Dear Friends,
Here are the study notes for Isaiah 2-6, a rich and exciting passage. Have your Bible open and look at it and the notes.
God bless you.
Because of Calvary,John Janney
Grace Bible Fellowship Church
Adult SS Elective: Isaiah 2:1-6:13
August 14, 2016

       2. Hope (2:1-4:6)

2:1. “Apart from 1:1 this is the only superscription in the Isaianic literature…. ‘Word’ signifies ‘message’ or ‘truth’ and saw signified ‘perceived by divine revelation’.” [Motyer, p. 52-53]

  a. The ideal Jerusalem (2:2-5)

“In four verses…Isaiah describes the nature of God’s kingdom; its glory, its extent, and its effect.” [VanGemeren, p.  477]

“Here, as in the nearly identical Mi. 4:1-5, is seen the true eminence of Zion, that the Lord is in her (cf. Ps. 68:15-16, where higher peaks look on with envy)… Her role is to draw people (2c, 3a), not to dragoon them; but their need is of God’s uncompromising truth and rule (3b, 4a; cf. 42:4)…. Both here an in Micah, vision issues in appeal (5), not to dream of a world movement one day, but to respond in the present and on the spot.” [Kidner, p. 635]

“The ‘into Zion’ theme of verses 2-3a balances the ‘out of Zion’ theme of verses 3b-4. The presence and truth of the Lord (2-3a) exercises a supernatural magnetism, producing a reordered world (4a) and a new humanity (4b).” [Motyer, p. 53]

“The peoples come voluntarily… Their coming transcends nationalism: they acknowledge the God of a single nation, the God of Jacob, as the God of all nations. They are moved by the desire (lit.) ‘that he may teach’…and they affirm ‘and we will walk’. (This is true knowledge: a grasp of truth issuing in redirection of life.)” [Motyer, p. 54]

“The promises of verse 4 are especially reassuring in an age in which nuclear warfare is always imminent.” [VanGemeren, p. 477]

“The choice of agricultural implements (ploughshares and pruning hooks) is symbolic of the return to Eden (11:6-9): people right with God again; the curse removed; the end of the serpent’s dominion; an ideal environment.” [Motyer, p. 54]

“Let us imagine Isaiah as he stood upon Mount Zion. He looked about him and there were ‘the mountains that are round about Jerusalem’ far outvying it in height, but yielding to Zion in glory. Dearer to his soul than even the snow-capped glories of Lebanon which glittered afar off was that little hill of Zion, for there upon its summit stood the temple, the shrine of the living God, the place of his delight, the home of song, the house of sacrifice, the great gathering-place whither the tribes went up, the tribes of the Lord to serve Jehovah, the God of Abraham. Standing at the gate of that glorious temple which had been piled by the matchless art of Solomon, he looked into the future and he saw, with tearful eye, the structure burned with fire; he beheld it cast down and the plough driven over its foundations. He saw the people carried away into Babylon, and the nation cast off for a season. Looking once more through the glass he beheld the temple rising from its ashes, with glory outwardly diminished, but really increased. He saw on till he beheld Messiah himself in the form of a little babe carried into the second temple; he saw him there, and he rejoiced; but ere he had time for gladness his eye glanced onward to the cross; he saw Messias nailed to the tree; he beheld his back ploughed and mangled with the whip. ‘Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, said the prophet, and he paused awhile to bemoan the bleeding Prince of the House of David. His eye was now doomed to a long and bitter weeping, for he saw the invading hosts of the Romans setting up the standard of desolation in the city. He saw the holy city burned with fire and utterly destroyed. His spirit was almost melted in him. But once more he flew through time with eagle wing, and scanned futurity with eagle eye; he soared aloft in imagination, and began to sing of the last days — the end of dispensations and of time. He saw Messias once again on earth. He saw that little hill of Zion rising to the clouds — reaching to heaven itself. He beheld the New Jerusalem descending from above, God dwelling among men, and all the nations flowing to the tabernacle of the Most High God, where they paid him holy worship.” [Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit V, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1859), p. 193-194]

“Either war is obsolete or men are.” [R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1958) in Norman Vincent Peale, My Favorite Quotations, (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1990), p. 114]

  b. The actual Jerusalem (2:6-4:1)

“In the ideal city a true relationship with the Lord (2:2-3a) issues in a true society (2:3b-4). The actual Jerusalem is seen first in religious (2:6-21) and then in social (3:1-4:1) disorder.” [Motyer, p. 54-55]

