may be shown that the teachings concerning the heaven which is to be obtained through a religious life are too often presented as an encouragement to self-pleasing. Illustrate by the calamity that befell Pliable, in ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ who was going on pilgrimage for the sake of what he himself would get by it.R.T.
Isa 58:6, Isa 58:7
God’s idea of fasting.
It should be noticed, as giving special point to this reference to fasting, that, besides the regular fasts of the Jewish religion, there were, during the Captivity in Babylon, special fasts appointed as days of repentance and prayer for Israel. God complains that these fasts did not say to him exactly what those who fasted intended them to say, because he looked at the whole conduct of the men to see if it was in harmony with the fasting. The important principle is here illustrated that, if a man be right with God, he will be right also with his fellow-men. If a man does not forgive his brother his trespasses, he cannot be in such a state of mind as makes it any use to him for God to forgive his trespasses. If a man is harsh, exacting, violent, in his dealings with his fellow-creatures, God will take no notice of his sad countenance, fasting, and fine pretences of penitence. God is never deceived by the excellent appearance of our Sunday ways. He judges us by the records of all the week.
I. GOD‘S IDEA OF FASTING IS NOT A FINE OUTWARD SHOW OF HUMILIATION. (Isa 58:5.) Bowed head. Starved body. Sackcloth dress. Ashes for a seat. That rooks fine, and men may be deceived by it, but not God. Compare our Lord’s teaching in the sermon on the mount. “Be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast.” “The prophet finds fault with the fasting of the Jews in two respects.
1. Because they did not combine fasting with works of righteousness.
2. Because they held the bodily exercise to be the chief thing.” Outward appearances may speak for us to God, only we must take care that they have something sincere and true and worthy to say to him, from our hearts. “Rend your hearts, and not your garments;” “The Lord searcheth the heart.”
II. GOD‘S IDEA OF FASTING IS SELF–RESTRAINT IN ORDER TO GAIN HIGHER EFFICIENCY FOR SERVICE. And such fasting needs to make no show. The man who fasts in this sense may “anoint his head, wash his face,” and look cheerful. The best signs of fasting are the good works which we can accomplish, which we gain power, through our self-restraints, to accomplishloosing bands, freeing the oppressed, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, blessing all. Fasting, in the sense of a refusal of all food, belongs to ceremonial religion and had its origin in Eastern lands. Fasting in its most spiritual form, as personal self-restraint, will-mastery over habits and preferences, must ever be binding upon all Christians. As explained by an apostle, it is “knowing how to possess the vessel of the body in sanctification and honour.”R.T.
Isa 58:9
Conditions of answer to prayer.
Were these men, whose lives were spent for self, but who made a show of seeming to want God, proper persons to receive answers to their prayers? Let the Apostle James answer. “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts” (Jas 4:3). God wants signs of right character in those whose petitions he grants; for such character is the only guarantee that what he gives is rightly accepted and rightly used. Here with special reference to the particular sins of the age, we have these conditions laid down.
1. Ceasing from stern and cruel dealings with those who serve us. “Take away the yoke” (see verse 6).
2. Taunts of those who are recognized as the faithful servants of God, but de not make just the same expression of their piety that we do. “Putting forth the finger;” a gesture of derision. “Indicative of mockery and insolence towards the pious and persisting part of the nation” (Matthew Arnold).
3. Boasting. A spirit of self-satisfaction, which is quite inconsistent with any approach to God with expressions of need and fervent desires. “Speaking vanity.” While these evils must be put away, it is made a further condition of answer to prayer, that he who prays shall be positively set upon doing good, caring for the hungry and the afflicted. As the immediate reference is to the prayers offered on the national fast-days, this homily may be made to hear specially upon national days of humiliation, Lenten times, etc. Such times are useful, and are necessary. They are called for by the Divine judgments. But the special danger of them is insincerity. The special condition of their acceptance with God is national turning from sin to righteousness and charity. Therefore, at such seasons, the work of God’s ministers is to produce due convictions of national sins. Our Lord taught conditions of prayer for his individual disciples, in his sermon on the mount. “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”R.T.
Isa 58:11
Guided, provided, and refreshed.
“Guide thee;” “Satisfy thy soul in drought; Make fat thy bones; Make thee like a watered garden.” These figures are all plain and simple, but the last of them gains point by some knowledge of Eastern sentiments. Van Lennep tells us that, in the East, “almost every house has more or less of a garden adjoining. There is neither system nor regular laying out. Trees are scattered about with little or no plan, and patches for vegetables are laid out as most convenient, onions and cabbages being the universal favourites. But the ornament most prized in a garden, one which all seek to possess if they can possibly afford it, is the marble tanksquare, oblong, or octagonalwith a spout in the centre, always out of order. They would not give up that spout in the centre for a good deal, although it does not play once in a generation; but they sit there and think how fine it would be to see it work, and it is almost the same as if they did see it. These tanks are often very tastefully cut and ornamented. The ground around them is always well smoothed, and fine grass is sown in it, and kept fresh by frequent sprinkling.” The immediate reference of the text is to the restoration of the exiles. Their journey they well might fear. Weariness, drought, peril, they could but expect. So the Divine assurances come meeting the three points of their special need. Their need is ours in the journey of life, our journey home to the new Jerusalem.
I. GOD PROMISES HELP FOR ALL THE MOVEMENTS OF LIFE. “Guide thee continually.” We are very familiar with journeyings. We are always going to and fro. By land we are constantly within the flange or’ a wheel of destruction. By sea only a plank or a plate of iron keeps us from foundering. Yet how securely we go! Is it human science or skill that we trust? Nay, God guideth. To every man the life-path is unknown. We have never gone the way heretofore. No matter. God guideth.
II. GOD PROMISES SUPPLY FOR THE NECESSITIES OF LIFE. “Satisfy” thee. Compare “Verily thou shalt be fed.” Forty years in the wilderness Israel was fed. For months Elijah was fed. Through the long march the exiles were fed. Manna did not more truly come from God than does our daily supply. None of his people are left desolate.
III. GOD PROMISES RELIEF FOR THE WEARINESSES OF LIFE. Such as comes to drooping flowers in the garden when the soft rains fall. Such as comes to parched travellers when in the desert they find the living, sparkling spring. Who of us cannot recall sweet memories of Divine refreshings, winds of God, waters of life?R.T.
Isa 58:13
The universal sabbath-law.
“Not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words.” The peculiarity of the day, the essential thing about the day, is that it is God‘s day, not ours. We only keep it aright when we keep it for God. We misuse it when we fill it with any ends of our own. The one sabbath-work is a special effort to honour and obey God, and we shall surely find that the one-day effort helps us in establishing and confirming the everyday habit. Do only God’s pleasure on the sabbaths, and it will be easy to put God’s will and pleasure first every day. Importance attached to keeping the sabbath in Babylon, because it was the most prominent thing in which the people publicly witnessed to their separation from idolatry, and allegiance to Jehovah. Faithful observance of it was the test by which the faithful ones were known. Equal importance attaches to the keeping of the sabbath in our day. It is, as much as ever it was, the searching test that reveals all the humble and faithful followers of God. Still a Christian is known by the Sunday test, “Does he seek his own pleasure on God’s day?” Henderson well says, “The observance of the sabbath has, in all ages, been found essential to the maintenance and prosperity of spiritual religion.” Blackstone says, “A corruption of morals usually follows a profanation of the sabbath.” It should be carefully noticed that this prophet, who is so stern against forms and ceremonies in religion, is thus severe in demanding loyalty to the day which is not ours, but God‘s. So familiar a subject needs no more than an outline of thought; illustrative material will readily be suggested.
I. WE MUST KEEP THE DAY. As a separate day. Showing its distinctness from other days in the change made in our life-habits and associations. Some illustrations may be taken from our keeping wedding-days or birthdays. At such times our minds are full of some particular personsthe days are kept in their honour. So we should separate Sundays for God.
II. WE SHOULD ENJOY THE DAY. Here is a paradox. We are not to do our own pleasure on the day, but we are to find our pleasure in the day. Sunday should be the brightest day of the week.
III. WE OUGHT TO HONOUR GOD ALL THE DAY. What precisely, in an age, a town, a community, a family, or a life, the best honouring of God is, the preacher must think out and present in his own way.R.T.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
c.The new creature
Isaiah 58-66
At the close of the second Ennead, the gaze of the Prophet had returned from the heights of prophecy to the practical necessities of his own time. In the third Ennead he renewedly mounts aloft to the heights of prophetic vision. Chapters 58, 59. form, as it were, the ladder on which he ascends. He shows in them how the people must, by a sincere repentance, raise themselves out of the region of the flesh into the region of the spirit. After this introductory section, the Prophet, in the second discourse, chap. 60, lets the day of salvation dawn by the rising of a new sun that will prove to be a new, heavenly principle of life in the sphere both of nature and of personal life. The third discourse, Isa 61:1 to Isa 63:6, shows us that the new principle of life will be represented by a personal centre. And in this personality, which, indeed, he beholds only as veiled, the Prophet distinguishes a three-fold official activity. He so speaks of it that we must recognize it as the bearer of a prophetic, priestly and kingly power and dignity. As for the object of this three-fold activity, it will be a double one. In a positive respect, there will be brought by that personal centre to the people Israel all-comprehending salvation, that shall find its concentrated expression in a new name. But negatively, it will be active as judge of the whole Gentile world, here represented by Edom. The fourth discourse, chaps, Isa 63:7-19 implies another descent of the Prophet into the present. But this time it is not the actual, absolute present, but a relative present, viz., that of the Exile into which he translates himself in thought. And as out of this present, he makes the people pray the Lord, in a fervent prayer, that He who once showed Himself as the God of His people, would now also look down, yea, that He would come down with grand display of His power. The fifth discourse, finally, chaps. 65, 66, is like a limited yes to the prayer offered in the foregoing discourse. For the prayer was respecting the deliverance of all Israel (Isa 64:7-8). To this 65 replies that neither all Israel will be saved, nor all Israel be lost. The righteousness of God will give to each his own (Isa 65:1-16). The pious shall receive new life. For there shall be a new earth and a new heaven. And the new life that shall reign in these will be one that is inexhaustibly rich, spiritually exalted, in the highest degree intensive; it will also bear the character of the tenderest maternal love (Isa 65:17; Isa 66:14). In conclusion, there follows, Isa 66:15-24, a panorama of the last time. Its acts of judgment the Prophet beholds together. The first act of the judgment is pre-supposed when, in Isa 66:19, it is said, that those that have escaped bring the salvation to the heathen; that the latter shall, as it were, bring back Israel as an offering to Jehovah, and that then all mankind shall be a new Israel on the highest pinnacle. So ends the book with an outlook on a new creation of a higher grade, whose reverse side is briefly indicated in the extended refrain, Isa 66:24, as a worm that never dies, and a fire that is unquenchable.
It must, in the third Ennead, first of all surprise one, that the number of the chapters in it no longer corresponds to the number of discourses, as is in general the case in both the Enneads that precede. For there are nine chapters, and yet only five discourses. Besides, we observe evident interpolations in various places [see Introd., p. 16 b]. Also, the division of verses is erroneous in several places (comp. the rem. on Isa 63:19 bIsa 64:4 a). All this appears to me to indicate that the Prophet had not wrought out the last Ennead as perfectly as the two preceding. In the materials originating from him, there were doubtless nine discourses indicated for the third division. Hence the undeniable Isaianic character of much the greater part of these last nine chapters. [The Authors further inferences are substantially a repetition of what appears on pp. 16, 17 of the Introduction, where see.Tr.]
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I.THE FIRST DISCOURSE
Bridge from the Present to the Future, from Preaching Repentance to Preaching Glory
Chaps. 58, 59
This discourse connects closely with the concluding word of the foregoing Ennead. There the Prophet had descended from the heights of future glory to the level of the present. This present, with its sad moral condition, makes him doubtful whether the glorious images of the future that he beheld could be realized. But he is comforted: Gods loving wisdom is able to heal a man, if only he does not harden his heart. The Prophet, then, in these chapters, proceeds from the level to which in 57 he descended. But he mounts upward again. He builds a bridge for himself that shall conduct him again to those heights he has momentarily forsaken. This he does first, by repelling the charge of the people that God is unjust and denies to their deserving its suitable reward. God, he says, is not unjust, but your piety is good for nothing, for it is merely outward, and appears associated with deeds that are morally objectionable (Isa 58:1-5). Then it is shown how true piety that pleases God must prove itself by actions (Isa 58:6-14). Then in chap. 59 which, with chap. 58, forms an organic whole, the Prophet first refutes the charge that God cannot help, and shows that the moral corruption of the people is to blame for their misfortune (Isa 59:1-8). This charge the people acknowledge to be founded, and make a sincere confession that promises genuine fruits (Isa 59:9-15 a). Upon this confession the Prophet promises again that Israel shall come to its right, to the possession of the theocratic salvation, and receives in conclusion the comforting assurance that the Spirit imparted to him will rule in Israel forever (Isa 59:15 b21). This artistically constructed conclusion has a double sense. First it intimates that the new covenant which the Goel will conclude with Israel shall inaugurate a life in the Spirit, and indeed the same Spirit which is imparted to the Prophet, and which will instantly, from chap. 60. on, again raise him aloft to the heights of prophetic vision. Here the division of the chapter is not quite correct. The first chief part of the discourse comprises Isa 58:1 to Isa 59:8; the second Isa 59:9-21. The first part opposes charge to charge. In chap. 53 the charge against Israel on account of false piety is opposed to the charge against God of unrighteousness. In Isa 59:1-8 the charge of moral corruption is opposed to the charge of inability. The second part contains first the peoples confession of sin (Isa 59:9-15 a), and then the promise that Jehovah will, after their repentance, also help Israel to their rights, by which also the spirit of the Prophet is, as it were, set free, and rendered capable of a new flight.
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1. CHARGE AGAINST CHARGE
Isa 58:1 to Isa 59:8.
a. The complaint of the people against the unrighteousness of Jehovah, opposed by the charge of false piety.
Isa 58:1-14.
1Cry 1aloud, spare not,
Lift up thy voice like a trumpet,
And show my people their transgression,
And the house of Jacob their sins.
2Yet they seek me daily,
And delight to know my ways, 2
As a nation that did righteousness,
And forsook not the ordinance of their God: 3
They ask of me the ordinances of justice;
They take delight in 4approaching to God.
3Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not?
Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge?
Behold, in the day of your fast ye 5find pleasure,
And exact all your 6labours.
4Behold, ye fast for 7strife and debate,
And to smite with the fist of wickedness:
8Ye 9shall not fast as ye do this day,
To make your voice to be heard on high.
5 Is it such a fast that I have chosen?
10A day for a man to afflict his soul?
Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush,
And to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast,
And an acceptable day to the Lord?
6Is not this the fast that I have chosen?
To loose the bands of wickedness,
To undo 11the 12heavy burdens,
And to let the 13oppressed go free,
And that ye break every yoke?
7Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry,
And that thou bring the poor 14that are 15cast out to thy house?
When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him;
And that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
8Then shall thy light break forth as the morning,
And thine 16health shall spring forth speedily:
And thy righteousness shall go before thee;
The glory of the Lord 17shall be thy rereward.
9Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer;
Thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am.
If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke,
The putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity;
10And18 if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry,
And satisfy the afflicted soul;
Then shall thy light rise in obscurity,
And thy darkness be as the noon day:
11And the Lord shall guide thee continually,
And satisfy thy soul in 19drought,
And 20make fat thy bones:
And thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water,
Whose waters 21fail not.
1222And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places:
Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations;
And thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach,
The restorer of paths 23to dwell in.
13If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath,
From doing thy 24pleasure on my holy day;
And call the Sabbath a delight,
The holy of the Lord, honourable;
And shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways,
Nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:
14Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord ;
And I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth,
And feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father:
For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Isa 58:3. It is doubtful whether means operas vestras (i.e your laborers), or opera vestra. But since (on the abnormal doubling of the by Dagheshforte derimens or separative see Green, 24. b; 216, 2 a) never has a personal sense, but always means only labor, hard work, we must translate: and ye exact all your compulsory labor. is construed not only with the accusative of the person, but also with the accusative of the thing, as is shown by 2Ki 23:35. The double accusative joined with the word here shows that it is conceived of as verbum postulandi.
Isa 58:5. It is not clear to me why Delitzsch affirms that the in is not dependent on . Only the ablative of the gerund could be so expressed. But here no ablative gerund is in place. For one could not translate: num flectendo caput arundinis instar? But it is the pure dative of the remoter object, that numberless times stands after in the sense of calling, to give a name. very often has a pretonic vowel before the monosyllabic infinitive that itself does not stand in the construct state (comp. Num 24:10; Amo 7:4). The construction after the infinitive is a return from the subordinate to the principal form.
Isa 58:6. Also in the last clause of this verse we notice the discourse returns after three infinitives to the principal form, to the imperfect.
Isa 58:7. at the beginning of the verse recapitulates the Isa 58:6, and also represents the clause introduced by the latter (is not that a fast, that I choose?). to split, divide, (only again spoken of bread, Jer 16:7, where is to be supplied; used beside only with of beasts that cleave the hoof) occurs only here in Isaiah.The word is difficult. It is found Lam 1:7 meaning a going astray, erratio. Lam 3:19 has the same word in the singular in the same sense. Both times the word is joined with , miseria, as in our text it is with , miser. That it is so connected with one or other of these words in every instance of its use, is certainly no accident. It seems to indicate a proverbial mode of expression. Also it results that our word is really from the same root as that in Lam. If then the latter be from , errare, vagari, then our word must be from the same, and not from rebellare. Now as there are no words ad. f. (with further obscuration in the plural into u) or , that would have both a substantive and adjective signification, we must, with Maurer, Knobel, et al., take as a substantive, which like e.g. ,, etc., pass over from the abstract meaning to the concrete. Then would be not merely wanderings astray, but also wanderers, as it were personified goings astray.
Isa 58:10. (in Isaiah occurs only vacillare Isa 28:7) is to make go out, promere, bring forth, in various senses, comp. Psa 140:9; Psa 144:13, Pro 3:13; Pro 8:35; Pro 12:2; Pro 18:22. It is still uncertain whether the root of our is or is not identical with that of Isa 28:7 and Jer 10:4. The jussive form stands parallel with in the foregoing conditional clause. We translate, not quite literally: and sacrifice thy hunger to the hungry one (comp. Gesen. and Umberit). Properly it should be rendered: and draw forth (offer out of thy provision) to the hungry one that after which thy soul craves. The other translation is for the sake of brevity and pregnancy.
Isa 58:11. By the imperf. with Vav consec. [copulat?] appears as the consequence of is extraxit, subtraxit; is extractus, become loose, free from, expeditus. The Piel denotes to draw off (clothes), to draw out (a prisoner; thus to free). Hiph. occurs only here. As Kal has a transitive meaning (excepting in Hos 5:6), a Hiph. formed from it is hardly in place here. Already Archbishop Secker, with whom Lowth agrees, would on this account read (comp. Isa 40:29; Isa 40:31;Isa 41:1). But meaning equipped, fighting men, is a word of such frequent occurrence, that the formation of a denominativum , meaning to make fit for war, active, is quite conceivable. I agree in this with Delitzsch without regarding it necessary to assume a , to be strong, for , lumbi.
Isa 58:12. Ewald, et al., would read . But, apart from only the Kal and Niph. of being used, this reading is needless, because nothing is gained by it either in respect to grammar or sense. Still I would not render by a te oriundi, and treat it as implying the subject of . But the latter carries its subject in itself; the third person plural of the personal pronoun (), for which we use the indefinite subject man, one, they, is expressed by the afformative .
Isa 58:13. The expression is found only here. Elsewhere we find: (Pro 1:15), (Pro 3:26; Eccl. 4:17), (Pro 4:27).Expositors now justly give up supplying before , which affords a forced construction, if not exactly an impossible one. is in apposition with , The doing, dispatching business ( see on Isa 58:3) is in fact the foot that desecrates the Sabbath. [Though the meaning business, maintained for the word , be suitable for its use in later writers, there is no reason for so rendering it here or in ver.3 or in the passages there cited from Isaiah. Delitzsch says at Isa 58:3 of : In the face of ver.13 this cannot have any other meaning than to stretch ones hand after occupation, to carry on business, to occupy ones-self with it, combining the three meanings, application or affairs, striving, and trade or occupation. Translation of Clarks F. Theol. Lib. As at Isa 58:13 he adds nothing to corroborate the above appeal to that verse, it would seem that in some way the use of in connection with the Sabbath must self-evidently refer to business. That is, we may suppose, it is self-evident that it cant mean pleasure. It is hard to resist the persuasion that such is actually the logical process of this interpretation. It is influenced by a state of religious life that has given up the Sabbath and will only recognize a Sunday. To those of different tradition it is not self-evident, that the right observance of the Sabbath does not call for self-renunciation in favor of God, even the renouncement of our own pleasures, that we may seek pleasure in what pleases God. To such, therefore, it seems perfectly obvious, as J. A. Alex., says on (Isa 44:28) that the word () has here its strict, original, and usual sense of inclination, will or pleasure, that which one delights in, chooses or desires; and the substitution of affair or business would be not only arbitrary but ridiculous. Tr ].
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Cry aloudtheir sins.
Ver.1. The Prophet still stands in the present; he is not soaring in the heights of prophetic vision. He never loses sight of the practical question: what must Israel do to be saved? Even in this last Ennead, where yet the inmost depths and the highest heights of the future salvation present themselves to his gaze, he does not forget to oppose the illusion, that every Israelite by his birth alone and nothing more has an expectancy of this salvation. On the contrary he says most emphatically, that the judgments of the Lord will fall on the unbelieving Israel just as on the unbelieving Gentile world (comp. especially Isa 65:2 sqq.; Isa 66:4 sqq., 14 sqq.). The Prophet, therefore, does not idealize his nation. He sees it in its concrete reality, made up as it is of the God-fearing and the godless combined. But it deeply concerns him that as many as possible of the latter may be converted. He had concluded the second Ennead with such a descent to the sphere of practical necessity, and from that sphere also he addresses himself to the third and final cycle of discourse. One sees how important to the Lord this practical point of view is, from the way He summons the Prophet to give it effect; with the greatest emphasis, without timidity or sparing the Prophet must hold up to the people their sins. For without the knowledge of sin there is no return (), and without return there is no salvation. This exhortation, to hold up to the people their sins, is of the nature of a theme. For warning against sin and exhortation to repent is the undertone of all of chapts. 58, 59; and is similarly the serious, dark background in chapts. 6466.
