Isaiah 1:29 Komentář

The first verse of this chapter is intended for a title to the whole book, and it is probable that this was the first sermon that this prophet was appointed to publish and to affix in writing (as Calvin thinks the custom of the prophets was) to the door of the temple, as with us proclamations are fixed to public places, that all might read them (Hab 2:2), and those that would might take out authentic copies of them, the original being, after some time, laid up by the priests among the records of the temple. The sermon which is contained in this chapter has in it, I. A high charge exhibited, in God's name, against the Jewish church and nation, 1. For their ingratitude (Isa 1:2, Isa 1:3). 2. For their incorrigibleness (Isa 1:5). 3. For the universal corruption and degeneracy of the people (Isa 1:4, Isa 1:6, Isa 1:21, Isa 1:22). 4. For the perversion of justice by their rulers (Isa 1:23). 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 (Isa 1:7-9). III. A just rejection of those shows and shadows of religion which they kept up among them, notwithstanding this general defection and apostasy (Isa 1:10-15). IV. An earnest call to repentance and reformation, setting before them life and death, life if they compiled with the call and death if they did not (Isa 1:16-20). V. A threatening of ruin to those that would not be reformed (Isa 1:24, Isa 1:28-31). VI. A promise of a happy reformation at last, and a return to their primitive purity and prosperity (Isa 1:25-27). 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.

This chapter, after the inscription, contains a charge of aggravated sin against the Jews; God's rejection of their ceremonial sacrifices and service; an exhortation to repentance and obedience, with a promise of pardon; a restoration from their sad estate; a prophecy of their restoration to a better; and of the destruction of idolatrous sinners. The inscription is in Isa 1:1 in which are the title of the prophecy, a vision; the writer of it described by his name, his descent, and the times in which he prophesied; and the subject of the prophecy is Judah and Jerusalem. The charge against the Jews is rebellion against the Lord, and the heavens and earth are called as witnesses of it; which is aggravated by the relation they stood in to God, and by the favours bestowed upon them, Isa 1:2 by their more than brutish stupidity, Isa 1:3 by the multitude of their sins, which were of a provoking nature, Isa 1:4 by the uselessness of chastisements, the whole body of the people, from the highest to the lowest, being afflicted without being the better for it, and so generally depraved, that no regard was had to any means of reformation, Isa 1:5 and by the desolation it brought upon them, which is illustrated by several similes, Isa 1:7 and by the grace and goodness of God in reserving a few, or otherwise they must have been for their punishment, as they were for their sins, like Sodom and Gomorrah, Isa 1:9 wherefore both rulers and people are called upon under those names to hearken to the law of God, and not trust in and depend upon their sacrifices and other rites of the ceremonial law, together with their hypocritical prayers; all which were abominable to the Lord, since they were guilty of such dreadful immoralities, Isa 1:11 when they are exhorted to repentance for sin, to the obedience of faith, and washing in the blood of Christ, whereby their crimson and scarlet sins would become as white as wool and snow, otherwise destruction must be expected, Isa 1:16 and then a lamentation is taken up concerning the deplorable state of Jerusalem, representing the difference between what it was now, and what it was formerly, and the sad degeneracy of the people, rulers, and judges, Isa 1:21 upon which the Lord foretells what he thought to do: to avenge himself of his enemies; to purge his church and people; to restore them to their former uprightness and integrity; and to redeem them with judgment and righteousness, Isa 1:24 and the chapter is concluded with a denunciation of utter destruction upon wicked men, who are described and pointed at as idolaters; which will cover them with shame and confusion, Isa 1:28 and which is illustrated by the fading of the leaves of an oak, and by a garden parched with drought, Isa 1:30 and it is suggested that it will be by burning with fire unquenchable, Isa 1:31.

For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired,.... Though there is a change of persons in the words, the same are intended; and design such, who being convinced of the idolatries of the church of Rome they have been fond of, and delighted in, will be ashamed of them, and relinquish them, and come out of Babylon a little before the destruction of it; for under oaks, and such like green trees, idolatry used to be committed, to which the allusion is; see Jer 2:20 and so the Targum interprets it of "trees of idols"; that is, under which idolatry was practised: and ye shall be confounded for the gardens ye have chosen; where also idolatrous practices were used, see Isa 65:3 and so the Targum paraphrases it, "and ye shall be ashamed of the gardens of idols, from whom ye have sought help.'' The sense is the same as before; unless both clauses should rather be understood of the destruction of sinners, before spoken of, who at that time will be filled with shame and confusion, they in vain praying to their idols for help; which sense the following words incline to.

