Bible Commentaries

Judah's sins, Isa 1:1-4; her judgments, Isa 1:5-9; her worship is rejected, Isa 1:10-15. Exhortations to repentance; promises of grace and mercy; threatenings of sore judgments; and complaints by reason of their backsliding, Isa 1:16-31.

The vision, or, the visions; the word being here collectively used, as it Isa 22:1 1Sa 3:1. The sense is, This is the book of the visions or prophecies. As prophets were called seers, 1Sa 9:9, so prophecies are called visions, because they were as clearly and certainly represented to the prophets' minds as bodily objects are to men's eyes.

Amoz; either the brother of Amaziah king of Judah, as the Hebrew writers fancy; or rather, some other person then well known.

Saw, i.e. foresaw and foretold. But he speaks, after the manner of the prophets, of things to come as if they were either past or present.

Concerning Judah and Jerusalem; principally, but not exclusively. For he prophesieth also concerning Egypt and Babylon, and divers other countries; which yet he doth with respect to Judah.

In the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah; in the time of their reign; whence it may be gathered that Isaiah exercised his prophetical office above fifty years together: see 2 Kings 15 2Ki 16.

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: he directeth his speech to these senseless creatures, that thereby he might more awaken and affect the Israelites, whom he hereby proclaimeth to be so dull and stupid that they were past hearing, and therefore gives them over as desperate; and calleth in the whole creation Of God to bear witness against them.

The Lord hath spoken: this is his plea against them, of the equity whereof he is willing that all the creatures should be judges.

I have nourished and brought up children; I first made them a people, and until this time I have sustained and blessed them above all other nations.

The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; the most stupid brute beasts acknowledge and obey their Lord and Benefactor, as experience showeth.

Israel doth not know, to wit, me, their Owner and Master, which is easily and necessarily understood out of the former clause.

Knowing is here taken practically, as it is usually in Scripture, and includes reverence and obedience.

Ah: this particle implies both his wonder, and anger, and grief, and shame that they were such.

Laden with iniquity, Heb. of heaviness of iniquity, i.e. of heavy or great sins; for heavy is commonly put for great or grievous, as Isaiah 21:15 30:27. Laden not with the sense of sin, as Matthew 11:28, but with the guilt and bondage of sin.

A seed of evil-doers; the children of wicked parents, whose guilt they inherit, and whose evil example they follow.

That are corrupters, Heb. that corrupt, to wit, themselves, or their ways, or others by their counsel and example. Or, that destroy themselves and their land by their wickedness.

They have forsaken the Lord, not in profession, but in practice and reality, neglecting or corrupting his worship, refusing his yoke and conduct. They have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger; they have lived as if it were their great design and business to provoke him.

They are gone away backward; instead of proceeding forward, and growing in grace, which was their duty, they are all fallen from their former professions, and grown worse and worse, and have impudently turned their backs upon me.

Why should ye be stricken any more? it is to no purpose to seek to reclaim you by one chastisement after another; and therefore I will utterly forsake and destroy you at once.

Ye will revolt more and more; I see you are incorrigible, and turn even your afflictions into sin.

The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint; your disease is mortal, as being in the most noble and vital parts, the very head and heart of the body politic, from whence the plague is derived to all the other members, as it follows. And this is to be understood either,

1. Of their sins; or rather,

2. Of their miseries. Which best suits,

3. With the foregoing words, this being added as a reason why it was in vain to strike them any more, or to expect any amendment that way, because he had stricken them already, and that very terribly, even in their head and heart, whose wounds are most dangerous, and yet they were not at all better for it.

4. With Isaiah 1:7,8, where this metaphor is so explained.

From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; you have been all of you punished, from the highest to the lowest, from the worst to the best.

They have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment; I have suffered you to lie under your maladies for a time, without applying any remedies, to try whether the length and continuance of your affliction might not work that cure which the strength of it could not do, but all in vain.

All this and what follows was verified in the days of king Ahaz, 2 Chronicles 28, in whose time, and upon which occasion, this prophecy seems to have been delivered, as more exactly agreeing with that time than with any other. If any object, that this being the first of his prophecies, must rather belong to the days of Uzziah, they must take notice, and it is agreed by interpreters, and it is undeniably true, that the prophecies of Isaiah, as also of the other prophets, are not set down in the same order in which they were delivered, but oftentimes the latter are put before the former.

In your presence; which your eyes shall see to torment you, when there is no power in your hands to deliver you.

As overthrown by strangers, Heb, as the overthrow of strangers, i.e. which strangers bring upon a land which is not theirs, nor likely to continue in their hands, and therefore they spare no persons that come in their way, and they spoil and destroy all things, which is not usually done in wars between persons of the same or of a neighbour nation.

The daughter of Zion, i.e. Zion, or Jerusalem; for these two names are promiscuously used of the same place; the name of daughter being frequently given to cities or countries. Thus the daughter of Babylon is put for Babylon itself, Psalm 137:8 Isaiah 47:1. In the same sense we read of the daughter of Tyre, Psalm 45:12, and of Zidon, Isaiah 23:12, and of Egypt, Jeremiah 46:11,24, and of Edom, Lamentations 4:21.

Is left as a cottage in a vineyard as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers; is left solitary, all the neighbouring villages and country round about it being laid waste.