Cry with throat, i. e., with chest-tones, with a full, strong sound (not with suppressed or whispered sound, comp. 1Sa 1:13). Farther, the Prophet is not to restrain (Isa 54:2), viz., his voice. He is therefore not to spare his voice, and accordingly not his hearers either. For a loud calling that penetrates marrow and bone, strains not only the crier but hearer also. The Prophets cry should penetrate to the quick, therefore it is said to him he must lift up his voice like the Shophar. interchanges Joshua 6 with (comp. vers.5 and 4, 6, 13). According to Josephus (Antiq. V., 6, 5, comp. Jdg 7:16), the Shophar was a rams-horn [ ). Jerome, too, remarks on Hos 5:8 concerning the Shophar: buccina pastoralis est et cornu, recurvo efficitur, unde et graece appellatur. Comp. Leyrer, in Herz.,R. Enc. X., p. 131.
2. Yet they seekto the Lord.
Vers.25. I share the view of Delitzsch, that before is to be taken in an adversative, and not a causal sense. For the summons to hold up importunately to the people their sin, implies that they do not know their sin, that they hold themselves to be quite sinless. In contrast with this (indirectly expressed) opinion of themselves, stands what the people attempt with respect to God. Gods ways seem incomprehensible to them. That is, they do not at all understand how the Lord can deal with them as He does. They think they deserve reward and praise, and yet must endure severe tribulation. (comp. Isa 31:1) is=to inquire, to find out by asking, to search out. They would know from the Lord how His treatment is to be understood. For such is the meaning of , which on its part is moreover explanatory of . But they do not stop with a verbal explanation. They demand a formal reply, i. e., they would have their pretended right assured to them by formal, judicial procedure. As a people that practice righteousness and has not forsaken the law (=legal norm) of its God, they demand of Jehovah judicial processes of righteousness, i. e., an impartial judicial procedure. They appeal, as it were, from Jehovah to a higher, independent court, and demand that Jehovah shall appear before it. In the expression righteous judgments, there is thus an indirect charge that Jehovahs treatment of them had been unjust. An impartial tribunal shall decide, and before this Jehovah Himself should appear. Such is the meaning (substant. again only Psa 73:28). is often used for appearing before judgment or before the lord and governor (Isa 34:1; Isa 41:1; Isa 41:5; Isa 48:16; Isa 57:3; Mal 3:5).Notice the full-sounding forms , (the latter rhyme-like concluding the two halves of the verse). They paint the bold insolence displayed.
In ver.3 the Lord lets the Israelites themselves produce their complaint. We have fasted and chastened ourselves. Such is the merit they urge. They ask why it is not acknowledged.This passage has been urged as a proof that our book originated in the exile, because from Zec 7:3 sqq. (comp. Isa 8:19) it appears that in the Exile fasting in the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months came in vogue (comp. WienerR. W., and Herz.R. Enc. s. v. Fasten), whereas the Mosaic law prescribed fasting for only one day in the year, viz., the great day of atonement (Lev 23:27-32). In this bragging about their fasting is found an indication of that extension that in the Exile was given to the rite of fasting. Even Delitzsch will not be dissuaded of the idea that here we have before us a picture out of the life of the exiles. But was that Isaiahs task, to give pictures from the life of the exiles?
In that passage of Zech. we are informed of an embassy, probably from Bethel, that made inquiry in Jerusalem, whether fasting in the fifth month was to be retained even after the return out of the Exile. Thereupon Zechariah receives a commission to answer the people that they might use their pleasure in this respect. For fasting as eating was indifferent to the Lord. What other divine service, better and more rational (Rom 12:1), Jehovah requires must be known to them from the words that Jehovah caused to be proclaimed by the former prophets ( ) when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, And then follows vers.9, 10, what sort of words of former prophets the Lord means: Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassions every man to his brother: and oppress not the widow, or the fatherless, the stranger nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart. If it be asked what words of an older prophet Zechariah means, only our passage can be first thought of. Of course the agreement is not verbal; but neither is there any other passage that does agree verbally with that in Zechariah. And as regards the sense, our passage is the only one that in the same way as Zechariah exposes negatively the valuelessness of outward fasting and sets positively in antithesis to it the true that is well-pleasing to God. Did ye at all fast unto me? the Lord asks in Zec 7:5. The idea of fasting here involves the idea of solemnizing, honoring, sanctifying in the way of divine service, and on this depends the accusative suffix (do ye then fast me). Not my honor and my interest did ye seek in your fasting, is, then what the Lord says, Zec 7:5. And He says the same in our text, only more extendedly, in that He charges the Israelites with not having God at all in view or in their hearts when they fasted, since otherwise it were impossible for them at the same time to carry on all sorts of wickedness. And as regards the positive feature, our Prophet in vers.6, 7, when he admonishes to let go the bound, to feed, entertain, clothe the poor, actually says what Zechariah (Isa 7:9-10) says with his admonition to practise works of righteousness and love. Also the prophet Joel utters a similar thought (Joe 2:12-13). By the words and with fasting, and with weeping and with mourning followed by and rend your heart and not your garments, he points out the difference between the true and the false . Zechariah may also have thought of Eze 18:5 sqq. (although it by no means has for subject the contrast between true and false divine service) since that is the only place beside Zechariah where the expression is found. But our passage has the most resemblance to that in Zechariah, partly because it speaks only of fasting and partly because it contrasts false and true fasting. There are some other particulars that favor the idea that Zechariah had our passage, and also others in chapts. 40, 66 in mind. Of inferior significance is the fact that the expression Zec 7:9, (in which we have recognized a connection with Eze 18:8), perhaps includes also a reminiscence of Isa 58:2, which expression, beside here, is found only Psa 119:7; Psa 119:62; Psa 119:106; Psa 119:160; Psa 119:164, in the form . It is more important that in Zec 7:13 we have a very plain echo of Isa 1:2; Isa 65:12; Isa 66:4. For after Zechariah (Isa 7:9-10) had quoted what the former prophets had demanded instead of the merely outward fasting, he proceeds in ver.11, with the information that Israel did not heed the words of those prophets, and that thereby a great wrath came about on the Lords part (Isa 58:11-12). Then it is said further: And it came to pass, that as He cried and they would not hear (ver.13). Now these words are the reproduction of a thought that in this form is peculiar to chapts. 40, 66. Thus in Isa 50:2 we have the words: Wherefore when I came was there no man, when I called was there none to answer? Afterwards we read: I called and ye did not answer, I spake and ye did not hear (Isa 65:12). Finally: I called and there was none answering, I spake and they did not hear (Isa 66:4). The same form of expression is found with modification only in Jeremiah and Zechariah beside. Thus in Jeremiah we read: And I spake unto you, rising up early and speaking, but ye heard not; and I called you, but ye answered not (Jer 7:13); and again: And thou shalt speak all these words unto them; but they will not hear thee; thou shalt also call unto them; but they will not answer thee (Jer 7:27). Finally: I have spoken unto them, but they have not heard; and I have called unto them, but they have not answered (Jer 35:17). Such are the Old Testament passages in which the said form of speech occurs applied to the people Israel. For it occurs already Job 19:16, but there only in relation to Job and his servant. We expressly observe that we have to do here only with that form of expression, which to the calling of a superior opposes the not answering of an inferior, and not with the opposite where the superior refuses to answer the call of an inferior. Now it is possible that the expression was borrowed from Job 19:16, and applied to the relation of Jehovah to Israel. Who did this first is the question. Any way the words in Zec 7:13 a, have most resemblance to Isa 65:12; Isa 66:4. Now as this kind of expression is found in Isaiah only Isa 50:2; Isa 65:12; Isa 66:4, the conclusion is very natural that Zechariah reckoned the author of Isaiah 40-64 to the former prophets that prophesied in the time when Jerusalem still sat and was quiet and its cities round about and the south, and the plain (Zec 7:7). For evidently vers.13, 14 are explanatory of what precedes. It is said wherein the great wrath consisted, of which Isa 58:12 spoke. And as the cause of this wrath was said to be that the Israelites would not hear the law and the words which Jehovah Sabaoth sent by His Spirit by the hand of the former prophets, so, in ver.13a, the cause of the wrath is more nearly defined by a condensed statement of the contents of those former prophecies. The conclusion here presented is the judgment also of KueperDas Prophetenth, d. A. B. p. 291. Another proof of the same thing is, that the words: made heavy their ears that they should not hear (Zec 7:11), is a quotation of Isa 59:1. And it may be noted that the expression in general occurs only in Isa. (Isa 6:10; Isa 59:1). From this whole investigation it results, that we have not to consider the words of Isa 58:3 a, as the language of an exile, but of a contemporary of Isaiah.
Although only one fast day in the year was legally prescribed, still voluntary fast-days were allowed both for individuals, and for the whole community. And there are many texts to prove that such often occurred. Comp. Jdg 20:26; 1Sa 7:16; 2Sa 1:12; 2Sa 12:16 sqq.; 1Ki 21:12; Joe 1:14; Jer 36:6; Jer 36:9; 2Ch 20:3; Ezr 8:21; Psa 109:24, etc. It was just voluntary fasting that was likely to become the subject of work-righteous, Pharisaical boasting (Luk 18:12). is to restrain, bow, repress the craving for food. It is the expression by which the law itself designated the inward side of fasting (Lev 16:31; Lev 23:27; Lev 23:29; Lev 23:32; Num 29:7; Num 30:14; Psa 35:13). Crucify the flesh, though not a literal rendering, is true to the sense; for is after all nothing else than the inner flesh, fleshly craving in the extended sense.
Isa 58:3 b. To this proud, work-righteous speech of the people, in which they make the Lord, as it were, the defendant, the Lord Himself replies by pointing them away from worship in the letter to worship in spirit, and in truth (John 4). First He exposes the hypocrisy of their way of fasting. Fasting ought to be a divine worship. Thus it implies a direction of the heart toward God. But how can devotion be thought of in those who, while they fast, turn their thoughts only to worldly profit, yea, to wrangling and unrighteousness. is that which a man delights in, not merely in the sense of transitory pleasure, but also in the more serious sense of business interest. In this sense it even stands parallel with Job 22:3, comp. Job 21:21. In Isa 44:28; Isa 53:10 we see plainly the transition from one to the other meaning. In our chapter ver.13 the word occurs twice again in the sense of , negotium. In Ecc 3:1; Ecc 3:17; Ecc 5:7; Ecc 8:6, it occurs in this sense, and each time the LXX. render it by . By the expression before the Prophet purposes primarily a paronomasia with respect to . But perhaps, too, (to touch, take hold of a business, according to the fundamental meaning pertingere ad, assequi, comp. Job 11:7; Psa 21:9; Isa 10:10; Isa 10:14) was a popular expression current in business life. The general sense of is easily made out. The Prophet reproaches the Israelites with combining greedy exaction with their fasting. But occasions difficulty, on which see Text, and Gram.
Isa 58:4. But beside greedy harshness toward those under them, the Israelites combined with their fasting vexatious strife that degenerated into deeds of violence towards those of like condition. Fasting, instead of raising them up inwardly, made them moody to the degree that they give vent to their ill-humor by cudgelings. Thus their fasting exercised even a demoralizing influence. The consequence is that the prayer, which combined with such fasting they send toward heaven, is not heard. cannot possibly (with Hahn) be taken in the sense of (Rom 13:12-13), (Eph 5:8). Also Stier ascribes too much to the expression when, following Jarchi, he takes it in the sense of as becomes the day (i. e., the day of atonement). simply urges the present, silently implying a contrast with the past and future. That is, the Prophet will say nothing of the past and future. He only makes prominent: that Israel now, in the present moment, does not fast as it ought to (comp. 1Sa 2:16; 1Sa 9:27; 1Ki 22:5). It implies also the possibility of doing better in the future. In the denotes the intended effect: ye fast not so that (the intended effect, to bring your voice on high (Isa 57:15; Isa 33:5) to a hearing) can be attained. Fasting and praying go together, and fasting is intended to serve the prayer as an accompaniment that recommends it, as say, with reference to men, a present is joined to a petition to make it more effective (compare the texts cited above on voluntary fasting).
Ver.5. The Prophet once more comprehends what has been said, in a question that calls for a negative response. Shall that (described vers.3 b4) be a fast that I choose, a day when a man afflicts his soul? We must not (with the Vulg. Luther and many others refer to what follows (numquid tale est jejunium quod elegi, per diem affligere hominem animam suam?Vulg.). For the words are words of the law (Lev 16:31; Lev 23:27; Lev 23:32; Num 29:7). One ought to fast so according to the law. Therefore the words are parallel with . It is indeed Gods will that a man afflict his soul, i. e., his psychical lusts, that he crucify the flesh. That is wholesome and healthy. But would fasting combined with outrage, as described Isa 58:3 b4, be really a wholesome crucifying of the flesh? This question must be answered with no. Moreover that is also to be called no fasting when one lays all stress on the outward, bodily exercise (the ) 1Ti 4:8) and at this price leaves the inward flesh wholly unmolested. The expression sackcloth and ashes occurs again only Dan 9:3; Est 4:1; Est 4:3. Evidently Isaiah has also here been the source for later usage, for in general the language of Isaiah 40-66 is not that of Daniel and Esther.
3. Is not this the fastthine own flesh.
Isa 58:6-7. It is well to observe that in these two verses, which would describe the fasting that is well-pleasing to God, the Prophet says nothing more of bodily mortification. He only names the works of righteousness toward the oppressed (ver.6), and beneficence toward the poor and needy. But one must not understand that he positively rejects fasting. When he says: is not that a fasting I choose? he assumes that there will be fasting. What follows: to loose, etc., only gays what should be combined with fasting, in contrast with the conduct of the Israelites in this respect. Nevertheless the Prophet lays the chief stress just on the works mentioned in Isa 58:6-7. He assumes that the practice of these works also costs a sacrifice either of bodily substance, or of inward resignation and subduing uncharitable inclinations. He that subdues the flesh to the will in this wise, practises the true afflicting of the soul. Notice how the Prophet is here quite on the road that reaches its highest elevation in the declarations of Isa 66:3. Also: that thou hide not thyself from thy flesh, is a trace of the broad, evangelical spirit that reigns in our passage. To the question: who is my neighbor? the answer is given here: every one who is of thy flesh. The answer does not run: every one who is of thy nation, or tribe (Luk 10:29 sqq.). Thus our Prophet here, too, rises far above theocratic narrowness. [Comp. Jam 1:27].
4. Then shall thy lightto dwell in.
Isa 58:8-12. The Prophet now gives a series of ten promises of glorious reward for those who will fulfil the command of the Lord in the right spirit. He strings them together like a necklace of pearls, yet so that, after the first four promises, he mentions again (Isa 58:9 b, and 10a), the conditions, as one breaks the monotony of the string of pearls by an ornament of another form and color. The row of promises consists of four and six members, among which a certain parallelism and also a climax is observable. In Isa 58:8-9 a, the Prophet describes in some measure the pious mans course of life. Rising out of the obscurity of his previous way of life, the light of divine holiness and glory rises like the morning dawn for the pious man to split, Niph. by splitting to press forth, (comp. Isa 35:6; Isa 59:5). Heretofore sick, he feels in himself the power of a new life, by which, as it were, new, healthy flesh grows on him, as on the dead bones Ezekiel saw (Eze 37:5 sq.). is certainly derived most naturally from longum esse, and denotes the new flesh that extends over the wound, by which, supplanting that which is dead, it fills up the gaps and restores the normal form of the member, (comp. FleischerinDel. Comm. p. 592, Anm.). The word is found only here in Isaiah, comp. Jer 8:22; Jer 30:17; Jer 33:6; 2Ch 24:13; Neh 4:1. He that has come to the light, and that has become strong in health, moves along the course assigned him. This march resembles a triumphal procession. As before him that goes in triumph are borne or led along the signs of his victory, so the glory of the pious goes before him, i. e., his righteous works. But he does not on this account shine in the brightness of his own celebrity, for he that closes up and holds together (comp. Isa 52:12) the procession, and thus shows himself to be the power that controls all, is the glory of Jehovah. But where is the pious one, let his course of life be never so glorious, that does not need God? Therefore the Prophet comprehends all the rest together in the great, glorious right of petition of the pious one, which consists in this, that the pious may ask for everything, and never prays in vain (Mat 21:22; Mar 11:24; Joh 14:13 sq.). As has been remarked, the Prophet in ver.9 b10 a interrupts the chain of promises, in order to repeat the conditions. What he mentions as such is again the demand to forego every sort of lovelessness (Isa 58:9 b), and to practise every sort of love (ver.10a). As the first thing to be abstained from, he designates: not to rule tyrannically, but to take away yokes wherever they exist. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2Co 3:17), and love does no evil to its neighbor; it seeks not its own; it rejoices not in iniquity (1Co 13:4 sqq.). There is here a certain climax: the Prophet evidently regards subjugation, tyranny, violence as the coarsest violation of the law of love. As a more refined transgression, he regards the pointing (, inf.) with the finger. This, among western nations as well as among orientals, is a gesture of contempt, comp. Gesen.in loc. (infamis digitus, the middle finger; Pers. II:33: rideto multum et digitum porrigito medium, Martial, II:28, 2). According to Pro 6:13, pointing the finger appears also as a means of malignant denunciation and spiteful betrayal. Still more refined, but not better on that account, is the transgression of the law of love by sacrilegious discourse (comp. Isa 1:13; Isa 10:1; Psa 5:6; Psa 6:9, etc.).The demand to cease to do evil is followed by the demand to do good (ver.10). And vice omnium it is demanded that the pious sacrifice his own hunger to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul. For I agree with Delitzsch in the opinion that can mean nothing else here than that after which the soul, i. e., here the hungry mans prompting for nourishment, craves. Hence it is going too far, when Stieret al., following Jerome, take in the sense of life and heart. For he that is hungry after our life, to him we would not owe it.
Ver.11. In what now follows we have a second row of promises and made stronger. It is composed of six members, but in its fundamental thought it corresponds to the one of four members [that precedes]. For underlying it is the thought of a life-career, that begins with the morning and presses happily through conflicts of every sort. But in this succession of six members the issue is different. That is, it concludes with a perspective of an activity that is richly blessed, and extends its efficiency into the remotest times. The first promise of this series corresponds exactly to the beginning of the first series: liberation from the chains of darkness, rising of light and increase of it is promised in such measure, that even the obscurest parts of that darkness will have the brightness of midday. (Job 11:17; Psa 18:29; Psa 37:6, etc.).The second promise is indeed the shortest, but it is also the most important of all: the Lord will never withdraw His hand from the pious one; He will abide with him and guide him (Isa 57:18) in all his ways. The third promise assumes that cross and conflict will, nevertheless, not be wanting to the pious one. For there will be also for him still , i. e., hot places. Jerome translates: implebit splendoribus animam tuam. Hahn follows this and translates: and let thy soul be satisfied with brightness. It is true, the root ,, in its fundamental meaning, burning, involves the meaning of gleaming and of drought. Hence on the one hand , nitens on the other hand (Psa 68:7) and (Neh 4:7) loca arida. But what is promised already, Isa 58:10 b, satisfies the requirements of light, and ver.11b. shows that the Prophet has in mind the refreshing element of water. He promises satiety from it in a two-fold gradation. First, the pious one shall want none, even in localities that for others are arid deserts. The soul, i. e., the need of -water shall be richly satisfied, so that thereby the bones (thus the body itself) become fresh and powerful. But, and this is the fourth promise, the refreshing element shall be, bestowed on the pious one in a still greater degree. That is to say, he shall himself become a well-watered garden; in fact, a richly flowing spring of water. Thus the pious one shall be an oasis in the desert, a lovely, green, fruitful garden, with a glorious spring that never goes dry. The expression is found again only in Jer 31:12. is the place of issue, the flowing place for water (comp. Isa 41:18; Psa 107:33; Psa 107:35; 2Ch 32:30). In general comp. Isa 1:30; Isa 51:3; Son 4:12.The fifth promise extends to the pious one the prospect that he will be still beyond the period of his life a source of blessing, and indeed the cause of a glorious restoration: they shall build (see Text, and Gram.) from thee ( designates the ideal originator) ancient waste places, means nothing else than: thou wilt be the author and spiritual director of such buildings by which ancient buildings that were destroyed shall be restored. The Prophet purposely does not say that it shall be just bodily children. Any way it will be children after the Spirit. Hence, also, in the second clause, just the second person sing. is used. It were incomprehensible why the childrens building should be mentioned before that of the father. On the other hand, explains to us the meaning of the . One is, indeed, tempted to do as Stier and others do, and refer the second clause to new buildings, since , as a rule, points to the future, and since great men are wont not merely to restore, but also to found new institutions. But in Isa 61:4, the Prophet repeats this expression with some modifications, and there, according to the context, only restoration can be meant. Added to this, in Pilel designates essentially rising up again, and the predicates and equally refer to restoration. (notice that it does not say ) is used of the past also in Deu 32:7; Psa 90:1.The sixth promise extends to the pious one the prospect of honorable surnames, the praise of having deserved well of his country. A is one that walls up (comp. Eze 22:30; 2Ki 12:13) what is shattered (28:21; Isa 30:13), thus a repairer of human dwellings. But, in order to dwell comfortably in a land, men must be able to go to one another, commerce and intercourse must be possible. Hence the additional title restorer of the paths. to dwell in, is probably to be referred to both, since, in order to dwell, i. e., for comfortable and secure dwelling in a land, both are necessary, good dwellings and good roads. is a poetic word with no technical reference, and hence suitable for designating any sort of way (comp. Leyrers article Strassen in Palaestina; Herz. R. Enc. xv. p. 157 sqq.).One sees, especially from ver.12, that the Prophet, who here still before the Exile preaches repentance to his nation, has yet always in mind the great future of restoration. So it is characteristic that, to the pious of his day, as a last and most glorious reward, he presents the prospect, that by him, too, shall be exercised blessed influences on Israels reinstallation in its land.
