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.
