NOTES for Isa 57:1-21

Printable version

¹The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.

²He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.

³But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore.

⁴Against whom do ye sport yourselves? against whom make ye a wide mouth, and draw out the tongue? are ye not children of transgression, a seed of falsehood,

⁵Enflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks?

⁶Among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion; they, they are thy lot: even to them hast thou poured a drink offering, thou hast offered a meat offering. Should I receive comfort in these?

⁷Upon a lofty and high mountain hast thou set thy bed: even thither wentest thou up to offer sacrifice.

⁸Behind the doors also and the posts hast thou set up thy remembrance: for thou hast discovered thyself to another than me, and art gone up; thou hast enlarged thy bed, and made thee a covenant with them; thou lovedst their bed where thou sawest it.

⁹And thou wentest to the king with ointment, and didst increase thy perfumes, and didst send thy messengers far off, and didst debase thyself even unto hell.

¹⁰Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way; yet saidst thou not, There is no hope: thou hast found the life of thine hand; therefore thou wast not grieved.

¹¹And of whom hast thou been afraid or feared, that thou hast lied, and hast not remembered me, nor laid it to thy heart? have not I held my peace even of old, and thou fearest me not?

¹²I will declare thy righteousness, and thy works; for they shall not profit thee.

¹³When thou criest, let thy companies deliver thee; but the wind shall carry them all away; vanity shall take them: but he that putteth his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain;

¹⁴And shall say, Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people.

¹⁵For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

¹⁶For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made.

¹⁷For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart.

¹⁸I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners.

¹⁹I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the LORD; and I will heal him.

²⁰But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.

²¹There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.

The Lord speaks to Deutero-Isaiah about the lot of the righteous in a world filled with evil and lies; this subject arises in the context of the promise that not only Israelites but foreigners too will turn to God. The logic of divine revelation is this: in chapter 56 He calls all nations to turn to Him, and the chapter ends with the exceptionally important statement that God calls the nations to Himself, not to Israel. Israel's leaders are blind, and their hearts and deeds are full of iniquity. The Lord calls us not to the way of life or religion of particular people, but only to Himself, because none of us can be a worthy witness to His holiness. This thought remains just as relevant to the Church of the New Testament. Then, in chapter 57, which we read today, the Lord speaks of the lot of the righteous person.

These words differ strikingly from everything we are accustomed to reading in the Old Testament, and from most people's conventional ideas. The Lord warns that the lot of the righteous is sorrowful, because in a fallen world righteousness inevitably brings suffering. We, on the contrary, like most Old Testament Jews, think it should be the other way round: the righteous should prosper and the wicked perish. And indeed the righteous ought to have prospered, and there ought to have been no wickedness at all, had it not been for humanity's fall, which distorted the Creator's original design. Thus, for the righteous person, only death brings the long-awaited peace found in God, and death also becomes deliverance from the malice reigning in this world. Here Deutero-Isaiah's words resonate with what the apostle Paul writes at the beginning of the Letter to the Philippians: ‘For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.’

Continuing, the Lord says that idolatry nevertheless brings good to no one, ever, because the idolater's path consists in serving falsehood. In essence, He thereby puts Israel and all the other nations on the same footing, calling everyone alike to turn to Him. This is a thoroughly New Testament thought: John the Baptist expresses precisely this in other words when he calls on the Jews to wash themselves (‘be baptised’ in our translation), as pagans coming to faith wash themselves. For everyone, repentance and hope in God alone prove to be the path to life, to ‘inheriting the land’, as the prophet puts it here. It is more than likely that this is the very passage the Lord Jesus Christ quotes in the Sermon on the Mount when speaking of the meek inheriting the earth.

In the concluding part of the chapter, the Lord says that no one can stand against His righteousness. He speaks these words not with anger and reproach, as we would, but with pain and compassion. ‘Why should you die?’ the prophet Ezekiel had exclaimed on behalf of the Most High several decades earlier. And through Deutero-Isaiah the Lord calls all people to come to Him, removing every obstacle on the way to the Redeemer. This ‘dispute’—the confrontation between God and people striving towards sin and death—will not last for ever, the Lord says, because none of us could survive it. And in the final verses, as through the other prophets, the Lord again promises to grant forgiveness and salvation to those who repent.

It is here, in these final verses, that we find extraordinary words, a true pearl of prophetic revelation. Calling everyone to turn to Him, the Lord says that His will and purpose lie in our turning to Him and being saved, in our being healed of sin and death. He says, ‘I dwell in the heights of heaven and in the sanctuary, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit.’ The Almighty dwells not only in heaven, not only in the sanctuary, but beside the humble in spirit. Here we begin to glimpse what Christ's great words express: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven; blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.’ Deutero-Isaiah is called the Old Testament evangelist because much was revealed to him that would later be spoken by Christ and fulfilled in His earthly life.

But the word of the Lord does not stop there. He continues: ‘I dwell... to revive the spirit of the humble and the hearts of the contrite.’ He lives in order to bring us, the humble and contrite, to life! In this gift of mercy, the Lord Himself places the meaning of His own life, incomprehensible and inexpressible in words. The eternal mystery of divine Life is revealed here as God's gift to those who come to Him.

Other notes

For Isa 57:1-21