Isaiah 65:1–16

¹“I REVEALED MYSELF to those who did not ask for me;

I was found by those who did not seek me.

To a nation that did not call on my name,

I said, Here am I, here am I.’

² All day long I have held out my hands

to an obstinate people,

who walk in ways not good,

pursuing their own imaginations—

³ a people who continually provoke me

to my very face,

offering sacrifices in gardens

and burning incense on altars of brick;

⁴who sit among the graves

and spend their nights keeping secret vigil;

who eat the flesh of pigs,

and whose pots hold broth of unclean meat;

⁵ who say, Keep away; don’t come near me,

for I am too sacred for you!’

Such people are smoke in my nostrils,

a fire that keeps burning all day.

⁶“See, it stands written before me:

I will not keep silent but will pay back in full;

I will pay it back into their laps—

⁷both your sins and the sins of your fathers,”

says the LORD.

“Because they burned sacrifices on the mountains

and defied me on the hills,

I will measure into their laps

the full payment for their former deeds.”

⁸This is what the LORD says:

“As when juice is still found in a cluster of grapes

and men say, ‘Don’t destroy it,

there is yet some good in it,’

so will I do in behalf of my servants;

I will not destroy them all.

⁹I will bring forth descendants from Jacob,

and from Judah those who will possess my mountains;

my chosen people will inherit them,

and there will my servants live.

¹⁰Sharon will become a pasture for flocks,

and the Valley of Achor a resting place for herds,

for my people who seek me.

¹¹“But as for you who forsake the LORD

and forget my holy mountain,

who spread a table for Fortune

and fill bowls of mixed wine for Destiny,

¹² I will destine you for the sword,

and you will all bend down for the slaughter;

for I called but you did not answer,

I spoke but you did not listen.

You did evil in my sight

and chose what displeases me.”

¹³Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says:

“My servants will eat,

but you will go hungry;

my servants will drink,

but you will go thirsty;

my servants will rejoice,

but you will be put to shame.

¹⁴ My servants will sing

out of the joy of their hearts,

but you will cry out

from anguish of heart

and wail in brokenness of spirit.

¹⁵You will leave your name

to my chosen ones as a curse;

the Sovereign LORD will put you to death,

but to his servants he will give another name.

¹⁶ Whoever invokes a blessing in the land

will do so by the God of truth;

he who takes an oath in the land

will swear by the God of truth.

For the past troubles will be forgotten

and hidden from my eyes.

God’s Continuing Revelation (65:1)

THE OPENING VERSE addresses this issue in ways that cannot be mistaken.2 In the previous section, 64:7 stated that “no one calls on [God’s] name,” because “you have hidden your face from us.” Isaiah 65:1 directly refutes that statement by saying that in fact God had “revealed” himself to people who did not call on his name. In other words, the reason they did not call on him was not because he had not revealed himself to them. He has been continually revealing himself. The problem lay in the people, not in God.

Israel’s Problem (65:2–7)

SO WHAT WAS their problem? They have been “obstinate” (sorer, see also 1:23; 30:1), walking in “not good” ways that they have devised for themselves. These three ideas—obstinacy, devising one’s own ways, and ways that are not good—describe in a brief compass precisely what the human problem is. Rather than obediently submitting to the ways of living that the Creator has designed for us, we have rebelled and tried to devise other ways of living for ourselves. By definition, “good” is that which corresponds to the Creator’s plan (cf. Gen. 1:3; etc.). Therefore, anything we try to replace those ways with is, by definition, “not good.”3

So what is it we humans have devised? We have devised worship practices that we believe will make it possible to manipulate God to act in our favor while we retain the option to live our lives for ourselves. This was the function of heathen ritual. By doing certain things here on earth, the pagans believed that the attitudes and behaviors of the gods were automatically altered. The attitude of the worshiper was unimportant; what mattered was whether the ritual was done correctly. If so, then the desired results could be expected.

That is the very attitude that Isaiah sees in his pious readers. Why is God not more evident in their public and private lives? Why does he not make them act in just and righteous ways? The reason, he says, is that, to use the imagery of Joel, they are tearing their garments in rituals of repentance while their hearts are left whole to serve themselves (cf. Joel 2:12–13). They are depending on their position as God’s people and on ritualistic religion to manipulate God in their favor while they continue to disobey the terms of their covenant with him.

