Isaiah 29

Wesley’s heading for these verses is the temple and city of Jerusalem destroyed. Ariel is that royal city, and seat of David and his posterity. Add year to year: go on in killing sacrifices from time to time, one year after another, whereby you think to appease me, but all shall be in vain. The woe is; it is David’s city in Isaiah’s hearing.

The feasts still run, and the offer is still sincere—they may yet cease from thinking the round of sacrifice will buy off the woe. Grace that still names Ariel as Jerusalem is a call to that generation, not a cipher for later states.

Calvin: Isaiah threatens the city of Jerusalem. He calls it Altar, because the chief defense of the city was in the Altar; they placed more reliance on the Temple and the altar than on the other defences. They concluded that God was with them so long as they enjoyed the altar and the sacrifices. Wicked men think that God has made a truce with them when they see no destruction close at hand; though they continue to offer sacrifices year by year, still the Lord will execute his vengeance. Let us not abuse his patience.

Delay is not a truce. David’s name is admitted in order to scatter the smoke of their vanity. The church hears a woe on Jerusalem under Assyria’s shadow.”

Wesley’s heading: the temple and city of Jerusalem destroyed. The sacrifices of v. 1 will not stay the distress. Moaning and lamentation take the place of the feasts that ran their round. She shall be to me as an altar—Jerusalem herself.

The yet is spoken while the altar still stands. They chose the round of offerings instead of the love and obedience Wesley names at v. 13. The city being distressed is David’s seat in that century. The church is to refuse both despair and the habit of renaming this Ariel every generation.

Calvin: and yet I will execute my judgments and take vengeance, though by delaying them for a time it may seem as if I had forgiven. He threatens grief and mourning instead of the joy of the festivals. The Lord will reduce that city to straits, that the Jews might know that they had to contend with God, and not with men, and that, though the war was carried on by the Assyrians, still they might perceive that God was their leader. The whole city shall be as Ariel, because it shall overflow with the blood of the slain.

Outward profession, ceremonies, and the demonstrations of favor are of no avail unless we sincerely obey him. The altar-city becomes the hearth. The church reads a slaughter in Isaiah’s Jerusalem, not a later code for “Ariel.”

Wesley: the temple and city of Jerusalem destroyed. Year added to year (v. 1) has not cancelled the works raised against her.

The siege falls on Ariel, eighth-century Jerusalem, whose festivals kept their calendar (v. 1) while the heart drifted. Keeping the feasts could not stand in for hearing the Lord who now encamps against the city.

Calvin: by the roundness of a ball he shews that all means of escape will be cut off. This war will be carried on under God’s direction, and the Assyrians, though hurried on by their passions and by the lust of power, will undertake nothing but by the command of God. He reckoned it of great importance that the Jews know all the evils which befell them were sent by God, that they might enter into an examination of their crimes.

The siege is the Lord’s, though Assyria holds the towers. The church hears an encampment against Jerusalem in that generation.

Wesley: thou who now speakest so loftily, shall be humbled, and with a low voice, beg the favour of thine enemies. As one who, that they might possess the people with a kind of reverence and horror, used to deliver their answers with a low voice, from some cave under the ground. The loftiness is Jerusalem’s in that hour.

The whisper is shame after pride, not a riddle for later ghosts. They may yet leave the lofty speech. The verse stays with Ariel brought low in the dust of her own land.

Calvin: he describes scornfully that arrogance which led the Jews to despise all threatenings so long as they enjoyed prosperity. When their pride has been laid aside, they will afterwards be more submissive; not that they will change their dispositions, but because shame will restrain that wantonness. They will utter a low and confused noise as out of caverns, compared to the speech of soothsayers who whispered from a dark cave. By their being brought down he means they shall be covered with disgrace, so that they will not dare to utter, as from a lofty place, their proud and idle boastings.

First terror, to repress insolence. The church hears Jerusalem’s voice in the dust.

Wesley: strangers—whom thou hast hired to assist thee, as indeed they did, when the Chaldeans came against them. Terrible ones—thy great commanders, and stout soldiers. It—this destruction of thy strangers, and terrible ones shall come to pass. The hired help and the stout men of Ariel are the ones turned to dust and chaff.

Wesley names those she hired and those she counted terrible; their passing is not a chart of later nations. Ariel remains the royal city of v. 1.

