Whereas heartfelt love for and trust in the Lord make anyone acceptable to Him, reliance on one's position or ability for acceptance will not.
The leaders of Israel were responsible for the peoples' failure to appreciate the difference between a real relationship with God and membership in the covenant community of Israel.
"The critique of leadership offered here is wholly one of character not of policy. The opinion that from the point of view of the public it matters only what the government's policy is, but the private lives of leaders is their own affair, finds no support. The juxtaposition of 56:9-12 with 57:1-21 insists that private wrong and public right do not co-exist."645
56:9 Isaiah summoned the beastly enemies of Israel to come and feed on the flock of God's people (cf. Jer. 12:9; Ezek. 34:5, 8).
56:10 The false prophets, who were God's watchmen over His flock, were blind to the dangers that faced Israel (cf. 21:6; 52:8). They were like dogs who should have barked when danger approached but were silent instead. Instead of being on guard, they were asleep dreaming of an unrealistically rosy future for the nation. They were unaware of those things that should have gripped their attention.
"When the minister does not warn the flock of false doctrine, he ceases to be a faithful undershepherd of the sheep, and instead becomes a dumb dog that cannot bark."646
56:11 These prophets and leaders of the people were greedy to satisfy their own desires and so were never satisfied. They had no understanding and so pursued their own personal agendas (cf. 28:7-8; 29:9-11).
56:12 Rather than caring for the sheep unselfishly, these shepherds went off and got drunk, repeatedly. They indulged themselves at the expense of their charges and in the process became enslaved and incapable of fulfilling their responsibilities.
57:1 As the leadership of the nation grew worse, the number of righteous people shrank without people perceiving what was happening. God allowed this disappearance of the devout to spare them the judgment He would bring on the evil nation and its ungodly rulers. Few people in the nation, however, understood this reason for the depletion of the righteous.
"Such deaths are not understood by the godless, for they do not realize that God in His goodness often takes righteous men to Himself to deliver them from some impending catastrophe."647
57:2 The righteous person entered a condition of peace by dying and going to his or her eternal reward. The end of the righteous, then, contrasts with that of the wicked leaders (56:9-12).
Isaiah identified another mark of Israel, which boasted in its election by God and viewed righteousness in terms of correct worship ritual. This was the widespread departure of the nation from God (apostasy). She had forsaken God and had pursued idols.
57:3 God summoned the idolatrous Israelites, in contrast to the righteous (vv. 1-2), to come before Him for judgment. Rather than behaving like descendants of Abraham and Sarah (cf. 51:2), these wicked Israelites were acting like their father was an adulterer and their mother a sorceress and a prostitute. That is, they were congenitally selfish, unfaithful to God, and wayward.
"Adultery . . . expresses the principle (unfaithfulness to the covenant); prostitution the practice (devotion to lovers other than the Lord). The adulterer gives his love elsewhere; the prostitute takes other lovers."648
57:4 Evidently the people these wicked Israelites mocked were the righteous minority among them. Like children, they ridiculed the righteous for being different from themselves. They were rebellious and deceitful in their relationship to the Lord.
57:5 They were rebellious and deceitful in that they practiced fertility worship and child sacrifice. They believed connection with nature, rather than a spiritual relationship with the Creator, would yield fertility. They also believed that sacrificing the next generation would guarantee the preservation of the present generation. Of course, the opposite is true. God's people burned with desire as they carried out these pagan rites in the places thought to be most conducive to their success.649How different a relationship with Yahweh based on trust would have been.
57:6 Having chosen to worship in the wadis, the apostate Israelites would have to be content to have the rocks of the wadis as their gods (cf. Rom. 1:20-25).650They even made drink and grain offerings to these rocks. This was not the kind of behavior that would cause God to change His mind about bringing judgment on His people.
57:7 The Israelites also worshipped idols on mountains, as the pagans did to get closer to their gods. Such worship constituted infidelity to the Lord and adultery with idols. Thus Israel had made her bed and slept with another man when she worshipped as she did. However, Isaiah's language was more than figurative since worship of these nature deities involved sacred prostitution.
57:8 The unfaithful Israelites were evidently setting up memorial objects to the idols in their homes as well. The Scripture portions that they were to place on their door frames (Deut. 6:9; 11:20) were to remind them of the Lord, but they had installed rival reminders inside their homes. The Lord's "wife"had turned her back on Him and had gone to bed with other lovers. She had been unfaithful to her covenant with Yahweh and had covenanted to worship idols since she loved the physical aspects of their worship.
57:9 Some Israelites had also traveled far from home to worship other gods. This may be a reference to making political alliances with other nations and then worshipping their gods with them (cf. Ezek. 23). The king in view may be the most prominent foreign ruler at the time Isaiah wrote this prophecy. These political trips involved great distances. The negotiators would take the oils and perfumes used in the worship of foreign gods with them. Over time these instances of idolatry had increased. But instead of going to foreign nations, Isaiah said these envoys were really going to Sheol because God would slay His people for their unfaithfulness to Him.
57:10 These trips to obtain political security through idolatry wore the envoys out. Rather than seeing that security did not come that way, however, they persevered in their wickedness in spite of their weariness.
"As with any addiction, the memory of former gratification drives one on, even when the gratification grows steadily less and less. To admit that the quest is hopeless would be to drive one back into the arms of God, whose invitation to surrender all control and live in trust one has already rejected."651
57:11 Yahweh asked the Israelites a question. Who had terrified them that they betrayed the truth (cf. Prov. 30:6), their covenant partner, and their concern for Him (cf. v. 1)? Obviously it was not a great threat that had made them unfaithful but neglect of Him. Perhaps if He had been more active in judging their sins they would have remembered Him. But, graciously, He had been silent about their sins, and so they had not paid attention to Him.
"Possibly we have here an example of Isaiah's preaching during the long dark days of Manasseh."652
57:12 God would bring Israel into judgment and make known her "righteous"deeds (cf. Matt. 13:24-30; Rev. 20:12). What she considered righteousness, the blending of her elect calling and paganism, was anything but that (cf. 56:1). She would come out lacking in that reckoning.
57:13 In that day of judgment the idols that the Israelites had trusted in would be of no help. They would be as useless and lightweight as what the winds blow away. In contrast, those who made Yahweh their refuge from the storms of life would inherit the land and possess the Zion of the future Millennium (cf. 11:9; 24:23; 25:6-8; 65:25; 66:20; Matt. 5:5).