The worship practices described in 65:3–5, 7 look markedly like the preexilic Canaanite practices that were so attractive to the Israelites. What are they doing here in this section of Isaiah? There are three possible explanations for this. (1) The returnees from exile are continuing to engage in these practices. But even those who take this point of view admit that there is no convincing evidence outside of Isaiah 56–66 in support of it. (2) Other scholars see this as evidence the book was written by a preexilic prophet and was addressed to preexilic people. But what is being said in these chapters is much more intelligible if we understand the general context to be the postexilic period. (3) The preexilic prophet is using images with which he is familiar to talk about the response of God to postexilic ritualism. This last one seems to me to be the most likely explanation.

The prophet does not intend these verses to be taken literally. Rather, he is throwing together a collection of the most horrendous images he can think of to try to convey how disgusting God finds ritualism of any sort when it is not expressing the important thing, a changed heart. Thus, I doubt that the returnees were actually engaging in these behaviors. But if they gave a whole burnt offering just as prescribed in Leviticus in an attempt to force God to forgive their sins and to bless them while they kept on sinning, the prophet says they might as well be sitting in a tomb and drinking mouse broth (see 66:3, where this very point is made).

In these circumstances, the people’s pretensions to holiness procured by ritual magic are ludicrous (65:5). That being the case, they might rather prefer for God to remain silent instead of responding to their lament and rending the heavens to speak to them! But the prophet says God “will not keep silent” (65:6). They want God to act? Well, act he will—and he will fully repay them for all they have done (65:7).

A Remnant of the Faithful (65:8–11)

BUT IF GOD CASTIGATES the spurious holiness of those who think that they can manipulate him through their rituals, it does not mean that there is no remnant of the faithful among the people. Just as in Elijah’s day (1 Kings 19:18), if many in the nation abandon the truth in the postexilic period, there will also be many who do not. God’s promises to create himself a people will not return to him void (55:11). These are the ones God calls his “servants.” While the behavior that marks these as God’s servants is not specified here, its content can be safely inferred. These are the people who “seek” the Lord (65:10).

What does seeking the Lord mean? This is the language of Deuteronomy. “But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 4:29). To seek the Lord is to seek his ways, to seek to please him, to seek his presence. These are the primary goals of a believer, not his blessings. Moreover, seeking involves one’s whole being. Ultimately, it is expressed in the language of Deuteronomy 6:5: “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” The servants of God stand in stark contrast with those who try to bypass a submissive relationship with God and seek to gain control of their “destiny” through religious behavior (Isa. 65:11).

God’s Promises Remain (65:12–16)

GOD HAS NOT abrogated his promises. “Jacob” will have “descendants,” and “Judah” will possess the “land” of promise (cf. 65:9). But that does not mean everyone called by the names of Jacob or Judah will share in the promise. As 56:1 stated and as 66:18–24 will reiterate, it is not birthright but behavior that marks the servants of God. Thus, 65:13–16 details the differences between “you” (i.e., those who have been trying to manipulate God for blessings) and “my servants” (i.e., those who seek God for himself with changed lives). In fact, the very blessings that the manipulators sought and were denied will fall on the servants who seek God first and his blessings only secondarily.4

Briding Contexts

TTH ESSENCE OF RELIGION, In every age the human problem seems to be the same. We want benefits without personal cost. The greatest good is seen to be personal freedom expressed ultimately in the right to determine what is right (“good”) and wrong (“evil”) for ourselves. That is, we are determined to deny the fact of creation. We refuse to admit that there is a Creator who has defined the norms of human existence and that these norms are nonnegotiable. As a result, God calls and calls to us (65:1, 12), but we do not hear. At the same time we accuse him of being unresponsive to our calls. We are deaf to him because we want him to speak to us on our terms. We want him to approve our sinful self-reliance and wonder why he is silent.

In fact, he is not silent at all. It is as though we refuse to purchase cable television service and then accuse the television broadcasters of not broadcasting anything because we cannot get programs on channel 73. The signals are all there; it is just that we have not met the conditions for receiving them.

The problem is compounded when we bring religion into the picture. As the tragedies of September 11, 2001, have made clear, the idea that a purely secular culture is a possibility is a fiction. In crises, the native human religiosity manifests itself again, much to the disgust of the committed secularists. What is religion? Paul Tillich said it was to have a concern for ultimate issues.5 Frankly, I think it is much more mundane than that. I believe religion is the attempt to get on the good side of whatever forces I conceive to have control of my destiny by the easiest and simplest means possible.

