Israel - A Sinful Nation

We said last time that God, having introduced the topic of His complaint against Israel, is now going to itemize a list of seven specific complaints against this, His chosen people, this nation He has sought to nurture and provide for over the centuries.  It has been clear that He has done all that he can to make them the apple of His eye and they have, in turn, done virtually all they can do to dishonor and degrade His calling and election in their lives.  He picks up in verse 4:

“Alas!” is a an interjectional particle. An interjection is simply an exclamation word that can stand alone grammatically. It is used in two main fashions in the OT. First it is used to express woe or intense sadness or grief as in a sudden exclamation of grief. Secondly, it can be used as an exhortation toward a goal. “Come on!” The common thread between the two ideas is that of emotion and intensity. The first is negative and the second is positive. It is often almost a non-verbal thing, a cry of emotion. In this context it is, of course, negative. The rest of the verse describes sin, the great sin of the Israelites and the tremendous sin they had fallen into. This first word is the exclamation of the great sadness or anger that lay beneath the assertion to follow. It is always indicative of a desire to call immediate attention to what follows.

1. A Sinful Nation

But the phrase rendered ‘Ah! Sinful Nation’ is not a mere exclamation, expressing astonishment. It is rather an interjection denouncing threatening, or punishment. ‘Woe to the sinful nation.’ The Vulgate, the Latin version of the Bible says: ‘Vae genti peccatrici.’ underscoring the sinfulness of the condition and the coming punishment that is due because of it.

“Nation” is “Goy” in Hebrew. It was used in three basic ways in the OT^[1].

First and primarily, it was used of a people in general, a nation, i.e., a large group based on various cultural, physical, geographical ties, and often extended clan relationships. Gen. 10:4-5, speaking of the descendants of Noah, speaks of the sons Javan and says that:

From these the coastland peoples of the Gentiles were separated into their lands, everyone according to his language, according to their families, into their nations.

Genesis 25:23 in the prophecy the Lord gave to Rebekah when the Lord finally moved and granted her pregnancy and two children struggled within her womb.

And the Lord said to her:

“Two nations are in your womb, Two peoples shall be separated from your body; One people shall be stronger than the other, And the older shall serve the younger.”

We ought to note here that that this reference was to both Jacob and Esau and that it can after Abraham, mysterious and perplexing, untidy, but there it is…

Second, it was used to speak of a human population in the terms of an animal. Joel 1:6 says:

For a nation has come up against My land, Strong, and without number; His teeth are the teeth of a lion, And he has the fangs of a fierce lion.

Zeph. 2:14-15 says:

¹⁴ The herds shall lie down in her midst, Every beast of the nation. Both the pelican and the bittern Shall lodge on the capitals of her pillars; Their voice shall sing in the windows; Desolation shall be at the threshold; For He will lay bare the cedar work. ¹⁵ This is the rejoicing city That dwelt securely, That said in her heart, “I am it, and there is none besides me.” How has she become a desolation, A place for beasts to lie down! Everyone who passes by her Shall hiss and shake his fist.

Third, there was a specific sense in which it was used to speak of the Gentiles, i.e., a national group or groups that are not Jewish, with the associative meaning of being uncultured, pagan and heathen. Neh 5:8 tells us:

And I said to them, “According to our ability we have redeemed our Jewish brethren who were sold to the nations. Now indeed, will you even sell your brethren? Or should they be sold to us?”

It is important to see the linkage between the three ideas here in Hebrew thought. In the Jewish mind the word had become almost entirely negative n its context. In the average Jewish mind, the Gentile was simply “them”, the others, unclean and outside the Covenant. But for the Leadership, they were the enemies of God and the oppressors, the opponents of His Kingdom and, by extension, of Jewish blessing and prosperity.

A portion of this was justified. The Gentiles were outside of the Covenant of God, They had no mediating connection to make provision for their sins or to allow them to enter His presence or please Him. They were yet in their sins, in rebellion and even the religious things they did, however well-intentioned, were abominable, because the fundamental problem of their sinfulness was still between they and their Maker.

It is not Isaiah’s point here either to endorse or to dispute this point. Rather, he simply takes it and uses it to underscore his own message from God. The Jews had become no different that the Gentiles at which they looked down their noses. They were, as a nation, no different than the Gentile nations around them. This is a recurring theme which we see again and again in the book.

