Expositions of Holy Scripture | Page 3

that by it we throw off the burden of
conscience and duty, piles heavier weights on our backs. The doer of

iniquity is 'laden with iniquity.' Notice, too, how the awful entail of evil
from parents to children is adduced--shall we say as aggravating, or as
lessening, the guilt of each generation? Isaiah's contemporaries are 'a
seed of evil-doers,' spring from such, and in their turn are 'children that
are corrupters.' The fatal bias becomes stronger as it passes down.
Heredity is a fact, whether you call it original sin or not.
But the bitter fountain of all evil lies in distorted relations to God. 'They
have forsaken the Lord'; that is why they 'do corruptly.' They have
'despised the Holy One of Israel'; that is why they are 'laden with
iniquity.' Alienated hearts separate from Him. To forsake Him is to
despise Him. To go from Him is to go 'away backward.' Whatever may
have been our inheritance of evil, we each go further from Him. And
this fatherly lament over Judah is indeed a wail over every child of man.
Does it not echo in the 'pearl of parables,' and may we not suppose that
it suggested that supreme revelation of man's misery and God's love?
After the indictment comes the sentence (vs. 5-8). Perhaps 'sentence' is
not altogether accurate, for these verses do not so much decree a future
as describe a present, and the deep tone of pitying wonder sounds
through them as they tell of the bitter harvest sown by sin. The
penetrating question, 'Why will ye be still stricken, that ye revolt more
and more?' brings out the solemn truth that all which men gain by
rebellion against God is chastisement. The ox that 'kicks against the
pricks' only makes its own hocks bleed. We aim at some imagined
good, and we get--blows. No rational answer to that stern 'Why?' is
possible. Every sin is an act of unreason, essentially an absurdity. The
consequences of Judah's sin are first darkly drawn under the metaphor
of a man desperately wounded in some fight, and far away from
physicians or nurses, and then the metaphor is interpreted by the plain
facts of hostile invasion, flaming cities, devastated fields. It destroys
the coherence of the verses to take the gruesome picture of the
wounded man as a description of men's sins; it is plainly a description
of the consequences of their sins. In accordance with the Old Testament
point of view, Isaiah deals with national calamities as the punishment
of national sins. He does not touch on the far worse results of
individual sins on individual character. But while we are not to ignore

his doctrine that nations are individual entities, and that 'righteousness
exalteth a nation' in our days as well as in his, the Christian form of his
teaching is that men lay waste their own lives and wound their own
souls by every sin. The fugitive son comes down to be a swine-herd,
and cannot get enough even of the swine's food to stay his hunger.
The note of pity sounds very clearly in the pathetic description of the
deserted 'daughter of Zion.' Jerusalem stands forlorn and defenceless,
like a frail booth in a vineyard, hastily run up with boughs, and open to
fierce sunshine or howling winds. Once 'beautiful for situation, the joy
of the whole earth,... the city of the great King'--and now!
Verse 9 breaks the solemn flow of the divine Voice, but breaks it as it
desires to be broken. For in it hearts made soft and penitent by the
Voice, breathe out lowly acknowledgment of widespread sin, and see
God's mercy in the continuance of 'a very small remnant' of still faithful
ones. There is a little island not yet submerged by the sea of iniquity,
and it is to Him, not to themselves, that the 'holy seed' owe their being
kept from following the multitude to do evil. What a smiting
comparison for the national pride that is--'as Sodom,' 'like unto
Gomorrah'!
After the sentence comes pardon. Verses 16 and 17 properly belong to
the paragraph omitted from the text, and close the stern special word to
the 'rulers' which, in its severe tone, contrasts so strongly with the
wounded love and grieved pity of the preceding verses. Moral
amendment is demanded of these high-placed sinners and false guides.
It is John the Baptist's message in an earlier form, and it clears the way
for the evangelical message. Repentance and cleansing of life come
first.
But these stern requirements, if taken alone, kindle despair. 'Wash you,
make you clean'--easy to say, plainly necessary, and as plainly
hopelessly above my reach. If that is all that a prophet has to say to me,
he may as well say nothing. For what