  1. Its religious condition (2:6-21)

“Beginning with ‘for’, these verses explain further the need to recall the people to the Lord. In a word, they are under threat of divine judgment. Two self-contained units of prophecy spell this out: verses 6-9 speak of facets of national life which are inviting judgment, and verses 10-21 are a poem on the natures and results of divine judgment. The charge of idolatry forms the climax to each section (8, 18-20). The Lord has forsaken his people because they have departed from him (6).” [Motyer, p. 55]

“The flood of superstition (6), alliances (6c), wealth (7a), armaments (7b) and idols (8), making cosmopolitan Judah anything but the light to the nations…. The word for idols is a favorite term in Isaiah, perhaps because it is identical with the adjective ‘worthless’ (cf. Jb. 13:4).” [Kidner, p. 635]

“Though an idol is ‘nothing in the world,’ there is nothing in the world more real than idolatry. Putting something else in God’s place, making a God of something else than God — that is a very real transaction.” [R. W. Barbour in The Speaker’s Bible IV edited by James Hastings and Edward Hastings, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, n.d.),, p. 32]

“It was God’s command that they should keep themselves separate, and worship him only; but, in the reign of this man Ahaz, they began to practice all the foul arts of the nations round about them. They had ‘soothsayers like the Philistines,’ — men who pretended to divine future events from the flights of birds, or from the entrails of victims, and a thousand other things; they went into witchcraft, and the unhallowed arts of the heathen.” [Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLIV, (1898), p. 179]

“Isaiah opens with abandoned (6) and ends with do not forgive (9) — an iron band of hopelessness gripping the apostates of verses 7-9. He makes five contrasts between the ideal and the actual: (i) the world is drawn to Zion (2); God’s people choose to conform to the world (6); (ii) the world seeks spiritual benefit (3); Zion heaps up material wealth (7a); (iii) the consequence of coming to Zion is world peace (4); Zion is full of armaments (7b); (iv) the world seeks to know the true God and commits itself beforehand to obey him (3); God’s people are busy inventing their own gods (8); (v) the world is received before the Lord’s tribunal (4); God’s people are abandoned and denied forgiveness (6, 9).” [Motyer, p. 55]

“The Lord has but to reveal his glory (10) and human arrogance is humbled (11), the whole world which human pride has infected is devastated (12-17), idols are exposed as useless (18-19) and people are left defenseless (20-21).” [Motyer, p. 56]

“Cease ye from man because you have come to know the best of men, who is more than man, even the Lord Jesus Christ, and he has so fully become the beloved of your souls, that none can compare with him. Rest in Christ as to your sins, and cease from priests. Rest, also, in the great Father as to your providential cares: why rest in men when he careth for you? Rest in the Holy Spirit as to your spiritual needs; why need to depend on man? Yea, throw yourself wholly and entirely upon the God all-sufficient, El Shaddai, as Scripture calls him.” [Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XXXIII, (1887), p. 538-539]

2. Its social condition (2:22-4:1)

“Just as in 2:2-4 true religion produced true society so the corrupt religion of the actual Jerusalem (2:6-21) has produced a corrupt society. …Since 3:1 opens with ‘for’, chapter 3 further justifies the call to stop trusting in man. It does this by showing how human leadership has brought about the collapse of society. The contents of this section fall into two parts — 3:1-15 and 3:16-4:1).” [Motyer, p. 59]

“Isaiah now charges the people with open rebellion (3:1-15). Their leaders are particularly responsible.” [VanGemeren, p. 478]

“The prophet, in the close of the foregoing chapter, had given a necessary caution to all not to put confidence in man, or any creature; he had also given a general reason for that caution, taken from the frailty of human life and the vanity and weakness of human powers. Here he gives a particular reason for it — God was now about to ruin all their creature-confidences, so that they should meet with nothing but disappointments in all their expectations from them…” [Matthew Henry’s Commentary IV, p. 15]

“The Lord removes stable leadership (1-3) and introduces childish leaders (4). As a result fragmentation sets in, socially and morally (5), and the whole idea of leadership falls into disrepute (6-7).” [Motyer, p. 59]

“Beginning with military leadership, hero and warrior (the supposed evidences of national security), Isaiah heaps up titles, moving broadly from the national (judge and prophet) to the local (elder and craftsman), and mixing the legitimate with the illegitimate (counselor and enchanter). This creates an impression of the total collapse of the command structure of society. The dissolution of society and the abandonment of true religion is always the signal for superstitions and an obsessive interest in prognostication, hence the reference to the soothsayer or ‘fortuneteller’…. The clever enchanter is one ‘instructed in whispering’, i.e. communicating with the dead, a practitioner of spiritism (cf. 8:19).” [Motyer, p. 60]