Isaiah 10 is a good example. In a passage that is developing ideas that Israel would readily agree with, the punishment of the unjust, etc.; the table are suddenly turned.

“Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees,
Who write misfortune,
Which they have prescribed
2 To rob the needy of justice,
And to take what is right from the poor of My people,
That widows may be their prey,
And that they may rob the fatherless.
3 What will you do in the day of punishment,
And in the desolation which will come from afar?
To whom will you flee for help?
And where will you leave your glory?
4 Without Me they shall bow down among the prisoners,
And they shall fall among the slain.”

For all this His anger is not turned away,
But His hand is stretched out still.
Arrogant Assyria Also Judged

5 “Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger
And the staff in whose hand is My indignation.
6 I will send him against an ungodly nation,
And against the people of My wrath
I will give him charge,
To seize the spoil, to take the prey,
And to tread them down like the mire of the streets.

To all of this, Israel would have heartily shouted “Amen and Amen”. This was talking about the Goyim, “them”!

7 Yet he does not mean so,
Nor does his heart think so;
But it is in his heart to destroy,
And cut off not a few nations.
8 For he says,
‘Are not my princes altogether kings?

I’m sorry, what was that? I missed it…

9 Is not Calno like Carchemish?
Is not Hamath like Arpad?
Is not Samaria like Damascus?
10 As my hand has found the kingdoms of the idols,
Whose carved images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
11 As I have done to Samaria and her idols,
Shall I not do also to Jerusalem and her idols?’ ”

Wait, hold on here, we weren’t talking about Jerusalem, we were talking about Syria and Damascus! We were talking about their great sin and wickedness, their great offense against God!

Well, they were at least partly rightly…Isaiah was talking about offense to God…

12 Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Lord has performed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, that He will say, “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his haughty looks.”

Note that the sense of the statement has changed…Now the focus of the work is not out there; it is on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem. Once that work is done (elsewhere we see that the instrument that God uses to do the chastening in Jerusalem is this same Assyria) He will then turn His attention to Assyria and punish them for their wickedness.

18 And it will consume the glory of his forest and of his fruitful field,
Both soul and body;
And they will be as when a sick man wastes away.
19 Then the rest of the trees of his forest
Will be so few in number
That a child may write them.
The Returning Remnant of Israel

20 And it shall come to pass in that day
That the remnant of Israel,
And such as have escaped of the house of Jacob,
Will never again depend on him who defeated them,
But will depend on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.
21 The remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob,
To the Mighty God.
22 For though your people, O Israel, be as the sand of the sea,
A remnant of them will return;
The destruction decreed shall overflow with righteousness.
23 For the Lord God of hosts
Will make a determined end
In the midst of all the land.

Note that the aim of the chastening that God puts in place in Israel’s life is entirely different than it is in Assyria’s by the way. In Israel’s, it is restorative. In Assyria’s it is destructive. This alone is a profound idea, one which we will take up in detail as we progress through the book. That the same or similar acts of chastening can serve very different purposes in the lives of the different participants in that action is one of the amazing and mysterious truths of the Bible and one of the great demonstrations of the Great mind and power of the Almighty.

Just as an aside, the entire issue of accountability for Assyria, created, raised up and used by God to chasten Israel is an interesting one that we will address later in the book. The entire reason, in so far as the Bible tells us, for the existence of Assyria, was to serve to demolish the Northern Kingdom and take Samaria into final captivity from which it, as a nation, would never return. Isaiah has much to say about this and we will be amazed at his eloquence and the depth of his theology as we move through the book.

The corruption Isaiah will describe pertained to the nation, and not merely to a part. It had become general. The character of the nation had become sinful, wicked and depraved. It was national. We might also note that this is no longer the fault of the leadership, or of the Priests and Rabbis, it is the fault of the entire nation. It is true that the people on go as the leadership leads, but there comes a time, when leadership is so very corrupted, that their sin becomes so obvious and clear that the “average” person is more than able to spot it and when the common person becomes responsible before God for their own condition.

Of course, people are responsible for their own condition, ultimately, before God at all times, but we are speaking of a more general, corporate situation here and thus we see that the leadership bears a huge responsibility before God, but that a given point, the corruption ceases to be a matter of the leadership only, becomes an affliction of the entire nation. Of course there is an application to our own nation here. Have we gotten to this point? Is the “average person” in America so corrupted by the vices our leaders have led us into that we are now approaching the kind of national guilt that Israel was guilty of at the time of Isaiah? It is certainly worth pondering!

