The Lord responded, through the prophet, to the viewpoint expressed in the preceding prayer (63:7-64:12).
65:1 God replied that He had been gracious in allowing a nation to call on Him and to obtain responses from Him since that nation did not normally pray to Him. The Apostle Paul applied this verse to the Gentiles, people to whom God had responded before they called (cf. Rom. 10:20). This was the "nation"that Isaiah had in view when he originally gave this prophecy.
65:2 The Lord had not hidden His face from the Israelites but had offered Himself to His people. It was not He who needed to change in His orientation toward them, but they needed to change. They were rebellious and pursued their own agenda (cf. 59:1-2; Rom. 10:21). He was not unresponsive. They wanted to have Him on their own terms (cf. 55:6-11).
65:3 The Israelites provoked the Lord by offering their sacrifices in ways that were unacceptable to Him and then claimed that He was unresponsive to them. Gardens were unauthorized places for sacrificing, and bricks were unauthorized materials for an altar (cf. Exod. 20:25; Deut. 27:5-6; Josh. 8:31).
65:4 The Israelites also engaged in pagan practices that rendered them unclean, and they were not careful to avoid the defilement caused by disregard of God's will. God's standards of discipline and holiness were of no concern to them (cf. Rev. 21:8; 22:15).
65:5 The Israelites' assumption of spiritual superiority over others disgusted the Lord. Rather than being a pleasing aroma in His nostrils, the smoke of their offerings repulsed Him. Their ceaseless sacrifices were a needless burning instead of pleasing acts of worship.
In this whole pericope, Isaiah was speaking for the Lord about the Israelites who felt that their rituals of worship should have resulted in God's blessing, or at least His responding to them when they prayed. They failed to appreciate that God dictates how people should worship Him because He is God. They felt that because they worshipped Him He should respond as they wanted, even though they worshipped Him in unacceptable ways.
65:6 The Lord announced that judgment was sure and inescapable. The people had demanded that He speak, but they did not appreciate that when He spoke His word would be a word of judgment rather than a word of deliverance. His repayment would go to the very center of their lives.
65:7 Repayment would be for the sins of all His people, since dependence on cultic righteousness had long been their sin. They had heaped up guilt from generation to generation, and failure to break with the past resulted in their having to accept the inheritance of the past. They had worshipped Yahweh at mountain shrines for a long time, and this amounted to scorning, not worshipping, the Lord. He would, therefore, pay them back in measure for their sins.
"If they gave a little more attention to the real character of their religion, they might be less hasty in begging him to split the heavens and come down."718
The Israelites had prayed for God to deliver them, but He explained that if He did respond it would be with punishment rather than deliverance.
The Lord proceeded to explain that even though He would destroy the ungodly, He would also spare the truly godly among His people (cf. Gen. 18:23-25).
65:8 Yahweh promised not to destroy the whole nation (cluster of grapes) but just the sinners among them (the bad grapes). The whole nation constituted His servants, but most of them were unprofitable servants.
"Reading chs. 40-55 alone might give one the impression that all that is necessary to be part of the remnant is to believe God's promises to deliver. Chs. 56-66 make plain that those who are truly the servants of God are those who believe his promises enough to obey his covenant."719
65:9 God would preserve a godly remnant from among His people who would inherit His promises to the patriarchs concerning His land and kingdom. Messiah was one of these descendants (cf. Mic. 5:2) but not the only one.
65:10 The faithful who truly sought the Lord would inhabit the fertile western coastal plain and the barren eastern area west of Jericho, in other words, the whole land. Those who sought the Lord were not necessarily those who engaged in religious activity but those who obeyed His covenant requirements.
65:11 In contrast to these faithful were those who forsook the Lord, who forgot Jerusalem as the specified place of His worship, and who participated in ritual meals to the gods of fortune and destiny (cf. 1 Cor. 10:21-22). Isaiah was using examples of idolatry that were present in his generation of Israelites to represent the idolatry that would exist after the exile. "Fortune"was an Aramean god (cf. Josh. 11:17; 15:37), and "destiny"means apportionment (of fate) and may have a connection with the goddess Manat of Arabian mythology.720
65:12 These Israelite hypocrites would be the objects of His judgment because when Hehad called theyhad not responded with obedience (cf. 64:12). Far from controlling their own fortune and destiny, Yahweh would control it. They had chosen the things in which the Lord did not delight--they had rebelled--so He would bring discipline on them (cf. Matt. 22:7; 23:37; Luke 19:27; Acts 13:46).
65:13-14 The Sovereign Lord's true servants, those in Israel who obeyed His covenant, would enjoy blessings of body and spirit, all types of blessings, whereas those who rebelled would experience all types of curses.
65:15-16 The reputation (name) of the rebellious Israelites would remain as a curse to all the Israelites, and Sovereign Yahweh would slay them. This is not a replacement of all Israel by the church, but a replacement of all who depended on formal worship for their relationship with God by those who genuinely loved and obeyed God. But those who faithfully served the Lord by keeping His covenant would have another reputation, namely, the reputation of the God of truth (lit. amen). People would bless and swear by this God, whom the godly served. Their godly conduct would give testimony to their solidarity with Him. In contrast to those whom He would slay (v. 15), the faithful would be those whom He had forgiven.
