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Isaiah 1: What the Passage Says

108 claims across 31 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Isaiah 1 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Isaiah's opening chapter sets out the LORD's charge against Judah and Jerusalem: they have rebelled against him, their country already lies wrecked, and their sacrifices, festivals, and prayers are rejected because their hands are full of blood. The LORD tells them to stop doing evil, seek justice, and defend the fatherless and the widow, and offers to make sins as red as crimson white as snow; those willing and obedient will eat the good of the land, and those who refuse and rebel will fall to the sword. The chapter closes with the LORD saying he will burn away the city's impurities and restore its judges, so it will be called the faithful city, while rebels, sinners, and those who abandon the LORD are destroyed.

Claim by Claim

  1. 1:1
    • Isaiah son of Amoz saw a vision.
    • The vision concerned Judah and Jerusalem.
    • The vision came in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.
    • Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah.
  2. 1:2
    • The heavens are commanded to hear.
    • The earth is commanded to give ear.
    • The reason given is that the LORD has spoken.
    • The LORD says he reared children and raised them up.
    • The LORD says those children rebelled against him.
  3. 1:3
    • The ox knows its owner.
    • The donkey knows its master's feeding trough.
    • Israel does not know.
    • The LORD's people do not understand.
  4. 1:4
    • A cry of woe is uttered over a sinful nation.
    • The people are weighed down with iniquity.
    • They are offspring of evildoers.
    • They are children who act corruptly.
    • They have forsaken the LORD.
    • They have spurned the Holy One of Israel.
    • They have turned away backward.
  5. 1:5
    • The people are asked why they should be struck again.
    • The people continue to add rebellion.
    • The whole head is sick.
    • The whole heart is faint.
  6. 1:6
    • From the sole of the foot to the head there is no sound spot.
    • There are wounds and welts and fresh sores.
    • The sores have not been pressed out.
    • The sores have not been bound up.
    • The sores have not been softened with oil.
  7. 1:7
    • Their country is a desolation.
    • Their cities are burned with fire.
    • Strangers devour their land in their presence.
    • The land is a desolation, as when strangers overthrow it.
  8. 1:8
    • The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard.
    • She is left like a hut in a cucumber field.
    • She is left like a besieged city.
  9. 1:9
    • If the LORD of hosts had not left them a small remnant, they would have become like Sodom.
    • If the LORD of hosts had not left them a small remnant, they would have resembled Gomorrah.
  10. 1:10
    • The rulers of Sodom are commanded to hear the word of the LORD.
    • The people of Gomorrah are commanded to give ear to the instruction of our God.
  11. 1:11
    • The LORD asks what the multitude of their sacrifices is to him.
    • This is what the LORD says.
    • The LORD is sated with burnt offerings of rams.
    • The LORD is sated with the fat of fattened beasts.
    • The LORD does not delight in the blood of bulls, lambs, and male goats.
  12. 1:12
    • The people come to appear before the LORD's face.
    • The LORD asks who required this from their hand.
    • The LORD calls it trampling his courts.
  13. 1:13
    • They are told to bring no more worthless offerings.
    • Incense is an abomination to the LORD.
    • New moon, sabbath, and the calling of assemblies are named.
    • The LORD cannot endure iniquity together with solemn assembly.
  14. 1:14
    • The LORD's soul hates their new moons and appointed feasts.
    • They have become a burden to the LORD.
    • The LORD is weary of bearing them.
  15. 1:15
    • When they spread out their hands, the LORD will hide his eyes from them.
    • Even when they multiply prayer, the LORD will not listen.
    • Their hands are full of blood.
  16. 1:16
    • They are commanded to wash.
    • They are commanded to make themselves clean.
    • They are commanded to remove the evil of their deeds from before the LORD's eyes.
    • They are commanded to cease doing evil.
  17. 1:17
    • They are commanded to learn to do good.
    • They are commanded to seek justice.
    • They are commanded to set right the oppressed.
    • They are commanded to judge the case of the fatherless.
    • They are commanded to plead the case of the widow.
  18. 1:18
    • The people are summoned to come and argue the case together with the LORD.
    • This is what the LORD says.