5. If thou turnhath spoken it.
Isa 58:13-14. Isaiahs contemporaries seem to have provoked the Lord especially by two things. First by an excess that was not demanded; that is by fasting much more than was commanded. They fancied that by this outward exercise they could bribe the Lord and wipe out scores with Him. But then they let themselves be caught in doing too little. They were as lax about keeping the Sabbath as they were strict about fasting. The Sabbath was Jehovahs day. Keeping it holy was a sure sign of fidelity to Jehovah, and easily tested. Thus the Prophet demands a right sanctification of the Sabbath as a condition of glorious, theocratic blessing (comp. Isa 56:2). The doing or dispatching business ( comp. onver.3 and Text, and G., where see Tr.s note) is just the foot whose tramp desecrates the holy ground of the Sabbath. From the mouths of those that did not heartily serve the Lord, one may often have heard utterances that the celebration of the Sabbath was a burden, that interfered with all business and occupation (Amo 8:5). Opposed to this the Prophet demanded that men shall call the Sabbath a delight ( again only Isa 13:22). It merits this name as the universal friend of man, that brings rest and refreshment to all that are weary and heavy-laden. But, as being holy to Jehovah, it deserves the name honorable ( to be highly honored). But the Israelites should practically honor it also by not doing their own ways, and not going about their trade and occupation (=far from making, without making or doing), by not doing their own business (see on ver.3) and by not carrying on conversation. The expression is found again Isa 8:10. The sense differs with the context. In many passages it has no pregnant sense (comp. Gen 41:28; Gen 44:18; 2Ki 5:13; Job 2:13; Pro 25:11). But there are also passages where it has (Deu 18:20; Isa 8:10; Jer 29:23; Jer 34:5; Eze 12:25; Eze 12:28; Eze 14:9; 2Sa 7:7). According to the Mosaic law, the Sabbath should be a day of joy (comp. Oehler in Herz.R. Enc. xiii. p. 199). Could it be exacted of all Israelites that on this day only weighty words should proceed from their mouth? Certainly not. But business conversation could properly be forbidden. On the Sabbath no business must be transacted, neither by works nor by words. Thus is here about the same as (comp. 1Sa 20:2; Jdg 18:7; Jdg 18:18, etc.). Let the Israelite practically honor the Sabbath in this way and he will delight himself in Jehovah Himself. He will serve the Lord with inmost satisfaction, and the Lord on His part will bestow upon Him the highest honor and the highest enjoyment. I will cause thee to ride, I will feed thee are citations from Deu 32:13, comp. Deu 33:29. To ride on the high places of the earth denotes exaltation above all other nations. Instead of eating the heritage of Jacob thy father, the original text in Deuteronomy reads eat the increase of the fields; and He (Jehovah) made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock. These expressions are compressed in our text, and an expression used instead that recalls the promises given to the fathers in reference to the land of Canaan (Exo 3:8; Exo 3:17; Exo 13:5, etc.). On For the mouth of the Lord, etc., see on Isa 1:20; Isa 40:5.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. On Isa 58:2-3. There are also to-day many men that hold up their good works to God (Luk 18:11 sqq.), and who, out aloud or silently, reproach Him for not adequately rewarding them for them. But one can distinguish here two classes: those that boast of having done works of undoubted moral worth; and such as found their pretensions essentially on works that are morally indifferent, as ceremonies of worship and the like. Of course there is a difference between these, for the former can, under some circumstances, really deserve praise; whereas the latter under all circumstances accomplish something more or less morally worthless, yea, possibly, as miserable hypocrites, directly provoke the wrath of God. But never has the creature the right to accuse God. It may be debated whether such accusation is more folly or wickedness. It is tinder all circumstances a presumptuous judgment. For, as long as we live, results are not assured, and we lack ability to see all. Only the day will make it clear what is the relation between Gods doing and ours, and that He has not let the just recompense be wanting (Isa 1:18; Isa 43:26).
2. On Isa 58:4 sqq. The Prophet finds fault with the fasting of the Jews in two respects. First, because they combined them with works of unrighteousness. Second, because they held the bodily exercise to be the chief thing. Perhaps in the Sermon on the mount our Lord had our text in mind when He said: When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites of a sad countenance. Mat 6:11. He makes prominent one particular that probably hovered before our Prophet also. For it is possible that he saw in the hanging the head an artificial, affected, and so hypocritical expression of a piety that did not exist inwardly; although it is not absolutely necessary that this letting the head hang and making ones bed in sand and ashes took place with hypocritical intent. But our Lord expressly demands that one do not let appear the harassed, sickly look, that was the perhaps quite natural consequence of fasting. He says (Mat 6:17): but thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father, which is in secret. One sees, therefore, that in the Sermon on the mount the Lord by no means rejects corporeal fasting. He only shows abhorrence of mens hypocritically abusing fasting for the gratification of pride. But the Prophet also does not reject fasting. But he would have corporeal fasting be the faithful expression of a simultaneous moral doing of penitent self-denial and compassionating love.
3. On Isa 58:6-9. As the apostle James pressingly urges against dead works, that even Abrahams faith was in itself a grand moral act, so here, too, the Prophet insists on right works as opposed to false works. But neither declares essentially anything concerning the true ground and origin of the works that they mean, because the context of their discourses does not call for it. We are to supply this from passages that professedly speak to this point, which they silently take for granted, according to the measure of intelligence given to them. For even Isaiah knows right well that that which satisfies and strengthens is not to be obtained by ones own labor and effort (55).
4. On Isa 58:7. Flesh denotes here in this context something more still, which J. von Mueller has remarked: The remembrance of universal brotherhood, and how we are all exposed to like thingsas . Verily flesh has need of covering. When therefore thou seest the naked, then see and feel therein the need of thine own flesh, and do not, proudly selfish, conceal or cover only thyself with thy garment that belongs to the other as also being thy flesh. Stier.
5. On Isa 58:7. Concerning the expression see Doctrinal and Ethical on Jer 16:7.
6. [On Isa 58:13-14. From the closing portion of this chapter we may derive the following important inferences respecting the Sabbath. (1) It is to be of perpetual obligation. The whole chapter occurs in the midst of statements that relate to the times of the Messiah. There is no intimation that the Sabbath was to be abolished, but it is fairly implied that its observance was to be attended with most happy results in those future times…. (2) We may see the manner in which the Sabbath is to be observed. In no place in the Bible is there a more full account of the proper mode of keeping that holy day. We are to refrain from ordinary travelling and employments; we are not to engage in doing our own pleasure; we are to regard it with delight, and to esteem it a day worthy to be honored. And we are to show respect to it by not performing our own ordinary works, or pursuing pleasures, or engaging in the common topics of conversation. In this description there occurs nothing of peculiar Jewish ceremony, and nothing which indicates that it is not to be observed in this manner at all times. Under the gospel assuredly, it is as proper to celebrate the Sabbath in this way as it was in the times of Isaiah, and God doubtless intended that it should be perpetually observed in this manner. (3) Important benefits result from the right observance of the Sabbath. In the passage before us these are said to be, that they who thus observed it would find pleasure in Jehovah, and would be signally prospered and be safe. But those benefits are by no means confined to the Jewish people. It is as true now as it was then, and they who observe the Sabbath in a proper manner find happiness in the Lordin His existence, perfections, promises, law, and in communion with Himwhich is to be found no where else… And it is as true that the proper observance of the Sabbath contributes to the prosperity and safety of a nation now as it ever did among the Jewish people. It is not merely from the fact that God promises to bless the people who keep His holy daythough this is of more value to a nation than all its armies and fleets; but it is that there is in the institution itself much that tends to the welfare and prosperity of a country…. Any one may be convinced of this who will be at the pains to compare a neighborhood, a village, or a city where the Sabbath is not observed with one where it is; and the difference will convince him at once that society owes more to the Sabbath than to any single institution beside. Barnes.]
7. On Isa 59:2. Quia quotidie apud nos crescit culpa, cur non et simul crescat poena? Augustine. The public sins are compared to a thick cloud, that sets itself between heaven and earth, and as it were hinders prayers from passing through (Lam 3:44). Starke. There is great power in sin, for it separates God and us from one another. Cramer. There are times when the hand of the Lord lies long and heavy on His children. One feels that God has withdrawn from him and hidden His countenance. But one does not sufficiently investigate the cause. One seeks it in God, and it lies in us, who, by sins unacknowledged and not repented of, make it impossible to God to turn to us in grace. Weber.
8. On Isa 59:3-8. The register of sins that Isaiah here holds up to the Jews is a mirror in which many a Christian, many a nation, many a time may recognize its own image. The Prophet declares here very plainly the poison nature, the serpent origin of sin. Sin is the poison that the old serpent knew how to bring into our nature. He that has stolen a taste of a product of this poison, as Eve did of the tree of knowledge, supposing that he will thereby receive some good, will go to ruin by it. But he that would be no lover of sin, but would stand forth as its opponent, may count upon it that the reptile will press its malignant fang in his heel, as was even held in prospect to the great trampler of the serpents head Himself (Gen 3:15).
9. On Isa 59:9-15 a. Here is for once an honest and thorough confession of sins. Nothing is palliated here, nothing excused. It is freely confessed that Israel is itself to blame for all its wretchedness, and this guilt is acknowledged to be the consequence of the apostacy from Jehovah and of the workings of a depraved heart, whose malignant fruits have become manifest in words and works. Comp. Jer 3:21 sqq.Here therefore is given a model for all who would know wherein true repentance must consist.
10. On Isa 59:15 b sqq. Si tu recordaberis peccatorum tuorum, Dominus non recordabitur. Augustine. God wonders that men let sin become so great and His righteousness so small. Oetinger in Stier.It is a divine privilege to need no helper. With God there is no difference between willing and being able. With Him the being able follows the willing ad nutum. And there is nothing to which God, when He wills, has not also the right. We men, when we have the will and the power, are often without the right, and this takes the foundation from under our feet.
Isa 59:17. This is the original source of the Apostle Pauls extended description of the spiritual armor, Eph 6:14; Eph 6:17. Also in 1Th 5:8 there underlies the same representation of the equipment required by Christians. On the other hand God is conceived of as an equipped warrior, e.g., Psa 7:13-14; Psa 35:2-3. In Exo 15:4 He is directly called a man of war.
11. On Isa 59:18-20. Regarding the time of the fulfilment of this prophecy, the honorable and thorough confession of sin in Isa 59:9-15 a, assumes the conclusion of the judgments against Israel and the conversion of the Gentiles. So Paul understood our passage, who cites it, Rom 11:26, to prove that only then will the Jews partake of the salvation when the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in. Therefore the Prophet distinguishes three great periods of time. The first comprehends all the stages of time in which Israel will be impenitent, and hence deprived of its theocratic rights. This period will conclude with a condition wherein Israels scale, as too light, hurries upwards to the highest elevation, while the scale of the Gentiles, by reason of its weight, will sink deep down. Just this situation will bring about the turning of the scale. Israel will repent; but those Gentiles and those Israelites that will not have repented will be overtaken by the judgment (Isa 59:18; Isa 59:20 ). For neither the fulness of the Gentiles, nor all Israel excludes there being still unconverted Gentiles and Jews. The third period is then the period of salvation, when the Goel [Redeemer] will come to Zion and raise up the covenant (Isa 59:21).
12. On Isa 59:21 Does the Spirit of God remain, then does also His word; does the word remain, then preachers also remain; do preachers remain, then also hearers do; do hearers remain, then there remain also believers, and therefore the Christian church remains also, to which ever some still will be gathered out of the Jews (Rom 11:26).Although in general God has promised that His word and Spirit shall not depart from the church of God, still no one must become so secure about that (comp. Jer 18:18) as if it were impossible that this or that particular church (and even the Romish church is nothing more) could err. Cramer.
HOMILETICAL HINTS
1. On Isa 58:1. Penitential Sermon. The text teaches us two things: 1) What one ought to preach on a day of repentance [fast-day]; viz., hold up to the people their sins. 2) How one should preach: a. boldly, b. without sparing, loud as a trumpet.
2. On Isa 58:2-9 This text contains the outlines of a popular theodicy. First we hear, Isa 58:2-3 a, the popular complaint that the divine Providence that guides the affairs of the world is unjust, and that He is not fair to the claims of reward that each individual fancies he has. Then in Isa 58:3 b9, we hear the divine justification. It consists of two parts. In the first part God shows that the claims of men are unfounded in two respects. First for this reason, because they do not do good purely, but along with the good have still room in their hearts for evil, consequently imagine that they can serve two masters (Isa 58:3 a., 4). Second, their claims are unfounded, because founded in the illusion that it is sufficient to fulfil the divine commands in a rude, outward manner. Thus men suppose, e.g., that they can satisfy the divine command to fast by harassing the body by hunger, and lying on sack-cloth and ashes (Isa 58:5). In the second part God shows what must be the nature of the performances that would satisfy the demand of His holiness, and give a claim on His righteousness for reward. That is to say, men must first of all, by practical repentance, make restoration for all injustice done by them, and make manifest by works of mercy their love to God and their neighbor (Isa 58:7). Then divine salvation and divine blessing will be constantly with them, and in every necessity their prayer for help will find certain hearing (Isa 58:8-9 a).
3. [On Isa 58:3. Having gone about to put a cheat on God by their external services, here they go about to pick a quarrel with God for not being pleased with their services, as if He had not done justly or fairly by them. M. Henry.]
4. [On Isa 58:4. Behold, you fast for strife and debate. When they proclaimed a fast to deprecate Gods judgments, they pretended to search for those sins that provoked God to threaten them with His judgments, and under that pretence, perhaps, particular persons were falsely accused, as Naboth in the day of Jezebels fast, 1Ki 21:12. Or the contending parties among them upon those occasions were bitter and severe in their reflections one upon another, one side crying out, It is owing to you, and the other, It is owing to you, that our deliverance is not wrought. Thus, instead of judging themselves, which is the proper work of a fast-day, they condemned one another. M. Henry.]
5. [On Isa 58:5; Isa 58:7. Plain instructions given concerning the true nature of a religious fast. 1. In general a fast is intended: (1) For the honoring and pleasing of God (Isa 58:5, a fast that I have chosen, an acceptable day to the Lord). (2) For the humbling and abasing of ourselves, Lev 16:29. That must be done on a fast-day which is a real affliction to the soul, as far as it is unregenerate and unsanctified, though a real pleasure and advantage to the soul as far as it is itself. II. What will be acceptable to God and afflict our corrupt nature to its mortification. (1) Negatively, what does neither of these, a. To look demure, put on a melancholy aspect and bow the head like a bulrush, Mat 6:16. Though that were well enough so far, Luk 18:13. b. It is not enough to mortify the body a little, while the body of sin is untouched. (2) Positively, a. That we be just to those with whom we have dealt hardly (Isa 58:6). b. That we be charitable to those that stand in need of charity (Isa 58:7). After M. Henry.]
6. On Isa 58:7. The compassionate love of the Samaritan. 1) What does it give? a. food, b. housing, c. clothing. 2) To whom does it give? To its flesh, i. e., to its neighbor in the sense of Luk 10:29 sqq.
7. On Isa 58:9. What if the Lord were to make us priests, and if He were to give us the light and righteousness that Aaron bore on his heart as often as he went in unto the Lord, and by which the Lord gave him answer when He inquired,if He were to give all of us that in our hearts, who are priests of the new covenant? And assuredly I believe that He will also do this. What He has already promised by the Prophets, He will much more fulfil in us: Thou shalt call, and the Lord shall answer thee; when thou shalt cry, He will say: here I am. Tholuck.
8. On Isa 58:7-9. O God, our great, sore, horrible blindness, that we so disregard such a glorious promise! To whom are we harsh, when we do not help poor people? Are they not our flesh and blood? As in heaven and earth there is no creature so nearly related to us, it ought to be our way: what we would that men should do to us in like case, that let us do to others. But there that detestable Satan holds our eyes, so that we withdraw from our own flesh and become tyrants and blood-hounds to our neighbors. But what do we accomplish by that? What do we enjoy? We load ourselves with Gods disfavor, curse and all misfortune, who might otherwise have temporal and eternal blessing. For he that takes on him the distress of his neighbor, his light shall break forth like the morning dawn, i.e., he shall find consolation and help in time of need. His recovery shall progress rapidly, i.e., God will again bless him, and replace what he has given away. His righteousness shall go before him, i.e., he shall not only have a good name with every one, but God will shelter him from evil, and ward off from him temporal misfortune, as one may see that God wonderfully protects His own when common punishments go about. And the glory of the Lord will take him to itself, i. e., God will interest Himself for him, [as follows Isa 58:9]. Lo, of such great mercy as this does greed rob us, when we do not gladly and kindly help the poor! Veit Dietrich.
9. [On Isa 58:12. Thou shalt be called (and it shall be to thy honor) the repairer of the breach, the breach made by the enemy in the wall of a besieged city, which whoso has courage and dexterity to make up, or make good, gains great applause. Happy are those who make up the breach at which virtue is running out, and judgments are breaking in. M. Henry].
10. On Isa 59:1-2. It is often in human life as if heaven were shut up. No prayer seems to penetrate through to it. To all our cries, no answer. Then people murmur (Isa 8:21 sq.; Lam 3:39) and accuse God, as if He were lame or deaf. But they ought rather to seek the blame in themselves. There still exists a wall of partition between them and God, a guilt unatoned for, the sight of which still continuously provokes the anger of God, and hinders the appearance of His mercy (Isa 1:15 sqq.; Isa 64:5 sqq.; Dan 9:5 sqq.: Pro 1:24 sqq.). Hence Christians must be pointed to what they must guard against in seasons of long-continued visitation and what they should strive after at such times before all things. As they would avoid great harm to soul and body, they must beware of laying any blame on God, as if He were wanting in willingness or ability. Rather, by sincere repentance, their endeavor should be that heaven may be pure and clear, that their guilt may be forgiven for Christs sake, and that, as children of God, with the testimony of the Holy Spirit (Rom 8:16) in their hearts, they may have free access to the heart of their heavenly Father.
11. On Isa 59:3-8. The description the Prophet gives here of the depraved moral condition of Israel is also a description of human sinfulness generally. And the Apostle Paul has adopted parts of it in the portrait he gives of the condition of the natural man (comp. Isa 59:7 with Rom 3:15). Therefore, where one would draw the picture of the natural man, he may make good use of this text.
12. [On Isa 59:13. Conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. They were words of falsehood, and yet they were said to be uttered from the heart, because though they differed from the real sentiments of the heart, and therefore were words of falsehood, yet they agreed with the malice and wickedness of the heart, and were the natural language of that; it was a double heart, Psa 12:2. M. Henry.]
13. On Isa 59:15 b21. One may preach on this text in times of great distress and conflict for the Church. The Lord the protection of His Church. 1) The distress of the Church does not remain concealed from Him, for He sees: a. that the Church encounters injustice (Isa 59:15 b), b. that no one on earth takes its part (Isa 59:16) 2) He stirs Himself (Isa 59:16 b; Isa 59:17 a, Isa 59:19 b): a. to judgment against the enemy (Isa 59:17 b, Isa 59:18), b. to salvation for the Church (Isa 59:17 helmet of salvation): a. with reference to its deliverance from outward distress (Isa 59:20), . with reference to inward preservation and quickening of the Church (Isa 59:20 b, 21), c. to rescue the honor of His own name (Isa 59:19 a), because the Church is even His kingdom, the theatre for the realization of His decrees of salvation. Comp. Homil. Hints on Isa 49:1-6.
14. [On Isa 59:16 sqq. How sin abounded we have read, to our great amazement, in the former part of the chapter; how grace does much more abound we read in these verses. And as sin took occasion from the commandment to become more exceedingly sinful, so grace took occasion from the transgression to appear more exceedingly gracious. M. Henry.]
Footnotes:
[1]Heb. with the throat.
[2]period instead of comma.
[3]comma.
[4]the approach of God.
[5]carry on business.
[6]Or, things wherewith ye grieve others.
[7]Heb. griefs.
[8]Or, ye fast not as this day.
[9]Ye fast not at present so as to make.
[10]Or, to afflict his soul for a day?
[11]Heb. the bundles of the yoke.
[12]yoke-chains.
[13]Heb. broken.
[14]wanderers.
[15]Or, afflteted.
[16]sound flesh will speedily grow.
[17]Heb. shall gather thee up.
[18]sacrificest thy hunger to the hungry and satisfiest.
[19]Heb. droughts.
[20]invigorate.
[21]Heb. lie, or, deceive.
[22]And they shall build from thee.
[23]so that men may inhabit.
[24]business.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
DISCOURSE: 992
THE MINISTERIAL OFFICE
Isa 58:1. Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.
CERTAINLY, one of Gods richest mercies unto man has been the appointment of an order of men to be his ambassadors to a guilty world, and to beseech their fellow-sinners to be reconciled to him. The ungodly indeed have never appreciated this mercy aright: for, from the very beginning of the world, have the Prophets of the Most High been regarded as the troubles of Israel, fit objects for hatred and contempt. Which of the prophets, says our blessed Lord, have not your fathers persecuted? But when a dispensation is committed to any man to declare the mind and will of God, woe will be unto him if he execute not the office that has been assigned him.
The words which I have read will naturally lead me to set before you,
I.
The office of a minister
This is, to shew to men their transgressions and their sins. But it may be asked, What need is there for their services for such an end as this? Do not all of us know ourselves better than any one else can know us? Can any one be so well acquainted with the workings of my heart, or with the actions of my life, as I myself am? To this, however, I answer, that,
1.
The world at large stand in need of such monitors
[There is, in the generality of men, a thoughtlessness about their ways; so that they are altogether unconscious of having contracted any great guilt. They never consider the requirements of Gods Law; they never refer their conduct to any other standard than public opinion; and they rest satisfied that all is right, so long as they do not violate the laws which the common consent of those around them has established for the regulation of their lives. As for the spirituality of Gods Law, they are utterly unacquainted with it; and consequently they never dream of their responsibility to God for any thing beyond their overt acts: or, if they think themselves accountable for their motives, they give themselves credit for meaning well, even where they are conscious of having acted ill: and, though their actions have not been altogether correct, they persuade themselves that their hearts are good, and that their aberrations from the path of duty have been the result of chance rather than design, and of temptation rather than of any inveterate propensity to evil.]
2.
Those also who are called Gods people, and who consider themselves as the seed of Jacob, are not a whit less in need of instructors than the careless world
[See the account given of those to whom the prophet was sent: They sought God daily; and delighted to know his ways, even as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinances of their God: they even asked of God the ordinances of justice; they took delight in approaching unto God [Note: ver. 2.]. Could such as these have any transgressions of which they needed to be informed, and any sins which endangered their souls? Yes: their hearts were not right with God: they were partial in the law: they put their outward obedience in the place of vital godliness: they trusted in their works also as recommending them to God, and as forming a justifying righteousness before him; and they even complained that God did not recompense them according to their deserts. And how many such characters are found amongst us! how many, who, whilst they find pleasure in attending upon the House of God, imagine that, by their religious observances, they shall entitle themselves to his favour!
Now, in reference to all such characters, I must say, that the duty of ministers is to shew them their sins. It is their duty to search out, for the information of others, the mind and will of God; and to bring home to the consciences of all a sense of their manifold transgressions. They must endeavour to hold up before men the glass of Gods Law, that they may see the deformity of their own fallen image, and be stirred up to seek reconciliation with their offended God. To every one must they point out the sins which most easily beset him; and declare to him the judgments which God, in his word, has denounced against him.]
Whilst we assert this to be their duty, it will be proper for us to notice,
II.
The manner in which it must be discharged
The direction here given is clear and strong. Those who have received a commission to speak for God must deliver their message,
1.
With earnestness
[Mere advice or friendly counsel is not that which becomes them on such occasions as these: they must cry aloud, and lift up their voice us a trumpet, if by any means they may awaken the drowsy consciences of those to whom they speak. Viewing themselves as ambassadors from God, they must speak with all authority, fearing the face of none; but declaring the truth, whether men will hear, or whether they will forbear: and they must shew, by the very manner in which they deliver their divine message, that it is a matter of life and death; and that the word they utter is not the word of man, but indeed and in truth the word of God.]
2.