That being so, and given our deep need to keep control of the core of our being, externals come to play the central part in our religious lives. If I think God likes praising, I will praise. If I think God wants praying, I will pray. If I think God wants offerings, I will offer. If I think God wants abstinence, I will abstain. If I think God wants obedience, I will obey. But none of these behaviors is for its own sake. They are all means to obtain blessing. Therefore, I will calculate to the finest point possible the minimum of these I can give and still get the blessing.

The problem is that God doesn’t want these things. By themselves he finds them disgusting. They are so because they are one more expression of human pride. It is as though we say, “Alright, God, you have a commodity I want, and I have some things you want. So let’s engage in a little trade. I give you what you want and you give me what I want. But you need to recognize, God, if you don’t give me what I want, you’re not going to get what you want.”

Such activity is not the behavior of a servant of God. A servant of God recognizes that God needs nothing, that he has already freely given everything I need or want, and that in fact, there is nothing I could ever do to earn these things. The two of us are not now, and never will be, on anything like a par. Rather, what I need is God’s presence in my life, and that presence is only possible when I renounce my right to myself and in a paroxysm of love and gratitude hurl myself into his arms, committed with all my being to be like him, simply because I want to.

Contemporary Significance

ATTITUDES SPEAK LOUDER THAN ACTIONS. What does it mean to be a Christian? In all too many ways we find ourselves in a similar position to those Isaiah is addressing in this passage. We gauge our faith on the basis of certain externals.

So one person says, “I am a Christian because I am a formal member of that body of people known as the Christian church. I am a Christian in just the same way that the Judeans were members of the people of God. We may say that we are adopted, but the relationship is the same: We are members of an elect group.”
Someone else says, “That is not true. Church membership means nothing. You must have received Christ as your personal Savior. Then you are a member of the church universal. You are part of the family forever.”
A third person says, “That is really not any necessary indication of your heart condition. A Christian attends worship with the body on a regular basis. Christians worship God with sacraments and music and prayer and the hearing of the Word of God.”
Another says, “There is more dead form at 11:00 A.M. on Sunday than any other hour of the week. Christians feel the presence of God in their hearts when they worship him spontaneously and energetically.”
Finally, someone else says, “What you’re ‘worshiping’ is the exciting feel of worshiping. A Christian is someone who gives a cup of cold water to the thirsty, a coat to the freezing, a word of encouragement to the despairing, all for Christ’s sake.”

Well, what is it to be a Christian, for heaven’s sake? I believe it is all of the above and none of the above. What do I mean? That with the right attitude every one of the above is characteristic of the Christian, and that with the wrong attitude every criticism of the above is correct. That is, if we gauge our Christian faith by external behaviors alone—any external behaviors—it is all dust and ashes. So a Malachi can say for God, “I am sick of your worship. I just wish you would shut the doors and go away” (cf. Mal. 1:10). Unless we have come to the place where our service to God is growing out of a glad servant heart, it is all in vain. Can you imagine a bridegroom asking a minister how many hours a month he has to spend with his bride to keep the marriage in force? If he does ask this question, we know something is severely lacking in his devotion to his bride, and we also know the relationship is doomed.

By contrast, if we really have a loving bond-slave relationship with the Lord, we will want to express that love in every possible way, from meeting together with Christian brothers and sisters to worshiping him in the most profound ways possible, to telling others about him, to reaching out to the downtrodden for him, to working for justice in his world. So Malachi can say to the people that if they truly love God, it will not be a problem to give their best, and Haggai can say that if they are truly God’s servants, they will show it by building God’s house. The point, then, is this: If external behaviors are in place of a loving servant heart, they are worthless, but if a loving servant heart does not express itself in external behaviors, we are deceiving ourselves.

1. Whybray, Isaiah 40–66, 266–67.

2. Motyer, Prophecy of Isaiah, 523–24, argues that v. 1 is actually the introduction to the final two chapters and that the reference is to God’s calling of the Gentiles. I think this flies in the face of the nearer context. See the comments above.

3. Note that the initial description of human moral corruption in Gen. 6:5 speaks of the complete corruption of the way we form the devisings of the heart. The ways we devise for ourselves are necessarily corrupt.

4. Much the same argument can be found in the book of Malachi, where the prophet insists that the blessings of God have eluded the people because they are seeking blessing and not God. See J. Oswalt, Where Are You, God (Nappanee, Ind.: Evangel, 1999).

5. D. M. Brown, Ultimate Concern: Tillich in Dialogue (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 49–51.