Isaiah finishes out his discussion of verse 7 by speaking of the horrible result of Israel’s unfaithfulness and the resulting judgment of God upon them. “Strangers” have descended upon them and overtaken their land, devouring it right in front of them!
Your country is desolate,
Your cities are burned with fire;
Strangers devour your land in your presence;
And it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. (Isaiah 1:7)
“Devour” means “to consume its provisions”. The verb is a simple one, but it is a participle and is pictured in the active sense and we are meant to see it as active. As with any participle, there is a picture being drawn here. It is not so much that we are meant to see the voracious hordes descending on the land so much as we are to picture the provision of the land, meant for the Israelites and intended by God for their sustaining and upholding, instead sustain and uphold foreigners. These provisions were meant by God to be consumed by the Israelites themselves, but are here being consumed by their enemies! Once again we are brought back to the idea that these are peoples in the land that shouldn’t have been there, consuming things that they shouldn’t have been consuming!
Note the use of “Your land” as a metaphor for all that God had given to the Israelites. Because of their disobedience, all that they had was coming unraveled before their eyes! God does not deal in partialities when all is said and done. This is particularly true when we remember that “Israel” was no novice at the things of God. At the time we are talking about she had held the Law in her hands for some 800 hundred or so years. God spoke to Moses @ the year 1500 BC or so. Isaiah @700 or so (we are speaking in grave generalities here). If we go back to Abram, we are talking about a nation that had known the things of God for headed for 1750 years! They were not novices! God had sent them prophets and priests. They had had the Tabernacle and the Temple, and experience without end. They ought to have known better.
And yet…
“In your presence” – The word is a noun that comes from a primary root that means “in front of” or “to stand out”. The verb form means to announce or to manifest, to expose, explain, even to praise. The idea is that action was conspicuous and obvious, certainly very noticeable and the implication is that this is a circumstance that greatly heightens the calamity, that they were compelled to look on and witness the desolation, without being able to prevent it.
“And it is overthrown by strangers” – From the Hebrew word to turn, to overturn, to destroy as a city; (Gen. 19:21-25; Deut. 29:22). It refers to the changes which an invading foe produces in a nation, where everything is subverted; where cities are destroyed, walls are thrown down, and fields and vineyards laid waste.
It is a ruin, a waste, i.e., a state of utter ruin, often relating to uninhabitable land as a sparsely populated area[1]. The same word is used in Ex 23:29:
I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you.
Note that God says that He will NOT drive the people of the land out before the Israelites just so that the land will not fall into this state! Now, because of the sin that Israel has indulged, the land has come fully into this state of disrepair. The land was as if an invading army had passed through it, and completely overturned everything. One writer proposes to read this, ‘as if destroyed by an inundation;’ but without authority. The desolation caused by the ravages of foreigners, at a time when the nations were barbarous, was the highest possible image of distress, and the prophet dwells on it, though with some appearance of repetition.
What if a preacher today talked like this in a congregation of Christians? “Hellfire and brimstone” preaching has just about disappeared. Yet Isaiah was one of the most educated men of his time. He was a member of the nobility, traveling in the highest circles of Israel. There is some evidence that he was of the royal house, though this inference is contested by some scholars. When Isaiah spoke his fiery words he was not a crazy preacher standing on a street corner with a sign. His words carried weight. We can learn from Isaiah that there is indeed a time and a place for wise, educated preachers to talk straight to their congregations about sin.
Isaiah called them “Sodom and Gomorrah” (Isa 1:10). He told them that God was sick and tired of their religious activities, their sacrifices and festivals, because they were ignoring true social justice (Isa 1:11, 12, 13, 14, 15). He advised them to start defending the good, seeking justice, reproving the ruthless, defending the orphan, and pleading for the widow. He did not tell them to take the easy way, to set up a political bureaucracy to do these things. Rather, he told them that each of them needed to stand up publicly and be counted on the side of justice for the oppressed.
God’s invitation is issued in Isa 1:18, “Come now, let us reason together.” God told the people who had been indicted that, if they would repent, their sins would be washed away, and they would eat the best of the land. He also told them that, if they continued to rebel, it was they who would be eaten—by the sword. With such options, what was clearly reasonable was heartfelt repentance.
What Isaiah delivered was part of the “whole counsel of God,” the rest of the story we often prefer not to hear. There are times when pastors must speak the whole counsel.
Does your church stifle or intimidate your pastor, perhaps unintentionally, so that some subjects about sin are off-limits from the pulpit? Give him the freedom to speak all of God’s Word to you.[2]
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[1] Swanson, J. (1997). Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament) (electronic ed.) (DBLH 9039, #1). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
[2] Sproul, Sr., R. C. Vol. 3: Before the face of God: Book Three: Ligonier Ministries.
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