IO. II. The Futility of a merely Ceremonial Worship (1:10-17) Hear the word of the LORD, Ye rulers of Sodom; Give ear unto the law of our God Ye people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? Saith the LORD. I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, And the fat of fed beasts; And I delight not in the blood of bullocks, to them it was a ritual thing, to him a moral. This great section shows how completely the prophets despised a religion which was exhausted in ritual, and how earnestly they championed morality as the supreme expression of religion. The 10. Through the imperative hear we get a glimpse of a great and eager crowd of worshippers gathered in the temple courts. prophet addresses the worshippers leaders and people alike as citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. The idea is not so much that the fate of Jerusalem will be like theirs, as that her guilt is like theirs, as though the two really go together - like in guilt, and like in destiny. This is, of course, the language of prophetic hyperbole; in point of fact, the sins of which Jerusalem was guilty, as enumerated, e.g., in vs. 17, were not so terrible as the sins of Sodom (cf. Gen. 13: 13; 19: 5 ff.). But the strong language shows how utterly abominable to the soul of a prophet is a religion which cares everything for ritual, and nothing for morals. The law of our God has here nothing to do with any written law, such as we find in the Pentateuch. Law is instruction, and is here, as the parallelism shows, identical with the word of Jehovah, that is, the word which he speaks through his prophet Isaiah practically it is the challenge which follows in vss. 11-17. 11. The people addressed by Isaiah are a zealous people, who offer a multitude of sacrifices: probably their zeal was at this period heightened by the fear of Assyria. The sacrifice is here a general word for the offering of a slain animal; it might be offered to the deity in whole, as a burnt offering entirely consumed upon the altar, or in part, as the fat and the blood. Beasts of several kinds were offered, Jehovah is sated with them; but what is it all 12. When ye come to appear before me, Who hath required this at your hand, to him? That is not what he desires or delights in. In their conception of religion, the great prophets appear to have given practically no place whatever to animal sacrifice, which bulked so largely in the popular conception; to them the sacrifice of the will was paramount (Ps. 40: 6-8). Amos (5: 25) and Jeremiah (7:22) maintain that animal sacrifice had formed no part of the divine demand in the days of the Exodus - then and now and ever, what God requires of man is a moral service (Micah 6: 6-8), mercy, and not sacrifice (Hos. 6:6). It is not surprising that this word of Hosea's, which so aptly crystallizes the prophetic conception of religion, was specially dear to our Lord (Mat. 9: 13; 12: 7). 12, 13a. Metrical and other considerations seem to suggest that the last clause of vs. 12 should be taken with vs. 13. The treading of the courts could not in any case be required of the hands. We should probably therefore translate: When ye come to behold my face, Who hath required this at your hands? Trample my courts no more, Bring offerings (no more). Vain is the smoke of sacrifice, It is an abomination to me. The present Hebrew text is pointed, against the grammar, to mean: "when ye come to appear, or show yourselves, before me.' There can be no doubt, however, that the Hebrew words originally meant and were intended to mean: "when ye come to see my face" a phrase which carries one back to a time when God was conceived as a man, and mortals were supposed to speak to him, and see him face to face, though in Isaiah's time the phrase can have meant little more than turning the face in the direction of the inner shrine of the sanctuary, where the presence of Jehovah was supposed uniquely to be. Even so, however, the anthropomorphic flavor of the phrase was objectionable to the austere theologians of a later date, and the word was pointed as a passive, or rather middle, not active, so as to suggest that the people appeared or showed themselves, and thus to eliminate the idea of beholding the divine face. Similar liberties are not infrequently taken with the original text, sometimes by the later Jews who pointed the consonantal text, sometimes much earlier still by the Greek-speaking translators, who, for example, in Exod. 24:10, transform" they saw the God of Israel "into" they saw the place where the God of Israel stood." that is, such sacrifices as are men Who hath required this 13. To trample my courts? Bring no more vain oblations. Incense is an abomination unto me; New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with 1 Iniquity and the solemn meeting. 14. Your new moons and your appointed feasts 1 Gr. fasting. tioned in the preceding verse — at your hand? As a matter of fact, there was an ancient law which did require that no worshipper should appear empty-handed (Exod. 23: 15; 34: 20). The prophetic conception of religion, however, as we have seen, was different. It is difficult to decide between Bring no more a vain offering: the smoke of sacrifice is an abomination to me, and Bring no more offerings: vain is the smoke of sacrifice, it is an abomination to me. The latter is more drastic and is probably to be preferred. Offering here is a general word covering animal sacrifice, though in the later law the term was confined to the bloodless sacrifice. 