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Expositor's Bible Commentary Isaiah 1:1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. CHAPTER I THE ARGUMENT OF THE LORD AND ITS CONCLUSION Isaiah 1:1-31 -His General Preface THE first chapter of the Book of Isaiah owes its position not to its date, but to its character. It was published late in the prophet’s life. The seventh verse describes the land as overrun by foreign soldiery, and such a calamity befell Judah only in the last two of the four reigns over which the first verse extends Isaiah’s prophesying. In the reign of Ahaz, Judah was invaded by Syria and Northern Israel, and some have dated chapter 1 from the year of that invasion, 734 B.C. In the reign again of Hezekiah some have imagined, in order to account for the chapter, a swarming of neighbouring tribes upon Judah; and Mr. Cheyne, to whom regarding the history of Isaiah’s time we ought to listen with the greatest deference, has supposed an Assyrian invasion in 711, under Sargon. But hardly of this, and certainly not of that, have we adequate evidence, and the only other invasion of Judah in Isaiah’s lifetime took place under Sennacherib, in 701. For many reasons this Assyrian invasion is to be preferred to that by Syria and Ephraim in 734 as the occasion of this prophecy. But there is really no need to be determined on the point. The prophecy has been lifted out of its original circumstance and placed in the front of the book, perhaps by Isaiah himself, as a general introduction to his collected pieces. It owes its position, as we have said, to its character. It is a clear, complete statement of the points which were at issue between the Lord and His own all the time Isaiah was the Lord’s prophet. It is the most representative of Isaiah’s prophecies; a summary is found, perhaps better than any other single chapter of the Old Testament, of the substance of prophetic doctrine, and a very vivid illustration of the prophetic spirit and method. We propose to treat it here as introductory to the main subject and lines of Isaiah’s teaching, leaving its historical references till we arrive in due course at the probable year of its origin, 701 B.C. Isaiah’s preface is in the form of a Trial or Assize. Ewald calls it "The Great Arraignment." There are all the actors in a judicial process. It is a Crown case, and God is at once Plaintiff and Judge. He delivers both the Complaint in the beginning ( Isaiah 1:2-3 ) and the Sentence in the end. The Assessors are Heaven and Earth, whom the Lord’s herald invokes to hear the Lord’s plea ( Isaiah 1:2 ). The people of Judah are the Defendants. The charge against them is one of brutish, ingrate stupidity, breaking out into rebellion. The Witness is the prophet himself, whose evidence on the guilt of his people consists in recounting the misery that has overtaken their land ( Isaiah 1:4-9 ), along with their civic injustice and social cruelty-sins of the upper and ruling classes ( Isaiah 1:10 , Isaiah 1:17 , Isaiah 1:21-23 ). The people’s Plea-in-defence, laborious worship and multiplied sacrifice, is repelled and exposed ( Isaiah 1:10-17 ). And the Trial is concluded-"Come now, let us bring our reasoning to a close, saith the Lord"-by God’s offer of pardon to a people thoroughly convicted ( Isaiah 1:18 ). On which follow the Conditions of the Future: happiness is sternly made dependent on repentance and righteousness ( Isaiah 1:19-20 ). And a supplementary oracle is given ( Isaiah 1:24-31 ), announcing a time of affliction, through which the nation shall pass as through a furnace; rebels and sinners shall be consumed, but God will redeem Zion, and with her a remnant of the people. That is the plan of the chapter-a Trial at Law. Though it disappears under the exceeding weight of thought the prophet builds upon it, do not let us pass hurriedly from it, as if it were only a scaffolding. That God should argue at all is the magnificent truth on which our attention must fasten, before we inquire what the argument is about. God reasons with man-that is the first article of religion according to Isaiah. Revelation is not magical, but rational and moral. Religion is reasonable intercourse between one intelligent Being and another. God works upon man first through conscience. Over against the prophetic view of religion sprawls and reeks in this same chapter the popular-religion as smoky sacrifice, assiduous worship, and ritual. The people to whom the chapter was addressed were not idolaters. Hezekiah’s reformation was over. Judah worshipped her own God, whom the prophet introduces not as for the first time, but by Judah’s own familiar names for Him-Jehovah, Jehovah of Hosts, the Holy One of Israel, the Mighty One, or Hero, of Israel. In this hour of extreme danger the people are waiting on Jehovah with great pains and cost of sacrifice. They pray, they sacrifice, they solemnise to perfection. But they do not know, they do not consider; this is the burden of their offence. To use a better word, they do not think. They are God’s grown-up children ( Isaiah 1:2 ) - children, that is to say, like the son of the parable, with native instincts for their God; and grown-up- that is to say, with reason and conscience developed. But they use neither, stupider than very beasts. "Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider." In all their worship conscience is asleep, and they are drenched in wickedness. Isaiah puts their life is an epigram-Wickedness and worship: "I cannot away," saith the Lord, "with wickedness and worship" ( Isaiah 1:13 ). But the pressure and stimulus of the prophecy lie in this, that although the people have silenced conscience and are steeped in a stupidity worse than ox or ass, God will not leave them alone. He forces Himself upon them. He compels them to think. In the order and calmness of nature ( Isaiah 1:2 ), apart from catastrophe nor seeking to influence by any miracle, God speaks to men by the reasonable words of His prophet. Before He will publish salvation or intimate disaster He must rouse and startle conscience. His controversy precedes alike His peace and His judgments. An awakened conscience is His prophet’s first demand. Before religion can be prayer, or sacrifice, or any acceptable worship, it must be a reasoning together with God. That is what mean the arrival of the Lord, and the opening of the assize, and the call to know and consider. It is the terrible necessity which comes back upon men, however engrossed or drugged they may be, to pass their lives in moral judgment before themselves; a debate to which there is never any closure, in which forgotten things shall not be forgotten, but a man "is compelled to repeat to himself things he desires to be silent about, and to listen to what he does not wish to hear, yielding to that mysterious power which says to him, Think. One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. With the sailor this is called the tide; with the guilty it is called remorse. God upheaves the soul as well as the ocean." Upon that ever-returning and resistless tide Hebrew prophecy, with its Divine freight of truth and comfort, rises into the lives of men. This first chapter of Isaiah is just the parable of the awful compulsion to think which men call conscience. The stupidest of generations, formal and fat-hearted, are forced to consider and to reason. The Lord’s court and controversy are opened, and men are whipped into them from His Temple and His Altar. For even religion and religiousness, the common man’s commonest refuge from conscience-not only in Isaiah’s time-cannot exempt from this writ. Would we be judged by our moments of worship, by our temple-treading, which is Hebrew for church-going, by the wealth of our sacrifice, by our ecclesiastical position? This chapter drags us out before the austerity and incorruptibleness of Nature. The assessors of the Lord are not the Temple nor the Law, but Heaven and Earth-not ecclesiastical conventions, but the grand moral fundamentals of the universe, purity, order, and obedience to God. Religiousness, however, is not the only refuge from which we shall find Isaiah startling men with the trumpet of the Lord’s assize. He is equally intolerant of the indulgent silence and compromises of the world, that give men courage to say, We are no worse than others. Men’s lives, it is a constant truth of his, have to be argued out not with the world, but with God. If a man will be silent upon shameful and uncomfortable things, he cannot. His thoughts are not his own; God will think them for him as God thinks them here for unthinking Israel. Nor are the practical