With fidelity
[They must not spare, even though the offender be ever so great and powerful, or ever so dear and tenderly regarded. As John the Baptist reproved Herod, in whose hands his life was, so must they approve themselves faithful even to the mightiest upon earth. They must shew no respect of persons, nor conceal any thing which they are authorized to declare; but must be impartial in their reproofs, and make known the whole counsel of God. Having received Gods word, they must speak it faithfully. They must be faithful for Gods sake, whose ambassadors they are; and for the peoples sake, whose eternal welfare is at stake; and for their own sake, seeing that if any perish through their want of faithfulness, the blood of all such persons will be required at their hands.]
Permit me now, Brethren, to discharge my office with respect to you
1.
To those who are altogether careless and indifferent
[You may imagine that God takes no notice of your sins: but indeed they are all viewed by him with abhorrence, and recorded by him in the book of his remembrance, in order that they may be brought forth against you at the future judgment. True it is, that if you repent of them, they shall all be blotted out, as a morning cloud; but if you remain impenitent, they will all be visited upon you, and sink you into everlasting perdition. I have no wish to alarm you needlessly; but I must, at the peril of my own soul, declare the truth; and must say, that except ye repent, ye shall all perish. But if ye repent, and turn from all your transgressions, I am authorized to declare, that your iniquities shall not be your ruin.]
2.
To those who account themselves the people of God
[I ask not now, whether ye be self-righteous formalists, or hypocritical professors: but, of whichever class ye be, I must declare, that God is not mocked; but whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap: he that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; and he only who soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. Do not imagine that God will judge according to the estimate which you form of yourselves. No: He will take off the mask from the hypocrite, and judge every man according to his works. Intreat him, then, to put truth in your inward parts, and to make you altogether new creatures in Christ Jesus; so shall you be accepted in his beloved Son, and stand before him with boldness in the great day of his appearing.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
CONTENTS
We must consider this Chapter only as a continuation of the same Sermon. It is full of reproof and instruction; and in the deficiency of all creature righteousness, the Holy Ghost, by his servant the Prophet, indirectly points to Christ.
Isa 58:1
Let not the Reader overlook, to whom the Prophet is commissioned to preach, of transgression. It is to the Lord’s people. They were transgressors, but at the same time the Lord owns them for his people. Sweet thought! that however we fail in duty, Jesus fails not in love. Oh! how doubly painful is that rebellion, which is against a covenant God in Christ!
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Dangers of Fasting (Ash Wednesday)
Isa 58:1
There are two classes of people to whom Lent brings no blessing those who do not keep it at all, and those who, while they observe it with outward formalities and even with strictness, yet do not keep it in the spirit of true penitence.
I. What a strange picture is here drawn! a nation seemingly most religious, not only fulfilling the ordinances of religion, but delighting in them, and yet absolutely without spiritual life. This character is described in other pails of Isaiah, notably in the first chapter, and is the character which is most difficult to change.
What is the character which Isaiah is describing? We must carefully bear in mind that it is not the conscious hypocrite, but the self-righteous, the self-deceived man who is here brought before us. It is not the man who is wealing the garb of religion in order to deceive his fellow-men, but who all the time knows himself to be a hypocrite. On the contrary, this man is conscious only of virtue, he delights in approaching God, religion is the interest of his life. He is the prototype of the Pharisee in the temple. The Pharisees of our Lord’s day, like those Jews in the time of Isaiah, to whom this rebuke is addressed, looked upon the externals of religion as its important part, and entirely ignored its life in the soul.
God demands external worship as the manifestation of the religion of the heart, not as a substitute for it.
II. Jehovah points out what was wrong in the fasting of His people:
1. The motive of their fasting was wrong. They looked upon fasting as constituting a claim upon God, rather than as a help to penitence.
2. The method of their fasting was wrong, as God points out, ‘Behold in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours’.
3. The accompaniment of their fasting was wrong.
III. God proceeds to indicate the manner in which they may make their fasting acceptable to Him and of value to their own soul:
1. Fasting should be accompanied with penitence.
2. Fasting should be associated with almsgiving, that is, with works of charity.
3. Fasting must always be attended by prayer.
We must fast with Christ in the wilderness during Lent if we are to rejoice with Christ in the gladness of Easter Day.
A. G. Mortimer, The Church’s Lessons for the Christian Year, part ii. p. 229.
References. LVIII. 1, 2. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No. 2308. LVIII. 3. F. E. Paget, Studies in the Christian Character, p. 167. LVIII. 3-7. J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii. p. 145. F. W. Farrar, ibid. vol. xxxi. p. 129. S. Pearson, ibid. vol. xii. p. 225. W. Archer Butler, Sermons Doctrinal and Practical (2nd Series), p. 148. T. Dale, Penny Pulpit, No. 2977. W. M. Punshon, Sermons (2nd Series), p. 317. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 262. LVIII. 5. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons for Daily Life, p. 211. LVIII. 6. A. D. Spong, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xli. 1892, p. 78. LVIII. 6, 7. W. M. Punshon, “An Acceptable Fast,” Sermons, p. 343.
The Necessity of Selflessness to Charity
Isa 58:8
I. This whole chapter is an exhortation to charity. The Prophet is urging men to deeds of ministration to sympathy with the poor, compassion for the sorrowful, help for the needy. He says that such a life of sacrifice is of more value than the keeping of sacred days or the attendance at holy festivals. But he says that even this life of sacrifice will have no value unless it is sought for its own sake that is to say, for the sake of the sufferer.
II. Do not think of the glory with which God will recompense you. Let that glory be to you in the rear a thing not before your eyes. Let the only thing before your eyes be the cause of righteousness, the duty to minister, the need to succour man; ‘Thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward’.
III. In the life for God there is an invitation to personal glory. But the Prophet tells us to put the promise behind our back until we have finished the sacrifice. He bids us forget the glory until we have surrendered the life. He says: ‘There is joy in heaven to a sacrificial soul; but I would not have that soul keep the joy of heaven before its eyes. I would have it, when it serves the beggar, forget the golden streets and the pearly gates and the unsetting suns and the crystal rivers and the living fountains. I would have it remember only the claims of love. I would have it remember only the cries of the perishing and the groans of the wounded and the deep inarticulate longings of those who are too feeble to cry, let the glory of the Lord be my rereward.’
G. Matheson, Messages of Hope, p. 53.
References. LVIII. 8. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx. No. 1793; vol. liii. No. 3028. A. Ainger, Sermons Preached in the Temple Church, p. 268. LVIII. 9, 11. S. Martin, Sermons, p. 169.
The Guidance of the Holy Spirit
Isa 58:11
In very deed the promise given to God’s people by Isaiah of old is fulfilled in the Christian Church; and as we live our lives in union with Jesus, we are called on to live them under the constant guidance of the Holy Spirit of God.
I. Jesus is our Director. Notice how truly His direction supplies our need.
1. The first qualification which a wise director must possess is knowledge a threefold knowledge. ( a ) He who would direct me aright must know clearly what it is that God wills me to be, he must have a clear apprehension of the end of my life. ( b ) He must know the nature of the one he guides. ( c ) He must have a continuous knowledge of the external circumstances of my life.
2. Firmness. Jesus Christ is firm; most tender, most patient, most constant, yet most firm.
3. We need sympathy also in our director; we need one who will feel with us as he guides us along the road which leads to eternal life. For of necessity this road is the Via Crucis , there is no other way which can bring us to the haven where we would be.
II. Notice how He directs us; it is by the ministry of the indwelling Spirit. Who is the Holy Spirit? You know full well that He is the Third Person of the Ever Blessed Trinity. Yet there are many who practically think of the Holy Ghost as simply an Influence coming forth from the Father and the Son. We can put this easily to the test. How often do you offer in your devotions direct adoration to the Holy Ghost? How often do you offer thanksgiving to the Holy Ghost? How often do you offer direct prayer to the Holy Ghost? If direct worship of the Holy Ghost is lacking from our devotions, is it not because the verity of His Divine Personality is not really laid hold on by us?
God the Holy Ghost is in us. Why? To lead us as our indwelling Guide. ‘Let Thy loving Spirit lead me forth into the land of righteousness.’ Such was the ancient cry, and that cry has been answered in an arresting manner in the Church of God. Speaking to His Apostles on the night of His betrayal, Christ uses these words about the Holy Ghost: ‘He dwelleth with you and shall be in you’. Of old He was with them, guiding them from without, but now He is in us, guiding us from within; and this is the essential condition of all true Christian liberty, that we are taught by an indwelling Teacher, and guided by an indwelling Guide.
How does He guide us? Not by sensible visions and signs. (1) He guides us first by His action on our minds; He instils into them holy thoughts; He reveals truth after truth, each of which calls for moral correspondence. (2) He acts not only on our minds, but on our hearts. (3) He acts upon our wills. (4) He guides us by acting upon our conscience.
III. Practical rules to help you in living this guided life:
1. We must obey our Lord’s calls promptly.
2. Our Lord’s calls must be fully responded to.
3. When Christ calls, we must respond perseveringly.
George Body, The Guided Life, p. 3.
A Watered Garden
Isa 58:11
‘A watered garden.’ There is too much music in these two words; we could have done with one of them. ‘A garden’ beautiful; ‘Watered’ music in itself, but ‘a watered garden,’ both things together and both things in our possession, and we ourselves representing that dual wealth. Who can handle a Psalm so magnificent, so majestic?
I. Yet even this text may give us pause, may lead us to the asking of some piercing questions. The further such questions penetrate the soul the better for the soul’s health. ‘A watered garden:’ cannot a garden water itself? No. That is the answer, definite, cold discouraging, encouraging, as we may take the term. Is it not enough to be a garden? what matter about the sunshine? who cares about the rain or the dew? Is it not enough to be a garden, a geometric form, pearled and diamonded with many a flower? The king’s gardens cannot do without rain; Solomon’s parterres wither away but for the morning dew and the summer shower. We need something from without. We are always reminded that there is no one world; you may write it up and sneer at the other worlds, and enclose yourselves in little square cages in which there is no room for an altar; you can do this; but again and again the Lord of the vineyard cometh to seek fruit, and if we have not supplicated His sunshine and His rain, His morning dew, we shall have no fruit for Him when He comes to visit His own land.
Cannot a man sustain himself by his own resources? He cannot. If any man has tried to do so he will be the loudest in his confirmation of my reply. We soon exhaust ourselves, we want the other man, the other hand to touch, the other eyes to look into, the other voice to fill the dull vacancy of our solitude. Is it not enough to be a man? What do you mean by being a man? A figure is not a man, a corpse is not a man; a mere personality, if it could be detached from all other personalities, would not be a man. We cannot live upon stature or figure or aught that our hand can hold. Life is deeper; there is a sanctuary of life, a well far away, where spring water bubbles and gurgles and flashes out in the sunlight like a great gospel preached to the thirst of man. You think you can do with your own resources; let us test your foolish argument for one moment, if we may dignify it by the name of argument.
II. Self-sustenance is not the law of the body; why should it be the law of the mind? Let us reason from the lower to the higher. Every day every man has to go out of himself to keep himself going. If he would study that simple philosophy, he would soon begin to pray. But he will not: he is led captive by Satan at his will. Who can believe that the body not living upon its own resources proves to the soul that it has resources enough within itself? The mind is not sustained by itself. You have books; lay them down, be your own book. You cannot. You need some other man to write you a book, and sometimes to explain it to you. You have libraries. What are libraries but wheatfields for the mind? If I ask you in the autumn, What do you want with all these golden growths, all these purple riches and vegetable and fruit? you say, We require all these things for the sustenance of the body. And what do you want with all these libraries, and museums, and academies, and colleges, and schools of every name and degree? These are the wheatfields which the soul reaps, and it needs them every one, for the soul is bigger than literature. The soul lives by friction with some other soul. God is fire. To come into happy attrition with Him, or contact, or friction, who can tell what may come out of that soul touching soul, man praying to God? Prayer is a kind of friction if truly wise and honest, and out of that friction come sparks to lighten the night and put out the common sun.
III. As we do not leave a garden to take care of itself, neither should we leave ourselves to ourselves.
God waits to give us every one more water, more sustenance, more sunshine. What we might be if we would enjoy our privileges! Into what great distance we might have entered the sanctuary if we had really cared to be at the upper and inner altar that we might be blessed by its sacrifices! Oh that thou hadst hearkened unto me! then had thy peace flowed as a river and thy righteousness had been as the waves of the sea. A branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine, and the Vine is Christ, and except we be in Christ our souls cannot receive the true culture or the true nourishment.
Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. ii. p. 194.
References. LVIII. 11. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. No. 736. LVIII. 12. J. Marshall Lang, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. 1895, p. 38. W, Ince, A Retrospect of Progress in the Church of England During the Nineteenth Century, Sermon. LVIII. 13. C. Holland, Gleanings from a Ministry of Fifty Years, p. 233. F. E. Paget, Helps and Hindrances to the Christian Life, vol. ii. p. 171. LVIII. 13, 14. H. D. M. Spence, Voices and Silences, p. 259. G. E. Jelf, Plain Sermons on Sunday Observance, p. 39. R. F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. 1900, p. 49. H. Ward Beecher, Sermons (4th Series), p. 264. “Plain Sermons” by contributors to the Tracts for the Times, vol. ix. p. 267. LIX. 1, 2. R. A. Suckling, Sermons Plain and Practical, p. 122. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xli. No. 2411.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
XXVII
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST IN ISAIAH
The relation between the New Testament Christ and prophecy is that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. To him give all the prophets witness. All the scriptures, the law, the prophets, and the psalms, testify of him. And we are fools, and slow of heart to credit adequate testimony when we distrust any part of the inspired evidence.
Of the ancient prophets Isaiah was perhaps the most notable witness of the coming Messiah. An orderly combination of his many messianic utterances amounts to more than a mere sketch, indeed, rather to a series of almost life-sized portraits. As a striking background for these successive portraits the prophet discloses the world’s need of a Saviour, and across this horrible background of gloom the prophet sketches in startling strokes of light the image of a coming Redeemer.
In Isa 2:2-4 we have the first picture of him in Isaiah, that of the effect of his work, rather than of the Messiah himself. This is the establishment of the mountain of the Lord’s house on the top of the mountains, the coming of the nations to it and the resultant millennial glory.
In Isa 4:2-6 is another gleam from the messianic age in which the person of the Messiah comes more into view in the figure of a branch of Jehovah, beautiful and glorious. In sketching the effects of his work here the prophet adds a few strokes of millennial glory as a consummation of his ministry.
In Isa 7:14 he delineates him as a little child born of a virgin, whose coming is the light of the world. He is outlined on the canvas in lowest humanity and highest divinity, “God with us.” In this incarnation he is the seed of the woman and not of the man.
The prophet sees him as a child upon whom the government shall rest and whose name is “Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6 ). This passage shows the divinity of Christ and the universal peace he is to bring to the world. In these names we have the divine wisdom, the divine power, the divine fatherhood, and the divine peace.
In Isa 11:1-9 the prophet sees the Messiah as a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, i.e., of lowly origin, but possessing the Holy Spirit without measure who equips him for his work, and his administration wrought with skill and justice, the result of which is the introduction of universal and perfect peace. Here the child is presented as a teacher. And such a teacher! On him rests the seven spirits of God. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and the fear of the Lord. He judges not according to appearances and reproves not according to rumors. With righteousness he judges the poor and reproves with equality in behalf of the meek. His words smite a guilty world like thunderbolts and his very breath slays iniquity. Righteousness and faithfulness are his girdle. He uplifts an infallible standard of morals.
In Isa 40:3-8 appears John the Baptist, whom Isaiah saw as a voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for the coming King.
In Isa 11:2 ; Isa 42:1 ; Isa 61:1-3 the prophet saw the Messiah as a worker in the power of the Spirit, in whom he was anointed at his baptism. This was the beginning of his ministry which was wrought through the power of the Holy Spirit. At no time in his ministry did our Lord claim that he wrought except in the power of the Holy Spirit who was given to him without measure.
In Isa 35:1-10 the Messiah is described as a miracle worker. In his presence the desert blossoms as a rose and springs burst out of dry ground. The banks of the Jordan rejoice. The lame man leaps like a hart, the dumb sing and the blind behold visions. The New Testament abounds in illustrations of fulfilment. These signs Christ presented to John the Baptist as his messianic credentials (Mat 11:1-4 ).
The passage (Isa 42:1-4 ) gives us a flashlight on the character of the Messiah. In the New Testament it is expressly applied to Christ whom the prophet sees as the meek and lowly Saviour, dealing gently with the blacksliding child of his grace. In Isa 22:22 we have him presented as bearing the key of the house of David, with full power to open and shut. This refers to his authority over all things in heaven and upon earth. By this authority he gave the keys of the kingdom to Peter one for the Jews and the other for the Gentiles who used one on the day of Pentecost and the other at the house of Cornelius, declaring in each case the terms of entrance into the kingdom of God. This authority of the Messiah is referred to again in Revelation:
And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying. Fear not: I am the first and the last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore and I have the keys of death and of Hades. Rev 7:17
And to the angel of the church in Philadelphis write: These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and none shall shut, and shutteth and none openeth. Rev 3:7
In Isa 32:1-8 we have a great messianic passage portraying the work of Christ as a king ruling in righteousness, in whom men find a hiding place from the wind and the tempest. He is a stream in a dry place and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
In Isa 28:14-18 the Messiah is presented to w as a foundation stone in a threefold idea:
1. A tried foundation stone. This is the work of the master mason and indicates the preparation of the atone for its particular function.
2. An elect or precious foundation stone. This indicates that the stone was selected and appointed. It was not self-appointed but divinely appointed and is therefore safe.
3. A cornerstone, or sure foundation stone. Here it is a foundation of salvation, as presented in Mat 16:18 . It is Christ the Rock, and not Peter. See Paul’s foundation in 1 Corinthians:
According to the grace of God which was given unto me; as a wise masterbuilder I laid a foundation; and another buildeth thereon. But let each man take heed how he buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 1Co 3:10-11 .
In Isa 49:1-6 he is presented as a polished shaft, kept close in the quiver. The idea is that he is a mighty sword. In Revelation, Christ is presented to John as having a sharp, twoedged sword proceeding out of his mouth.
In Isa 50:2 ; Isa 52:9 f.; Isa 59:16-21 ; Isa 62:11 we have the idea of the salvation of Jehovah. The idea is that salvation originated with God and that man in his impotency could neither devise the plan of salvation nor aid in securing it. These passages are expressions of the pity with which God looks down on a lost world. The redemption, or salvation, here means both temporal and spiritual salvation salvation from enemies and salvation from sin.
In Isa 9:1 f. we have him presented as a great light to the people of Zebulun and Naphtali. In Isa 49:6 we have him presented as a light to the Gentiles and salvation to the end of the earth: “Yea, he saith, It is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.”
In Isa 8:14-15 Isaiah presents him as a stone of stumbling: “And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble thereon, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken.”
The prophet’s vision of his maltreatment and rejection are found in Isa 50:4-9 ; Isa 52:13-53:12 . In this we have the vision of him giving his “back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair.” We see a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. His visage is so marred it startled all nations. He is a vicarious sacrifice. The chastisement of the peace of others is on him. The iniquity of others is put on him. It pleases the Father to bruise him until he has poured out his soul unto death as an offering for sin.
The teaching of Isaiah on the election of the Jews is his teaching concerning the “holy remnant,” a favorite expression of the prophet. See Isa 1:9 ; Isa 10:20-22 ; Isa 11:11 ; Isa 11:16 ; Isa 37:4 ; Isa 37:31-32 ; Isa 46:3 . This coincides with Paul’s teaching in Romans 9-11.
In Isa 32:15 we find Isaiah’s teaching on the pouring out of the Holy Spirit: “Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be esteemed as a forest,” and in Isa 44:3 : “For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and streams upon the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.”
In Isa 11:10 he is said to be the ensign of the nations: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the root of Jesse, that standeth for an ensign of the peoples unto him shall the nations seek; and his resting place shall be glorious.”
Isa 19:18-25 ; Isa 54:1-3 ; Isa 60:1-22 teach the enlargement of the church. The great invitation and promise are found in Isa 55 .
The Messiah in judgments is found in Isa 63:1-6 . Here we behold an avenger. He comes up out of Edom with dyed garments from Bozra. All his raiment is stained with the blood of his enemies whom he has trampled in his vengeance as grapes are crushed in the winevat and the restoration of the Jews is set forth in Isa 11:11-12 ; Isa 60:9-15 ; Isa 66:20 . Under the prophet’s graphic pencil or glowing brush we behold the establishment and growth of his kingdom unlike all other kingdoms, a kingdom within men, a kingdom whose principles are justice, righteousness, and equity and whose graces are faith, hope, love, and joy, an undying and ever-growing kingdom. Its prevalence is like the rising waters of Noah’s flood; “And the waters prevailed and increased mightily upon the earth. And the water prevailed mightily, mightily upon the earth; and all the high mountains, that are under the whole heavens, were covered.”
So this kingdom grows under the brush of the prophetic limner until its shores are illimitable. War ceases. Gannenta rolled in the blood of battle become fuel for fire. Conflagration is quenched. Famine outlawed. Pestilence banished. None are left to molest or make afraid. Peace flows like a river. The wolf dwells with the lamb. The leopard lies down with the kid. The calf and the young lion walk forth together and a little child is leading them. The cow and the bear feed in one pasture and their young ones are bedfellows. The sucking child safely plays over the hole of the asp, and weaned children put their hands in the adder’s den. In all the holy realms none hurt nor destroy, because the earth is as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the fathomless ocean is full of water. Rapturous vision! Sublime and ineffable consummation! Was it only a dream?
In many passages the prophet turns in the gleams from the millennial age, but one of the clearest and best on the millennium, which is in line with the preceding paragraph, Isa 11:6-9 : “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together: and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea.”
The prophet’s vision of the destruction of death is given in Isa 25:8 : “He hath swallowed up death for ever; and the Lord Jehovah will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach of his people will he take away from all the earth: for Jehovah hath spoken it,” and in Isa 26:19 : “Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the dead.”
The clearest outlines of the prophet’s vision of “Paradise Regained” are to be found in Isa 25:8 , and in two passages in chapter Isa 66 : Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn over her; that ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream: and ye shall suck thereof; ye shall be borne upon the side, and shall be dandled upon the knees, as one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. And ye shall see it, and your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like the tender grass: and the hands of Jehovah shall be known toward his servants ; and he will have indignation against his enemies. Isa 66:10-14
For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make shall remain before me, saith Jehovah, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith Jehovah. Isa 66:22-23
QUESTIONS
1. What is the relation between the New Testament Christ and prophecy?
2. What can you say of Isaiah as a witness of the Messiah?
3. What can you say of Isaiah’s pictures of the Messiah and their background?
4. Following in the order of Christ’s manifestation, what is the first picture of him in Isaiah?
5. What is the second messianic glimpse in Isaiah?
6. What is Isaiah’s picture of the incarnation?
7. What is Isaiah’s picture of the divine child?
8. What is Isaiah’s vision of his descent, his relation to the Holy Spirit, his administration of justice, and the results of his reign?
