Isaiah 1

Wesley: visions, because they were as clearly represented to the prophets’ minds as bodily objects to men’s eyes; principally Judah, yet not exclusively.

Isaiah is a seer whose visions span the reigns of several kings. The fork is not whether Isaiah saw; it is how the Lord governs what he saw.

Calvin: vision here denotes the certainty of the doctrine—nothing in this book not made known to Isaiah by God. Concerning Judah and Jerusalem as the chief subject; other nations are not outside his office, but Judah is who he is sent to.

God opened the prophet’s eyes. Assyria’s shadow is the history.

Hear, you heavens, and listen, earth, for the LORD has spoken: I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. Wesley: he calls in the whole creation to bear witness against Israelites past hearing; this is the Lord’s plea, of whose equity all creatures may be judges.

God speaks as a father who raised children, and the rebellion is theirs. Arminian readers stress the grief in the verse: this is not a machine malfunctioning but sons turning away from the one who brought them up.

Calvin: Isaiah imitates Moses (Deut 32:1). A prodigy that should strike even the elements: children nourished, then in revolt. God had exhausted kindness toward this people as toward a vineyard (Isa 5:4). They have revolted, not merely despised.

The rearing is the Father’s; the revolt does not make Him a spectator. Both traditions agree: heavens and earth hear; Judah rebelled. The ox is next.

The ox knows his owner, and the donkey his master’s crib; Israel doesn’t know. My people do not understand. Wesley: know me their owner and master; knowing is practical and includes reverence and obedience.

They ought to have known. Crib and owner are given; the not-knowing is guilt, not missing data. Creaturely Israel under an Owner.

Calvin: worse than the Gentiles would have been charge enough; he sends them to ox and ass. Israel is emphatic: the name of the wrestler is a reproach in bastard mouths. They do not know their Owner or their crib.

Dullness after such feeding is monstrous. Both traditions agree: ox knows; Israel does not. The ah of v. 4 names the nation.

Ah, sinful nation, loaded with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD, despised the Holy One of Israel, utterly estranged. Wesley: a seed—children of wicked parents, whose guilt they inherit and whose example they follow; corrupters of themselves or others; backward instead of growing in grace.

The cry “Ah” exposes a nation that has forsaken the LORD. Inherited example does not cancel this generation’s corrupt dealing. The Holy One of Israel is despised by children He named.

Calvin: hoi is astonishment and sorrow. Laden: not a slip, but sold to act wickedly. Degenerate: unlike their parents. They have forsaken the Lord—the source of all evils. They have despised the Holy One of Israel, who had chosen them alone.

The cry “Ah” mourns an apostasy, not a single crime. Sinful nation, Holy One despised.

Why should you be struck down? Why continue to rebel? Wesley: the very head and heart of the body politic, from which the plague is derived to the members.

The blows are not imaginary, and the continuing is theirs. Striking has not yet made them unwilling to rebel. Judah’s head and heart are sick.

Calvin: why should you be stricken any more? Every remedy tried; obstinacy past hope of cure. You will grow more faithless. Head and heart: vital parts injured, so the body cannot be healed.

Chastisements that do not humble prove the height of wickedness. On this both agree: still struck, still rebelling.

From sole to head, no soundness: bruises, sores, raw wounds, not pressed out, bound up, or softened with oil. The figure stays medical. Judah is a body untreated.

Sores of a people who would not take the oil. Agency remains in the refusing of the bandage. The Lord still offers a physician; they still bleed.

Calvin: putrifying sores, a fountain of venom that cannot be stopped. No closing, binding, or ointment: without hope of relief, without comfort, without remedy. This is the display of severity after long patience.

The nation almost wasted, and still impenitent. Both traditions see that no soundness is left in the body.

Country desolate; cities burned; in your presence foreigners devour your land, as overthrown by foreigners. Wesley: the eye sees it to torment you, with no power in the hands to deliver; the overthrow of strangers who spare no persons because the land will not stay theirs.

Invaders of Judah—Syria, Israel, Assyria in these reigns. Cities, fire. The devouring is under the Lord’s rule without emptying the armies of agency.

Calvin: not a threat only but calamities already in view. Strangers from a distant country lay waste with more recklessness than neighbors who hope to garrison. If we do not repent, He does not desist.

Providence using second causes, including cruel ones. Desolate land, burned cities. Not a modern-nation chart.

The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, a hut in a field, a besieged city. Wesley: left solitary, neighboring villages and country laid waste.

“Left”—a leftover city under siege. Booth and lodge are seasonal and frail. Zion is still called daughter. Mercy has not yet said Sodom.

Calvin: vine-keepers’ cottage when grapes ripen; a night-watch over cucumbers. Either the country wasted and the city like a cottage, or the city itself brought down to a mean hut. Daughter of Zion: Jerusalem by the dignity of the temple.

The leftover is already a judgment. On this both agree: booth, lodge, besieged. The unless of v. 9 is the fork.

Unless the LORD of Armies had left to us a very small remnant, we would have been as Sodom. We would have been like Gomorrah. From Wesley’s nearby notes: survivors are the Lord’s leaving, and the revolt that nearly ended in Sodom was theirs.

The remnant is sheer mercy: without it Judah would have become Sodom. Arminians note that the sparing does not undo the rebellion of v. 2; it keeps a people alive for the chance to return.

Calvin: the Lord snatched as it were from the burning a very small remnant. You would be Sodom, were it not that God in compassion preserved a remnant. Special grace, that out of the general ruin He rescues His people. Paul, the best interpreter: through tender mercies a remnant shall be saved, that the Church may not utterly perish (Rom 9:27–29). Do not judge by numbers; God acknowledges a small chosen people.

“Remnant”—effectual sparing, not a bare permission after the fire. Lord of hosts, few survivors, else Sodom. Judah; Paul reads the same line as mercy that keeps a church in the world.