“The list of leading men (2-3) provides a firsthand glimpse of the society of Isaiah’s day, whose respected figures included a liberal sprinkling of charlatans (soothsayer…clever enchanter). But for all the misrule of this company, worse was to come; first in sheer incompetence and resultant anarchy (4-5) and finally in a ruin so complete that it would seem irretrievable (6-8)…. In spite of the assurance that Jerusalem would not fall to Sennacherib (e.g. 37:33-35), Isaiah saw as plainly as Micah that its final glory…would have to be preceded by destruction (e.g. 22:4-5; 32:14; 39:6; cf. Mi. 3:12; 4:1-8)…. The fine show of free thinking and moral daring described in vs. 8b and 9 not only affronts God himself, who is the only source of glory (as the striking close of v. 8 makes plain), but leaves one ultimately nothing to believe in. After the skeptic has had his fling, he is left stranded in the wasteland he has helped to produce.” [Kidner, p.  636]

“The general principle of just reward (9b) is applied first to the righteous (10) and then to the wicked (11).” [Motyer, p. 61]

“The boomerang quality of sin is highlighted and the sinner is his own paymaster… Disaster…is his wage.” [Motyer, p. 61]

“The situation of oppressed (12a) and misgoverned (12b) people is brought to the bar of divine justice and the rulers are arraigned before the Lord’s tribunal (13-15). But then metaphor becomes history and judgment falls on an errant people through military overthrow (3:16-4:1). Thus verses 13-15 display the reality of the offended Lord and 3:16-4:1 the experienced reality of his wrath in action.” [Motyer, p. 61-62]

“Yahweh charges the daughters of Jerusalem with pride and seduction (3:16-4:1). The men of Jerusalem are selfish, materialistic, and oppressive, but they have partners in their wives and lovers who have an insatiable desire to beautify themselves, enrich themselves, and compete with each other.… Their glory will turn to shame. The severity of their loneliness is so great that these women will fight over a man, in order to remove the disgrace of their childlessness.” [VanGemeren, p. 478]

c. The New Jerusalem (4:2-6)

“We have been led to this point by the momentum of the coming ‘day of the Lord’; its existence (2:12), its effects (2:17,20) and its infliction (3:18; 4:1). And now once again the same words! The mind recoils in dread. But contrary to all expectation there follows a message about glory and survival (2), holiness and life (3), cleansing (4), new creation and divine indwelling (5) and an open shelter.” [Motyer, p. 64]

“The prophet’s theme now changes abruptly, for in 4:2-6 Isaiah speaks about the new messianic era…. The filth of corruption, the fires of rebellion, and the folly of God’s people have been removed and those who are left are now described as holy and their names are recorded in the Book of Life.” [VanGemeren, p. 478]

“In Isaiah iv.2, the appearance of the Branch of Jehovah is predicted, to whose advent such effects are ascribed as prove Him to be a divine person. Those effects are purification, the pardon of sin, and perfect security.” [Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology I, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1873) p. 492]

“Whereas most nations look to the past to some Golden Age, the Jews looked to the future for their day of glory. Central to their anticipations was the figure of the Messiah.” [Bernard Ramm, Protestant Christian Evidences, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1957), p. 92]

“The Book of Isaiah and the Bible as a whole show God at work for the redemption of a people, elect and believing. …[We should] never…presume that God is ‘satisfied’ with the achievement of certain goals, such as the building of a new temple in Jerusalem or the worship there of a religious remnant of his chosen ones. God’s will moves far beyond that…. Personal redemption in the midst of a fallen world is glorious, but it is not the whole picture of God’s goal…. Not until the entire cosmos is redeemed can he be satisfied. That calls for a new heaven and a new earth…” [Watts, “Isaiah,” Word Biblical Themes, p. 21-22]

   3. Judgment (5:1-30)

“In this last, grimmest section of his preface Isaiah faces the seeming inevitability of divine judgment…. In 1:8 the vineyard reference pointed to a remnant which the Lord preserved; in 3:12-4:1, when the vineyard was despoiled, the Lord intervened to pass judgment on its behalf and against its despoilers. Now, however, the vineyard is the place where total destruction is pronounced (1-7)…. Now sin takes even hope away and nothing is left but…darkness (30).” [Motyer, p. 67]