9. What is Isaiah’s vision of the Messiah’s herald?
10. What is the prophet’s vision of his anointing?
11. What is the prophet’s vision of him as a miracle worker?
12. What is the prophet’s vision of the character of the Messiah?
13. What is the prophet’s vision of him as the key bearer?
14. What is the prophet’s vision of him as a king and a hiding place?
15. What is the prophet’s vision of the Messiah as a foundation stone?
16. What is the prophet’s vision of him as a polished shaft?
17. In what passages do we find the idea of the salvation of Jehovah, and what the significance of the idea?
18. What is Isaiah’s vision of the Messiah as a light?
19. Where does Isaiah present him as a stone of stumbling?
20. What is the prophet’s vision of his maltreatment and rejection?
21. What is the teaching of Isaiah on the election of the Jews?
22. Where do we find Isaiah’s teaching on the pouring out of the Holy Spirit?
23. Where is he said to be the ensign of the nations?
24. What passages teach the enlargement of the church?
25. Where is the great invitation and promise?
26. Where is the Messiah in judgment?
27. What passages show the restoration of the Jews?
28. What is the prophet’s vision of the Messiah’s kingdom?
29. What is the prophet’s vision of the millennium?
30. What is the prophet’s vision of the destruction of death?
31. What is the prophet’s vision of “Paradise Regained?”
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
XXIV
THE BOOK OF ISAIAH PART 16
Isaiah 58-60
This division (Isaiah 58-66) is eschatological and consists of promises and warnings for the future. The special theme of Isaiah 58-60 is Israel’s sin, Jehovah’s salvation, and Zion’s glory. Israel’s sin, as stated in Isa 58 , was a heartless ritualism.
The prophet’s special commission in Isa 58:1 was to cry aloud, to sound forth like a trumpet against the transgressions and sin of Jacob.
The people complained (Isa 58:2-7 ) that Jehovah had not regarded their religious services; that he had not dealt with them in righteous judgments. To this Jehovah replied that their fasting was nothing more than a form; that while they fasted they, at the same time, did their own pleasure and oppressed all their laborers; that while they fasted they also fought and did not fast so as to be heard when they prayed; that fasting was not merely bowing the head like a bulrush and sitting in sackcloth and ashes; that such fasting was not regarded by Jehovah at all, but rather the fasting that put away wickedness, set the captives free, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and aided their own countrymen generally.
The promises to Jacob in this connection and the conditions upon which they were made are as follows:
1. On the condition that they fast in reality, as Just described, he promised that light should break forth upon them; that they should be healed speedily; that righteousness should be in front of them and the glory of Jehovah should be their reward; and then their cries to Jehovah should be answered by him.
2. On the condition that they take away oppression, scorning, wicked speaking, feed and sympathize with the hungry and afflicted, he promised that their light should become as bright as the noonday; that Jehovah would guide them; that they should be like a watered garden; and that the land should be restored to its former blessings.
3. On the condition that they keep his holy sabbath, doing the Lord’s pleasure therein, he promised that they should have delight in Jehovah and he would exalt them in the high places of the earth and would supply their every need.
This chapter has for its historical background the great atonement day, the only time when Israel was required to fast as herein pictured. The voice of the prophet here corresponds to the trumpet which announced the atonement day. His announcing their transgressions, sins, and iniquities, all of which cluster about this day corresponds to the reminding of their sins on the atonement day, on which also was announced the Jubilee, when there was the breaking of all yokes, and ita provisions for those who had come to be broken down and oppressed. But they had only kept the outward form of this ritual and had not observed it in heart. So the prophet issues a call to repentance, very much like that of John the Baptist before he announced the Lamb of God that took away the sin of the world. The great atonement was just ahead and it was necessary that they be afflicted in their souls on account of their sins.
This thought is carried on in the next chapter (Isa 58:1-8 ). Here the sins are pointed out more particularly. The prophet begins by announcing that the difficulty is not with Jehovah but with the people. Their sins had separated between them and God. The sins here recited cover the whole catalogue. Their hands, their fingers, their lips, their tongues, their feet, and their minds were all involved. Their state was most despicable and called for the severest Judgments. They were all gone out of the way.
There follows (Isa 58:9-14 a) a most wonderful confession of sin. In this confession they state their awful condition and lament their sins and hopelessness. This is very much like the condition of Israel when John the Baptist lifted his voice in the wilderness of Judea at which they repented confessing their sins.
But relief comes in this state of hopelessness and despair. Jehovah intervened in the power of his grace and wrought out their salvation (Isa 59:15-21 ). When Jehovah looked on he saw that there was no justice; that there was not a righteous man; that there was no one, like Moses or Aaron, to intercede. Just such a condition existed when our Lord came. There was none good, no, not one. So he was moved with compassion and stretched forth his arm and brought deliverance to his people.
When he came to contend like a mighty warrior for his people he put on righteousness as a breastplate, salvation for a helmet upon his head, garments of vengeance for clothing, and zeal as a mantle. Thus panoplied he waged a spiritual conflict with his adversaries and he recompensed to his enemies their dues.
The marginal reading of Isa 59:19 is to be preferred for this verse: “So shall they fear the name of Jehovah from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun; for when the adversary shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of Jehovah will lift up a standard against him.” The first part of this verse teaches us that the true religion will be spread over the whole earth. The latter part seems to have its analogue in the past deliverance of Israel, as in the case with Sennacherib, but it connects directly here with the Messiah who is the standard which Jehovah has set up against the adversary, and for the whole world. He is the ensign for all peoples.
The Redeemer in Isa 59:20-21 is unmistakably the Messiah. This passage is highly messianic and reveals the salvation of Christ. The covenant here is the new covenant, or the covenant of grace, so much amplified in the New Testament. The Spirit here is the Holy Spirit who inspired the prophet and inspired the New Testament writers giving them words that would never depart from the mouths of God’s people. This is a promise of inspiration for all the word of God and that there will always be a seed who will contend for that inspiration. As surely as the church of Jesus Christ, which is the habitat of the ‘Spirit, shall be perpetuated, just that surely there will always be a contention in that church for the word which was inspired by that same Spirit. A good sign of apostasy upon the part of a church is for it to deny the inspiration of the word of God. This is exactly in line with the New Testament teaching on the Holy Spirit. The new covenant herein spoken of involves the giving of God’s Holy Spirit to his people (Joe 2:28 and Act 2 ), and this Spirit was promised by Christ as the Paraclete of the church forever. He shall not depart from God’s people while time endures, and his office work in the hearts of men and women will continue until the Lord, for whom he must bear witness, shall come back to this earth without a sin offering unto salvation.
The theme of Isa 60 is the transcendent glory of Zion and it is in the nature of a song of triumph, a poem which is the counterpart, perhaps, of Isa 47 , describing the fall and ruin of Babylon. The theme of this song appears in verse Isa 60:14 : “The city of Jehovah, The Zion of the Holy One of Israel.”
The connection between Isa 60 and Isa 59 is very close. They are closely bound together, the relation between them being, for the most part, that of contrast. There are five of these points of contrast as follows:
1. In Isa 59 the people were waiting in “dark places for the light”; now the “light” has come.
2. In Isa 59 “righteousness and peace” stood at a distance; now they govern the Holy City.
3. In Isa 59 “salvation” was far off; now the walls of the city are called salvation.
4. In Isa 59 reverence for the “name of Jehovah” and “his glory” was promised; now it is realized.
5. In Isaiah 59 a “redeemer” was foreseen; now his work is accomplished.
The imagery of this poem seems to be borrowed from the account of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, found in 1Ki 10:1-10 . This song consists of five stanzas, of nearly equal length, as follows:
1.Isa 60:1-4 , Zion’s light and inhabitants
2.Isa 60:5-9 , Zion’s wealth
3.Isa 60:10-14 , Zion’s reconstruction
4.Isa 60:15-18 , Zion’s prosperity
5.Isa 60:19-22 , Zion’s crowning glories
The light of Zion is the reflected light of the glory of Jehovah, just as the light of the disciples of Jesus was his reflected light. He is the “Sun of Righteousness” and “the Light of the World”; primarily, while his disciples are “suns of righteousness” and “the light of the world,” secondarily. Here Zion is exhorted to arise and shine, just as Christ said to his disciples, “Ye are the light of the world . . . let your light so shine, etc.” The “promise” is that, notwithstanding gross darkness should cover the earth and its peoples, Zion should have the light of Jehovah, and it should be so attractive that the nations of the earth and the kings of the world should come to her brightness.
The inhabitants of Zion shall come from far, i.e., from all parts of the world, as Jesus said, “They shall come from the east, and from the west; from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God.” They shall be Jews and Gentiles, Greek and Roman, Chinese and Japanese, Malayan and Australian, Indian and African, European and American. Yea they shall be Oriental, Occidental, Septentrional, and Austral, but all radiant with one life, one light, and one love.
The very best of everything in the material world is here mentioned as coming to Zion, illustrating both the temporal and spiritual blessings of Zion, the temporal being used to transport Zion’s sons and daughters, i.e., for missionary purposes. This is literally fulfilled in every material thing that is consecrated to the service of the king of this splendid city. The ships, the lower animals) the gold and the silver the best of it all has been made to serve the purposes of Christianity from the time of Paul to the present day.
The reconstructors of this city are here called foreigners which may refer primarily to Cyrus and Artaxerxes Longimanus but the passage has a meaning far beyond the literal one. “Strangers” of all kinds, Greeks, Romans, Africans, Gauls, Spaniards, and others, are building the walls of Zion today. The promises here remind us of those concerning the New Jerusalem of Revelation. The gates are open continually, and kings and conquerors bring their trophies into it. The nation that will not serve this one shall perish. Many of them have come and gone according to this promise. The final and complete victory of this glorious institution over its enemies is one of the most encouraging promises of this passage.
But what of her prosperity? Whereas Zion has been down and trodden under foot, now she stands erect with an eternal excellency, and becomes the joy of many generations. Her nourishment comes through the means of the Gentiles. Righteousness and peace shall be its rulers, and no more violence shall be heard in the land. The entire cessation of war and violence is one of the most characteristic features of the “last times,” when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks. The Prince of Peace shall ultimately establish peace. Many men of earnest religious feeling have thought, at various times, that they saw the actual commencement of the reign of peace upon the earth, so distinctly promised, so earnestly longed for, and so necessary for the happiness of mankind. But a calm dispassionate observer of the twentieth century is shaken from every confidence of its approach when he witnesses such disastrous wars as the recent terrific struggles for the championship of the world. Yet just such conflicts as these must precede the coming in of the reign of peace and who can tell but that these are the last great struggles which shall introduce this blessed reign of the Prince of Peace? (See the author’s discussion of this in his Interpretation of Revelation, pp. 225-267.)
This description (Isa 60:19-22 ) of the crowning glories of this city of Jehovah parallels John’s description of the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. Here the redeemed are basking in a light whose radiance eclipses the light of the sun and moon, which streams down upon them from God the Father of lights in whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. This light shall be everlasting and there shall be no mourning. All her people shall be righteous and the saying shall come to pass that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” The little flock shall become the strong nation, the multitude that no man can number. All this must come in its own time, the time fixed in God’s counsels for the final and glorious triumph of his everlasting kingdom.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the theme of Isaiah 58-66?
2. What is the special theme of Isaiah 58-60?
3. What, in general, was Israel’s sin, as stated in Isa 58 ?
4. What is the prophet’s special commission in Isa 58:1 ?
5. What complaint do the people of Jacob make against Jehovah and what his reply?
6. What are the promises of Jacob in this connection and upon what conditions?
7. What the historical background of this chapter and what time in the history of Israel does it foreshadow?
8. How is this thought carried on in the next chapter?
9. What the effect of this cry of the prophet against their sin?
10. What relief comes in this state of hopelessness and despair?
11. When Jehovah looked on what did he see and how did it affect him?
12. What were his weapons for this mighty conflict?
13. What is the meaning of Isa 59:19 ?
14. Who is the Redeemer, what the covenant and what the mission of the Holy Spirit as set forth in Isa 59:20-21 ?
15. What is the special theme and what the nature of Isa 60 ?
16. Where in this chapter do we find the subject, or theme, of this address?
17. What is the connection between this chapter and the preceding chapter?
18. What is the imagery of this poem and where found?
19. Give an analysis of this song, showing its parts and their several
20. What is the light of Zion and what the promise concerning it (Isa 60:1-22 ?
21. Who are to be the inhabitants of Zion?
22. What shall be the wealth of this glorious city and what use shall be made of it?
23. Who the reconstructors of this city and what the promises connected with the reconstruction?
24. What of her prosperity?
25. Describe the crowning glories of this city of Jehovah, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Isa 58:1 Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.
Ver. 1. Cry aloud. ] Heb., Cry with the throat, or, With full throat. as Jer 12:6 a Plenis faucibus, voce sonora, et quasi tubali: Set up thy note; not only say to the wicked, “It shall be ill with him,” Isa 3:11 there is no peace to him, Isa 57:21 but cry it aloud.
Spare b not.] Singulae particulae habent emphasin; use utmost intention of spirit and contention of speech. Thou hast to do with a hypocritical nation, than which kind of people nothing is more stupid, more uncounsellable, or impenitent; for how should such repent as have converted conversion itself into a form, yea, into sin? Bestir thee therefore against these deaf sea monsters. Sic clames ut stentora vincere possis. If a man’s house be on fire, we must not speak softly, as loath to awaken him: Sir, your house is on fire.
Lift thy voice like a trumpet.
And show my people their transgressions.
a Ne frigide arguas, et in aenigmatibus ac obscure. – Oecol.
b Ne parcas guttari et voci, – A Lap.
c Dr Playfair on Mat 5:19 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Isaiah Chapter 58
To Isa 58 and Isa 59 one might add Isa 60 as completing the series. This is the opening of the last section of the prophecy (chaps. 58 – 66). The Spirit had closed both His counts against God’s ancient people, their idolatry, and their rejection of the Messiah, with the consequences in the certainty of judgement, and not peace, for the wicked on either side. We have now a sequel or appendix, consisting of moral argument and appeal to the people, with a positive revelation of Jehovah’s intervention and their establishment in glory and blessing. For no prophecy of scripture is of isolated interpretation; each links itself with the kingdom of Jehovah in the last days, however it may apply to lesser and passing circumstances in the prophet’s days, or in the times that succeeded. Prophetic scripture does not interpret itself apart from that day, but forms a united system. Though it may be verified in particulars now and then, here or there, it looks onward to the final scenes, and connects what was wrought in the past with the state of things which will necessitate Jehovah’s appearance on the scene to introduce His own day. The state of the Jews at the time called for this unveiling of their sins. “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and declare unto my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that doeth righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous ordinances, they delight to draw near unto God. Wherefore have we fasted, [say they,] and thou seest not? [wherefore] have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find [your own] pleasure, and exact all your labours” (vv. 1-3). It is the spirit of Pharisaism.
The notion of some* that Protestantism is in question is as unfounded as the unbelief of an older day which turned aside the prophecy from Israel because no part of the blessing has as yet been accomplished in them as a nation. The quotation from this prophecy (Isa 59:20 ), as employed by the apostle in Rom 11:26 , appears clearly to refute both, by giving as the divine key the future salvation of that Israel which is now the most blinded and has stumbled at the Stumbling-stone. The time too is rendered certain; it is unquestionably not present any more than past, but future. For, as the Spirit there interprets the prophecy, we are not to look for its fulfilment in the salvation of all Israel (Isa 59:20 ) till after the fullness of the Gentiles is come in; whereas this is only going on now and therefore is not complete. Hence the moment is not arrived even for commencing to apply to Israel. But faith can profit by it at any time.
*Vitringa, Horsley and Fry in modern times.
Jehovah then deals with the exceeding hypocrisy of this people in their holy things. It was not that they failed to approach His temple, not only professing delight in His ordinances, but fasting and afflicting their souls. In vain! “Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure and exact all your labours. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness; ye fast not [this] day to cause your voice to be heard on high” (vv. 3, 4). Nothing of the kind could be acceptable to Jehovah, Who will have truth in the inward parts, with things fair and good in the sight of all men. Hollow and sterile religiousness is abominable in His eyes; and compels Him to judge themselves if He cannot sanction their sin. Hence the expostulation in vers. 5-7. “Is such the fast that I have chosen? the day for a man to afflict his soul – that he should bow down his head as a rush, and spread sackcloth and ashes [under him]? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to Jehovah? [Is] not this the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? [Is it] not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor wanderers to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?” (vv. 5-7).
Were there a response to His own goodness, in the practice of mercy which became the people of Jehovah to the oppressed and destitute, how would He not bless them! Were they to heed the sabbath, calling it a delight, and honouring Jehovah, how should they not delight themselves in Him, riding in the high places of the earth, and fed with the heritage of their father Jacob! “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy healing shall spring forth speedily; and thy righteousness shall go before thee, the glory of Jehovah shall be thy rearward. Then shalt thou call, and Jehovah shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I [am]. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and the speaking vanity; and [if] thou proffer thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in darkness, and thine obscurity [be] as the noonday: and Jehovah will guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make strong thy bones; and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters deceive not. And [they that shall be] of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called Repairer of the breach, Restorer of paths of habitation. If thou turn back thy foot from the sabbath, [from] doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, the holy [day] of Jehovah, honourable; and thou honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking [idle] words, then shalt thou delight thyself in Jehovah; and I will make thee to ride upon the high places of the earth; and I will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken” (vv. 8-14).
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Isa 58:1-12
1Cry loudly, do not hold back;
Raise your voice like a trumpet,
And declare to My people their transgression
And to the house of Jacob their sins.
2Yet they seek Me day by day and delight to know My ways,
As a nation that has done righteousness
And has not forsaken the ordinance of their God.
They ask Me for just decisions,
They delight in the nearness of God.
3’Why have we fasted and You do not see?
Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?’
Behold, on the day of your fast you find your desire,
And drive hard all your workers.
4Behold, you fast for contention and strife and to strike with a wicked fist.
You do not fast like you do today to make your voice heard on high.
5Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it for bowing one’s head like a reed
And for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed?
Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the LORD?
6Is this not the fast which I choose,
To loosen the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the bands of the yoke,
And to let the oppressed go free
And break every yoke?
7Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry
And bring the homeless poor into the house;
When you see the naked, to cover him;
And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
8Then your light will break out like the dawn,
And your recovery will speedily spring forth;
And your righteousness will go before you;
The glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
9Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
You will cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’
If you remove the yoke from your midst,
The pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness,
10And if you give yourself to the hungry
And satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
Then your light will rise in darkness
And your gloom will become like midday.
11And the LORD will continually guide you,
And satisfy your desire in scorched places,
And give strength to your bones;
And you will be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.
12Those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins;
You will raise up the age-old foundations;
And you will be called the repairer of the breach,
The restorer of the streets in which to dwell.
Isa 58:1 This chapter, like many chapters in Isaiah (i.e., a typical literary marker for a new poem), starts with a series of IMPERATIVES. The questions of interpretation are:
1. who is the speaker?
2. who is the recipient?
Here is the list of what is commanded (note the parallelism):
1. cry loudly – Qal IMPERATIVE, BDB 894, KB 1128
2. do not hold back – Qal IMPERFECT, BDB 362, KB 359, used in a JUSSIVE sense
3. raise your voice – Hiphil IMPERATIVE, BDB 926. KB 1202
4. declare – Hiphil IMPERATIVE, BDB 616, KB 665
The speaker is YHWH by the mouth of His prophet and the recipients are:
1. pre-exilic Israel
2. exilic Israel
3. returning Israel
4. eschatological people of God
trumpet This is BDB 1051. See Special Topic below.
SPECIAL TOPIC: HORNS USED BY ISRAEL
their transgression. . .their sins Formal ritual had replaced personal righteousness. They were religious but far from YHWH (cf. 2Ti 3:5). Religion can be a barrier to true personal faith!
Isa 58:2 Notice how the false faith is characterized.
1. They seek Me day by day.
2. They delight to know My ways.
3. A nation. . .has not forsaken the ordinance of their God.
4. They ask Me for just decisions.
5. They delight in the nearness of God.
All of this sounds great but it was a show, a farce, a religious game; words, not deeds (cf. Isa 29:13).
As a nation that has done righteousness This is sarcasm.
ask Me for just decisions This refers to
1. the Urim and Thummin (i.e., the High Priest, cf. Exo 28:30; Num 27:23; Deu 33:8; Neh 7:65
2. the prophets
3. local Levites
Isa 58:3 fasted. . .humbled ourselves The word fasted (Qal PERFECT, BDB 847, KB 1012) parallels humbled (Piel PERFECT, BDB 776, KB 853, cf. Lev 16:29; Lev 16:31). They thought God must bless their religious acts. The OT has only one fast a year (Leviticus 16), the Day of Atonement (cf. Isa 58:6 a). During the Exile the Jews had multiplied this to four fast days to commemorate tragic events in their national life (i.e., the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, etc., cf. Zec 7:3; Zec 7:5; Zec 8:19).
on the day of your fast you find your desire
And drive hard all your workers They fasted for religious reasons and would not allow their laborers off to participate! The effects of the Fall continue!
Isa 58:4 The fast days produced irritation not faith.
NASBto strike with a wicked fist
ABstrike the poor with the fist
LXXstrike a humble person with your fists
The MT has to hit the wicked with fist, but notice how the LXX takes a clue from Isa 58:3 -d.
to make your voice heard on high One purpose of fasting was to help with prayers, but it caused the opposite reaction (cf. Isa 1:15; Isa 59:2).
Isa 58:5 This is a list of outward signs of mourning, like sackcloth and ashes, but in reality these were only for show (cf. Mat 6:5; Mat 6:16-18). See Special Topic: Grieving Rites .
Isa 58:6-7 Is this not the fast which I chose God lists what He really wants from His people (i.e., daily social justice, cf. Exo 21:2; Lev 25:39-41; Deu 15:12; and Jer 34:8-11, which refers to the year of Jubilee; Tit 1:16).
1. to loosen the bonds of wickedness – Piel INFINITIVE ABSOLUTE, BDB 834, KB 986
2. to undo the bonds of the yoke – Hiphil INFINITIVE ABSOLUTE, BDB 684, KB 736
3. to let the oppressed go free – Piel INFINITIVE ABSOLUTE, BDB 1018, KB 1511
4. to break every yoke – Piel PASSIVE PARTICIPLE, BDB 954, KB 1285
5. to divide your bread with the hungry – Qal INFINITIVE ABSOLUTE, BDB 828, KB 969
6. to bring the homeless poor into the house – Hiphil IMPERFECT, BDB 97, KB 112, cf. Mat 25:35; Rom 12:13; 1Ti 3:2; Tit 1:8; Heb 13:2; 1Pe 4:9
7. to cover the naked – Piel PERFECT, BDB 491, KB 487, cf. Jas 2:14-18
8. not to hide yourself from your own flesh – Hithpael PERFECT, BDB 761, KB 834, cf. 1Ti 5:8
This is the origin of the glorified Messiah’s criteria for dividing the sheep (faithful believers) from the goats (unbelievers who act selfishly) in Mat 25:31-46. This is not a works-righteousness, but lifestyle evidence that the results of the Fall (i.e., self) have been reversed (i.e., others).