    • Though their sins are like scarlet, they shall become white as snow.
    • Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
  19. 1:19
    • If they are willing and obedient, they shall eat the good of the land.
  20. 1:20
    • If they refuse and rebel, they shall be devoured by the sword.
    • The mouth of the LORD has spoken it.
  21. 1:21
    • The faithful city has become a harlot.
    • The city was once full of justice.
    • Righteousness lodged in her.
    • Now murderers are in her.
  22. 1:22
    • Her silver has become dross.
    • Her drink is diluted with water.
  23. 1:23
    • Her princes are rebellious.
    • Her princes are companions of thieves.
    • Every one of them loves a bribe.
    • Every one of them pursues payments.
    • They do not judge the case of the fatherless.
    • The cause of the widow does not come before them.
  24. 1:24
    • This is the declaration of the Lord, the LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel.
    • The LORD says he will be relieved of his adversaries.
    • The LORD says he will avenge himself on his enemies.
  25. 1:25
    • The LORD will turn his hand against her.
    • The LORD will smelt away her dross as with lye.
    • The LORD will remove all her alloy.
  26. 1:26
    • The LORD will restore her judges as at the first.
    • The LORD will restore her counselors as at the beginning.
    • Afterward she shall be called the city of righteousness.
    • Afterward she shall be called the faithful city.
  27. 1:27
    • Zion shall be redeemed with justice.
    • Those in her who return shall be redeemed with righteousness.
  28. 1:28
    • Transgressors and sinners shall be broken together.
    • Those who forsake the LORD shall come to an end.
  29. 1:29
    • They shall be ashamed of the terebinths they desired.
    • They shall be disgraced because of the gardens they chose.
  30. 1:30
    • They shall be like a terebinth whose leaf withers.
    • They shall be like a garden that has no water.
  31. 1:31
    • The strong one shall become tow.
    • His work shall become a spark.
    • Both shall burn together.
    • There shall be no one to quench them.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1
"Vision" is the standard technical term for a message a prophet received; it does not necessarily mean something seen with the eyes. The four kings named reigned over roughly 790–686 BC, so the heading covers a working life of some fifty years. Judah was the southern of the two Hebrew kingdoms, with Jerusalem as its capital; the northern kingdom, called Israel, had split from it about 930 BC.
1:2
Summoning heaven and earth as witnesses was a fixed legal formula in the ancient Near East: treaties and formal accusations were sworn before witnesses who could not be bribed or die. The opening announces a court case, not a sermon. "LORD" printed in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants usually written YHWH, which readers traditionally did not pronounce aloud.
1:3
The point of the comparison rests on a common ancient assumption that the ox and the donkey were the dullest of domestic animals. Even they know where their food comes from.
1:4
"The Holy One of Israel" is a title for God that Isaiah uses about twenty-five times and that is rare anywhere else in the Bible; it becomes something like the book's signature phrase. "Israel" here means the whole covenant people, not only the separate northern kingdom.
1:5
The beating in view is judicial flogging, a standard punishment meant to correct an offender. The question is why anyone would keep earning more strokes.
1:6
Olive oil was the ordinary medical treatment for wounds, rubbed on to soften and soothe them; the three stages named here (washing, bandaging, oiling) were the whole of common first aid. To have had none of them done means the body has simply been left.
1:7
"Strangers" means foreigners, in practice invading armies living off the land they have overrun. Isaiah worked during the years when Assyria repeatedly campaigned through this territory, most severely in 701 BC.
1:8
Zion was the ridge on which Jerusalem stood, and "daughter of Zion" is a standard idiom personifying the city and its people as a woman. The huts and shacks were flimsy shelters thrown up in a field so a watchman could guard the crop; once the harvest was over they were abandoned, and one left standing in an empty field was the picture of something forlorn and alone.
1:9
Sodom and Gomorrah were the cities destroyed by fire in Genesis 19, remembered as the standard example of total obliteration with no survivors. "LORD of hosts", rendered here "LORD of Armies", is a military title; the hosts are the heavenly forces at God's command.
1:10
The insult is deliberate and shocking: the leaders of Jerusalem are addressed with the names of the two cities every hearer thought of as beyond saving. "Law" translates the Hebrew word torah, which means instruction or teaching generally, not only legislation.
