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30. Woe to Obstinate Nation

¹ “Woe to the obstinate children,”
   declares the LORD,
“to those who carry out plans that are not mine,
   forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit,
   heaping sin upon sin;
² who go down to Egypt
   without consulting me;
who look for help to Pharaoh’s protection,
   to Egypt’s shade for refuge.
³ But Pharaoh’s protection will be to your shame,
   Egypt’s shade will bring you disgrace.
⁴ Though they have officials in Zoan
   and their envoys have arrived in Hanes,
⁵ everyone will be put to shame
   because of a people useless to them,
who bring neither help nor advantage,
   but only shame and disgrace.”

⁶ A prophecy concerning the animals of the Negev:

   Through a land of hardship and distress,
   of lions and lionesses,
   of adders and darting snakes,
the envoys carry their riches on donkeys’ backs,
   their treasures on the humps of camels,
to that unprofitable nation,
    ⁷ to Egypt, whose help is utterly useless.
Therefore I call her
   Rahab the Do-Nothing.

    ⁸ Go now, write it on a tablet for them,
   inscribe it on a scroll,
that for the days to come
   it may be an everlasting witness.
⁹ For these are rebellious people, deceitful children,
   children unwilling to listen to the LORD’s instruction.
¹⁰ They say to the seers,
   “See no more visions!”
and to the prophets,
   “Give us no more visions of what is right!
Tell us pleasant things,
   prophesy illusions.
¹¹ Leave this way,
   get off this path,
and stop confronting us
   with the Holy One of Israel!”

¹² Therefore this is what the Holy One of Israel says:

   “Because you have rejected this message,
   relied on oppression
   and depended on deceit,
¹³ this sin will become for you
   like a high wall, cracked and bulging,
   that collapses suddenly, in an instant.
¹⁴ It will break in pieces like pottery,
   shattered so mercilessly
that among its pieces not a fragment will be found
   for taking coals from a hearth
   or scooping water out of a cistern.”

¹⁵ This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:

   “In repentance and rest is your salvation,
   in quietness and trust is your strength,
   but you would have none of it.
¹⁶ You said, ‘No, we will flee on horses.’
   Therefore you will flee!
You said, ‘We will ride off on swift horses.’
   Therefore your pursuers will be swift!
¹⁷ A thousand will flee
   at the threat of one;
at the threat of five
   you will all flee away,
till you are left
   like a flagstaff on a mountaintop,
   like a banner on a hill.”

    ¹⁸ Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you;
   therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
For the LORD is a God of justice.
   Blessed are all who wait for him!

¹⁹ People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. ²⁰ Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. ²¹ Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” ²² Then you will desecrate your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold; you will throw them away like a menstrual cloth and say to them, “Away with you!”

²³ He will also send you rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the food that comes from the land will be rich and plentiful. In that day your cattle will graze in broad meadows. ²⁴ The oxen and donkeys that work the soil will eat fodder and mash, spread out with fork and shovel. ²⁵ In the day of great slaughter, when the towers fall, streams of water will flow on every high mountain and every lofty hill. ²⁶ The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.

    ²⁷ See, the Name of the LORD comes from afar,
   with burning anger and dense clouds of smoke;
his lips are full of wrath,
   and his tongue is a consuming fire.
²⁸ His breath is like a rushing torrent,
   rising up to the neck.
He shakes the nations in the sieve of destruction;
   he places in the jaws of the peoples
   a bit that leads them astray.
²⁹ And you will sing
   as on the night you celebrate a holy festival;
your hearts will rejoice
   as when people playing pipes go up
to the mountain of the LORD,
   to the Rock of Israel.
³⁰ The LORD will cause people to hear his majestic voice
   and will make them see his arm coming down
with raging anger and consuming fire,
   with cloudburst, thunderstorm and hail.
³¹ The voice of the LORD will shatter Assyria;
   with his rod he will strike them down.
³² Every stroke the LORD lays on them
   with his punishing club
will be to the music of timbrels and harps,
   as he fights them in battle with the blows of his arm.
³³ Topheth has long been prepared;
   it has been made ready for the king.
Its fire pit has been made deep and wide,
   with an abundance of fire and wood;
the breath of the LORD,
   like a stream of burning sulfur,
   sets it ablaze.