(Verse 29.) For they will be confounded by the idols to which they sacrificed, and you will be ashamed of the gardens you have chosen. And when they are saved, they will be ashamed of those who previously sacrificed to idols, and they will blush in the gardens they had chosen. However, it signifies places of luxury, groves and forests.

64. For they shall be confounded. Here he places the manner of destruction: and first, as to the confusion of sin; second, as to the subtraction of good, where it says, when you shall be (Isa 1:30). Concerning the first, against idolatry, he ordains confusion, saying, they shall be confounded by the idols, that is, because of the idols: let them be all confounded that adore graven things (Ps 96[97]:7); against pleasure, he ordains shame, when he says, you shall be ashamed of the gardens, that is, the places of pleasure, which you have chosen, of your lust: what fruit had you in those things of which you are now ashamed? (Rom 6:21). For confusion relates more to evil; but shame to fault, for carnal sins, as Gregory says, are of lesser fault and greater dishonor; and the reason is that they concern the faculties that are less honorable and most material; and nevertheless these faculties are innate and connatural and passible.

General title to the whole Book, Jer 1:1-3. Jeremiah receives a commission to prophesy concerning nations and kingdoms, a work to which in the Divine purpose he had been appointed before his birth, Jer 1:4-10. The vision of the rod of an almond tree and of the seething pot, with their signification, Jer 1:11-16. Promises of Divine protection to Jeremiah in the discharge of the arduous duties of his prophetical office, Jer 1:17-19.

For they shall be ashamed of the oaks "For ye shall be ashamed of the ilexes" - Sacred groves were a very ancient and favorite appendage of idolatry. They were furnished with the temple of the god to whom they were dedicated, with altars, images, and every thing necessary for performing the various rites of worship offered there; and were the scenes of many impure ceremonies, and of much abominable superstition. They made a principal part of the religion of the old inhabitants of Canaan; and the Israelites were commanded to destroy their groves, among other monuments of their false worship. The Israelites themselves became afterwards very much addicted to this species of idolatry. "When I had brought them into the land, Which I swore that I would give unto them; Then they saw every high hill and every thick tree; And there they slew their victims; And there they presented the provocation of their offerings; And there they placed their sweet savor; And there they poured out their libations." Eze 20:28. "On the tops of the mountains they sacrifice; And on the hills they burn incense; Under the oak and the poplar; And the ilex, because her shade is pleasant." Hos 4:13. Of what particular kinds the trees here mentioned are, cannot be determined with certainty. In regard to אלה ellah, in this place of Isaiah, as well as in Hosea, Celsius (Hierobot.) understands it of the terebinth, because the most ancient interpreters render it so; in the first place the Septuagint. He quotes eight places; but in three of these eight places the copies vary, some having δρυς, the oak, instead of τερεβινθος, the terebinth or turpentine tree. And he should have told us, that these same seventy render it in sixteen other places by δρυς, the oak; so that their authority is really against him; and the Septuagint, "stant pro quercu," contrary to what he says at first setting out. Add to this that Symmachus, Theodotion, and Aquila, generally render it by δρυς, the oak; the latter only once rendering it by τερεβινθος, the terebinth. His other arguments seem to me not very conclusive; he says, that all the qualities of אלה ellah agree to the terebinth, that it grows in mountainous countries, that it is a strong tree, long-lived, large and high, and deciduous. All these qualities agree just as well to the oak, against which he contends; and he actually attributes them to the oak in the very next section. But I think neither the oak nor the terebinth will do in this place of Isaiah, from the last circumstance which he mentions, their being deciduous, where the prophet's design seems to me to require an evergreen, otherwise the casting of its leaves would be nothing out of the common established course of nature, and no proper image of extreme distress and total desolation, parallel to that of a garden without water, that is, wholly burnt up and destroyed. An ancient, who was an inhabitant and a native of this country, understands it in like manner of a tree blasted with uncommon and immoderate heat; velut arbores, cum frondes aestu torrente decusserunt. Ephrem Syr. in loc., edit. Assemani. Compare Psa 1:4; Jer 17:8. Upon the whole I have chosen to make it the ilex, which word Vossius, Etymolog., derives from the Hebrew אלה ellah, that whether the word itself be rightly rendered or not, I might at least preserve the propriety of the poetic image. - L. By the ilex the learned prelate means the holly, which, though it generally appears as a sort of shrub, grows, in a good soil, where it is unmolested, to a considerable height. I have one in my own garden, rising three stems from the root, and between twenty and thirty feet in height. It is an evergreen. For they shall be ashamed "For ye shall be ashamed" - תבושו teboshu, in the second person, Vulgate, Chaldee, three MSS., one of my own, ancient, and one edition; and in agreement with the rest of the sentence.

