#5 - They Have Forsaken the Lord

Alas, sinful nation,
A people laden with iniquity,
A brood of evildoers,
Children who are corrupters!
They have forsaken the Lord,
They have provoked to anger
The Holy One of Israel,
They have turned away backward. (Isaiah 1:4)

A sinful nation, seed of evil-doers, laden with iniquity, and children that are corruptors... not a glowing evaluation that anyone would want on their resume.  Yet this is God’s evaluation of His chosen people, Israel.  How terrible to see, in print, in reality, God’s estimation of you!  We all have a cherished view of self.  We like to think of ourselves in a certain fashion, at the least in a somewhat positive fashion at any rate. 

To have that view of self destroyed is devastating.  It is crushing!  But yet, from a Biblical point of view, this kind of realization is necessary.  Of course, it is far better never to have fallen down into sin to begin with, to obey is better than to need to repent.  But when and where there is need to be called to repent, to hear and to heed that call is best.  We don’t do anyone any favors when we sugar-coat the truth and beg and plead in terms less that what the real truth of the matter is.  Isaiah speaks truth to the Israelites and calls them to repentance, and he is not done with them yet!

When we think of the verbs in this verse, we need to remember that the Hebrew had no real sense of grammatical “tense” as we think of it, we do, however, understand that they had “aspect” and viewed verbs as to whether or not the action of the verb was accomplished from the point of view of the speaker. That roughly correspond to our idea of tense.

The action of the verb here, forsaking or leaving, is viewed as finished, or complete, without any technical reference to time. That is difficult for us to grasp, but there it is. Hebrew also had a “Person” called the “Common” that was used for a group that included both male and female.  It is that which is used here.

In the English it might appear that this is a participle, but that is not the case, is a simple verb actually, in a simple form.

Note that there is a clear chain of reference here. The “they” refers back to the “children” in the prior phrase. That, in turn, speaks of the “brood” from the prior phrase, which speaks of the “people” referred to earlier, all the way back to the “nation” at the beginning of the verse. That chain of reference can be trace all the way back to verse one and the reference to Judah and Jerusalem.

“Forsaken” conveys a fairly condemning Hebrew word^[1]. It means to abandon, to reject, or desert, specifically, to leave a former association. In 1Ki 18:18 Elijah replies to Ahab’s charge that he has troubled Israel:

And he answered, “I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father’s house have, in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and have followed the Baals.”

Literally it means to leave, that is, to depart from an area with linear motion, implying a continuing state or condition is the result. In Jos 8:17 we read:

There was not a man left in Ai or Bethel who did not go out after Israel. So they left the city open and pursued Israel.

Note the clear expression of the full idea. They left the city completely and fully.

Metaphorically, it can mean to leave behind, abandon, i.e., cause an object to stay in a place while the participant leaves. Genesis 39:6 expresses this idea well:

Thus he left all that he had in Joseph’s hand, and he did not know what he had except for the bread which he ate…

Following the example of Ahab, these Israelites has forsaken the commands of the Lord and abandoned the relationship they had had with Him historically, in the face of all blessing and evidence.

It is no small matter that the word used here for LORD is YAHWEH – this is the “covenant name” of the God of Israel. According to the biblical account, it is the name by which God identified himself to Moses in the encounter at the burning bush (Exod. 3:14).^[2]

And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”

Although the meaning of the name remains subject to debate, Yahweh is most likely a verbal form of Heb. hâyâ (perhaps originally hwy) “be, become.” It is frequently held to be a hiphil form “cause to be,” and as such may represent the initial element in a compound such as Yahweh-El (“God, who causes to be”). ^[3]  The bottom line is that the grammar, really, is almost as inscrutable as as God Himself! (I suspect purposefully!)

This is the chief OT title and representative name for God.  It was translated kyrios (Gk., ‘Lord’) in the LXX and ‘the Lord‘ by several English versions. This name was used by ot authors more than 6,000 times, compared to about 2,500 times for elohim, ‘God.’ The NT continues to use ‘Lord’ for God (about 100 times), primarily in quotations from the LXX (e.g., Mark 1:3; 12:11; Acts 2:34) and in set phrases such as ‘hand of the Lord’ (Luke 1:66).

The vast majority of the 719 occurrences of kyrios (‘Lord’) in the NT refers to Jesus, however, usually as the exalted Christ (e.g., Acts 2:36; John 20:28). Thus, the two most common OT names for deity, ‘God’ and ‘Lord,’ are used in the NT not only for God but also (though rarely in the case of the word ‘God’) for Jesus as the exalted Lord of the church’s faith. A much less common word for ‘Lord’ in the LXX, despotēs (Gk., ‘lord,’ ‘sovereign,’ ‘master’) is also used in the NT both for God (Luke 2:29; Acts 4:24; Rev. 6:10) and for Christ (Jude 4; 2 Pet. 2:1). ^[4]

 

The significance of the statement in its’ context could not be greater!  They have forsaken the God of the universe!  This is the God Who bought them, made them a nation, molded them into a people, set them as a holy people above the other nations around them, preserved them above all or the other families around about them.  He provided for them, protected them, defended them and loved and cherished them and yet they have abandoned Him, “forsaken” Him; walked away from for that which is no god!  There is little wonder that His anger is falling and His judgment, in the form of chastening and captivity.

---

[1] Swanson, J. (1997). Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament) (electronic ed.) (DBLH 6440, #4). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

[2] Myers, A. C. (1987). The Eerdmans Bible dictionary. Rev., augm. translation of: Bijbelse encyclopedie. Rev. ed. 1975. (1075). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans.

[3] Achtemeier, P. J., Harper & Row, P., & Society of Biblical Literature. (1985). Harper's Bible dictionary. Includes index. (1st ed.) (684). San Francisco: Harper & Row.

[4] Op Cit, Myers.