Isaiah 44:9 - Meaning and Application

Long before this, God had used the prophet to show the foolishness and empty thinking of idolaters. Here he goes further and exposes them fully, so they look ridiculous. This message had several purposes: to protect Israel from the temptation to worship idols in Babylon, to correct their own deep pull toward idolatry, to give them words to answer their Chaldean masters, and to strengthen their hope in the true God.

Babylon was where Israel would be taken captive, far from the city where they worshiped God. There they would face pressure to fit in and please their new rulers. Since idolatry was the sin that most easily trapped them, God sent them into Babylon partly to cure them of it. God’s rod and God’s word work together, the one to discipline, the other to explain why he is disciplining.

When their captors sneered, “Where is your God?” Israel could answer with another question: What are your gods? God also wanted to remove their fear of the gods of their enemies. He would show that he stands against anyone who sets up such shameful rivals to his throne.

So the prophet gives idolaters a challenge. Let them clear themselves, if they can, from the charge of foolishness and blindness. They set their minds and hands to make carved images, and then call them their delightful things. They are deeply fond of them, and they expect great help from them. But sinful human nature often turns what should be hated into what is loved, and that is a serious sickness.

Those who make and trust in idols are all emptiness. They fool themselves and others, and they deceive the people for whom they make these images. Their precious idols will not help them. They cannot give good or protect from harm. Carved images are useless, and the worship given to them brings no benefit at all.

The prophet even appeals to the idolaters’ own consciences. If they would be honest with themselves, they would admit that they are blind and ignorant in doing this. They are their own witnesses against themselves. Who but someone mad would think of making a god, that is, making something and then claiming it is divine? If people would be faithful to their own inner sense of right, they might often be brought to repentance, especially idolaters.

The prophet also challenges them to defend their case with confidence. If a man says he has made a god, and others gather to explain how each one helped make it, they will all be ashamed of the fraud. The workers are only men, weak and limited. They cannot possibly make something all-powerful, and they should blush to pretend otherwise. If they all stand together, like craftsmen defending their trade, they still cannot face the matter with any real courage. Their cause is too weak. Idolatry and godlessness are things people should be ashamed to defend.

Then the prophet gives a plain account of how a god is made. The work is done by common tradesmen, the sort of men who make ordinary farm tools like a cart or plow. One man is a blacksmith, working with tongs and coals. He labors hard until he is hungry and exhausted, because those who hired him are eager to get the work done. He may not even stop to eat or drink, and so he grows faint (Isaiah 44:12). Perhaps there was even some superstition in this, as if the maker of a god should not eat while working on it.

The smith shapes the iron plates and fittings with hammers and makes everything exact according to the model before him. Then comes the carpenter, who puts equal care into the woodwork (Isaiah 44:13). He takes out all his tools. He measures with a rule, marks the wood with a line, cuts it to size, smooths it with planes, and marks the shape with a compass. The object is exactly what he wants it to be.

Its form is that of a man, a weak and dying creature, because that is the noblest shape the maker knows. He is proud of human beauty, so he gives the image the best human features he can think of. But this is a great insult to God. God honored man by making him in his image in terms of soul and mind, but man dishonors God by making him in the image of a human body. Even if the man uses the fairest human features, that still does not fit the infinite Spirit. It only lowers him.

When the image is finished, it stays in the house, in the temple or shrine made for it, or maybe in a private home if it is a household god. But the material itself is poor stuff for a god. It is only the stock of a tree. The tree grew in the forest among other trees, with no more value or power than the rest.

It may have been a cedar, a cypress, or an oak (Isaiah 44:14). Perhaps the man had chosen it long before for this very use and had made it stronger for himself, using some skill to make it better grown than other trees. Or, as some read it, he picked out the tallest and strongest tree in the forest. Or he may have preferred an ash tree, which grows quickly and had even been planted by him for this purpose, then watered by heaven’s rain.

See how false his comfort is. He trusts in what he himself planted, shaped, and prepared. He sets up as a rival to the God of heaven something that was nourished by God’s rain, the rain that falls on both the righteous and the wicked.

