Expositions of Holy Scripture | Page 2

with iniquity, a seed of evildoers,
children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have
provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away
backward. 5. Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more
and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. 6. 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. 7. Your country is
desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it
in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. 8. And
the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a
garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. 9. Except the Lord of hosts
had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom,
and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.... 16. Wash you, make
you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes;
cease to do evil; 17. Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the
oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. 18. Come now,
and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow: though they be red like crimson, they
shall be as wool. 19. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good
of the land. 20. But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the
sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.'--ISAIAH 1,1-9;
16-20.
The first bars of the great overture to Isaiah's great oratorio are here
sounded. These first chapters give out the themes which run through all
the rest of his prophecies. Like most introductions, they were probably
written last, when the prophet collected and arranged his life's labours.
The text deals with the three great thoughts, the leit-motifs that are
sounded over and over again in the prophet's message.
First comes the great indictment (vs. 2-4). A true prophet's words are of
universal application, even when they are most specially addressed to a
particular audience. Just because this indictment was so true of Judah,

is it true of all men, for it is not concerned with details peculiar to a
long-past period and state of society, but with the broad generalities
common to us all. As another great teacher in Old Testament times said,
'I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt-offerings, to have
been continually before me.' Isaiah has nothing to say about ritual or
ceremonial omissions, which to him were but surface matters after all,
but he sets in blazing light the foundation facts of Judah's (and every
man's) distorted relation to God. And how lovingly, as well as sternly,
God speaks through him! That divine lament which heralds the
searching indictment is not unworthy to be the very words of the
Almighty Lover of all men, sorrowing over His prodigal and fugitive
sons. Nor is its deep truth less than its tenderness. For is not man's sin
blackest when seen against the bright background of God's fatherly
love? True, the fatherhood that Isaiah knew referred to God's relation to
the nation rather than to the individual, but the great truth which is
perfectly revealed by the Perfect Son was in part shown to the prophet.
The east was bright with the unrisen sun, and the tinted clouds that
hovered above the place of its rising seemed as if yearning to open and
let him through. Man's neglect of God's benefits puts him below the
animals that 'know' the hand that feeds and governs them. Some men
think it a token of superior 'culture' and advanced views to throw off
allegiance to God. It is a token that they have less intelligence than
their dog.
There is something very beautiful and pathetic in the fact that Judah is
not directly addressed, but that verses 2-4 are a divine soliloquy. They
might rather be called a father's lament than an indictment. The
forsaken father is, as it were, sadly brooding over his erring child's sins,
which are his father's sorrows and his own miseries. In verse 4 the
black catalogue of the prodigal's doings begins on the surface with
what we call 'moral' delinquencies, and then digs deeper to disclose the
root of these in what we call 'religious' relations perverted. The two are
inseparably united, for no man who is wrong with God can be right
with duty or with men. Notice, too, how one word flashes into
clearness the sad truth of universal experience--that 'iniquity,' however
it may delude us into fancying