19. Though they be red like crimson If ye be willing and obedient, Ye shall eat the good of the land: 20. But if 21. ye Ye shall be devoured with the sword. For the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. Zion's Present Shame and Future Glory (1:21-28) How is the faithful city Become an harlot ! She that was full of judgement ! The common interpreta people may imagine (cf. Hos. 6:1-4). tion of the verse may, however, perhaps be retained, for the next two verses make it very plain that the forgiveness is not unconditionally offered. Crimson, the Hebrew word denotes primarily the insect from which the color was obtained. 19 f. Note how, as so often in the Old Testament, penitence and obedience are represented as being rewarded by material prosperity - the good of the land- and disobedience by disaster, here the disaster of war: "ye shall be made to taste the sword," meaning "the sword shall devour you." Apparently, when these verses were spoken, an invasion was impending and the prophet seizes the opportunity to lead the people to repentance. 1:21-28. This little poem in Hebrew elegiac metre (generally with three accents in the first line and two in the second, thus: Hów is the faithful city Become a hárlot!) repeats in more pathetic words the charges already made against Jerusalem, and contrasts her present shame with the glory that will be hers when she is redeemed from her sin. 21. The prophet looks wistfully back to the early days of Jerusalem's history, the times of David and Solomon, when she was a faithful city, faithful to the principles of right and justice, with which Jehovah is peculiarly identified (vss. 16, 17); now she is a harlot, that is, unfaithful to those principles. She may be faithful enough in offering her animal sacrifices (vss. 11 ff.); but it is her attitude to what is socially just and right that is the real test of her fidelity to her God. Righteousness lodged in her, 22. Thy silver is become dross, Thy wine mixed with water. 23. Thy princes are rebellious, And companions of thieves: And followeth after rewards: Neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them. 24. Therefore saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts, The Mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, And will take away all thy tin: 22. The contrast between then and now is pitiful. Then it was silver, now it is dross; then pure wine, now adulterated. The silver and the wine probably refer to the "justice and right" of vs. 21 - corrupted now by the venal practices of the judges. 23. This verse gives a concrete picture of the deterioration, which consists, as in vs. 17, in the unblushing disregard of justice and mercy: The princes represent officialdom: in the Hebrew sentence, there is, as often (cf. Hos. 9: 15), a play upon words— thy rulers are unruly" (Cheyne), thy rulers are rebels. They were responsible, in part, for the administration of justice, but instead of suppressing crime they actually abetted it by accepting bribes, and so made themselves the confederates of contemptible thieves. Worst of all, they ignore the rights of the defenceless orphan and widow (vs. 17). 24. There can be no hope for a city with officials like these; enemies of right, they are enemies of God, and he must get rid of them. He is Israel's strong one, who will use his strength to take vengeance upon them. 25. The process by which the city is to be purified is compared to the smelting of impure ore. Jehovah turns his mighty hand in judgment against the city. I will purge thy dross as with lye a vegetable alkali, which was used to help the process of smelting 26. And I will restore thy judges as at the first, And thy counsellors as at the beginning: Afterward thou shalt be called The City of Righteous ness, The Faithful City. 27. Zion shall be redeemed with judgement, And her converts with righteousness. 28. But the destruction of the transgressors and the sinners shall be together, And they that forsake the LORD shall be consumed. and separation and all thine alloy I will remove, that Jerusalem might again become the pure silver which she had been at the first (vs. 22). Instead of as with lye, we may read, by a very simple change, “ I will purge away thy dross in the furnace." 26. The result of this smelting process, with its consequent removal of the dross, would be the restoration of Jerusalem to its pristine purity. And as the rulers, and in particular the administrators of justice, were largely responsible for her decadence (vs. 23), so, in the restoration, their places would be taken by men worthy of the ancient régime; and then Jerusalem, once more the home of right and justice (vs. 21), would again deserve the name Faithful City the name with which the elegy began (vs. 21). 