Isa 58:8-9 b This is the promised restoration if they will repent and exhibit lifestyle faith. Notice what true faithfulness brings.
1. your light will break out like the dawn
2. your recovery will speedily spring forth
3. your righteousness will go before you
4. the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard
5. you will call and the LORD will answer
6. you will cry, and He will say Here I am (cf. Isa 65:1)
This is what God wanted to do for His people, but their sin and rebellion caused judgment and separation!
the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard This refers to the Shekinah cloud of glory being their protection as it was during the Exodus period (cf. Exo 14:19 and Isa 52:12).
Isa 58:9-10 If This (cf. Isa 58:9-10) shows the conditional element of God’s reciprocal covenantal relationship with His people. Note the conditions.
1. remove the yoke
2. stop the pointing of the finger, cf. Pro 6:13
3. stop speaking wickedness
4. give yourself to the hungry (Hiphil JUSSIVE, BDB 807, KB 920)
5. satisfy the desire of the afflicted
Isa 58:9 The pointing of the finger This refers to evil gestures and words (cf. Pro 6:13).
Isa 58:10-12 The then (blessing) part of the conditional covenant (cf. Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28-29) is spelled out.
1. your light will rise in darkness
2. your gloom will become like midday
3. the Lord will continually guide you
4. the Lord will satisfy your desire
5. the Lord will give strength to your bones
6. you will be like a watered garden
7. you will be like a spring of water whose waters do not fail
8. you will rebuild the ancient ruins
9. you will raise up the age old foundations
10. you will be called the repairer of the breach
11. you will be called the restorer of the streets
The prophet uses several sources of imagery to describe YHWH’s presence and blessing.
1. light vs. darkness
2. shepherd imagery
3. agricultural blessing
4. rebuilding imagery
Isa 58:11 There are two textual issues in this verse.
1. Isa 58:11 b
NASBsatisfy your desire
NKJVsatisfy your soul in drought
TEVsatisfy you with good things
NJBwill satisfy your needs in the scorched land
JPSOAHe will slake your thirst in parched places
PESHITTAsatisfy your soul with rich food
LXXyou shall be satisfied exactly as your soul desires
The word desire is nephesh (BDB 659) which has many connotations.
The scorched places is found only here (BDB 850, KB 1019) and the meaning is uncertain.
2. Isa 58:11 e
NASB, NKJV whose waters do not fail
The MT’s VERB (BDB 469, KB 467, Piel IMPERFECT) means to lie or to deceive. The sense seems to be the waters God provides never ‘lie’ or ‘deceive’ (i.e., always flows [NJB])
Isa 58:12
NASBthe restorer of the streets in which to dwell
JPSOArestorer of lanes for habitation
LXXyou shall cause the paths between them to rest
PESHITTAthe restorer of paths to dwell in
REBthe restorer of houses in ruins
The MT has paths (BDB 677), probably to be understood as streets because of the VERB to dwell (Qal INFINITIVE CONSTRUCT, BDB 442, KB 444).
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Cry aloud = Hebrew “call with the throat”: i.e. deep down as in the oriental throat. It denotes not a wild cry, but solemnity with restraint. transgression = rebellion. Hebrew. pasha’ App-44.
the house of Jacob. See note on Isa 2:6.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 58
Cry aloud, spare not ( Isa 58:1 ),
The Lord is commanding now the prophet Isaiah.
lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily ( Isa 58:1-2 ),
Now there was a real inconsistency here, because the attendance at the temple worship had not diminished at all. People were still going through outward forms of religion. There was a popular religious movement on the surface, but the heart of the people was still alienated from God. And so there was a combination. They would go to temple and worship God. And yet they were still worshipping their own little idols and still following after their own flesh. And such was the dichotomy that existed then and such is the dichotomy today. There are people who still on the surface acknowledge God. And it’s a surface experience, but it hasn’t really affected down in their hearts and down in their lives, their way of living. And God was interested in the heart.
Now you remember when Jeremiah who prophesied shortly after Isaiah, and during the time of Jeremiah’s prophecy, and we’ll be getting into that a couple of weeks now, during the time of Jeremiah’s prophecy when Josiah became the king. He was a good king and there was a popular religious movement under Josiah. You might say a revival. Everybody was going back to temple. And so the Lord said to Jeremiah, this young boy, “Now you go down to the temple and cry unto the people as they’re going into the temple, saying, ‘Trust not in lying vanities saying, “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these.”‘” In other words, God again was crying out against the fact that it was only a surface movement. It wasn’t down deep in the hearts of the people a move towards Him. So here God is telling the prophet, “Cry out. Let your voice be like a trumpet. Show My people their transgressions for they seek Me daily.”
they delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; and they take delight in approaching God ( Isa 58:2 ).
They had a great form of religion. Going to hear, inquiring, “What does God say?” And then they were complaining. They were even fasting, but they were saying to God,
How is it that we have fasted, and you do not see it? we have afflicted our soul, and you haven’t taken any acknowledgment of it? ( Isa 58:3 )
But the Lord answers them.
Behold, in the day of your fast you find pleasure, and you exact all your labors. Behold, you fast for strife and for debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high ( Isa 58:3-4 ).
You’re not really fasting to seek God but to prove a point.
Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? will you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? ( Isa 58:5 )
Do you think that I want an outward kind of a thing from you?
Now Jesus said when you fast, don’t be like the hypocrites who like to make a big, open kind of a display of their fasting. They get a very mournful face and they don’t anoint themselves and all. And they look very gaunt and sad. You say, “Oh, what’s the matter, brother?” “Oh, I’m fasting today, brother, you know.” “And oh my, isn’t he spiritual?” And the Lord says, “Hey, don’t do it that way. That’s not… I don’t want an outward fasting kind of a thing. If you’re going to fast, let it be something really of your heart and seeking after Me. Don’t let it be to prove a point. Don’t let it be to gain an advantage.” How many times people are trying to fast just to gain some kind of an advantage with God. Force God to answer my prayer because I’m fasting. If I’m going to afflict my soul and going to fast, let me do it out of a pure motive of just wanting God and more of God in my life. And do it unto God, not in a big display or show. But God said,
This is the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when you see the naked, that you would cover him; and that thou hide not yourself from your own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning ( Isa 58:6-8 ),
When you really are fasting right, doing what God wants, fasting and doing, God wants you to set free those that are oppressed. To feed those that are hungry. To clothe those that are poor. Take of your substance and really give it to someone else. “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning.”
and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall [come behind you] be your rearward. Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity ( Isa 58:8-9 );
So there is a fast that God will honor. And God will be with you. He’ll go before you and behind you. He’ll answer you when you call. They were fasting, but it was just a formality. And then they were saying, “Well, why doesn’t God respond?” And so God answers why He was not responding.
And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness shall be as the noonday: And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not ( Isa 58:10-11 ).
So the prosperity, the blessing, the glory if you draw out your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul.
And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the old foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honorable; and thou shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and to feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it ( Isa 58:12-14 ).
So the right way to fast; the wrong way to fast. The right purposes and the wrong purposes. And also it does also follow in the keeping of the sabbath day, the right and the wrong way. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Isa 58:1-2. Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily,
There are many nominally religious people who are full of sin. They have an external religion which allows them to live in rebellion against God. And such people are not easily convinced of sin. Hence the prophet is bidden to lift up his voice like a trumpet; yet, even if he does so, they will not hear him. There are none so deaf as those that will not hear; and these men are not wishful to hear what God has to say to them: Yet they seek me daily,
Isa 58:2. And delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God.
They are always in a place of worship if possible; they cannot have too many services and sermons; yet they have no heart towards God. O my dear friends, let us always be afraid of merely external religiousness! Genuine conversion, real devotion to God, true communion with God, these are sure things; but mere outward religiousness is nothing but so much varnish and tinsel, it is indeed but the ghastly coffin of a soul that never was quickened unto spiritual life. This is the way these sham religionists talked about their religion,
Isa 58:3. Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge?
When God rejects a mans religion, what must be the reason of it? Here is the explanation.
Isa 58:3. Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours.
You fast, but you make your workmen toil on still; you determine that they shall not have one atom of their labour abated; and you make an amusement of what you call a fast: In the day of your fast ye find pleasure.
Isa 58:4. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high.
The best sort of mere external religion will soon turn sour. If you do not worship the Lord in a right spirit, God will loathe the very form of your service. Why, you might, by hypocrisy, make even prayer-meetings to be hateful in the sight of God; and the ordinances may be made as abominable to God as the mass itself. You can soon degrade sermon-hearing into mere listening to oratory, and the Sabbath-day may easily become an object only of superstitious and formal observance. The heart the heart is everything; if that be wrong, it sours the sweetest things under heaven.
Isa 58:5. Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD?
Does God care for the externals of worship only? Is he satisfied with sackcloth and ashes, and the hanging down of the head like a bulrush?
Isa 58:6. Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
Yes, this is true fasting before God; not to demand your pound of flesh, and declare that you will have it; not to grind down the poor man to the last farthing; but to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free.
Isa 58:7. Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
That is the kind of fast that the Lord approves, to deny yourself that you may give to those who are in need.
Isa 58:8-9. Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy reward. Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity;
That is, if thou shalt take away all oppression, all wrong-doing to men, all talking of falsehood and speaking vanity: Then shall thy light break forth as the morning.
Isa 58:10-11. And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day: and the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.
What promises God gives to those who consider the poor and needy round about them! But if you shut your ears to the cry of the distressed, God will shut his ears to your cry.
This exposition consisted of readings from Isa 57:10-21; and Isa 58:1-11.
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Isa 58:1-3
Isa 58:1-3
(The beginning of Section C of Division VI (Isaiah 58-66)
As Kidner observed, “God’s trumpet call to the formalists is related to the previous indictment in Isa 57:1-13”; and this indicates that the period of Isaiah’s own times and reaching down to the captivity is the historical era to which the chapter evidently refers. Hailey, a very dependable scholar, agreed with this, and fixed the period after the invasion of Sennacherib (that is, in the times of Manasseh) as the times visible in this chapter, stating that, “This is the most reasonable of the theories. Barnes’ analysis indicated that this prophecy applied to, “the reign of Manasseh, at or near the time of one of the public fasts; and the fact that the external rites of religion were observed among the abominations of that wicked reign led to the severe reproof here.
Most of the writers, however, it appears to us, missed the real reason for the denunciations here. Barnes thought that the rebuke was, “of their formality and hypocrisy”; and Archer supposed that it was due to the failure of the Jews to conform their lives to the moral requirements of true religion, writing that, “No religious observance has value (in the eyes of Jehovah) that is not supported by a godly law-abiding life.
As they stand, such opinions are true enough, except that they do not address the principal reason for God’s vehement denunciations. And what is that? It is simply this, “that God had never commanded all of those fasts the people were having!” The only fast God ever commanded the Jews to observe was that on the day of Atonement (Lev 16:29-31); and all the rest of their many fasts were purely of human origin with no divine authority or sanction whatever.
Of course, the critical community, hunting some excuse to date these chapters after the exile, point out that the Pharisees of Jesus’ times fasted “a hundred times in the year” (twice a week, Mat 9:14); but this habit of Israel’s multiplying the number of their fasts was going on long before the times of the return from Babylon, as witnessed by Zec 7:7. The prevalence of that habit cannot be divorced from the times of Manasseh.
In view of these facts, therefore, we believe that the great sin of Israel was their departure from the Word of God in the multiplication of their fasts. Of course, we also admit their formality and hypocrisy in this; but even if they had been “sincere,” which Rawlinson believed many of them were,[6] God would never have approved and accepted all of those man-commanded fast days. There are many people of our own times today who are perfectly sincere and faithful in following human forms and systems of worship who stand in the same jeopardy as did those whom God so severely condemned here. Men simply do not have the right, or the authority, to change what God has required of his human servants.
The continued strong evidence of Isaiah’s authorship of all of Isaiah should not be overlooked here. As Cheyne noted, “Hoffman in particular uses this chapter as evidence of Isaiah’s authorship.
This is the beginning of Section 3 of Division VI of Isaiah, and Douglas professed to have found a three-fold division of this section, three chapters each, corresponding to admonitions connected with, “The kingly office of Christ in Isaiah 58-60, his priestly and prophetic offices in Isaiah 61-63, and with the final messages of Jehovah in Isaiah 64-66. Such divisions do not appear very distinct to this writer, and they have not proved to be very helpful.
Isa 58:1-3
“Cry aloud, spare not, lift tip thy voice like a trumpet, and declare unto my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways: as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God, they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near unto God. Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find your own pleasure, and exact all your labors.”
“Voice like a trumpet …” (Isa 58:1). One would not warn a man that his house was on fire in a soft casual voice. Isaiah was here commanded to deliver this warning in a manner consistent with the urgency of it. We wonder if some of the soothing, casual, and conversational voices of many of our modern preachers should not be more consistent with the urgency of the Divine call to repentance.
Isa 58:2 states that Israel were transgressors and sinners “as a nation, etc.,” “as if they were a nation” that did righteousness and had not forsaken the ordinance of their God. Note the singular “ordinance.” What was it? It was that single fast that God had commanded on the day of Atonement! That is precisely the thing they had omitted in favor of all kinds of fasts proclaimed by their false leaders. God’s further word in Isa 58:3 notes that, “In the day of your fast (not mine), ye find your own pleasure, and exact all your labors.” Some have applied this to the exaction imposed upon servants by their masters; but we fail to see how “your labors” can be applied to servants, as they have not been mentioned here. We believe the reference is to all the work and bother that the hypocritical Jews were going about in order to observe their own fast days, while neglecting God’s one sacred fast day on the day of Atonement. Adam Clarke thought the reference meant that, “Some disregarded the most sacred fast (the day of Atonement); but obliged their servants to work all day long (on that day), in numberless cases, having changed the fast day into feast day!”
Many of the things written about the situation here are in error because they are founded upon the mistake that God is not concerned with anything except social justice. It is very significant here that the very first sin God mentions is their neglecting “God’s ordinance.” Of course, God is also concerned with social justice; but all social justice, in the final analysis, derives from honor paid to the Word of God and the holy worship He has commanded.
Isa 58:1-3a HAUGHTINESS: Isaiah is told to cry a throaty call. The Hebrew words kera vegaron mean literally, call with the throat. The Jerusalem Bible translates, Shout for all you are worth. Apparently the Lord knew there would be a few in Judah who would hearken to the prophets call and wisely repent. There were some who would become covenant-keepers. Presently, however, the majority of people were covenant-breakers. Not only so, they were hypocrites as well. The Hebrew word thakhesek, translated spare not, means do not withhold. The point is that Isaiah is not to hold back declaring the hypocrisy of the majority even when they may appear to be righteous by their great show of religiosity or their attempts to justify themselves (as in verse three) or by their threats against the prophet himself. Isaiah is to become a shophar (rams horn or trumpet, the instrument used to sound a warning).
For the most part, the nation went right on, day after day, haughtily tramping into the courts of the Temple (cf. Isa 1:12 ff), pretending to seek Jehovah and pretending to find satisfaction in obeying His appointed fast days. Publicly they have a finely practiced facade of not being caught disobeying the rituals and ordinances of the Law. They have put on an ostentatious show. Then they reasoned that Jehovah should reciprocate with goodness toward them (material goodness, no doubt) and judgments upon their enemies. It appears they think they have fooled God with their outward show and now expect Him to reward them accordingly. They took pleasure in their religiosity because they had deceived themselves into thinking Jehovahs righteousness could be compromised by their hypocrisy. They believed they could have their sin and Jehovahs blessing at the same time. But obviously, Jehovah had not responded to their sham-fasting as they had expected. He had not healed the social depravity of the day; He had not removed the growing threat of Assyrian or Babylonian invasion of their country. They had so thoroughly calloused their own consciences they blamed Jehovah for what was very evidently about to befall them. They accuse God of insensitiveness, of carelessness and unconcern. Usually, the hypocrite plays his part so well, he fools himself more than anyone else. These haughty hypocrites had so deceived themselves they were incredulous that God should not be impressed with their self-righteousness!
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
We now commence the last division of the book, which deals with the program of peace as it sets forth the conditions, describes the ultimate realization, and insists on a principle of discrimination.
In dealing with conditions the prophet first declares the moral requirements. This message consists of a condemnation of formalism and a description of true religion. Jehovah’s charge against the people is that they have observed the external ordinances of religion, and yet have complained that God has not answered them. In reply to this complaint Jehovah charges them with selfishness even in worship, and declares that their prayer is not heard, affirming that He does not accept the prostration of the body which is unaccompanied by diction of soul.
In a passage full of beauty true religion, with its rewards, is then described. It is expressed in rightness of action, and tenderness, which is rewarded by light, and fellowship, and answered prayer. In these external observances, such as that of the Sabbath, they must be free from all selfishness, and characterized by delight in the Lord. This is followed by true exaltation, and the realization of the promises of Jehovah.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
the Fast That God Has Chosen
Isa 58:1-14
The divorce between outward rites and inward piety has been the curse of every age. When the Pharisees were plotting our Lords death, they refused to enter Pilates hall. Not the bowed head, but the broken heart; not the sackcloth and ashes of the flesh, but the contrition of the soul!
Notice the three paragraphs descriptive of the experiences of the devout and consecrated soul: (1.) The conditions of blessedness, Isa 58:6-7. (2.) The successive items which go to make a blessed life, Isa 58:8-12. (3.) The true Sabbath-keeping, Isa 58:13-14. Primarily, it is inward, not outward. Let us be on our watch against the entrance into our hearts of all thoughts that would break the holy inward calm. Remember to imitate Nehemiahs instructions: Neh 13:16-22. Let the divine peace rule within and be as a sentinel keeping the outward gate, Col 3:15; Php 4:7. Cease to follow your own ways, or find your own pleasures, or speak your own words. Delight yourself in God; so shall you sit with Christ in heavenly places and feed at the heavenly table.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
EXPOSITORY NOTES ON
THE PROPHET ISAIAH
By
Harry A. Ironside, Litt.D.
Copyright @ 1952
edited for 3BSB by Baptist Bible Believer in the spirit of the Colportage ministry of a century ago
ISAIAH CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
FASTS AND SABBATHS PLEASING TO GOD
THIS chapter begins the last section of this book. In chapters fifty-eight through sixty-six we have – in the main – visions of the coming glory, the prophet setting before us the wonderful things that will take place at the coming of the Lord. But GOD still deals with practical things. A call to the nation to heed the voice of GOD and get right with Him that judgment may be averted and blessing ensured.
“Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God. Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours” (verses 1-3).
So chapter fifty-eight commences with the words, “Cry aloud, spare not, . . . shew my people their transgression,” and then the prophet goes on to emphasize the sins of Israel. The great sin that he stresses is their reliance upon a mere formal observance of ritual and ceremony when the heart was far from GOD.
Isaiah takes up particularly the question of fasting. The Jews had a great number of fasts which they observed punctiliously, and there was a definite fast set forth in Leviticus 23 in connection with the appointed times of the Lord. But in addition to these, they brought in other things and added other fasts. They boasted in abstention from food and drink at certain hours and on certain days, taking it for granted that this pleased GOD, whereas He commends those who fasted from far different motives in order that their minds, taken away from other things, might be able to give attention to the things of the Spirit. So there is no praise but reproof for these merely formal fasts.
“Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high” (verse 4).
They used the fast to cover up other offenses. Some people today misuse that text: “Charity shall cover the multitude of sins.” “Well,” they say, “if I give some money to charity that makes up for other things.” That is not what the Lord meant at all.
Israel fasted for strife and debate, to cover up other sins, and thought they were doing it by the careful observance of the fasts.
“Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?” (verses 5-7).
In His fasts GOD called upon them to recognize the importance of self-judgment. The fasts gave them opportunity to come before Him to meditate upon His dealings with them, and upon their own failures and sins, to confess them, and then carry out practically the compassions of GOD toward those who are needy. In other words, the mind of GOD was not simply that they should deny themselves a little food but that they should be constantly living lives of self-denial, dividing what GOD gave them with others, and sharing with the poor and the needy.
The Lord JESUS speaks of the same thing. He says, “Moreover when ye fast, be not. . . of a sad countenance . . . That thou appear not unto men to fast” (Mat 6:16-18).
The people would look at them and say, “That’s a godly man – he hasn’t eaten anything since three o’clock yesterday afternoon.” But the Lord says, “When you fast, let it be between you and GOD, and have a cheerful, bright and happy countenance among the people.”
The Lord JESUS really is in full harmony with Isaiah; the same Spirit spoke through both. And then the Lord promises, both through Isaiah and Matthew, that if there is reality, He will reward.
“Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am . . . then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: And the Lord shall guide thee continually” (verses 8-11).
What a reward is this!
Then the subject of the sabbath is continued. We have seen that for the Christian the first day of the week has voluntarily taken the place of the sabbath, the covenant sign for the Jew. But the blessing attending their appointed day may be ours abundantly.
“If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and
call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it” (verses 13, 14).
It is of all importance to realize that men are more to GOD than forms and ceremonies, even of His own devising.
“The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mar 2:27). He who is “Lord. . . of the sabbath” is pleased when we use His holy day to bless and help those in trouble, and to relieve the afflicted, so far as we are able to do so. Truly to keep the first day of the week holy to the Lord is to use it for rest, worship, and ministry to others. To think only of relaxation, and spend this day in pleasure-seeking, is to misuse it and fail to enter into the purpose GOD has had in mind in preserving its privileges for us.
“I get so weary with all the burdens of business throughout the week,” said a Christian, “that I must have rest and exercise on Sunday. So I use the Lord’s Day afternoons visiting in the hospital and seeking to comfort and help the friendless.” He returned to work on Monday refreshed and ready for another six days of toil.
Let us cherish our privileges and neither despise them, on the one hand, nor hedge them about with legal enactments, on the other, for which there is no biblical authorization.
~ end of chapter 58 ~
http://www.baptistbiblebelievers.com/
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Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
Isa 58:3-7
I. The Hebrew prophet’s deliverance here is not in condemnation or disparagement of all fasting. The people of his day were in the habit, it appears, of denying themselves food, and assuming postures of mourning and humiliation as an offering to the Almighty, and an appeal to Him for His recognition and regard, while they were living, and persisted in living, unrighteously and unlovingly. Ever and anon, they would set apart a time in which to make themselves generally uncomfortable, by going without their meals, and spreading sackcloth and ashes over themselves, as an act towards Jehovah, and a call upon Him for His favour, while their lives were rank with injustice and selfishness. This was what their religious teacher inveighed against so sharply: the idea that to stop once and again in a course of bad conduct, and lie in the dust, with bent heads, and empty, unfed mouths, was a ceremony acceptable to God, and would suffice to atone in a measure for their habitual covetousness and cruelty.