The Character of Israel’s Corruption

Moreover, we need to remember the character of the corruption of which we are speaking. “Sinful” is actual a verb, a participle. Remember that a participle is a verb that is kind of acting like an adjective. An adjective is a describer and so this is a verb that is an active describer.

The word basically refers to missing a mark. It is used over 235 times in the OT. In reality, the word can, according to the context, be used in both positive and negative contexts, but by far it is used negatively with a sinful implication. The idea here is that God has set forth a standard and Israel has missed it. Because God is holy, that standard is an absolute and inflexible one. This standard is the Law of God. All men are required by God to measure up to that standard and all men have universally missed that mark.

Thus the word came to refer to sin^[2], or to do wrong. God is the authority in the universe and the One Who gets to set the rules. Any breaking of those standards is sinful or wrong. Thus the one committing the sin comes to bear blame, or to be guilty before that authority. They commit an infraction of law or agreement, implying a penalty must be paid or forfeited.

When Abimelech became aware that Sarai was Abram’s sister and thus to have taken her as wife would have been a great sin against God he was furious and called Abram before him in Genesis 20:9:

And Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, “What have you done to us? How have I offended you, that you have brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? You have done deeds to me that ought not to be done.”

So also in Exodus 9:27, when God sent thunderings and hail upon Egypt, Pharaoh was filled with fear and a sense of his own sinfulness:

And Pharaoh sent and called for Moses and Aaron, and said to them, “I have sinned this time. The Lord is righteous, and my people and I are wicked.

In both of those cases there was an inherent idea that there was penalty naturally attached to the offense.  That is the nature of sin – it is not simply a matter of falling short, but carries with it the sense of debt, of owing the master and needing to pay that debt.  That is a key idea throughout the entire OT and finds its resolution, of curse, in the cross of Christ.

The irony here is that this is exactly the way the Jews of the times thought of the Goy around them, the sinners. Yet, here they are, declared by God to be themselves utterly and completely sinful. This is the essence of hypocrisy. While a certain amount of their actions and attitudes were not deliberate, the greater part of it was knowing and thus deliberate sin. The Major and Minor Prophets make that very clear, and we will pursue this further as we move along.

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^[1] Swanson, J. (1997). Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament) (electronic ed.) (DBLH 1580, #3). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^[2] Ibid, DBLH 2627, #1.

The Danger of Ignoring Observed Knowledge – Part 1

The ox knows its owner
And the donkey its master’s crib;
But Israel does not know,
My people do not consider.”  (Isa. 1:3)

The verbs used here are finite verbs that refers to knowledge, but is rarely used of abstract knowing, that which is reasoned, but almost always refers to the kind of knowledge that is ascertained and understood by the senses, in other words, to that which so obvious and so completely clear that anything with the physical senses can perceive it.

This is an important idea for us to understand because in Isaiah is called Israel to account, not for spiritual knowledge which is revealed by God or even for the understanding of General Revelation which we are told in no uncertain terms are both revealed and explained by God so that man is left without any excuse when the time of judgment comes (Romans 1).

This passage, on the other hand is talking about the general impact and witness of the world around us.  It also speaks of General Revelation, but of the of the more general testimony of that revelation and the accountability required by God of the world because of the abundant and overwhelming testimony that that generic evidence will give when God calls all men to account at that last day.

“Master” is actually a participle and demonstrates the quality of buying in action. It is literally “the buying or purchasing one”. Literally God is being described as Israel’s “owner”, the One Who “purchased” him!

It is a participle, a part of speech that has historically been described as a “verbal adjective” meaning that it is a word that both the qualities of a verb (action of some sort) and an adjective (description). It fulfills the positions in the sentence of a noun or a pronoun, but also carries at least some of the force of a verb or an adverb, implying action.  It is significant that Isaiah uses this word here, because of the argument that will be made as the chapter and the book progresses.

It is with this phrase that Isaiah’s argument in these two verses reaches its’ apex.  There are actually a couple ways we can see what Isaiah is saying here. Isaiah might be saying that the ox and donkey, though not reasoning, self-aware animals, and having the power to rebel and refuse service, still serve the one who owns them.