27 f. With vs. 26, which is an echo of vs. 21, the poem is admirably rounded off. Vss. 27, 28, the terms of which are more general and less concrete, may have been added at a later date; but they are thoroughly appropriate to the spirit of the preceding poem, contemplating as they do the salvation of Zion and the destruction of the rebels. Here it is apparently not to her own (cf. vs. 21), but to the divine justice and righteousness that Zion and her converts owe their redemption. 1:29-31. This section gives us a glimpse into the old heathen worship of trees and springs, which persisted among the people despite all prophetic preaching and which even yet is not dead. In 65:3; 66:17, passages which are almost certainly post-exilic, there is a similar reference to gardens as the seats of idolatrous worship; but, considering the reverence with which "sacred trees were always regarded, this practice may well have been common in Isaiah's time, and this scathing condemnation may have come from the prophet himself. The Heathen Cult and Its Doom (1:29–31) 29. For1 they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, And ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen. 30. For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, And as a garden that hath no water. 31. And the strong shall be as tow, and his work as a spark ; And they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them. Jerusalem, the Centre of Blessing to the World (2 : 1−5) 2. The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 1 Some Hebrew MSS. read ye. Gr. reads they throughout in vss. 29-31. 29. The change in vs. 29 from the third person to the second is strange and difficult to explain naturally: apparently we must read throughout the section either the third person or the second, "Ye shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded," etc. Their heathenish worship would lead to nothing but disappointment. 30. The withered leaves of the tree and the vanished waters of the spring were proofs of the impotence of the deities who were supposed to haunt them, and symbols of the fate of those who worshipped there. "In Palestine, for the most part, the presence of a spring, or a capacious cistern, was essential to the existence of a garden (Hastings, Dict. of the Bible, ii, 109); hence the pathos of the garden that hath no water. 31. These idolaters, strong in their own eyes as the oaks (cf. Amos 2:9) which they worship, are doomed, with all their works and devices, to irrevocable destruction - pictured here as a judgment of fire. 2:1-5. This beautiful picture of Jerusalem in "the issue of the days," when the whole world would recognize her unique religious supremacy, and flock to her to have difficult cases settled by the 2. And it shall come to pass in the latter days, That the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established 1 In the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; I Gr. adds and the house of God. arbitration of her God and his laws, forms a very effective contrast to the picture of the sinful city with which Chap. 1 opened, and of the description of the idolatries with which it closed. In spite of the new superscription (vs. 1; cf. I: 1) which shows that the chapters introduced by it (probably Chaps. 2−4) once formed an independent group and circulated separately, the present setting of the passage strongly suggests that it was originally intended as a foil to the descriptions of the real Jerusalem in Chap. 1, like the corresponding passage in Micah 4:1-4; it would certainly form a happy conclusion to the first group of prophecies (1: 1–2: 5). It is difficult to say what the connection is between this passage and the similar passage in Micah 4: 1-4. Either Isaiah borrowed from Micah, or Micah from Isaiah, or both from an older prophecy, or in both cases the passage is a later insertion. For several reasons the last supposition seems, on the whole, the most probable. I. Cf. I: I. 2. In the latter days. The true prophet looks frankly at the present (cf. Chap. 1), but his eyes are no less fixed upon the future. Beyond these days, he sees the days that come after; and the phrase "the after-days," the sequel or "issue of the days," naturally came to acquire an almost technical meaning, and was used to indicate what we commonly speak of as the Messianic age, the happy, righteous era which would succeed the wretched and sinful age that now is. In this striking passage, it is regarded as an age in which war shall be no more (cf. 9:5) and the disputes of the nations will be settled by arbitration. The Greek version and the parallelism in vs. 3 suggest that the original text ran thus: The mount of Jehovah shall be firmly established, And the house of our God on the chief of the mountains. The reference is to the temple and the temple hill. Jerusalem is the religious capital of the world, the temple the most sacred thing in Jerusalem, the house of our God, and the temple hill the chief mountain in the world, the head of the mountains. This is |