Calvin, against the common reading that this multitude is the enemy host: the Prophet speaks contemptuously of the garrisons on which the Jews foolishly relied, for they had in their pay foreign soldiers who were strong men. Their subsidiary troops, though a vast multitude, shall be like dust or chaff, useless refuse; those military aids shall not last long, but shall quickly vanish away. In vain do men boast of them, for God is their enemy.

Wealth and resources, however great, are reduced to nothing when the Lord determines to deal with us. The church reads Judah’s hired strength in Isaiah’s century, not a later code for “foes.”

Wesley: thou—thou, O Jerusalem. Fire—with dreadful judgments, which are frequently expressed by these metaphors.

Thunder, earthquake, and flame picture the Lord’s visitation on David’s city. Arminian readers note that such warnings come before the blow, while turning is still possible.

Calvin: he assigns the reason why the multitude of garrisons shall be like chaff, by an opposite metaphor: with those soldiers he contrasts the anger and visitation of the Lord. What is chaff to the flame of a devouring fire? What is dust to the force of a whirlwind? The vengeance of God will be such as all their preparations shall be unable to resist. If he determine to chastise us, we shall not ward off his wrath by any force or bulwarks.

Those who assail can do no more than the Lord permits; those who trust hired strength cannot resist his flame. The church fears that visitation in Jerusalem, not a later tempest pasted onto “LORD of Armies.”

Wesley’s heading for vv. 7–8 is her enemies insatiable. The nations that fight Ariel are not a vanishing comfort-story in his notes; they are the multitude whose appetite is named in v. 8. The dream belongs to the siege of Jerusalem, David’s city.

Wesley keeps the fight against Ariel as a fight against her.

Calvin: this verse also I interpret differently from others; for they think that the Prophet intended to bring consolation to the godly, namely that the enemies of the Church resemble dreamers, and the Lord disappoints their hopes. But this interpretation does not appear to me to agree well with the text. Since he afterwards proceeds again to utter threatenings, I have no doubt that here he follows out the same subject. He censures the Jews for their obstinacy. The enemies shall arrive suddenly and unexpectedly, while the Jews imagine they are enjoying profound peace; the event shall be so sudden that it will appear to be a dream.

A beautiful consolation-sentence must not steal us from the author’s meaning. The church hears a rebuke of Jerusalem’s false rest.

Wesley: his soul—his appetite or desire is unsatisfied. So—no less unsatisfied and insatiable; they shall be always thirsting after more of your blood. The hungry dreamer, in his notes, is the multitude that fights Zion: they do not wake content.

The nations besieging Zion are like a hungry man who dreams of food and wakes up empty. Their appetite for conquest will never be satisfied.

Calvin: he compares the Jews to hungry men, who are indeed asleep, but whose empty stomach craves for food. The Lord continually warned them by his prophets, and invited them to the divine feasts of the word; but they despised those feasts, and chose rather to fall asleep in their vices. When they have been aroused by a sudden calamity, they shall feel how empty those dreams were. I see nothing here that is fitted to yield consolation; the Prophet pursues the same subject, and exclaims against the scorn and rebellion of the Jews.

The dreamer is Ariel’s own false feast. Christ remains, for Calvin, the light and the soul of the law when the sealed vision is later named; this verse does.

Wesley: wonder—at the stupidity of this people. Cry—cry out again and again through astonishment. They stagger—with giddiness or stupidity, which makes them like drunken men, insensible of their danger.

The command to be astonished is meant to shake them awake. Jerusalem staggers without wine, insensible of her danger, and the prophet names the stupor so it can be seen for what it is.

Calvin: he mocks and reproves their stupidity. Though they dwell long on this thought, it will end in nothing else than that their minds shall be amazed. They are drunken, and not with wine: they resemble drunkards; spiritual drunkenness engrosses and stupefies all their senses, so that they are blind to the plainest subjects. This stupidity is a just punishment which the Lord inflicts on account of their unbelief. These words are not commands to think longer; he mocks their slowness: think as much as you please, you will not at all understand it.

They are blinded, and they blind. The church hears Judah’s judicial stupor.

Wesley: dead sleep—hardness of heart, and insensibleness of your danger. Seers—your magistrates and ministers. Covered—with the veil of ignorance and stupidity.