He might also be saying that even such unreasonable animals as these still, despite their lack of intelligence can still recognize the one who purchased them. They might rebel against all others, throwing themselves against all comers, but their owners, at the least, are recognized and served.

As we noted a moment ago, one of the arguments that Isaiah will make is that God “owns” Israel and that they, thus, did not have the right to rebel (though they surely had the ability). This is a powerful statement that cuts fundamentally across the human conception of self, especially across the modern concept of self as free and self determining. 

Man sees himself as fundamentally free.  He understands himself as having been created by God having a will and understands that freedom and being inviolable.  One of the great goods in the modern world is freedom and one of the great evils, if not the great evil, at least in the western world, is to infringe on or take away that freedom because, after all, that freedom is “God given” right?  It is one of our inalienable rights!  That truth is “self-evident” our American Constitution says.

But yet the Scripture is very, VERY clear that God OWNS men.  He is not merely their Master, He literally owns them; they are His to do with as He pleases.  That is the only thing that makes the Bible make any sense.  If we fail to acknowledge that, then we get caught up in the issue of fairness on God’s part.  What should happen and should not happen.  This is all because we look from man’s point of view rather than from God’s. 

Isaiah clearly draws the analogy here, implying that that Israel was very much like the Ox and the Donkey in that they did not know their owner, when they ought have!

Further, he will ask us to consider that this is a fundamental rule of nature; a rule that Israel has deliberately and purposely broken. This is a great crime and, as Isaiah will show us, is an incredible one given the clarity of the evidence and proofs of God that they have seen and all of the goodness that generosity that has been shown to them.

Actually, this is a poetic device that, as with most Hebrew poetry uses parallelism to make its point. This point being that the reality in Israel’s life was an absolutely absurd one. It was one that, when examined from a step or two backward, made no sense at all. If the “ownership” of God was so plain and obvious that even the dullest of animals, the ox and the donkey, the least and most base of creatures recognized and observed it, then it makes no sense whatsoever for Israel to refuse to acknowledge and submit to it; and yet they did refuse!

The second phrase is virtually a restatement of the first with, really, only a single difference, the reference to the Master’s Crib. “Master’s” is actually a play on words that often referred to Baal, the primary foreign God with which Israel played the harlot. The common meaning of the word is simply man or person, often implying ownership.

By the way “the ‘Crib’” is simply the manger or the enclosure within which a animal, typically the ox, donkey, or some other barnyard animal was fed.

The idea is that in chasing after other ‘feeding places”, they were failing to recognize their own (far superior) Master’s provision for them. Once again, this is an illustration of complete absurdity of the situation that Israel had created in their national lives. They were out seeking, chasing after other masters and their mangers, which in reality are no mangers at all. In the process they were ignoring a far great “crib” that their master gladly provided for them and kept stocked for their use.

We cannot help but note that the only real place to get spiritual food is from the hand of the Master!  How many times had Israel been told that?  From Prophet after Prophet, given example time and again, not to mention the precious trust of the Word of God!  And yet they are anxious to turn elsewhere lest they miss a meal!  There might be something somewhere else!  And lest we be too quick to judge, that apple won’t fall to far from the tree!  You and are wont to do much the same thing if we aren’t careful.  We are products of our society and can fall easily to the roving eye that has made modern man include every ridiculous heresy that has come down the pike!  We need to be careful that we indeed are faithful to the principle of “Sola Scirptura”!

The “but” that starts the contrasting section is implied from the use of parallelism itself, and from the nature of the context.  Interestingly, “does not know” is a negated form of the same verb in the same form as we saw earlier in the verse. The only difference is that it is combined with a particle of negation, and thus means the precise opposite of what it meant in the beginning of the verse. Whereas the Ox and Donkey know their master, Israel does not!  The implication is that, all things being equal, in the same situation, the ox and donkey acted more wisely than Israel.

But Israel - The name Israel, though after the division of the tribes into two kingdoms specifically employed to denote that of the ten tribes, is often used in the more general sense to denote the whole people of the Jews, including the kingdom of Judah. It refers here to the kingdom of Judah, though a name is used which is not inappropriately characteristic of the whole people.