and intellectual distractions of a busy life any refuge from conscience. When the politicians of Judah seek escape from judgment by plunging into deeper intrigue and a more bustling policy, Isaiah is fond of pointing out to them that they are only forcing judgment nearer. They do but sharpen on other objects the thoughts whose edge must some day turn upon themselves. What is this questioning nothing holds away, nothing stills, and nothing wears out? It is the voice of God Himself, and its insistence is therefore as irresistible as its effect is universal. That is not mere rhetoric which opens the Lord’s controversy: "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken." All the world changes to the man in whom conscience lifts up her voice, and to the guilty Nature seems attentive and aware. Conscience compels heaven and earth to act as her assessors, because she is the voice, and they the creatures, of God. This leads us to emphasise another feature of the prophecy. We have called this chapter a trial-at-law; but it is far more a personal than a legal controversy; of the formally forensic there is very little about it. Some theologies and many preachers have attempted the conviction of the human conscience by the technicalities of a system of law, or by appealing to this or that historical covenant, or by the obligations of an intricate and burdensome morality. This is not Isaiah’s way. His generation is here judged by no system of law or ancient covenants, but by a living Person and by His treatment of them-a Person who is a Friend and a Father. It is not Judah and the law that are confronted; it is Judah and Jehovah. There is no contrast between the life of this generation and some glorious estate from which they or their forefathers have fallen; but they are made to hear the voice of a living and present God: "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me." Isaiah begins where Saul of Tarsus began, who, though he afterwards elaborated with wealth of detail the awful indictment of the abstract law against man, had never been able to do so but for that first confronting with the Personal Deity, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" Isaiah’s ministry started from the vision of the Lord; and it was no covenant or theory, but the Lord Himself, who remained the prophet’s conscience to the end. But though the living God is Isaiah’s one explanation of conscience, it is God in two aspects, the moral effects of which are opposite, yet complementary. In conscience men are defective by forgetting either the sublime or the practical, but Isaiah’s strength is to do justice to both. With him God is first the infinitely High, and then equally the infinitely Near. "The Lord is exalted in righteousness!" yes, and sublimely above the people’s vulgar identifications of His will with their own safety and success, but likewise concerned with every detail of their politics and social behaviour; not to be relegated to the Temple, where they were wont to confine Him, but by His prophet descending to their markets and councils, with His own opinion of their policies, interfering in their intrigues, meeting Ahaz at the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field, and fastening eyes of glory on every pin and point of the dress of the daughters of Zion. He is no merely transcendent God. Though He be the High and Holy One, He will discuss each habit of the people, and argue upon its merits every one of their policies. His constant cry to them is "Come and let us reason together," and to hear it is to have a conscience. Indeed, Isaiah lays more stress on this intellectual side of the moral sense than on the other, and the frequency with which in this chapter he employs the expressions know, and consider, and reason, is characteristic of all his prophesying. Even the most superficial reader must notice how much this prophet’s doctrine of conscience and repentance harmonises with the metanoia of New Testament preaching. This doctrine, that God has an interest in every detail of practical life and will argue it out with men, led Isaiah to a revelation of God quite peculiar to himself. For the Psalmist it is enough that his soul come to God, the living God. It is enough for other prophets to awe the hearts of their generations by revealing the Holy One; but Isaiah, with his intensely practical genius, and sorely tried by the stupid inconsistency of his people, bends himself to make them understand that God is at least a reasonable Being. Do not, his constant cry is, and he puts it sometimes in almost as many words-do not act as if there were a fool on the throne of the universe, which you virtually do when you take these meaningless forms of worship as your only intercourse with Him, and beside them practise your rank iniquities, as if He did not see nor care. We need not here do more than mention the passages in which, sometimes by a word, Isaiah stings and startles self-conscious politicians and sinners beetle-blind in sin, with the sense that God Himself takes an interest in their deeds and has His own working plans for their life. On the land question in Judah: { Isaiah 5:9 } "In mine ears, saith the Lord of Hosts." When the people were paralysed by calamity, as if it had no meaning or term: { Isaiah 28:29 } "This also cometh forth from the Lord of Hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in effectual working." Again, when they were panic-stricken, and madly sought by foolish ways their own salvation: { Isaiah 30:18 } "For the Lord is a God of judgment" -i.e., of principle, method, law, with His own way and time for doing things-"blessed are all they that wait for Him." And again, when politicians were carried away by the cleverness and success of their own schemes: { Isaiah 31:2 } "Yet He also is wise," or clever. It was only a personal application of this Divine attribute when Isaiah heard the word of the Lord give him the minutest directions for his own practice-as, for instance, at what exact point he was to meet Ahaz; { Isaiah 7:3 } or that he was to take a board and write upon it in the vulgar character; { Isaiah 8:1 } or that he was to strip frock and sandals, and walk without them for three years (chapter 20). Where common men feel conscience only as something vague and inarticulate, a flavour, a sting, a foreboding, the obligation of work; the constraint of affection, Isaiah heard the word of the Lord, clear and decisive on matters of policy, and definite even to the details of method and style. Isaiah’s conscience, then, was perfect, because it was two-fold: God is holy; God is practical. If there be the glory, the purity as of fire, of His Presence to overawe, there is His unceasing inspection of us, there is His interest in the smallest details of our life, there are His fixed laws, from regard for all of which no amount of religious sensibility may relieve us. Neither of these halves of conscience can endure by itself. If we forget the first we may be prudent and for a time clever, but will also grow self-righteous, and in time self-righteousness means stupidity too. If we forget the second we may be very devotional, but cannot escape becoming blindly and inconsistently immoral. Hypocrisy is the result either way, whether we forget how high God is or whether we forget how near. To these two great articles of conscience, however-God is high and God is near-the Bible adds a greater third, God is Love. This is the uniqueness and glory of the Bible’s interpretation of conscience. Other writings may equal it in enforcing the sovereignty and detailing the minutely practical bearings of conscience: the Bible alone tells man how much of conscience is nothing but God’s love. It is a doctrine as plainly laid down as the doctrine about chastisement, though not half so much recognised-"Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth." What is true of the material pains and penalties of life is equally true of the inward convictions, frets, threats, and fears, which will not leave stupid man alone. To men with their obscure sense of shame, and restlessness, and servitude to sin the Bible plainly says, "You are able to sin because you have turned your back to the love of God; you are unhappy because yon do not take that love to your heart; the bitterness of your remorse is that it is love against which you are ungrateful." Conscience is not the Lord’s persecution, but His jealous pleading, and not the fierceness of His anger, but the reproach of His love. This is the Bible’s doctrine throughout, and it is not absent from the chapter we are considering. Love gets the first