II. While Isaiah is denouncing the superstition of his countrymen in thinking to compound for their transgressions by bodily abstinences and austerities, he is led, it would appear, to consider the practice of fasting with outward signs of humiliation and mourning, and to ask the question, “Is it ever what the Lord desires and demands? “And the answer of the prophet’s soul is, “No.” Men will and must fast if heavily oppressed with grief, and they may and should fast if it will help them at all in the effort to rise above false passion, and subordinate the lower nature to the higher. But to fast and lie in the dust, as an offering to God, as an exercise toward Him, for Him to look upon and be attracted by, is altogether vain and worthless. The one true repentance is to turn from the ways of sin into the ways of righteousness. The fear of the Lord is to depart from evil, and if a man be departing from evil he need not trouble about any further confession or repentance, except in so far as his own heart should compel him. In departing from evil he is fasting the fast which God chooses, which is not to afflict his soul with abstinence for a day, and to bow down his head as a bulrush, but to “loosen the bands of wickedness,” and to “deal his bread to the hungry.”
S. A. Tipple, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 200.
References: Isa 58:4.-J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 145. Isa 58:5.-F. W. Farrar, Ibid., vol. xxxi., p. 129.
Isa 58:6. 7
This passage is one of those in which the purity and holiness peculiar to the Gospel seem to be foretokened in the morality of the prophetic canon. Isaiah has been termed the Evangelical Prophet; and he is so, not more in the transcendent clearness of his predictions of evangelic facts, than in the corresponding brightness of his anticipations of evangelic holiness. As the inspired writers approached the great centre of purity, they became more and more deeply tinged with the glory they were approaching. The twilight clouds were red with the coming Sun.
I. Isaiah and his brother-prophets were holier and heavenlier and richer in the works of love upon an anticipated Christ than we are in a Christ already our crucified example. These men of God knew no divorce between belief and love, between living perpetually in the presence of a benevolent Lord and imitating His benevolence to their fellow-creatures. As it is the spirit of truth that has solemnised the union of the principle of faith with the works of charity, so it is, and in all ages has been, the master policy of the spirit of evil to effect their separation. This same purpose of separation which in darker ages the enemy of man sought to accomplish by making faith stand for a catalogue of superstitious observances-similar to the fasts of which the prophet speaks in the text-he now attempts to accomplish by exaggerating and perverting its more legitimate signification.
II. The whole religious providence of God towards man in every age has been a system operating by the combined influences of faith and love,-both directed towards His own perfect essence. In our existing condition, what is faith but love relying on support? What is love but faith forgetting the support in the supporter? Every progressive step in attaining habits of compassion and kindness upon earth must necessarily be a step towards estimating and loving Him who is the essential Spirit of benevolence. The love of man is the type and shadow of the love of God-the first step upon a pathway that conducts to paradise. The people of God are here engaged with the rudiments and images of those affections which are to be the duty and the happiness of their eternity.
W. Archer Butler, Sermons Doctrinal and Practical, 2nd series, p. 148.
References: Isa 58:6, Isa 58:7.-T. Dale, Penny Pulpit, No. 2977; W. M. Punshon, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 317. Isa 58:6-8.-S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xii., p. 225.
Isa 58:8
I. That the word “prophet” should so early in our language have come to be used as a synonym for a predictor is only an instance of the prevailing error which consists in looking for signs and wonders as evidence of Divine power. If a man possesses a superhuman commission”, he must be able to do superhuman acts. Such is the vulgar reasoning. And as the prophets, men inspired by God, have looked forward into the future and spoken of what they saw, these predictions have been seized upon as the characteristic feature of the speaker’s mission, and the noble office of prophet has come to be regarded as that of a worker of magic. The true seer is not the magician, but the pleader for the righteousness of God.
II. The attitude of the prophet Isaiah is that of the forward-looking man. His eye is not so much lifted to heaven, or bent downwards upon the people, as it is turned ever towards the horizon, waiting for the dawn. It is for all nations that he looks forward with hope. The keynote of his song has been struck long before in the promise to Abraham, that in his seed should all nations of the world be blessed. The prophets were commissioned to instil the truth which might have saved the peculiar people from the danger of exclusiveness. They saw from the height on which they stood, alone with God, the future of the world lying like a map at their feet, and bathed in the sunshine of God’s favour. The prophet was a predictor. He could not fail to be. The firmer his faith in God, the farther a man sees. The “seer” owes his power to faith. The believer sees and knows what the unbeliever cannot see or know. These are the two notes of the prophetic character,-its hopefulness and its catholicity.
A. Ainger, Sermons in the Temple Church, p. 268.
References: Isa 58:8.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx., No. 1793. Isa 58:11.-Ibid., vol. xiii., No. 736; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 364. Isa 58:12.-Pulpit Analyst, vol. iii., p. 296. Isa 58:13, Isa 58:14.-Plain Sermons by Contributors to “Tracts for the Times,” vol. ix., p. 267; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 257; H. F. Burder, Sermons, p. 426; H. W. Beecher, Plymouth Pulpit, 4th series, p. 213.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
3. Jewish History in the End time: their Future Glory and the Glory of the Coming Age (58-59)
This third and last section of the vision of Isaiah can only be understood and appreciated if it is studied in the light of other prophecies which predict the final events with which the times of the Gentiles close. That period consists of 7 years, the last 3 1/2 being the great tribulation. According to these predictions a part of the Jewish nation will be back in their land. These returned Jews will consist of two classes, a faithful remnant who own their condition, trust in Jehovah and in the national promises, and an unbelieving mass. The latter will be the large majority and hate their own brethren. In their unbelief they will build another temple and eventually will accept the false messiah, the Antichrist. The struggles and troubles of the end time can easily be traced in this last section. The faithful remnant, their fears and hopes, their sufferings and prayers are written here, as well as their deliverance through the coming Of the King, the Lord Jesus Christ. The prophetic descriptions of the future of Jerusalem, the land of Israel, the restored nation, the spiritual blessings and the glories in store for this earth are the most magnificent in the entire book.
CHAPTER 58
The Condition of the People, Repentance, and the Blessings to Follow
1. The Prophets commission (Isa 58:1) 2. The transgression and sins of Jacob uncovered (Isa 58:2-5) 3. The divine requirements (Isa 58:6-7) 4. What Jehovah promises (Isa 58:8-14) Once more the Prophet is commissioned to cry and this time to call the people to repentance. Such will be the case during the time of the end. The first advent of the Lord was heralded by John the Baptist, who called the nation to repentance. The Second Advent will be preceded by another call to repentance. It is before us in this chapter. See also Mal 4:3-6.
In Isa 58:9-14 we have all the great future blessings of the converted remnant of Israel described. It is the entire section in embryo.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
aloud: Heb. with the throat
spare: Isa 56:10, Psa 40:9, Psa 40:10, Jer 1:7-10, Jer 1:17-19, Jer 7:8-11, Jer 15:19, Jer 15:20, Eze 2:3-8, Eze 3:5-9, Eze 3:17-21, Eze 20:4, Eze 22:2, Mic 3:8-12, Mat 3:7-9, Act 7:51, Act 7:52, Act 20:26, Act 20:27, Tit 2:15, Rev 14:9, Rev 14:10
lift up: Isa 40:9, Isa 40:10
like: Isa 27:13, Hos 8:1, Rev 1:10, Rev 4:1
Reciprocal: Num 10:5 – blow Num 10:9 – then ye shall 1Ki 13:2 – O altar Psa 50:16 – What Isa 1:12 – When Isa 40:6 – Cry Isa 45:19 – Seek Isa 52:8 – lift Jer 2:2 – cry Jer 5:26 – For Jer 6:17 – Hearken Jer 11:6 – Proclaim Jer 26:2 – all the words Jer 36:9 – they Jer 42:1 – came Lam 2:14 – they have Eze 6:11 – Smite Eze 11:4 – General Eze 11:5 – Speak Eze 14:7 – and cometh Eze 16:2 – cause Eze 23:36 – declare Eze 33:3 – he blow Dan 3:4 – aloud Hos 2:2 – Plead with Hos 6:5 – have I Jon 1:2 – cry Mic 2:7 – named Mat 15:9 – in Mat 23:27 – like Mar 3:17 – he surnamed Mar 4:8 – fell Joh 7:37 – and cried Act 2:14 – lifted Act 4:11 – you Act 4:29 – that Act 5:20 – stand Act 18:9 – Be Act 18:26 – to speak Rom 10:20 – very bold 1Co 11:17 – that ye Eph 6:20 – boldly 2Ti 3:5 – a form Rev 14:7 – with
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
MEETING OF THE AGES
We are drawing to the end of the present, and the opening of the Millennial age. The prophets eye rests on the time when Israel is back in her land, the majority still unconverted to Christ and worshiping in a restored temple. There is a faithful remnant waiting for Him, though enduring the persecution of the false christ. This persecution may often be felt at the hands of their own brethren after the flesh. These facts must be assumed in the interpretation of these chapters, though they will not appear strange to any who have studied the preceding books in this commentary.
Chapter 58 opens with a renewal of the prophetic commission, suggesting that at the time of the end there will be a special heralding of the Lords coming as there was at His first coming (Mal 4:5-6). Indeed the whole chapter suggests the preaching of John the Baptist. Their complaint in Isa 58:3 is answered in the verses that follow (Isa 58:4-7). Their blessing depends on obedience (Isa 58:8-14).
Chapter 59 continues the thought, leading into a revelation of the divine purpose to interpose on their behalf in the person of the Redeemer. This interposition is for judgment (Isa 59:15-19), but to the penitent and believing it means forgiveness, sanctification and blessing forever (Isa 59:20-21).
Chapter 60 carries on the description of the blessing. It has actually come. The rest of the world may yet be in darkness, but not Israel (Isa 60:1-2). Moreover, the latter has become light for all the rest. Millennial blessing pervades the earth (Isa 60:3-11). Israel is the arbiter of the Gentile nations (Isa 60:12), and the latter are contributing to her greatness and benefit (Isa 60:14-16). Now the whole of Israel is converted and she has become great (Isa 60:21-22).
Chapter 61 shows the cause of the foregoing to be the work of the Messiah on Israels behalf (Isa 61:1-3). The first part of this prediction was fulfilled at the first coming of Christ (see Luk 4:16-20). The first part ended at the proclamation of the acceptable year of the Lord (Isa 61:3), but the second part begins at the day of vengeance of our God. This is the second coming. The rest of the chapter repeats what was said of the future blessings in the preceding one.
Chapter 62 carries on the thought of 61. Help will be found by reading the Revised Version side by side with the King James, and especially by observing the marginal readings.
Chapter 63 begins with the picture of judgment. The day of vengeance is ushered in by the coming of the Avenger, Christ, on behalf of His people against the oppressing Gentiles (Isa 63:1-6). The remainder of the chapter is identified with the following one, the two composing the intercessory prayer of penitent Israel in that day. Read and compare it with Nehemiahs prayer in Nehemiah 1 and with that of Daniel 9. It also suggests many of the psalms. The closing two chapters are the answer to this prayer, and require no comment in the light of the principles of interpretation illustrated before.
QUESTIONS
1. What period is in view here?
2. Whose later work is suggested in chapter 58?
3. How does chapter 60 show that the blessing on Israel is to precede that of the rest of the earth?
4. Have you read Luk 4:16-20?
5. What time period is represented by the comma after the word Lord, in Isa 61:2?
6. Are you careful to note the marginal renderings in your Bible?
7. How would you designate the last part of chapter 63 and chapter 64?
Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary
Isa 58:1. Cry aloud Be faithful, plain, and earnest in thy addresses, remonstrances, reproofs, and exhortations to and among my people; and spare not Forbear not to speak whatsoever I command thee for their conviction and reformation. Lift up thy voice like a trumpet Be not afraid to exert thy voice and spend thy strength in this work. Give an alarm which all may hear. Show my people their transgressions Set their sins, all their sins, before them, in a true point of view, and with all their aggravations, especially the iniquities of their holy things, and the hypocrisy of their religious services, (Isa 58:2,) that they may be brought to true repentance for them.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Isa 58:1. Cry aloud, spare not; lift up thy voice like a trumpet. It is not doubted by the Jews, nor by St. Jerome, that Isaiah lived to the beginning of Manassehs idolatrous reign; nor that he was sawn asunder, while opposing idolatry. Against sins which ruin a nation, the ministers of God must raise their voice, and not keep silence.
Isa 58:3. Wherefore have we fasted? The fasts of the Hebrews were many. Zec 7:3. The annual fast was on the tenth day of the seventh month. Lev 23:28. But the occasion of this fast, it would seem from Isa 58:14, was, that certain fortresses or high places were occupied by the Assyrians. After the fast, they expected some special deliverance, but none came. They were still in their sins; they asked mercy of God, without showing mercy to man. They remitted no debts, nor suppressed a single vice, as described in the following chapter; a portrait stained with the foulest crimes.
Isa 58:4. Behold ye fast for strife, dragging the poor into vexatious suits before the elders.
Isa 58:13. Nor finding thine own pleasure, on that holy day. The Jews were allowed to walk about a mile from the gate of the city; walks within the city appear nowhere to have been counted. This was thought sufficient for health; and health is the plea of London for crowding teagardens and publichouses; but teagardens and alehouses are the ruin of health, and the destruction of virtue. The liberal principle is there in full operation. They are sanctioned places of revolt, against the bible, against the church, and against the throne. Country girls come up to town to improve their condition, or otherwise, are on going home in an evening pushed into certain houses, and are ruined. Some of those cases have been exposed at the Old Bailey; and it is painful to add, that those authorities which reject all public enactments for the better observance of the sabbath, and who prefer travelling on that day, may see their error when it is too late. The sanctity of the sabbath in abstaining from all labour, and attending to the public duties of devotion, has a connection with national independence. I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the land. Hab 3:18. Thy garrisons shall not be occupied by Assyrian troops. See on Ezekiel 20., and Genesis 2.
REFLECTIONS.
After so happy a reign as that of Hezekiah, and after the labours of so great a prophet as Isaiah, now grown grey with hoary age, we might have expected to find religion in a better state. Yet the man of God resolves to die in the contest, and gain the martyrs crown. Isaiah having traced the horror and impiety of the idolaters, proceeds now with a high voice to make manifest the sins of those who still adhered to the Lords temple. Here he made the divine word resound with the energy and emphasis of the trumpets which called them to devotion. Vices long enrooted in the heart, and confirmed by habit, will not be eradicated by the mild addresses of an Eli to his profligate sons; and addresses of this description have been, for more than a century past, the too general character of our printed sermons. Isaiah saw his country on the brink of ruin. The worshippers of the Lord were either formalists, or wicked men; and the rest of the nation were gone after idols, and lolled out the tongue against the Lord. What was still more to be feared, the young Manasseh was rapidly introducing superstition into Judah, and even into the temple. Isaiah therefore seemed resolved not to outlive the departed glory. He resisted alike the wicked king, the apostate priests, and the degenerate people. He was indeed very old and greyheaded; yet when acting for God, he felt all the fire of youth; and so irresistible was the torrent of his sublime eloquence, that the revolting king ordered him to be sawn asunder. Well, he was taken from the evil to come: Isa 57:1. He entered into peace, having expired in the contest. But ah, on whom did his mantle fall? Where are the ministers raised up in his spirit? And how will the temporizing shepherds dare to meet his eyes, when his master, the Messiah, shall come in the clouds of heaven?See the second edition of four Sermons by the Rev. Dr. Thomas Coke; of ministers they deserve particular attention.
When the spirit of religion is lost in formality, it is a most dangerous omen to the church of God. From habits acquired in good Hezekiahs reign, considerable numbers still assembled in the courts of the Lord, to celebrate his fasts and festivals, but they still retained their sins. They exacted labour of their servants, they oppressed the poor, and smote them with the fist of wickedness, not from any judicial sentence, but from wanton cruelty.
When an assembled nation seeks the divine clemency by fasting and prayer, they should first show mercy one to another. It is the highest insult to the majesty and holiness of God to ask forgiveness while we retain our sins. Hence of Israel it was required that they should relax something of rigour to the poor, should loose the bands of oppressive servitude, and not retain the poor for vexatious debts. They should feed the hungry, and clothe the naked; then the light of national and personal prosperity would break forth upon them as the morning. The country would then soon be full of people, as in Solomons time; and the waste and desolate places made so by the Assyrian and other wars, would soon be rebuilt. One tide of prosperity would overflow the land; yea, the Babylonian captivity, so long predicted, would, as in the case of Nineveh, have been avoided.
Another sin which frustrated all the good effects of fasting and devotion, was sabbath-breaking. If Israel would forbear journies of pleasure, ordinary work, idle talk, and bearing burdens on that holy day, then the Lords glory should dwell in the land. They should ride on their high fortresses, and display their banners: the heritage of Jacob in all temporal and spiritual good should be their portion, and the flag of an enemy should not insult their country. Learn then, oh my soul, to hallow the sabbath. This day was almost lost on the continent of Europe before the French revolution; and mark what christendom still suffers. This day is most shamefully profaned in England; and consequently, the cloud is but suspended over our guilty heads.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Isa 58:1-14. Fasting, False and True.Yahweh bids the prophet explain to His people wherein their sin lies. Daily they attend the Temple, seeking to know His will for all the world as though their one aim were to do it! They question the priests as to correct ritualrighteous ordinancesand delight in daily worship. Why, they ask, when we fast does Yahweh take no notice of our pleas? Because on their fast-days they pursue their businessso render rather than pleasureand exact their debts (so emend (cf. LXX) the dubious word rendered labours). Thus their fast-days are marked by strife and oppression. Such fasting will not speed their prayers on high! Yahweh desires as a fast not self-mortification, gestures of woe, symbols of humiliation: but the loosing of unjust bonds, and the freeing of the crushed; the feeding of the hungry (cf. Neh 5:17) and the housing of the homeless; the clothing of the naked, and brotherly association with their poor fellow-countrymentheir own flesh. Thus would come prosperity and healing. Their right-doing would be as their vanguard and Yahweh Himself their rearguard. He would answer their petitions without delay. Let them put away oppression, contemptuous action, and wicked speech; let them give their bread (so some MSS and VSS for soul) to the hungry: and their deep gloom shall be exchanged for noonday light. Yahweh will be their guide, giving them water in arid regions, renewing their strength (so emend the dubious Heb. make strong thy bones). They shall flourish like an irrigated garden, or an oasis whose springs do not disappear in the hot season. Zions sons will rebuild her ancient ruins, restoring the time-honoured foundations. Isa 58:13 f. bears the marks of a later corollary to this discourse on fasting. It consists largely of quotation, and differs considerably in LXX. If thou regard the Sabbath as holy ground, from which thou turnest a profane foot, refraining from business; if thou callest the Sabbath thy delight and the new moon of Yahweh (for the combination cf. Isa 1:13) thy joy (emending the strange and tautologous expression the holy of the Lord honourable), refraining from business and idle talk: then thou shalt have thy delight in Yahweh, and I will cause thee to surmount all difficulties (cf. Deu 32:13) and assuredly cause thee to enjoy the inheritance of thine ancestors.
Isa 58:8. healing: the new flesh which forms in the healing of a wound.
Isa 58:11. spring of water: rather, a place of springs.
Isa 58:12. Read, And thy sons shall build.paths: perhaps read, ruins.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
58:1 Cry {a} aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.
(a) The Lord thus speaks to the prophet willing him to use all diligence and severity to rebuke the hypocrites.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
False worship 58:1-5
Many of the Israelites were relying on their practice of the Mosaic rites to satisfy God. The true meaning of the rites had not affected their lives. God intended the system of worship He prescribed to illustrate the importance of a heart relationship with Himself that should affect interpersonal relationships. This pericope exposes the superficial attitude of many of God’s people with strong irony.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The transgressions and sins that the Lord called Isaiah to proclaim to His people were so serious that the prophet needed to grab their attention with loud announcements. The name "the house of Jacob" calls attention to the Jacob-like quality of the nation that God would expose, namely: the people’s attempts to manipulate God.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
CHAPTER XXIII
THE REKINDLING OF THE CIVIC CONSCIENCE
Isa 56:9-12; Isa 57:1-21; Isa 58:1-14; Isa 59:1-21
IT was inevitable, as soon as their city was again fairly in sight, that there should re-awaken in the exiles the civic conscience; that recollections of those besetting sins of their public life, for which their city and their independence were destroyed, should throng back upon them; that in prospect of their again becoming responsible for the discharge of justice and other political duties, they should be reminded by the prophet of their national faults in these respects, and of Gods eternal laws concerning them. If we keep this in mind, we shall understand the presence in “Second Isaiah” of the group of prophecies at which we have now arrived, Isa 56:9-12; Isa 57:1-21; Isa 58:1-14; Isa 59:1-21. Hitherto our prophet, in marked contrast to Isaiah himself, has said almost nothing of the social righteousness of his people. Israels righteousness, as we saw in our fourteenth chapter, has had the very different meaning for our prophet of her pardon and restoration to her rights. But in Isa 56:9-12; Isa 57:1-21; Isa 58:1-14; Isa 59:1-21 we shall find the blame of civic wrong, and of other kinds of sin of which Israel could only have been guilty in her own land; we shall listen to exhortations to social justice and mercy like those we heard from Isaiah to his generation. Yet these are mingled with voices, and concluded with promises, which speak of the Return as imminent. Undoubtedly exilic elements reveal themselves. And the total impression is that some prophet of the late Exile, and probably the one whom we have been following, collected these reminiscences of his peoples sin in the days of their freedom, in order to remind them, before they went back again to political responsibility, why it was they were punished and how apt they were to go astray. Believing this to be the true solution of a somewhat difficult problem, we have ventured to gather this mixed group of prophecies under the title of the Rekindling of the Civic Conscience. They fall into three groups: first, Isa 56:9-12; Isa 57:1-21; second, chapter 58; third, chapter 59. We shall see that, while there is no reason to doubt the exilic origin of the whole of the second, the first and third of these are mainly occupied with the description of a state of things that prevailed only before the Exile, but they contain also exilic observations and conclusions.
