Bible Study on Isaiah 1, verses 2 to 9, Ah sinful nation

 

Isaiah 1:2 ¶  Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. 3  The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. 4  Ah sinful nation, a people laden 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.

Compare Isaiah 1:2 with Genesis in the creation of heaven and earth and the establishment of the children of Israel, who will rebel against God. Think of Adam and Eve as God’s children as mankind rebels against God. There are other connections between Isaiah, chapter 1 and Genesis if you will look for them.

Isaiah is speaking for God, from God, and what is to follow is an important pronouncement.

Deuteronomy 32:1 ¶  Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.

The Jews were specifically God’s children and they rebelled against Him in their idolatry. Remember what He had said under the Law given to Moses.

Deuteronomy 21:18 ¶  If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: 19  Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; 20  And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. 21  And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

John Gill quotes a Targum, the Jewish understanding and paraphrase of what the Old Testament, their Bible, meant, in saying that specifically the Jews rebelled against the Word of God, that part of the Godhead by which everything was created, who Christians acknowledge as the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

And so, Israel, unlike even a domestic animal, doesn’t know their place or their owner, their master. Israel was a sinful nation, doing what it was not called to do, rebelling against God.

Deuteronomy 7:6  For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

The indictment against Israel is terrible. They are full of sin, corrupters of others, and have turned their backs on the God who created them, provoking Him to anger.

From verse 5 on Isaiah pleads with them to see how low their apostasy has brought them and to realize why they are suffering so horribly. Do you not see what you’ve done and why you are suffering?

In verse 8 references are made to a cottage in a vineyard or a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. These were small booths where the farmer would stay to keep others from stealing his produce according to John Gill, quoting Jewish sources. They were lonely sentinels and there was no one around them to talk to or to help them keep intruders away. Jerusalem was cut off from other besieged cities, many of them destroyed, and like the lonely farmer had no one to go to for help because they had denied their only help, the Lord God.