Alas Sinful Nation

The Hebrew Bible moves from the early prophets of Joshua - 2 Kings to the latter prophets of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. The ministry of Isaiah begins around 740 BC, during the reign of Uzziah and continues to the reign of Hezekiah. This spans around 62 years of the experience of Israel and Judah, with God sending many prophets to warn His people to turn from their sin and back to Him. As they ignore the warnings, God sends the promised calamities of famine, war, pestilence, and other nations to conquer their land. The Book of Isaiah was known as the Fifth Gospel by the church fathers, for it contains many prophecies which were fulfilled by Jesus in His first coming and many that will be fulfilled in His return.

Isaiah begins his text with the vision given to him during the reign of these kings. In it, God is calling heaven and earth as witnesses against His people Israel for forgetting their God. ‘Listen, O heavens, and hear, O earth; for YHWH speaks, ‘Sons have I reared and brought up, but they have revolted against me. As an ox knows its owner, and a donkey its master’s manger, Israel does not know, My people do not understand.’

The covenant God made with Israel at Mt. Sinai with the children of Israel was made with heaven and earth as witnesses against Israel. Moses repeated this in Deuteronomy 30, where he warned Israel of the dangers of rejecting the One True God who set them free from Egypt. He told them, ‘But if your heart turns away and you will not listen, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it. i call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your seed, by loving Yahweh your God, by listening to His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.’

Despite the warnings by Moses and every prophet up to Isaiah, both Israel and Judah had walked away from worshiping YHWH, the God of Israel. And so God sent warnings of coming judgment again. The northern kingdom was falling to the Assyrians, so Isaiah could point to that as proof that God would fulfill His Word with the curses agreed to at Mt. Ebal when Joshua and the children of Israel entered the land of promise. The sin of Israel and Judah had risen to the point where judgment was unavoidable. They were weighed down with iniquity, they bore generations of wicked men, they abandoned YHWH, they despised the Holy One of Israel by turning away from Him.

God weighed them in the balances and found Israel and Judah lacking. He examined them and determined that not only was their head sick, the whole body was diseased. All of Israel and Judah had walked away, the entire nation was sinful evildoers. So the land was desolate, the cities burned with fires, the fields were being devoured by strangers - all in fulfillment of the warnings given by Moses. And Judah was like a small hut in a large field, Jerusalem was like a watchman’s hut in a cucumber field. It was small, surrounded by nothing to stop the enemies from destroying it except God Himself.

Isaiah recognized the mercy of God even then. God could remove His hand and Judah would be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah was in one day. Yet it was the covenant God had made with Israel that kept Him from total destruction. So YHWH left Israel a small remnant of survivors, for that was all that remained in Judah.