13b, 14. Not only are the sacrifices detestable, but the very holy days themselves, of which the new moon and the sabbath (frequently mentioned together, cf. Amos 8:5, Hos. 2: 11) are specially singled out. The new moon must have been a very ancient festival, and goes back to Israel's nomadic days: the sabbath, apparently of Babylonian origin, was probably first domesticated among the Hebrews - and, in the process, transformed in the agricultural period that followed their entrance into Canaan. We can hardly suppose that the holy days are objectionable in themselves, but simply as affording opportunity for the convocation of the immoral worshippers. After I cannot perhaps the word bear should be supplied (there is no equivalent for away with in the Hebrew): New moon and sabbath, solemn convocation, I cannot bear. The last two Hebrew words of vs. 13 might be translated wickedness and worship (lit. iniquity and sacred assembly), and would give a fine epigrammatic point to the verse. For "iniquity," however, the Greek version reads fasting, and this is possibly correct. Participation in the act of worship or communion with the deity was often preceded by preparatory fasting, so that the two words together might indicate a certain scrupulous piety. This kind of piety, however, offered by wor 15. 16. 17. My soul hateth: They are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, Your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; Cease to do evil : Learn to do well Seek judgement, shippers with hands full of blood (vs. 15), my soul hateth. The appointed feasts are the festivals determined by the season of the year (Gen. 1: 14). The sacred seasons and sacrifices lie upon Jehovah like a burden which wearies him; his patience is exhausted and he will bear it no more. 15. Prayer is a higher expression of religion than animal sacrifice; but their prayers, passionately offered with outstretched hands, are as detestable as their sacrifices, because in their social relations they show neither mercy nor justice (vss. 16, 17). Jehovah will not hear the prayers of such men, however many or passionate they be: he will hide his eyes as a man does, who refuses to grant a request (Prov. 28: 27). 16. The last clause of vs. 15 should go with vs. 16: Your hands are full of blood, Wash, cleanse yourselves. The blood which stained their hands vividly suggests the violence which those unscrupulous hypocrites did not hesitate to use, in order to compass their nefarious ends. The hands outstretched in prayer are red. Hands and hearts sorely need to be cleansed. The God whom they worshipped was not blind to the immorality of their social life: “ put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes." 17. The vague phrases, cease to do evil, learn to do well whether part of the original text or not receive at any rate much more concrete and definite expression in the four following phrases, which show that what Isaiah means by good is justice and mercy as applied to social relations, "seek justice.' Probably instead of relieve the oppressed, we should translate restrain (or, by the change of a letter, chastise) the man of violence. The fatherless and the widow, having no natural defenders, would fall an easy prey to the unscrupulous; but Israel's God is on the side of the weak, and those who worship him truly are like him in their regard for the defenceless. True religion, according to Isaiah, consists not in offering animal sacrifice, but in defending the rights of the weak, especially when they were assailed by avarice and imperilled by unjust legal processes. The truest expression of religion is justice and pity in our relations with our fellow-men (cf. Js. I: 27). I: 18-20. come An invitation is given by Jehovah to the people to before a court, as it were, in which each party may argue his case. In point of fact, it is only Jehovah who speaks; he lays down the terms of acceptance and rejection - terms which the conscience of the people must admit to be reasonable. 18. Though your sins (such as are described or implied in vss. 15-17, 21, etc.) be as scarlet, etc. This looks like a promise of forgiveness the red sin (cf. vs. 15) will be washed white (though, in vs. 16, the washing was to be done by themselves). It must be admitted, however, that, considering the dreadful state of Jerusalem as disclosed alike by the preceding and the following verses (21 ff.), so emphatic an assurance of forgiveness, especially at the very beginning of Jehovah's argument, comes as an abrupt surprise softened indeed, somewhat, by reading back into vs. 18 the conditions laid down in vss. 19 and 20. This difficulty has led some scholars to take the second clauses as stinging and indignant questions: "though your sins be as scarlet, shall they be white as snow? shall they be as wool? " with the implied answer, Nay, verily." Red sins cannot be so easily washed out as a frivolous 66 |