THE GENERAL TITLE OR PROGRAM applying to the entire book: this discountenances the Talmud tradition, that he was sawn asunder by Manasseh. Isaiah--equivalent to "The Lord shall save"; significant of the subject of his prophecies. On "vision," see Sa1 9:9; Num 12:6; and see my Introduction. Judah and Jerusalem--Other nations also are the subjects of his prophecies; but only in their relation to the Jews (Isa. 13:1-23:18); so also the ten tribes of Israel are introduced only in the same relation (Isa. 7:1-9:21). Jerusalem is particularly specified, being the site of the temple, and the center of the theocracy, and the future throne of Messiah (Psa 48:2-3, Psa 48:9; Jer 3:17). Jesus Christ is the "Lion of the tribe of Judah" (Rev 5:5). Uzziah--called also Azariah (Kg2 14:21; Ch2 26:1, Ch2 26:17, Ch2 26:20). The Old Testament prophecies spiritually interpret the histories, as the New Testament Epistles interpret the Gospels and Acts. Study them together, to see their spiritual relations. Isaiah prophesied for only a few years before Uzziah's death; but his prophecies of that period (Isa. 1:1-6:13) apply to Jotham's reign also, in which he probably wrote none; for Isa. 7:1-25 enters immediately on Ahaz' reign, after Uzziah in Isa 6:1-13; the prophecies under Hezekiah follow next.

ashamed-- (Rom 6:21). oaks--Others translate the "terebinth" or "turpentine tree." Groves were dedicated to idols. Our Druids took their name from the Greek for "oaks." A sacred tree is often found in Assyrian sculpture; symbol of the starry hosts, Saba. gardens--planted enclosures for idolatry; the counterpart of the garden of Eden.

In passing to our exposition of the book, the first thing which strikes us is its traditional title - Yeshaiah (Isaiah). In the book itself, and throughout the Old Testament Scriptures, the prophet is called Yeshayahu; and the shorter form is found in the latest books as the name of other persons. It was a common thing in the very earliest times for the shorter forms of such names to be used interchangeably with the longer; but in later times the shorter was the only form employed, and for this reason it was the one adopted in the traditional title. The name is a compound one, and signifies "Jehovah's salvation." The prophet was conscious that it was not merely by accident that he bore this name; for ישׁע (he shall save) and ישׁוּעה (salvation) are among his favourite words. It may be said, in fact, that he lived and moved altogether in the coming salvation, which was to proceed from Jehovah, and would be realized hereafter, when Jehovah should come at last to His people as He had never come before. This salvation was the goal of the sacred history (Heilsgeschichte, literally, history of salvation); and Jehovah was the peculiar name of God in relation to that history. It denotes "the existing one," not however "the always existing," i.e., eternal, as Bunsen and the Jewish translators render it, but "existing evermore," i.e., filling all history, and displaying His glory therein in grace and truth. The ultimate goal of this historical process, in which God was ever ruling as the absolutely free One, according to His own self-assertion in Exo 3:14, was true and essential salvation, proceeding outwards from Israel, and eventually embracing all mankind. In the name of the prophet the tetragrammaton יהוה is contracted into יהו (יה) by the dropping of the second ה. We may easily see from this contraction that the name of God was pronounced with an a sound, so that it was either called Yahveh, or rather Yahaveh, or else Yahvâh, or rather Yahavâh. According to Theodoret, it was pronounced ̓Ιαβε (Yahaveh) by the Samaritans; and it is written in the same way in the list of the names of the Deity given in Epiphanius. That the ah sound was also a customary pronunciation, may not only be gathered from such names as Jimnah, Jimrah, Jishvah, Jishpah (compare Jithlah, the name of a place), but is also expressly attested by the ancient variations, Jao, Jeuo, Jo (Jer 23:6, lxx), on the one hand, and on the other hand by the mode of spelling adopted by Origen (Jaoia) and Theodoret (Aia, not only in quaest, in Ex. 15, but also in Fab. haeret. "Aia signifies the existing one; it was pronounced thus by Hebrews, but the Samaritans call it Jabai, overlooking the force of the word"). The dull-sounding long a could be expressed by omega quite as well as by alpha. Isidor follows these and similar testimonies, and says (Orig. vii. 7), "The tetragrammaton consisted of ia written twice (iaia), and with this reduplication it constituted the unutterable and glorious name of God." The Arabic form adopted by the Samaritans leaves it uncertain whether it is to be pronounced Yahve or Yahva. They wrote to Job Ludolf (in the Epistola Samaritana Sichemitarum tertia, published by Bruns, 1781), in opposition to the statement of Theodoret, that they pronounced the last syllable with damma; that is to say, they pronounced the name Yahavoh (Yahvoh), which was the form in which it was written in the last century by Velthusen, and also by Muffi in his Disegno di lezioni e di ricerche sulla lingua Ebraica (Pavia, 1792). The pronunciation Jehovah (Yehovah) arose out of a combination of the Keri and the chethib, and has only become current since the time of the Reformation. Genebrard denounces it in his Commentary upon the Psalms with the utmost vehemence, in opposition to Beza, as an intolerable innovation. "Ungodly violators of what is most ancient," he says, "profaning and transforming the unutterable name of God, would read Jova or Jehova - a new, barbarous, fictitious, and irreligious word, that savours strongly of the Jove of the heathen." Nevertheless his Jehova (Jova) forced its way into general adoption, and we shall therefore retain it, notwithstanding the fact that the o sound is decidedly wrong. To return, then: the prophet's name signifies "Jehovah's salvation." In the Septuagint it is always written ̔Ησαΐ̀ας, with a strong aspirate; in the Vulgate it is written Isaias, and sometimes Esaias. In turning from the outward to the inward title, which is contained in the book itself, there are two things to be observed at the outset: (1.) The division of the vv. indicated by soph pasuk is an arrangement for which the way was prepared as early as the time of the Talmud, and which was firmly established in the Masoretic schools; and consequently it reaches as far back as the extreme limits of the middle ages - differing in this respect from the division of vv. in the New Testament. The arrangement of the chapters, however, with the indications of the separate sections of the prophetic collection, is of no worth to us, simply because it is not older than the thirteenth century. According to some authorities, it originated with Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury († 1227); whilst others attribute it to Cardinal Hugo of St. Caro († 1262). It is only since the fifteenth century that it has been actually adopted in the text. (2.) The small ring or star at the commencement points to the footnote, which affirms that Isaiah 1:1-28 (where we find the same sign again) was the haphtarah, or concluding pericope, taken from the prophets, which was read on the same Sabbath as the parashah from the Pentateuch, in Deu 1:1. It was, as we shall afterwards see, a very thoughtful principle of selection which led to the combination of precisely these two lessons.

