5 Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, And the whole heart faints. 6 From the sole of the foot even to the head, There is no soundness in it, But wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; They have not been closed or bound up, Or soothed with ointment. 7 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.
The experience of Israel is a paradox to us, it is a mystery. It is thus because we think of it in modern terms, in New Testament terms instead of understanding it in Old Testament terms. In order to understand it we must understand it in Old Covenant terms, in terms of Israel as a nation and in terms of God dealing with Israel nationally. It is true that God dealt with men individually in the Old Testament and we have record of that in the Bible. God dealt with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He dealt with David and with Solomon. We could go on and on. But the record of the Old Testament is more importantly the record of God dealing with a nation, not that of God dealing with an individual and we must, if we are to understand God’s pronouncements rightly, understand it so. If we fail to see this we will misinterpret many of the things that God says. Much of what God says in the prophetic portions of the Scripture He is saying to Israel nationally, not to individuals. This is one such passage. If we apply this passage to a single person, as some Bible scholars have attempted to do, we will go badly awry in our doctrine.
We want to follow up by emphasizing that there is surely application of Old Testament Scripture to individual life. We would be far amiss if we denied that the Law and the rest of the Old Testament had much to say to individual believers in the New Testament age. It surely does. But insofar as interpretation goes we must take care to be sure that we understand each passage as God intended it to be understood, as He gave it through its original author. Application to modern life is one thing but interpretation is quite another altogether!
This is what we see in Isaiah. He is speaking to and about the nation as a whole. His rebuke is not for any single individual (unless, of course that individual is clearly singled out) but is aimed at the entire nation as a unit. It is all of Israel with which God is angry. It is the entire nation which He takes to task and it is the entire nation to which Isaiah speaks.
Once again, however, this is not to say that we cannot take individual application from his words, only that we must take close care that we do so with the clear understanding the words are spoke to a group, a national entity and not an individual and with the sure knowledge that that will have an impact on how we both understand and apply what we read.
The Effects of their Sin (Isaiah 1:5)
Why … - The prophet now, by an abrupt change in the discourse, calls their attention to the effects of their sins, namely that there is a cumulative effect that we would call incorrigibility. Instead of saying that they had been smitten, or of saying that they had been punished for their sins, he assumes both, and asks why it should be repeated. The Latin Vulgate reads this: ‘on what part - shall I smite you anymore?’ This expresses well the sense of the Hebrew – “upon what”; and the meaning is, ‘what part of the body can be found on which blows have not been inflicted? On every part there are traces of the stripes which have been inflicted for your sins.’ The idea is taken from a body that is all covered over with weals or marks of blows, and the idea is, that the whole frame is one continued bruise, and there remains no sound part to be stricken. God has chastened Israel to an unprecedented extent and yet they have not learned their lesson!
Isaiah’s image, that of a hopeless sick body, mirrors a fact of O.T. covenant life. God had promised to keep an obedient people “free from every disease” (Deut. 7:12, 14–15).[1]
“Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers.
14 You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a male or female barren among you or among your livestock. 15 And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on all those who hate you.
Disobedience made His people vulnerable to “severe and lingering illness” (Deut. 28:59).[2]
59 then the Lord will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary plagues—great and prolonged plagues—and serious and prolonged sicknesses.
What we see here then is another example of the bearing out of the promises made to Israel in the Law. Blessing for obedience and cursing for disobedience. Their covenant relationship with God was (and still is for it has never been revoked) a two-edged sword. So it is, by the way, with the believer in the New Testament era. God has entered into a Father-Son relationship with us and will not abandon that relationship with us – in other words, He will pursue us and discipline us, chastening us and calling us back to himself! Praise Him for His faithfulness!
The particular chastisement to which the prophet refers is specified in Isa. 1:7-9. In Isa. 1:5-6, he refers to the calamities of the nation, under the image of a person wounded and chastised for crimes. Such a figure of speech is not uncommon in more modern classic writers. Again, the picture is one of God having chastened again and again to the point of Israel being one large bruise and sore. God has gone to such an extent to seek to restore them to faithfulness to Him that He has practically killed her! He has practically destroyed her. Except, Isaiah says in verse 9, God has deliberately left a small remnant, Israel would have gone the way of Sodom and Gomorrah – they would have been completely destroyed!
The “why” here is rhetorical – no answer is expected. The following verse supply the answer. By the way, Israel will continue to be stricken – she has been chastened more and more ever since – God has not stopped and will not until the time of the end when He will miraculously convert all who alive! Romans 11:25-27:
25 For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:
“The Deliverer will come out of Zion,
And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;
27 For this is My covenant with them,
When I take away their sins.”
There will come a day, at the time of the end, when all of Israel left alive, will see the truth of the Gospel and will, by the power of the Spirit of God, believe the truth of that Gospel and be saved, gloriously saved to the great glory of a patient and faithful God.
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[1] Richards, L. O. (1991; Published in electronic form by Logos Research Systems, 1996). The Bible Readers Companion (electronic ed.) (412). Wheaton: Victor Books.
[2] Ibid.
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