word even in the indictment of this austere assize: "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me." Conscience is already a Father’s voice: the recollection, as it is in the parable of the prodigal, of a Father’s mercy; the reproach, as it is with Christ’s lamentation over Jerusalem, of outraged love. We shall find not a few passages in Isaiah, which prove that he was in harmony with all revelation upon this point, that conscience is the reproach of the love of God. But when that understanding of conscience breaks out in a sinner’s heart forgiveness cannot be far away. Certainly penitence is at hand. And therefore, because of all books the Bible is the only one which interprets conscience as the love of God, so is it the only one that can combine His pardon with His reproach, and as Isaiah now does in a single verse, proclaim His free forgiveness as the conclusion of His bitter quarrel. "Come, let us bring our reasoning to a close, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Our version, "Come, and let us reason together," gives no meaning here. So plain an offer of pardon is not reasoning together; it is bringing reasoning to an end; it is the settlement of a dispute that has been in progress. Therefore we translate, with Mr. Cheyne, "Let us bring our reasoning to an end." And how pardon can be the end and logical conclusion of conscience is clear to us, who have seen how much of conscience is love, and that the Lord’s controversy is the reproach of His Father’s heart, and His jealousy to make His own consider all His way of mercy towards them. But the prophet does not leave conscience alone with its personal and inward results. He rouses it to its social applications. The sins with which the Jews are charged in this charge of the Lord are public sins. The whole people is indicted, but it is the judges, the princes, and counsellors who are denounced. Judah’s disasters, which she seeks to meet by worship, are due to civic faults, bribery, corruption of justice, indifference to the rights of the poor and the friendless. Conscience with Isaiah is not what it is with so much of the religion of today, a cul de sac , into which the Lord chases a man and shuts him up to Himself, but it is a thoroughfare by which the Lord drives the man out upon the world and its manifold need of him. There is little dissection and less study of individual character with Isaiah. He has no time for it. Life is too much about him, and his God too much interested in life. What may be called the more personal sins-drunkenness, vanity of dress, thoughtlessness, want of faith in God and patience to wait for Him-are to Isaiah more social than individual symptoms, and it is for their public and political effects that he mentions them. Forgiveness is no end in itself, but the opportunity of social service; not a sanctuary in which Isaiah leaves men to sing its praises or form doctrines of it, but a gateway through which he leads God’s people upon the world with the cry that rises from him here: "Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." Before we pass from this form in which Isaiah figures religion we must deal with a suggestion it raises. No modern mind can come into this ancient court of the Lord’s controversy without taking advantage of its open forms to put a question regarding the rights of man there. That God should descend to argue with men, what license does this give to men? If religion be reasonable controversy of this kind, what is the place of doubt in it? Is not doubt man’s side of the argument? Has he not also questions to put-the Almighty from his side to arraign? For God has Himself here put man on a level with Him, saying, "Come, and let us reason together." A temper of this kind, though not strange to the Old Testament, lies beyond the horizon of Isaiah. The only challenge of the Almighty which in any of his prophecies he reports as rising from his own countrymen is the bravado of certain drunkards (chapters 5 and 28). Here and elsewhere it is the very opposite temper from honest doubt which he indicts-the temper that does not know, that does not consider. Ritualism and sensualism are to Isaiah equally false, because equally unthinking. The formalist and the fleshly he classes together, because of their stupidity. What does it matter whether a man’s conscience and intellect be stifled in his own fat or under the clothes with which he dresses himself? They are stifled, and that is the main thing. To the formalist Isaiah says, "Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider"; to the fleshly (chapter 5), "My people are gone into captivity for want of knowledge." But knowing and considering are just that of which doubt, in its modern sense, is the abundance, and not the defect. The mobility of mind, the curiosity, the moral sensitiveness, the hunger that is not satisfied with the chaff of formal and unreal answers, the spirit to find out truth for one’s self, wrestling with God-this is the very temper Isaiah, would have welcomed in a people whose sluggishness of reason was as justly blamed by him as the grossness of their moral sense. And if revelation be of the form in which Isaiah so prominently sets it, and the whole Bible bears him out in this-if revelation be this argumentative and reasonable process, then human doubt has its part in revelation. It is, indeed, man’s side of the argument, and, as history shows, has often helped to the elucidation of the points at issue. Merely intellectual scepticism, however, is not within Isaiah’s horizon. He would never have employed (nor would any other prophet) our modern habits of doubt, except as he employs these intellectual terms, to know and to consider- viz. , as instruments of moral search and conviction. Had he lived now he would have been found among those few great prophets who use the resources of the human intellect to expose the moral state of humanity; who, like Shakespeare and Hugo, turn man’s detective and reflective processes upon his own conduct; who make himself stand at the bar of his conscience. And truly to have doubt of everything in heaven-and earth, and never to doubt one’s self, is to be guilty of as stiff and stupid a piece of self-righteousness as the religious formalists whom Isaiah exposes. But the moral of the chapter is plainly what we have shown it to be, that a man cannot stifle doubt and debate about his own heart or treatment of God; whatever else he thinks about and judges, he cannot help judging himself. NOTE ON THE PLACE OF NATURE IN THE ARGUMENT OF THE LORD The office which the Bible assigns to Nature in the controversy of God with man is fourfold-Assessor, Witness, Man’s Fellow-Convict, and Doomster or Executioner. Taking these backward:- 1. Scripture frequently exhibits Nature as the domster of the Lord. Nature has a terrible power of flashing back from her vaster surfaces the guilty impressions of man’s heart; at the last day her thunders shall peal the doom of the wicked, and her fire devour them. In those prophecies of the book of Isaiah which relate to his own time this use is not made of Nature, unless it be in his very earliest prophecy in chapter 2 and in his references to the earthquake. { Isaiah 5:25 } To Isaiah the sentences and scourges of God are political and historical, the threats and arms of Assyria. He employs the violences of Nature only as metaphors for Assyrian rage and force. But he often promises fertility as the effect of the Lord’s pardon, and when the prophets are writing about Nature, it is difficult to say whether they are to be understood literally or poetically. But, at any rate, there is much larger use made of physical catastrophes and convulsions in those other prophecies which do not relate to Isaiah’s own time, and are now generally thought not to be his. Compare chapters 13 and 14. 2. The representation of the earth as the fellow-convict of guilty man, sharing his curse, is very vivid in Isaiah 24:1-23 ; Isaiah 25:1-12 ; Isaiah 26:1-21 ; Isaiah 27:1-13 . In the prophecies relating to his own time Isaiah, of course, identifies the troubles that afflict the land with the sin of the people, of Judah. But these are due to political causes- viz ., the Assyrian invasion. 3. In the Lord’s court of judgment the prophets sometimes employ Nature as a witness against man, as, for instance, the prophet Micah. { Micah 6:10 , ff} Nature is full of associations; the enduring mountains have memories from old, they have been constant witnesses of the dealing of God with His people. 