I. A CONSCIENCE BUT NO GOD
Isa 56:9-12; Isa 57:1-21
This is one of the sections which almost decisively place the literary unity of “Second Isaiah” past possibility of belief. If Isa 56:1-8 flushes with the dawn of restoration, Isa 56:9-12; Isa 57:1-21 is very dark with the coming of the night, which preceded that dawn. Almost none dispute that the greater part of this prophecy must have been composed before the people left Palestine for exile. The state of Israel, which it pictures, recalls the descriptions of Hosea, and of the eleventh chapter of Zechariah. Gods flock are still in charge of their own shepherds, {Isa 56:9-12} -a description inapplicable to Israel in exile. The shepherds are sleepy, greedy, sensual, drunkards, -victims to the curse against which Amos and Isaiah hurled their strongest woes. That sots like them should be spared while the righteous die unnoticed deaths {Isa 57:1} can only be explained by the approaching judgment. “No man considereth that the righteous is taken away from the Evil.” The Evil cannot mean, as some have thought, persecution, -for while the righteous are to escape it and enter into peace, the wicked are spared for it. It must be a Divine judgment, -the Exile. But “he entereth peace, they rest in their beds, each one that hath walked straight before him,”-for the righteous there is the peace of death and the undisturbed tomb of his fathers. What an enviable fate when emigration, and dispersion through foreign lands, are the prospect of the nation! Israel shall find her pious dead when she returns! The verse recalls that summons in Isa 26:1-21, in which we heard the Mother Nation calling upon the dead she had left in Palestine to rise and increase her returned numbers.
Then the prophet indicts the nation for a religious and political unfaithfulness, which we know was their besetting sin in the days before they left the Holy Land. The scenery, in whose natural objects he describes them seeking their worship, is the scenery of Palestine, not of Mesopotamia, – terebinths and wadies, and clerts of the rocks, and smooth stones of the wadies. The unchaste and bloody sacrifices with which he charges them bear the appearance more of Canaanite than of Babylonian idolatry. The humiliating political suits which they paid-“thou wentest to the king with ointment, and didst increase thy perfumes, and didst send thine ambassadors afar off, and didst debase thyself even unto Sheol” (Isa 57:9)-could not be attributed to a captive people, but were the sort of degrading diplomacy that Israel earned from Ahaz. While the painful pursuit of strength (Isa 57:10), the shabby political cowardice (Isa 57:11), the fanatic sacrifice of manhoods purity and childhoods life (Isa 57:5), and especially the evil conscience which drove their blind hearts through such pain and passion in a sincere quest for righteousness (Isa 57:12), betray the age of idolatrous reaction from the great Puritan victory of 701, -a generation exaggerating all the old falsehood and fear, against which Isaiah had inveighed, with the new conscience of sin which his preaching had created. The dark streak of blood and lust that runs through the condemned idolatry, and the stern conscience which only deepens its darkness, are sufficient reasons for dating the prophecy after 700. The very phrases of Isaiah, which it contains, have tempted some to attribute it to himself. But it certainly does not date from such troubles as brought his old age to the grave. The evil, which it portends, is, as we have seen, no persecution of the righteous, but a Divine judgment upon the whole nation,- presumably the Exile. We may date it, therefore, some time after Isaiahs death, but certainly-and this is the important point-before the Exile. This, then, is an unmistakably pre-exilic constituent of “Second Isaiah.”
Another feature corroborates this prophecys original independence of its context. Its style is immediately and extremely rugged. The reader of the original feels the difference at once. It is the difference between travel on the level roads of Mesopotamia, with their unchanging horizons, and the jolting carriage of the stony paths of Higher Palestine, with their glimpses rapidly shifting from gorge to peak. But the remarkable thing is that the usual style of “Second Isaiah” is resumed before the end of the prophecy. One cannot always be sure of the exact verse at which such a literary change takes place. In this case some feel it as soon as the middle of Isa 57:11, with the words, “Have not I held My peace even of long time, and thou fearest Me not?” It is surely more sensible, however, after ver. 14, in which we are arrested in any case by an alteration of standpoint. In ver. 14 we are on in the Exile again-before Isa 57:14 I cannot recognise any exilic symptom-and the way of return is before us. “And one said,”-it is the repetition to the letter of the strange anonymous voice of Isa 40:6, -” and one said, Cast ye up, Cast ye up, open up,” or “sweep open, a way, lift the stumbling block from the way of My people.” And now the rhythm has certainly returned to the prevailing style of “Second Isaiah,” and the temper is again that of promise and comfort.
These sudden shiftings of circumstance and of prospect are enough to show the thoughtful reader of Scripture how hard is the problem of the unity of “Second Isaiah.” On which we make here no further remark, but pass at once to the more congenial task of studying the great prophecy, Isa 57:14-21, which rises one and simple from these fragments as does some homogeneous rock from the confusing debris of several geological epochs.
For let the date and original purpose of the fragments we have considered be what they may, this prophecy has been placed as their conclusion with at least some rational, not to say spiritual intention. As it suddenly issues here, it gathers up, in the usual habit of Scripture, Gods moral indictment of an evil generation, by a great manifesto of the Divine nature, and a sharp distinction of the characters and fate of men. Now, of what kind is the generation to whose indictment this prophecy comes as a conclusion? It is a generation which has lost its God, but kept its conscience. This sums up the national character which is sketched in Isa 57:3-13. These Israelites had lost Jehovah and His pure law. But the religion into which they fell back was not, therefore, easy or cold. On the contrary, it was very intense and very stern. The people put energy in it, and passion, and sacrifice that went to cruel lengths. Belief, too, in its practical results kept the people from fainting under the weariness in which its fanaticism reacted. “In the length of thy way thou wast wearied, yet thou didst not say, It is hopeless; life for thy hand”-that is, real, practical strength-“didst thou find: wherefore thou didst not break down.”
And they practised their painful and passionate idolatry with a real conscience. They were seeking to work out righteousness for themselves (Isa 57:12 should be rendered: “I will expose your righteousness,” the caricature of righteousness which you attempt). The most worldly statesman among them had his sincere ideal for Israel, and intended to enable her, in the possession of her land and holy mountain, to fulfil her destiny (Isa 57:13). The most gross idolater had a hunger and thirst after righteousness, and burnt his children or sacrificed his purity to satisfy the vague promptings of his unenlightened conscience.
It was indeed a generation which had kept its conscience, but lost its God; and what we have in Isa 57:15-21 is just the lost and forgotten God speaking of His Nature and His Will. They have been worshipping idols, creatures of their own fears and cruel passions. But He is the “high and lofty one”-two of the simplest adjectives in the language, yet sufficient to lift Him they describe above the distorting mists of human imagination. They thought of the Deity as sheer wrath and force, scarcely to be appeased by men even through the most bloody rites and passionate self-sacrifice. But He says, “The high and the holy I dwell in, yet with him also that is contrite and humble of spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.” The rest of the chapter is to the darkened consciences a plain statement of the moral character of Gods working. God always punishes sin, and yet the sinner is not abandoned. Though he go in his own way, God “watches his ways in order to heal him. I create the fruit of the lips,” that is, “thanksgivings: Peace, peace, to him that is far off and him that is near, saith Jehovah, and I will heal him.” But, as in chapter 48, and chapter 50, a warning comes last, and behind the clear, forward picture of the comforted and restored of Jehovah we see the weird background of gloomy, restless wickedness.
II. SOCIAL SERVICE AND THE SABBATH
(chapter 58)
Several critics (including Professor Cheyne) regard chapter 58 as post-exilic, because of its declarations against formal fasting and the neglect of social charity, which are akin to those of post-exilic prophets like Zechariah and Joel, and seem to imply that the people addressed are again independent and responsible for the conduct of their social duties. The question largely turns on the amount of social responsibility we conceive the Jews to have had during the Exile. Now we have seen that many of them enjoyed considerable freedom: they had their houses and households; they had their slaves; they traded and were possessed of wealth. They were, therefore, in a position to be chargeable with the duties to which chapter 58 calls them. The addresses of Ezekiel to his fellow-exiles have many features in common with chapter 58, although they do not mention fasting; and fasting itself was a characteristic habit of the exiles, in regard to which it is quite likely they should err just as is described in chapter 58. Moreover, there is a resemblance between this chapters comments upon the peoples enquiries of God (Isa 58:2) and Ezekiels reply when certain of the elders of Israel came to enquire of Jehovah. (Eze 21:1-32, cf. Eze 33:30 f.) And again Isa 58:11-12 are evidently addressed to people in prospect of return to their own land and restoration of their city. We accordingly date chapter 53 from the Exile. But we see no reason to put it as early as Ewald does, who assigns it to a younger contemporary of Ezekiel. There is no linguistic evidence that it is an insertion, or from another hand than that of our prophet. Surely there were room and occasion for it in those years which followed the actual deliverance of the Jews by Cyrus, but preceded the restoration of Jerusalem, -those years in which there were no longer political problems in the way of the peoples return for our prophet to discuss, and therefore their moral defects were all the more thrust upon his attention; and especially, when in the near prospect of their political independence, their social sins roused his apprehensions.
Those who have never heard an angry Oriental speak have no idea of what power of denunciation lies in the human throat. In the East, where a dry climate and large leisure bestow upon the voice a depth and suppleness prevented by our vulgar haste of life and teasing weather, men have elaborated their throat-letters to a number unknown in any Western alphabet; and upon the lowest notes they have put an edge, that comes up shrill and keen through the roar of the upper gutturals, till you feel their wrath cut as well as sweep you before it. In the Oriental throat, speech goes down deep enough to echo all the breadth of the inner man; while the possibility of expressing within so supple an organ nearly every tone of scorn or surprise preserves anger from that suspicion of spite or of exhaustion, which is conveyed by too liberal a use of the nasal or palatal letters. Hence in the Hebrew language “to call with the throat” means to call with vehemence, but with self-command; with passion, yet as a man; using every figure of satire, but earnestly; neither forgetting wrath for mere arts sake, nor allowing wrath to escape the grip of the stronger muscles of the voice. It is “to lift the voice like a trumpet,”-an instrument, which, with whatever variety of music its upper notes may indulge our ears, never suffers its main tone of authority to drop, never slacks its imperative appeal to the wills of the hearers.
This is the style of the chapter before us, which opens with the words, “Call with the throat, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet.” Perhaps no subject more readily provokes to satire and sneers than the subject of the chapter, -the union of formal religion and unlovely life. And yet in the chapter there is not a sneer from first to last. The speaker suppresses the temptation to use his nasal tones, and utters, not as the satirist, but as the prophet. For his purpose is not to sport with his peoples hypocrisy, but to sweep them out of it. Before he has done, his urgent speech, that has not lingered to sneer nor exhausted itself in screaming, passes forth to spend its unchecked impetus upon final promise and gospel. It is a wise lesson from a master preacher, and half of the fruitlessness of modern preaching is clue to the neglect of it. The pulpit tempts men to be either too bold or too timid about sin; either to whisper or to scold; to euphemise or to exaggerate; to be conventional or hysterical. But two things are necessary, the facts must be stated, and the whole manhood of the preacher, and not only his scorn or only his anger or only an official temper, brought to bear upon them. “Call with the throat, spare not, like a trumpet lift up thy voice, and publish to My people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sin.”
The subject of the chapter is the habits of a religious people, -the earnestness and regularity of their religious performance contrasted with the neglect of their social relations. The second verse, “the descriptions in which are evidently drawn from life,” tells us that “the people sought God daily, and had a zeal to know His ways, as a nation that had done righteousness,”-fulfilled the legal worship, -“and had not forsaken the of their God: they ask of Me laws of righteousness,”-that is, a legal worship, the performance of which might make them righteous, -“and in drawing near to God they take delight.” They had, in fact, a great greed for ordinances and functions, -for the revival of such forms as they had been accustomed to of old. Like some poor prostrate rose, whose tendrils miss the props by which they were wont to rise to the sun, the religious conscience and affections of Israel, violently torn from their immemorial supports, lay limp and wind-swept on a bare land, and longed for God to raise some substitute for those altars of Zion by which, in the dear days of old, they had lifted themselves to the light of His face. In the absence of anything better, they turned to the chill and shadowed forms of the fasts they had instituted. But they did not thereby reach the face of God. “Wherefore have we fasted,” say they, “and Thou hast not seen? we have humbled our souls, and Thou takest no notice?” The answer comes swiftly: Because your fasting is a mere form! “Lo, in the very day of your fast ye find a business to do, and all your workmen you overtask.” So formal is your fasting that your ordinary eager, selfish, cruel life goes on beside it just the same. Nay, it is worse than usual, for your worthless, wearisome fast but puts a sharper edge upon your temper: “Lo, for strife and contention ye fast, to smite with the fist of tyranny.” And it has no religious value: “Ye fast not” like “as” you are fasting “today so as to make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, -a day for a man to afflict himself? Is it to droop his head like a rush, and grovel on sackcloth and ashes? Is it this thou wilt call a fast and a day acceptable to Jehovah?” One of the great surprises of the human heart is that self-denial does not win merit or peace. But assuredly it does not, if love be not with it. Though I give my body to be burned and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Self-denial without love is self-indulgence. “Is not this the fast that I choose? to loosen the bonds of tyranny, to shatter the joints of the yoke, to let the crushed go free, and that ye burst every yoke. Is it not to break to the hungry thy bread, and that thou bring home wandering poor? when thou seest one naked that thou cover him, and that from thine own flesh thou hide not thyself? Then shall break forth like the morning thy light, and thy health shall immediately spring. Yea, go before thee shall thy righteousness, the glory of Jehovah shall sweep thee on,” literally, “gather thee up. Then thou shalt call, and Jehovah shall answer; thou shalt cry, and He shall say, Here am I If thou shalt put from thy midst the yoke, and the putting forth of the finger, and the speaking of naughtiness”-three degrees of the subtlety of selfishness, which when forced back from violent oppression will retreat to scorn and from open scorn to backbiting, -“and if thou draw out to the hungry thy soul,”-tear out what is dear to thee in order to fill his need, the strongest expression for self-denial which the Old Testament contains, -“and satisfy the soul that is afflicted, then shall uprise in the darkness thy light, and thy gloom shall be as the noonday. And guide thee shall Jehovah continually, and satisfy thy soul in droughts, and thy limbs make lissom; and thou shalt be like a garden well-watered, {Jer 31:12} and like a spring of water whose waters fail not. And they that are of thee shall build the ancient ruins; the foundations of generation upon generation thou shalt raise up, and they shall be calling thee Repairer-of-the-Breach, Restorer-of-Paths-for-habitation.” {Cf. Job 24:13} Thus their “righteousness” in the sense of external vindication and stability, which so prevails with our prophet, shall be due to their “righteousness” in that inward moral sense in which Amos and Isaiah use the word. And so concludes a passage which fills the earliest, if not the highest, place in the glorious succession of Scriptures of Practical Love, to which belong the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, the twenty-fifth of Matthew and the thirteenth of First Corinthians. Its lesson is, -to go back to the figure of the draggled rose, -that no mere forms of religion, however divinely prescribed or conscientiously observed, can of themselves lift the distraught and trailing affections of man to the light and peace of Heaven; but that our fellow men, if we cling to them with love and with arms of help, are ever the strongest props by which we may rise to God; that character grows rich and life joyful, not by the performance of ordinances with the cold conscience of duty, but by acts of service with the warm heart of love.
And yet such a prophecy concludes with an exhortation to the observance of one religious form, and places the keeping of the Sabbath on a level with the practice of love. “If thou turn from the Sabbath thy foot,” from “doing thine own business on My holy day; {Amo 8:5} and tallest the Sabbath Pleasure,”-the word is a strong one, “Delight, Delicacy, Luxury, -Holy of Jehovah, Honourable; and dost honour it so as not to do thine own ways, or find thine own business, or keep making talk: then thou shalt find thy pleasure,” or “thy delight, in Jehovah,”-note the parallel of pleasure in the Sabbath and pleasure in Jehovah, -“and He shall cause thee to ride on the high places of the land, and make thee to feel upon the portion of Jacob thy father: yea, the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken.”
Our prophet, then, while exalting the practical Service of Man at the expense of certain religious forms, equally exalts the observance of Sabbath; his scorn for their formalism changes when he comes to it into a strenuous enthusiasm of defence. This remarkable fact, which is strictly analogous to the appearance of the Fourth Commandment in a code otherwise consisting of purely moral and religious laws, is easily explained. Observe that our prophet bases his plea for Sabbath-keeping, and his assurance that it must lead to prosperity, not on its physical, moral, or social benefits, but simply upon its acknowledgment of God. Not only is the Sabbath to be honoured because it is the “Holy of Jehovah” and “Honourable,” but “making it ones pleasure” is equivalent to “finding ones pleasure in Him.” The parallel between these two phrases in Isa 58:13 and Isa 58:14 is evident, and means really this: Inasmuch as ye do it unto the Sabbath, ye do it unto Me. The prophet, then, enforces the Sabbath simply on account of its religious and Godward aspect. Now, let us remember the truth, which he so often enforces, that the Service of Man, however, ardently and widely pursued, can never lead or sum up our duty; that the Service of God has, logically and practically, a prior claim, for without it the Service of Man must suffer both in obligation and in resource. God must be our first resort-must have our first homage, affection, and obedience. But this cannot well take place without some amount of definite and regular and frequent devotion to Him. In the most spiritual religion there is an irreducible minimum of formal observance. Now, in that wholesale destruction of religious forms, which took place at the overthrow of Jerusalem, there was only one institution, which was not necessarily involved. The Sabbath did not fall with the Temple and the Altar: the Sabbath was independent of all locality; the Sabbath was possible even in exile. It was the one solemn, public, and frequently regular form in which the nation could turn to God, glorify Him, and enjoy Him. Perhaps, too, through the Babylonian fashion of solemnising the seventh day, our prophet realised again the primitive institution of the Sabbath, and was reminded that, since seven days is a regular part of the natural year, the Sabbath is, so to speak, sanctioned by the statutes of Creation.
An institution, which is so primitive, which is so independent of locality, which forms so natural a part of the course of time, but which, above all, has twice-in the Jewish Exile and in the passage of Judaism to Christianity-survived the abrogation and disappearance of all other forms of the religion with which it was connected, and has twice been affirmed by prophecy or practice to be an essential part of spiritual religion and the equal of social morality, -has amply proved its Divine origin and its indispensableness to man.
III. SOCIAL CRIMES
(Chapter 59)
Chapter 59 is, at first sight, the most difficult of all of “Second Isaiah” to assign to a date. For it evidently contains both pre-exilic and exilic elements. On the one hand, its charges of guilt imply that the people addressed by it are responsible for civic justice to a degree which could hardly be imputed to the Jews in Babylon. We saw that the Jews in the Exile had an amount of social freedom and domestic responsibility which amply accounts for the kind of sins they are charged with in chapter 58. But ver. 14 of chapter 59 (Isa 59:14) reproaches them with the collapse of justice in the very seat and public office of justice, of which it was not possible they could have been guilty except in their own land and in the days of their independence. On the other hand, the promises of deliverance in chapter 59 read very much as if they were exilic. “Judgment” and “righteousness” are employed in Isa 59:9 in their exilic sense, and God is pictured exactly as we have seen Him in other chapters of our prophet.
Are we then left with a mystery? On the contrary, the solution is clear. Israel is followed into exile by her old conscience. The charges of Isaiah and Ezekiel against Jerusalem, while Jerusalem was still a “civitas,” ring in her memory. She repeats the very words. With truth she says that her present state, so vividly described in Isa 59:9-11, is due to sins of old, of which, though perhaps she can no longer commit them, she still feels the guilt. Conscience always crowds the years together; there is no difference of time in the eyes of God the Judge. And it was natural, as we have said already, that the nation should remember her besetting sins at this time; that her civic conscience should awake again, just as she was again about to become a civitas.
The whole of this chapter is simply the expansion and enforcement of the first two verses, that keep clanging like the clangour of a great high bell: “Behold, Jehovahs hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is His ear heavy that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have been separators between you and your God, and your sins have hidden” His “face from you, that He will not hear.” There is but one thing that comes between the human heart and the Real Presence and Infinite Power of God; and that one thing is Sin. The chapter labours to show how real God is. Its opening verses talk of “His Hand, His Ear, His Face.” And the closing verses paint Him with the passions and the armour of a man, -a Hero in such solitude and with such forward force, that no imagination can fail to see the Vivid, Lonely Figure. “And He saw that there was no man, and He wondered that there was none to interpose; therefore His own right arm brought salvation unto Him, and His righteousness it upheld Him. And He put on righteousness like a breastplate and salvation” for “a helmet upon His head; and He put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped Himself in zeal like a robe.” Do not let us suppose this is mere poetry. Conceive what inspires it, -the great truth that in the Infinite there is a heart to throb for men and a will to strike for them. This is what the writer desires to proclaim, and what we believe the Spirit of God moved his poor human lips to give their own shape to, -the simple truth that there is One, however hidden He may be to mens eyes, who feels for men, who feels hotly for men, and whose will is quick and urgent to save them. Such a One tells His people that the only thing which prevents them from knowing how real His heart and will are-the only thing which prevents them from seeing His work in their midst-is their sin.
The roll of sins to which the prophet attributes the delay of the peoples deliverance is an awful one; and the man who reads it with conscience asleep might conclude that it was meant only for a period of extraordinary violence and bloodshed. Yet the chapter implies that society exists, and that at least the forms of civilisation are in force. Men sue one another before the usual courts. But none “sueth in righteousness or goeth to the law in truth. They trust in vanity and speak lies.” All these charges might be true of a society as outwardly respectable as our own. Nor is the charge of bloodshed to be taken literally. The Old Testament has so great a regard for the spiritual nature of man, that to deny the individual his rights or to take away the peace of God from his heart, it calls the shedding of innocent blood. Isaiah reminds us of many kinds of this moral murder when he says, “your hands are full of blood: seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” Ezekiel reminds us of others when he tells how God spake to him, that if he “warn not the wicked, and the same wicked shall die in his iniquity, his blood will I require at thy hand.” And again a Psalm reminds us of the time “when the Lord maketh inquisition for blood, He forgetteth not the cry of the poor.” {Isa 1:17; Psa 9:12} This is what the Bible calls murder and lays its burning words upon, -not such acts of bloody violence as now and then make all humanity thrill to discover that in the heart of civilisation there exist men with the passions of the ape and the tiger, but such oppression of the poor, such cowardice to rebuke evil, such negligence to restore the falling, such abuse of the characters of the young and innocent, such fraud and oppression of the weak, as often exist under the most respectable life, and employ the weapons of a Christian civilisation in order to fulfil themselves. We have need to take the bold, violent standards of the prophets and lay them to our own lives, -the prophets that call the man who sells his honesty for gain, “a harlot,” and hold him “blood-guilty” who has wronged, tempted, or neglected his brother. Do not let us suppose that these crimson verses of the Bible may be passed over by us as not applicable to ourselves. They do not refer to murderers or maniacs: they refer to social crimes, to which we all are in perpetual temptation, and of which we all are more or less guilty, -the neglect of the weak, the exploitation of the poor for our own profit, the soiling of childrens minds, the multiplying of temptation in the way of Gods little ones, the malice that leads us to blast anothers character, or to impute to his action evil motives for which we have absolutely no grounds save the envy and sordidness of our own hearts. Do not let us fail to read all such verses in the clear light which John the Apostle throws on them when he says: “He that loveth not abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.”