1:11
In a burnt offering the whole animal was consumed on the fire rather than shared as a meal. The fat was considered the choicest part and was reserved for God in other kinds of sacrifice. The animals listed (rams, well-fed cattle, bulls, lambs, male goats) are the expensive ones, the offerings of people doing the ritual generously.
1:12
"To appear before me" is the set phrase for attending the temple at the pilgrimage festivals, which Israelite men were expected to do three times a year. The courts are the open courtyards of the Jerusalem temple, as far in as ordinary worshipers could go; "tread" or "trample" turns that traffic into something like livestock churning up ground.
1:13
Incense was burned as a regular part of temple worship. The New Moon was the first day of each lunar month, marked as a festival with its own sacrifices; the Sabbath was the seventh day of each week, kept free of work. These were the fixed points of the religious calendar, not optional extras.
1:14
"Appointed feasts" are the set annual festivals (chiefly Passover, Weeks, and Booths) laid down in the law with fixed dates.
1:15
Standing with hands spread out and palms upward was the ordinary posture for prayer, the way kneeling or folded hands is for later readers. "Hands full of blood" is an idiom for guilt in violent crime, and it sets up a deliberate clash: the same lifted hands are both praying and bloodstained.
1:16
"Wash" and "make clean" are borrowed from the vocabulary of ritual purification, the physical washing required before approaching the temple. The demand transfers those words to conduct.
1:17
A child without a father and a woman without a husband had no male relative to speak for them in a legal dispute, and in a society where cases were argued in person at the city gate that left them effectively defenseless. "Judge the fatherless" means give them their day in court, not condemn them; "plead for the widow" means argue her case. These two groups are the standard shorthand in Hebrew law for those most easily robbed of justice.
1:18
"Let us reason together" is legal language for arguing a case out to a settlement, continuing the courtroom scene begun in verse 2. Scarlet and crimson were made from an expensive insect-derived dye famous for being fast: it did not wash out. Wool and snow stand for the natural, undyed white the fabric can no longer return to.
1:20
Swords here mean an enemy army coming to fight.
1:21
Describing a city as a woman was conventional, and the charge of prostitution is the standard prophetic figure for breaking a bond of loyalty, a wife's unfaithfulness stands for the people's abandonment of their God, often with the added sense of hiring oneself out to whoever pays.
1:22
Dross is the worthless scum that rises to the surface when ore or metal is melted and has to be skimmed off. Watering wine was a known commercial fraud. Both images are of something valuable secretly adulterated so that it still looks like the real thing.
1:23
The Hebrew word behind "gifts" means bribes in a legal setting. These leaders were the men who heard cases, so their taking of payments and their failure to hear the fatherless and the widow are the same fact stated twice.
1:24
The Mighty One of Israel is another name for God. To pay someone back means to punish them for the wrong they did.
1:25
This continues the metalworking image from verse 22. Refining meant heating the metal until the impurities separated so they could be skimmed away. "Tin" translates a word for the base metal alloyed in to bulk out or cheapen silver; the process destroys the additive in order to keep the silver.
1:26
"As at the first" points back to an earlier, idealised era of honest judges, either the period before there were kings or the founding days of the monarchy. The text does not specify which, and both were read into it.
1:27
"Redeem" is a family and commercial term: buying back a relative sold into debt-slavery, or reclaiming land the family had been forced to sell. It carries the sense of a price paid by someone under obligation to act. "Her converts" translates a word meaning those who turn back or return.
1:29
Large solitary trees and enclosed garden plots were used as open-air worship sites, associated with rites the Jerusalem authorities regarded as foreign. "Desired" and "chosen" hint at the erotic overtones such shrines had for their critics. The Hebrew shifts here between speaking of these people as "they" and addressing them as "you"; translations differ on which to follow.
1:31
Tow is the short, coarse fiber left over when flax is combed for linen-making, notoriously quick to catch fire. "The maker of it" is ambiguous in the Hebrew and has been read both as the strong man's own handiwork, meaning what he has achieved, and as an idol he has manufactured; either way, maker and thing made burn in the same fire.

Read Isaiah 1