Isa 1:29 declares how God's judgment of destruction would fall upon all of these. The v. is introduced with an explanatory "for" (Chi): "For they become ashamed of the terebinths, in which ye had your delight; and ye must blush for the gardens, in which ye took pleasure." The terebinths and gardens (the second word with the article, as in Hab 3:8, first binharim, then banneharim) are not referred to as objects of luxury, as Hitzig and Drechsler assume, but as unlawful places of worship and objects of worship (see Deu 16:21). They are both of them frequently mentioned by the prophets in this sense (Isa 57:5; Isa 65:3; Isa 66:17): Châmor and bâchar are also the words commonly applied to an arbitrary choice of false gods (Isa 44:9; Isa 41:24; Isa 66:3), and bosh min is the general phrase used to denote the shame which falls upon idolaters, when the worthlessness of their idols becomes conspicuous through their impotence. On the difference between bosh and Châpher, see the comm. on Psa 35:4. (Note: It is perfectly certain that Châpher (Arab. Chaphira, as distinguished from Châphar, hafara, to dig) signifies to blush, erubescere; but the combination of bosh and yâbash (bâda), which would give albescere or expallescere (to turn white or pale) as the primary idea of bosh, has not only the Arabic use of bayyada and ibyadda (to rejoice, be made glad) against it, but above all the dialectic bechath, bahita (bahuta), which, when taken in connection with bethath (batta), points rather to the primary idea of being cut off (abscindi: cf., spes abscissa). See Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, i. 263.) The word elim is erroneously translated "idols" in the Septuagint and other ancient versions. The feeling which led to this, however, was a correct one, since the places of worship really stand for the idols worshipped in those places. (Note: With regard to the derivation, êlim, whether used in the sense of strong men, or gods, or rams, or terebinths, is still but one word, derived from ı̄l or ūl, so that in all three senses it may be written either with or without Yod. Nevertheless elim in the sense of "rams" only occurs without Yod in Job 42:8. In the sense of "gods" it is always written without Yod; in that of "strong men" with Yod. In the singular the name of the terebinth is always written elah without Yod; in the plural, however, it is written either with or without. But this no more presupposes a singular êl (ayil) in common use, than bêtzim presupposes a singular bêts (bayits); still the word êl with Yod does occur once, viz., in Gen 14:6. Allâh and allōn, an oak, also spring from the same root, namely âlal = il; just as in Arabic both ı̄l and ill are used for ēl (God); and âl and ill, in the sense of relationship, point to a similar change in the form of the root.) The excited state of the prophet at the close of his prophecy is evinced by his abrupt leap from an exclamation to a direct address (Ges. 137, Anm. 3).