4. Or lastly, Nature may be used as the great assessor of the conscience, sitting to expound the principles on which God governs life. This is Isaiah’s favourite use of Nature. He employs her to corroborate his statement of the Divine law and illustrate the ways of God to men, as in the end of chapter 28 and no doubt in the opening verse of this chapter. Isaiah 1:22 Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water: CHAPTER XIX AT THE LOWEST EBB Isaiah 1:1 ; Isaiah 22:1-25 IN the drama of Isaiah’s life we have now arrived at the final act-a short and sharp one of a few months. The time is 701 B.C., the fortieth year of Isaiah’s ministry, and about the twenty-sixth of Hezekiah’s reign. The background is the invasion of Palestine by Sennacherib. The stage itself is the city of Jerusalem. In the clear atmosphere before the bursting of the storm Isaiah has looked round the whole world-his world-uttering oracles on the nations from Tyre to Egypt and from Ethiopia to Babylon. But now the Assyrian storm has burst, and all except the immediate neighbourhood of the prophet is obscured. From Jerusalem Isaiah will not again lift his eyes. The stage is thus narrow and the time short, but the action one of the most critical in the history of Israel, taking rank with the Exodus from Egypt and the Return from Babylon. To Isaiah himself it marks the summit of his career. For half a century Zion has been preparing for, forgetting and again preparing for, her first and final struggle with the Assyrian. Now she is to meet her foe, face to face across her own walls. For forty years Isaiah has predicted for the Assyrian an uninterrupted path of conquest to the very gates of Jerusalem, but certain check and confusion there. Sennacherib has overrun the world, and leaps upon Zion. The Jewish nation await their fate, Isaiah his vindication, and the credit of Israel’s religion, one of the most extraordinary tests to which a spiritual faith was ever subjected. In the end, by the mysterious disappearance of the Assyrian, Jerusalem was saved, the prophet was left with his remnant and the future still open for Israel. But at the beginning of the end such an issue was by no means probable. Jewish panic and profligacy almost prevented the Divine purpose, and Isaiah went near to breaking his heart over the city, for whose redemption he had travailed for a lifetime. He was as sure as ever that this redemption must come, but a collapse of the people’s faith and patriotism at the eleventh hour made its coming seem worthless. Jerusalem appeared bent on forestalling her deliverance by moral suicide. Despair, not of God but of the city, settled on Isaiah’s heart; and in such a mood he wrote chapter 22. We may entitle it therefore, though written at a time when the tide should have been running to the full, "At the Lowest Ebb." We have thus stated at the outset the motive of this chapter, because it is one of the most unexpected and startling of all Isaiah’s prophecies. In it "we can discern precipices." Beneath our eyes, long lifted by the prophet to behold a future "stretching very far forth," this chapter suddenly yawns, a pit of blackness. For utterness of despair and the absolute sentence which it passes on the citizens of Zion we have had nothing like it from Isaiah since the evil days of Ahaz. The historical portions of the Bible which cover this period are not cleft by such a crevasse, and of course the official Assyrian annals, full as they are of the details of Sennacherib’s campaign in Palestine, know nothing of the moral condition of Jerusalem. Yet if we put the Hebrew and Assyrian narratives together, and compare them with chapters 1 and 22 of Isaiah, we may be sure that the following was something like the course of events which led down to this woeful depth in Judah’s experience. In a Syrian campaign Sennacherib’s path was plain-to begin with the Phoenician cities, march quickly south by the level coastland, subduing the petty chieftains upon it, meet Egypt at its southern end, and then, when he had rid himself of his only formidable foe, turn to the more delicate task of warfare among the hills of Judah-a campaign which he could scarcely undertake with a hostile force like Egypt on his flank. This course, he tells us, he followed. "In my third campaign, to the island of Syria I went. Luliah (Elulaeus), King of Sidon-for the fearful splendour of my majesty overwhelmed him-fled to a distant spot in the midst of the sea. His land I entered." City after city fell to the invader. The princes of Aradus, Byblus and Ashdod, by the coast, and even Moab and Edom, far inland, sent him their submission. He attacked Ascalon, and captured its king. He went on, and took the Philistine cities of Beth-dagon, Joppa, Barka, and Azor, all of them within forty miles of Jerusalem, and some even visible from her neighbourhood. South of this group, and a little over twenty-five miles from Jerusalem, lay Ekron; and here Sennacherib had so good reason for anger, that the inhabitants, expecting no mercy at his hands, prepared a stubborn defence. Ten years before this Sargon had set Padi, a vassal of his own, as king over Ekron; but the Ekronites had risen against Padi, put him in chains, and sent him to their ally Hezekiah, who now held him in Jerusalem. "These men," says Sennacherib, "were now terrified in their hearts; the shadows of death overwhelmed them." Before Ekron was reduced, however, the Egyptian army arrived in Philistia, and Sennacherib had to abandon the siege for these arch-enemies. He defeated them in the neighbourhood, at Eltekeh, returned to Ekron, and completed its siege. Then, while he himself advanced southwards in pursuit of the Egyptians, he detached a corps, which, marching eastwards through the mountain passes, overran all Judah and threatened Jerusalem. "And Hezekiah, King of Judah, who had not bowed down at my feet, forty-six of his strong cities, his castles and the smaller towns in their neighbourhood beyond number, by casting down. ramparts and by open attack, by battle - zuk , of the feet; nisi , hewing to pieces and casting down (?)- I besieged, I captured . . . He himself, like a bird in a cage, inside Jerusalem, his royal city, I shut him up; siege-towers against him I constructed, for he had given commands to renew the bulwarks of the great gate of his city." But Sennacherib does not say that he took Jerusalem, and simply closes the narrative of his campaign with the account of large tribute which Hezekiah sent after him to Nineveh. Here, then, we have material for a graphic picture of Jerusalem and her populace, when chapters 1 and 22 were utter

The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz. Isaiah 1:1 Isaiah the son of Amoz S. Horton. This is not Amos the inspired herdsman. It is his glory simply that he was the father of Isaiah. Like many another he lives in the reflected glory of his offspring. The next best thing to being a great man is to be the father of one. ( S. Horton. ) Isaiah's father C. Geikie, LL. D. The rabbis represent his father Amoz as having been a brother of King Amaziah; but, at any rate, if we may judge from his illustrious son's name, which means "salvation is from Jehovah," he was loyal to the national faith in days clouded by sore troubles, political danger threatening from without, and deep religious decay pervading all classes of the community. ( C. Geikie, LL. D. ) The vision of Isaiah Prof. J. Skinner, D. D. The word "vision" is used here in the wide sense of a collection of prophetic oracles ( Nahum 1:1 ; Obadiah 1 ). As the prophet was called a "seer," and his perception of Divine truth was called "seeing," so his message as a whole is termed a "vision." ( Prof. J. Skinner, D. D. ) The time when Isaiah prophesied S. Horton. Why does the Bible tell us so particularly the time when Isaiah prophesied? Does not the thinker belong to all the ages Does not the poet sing for all time? Why weight the narrative with these thronelogical details? Because you can only judge either a man or his message by knowing the circumstances of his time. If you take a geologist a new specimen he not only wants to know its genus and species, but the matrix out of which it was hewn. The best men not only help to make their times, but their times help to make them. He who is moulded entirely by his surroundings is a human jelly fish — of no account. He who is not influenced at all by "the play of popular passion" — the set of public opinion — is an anachronism, a living corpse. ( S. Horton. ) Isaiah's manly outspokenness J. Parker, D. D. It is a living man who speaks to us. This is not an anonymous book. Much value attaches to personal testimony. The true witness is not ashamed of day and date and all the surrounding chronology; we know where to find him, what he sprang from, who he is, and what he wants. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken. Isaiah 1:2-31 God finds vindication in nature D. Davies. I well remember two funerals going out of my house within a few brief months during my residence in London. There were cards sent by post and left at the door, in all kindliness; but one dark night when my grief overwhelmed me I looked at some of the cards and could find no vibration of sympathy there. I had not felt the touch of the hand that sent them. I went out into the storm that moaned and raged alternately, and walked round Regent's Park through the very heart of the hurricane. It seemed to soothe me. You troy I could not find sympathy there. Perhaps not, but I at least found affinity: the storm without seemed to harmonise with the storm within; and then I remembered that He who sent that storm to sweep over the earth loved the earth still, and then remembered that He who sent the storm to sweep over my soul, and make desolate my home, loved me still. I got comfort there in the darkness, and the wild noise of a storm on an autumn night, which I found not in cards of condolence, sincere as in many instances the sympathy of the senders was. Ah me! when man not only failed to sympathise, but also forgot all gratitude and rebelled against his Heavenly Father, I can imagine God looking out to His own universe, to the work of His own hand, and seeking vindication, if not sympathy, as He spoke of man, his rebellion and folly. ( D. Davies. ) The sinful nation Sermons by the Monday Club. I. THE PRIVILEGES OF THE NATION. It was no mean prerogative to become the chosen people of God, but for what was that choice made? Not because of perfect characters surely; but rather to declare among the nations the messages of God; not a nation holy in character, but with a holy errand. When the ten tribes revolted, leaving only a remnant, that remnant must do the errand appointed. Thus did God speak of them as "My people," "My children." Our privileges cannot save us, and even our blessings may become a curse. God cannot give to us personally what we will not receive. II. THE NATIONAL CORRUPTION. What the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans is in the New Testament, that is the first chapter of Isaiah's prophecy in the Old. Deeper degradation than that of Israel it would be hard to find. In Isaiah's time, gold and silver idols glittered on every street of Jerusalem. By royal authority, worship was given to the sun and moon. At the opening of each new season, snow-white horses, stalled in the rooms at the temple entrance, were driven forth harnessed to golden chariots to meet the sun at its rising. Incense ascended to heathen gods from altars built upon the streets. Vice had its impure rites in the temple itself. The valley of Hinnom echoed the dying screams of children offered as sacrifices in the terrible flames of the hideous Moloch. Words fail in depicting the deep corruption. There is the sting of sin in the plain statement of the awful history, "They have forsaken the Lord," etc. III. THE RELATION OF RITUAL TO MORALITY. The more pronounced the ceremonial, the more tenaciously will men cling to it. Thus, in Isaiah's day, they who had swung their incense to the sun and moon; who had worshipped Baal upon the high places and in the groves; who had cast their children into the burning arms of Moloch, turned immediately from these heathenish practices to worship in the temple. Of burnt offerings and sacrifices there was no end. The purest spiritual worship, like that of Enoch and Abraham and Melchizedek, did not need it; it was given when a nation of slaves, degraded by Egyptian bondage, could appreciate nothing higher, and it was taken away when the true, light was come. There was neither perfection nor spirituality in such a ritual; yet in such a system God tried to elevate the nation to spiritual truths they could not yet apprehend. The ritual could not make morality. IV. ANY WORSHIP TO PLEASE GOD MUST BE REASONABLE. The Divine appeal claims the undivided attention of the profoundest thoughts; "Come, now, and let us reason together." ( Sermons by the Monday Club. ) The sinful nation Hanford A. Edson, D. D. The message to the "sinful nation" with which the book of Isaiah begins has for ourselves the tremendous force of timeliness as well as truth. I. We are led to consider, that STATE AND NATION ARE INVOLVED TOGETHER. The country is "desolate," the cities are "burned with fire, 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." We remember indeed that the saints have survived in "the dens and caves of the earth." But these victories of truth and righteousness — God's power to overrule wickedness — by no means contradict Isaiah's vision. If it is true that the Founder of the Church can maintain its strength notwithstanding civil turmoil and decay, let us also consider how God magnifies the Church through days of peace and virtue. Jesus Himself waited until the nations were still And what may be the possibilities for His kingdom of the continued growth and happiness of our own country, it is entrancing to contemplate. The treasuries of love, how full they may be! The pastors and teachers for every dark land, — what hosts there may be prepared! II. Aroused to the consideration of such a problem, we readily appreciate the prophet's reference to THE RESPONSIBILITY OF RULERS (ver. 10). Our own happy visions of the future may all be over clouded if there be but one Ahab in authority. The exhortation, therefore, addresses those who as citizens are to be charged with the duty of placing men in power. III. We find the prophet distinctly TRACING THE NATIONAL CALAMITIES TO THE NATION'S WICKEDNESS (Vers. 4-8). IV. THE PROPHET'S MESSAGE TO HIS COUNTRYMEN IS PARTICULARLY DIRECTED AGAINST THEIR IMPIETY. They have forms of religion enough, indeed. But out of the people's worship the heart and life have departed. Only the husks remain. Perhaps it will be seen in the end that the Pharisee is not only as bad, but as bad a citizen too, as the glutton and the winebibber. The Pharisaic poison works with a more stealthy force and makes its attacks upon more vital parts. We are to look not only for a sinful nation's natural decay, but besides for those mighty interpositions of Providence in flood and famine, in pestilence and war, directly for its punishment and overthrow. V. THE VALUE OF A "REMNANT." God has been saving remnants from the beginning — Noah, Abraham, Moses, Nehemiah — and the little companies of which such souls are the centre and the life in every age. God's plans are not spoiled by man's madness. If many rebel against Him, He saves the few and multiplies their power. The leaven leavens the whole lump again. VI. Most impressive, therefore, is THE TENDER AND EMPHATIC PROCLAMATION OF MERCY AND PARDON in this chapter. ( Hanford A. Edson, D. D. ) The sinful nation J. Sanderson, D. D. I. THE WRITER (ver. 1). II. THE CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE (vers. 2-6). III. THE FRUITS OF THIS CHARACTER (vers. 7-9). IV. FALSE EFFORTS TO OBTAIN RELIEF (vers. 10-15). Murderers may be found at church, making their attendance a cloak for their iniquity or an atonement for their crime. God cannot become a party to such horrible trading. V. THE TRUE WAY OF DELIVERANCE (vers. 16-18). God not only describes the disease, but provides the remedy. The fountain is provided; sinners must wash in it — must confess, forsake, get the right spirit, and do right. ( J. Sanderson, D. D. ) Isaiah's sermon The sermon which is contained in this chapter hath in it — I. A HIGH CHARGE exhibited in God's name against the Jewish Church and nation. 1. For their ingratitude (vers. 2, 3). 2. For their incorrigibleness (ver. 5). 3. For the universal corruption and degeneracy of the people (vers. 4, 6, 21, 22). 