Bible Study on Isaiah 1, verses 10 to 15, Jerusalem likened to Sodom and Gomorrah

 

Isaiah 1:10 ¶  Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. 11  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, or of lambs, or of he goats. 12  When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? 13  Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. 14  Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. 15  And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

God is calling Jerusalem Sodom and Gomorrah for its sins. This is a profound insult, as you can imagine. Put your mind back in Genesis to the rain of ruin on Sodom and Gomorrah. God has likened Jerusalem to Sodom in other prophecies including one about the end of history.

Jeremiah 23:14  I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.

Ezekiel 16:46  And thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand: and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her daughters. 47  Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, thou wast corrupted more than they in all thy ways. 48  As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.

Revelation 11:8  And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.

They rejected the important matters of the Law given to Moses as the Scribes and Pharisees did in Jesus’ time.

Matthew 23:23  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

But they focused on the strictly ceremonial aspects of the Law. But God had no need of those things such as sacrifices without the proper obedience. He already possesses, owns all creatures.

Psalm 50:10  For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. 11  I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. 12  If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.

He’s done with the sacrifices made by an unrepentant people.

He told them what He wanted from them.

Deuteronomy 10:12  And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,

Micah 6:8  He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

The sacrifices He valued most were the sacrifices of obedience, mercy, praise, and thanksgiving.

1Samuel 15:22  And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

Hosea 6:6  For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

Psalm 69:30 ¶  I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving. 31  This also shall please the LORD better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs.

God is telling the Israelites through Isaiah that their worship, their rituals, their holy days, and solemn occasions are all a fraud, a phony and hypocritical show of false worship that the God to whom these so-called acts of worship are directed to, despises. Imagine Cain’s false religion that God rejected and the Israelites false view of religion.

For verse 15 one can think of Cain killing Abel as well as the decree by God in Genesis 9:6.