1. Keep justice and do righteousness. This moral exhortation, coupled with the urging to observe the sabbath in the next verse, strikes a new note in the Isaiah collection, one that some commentators have characterized as “sermonic.” It is the strong consensus of biblical scholarship, with only a few dissenters, that Isaiah 56–66 is a later composition than Isaiah 40–55, and almost certainly the work of more than one prophet. The frequent allusions to the imminent Persian conquest of Babylonia in chapters 40–55 enable us to date it, or at least much of it, to the time just before the conquest in 539 B.C.E. The situation presupposed in chapters 56–66 is of the exiles already returned to their homeland—there are no further prophecies of the people triumphantly crossing the desert to Zion, and the issues engaged are the behavior of the people in their land and the nature of the community they constitute. The probable period for these prophecies is the early decades of the fifth century B.C.E., before the arrival from Babylonia of Ezra and Nehemiah in the middle of the century. Those responsible for these texts appear to have been familiar with Second Isaiah, but the often asserted claim that they were his disciples seems a little off the mark because they were separated from him by at least two generations.

3. And let not the foreigner say. This is another new note. There were foreigners living in the province of Judah, whether people who had settled there after the Babylonian conquest in 586 B.C.E. or those who may have been drawn to accompany the returning exiles from Mesopotamia. Some of these were attracted to the faith of the Judahites, and the prophet argues that such people should be freely admitted to the ranks of Israel. (At this point in time, there was nothing like a formal conversion ceremony.)

nor let the eunuch say, “Why, I am a withered tree.” This declaration extends the prophet’s program of inclusion. Eunuchs and men otherwise sexually maimed were prohibited from participation in the Temple cult. One therefore may infer that the “joining” the LORD envisaged here is not limited to the cultic (though sacrifices are mentioned in verse 7) but involves entering a community of observance—in particular, observance of the sabbath. The eunuch can produce no biological offspring, but in adhering to the covenant, he becomes part of a community vouchsafed the covenantal promise of a destiny to be as multitudinous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the shore. This notion is spelled out in verse 5, “I will give them in My house and within my walls / a marker and a name better than sons and daughters.” Offspring means permanence; here permanence is being part of the covenanted people.

7. For My house a house of prayer / shall be called for all the peoples. Solomon’s dedication of the First Temple also emphasized prayer, but the designation here of the new Temple as a house of prayer is noteworthy. The phrase “for all the peoples” reflects a universalist perspective, but what it means in the context of foreigners joining the LORD is that God’s house becomes the house of prayer for all people when they embrace His laws.

8. Still more will I gather for him. Either this whole verse is a fragment, predicting another wave of returned exiles and hence unconnected with what has preceded, or the clause refers to the foreigners and eunuchs who are added to the community of Israel.

9. All beasts of the field, come to devour. These words mark the beginning of a new prophecy, one of castigation. It is usually assumed that the devouring beasts are a metaphorical representation of Israel’s enemies.

10. His watchmen are all of them blind. The watchmen are the leaders of the people or, more specifically, its (false) prophets. The motif of the blind leadership is picked up from Second Isaiah.

mute dogs. “Dogs” in biblical language is always a term of opprobrium—truly insulting for leaders or prophets. The muteness refers to their failure to rebuke the people as they should have done. There is scant evidence that watchdogs were used in ancient Israel; most of the biblical references to dogs conceive them as feral scavengers, not domesticated animals.

Dazed. The verb hozim appears only here. In later Hebrew, based on an unlikely understanding of the meaning here, it suggests something like “to hallucinate” or “to entertain idle visions.” Blenkinsopp proposes a possible pun on ḥozim, “to see visions.”

11. they are the shepherds. Throughout the Bible and elsewhere in ancient Near Eastern literature, “shepherd” is a stock metaphor for “ruler.”

12. Come, let me take wine, / and let us swill strong drink. The evocation of drunken leaders may allude to chapter 28. The word for “come” is an Aramaicizing usage that reflects the relatively late period of this text. In poetic parallelism, the more common term, yayin, “wine,” always occurs in the first verset and sheikhar, “strong drink,” in the second. But since sheikhar—in all likelihood, grappa—has a higher alcohol content, this order also follows the principle of intensification of parallel terms from the first verset to the second.