4. For their rulers' perverting of justice (ver. 23). II. A SAD COMPLAINT OF THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD which they had brought upon themselves by their sins, and by which they were brought almost to utter ruin (rots. 7-9). III. A JUST REJECTION OF THOSE SHOWS AND SHADOWS OF RELIGION which they kept up among them, notwithstanding this general defection and apostasy (vers. 10-15). IV. AN EARNEST CALL TO REPENTANCE AND REFORMATION, setting before them life and death (vers. 16-20). V. A THREATENING OF RUIN TO THOSE THAT WOULD NOT BE REFORMED (vers. 24, 28-31). VI. A PROMISE OF A HAPPY REFORMATION AT LAST, and a return to their primitive purity and prosperity (vers. 25-27). And all this is to be applied by us, not only to the communities we are members of, in their public interests, but to the state of our own souls. ( M. Henry . ) A last appeal Lloyd Robinson. The prophets are God's storm signals. This was a crisis in Israel's history. Mercy and judgment had alike failed. The mass of the people had become more hardened. Judgment alone had now become the only real mercy. The prophet was sent to make a last appeal; to warn of judgment. I. THE CHARGE. They have proved unnatural children. Have disowned their Father. Have failed to meet the claims due from them. Have frustrated the purpose of their national existence. Have, as a nation, wholly abandoned themselves to sin. In spite of exceptional privileges, they have lowered themselves beneath the level of the brutes. Nature witnesses against them, and puts them to shame. II. THE DEFACE. The prophet imagines them to point to their temple services, — so regular, elaborate, costly, — in proof that their natural relations to their Father have been maintained. But this common self-delusion is disallowed, exposed, repelled. Not ritual, not laborious costly worship is required, but sincerity of heart, integrity of purpose, rightness of mind. Acceptable religious observance must be the spontaneous expression of an inward religious life. III. THE OFFER OF MERCY. But the day of grace is not even yet past. One last attempt is yet made to arouse the sleeping spiritual sensibilities of the nation by the offer of pardon. Reconciliation is possible only upon amendment. IV. THE THREAT OF JUDGMENT. Fire alone can now effect the change desired. God cannot be evaded. He is as truly merciful in threatening as in offering pardon. The nation shall be purged, yet not destroyed. Evil shall be consumed. But thereto who, like gold, can stand the fire and come out purified shall be the nucleus of an ideal society, and remodel the national life. All social amendment has its roots in complete purification of individual hearts. The prophet's dream was never realised. Yet it was not therefore wasted. It was an ideal, an inspiration to the good in after ages. It will one day be realised through the Gospel. ( Lloyd Robinson. ) I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me. The Fatherhood of God in relation to Israel F. Delitzsch. Israel is Jehovah's men ( Exodus 4:22 , etc.); all the members of the nation are His children ( Deuteronomy 14:1 ; Deuteronomy 32:20 ); He is the Father of Israel, whom He has begotten ( Deuteronomy 32:6, 18 ). The existence of Israel as a nation, like that of other nations, is effected, indeed, by means of natural reproduction, not by spiritual regeneration; but the primary ground of Israel's origin is the supernaturally efficacious word of grace addressed to Abraham ( Genesis 17:15 , etc.); and a series of wonderful dealings in grace has brought the growth and development of Israel to that point which it had attained at the Exodus from Egypt. It is in this sense that Jehovah has begotten Israel. ( F. Delitzsch. ) Israel's apostasy F. Delitzsch. Two things that ought never to have been conjoined — I. THE GRACIOUS AND FILIAL RELATION OF ISRAEL TO JEHOVAH. II. ISRAEL'S BASE APOSTASY FROM JEHOVAH. ( F. Delitzsch. ) The Fatherhood of God in the Old Testament J. Parker, D. D. Sometimes we imagine that the Fatherhood of God is a New Testament revelation; we speak of the prophets as referring to God under titles of resplendent glory and overpowering majesty, and we set forth in contrast the gentler terms by which the Divine Being is designated in the new covenant. How does God describe Himself in this chapter? Here He claims to be Father: I have nourished and brought up sons — not, I have nourished and brought up slaves — or subjects — or creatures — or insects — or beasts of burden — I have nourished and brought up sons: I am the Father of creation, the fountain and origin of the paternal and filial religion. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) Ingratitude Bishop Reynolds. As the Dead Sea drinks in the river Jordan and is never the sweeter, and the ocean all other rivers and is never the fresher, so we are apt to receive dally mercies from God and still remain insensible to them — unthankful for them. ( Bishop Reynolds. ) God man's truest Friend We are obliged to speak of the Lord after the manner of men, and in doing so we are clearly authorised to say that He does not look upon human sin merely with the eye of a judge who condemns it, but with the eye of a friend who, while he censures the offender, deeply laments that there should be such faults to condemn. Hear, "O heavens, and give ear, O earth: I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me," is not merely an exclamation of surprise, or an accusation of injured justice, but it contains a note of grief, as though the Most High represented Himself to us as mourning like an ill-treated parent, and deploring that after having dealt so well with His offspring they had made Him so base a return. God is grieved that man should sin. That thought should encourage everyone who is conscious of having offended God to come back to Him. If thou lamentest thy transgression, the Lord laments it too. ( C. H. Spurgeon . ) The parental grief of God, and its pathetic appeal D. Davies. (with ver. 3): — I look upon this text as a fragment of Divine autobiography, and as such possessing the greatest significance to us. I. It presents to us in a striking manner THE SOCIAL SIDE OF GOD'S CHARACTER. It is well for us to remember that all that is tender and lovable in our social experience, so far as it is pure and noble, is obtained from God. The revelation which we have of God presents Him to us, not as isolated from all His creatures, but as finding His highest joy in perfect communion with exalted spirits whom He has created. I love to think that man exists because of this exalted social instinct in God. Further, when God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone," methinks I hear but the echo of a Divine, of a God. felt feeling. Among the mysteries of Christ's passion we find an element of suffering which, as God and man, He felt — "Ye shall leave Me alone"; "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!" Our God is to us an object of supremest interest because He holds with us the most sacred relationship. II. Our text represents GOD ON THE DOMESTIC SIDE OF HIS CHARACTER. It is the parental rather than the paternal that we see here. The word father does not express all that God is to us. The illustrations of this Book are not exhausted with those that refer to His fatherhood: "Can a woman forget her sucking child," etc. ( Isaiah 49:15 ). All that is tender in motherhood, as well as all that is strong in fatherhood, is to be found in Him. It is as a parent that He speaks here: "I have nourished" — or "given nutriment." In other words, "Out of My rich resources of blessing have I provided for their need; I have nourished and brought up children." Here we have God's grief revealed in the light which can only come through such tender and loving channels as parental patience and wounded love. III. Our text reveals GOD'S CHARACTER IN ITS REPROVING ASPECT. The folly is emphasised by the comparison with two creatures, by no means noted for their intelligence. Yet both are domesticated creatures, and feel the ties of ownership. What is it that domesticates a creature? The creature that recognises man as his master, by that very act becomes domesticated. The higher type of knowledge possessed by the domesticated animal is a direct recognition of its master. The finest creatures possess that. There is a lower grade of knowledge, but yet one which stamps the creature as domesticated. That is an acknowledgment, not of the master directly, but a recognition of the provision which the master has made for its need. "The ox knoweth his owner." The ass does not do that; but the ass knoweth "his master's crib." The ass knows the stall where it is fed, and it goes and is fed there. By that act it indirectly acknowledges the sovereignty of its owner, because it recognises his protection. IV. The text presents to us THE TENDER AND PATHETIC SIDE OF GOD'S CHARACTER. This is God's version of human sin. His rebukes are full of pathos. With the great mantle of charity that covers over a multitude of sins, and with the Divine pity that puts the best construction upon human rebellion, He puts all down to ignorance and folly. Observe further, that although they have rebelled against Him, He does not withdraw the name He gave them, Israel — "Israel doth not know: My people doth not