The deep sleep is judicial, poured out on a people who had already shut their own eyes (v. 9). Wesley applies it to magistrates and ministers—those whose calling was to see for others.

Calvin: for the purpose of shewing more clearly the source of this blindness, he attributes it to the judgment of God, who determined to punish in this manner the wickedness of the people. As it belongs to him to give eyes to see, so he alone deprives us of all light, when he sees that by a wicked and depraved hatred of the truth we of our own accord wish for darkness. The people are deprived of those aids which ought to have imparted light: their teachers will be altogether senseless, so far from directing others that they will not even be able to guide themselves.

When men are blind in things so plain, we perceive his righteous judgment. The church fears that sleep upon Judah’s prophets.

Wesley’s heading for vv. 9–12 is their senselessness. Of all—of all, your prophets. As a book—in which no man can read, while it is sealed up, as books then sometimes were, being made in the form of rolls. The learned reader of Jerusalem cannot open what the Lord has sealed to that generation.

The vision is all this—Ariel, siege, dream, sleep—already spoken. The seal is. They may still have asked to hear.

Calvin: the blindness of the Jews will be so great that, though the Lord enlightens them by the clearest light of his word, they will understand nothing. Nor does he mean that this will happen to the common people alone, but even to the rulers and teachers. Both learned and unlearned will be so dull as to be altogether dazzled by the word of God, and to see no more in it than in a sealed letter. He does not say that doctrine will be taken away, but that, though it be in their possession, they will not have reason and understanding.

We must not boast of the outward preaching of the word; it will be of no avail unless it enlighten our minds. The church hears a sealed vision in Isaiah’s Judah. Calvin will name Christ as the one who takes away the vail; that christology is.

Wesley: delivered—unsealed and opened. Even then the unlearned says he cannot read. Senselessness runs from prophet to people: the book of all this, opened or sealed, finds no reader in Ariel.

Inability here is the stupidity Wesley named at v. 9. The offer “read this” is still made. The verse stays with eighth-century Jerusalem.

Calvin: from the highest to the lowest they will derive no benefit from the word of God. Learning did not prevent them from being blinded; the vengeance is threatened not only against the ignorant but also against the learned. We do not understand spiritual doctrine in consequence of possessing an acute understanding or a superior education in the schools.

Embrace the word sincerely if we wish to escape this vengeance. The church reads an unlearned man in Judah’s hearing.

Wesley: draw near—namely, in acts of worship. With lips—with outward devotions. But—they do not pay me that love, and fear, and obedience, which I require. And—they worship me not in such a manner as I have prescribed, but according to mens inventions, preferring the devices and traditions of their false prophets, before my institutions. Deep hypocrisy, in his heading, is Jerusalem’s, at the feasts of v. 1.

The far heart is still invited near. Love, fear, and obedience are required as sincere; lips without them will not do. Wesley and Calvin agree here that the charge is hypocrisy in Judah.

Calvin: the people have deserved this punishment chiefly on account of their hypocrisy and superstitions. With the lips and mouth the Prophet contrasts the heart, the sincerity of which God enjoins; if this be wanting, all our works, whatever brilliancy they possess, are rejected by him. Their fear hath been taught by the precept of men: to make the commandments of men, and not the word of God, the rule of worshipping him, is a subversion of all order. We ought not to seek a better expositor than Christ himself: “This people honoureth me with the lips, but their heart is far from me.”

Reformed close of the charge: God is a Spirit, and chooses to be worshipped with the spirit and the heart. Shared christology: Calvin hears Christ name this verse; Wesley’s lips-and-heart is the same hypocrisy.

Wesley: hid—shall disappear and vanish.

The marvel is a judgment: lips honored God while hearts stayed far (v. 13), so the wisdom of the wise will vanish. Paul quotes the verse in 1 Corinthians 1:19, where the cross does the same work on human cleverness.

Calvin: he threatens that he will punish by blinding not only the ignorant or the ordinary ranks, but those wise men who were held in admiration by the people. From this vengeance we may easily learn how hateful a vice hypocrisy is. What kind of punishment is more dreadful than blindness of mind and stupidity? He does not speak of the common herd, but of their very leaders, who ought to have been like eyes. If the light be darkness, how great shall be the darkness.

The marvelous work is the hiding of discernment in that generation. Calvin and Wesley agree the stone and the Christ who exposits the lips-charge stand; this wonder does.