“In this chapter the prophet, in God’s name, shows the people of God their transgressions, even the house of Jacob their sins, and the judgments which were likely to be brought upon them for their sins, I. By a parable, under the similitude of an unfruitful vineyard, representing the great favors God had bestowed upon them, their disappointing his expectations from them, and the ruin they had thereby deserved (v. 1-7). II. By an enumeration of the sins that did abound among them, with a threatening of punishments that should answer to the sins. 1. Covetousness, and  greediness of worldly wealth, which shall be punished with famine (v. 8-10). 2. Rioting, reveling, and drunkenness (v. 11, 12, 22, 23), which shall be punished with captivity and all the miseries that attend it (v. 13-17). 3. Presumption in sin, and defying the justice of God (v. 18, 19). 4. Confounding the distinctions between virtue and vice, and so undermining the principles of religion (v. 20). 5. Self-conceit (v. 21). 6. Perverting justice, for which, and the other instances of

reigning wickedness among them, a great and general desolation in threatened, which should lay all waste (v. 24, 25), and which should be effected by a foreign invasion (v. 26-30…” [Matthew Henry’s Commentary IV, p. 23]

   a. The goodness of God (5:1-7)

                         i. Israel has been blessed (5:1-2)

                         ii. Israel has become wicked (5:3-4)

                         iii. Israel will be punished (5:5-7)

“The gap between this threat and its fulfillment was about 130 years…” [Motyer, p. 69]

      b. The wickedness of Judah (5:8-30)

“The rich stole from the poor (vv. 8-10), and people lived for sensual pleasure rather than godly enrichment (vv. 11-17). Confident of their own wisdom (v. 21), they questioned God’s counsel (vv. 18-19) and for a price changed His words (vv. 20-23).” [Wiersbe, With the Word, p. 455]

    i.   Covetousness (5:8-10)

                         ii.  Drunkenness (5:11-17)

                         iii. Carelessness (5:18-19)

                         iv. Deception (5:20)

“Let us beware of applying our intellects to condoning evil or to making ourselves into ‘splendidly wicked’ people. Twice this century has spawned overwhelming state terrorism ― in communism and fascism. We cannot afford such blindness to history and such naïveté as to embrace the morality of the cool.” [Roger Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge in Os Guinness, Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), p. 105-106]

“Sinners dare not commit sin until they have given it a new name…. Revenge they will not own; they term it a vindication of their honor, a doing right to their reputation. Covetousness, they say, is a sordid thing; theirs is only frugality and good husbandry. Drunkenness is unmanly, it is bestial, they confess; but there is only good fellowship in the liberal use of the creature. Pride must be called decency and being in the fashion. Fornication is only a trick of youth, or gratifying nature.” [Venning, The Plague of Plagues, p. 129]

“Man’s conscience, like a ship’s compass, should be corrected according to a Divine standard. It must be set right by comparison with the true standard of the Sun of Righteousness, and guarded watchfully lest by careless usage its accuracy be lost and the soul in mid-ocean without a guide.” [H. C. Trumbull in The Speaker’s Bible IV, p. 43]

       v.  Pride (5:21)

“Where does it all start? With humankind’s insistence on autonomy.” [Motyer, p. 72]

vi. Injustice (5:22-24)

   c. The warning of Isaiah (5:25-30)

“The repeated Therefore gives a doubly inevitable note to the judgment, in terms of logical outcome (24) and judicial wrath (25)…. The army of terrifying precision and ferocity presented in the final verses, machine and wild beast in one, is Assyria’s…” [Kidner, p. 637]

“O what a harvest of souls is the devil likely to have! Isaiah 5:14, ‘Hell hath enlarged itself.’ It is fain to make room for its guests. ‘Tis matter of grief to think that the dragon should have so many followers and the Lamb so few.

“Cyprian brings in the devil insulting Christ thus: ‘As for my followers, I never died for them as Christ died for His. I never promised them as great a reward as Christ has done to His; yet I have greater numbers than He, and my followers venture more for me than His do for Him.’” [Thomas Watson, The Mischief of Sin, (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1671), p. ix]

B. A Message to God’s People (6:1-12:6)

                 1. The Way of Salvation (6:1-13) A prototype.

“In this vision, the major concerns of the book are discernible: God’s inescapable holiness and sole majesty; the glory he has decreed and the clearance it demands; the cleansing of the penitent and the resurgent life that will yet break forth from the stock of Israel.” [Kidner, p. 637]

“Isaiah ends his Preface (chapters 1-5) with the implied question: Has even grace come to an end? (cf. 5:4). Immediately he moves to the experience and record of what grace can in fact do for one who is doomed by sin (6:1-8).” [Motyer, p. 32]

“…There is nothing in Holy Writ more unique and sublime than the call of Isaiah, and it is pregnant in every line with instruction.” [James Stalker, The Preacher and His Models, (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1891), p. 36]

   a. Isaiah’s vision of his Sovereign (6:1-4)