consider." He does not repudiate them. The last thing that love can do is that. There is something exceedingly pathetic in God here making an appeal to creation relative to His relationship with man. What if it gave a relief to the heart of God to exclaim to His own creation that groaned with Him over human sin, "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth!" Am I imagining? Do we not find a Divine as well as human feeling in Christ's going to the wilderness or the mountain top in the hours of His greatest need? There, amid God's creation, He found His Father very near. Here the fact that the child does not know his Heavenly Father is represented as the burden of God's grief. But in this case the ignorance was wilful This was the burden on the heart of Christ in His prayer ( John 17 ). There everything is made to depend upon men knowing God as their Father. That is just why we preach. We seek to make it impossible for you to pass through God's world, and receive from His hands blessings great and boundless, and yet not know Him. We seek to make it impossible for you to look at the Cross and listen to the story of an infinite sacrifice, and yet forget that "God so loved the world," etc. ( D. Davies. ) The heinousness of rebellion against God's paternal government T. W. Coit. The criminality of rebellion must, of course, be affected by the nature of the government and administration against which it is exerted. It must be measured by the mildness and propriety of the system whose authority it renounces, and by the patience, lenity, and wisdom with which that system is administered. If the government be despotic in its character, and administered with implacable or ferocious sternness, it can hardly be unlawful, and may be deserving of commendation. If the government be paternal in its character and administered with paternal sensibilities, then criminal to a degree absolutely appalling. I. THE PATERNAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. This is seen in — 1. The object of its precepts. The entire and simple aim of all and every one of His commands, and the motives by which He urges them, appear to be an advancement in knowledge, holiness, and felicity, that we may be fitted for His own presence and intimate communion; for the exalted dignities and interminable bliss of the realms where His honour dwelleth. 2. The length of His forbearance. Who but a father, surpassing all below that have honoured this endearing name, could have borne so long and so meekly, with the thankless, the wayward, the audacious, the provoking! Who but a father, such as Heaven alone can furnish, would return good for evil, and blessing for cursing, hundreds and thou. sands of years, and then, when any finite experimenter had utterly despaired, resolve to vanquish his enemies, not by terror, wasting and woe, but by the omnipotence of grace and mercy! Who but a GOD, and a paternal GOD, would have closed such a strange and melancholy history as that of Israel, by sending "His Son into the world, not to condemn the world," etc. 3. The nature of His tenderness. The philanthropist commiserates the distresses of his fellow creatures, and magnanimously resolves to meliorate them. But he is not animated by that lively, that overpowering, self-sacrificing tenderness which prompts the exertions of a father in behalf of his suffering child. No; that tenderness shrinks from no expenditure, falters before no obstacles. And such was the tenderness of God, for it is not said that He so pitied, but that "He so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son," etc. II. IF SIN BE THE RESISTANCE OF THE COMMANDS AND CLAIMS, THE MOTIVES AND EXPOSTULATIONS, THE GRACE AND MERCY OF ONE WHO HAS GIVEN US SUCH ILLUSTRIOUS PROOFS OF HIS PATERNAL REGARD AND GOODNESS — CAN IT BE OTHER THAN REBELLION? Can it be other than rebellion of a most aggravated character? The consideration should silence every whisper of pretension to meritorious virtue, and stir up the sentiments of profound contrition. It should take every symptom of stubbornness away, and make us self-accusing, lowly, and brokenhearted. ( T. W. Coit. ) The ox knoweth his owner...but Israel doth not know. Isaiah 1:3 Isaiah's message J. G. Rogers, B. A. What does Isaiah teach about God? A prophet of his times had much to do in clearing the minds of the people from the confusion, or something worse, into which, as the history shows, the Jews were only too prone to fall. They were surrounded by idolatrous nations, and there was a danger that they might regard Jehovah as though He were like these gods of the nations. Even when they did not sink to this level they were prone to regard Him as their national God, not as the God of all the earth. I. What the prophet sought to do was to communicate to them something of that view of the MAJESTY OF HIS GLORY AND THE BEAUTY OF HIS HOLINESS which had impressed itself so deeply on his own mind. He had seen God, and he would fain have them see Him also. And where can we search for more sublime conceptions of the spirituality, the holiness, the majesty of God than those which we find in this book? II. But the teaching of the prophet includes another conception of God which we should be still less prepared to find in the Old Testament. If the lofty conceptions of the Divine spirituality surprise, still more are we impressed with the revelation of THE DIVINE TENDERNESS AND THOUGHT FOR MAN. This is the basis of all those urgent appeals addressed by Isaiah to his own generation. The first chapter strikes the keynote. Here is not a distant God so absorbed in the care of His vast empire that He has no remembrance of His poor children here, and so far removed that between Him and them there can be no sympathy. The prevailing note is that for which we are least prepared — that of Love. There is no dallying with the sin. The apostasy of the people is set forth in its darkest aspects, and the enormity of the rebellion only serves to make more conspicuous the glory of the grace which is proclaimed to these sinners. All their iniquity, their ingratitude, their pride of heart, their forgetfulness of God have not turned the heart of their God from them. Surely these are wondrous teachings to find in this old world record. Isaiah had them from God Himself. ( J. G. Rogers, B. A. ) The inconsiderateness of mankind towards God I. A SERIOUS FAULT, common, yea, universal. "Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider." 1. Men are most inconsiderate towards God. One would pardon them if they forgot many minor things, and neglected many inferior persons, but to be inconsiderate to their Creator, to their Preserver, to Him in whose hand their everlasting destiny is placed, this is a strange folly as well as a great sin. If it were only because He is so great, and therefore we are so dependent upon Him, one would have thought that a rational man would have acquainted himself with God and been at peace; but when we reflect that God is supremely good, kind, tender and gracious, as well as great, the marvel of man's thoughtlessness is much increased. 2. Then, again, man is inconsiderate towards himself in reference to his best interests. 3. Thoughtless man is inconsiderate of the claims of justice and of gratitude, and this makes him appear base as well as foolish. The text says, "Israel doth not know." Now, Israel is a name of nobility, it signifies a prince; and there are some here whose position in society, whose condition amongst their fellow men, should oblige them to the service of God. That motto is true, " noblesse oblige ," — nobility has its obligations; and where the Lord elevates a man into a position of wealth and influence, he ought to feel that he is under peculiar bonds to serve the Lord. I speak also to those who have been trained in the fear of God. To you more is given, and therefore of you more is required. 4. One sad point about this inconsiderateness is, that man lives without consideration upon a matter where nothing but consideration will avail. 5. This inconsideration, also, occurs upon a subject where, by the testimony of tens of thousands, consideration would be abundantly remunerative, and would yield the happiest results. II. AGGRAVATIONS WHICH ATTEND IT, in many eases. 