8. Now go, and write this vision on a tablet. After having convicted the Jews of manifest unbelief, he means that it should be attested and sealed by permanent records, that posterity may know how obstinate and rebellious that nation was, and how justly the Lord punished them. We have said that it was customary with the prophets to draw up an abridgment of their discourses and attach it to the gates of the temple, and that, after having allowed full time to all to see and read it, the ministers took it down, and preserved it among the records of the temple; and thus the book of the prophets was collected and compiled. ²⁸⁹²⁸⁹ {Bogus footnote} But when any prediction was remarkable and peculiarly worthy of being remembered, then the Lord commanded that it should be written in larger characters, that the people might be induced to read it, and to examine it more attentively. (Isaiah 8:1; Habakkuk 2:2.) The Lord now commands that this should be done, in order to intimate that this was no ordinary affair, that the whole ought to be carefully written, and deserved the closest attention, and that it ought not only to be read, but to be engraven on the remembrance of men in such a manner that no lapse of time can efface it.

Yet there can be no doubt that Isaiah, by this prediction, drew upon himself the intense hatred of all ranks, because he intended to expose and hold them up for abhorrence, not only among the men of his own age, but also among posterity. There is nothing which men resent more strongly than to have their crimes made publicly known and fastened on the remembrance of men; they reckon it ignominious and disgraceful, and abhor it above all things. But the Prophet must obey God, though he should become the object of men’s hatred, and though his life should be in imminent danger. Here we ought to observe his steadfastness in dreading nothing, that he might obey God and fulfill his calling. He despised hatred, dislike, commotions, threatenings, false alarms, and immediate dangers, that he might boldly and fearlessly discharge the duties of his office. Copying his example, we ought to do this, if we wish to hear and follow God who calls us.

Before them. אתם (ĭttām) is translated by some, “with them,” but it is better to translate it “before them,” or, “in their sight;” for it was proper that he should openly irritate the Jews, to whom he presented this prediction written “on a tablet.” Hence we ought to infer, that wicked men, though they cannot bear reproof and are filled with rage, ought nevertheless to be reproved sharply and openly; and that threatenings and reproofs, though they be of no advantage to them, will yet serve for an example to others, when those men shall be stamped with perpetual infamy. In them will be fulfilled what is written elsewhere,

“The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond engraven on their hearts.” (Jeremiah 17:1.)

They must not think that they have escaped, when they have despised the prophets and shut their ears against them; for their wickedness shall be manifest to men and to angels. But as they never repent willingly or are ashamed of their crimes, God commands that a record of their shame shall be prepared, that it may be placed continually before the eyes of men. As victories and illustrious actions were commonly engraved on tables of brass, so God commands that the disgrace which the Jews brought upon themselves by their transgressions, shall be inscribed on public tablets.

That it may be till the last day. It was very extraordinary, as I remarked a little before, that the Prophet was charged by a solemn injunction to pronounce infamy on his countrymen. For this reason he adds “till the last day,” either that they may be held up to abhorrence through an uninterrupted succession of ages, or because, at the appearance of the Judge, the crimes of the wicked shall be fully laid open when he shall “ascend his judgment seat, and the books shall be opened;” for those things which formerly were hidden and wrapped in darkness will then be revealed. (Daniel 7:10; Revelation 20:12.)

Here it ought to be carefully observed, that prophecies were not written merely for the men of a single age, but that their children and all posterity ought to be instructed by them, that they may know that they ought not to imitate their fathers.

“Harden not your hearts as your fathers did.” (Psalm 95:8.)

What Paul affirms as to the whole of Scripture is applicable to prophecy, that it

“is profitable for warning, for consolation, and for instruction,” (2 Timothy 3:16;)

and this is proper and necessary in every age. We must therefore reject the fancies of fanatics and wicked men, who say that this doctrine was adapted to those times, but affirm that it is not adapted to our times. Away with such blasphemies from the ears of the godly; for, when Isaiah died, his doctrine must flourish and yield fruit.