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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.

10. Who say to the seers, See not. He now describes more clearly, and shews, as it were, to the life, the contempt of God and obstinacy which he formerly mentioned; for wicked men not only pour ridicule on doctrine, but furiously drive it away, and would even wish to have it utterly crushed and buried. This is what Isaiah intended to express. Not only do they turn away their ears, and eyes, and all their senses, from doctrine, but they would even wish that it were destroyed and taken out of the way; for wickedness is invariably attended by such rage as would lead them to wish the destruction of that which they cannot endure. The power and efficacy of the word wounds and enrages them to such a degree, that they give vent to their fierceness and cruelty like wild and savage beasts. They would gladly escape, but whether they will or not, they are constrained to hear God speaking, and to tremble at his majesty. This bitterness is followed by hatred of the prophets, snares, alarms, persecutions, banishment, tortures, and deaths, by which they think that they can overturn and root out both the doctrine and the teachers; for men are more desirous to have dreams and fabulous tales told them than to be faithfully instructed.

See not, prophesy not to us right things. The Prophet does not relate the words of wicked men, as if they openly made use of these words, but he describes the state of the fact and their actual dispositions; for he had not to do with men who were such fools as to make an intentional discovery of their wickedness. They were singularly cunning hypocrites, who boasted of worshipping God, and complained that they were unjustly reproached by the prophets. Isaiah tears off the mask by which they concealed themselves, and discovers what they are, because they refused to give place to the truth; for whence came the murmurs against the prophets, but because they could not bear to hear God speaking?

The prophets were called seers, because the Lord revealed to them what would afterwards be made known to others. They were stationed, as it were, in a lofty place, that they might behold from on high, and as if from “a watch-tower,” (Habakkuk 2:1,) the prosperous or adverse events which were approaching. The people wished that nothing of an adverse nature should be told them; and therefore they hated the prophets, because, while they censured and sharply reproved the vices of the people, they at the same time were witnesses of the approaching judgment of God. Such is the import of those words, “Do not see, do not prophesy right things.” Not that they spoke in this manner, as we have already said, but because such was the state of their feelings, and because they desired that the prophets should speak with mildness, and could not patiently bear the sharpness of their reproofs. Not one of them was so impudent as to say that he wished to be deceived, and that he abhorred the truth; for they declared that they sought it with the greatest eagerness, as all our adversaries boast of doing at the present day; but they denied that what Isaiah and the other prophets told them was the word of God. In like manner they plainly told Jeremiah that he was “a liar,” (Jeremiah 43:2,) and threatened him more insolently,

“Thou shalt not prophesy in the name of the Lord,
lest thou die by our hand.” (Jeremiah 11:21.)

To them the truth was intolerable; and when they departed from it, they could find nothing but falsehood, and thus they willingly chose to be deceived and to have falsehood told them.

Speak to us smooth things. When he says that they desire “smooth things,” ²⁹⁰²⁹⁰ {Bogus footnote} he points out the very source; for they were ready to receive flatterers with unbounded applause, and would willingly have allowed their ears to be tickled in the name of God. And this is the reason why the world is not only liable to be carried away by delusions, but earnestly desires them; for almost all wish to have their vices treated with forbearance and encouragement. But it is impossible that the servants of God, when they endeavor faithfully to discharge their duty, should be chargeable with being severe reprovers; and hence it follows that it is an idle and childish evasion, when wicked men pretend that they would willingly be God’s disciples, provided that he were not rigorous. It is as if they bargained that, for their sake, he should change his nature and deny himself; as Micah also says, that no prophets were acceptable to the Jews, but such as “prophesied of wine and strong drink.” (Micah 2:11.)