Isaiah 3

Behold, the Lord, GOD of Armies, takes away from Jerusalem and Judah supply and support, the whole supply of bread, and water.

The Lord actually removes what Judah leaned on. Bread and water were stays. Agency remains in the speech and deeds of v. 8 that drew this taking.

Calvin: behold presses the nearness of the hand. Wealth will not prevent wrath. Stay and staff: every kind of support, then bread and water first. God takes the strength of bread either by removing food or by withdrawing the hidden power that nourishes; without His blessing the full belly still hungers.

The secret blessing is His to give or withhold.

Wesley: judge—civil magistrates; ancient—wisdom increased by long experience.

Every rank in Judah’s gates will be taken away. When they go, the city feels it.

Calvin: magistrates and teachers are the two eyes of the body. He mixes warrior, judge, prophet. Sometimes God takes them by death, sometimes by making them soft. A well-ordered commonwealth is a gift; fanatics who banish the sword oppose public safety.

He takes what He gave. Mighty, soldier, judge, prophet, elder.

Captain of fifty, man of rank, counselor, skillful magician, expert in charms. Judah’s full staff, including dark arts it should not have kept.

Offices and forbidden crafts together. Losing both is judgment on a land that filled itself from the east (2:6).

Calvin: captains of fifty as the custom then. Artificers uphold a nation. Eloquent or skilled in muttering: some hear forbidden charms among the punishments—God takes even unlawful aids (cf. Hos 3:4).

Every ornament of a safe people is His to strip. The captain, the counselor, and the charmer are all removed.

I will give boys to be their princes, and children shall rule over them. Wesley’s childish rulers begin here.

Unfit heads in Judah, not a modern gender or age slogan. The Lord makes them princes; the people still live under them.

Calvin: children by age or by mind—delicate, without courage. No man is fit to govern unless God appoint and endow him. Vengeance in two ways: He stuns the able, or He gradually removes them and commits the reins to those who cannot rule a house.

He appoints kings in wrath (Hos 13:11). Neither side disputes this: boys, infants, rule.

People oppress one another; youth insolent to the elder, the wicked against the honorable. Wesley: oppressed by command or permission of such childish rulers.

Neighbor against neighbor in streets. Insolence is still theirs under infant princes.

Calvin: utmost confusion when order is destroyed. Wantonness unrestrained. They who sap civil government are open enemies of mankind. A child insulting an old man is the most preposterous of spectacles, and unavoidable when government has fallen.

Anarchy is a judgment, not a liberation. Common to both: oppress, youth, elder, despised, honorable.

A man takes hold of his brother: You have clothing, you be our ruler, and let this heap of ruins under your rule. Wesley: we are undone, neither food nor raiment; thou hast something left; under thine hand—to heal it.

A rag of dignity in a ruined house. They still seize a brother.

Calvin: no man will undertake to govern, though requested. Ambition usually contends for power; when dignity is refused, calamity has reached its depth. Take hold: they seize, not merely flatter. Ruin under thy hand: at least if you have compassion, aid our wretchedness.

The throne is a burden no one wants. Brother, cloak, leader, ruins.

In that day he will say, I will not be a healer; for in my house neither bread nor clothing. You shall not make me ruler. Wesley: healer—a repairer of the ruins of the state.

The man asked to be a healer refuses. The man with a cloak still cannot bind the wound.

Calvin: swear marks a firm refusal. Healer: metaphor from surgeons—I will not bind the wounds. House without bread or clothing: the state is past remedy.

The office is declined because the ruin is beyond him. Both traditions hear: not a healer, no bread, no cloak.

Jerusalem has stumbled, Judah fallen; because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his glorious presence. The taking of v. 1 has this because.

Judah fell because “their tongue and their doings” defied the LORD. Arminian readers note the provocation was deliberate, done in the very presence of his glory.

Calvin: lest God seem cruel, the reason is their words and actions against Him, to provoke the eyes of His glory. Open insult in His presence. Glory: extraordinary madness to have no reverence when majesty is displayed. The cause of calamities is in their own hands.

The fall is His righteous sentence on that defiance. Jerusalem, Judah, speech, deeds, glory.

The look of their faces bears witness; they parade their sin like Sodom. They have brought disaster upon themselves. Wesley: pride and impiety show in their looks; they act it publicly; procured a fit recompense, even utter ruin.

