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!
[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.
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