1. And first, remember that some of these careless persons have had their attention earnestly directed to the topics which still they neglect. Observe in this passage that these people had been summoned by God to consider. The heavens and the earth were called to bear witness that they had been nourished and brought up by the good Father, and in the fourth verse they are rebuked because they continue to be so unmindful of their God. Now, if a person should for a while forget an important thing, we should not be surprised, for the memory is not perfect; but when attention is called to it again and again, when consideration is requested kindly, tenderly, earnestly, and when because the warning is neglected, that attention is demanded with authority, and possibly with a degree of sharpness, one feels that a man who is still unmindful is altogether without excuse, and must be negligent of set purpose and with determined design. 2. The prophet then mentions the second aggravation, namely, that in addition to being called and admonished, these people had been chastened. They had been chastised, indeed, so often and so severely that the Lord wearied of it. He saw no use in smiting them any more. Their whole body was covered with bruises, they had been so sorely smitten. The nation as a nation had been so invaded and trodden down by its enemies that it was utterly desolate, and the Lord says, "Why should ye be stricken any more? Ye will revolt more and more." I may be addressing someone whose life of late has been a series of sorrows. Know you not that all these are sent to wean you from the world? Will you still cling to it! Must the Lord strike again and again, and again and again, before you will hear Him? 3. It was an additional piece of guiltiness that these people were all the while that they would not consider, very zealous in an outward religion. 4. Yet further, there was an aggravation to Israel's forgetfulness of God, because she was most earnestly and affectionately invited to turn to God by gracious promises. "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." A man might say, "Why should I think of God? He is my enemy." O man, you know better. 5. As a last aggravation, note that these very people had ability enough to consider other things, for we find that they considered how to get bribes, and were very shrewd in following after rewards; yet they did not know and did not consider their God. Oh, how quick are some men in the ways of evil, and yet, if you talk to them about religion they say it is mysterious, and beyond their power of apprehension. Those same persons will discuss with you the knottiest points of politics, or unravel the abstrusities of science, and yet they pretend they cannot understand the simplicities of revelation. "I am a poor man," saith one, "and you cannot expect me to know much"; yet, if anybody were to meet that same "poor man" in the street and tell him he was a fool, he would be indignant at such an accusation, and would zealously prove that he was not inferior in common sense. "I cannot," says one, "vex my brain about such things as these"; yet that very man wears his brain far more in pursuit of wealth or pleasure. If a man has an understanding, and can exercise it well upon minor matters, how shall we apologise for his neglect of his God? III. THE SECRET CAUSES of human indifference to topics so important. 1. In the case of many thoughtless persons we must lay the blame to the sheer frivolity of their nature. 2. I have no doubt that in every case, however, the bottom reason is opposition to God Himself. 3. Upon some minds the tendency to delay operates fearfully. 4. Some make an excuse for themselves for not considering eternity, because they are such eminently practical men. I only wish that those who profess to be practical were more truly so, for a practical man always takes more care of his body than of his coat, certainly; then should he not take more care of his soul than of the body, which is but the garment of it? A practical man will be sure to consider matters in due proportion; he will not give all his mind to a cricket match and neglect his business. And yet how often your practical man still more greatly errs; he devotes all his time to money making, and not a minute to the salvation of his soul and its preparation for eternity! 5. I have no doubt with a great many their reason for not thinking about soul matters, is prejudice. They are prejudiced because some Christian professor has not lived up to his profession, or they have heard something which is said to be the doctrine of the Gospel, which they cannot approve of. 6. In most cases men do not like to trouble themselves, and they have an uncomfortable suspicion that if they were to look too narrowly into their affairs they would find things far from healthy. They are like the bankrupt before the court the other day who did not keep books; he did not like his books, for

1:1-9 Isaiah signifies, The salvation of the Lord; a very suitable name for this prophet, who prophesies so much of Jesus the Saviour, and his salvation. God's professing people did not know or consider that they owed their lives and comforts to God's fatherly care and kindness. How many are very careless in the affairs of their souls! Not considering what we do know in religion, does us as much harm, as ignorance of what we should know. The wickedness was universal. Here is a comparison taken from a sick and diseased body. The distemper threatens to be mortal. From the sole of the foot even to the head; from the meanest peasant to the greatest peer, there is no soundness, no good principle, no religion, for that is the health of the soul. Nothing but guilt and corruption; the sad effects of Adam's fall. This passage declares the total depravity of human nature. While sin remains unrepented, nothing is done toward healing these wounds, and preventing fatal effects. Jerusalem was exposed and unprotected, like the huts or sheds built up to guard ripening fruits. These are still to be seen in the East, where fruits form a large part of the summer food of the people. But the Lord had a small remnant of pious servants at Jerusalem. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed. The evil nature is in every one of us; only Jesus and his sanctifying Spirit can restore us to spiritual health. 1:10-15 Judea was desolate, and their cities burned. This awakened them to bring sacrifices and offerings, as if they would bribe God to remove the punishment, and give them leave to go on in their sin. Many who will readily part with their sacrifices, will not be persuaded to part with their sins. They relied on the mere form as a service deserving a reward. The most costly devotions of wicked people, without thorough reformation of heart and life, cannot be acceptable to God. He not only did not accept them, but he abhorred them. All this shows that sin is very hateful to God. If we allow ourselves in secret sin, or forbidden indulgences; if we reject the salvation of Christ, our very prayers will become abomination. 1:16-20 Not only feel sorrow for the sin committed, but break off the practice. We must be doing, not stand idle. We must be doing the good the Lord our God requires. It is plain that the sacrifices of the law could not atone, even for outward national crimes. But, blessed be God, there is a Fountain opened, in which sinners of every age and rank may be cleansed. Though our sins have been as scarlet and crimson, a deep dye, a double dye, first in the wool of original corruption, and afterwards in the many threads of actual transgression; though we have often dipped into sin, by many backslidings; yet pardoning mercy will take out the stain, Ps 51:7. They should have all the happiness and comfort they could desire. Life and death, good and evil, are set before us. O Lord, incline all of us to live to thy glory. 1:21-31 Neither holy cities nor royal ones are faithful to their trust, if religion does not dwell in them. Dross may shine like silver, and the wine that is mixed with water may still have the colour of wine. Those have a great deal to answer for, who do not help the oppressed, but oppress them. Men may do much by outward restraints; but only God works effectually by the influences of his Spirit, as a Spirit of Judgment. Sin is the worst captivity, the worst slavery. The redemption of the spiritual Zion, by the righteousness and death of Christ, and by his powerful grace, most fully accord with what is here meant. Utter ruin is threatened. The Jews should become as a tree when blasted by heat; as a garden without water, which in those hot countries would soon be burned up. Thus shall they be that trust in idols, or in an arm of flesh. Even the strong man shall be as tow; not only soon broken, and pulled to pieces, but easily catching fire. When the sinner has made himself as tow and stubble, and God makes himself as a consuming fire, what can prevent the utter ruin of the sinner?