Sodom is moral resemblance (1:10). They fetched this evil. Faces still their own.

Calvin: countenance answers against them—it will not be necessary to bring distant witnesses. They declare their sin as Sodom, boasting without shame. Woe unto their soul: they have rewarded evil unto themselves. God cannot be accused; give glory to a righteous judge and lay the blame on yourselves.

The fetching is theirs; the woe is His verdict.

Tell the righteous that it will be well with them, for they will eat the fruit of their deeds. Wesley: say ye, O priests and Levites, that God will be their safeguard and portion.

An earnest word to righteous in this crashing city. Fruit of deeds is not a works-gospel that buys 1:18’s snow; it is well with them because God is their portion, and what they have done is not nothing. Creaturely fruit under a King who actually safeguards.

Calvin: say—hold it a settled point. Public calamity tempts the godly to think they perish with the wicked. Providence never confounds; even in apparent confusion He distinguishes. He does not merely bid them tell the righteous, but every man be convinced it shall be well, though he appear unhappy. Fruit of his doings: he shall not be defrauded of the reward of good conduct.

The distinction is God’s, not chance. The fruit is a reward He will not deny, not a claim that justifies. On this both agree: righteous, well, fruit of deeds.

Disaster is upon them, for the deeds of their hands will be paid back to them. What his hands have done will be paid back to him. The pair of v. 10. Hands still deal.

Ill matching hands. Not a fake warning.

Calvin: contrast to comfort the godly and terrify the wicked. Do not think chance rules, or that God punishes without justice, or that good and bad have the same reward. Hold that the wicked man’s condition will be most wretched; he brings on himself the evil that falls on his head.

The dealing is repaid by a just judge. The wicked receive what their hands have done.

My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. Guides mislead and swallow the way of your paths. Wesley: women—weak and effeminate rulers; rulers civil and ecclesiastical.

The boy-princes of v. 4 in another key. Unfit heads, weak where they should have been fathers. Guides still mislead; the people can still refuse the path.

Calvin: madness that they obstinately shake off God’s yoke and yield abject submission to men of no estimation. God has struck them with cowardice. They who govern cause thee to err: the rulers are the plague; no worse destruction than bad princes. He does not here mean flattering prophets so much as heads who corrupt by example.

Wrath appointed these heads. Both confess: my people, infants, women as unfit rule, guides mislead.

The LORD stands up to contend, and stands to judge the peoples. Wesley: he will shortly stand as judge to enquire and give sentence; to judge—to defend and deliver them.

The LORD holds court over the peoples. He contends; elders still have to answer.

Calvin: so long as wickedness rages, we think He is idle. After complaining of princes, he adds that the Lord will do what His authority demands. He sits as judge in heaven and will call them to account.

He was never absent. Either reading: contend, judge, peoples.

The Lord comes to judge the elders and princes of his people: you have eaten up the vineyard. The plunder of the poor is in your houses. Wesley: ancients—princes chosen from ripe years; eaten—destroyed instead of preserving; spoil—goods violently taken from the poor.

Judah as the Lord’s planting (soon Isa 5). Spoil in houses is theft in the gates of 1:23. They ate what they should have dressed.

Calvin: God contends with the ancients—not a lawful assembly in which they sit as deputies, but a suit against them. Psalm 82: He stands in the assembly of the gods. You have destroyed the vineyard: vine-dressers who devoured like wild beasts. Spoil of the poor in palaces that ought to be a sanctuary is sacrilege.

“Vineyard”—double crime—they wasted what He loved. Elders, princes, vineyard, spoil, poor.

What do you mean that you crush my people, grind the face of the poor? “Says the Lord, GOD of Armies.” The last word of the range is His question.

An interrogation of grinders. My people, the poor—Judah’s crushed, not a slogan. They can still stop the millstone.

Calvin: other particulars of haughty, cruel rule. The poor ought to betake themselves to the magistrate as father. What? What effrontery to abuse the mean. God speaks: the accusation is not from men. Majesty meets princes who think themselves beyond advice. From the greater to the less: if He punishes princes who destroyed the vineyard, the lowest will not escape.

The Lord of hosts is the plaintiff. Crushing, grinding, poor, Lord God of hosts.