Israel was the second name for Jacob given to him by God after his wrestling with the angel at Peniel. It thus passed as the name of the descendants and the nation of the descendants of Jacob and was the name of the nation until the death of Solomon and the split of the nation into a northern and southern portion. After that split, the name used and given to the northern kingdom consisting of the 10 tribes under Jeroboam; the southern kingdom was known as Judah. Because the northern kingdom was taken by Assyria and never returned, Israel became the name of the nation after the return from exile in Babylon and persisted as such until Titus destroyed the Temple and the nation ceased to exist as a national entity. ^[1] It is the name of the modern national state of Israel today, but it ought to be noted that this is not the Israel prophesied to be raised up at the last time as that entity is returned to the land in faith and modern Israel assuredly is not present in the ancient land in faith, though it is surely possible that prophetic Israel could rise from among the national group in the land today.

The name literally means “God prevails” or “God will prevail” and speaks of the nation of Israel as the demonstration that God will persevere and, in His power, have his way.  It is a particularly poignant use of that name in this context where, despite all of Israel’s attempts to have his own way and do his own thing, God will have His way!

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^[1] Strong, J. (1996). The exhaustive concordance of the Bible : Showing every word of the text of the common English version of the canonical books, and every occurrence of each word in regular order. (electronic ed.) (H3478). Ontario: Woodside Bible Fellowship.

Considering Real Freedom

When the Lord called Elijah to hide from the king's wrath and find water at a time when the land was under the judgment of drought, God directed him to a brook called Cherith. Yet, in what I am sure was a situation that brought great anxiety to Elijah, day by day he watched the water level shrinking further and further. Lets remember that this very drought was the result of the words God had instructed him to proclaim. What a challenge this must have been!

Elijah Predicts a Drought

1 Kings 17:1 Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” 2 And the word of the Lord came to him: 3 “Depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. 4 You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” 5 So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan. 6 And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. 7 And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.

Yet even in the midst of famine, God had not forgotten his man and had provided means for supplying Elijah's needs, through a very unusual source - a widow who was preparing what she thought was her last ever meal before death. Think about that. This widow, at the very end of herself, was God's appointed means of provision for His prophet. God was surely showing Elijah that He has countless ways of providing, but also showing this widow such amazing love and mercy (though she might not be aware of this when asked to share her last meal with him). How tender He is with His people even as they face great trials and hardships. How great is His love.

God provided the Cherith brook for Elijah, but this means of provision was ending, and so God instructed Elijah to leave that place and go to another.

The Widow of Zarephath

1 Kings 17: 8 Then the word of the Lord came to him, 9 “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” 10 So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.” 11 And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” 12 And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” 13 And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. 14 For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’” 15 And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. 16 The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.

The initial drought came as an act of judgment on the land because of the sins of King Ahab (which we could read about in the previous chapter of 1 Kings 16). Perhaps you are experiencing a drought of a different kind. It may be some special season that has passed; losing a job or some illness or relationship problem. Some of these situations are extremely heartbreaking and challenging; others the Lord lifts quickly by the prayer of faith. Yet whatever we face, our God is in the heavens and He does what pleases Him. He wants us to look to Him as our Source recognizing that He has many different means of supply for us. Our mistake is to put our confidence in the means rather than Him as the Source. Whatever God does to provide for us we need to see it as simply a temporary means of supply (sometimes it lasts a very short time, while at other times it can last decades before that particular brook dries up... but it is simply a means nonetheless and not the Source). God Himself is our Source, Jehovah Jireh, our Provider!

Let us remember that He alone is our Source both as individuals and families and even as a nation. Here in these United States of America, we remain, one nation under God.

The Source of Real Freedom

That is what brings real freedom!  When we are not bound or beholding to some source or afraid that supply will be cut and that we will go lacking - it is then and only then we can be really free to worship and see Who God truly is.  It is this that the secular world seeks after.  They seek it by a political means, the only means available to them as unregenerate men.  But as the children of God we are free from the cares of the world and worries and fears that those cares bring.  The future holds no dread for us (at least in need not!).  The promises of God are glorious indeed when we consider the the contrast of this world with the next, but that not the only impact that they have.  They are are likewise glorious for His children here as well.  For they enable us to walk through life as those who are different, holy, "other", bearing witness to Jehovah Jireh, the God who provides and to the freedom in which He can allow His children to walk; a freedom for which all men long!