The branches of this tree are good for nothing except fuel, and that is what they are used for, along with the chips cut from it while it is being worked. They are for a man to burn (Isaiah 44:15, Isaiah 44:16). This shows that the tree has no power in itself to protect it, since it can be burned like any other tree. It also shows that the man who chose it had no special respect for it before he made it into an idol.

Part of it serves him as his fire for warmth. He takes some of it and warms himself (Isaiah 44:15). He enjoys the comfort of it and is so little troubled by what he has done that he says, “Ah, I am warm, I can feel the fire.” In fact, the part of the tree used for fuel, which is what God and nature intended it for, gives him more real help and satisfaction than the idol he makes from the rest of it.

It also serves him for cooking. He uses it to heat meat, roasting his food and being satisfied that he has done nothing wrong. It even serves him to heat the oven, which is where we use the least valuable fuel. He kindles it and bakes bread with its heat, and no one blames him for it.

After all that, he still uses the trunk of the tree to make a god, when it could just as well have become a bench, as one of the ancient poets mocked. Another writer threatened the idol that guarded his woods, warning it that if it did not keep the trees for his fire, it would be burned itself. When the foolish idolater has used part of the tree for the lowest tasks and has let the rest season, he makes it a graven image and bows down to it (Isaiah 44:15). That is, he turns the leftover wood into a god, according to his own fancy and intention (Isaiah 44:17). He bows before it and worships it, giving it divine honor. He falls before it like a servant or a beggar, and he prays to it, depending on it and expecting help from it. He says, “Deliver me, for you are my god.”

There he gives his worship and loyalty, and from there he expects protection and rescue. What a strange blindness it is to look for help from gods that cannot help themselves. Yet it is the praying that makes them gods, not the work the smith or carpenter did on them. Whatever we trust in for deliverance, that is what we make into a god.

The judgment on all this is plain (Isaiah 44:18-20). It is the clearest sign of deep stupidity and foolishness, showing that man can become worse than the animals that perish. Animals follow their senses, but here man does not even follow reason. They have not known or understood common sense (Isaiah 44:18). In other matters they may act wisely, but in this they act in the most unreasonable way.

Though they have some knowledge and understanding, they ignore the basic rule of serious thought (Isaiah 44:12). No one stops to think or asks himself, “I have burned part of this tree for cooking and roasting. Why would I now make the rest into something detestable?” That is, into an idol, which is hateful to God and to all wise and good people. “Why would I choose to do what the Lord hates? Why would I fall down before a piece of wood, a senseless, lifeless, helpless thing? Why would I lower myself and become like what I worship?” A growing tree may be beautiful and strong, but the stump has lost its glory. And the man who gives glory to it loses his own.

The sad truth about these idolaters is this, first, they cheat themselves (Isaiah 44:20). They feed on ashes. They expect profit from worshiping idols, but they will be disappointed, like a man trying to get nourishment from ashes. Feeding on ashes shows a twisted appetite and a sick condition. In the same way, it shows a soul ruled by evil habits when people, in worship, go only as far as their eyes can see.

They are badly deceived, and the fault is their own. A deceived heart of their own has turned them aside from the faith and worship of the living God to silent idols. They are led away by their own desires and trapped by them. A sinner’s turning from God comes entirely from himself and from the evil heart of unbelief within him. A rebellious heart is also a deceived heart.

Second, they keep clinging to their own deception and refuse to be set right. None of them can be persuaded to doubt himself enough to say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” and so think about saving his soul.

Idolaters hold a lie in their right hand. An idol is a lie because it is not what it claims to be, and it cannot do what it promises. It is also a teacher of lies (Habakkuk 2:18).

This is a serious warning for anyone who is settling into sin. We should ask ourselves whether there is a lie in our own right hand. Is the thing we treat as our highest good really a lie? If our hearts are set on wealth or on the pleasures of this world, they will surely prove false. And if we hold tightly to our outward religion and good actions as if they can save us, we are fooling ourselves with a lie in our right hand, like a house built on sand.

Self-doubt is often the first step toward rescue. We cannot be truly honest with ourselves unless we are careful and wary of ourselves. Anyone who wants to save his soul must begin by asking his own conscience, “Is there a lie in my right hand?” Those who are given over to believe a lie are under strong delusion, and it is hard to break free from it (2 Thessalonians 2:11).