“Chapter vi. contains an account of the prophet’s vision of Jehovah in his holy temple, surrounded by the hosts of adoring angels, who worship Him day and night. The person thus declared to be Jehovah, the object of angelic worship, the Apostle John tells us, John xii.41, was none other than Christ, whom all Christians and all angels now worship.” [Hodge, Systematic Theology I, p. 492]

“Israel’s king dies, but Israel’s God still lives.” [Matthew Henry’s Commentary IV, p. 30] Cf. 2 Chronicles 26:15b. 16a. Uzziah had reigned for 52 years. “He was smitten with leprosy. The fatal disease dragged him from the palace to the pest house. It wrenched the scepter from his hand. It tore the crown from his brow. It flung him out into the grave.”  [Clovis G. Chappell, Sermons on Old Testament Characters, (New York: Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1931), p. 12]

“King Uzziah dies in an hospital, but the King of kings still sits upon his throne.” [Matthew Henry’s Commentary IV, p. 30]

“Isaiah says, I saw the Lord, and though it is true that ‘no-one has ever seen God’ (Jn. 1:18) for in his essential being he is Spirit (Is. 31:3; Jn. 4:24), yet he graciously condescends to clothe now this side of his nature and now that with visibility for the instruction and comfort of his people (e.g. Jos. 5:13-15).” [Motyer, p. 76]

“The focal point of the call of Isaiah is the holiness of God…. Within the call-narrative…the notion of holiness is applied in three directions. First, holiness and transcendence. The vision is of the exalted Sovereign (Lord…in verse 1; King in verse 5), and the nature of that sovereignty is defined in the ceaseless cry of the seraphim that the Lord is holy. Secondly, holiness and judgment…. It is a deadly thing for a sinner to be found in the presence of the Holy One. No sentence need be pronounced from the throne; conscience declares personal and national guilt and its consequence. Thirdly, holiness and salvation. The smoke of holiness (cf. Ex. 19:18) left the means of salvation (the altar) still in view (verse 6), and from the presence and by the will of the Holy One a seraph flew to be the minister of cleansing and atonement to the sinner.” [Motyer, p. 17]

“This is the only place in the Old Testament where we find mention of the seraphim. It is the one glimpse we have in Scripture of these strange creatures by the throne of God.” [G. H. Morrison, The Weaving of Glory, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d.), p. 240]

“The seraphim are like men in appearance with faces and feet, but unlike men, they have six wings with which they cover themselves in the presence of the Lord.” [VanGemeren, p. 480]

“Yahweh’s holiness is an expression of his separateness from the corruption of his people.” [VanGemeren, p. 480]

   b. Isaiah’s vision of his sin (6:5)

“…I am cut off, undone, doomed to die” [Young I, p. 247]. Cf. Job 42:5, 6; Luke 5:8; Rev 1:7.

“A high earthly king is brought low by death. A vision of the high heavenly King brings Isaiah low in confession. The Lord purifies and raises Isaiah to pronounce that Judah will be brought low.” [Paul Scott Wilson, The Practice of Preaching, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995) p. 135]

“If a man think well of himself, he has never met God.” [R. A. Torrey, What the Bible Teaches, (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1898), p. 41]

c. Isaiah’s vision of his salvation (6:6-7)

“…God does not leave Isaiah devastated.” [Bridges, The Joy of Fearing God, p. 71]

“The perpetual fire (Lv. 6:12-13) on the altar went beyond symbolizing divine wrath, for the altar was the place where the holy God accepted and was satisfied by blood sacrifice (Lv. 17:11). It holds together the ideas of atonement, propitiation and satisfaction required by God and of the forgiveness, cleansing and reconciliation needed by his people. All this is achieved through substitutionary sacrifice and brought to Isaiah, encapsulated in the single symbol of the live coal.” [Motyer, p. 78]

d. Isaiah’s vision of his service (6:8-12)

“The commission consists of a declaration that Isaiah’s ministry is going to be hard and long. His message will prick the conscience of people, but they will harden themselves against God and His Word. Isaiah is shown the desolation of the land and the exile of the population. The emphasis is on judgment, devastation, and desolation. Yet there is hope, for the ‘holy seed’ will remain. Isaiah begins chapter 1 with ‘the brood of evildoers’ (lit. seed of,) and concludes chapter 6 with a ray of hope.” [VanGemeren, p. 480]

    e. Isaiah’s vision of the Seed (6:13)

Isaiah’s assigned service would raise the question “What about the promises to the seed of Abraham?” God says, “There is to be a new Judah!’

(1) It will be small: a tenth.

(2) It will be afflicted: eaten or burned.

(3) It will be holy: as God is holy. The seed will not be a matter of national descent but of spiritual standing.