Isaiah 57:3 - Meaning and Application

Here we have a serious charge, but one that is surely just, brought against that wicked generation from which God removed his righteous people, because the world was not worthy of them. Notice first the general name given to them in Isaiah 57:3. They are told to come near and listen to the charge, as if they are standing in court and being accused as children of a sorceress, or witch, the offspring of an adulterer and a prostitute. That means they were marked by that same kind of sin themselves, and they had also inherited patterns of sin from those who came before them.

Sin is compared to sorcery and adultery because it turns away from God and gives loyalty to the devil. They are called children of disobedience. The prophet says, in effect, “Come here, and I will tell you your fate. Death brings peace and rest to the righteous, but not to you. You are children of rebellion and a false race” (Isaiah 57:4). This kind of sin had become part of them. It was woven into their nature to turn back from God and deal falsely with him (Isaiah 48:8).

The second part of the charge names their specific sins. First, they mocked God and his word. They are called a generation of scoffers (Isaiah 57:4). They may have thought they were only insulting the poor prophets, men they treated as worthless, but in truth they were insulting God, who sent them and gave them his message. Mocking the Lord’s messengers was one of Jerusalem’s worst sins, because God counted what was done to them as done to himself.

When they were corrected for their sins and warned about God’s judgments, they answered with rude gestures and contempt. They made fun of what should have made them serious, and they laughed at what should have humbled them. They twisted their mouths at the prophets and stuck out their tongues, ignoring even the basic respect they would have shown a gentleman’s servant sent on an errand. Those who mock God and defy his judgments should remember who they are treating so proudly.

Second, they were guilty of idolatry. This was the great sin of the Jewish people before the exile, though that suffering later cured them of it. In Isaiah’s day, it was widespread, as seen in the terrible idol worship under Ahaz and Manasseh, the kings of Judah, who likely fit this passage in a special way. They loved their idols with a mad passion, like people inflamed by sinful lust. They were obsessed with idols, and their worship only made that fire burn hotter.

They worshiped their idols under every green tree, out in the open or in the shade. But the beauty of the trees did not draw them toward the God who made the trees. Instead, it pulled them farther from him. The very things in nature that should have led them to God became a snare. Their zeal for false gods should shame us when we think about how cold and careless we often are in worshiping the true God.

Their idol worship was also cruel. They killed their children and offered them as sacrifices to idols, not only in the Valley of Hinnom, where this terrible practice was centered, but in other valleys too, and even under rocky cliffs in dark, lonely places, which suited works of darkness. They were never satisfied. They thought they could never have enough idols or spend enough on their service.

The Syrians once thought the God of Israel was a God of the hills, but not of the valleys (1 Kings 20:28). These idolaters wanted both, just to be safe. They had gods of the valleys too, worshiped in low places by the water’s edge (Isaiah 57:6). If they found a smooth stone, even one set up only as a landmark, they were ready to worship it, much as some later people treated crosses. Or in rocky valleys they set up their own gods and called them their portion, the thing they had chosen as their lot, just as God’s people choose the Lord as their portion.

But these stone gods would prove no better than the smooth stones in the stream nearby. Sometimes they even worshiped the rivers themselves. The false gods they trusted in would be the very thing that left them miserable. See the folly of sinners, who choose the smooth stones of the brook for their portion when they could have the precious stones of God’s Jerusalem and the priest’s ephod, the sacred vestments of the high priest, for their inheritance.

Having taken these idols as their lot and portion, they spared no expense in honoring them. They poured out drink offerings and offered grain offerings to them, as if these idols had given them food and drink. They loved their idols more than their children, since they robbed their own tables to fill the altars of false gods. If we have truly taken the living God as our portion, let us serve him with our food and drink, not by refusing them, but by eating and drinking to his glory.

In the middle of this, the Lord speaks out his rightful anger: “Should I take comfort in these people?” Can anyone expect God to delight in them or accept their worship at his altar, when they use his gifts to serve Baal? God does take pleasure in his people when they are faithful to him. But what comfort can he take in those who should have stood against the idols of the world and instead joined them? Should he have compassion on such people, or should he turn from his purpose to punish them? They cannot expect him to spare them or lessen their judgment when they are so provoking. “Should I not punish these things?” (Jeremiah 5:7, Jeremiah 5:9).

They also had gods of the hills (Isaiah 57:7). On a high and lofty mountain, as if they were competing with the High and Lofty One himself (Isaiah 57:15), they set up their bed, meaning their idol and its altar. It was the bed of their uncleanness, where they committed spiritual adultery with all the shamelessness of idolatry, breaking the covenant of their God.

You went up there willingly, even though the climb was hard, to offer sacrifice. Some think this shows how bold they had become in their idolatry. At first, they may have felt some shame when they worshiped their idols in valleys and hidden places. But soon they lost even that shame and came to worship on the high mountains. They were not ashamed, and they could no longer blush.

As if that were not enough, they also had household gods, their own private idols. Behind the doors and doorposts, where God’s law should have been written to remind them of their duty, they placed reminders of their idols (Isaiah 57:8). They did this not only to keep the idols in their own minds, because they were already deeply attached to them, but also to show others how devoted they were. They wanted even their children to remember them and to grow up respecting these worthless gods.

Their idolatry was not only constant, it was public. They became hardened in evil and worshiped their idols openly, with no shame for the sin and no fear of punishment. They went to idol temples as publicly and in as large crowds as they had once gone to God’s house. This was like an impudent prostitute, openly giving herself to someone other than her husband and openly professing another religion instead of the true one. They even took pride in winning others over to their idols, enlarging their idol temples and making them bigger than those they copied, much as Ahaz, king of Judah, copied his altar from Damascus (2 Kings 16:10).

They were so deeply trapped in idolatry that they could not easily be separated from it. Ephraim, the northern kingdom of Israel, was joined to idols both in affection and in agreement. In agreement, they had made a covenant with the idols and with the idol worshipers, as if they meant to live and die together. That was a full rejection of their covenant with God and an open decision to keep turning away from him. In affection, they loved the idol temple, wherever they saw it. So they were rightly given over to the desires of their own hearts.

Another sin charged against them was their trust in foreign help and their search for alliances with Gentile powers (Isaiah 57:9). “You went to the king,” which some understand as the idol they worshiped, especially Moloch, since that name means “king.” In that case, the meaning is that they did everything they could to win over the idol, offering incense and sweet perfumes at its altars. Or this may refer to the king of Assyria, to whom Ahaz, king of Judah, appealed, or to the king of Babylon, whose messengers Hezekiah welcomed. It may also point to other kings of the nations, whose idolatrous customs they admired and wanted to copy. For that reason, they went and sent messages to form ties with them, hoping to become like them and to strengthen themselves through alliance.

Think of the cost they paid to make and secure this great alliance. They went with ointments and perfumes, either to make themselves look impressive, or to present gifts to those whose favor they wanted. A gift opens the way for a person and brings him before important people. When the first present of rich perfumes seemed too small, they added more. Many people still seek the favor of rulers this way, forgetting that, in the end, every person’s judgment comes from the Lord. They were so eager for the friendship of these heathen princes that they did not only go themselves to those nearby, but also sent messengers to those far away (Isaiah 18:2).

By doing this, they lowered themselves and threw away the honor of their nation. They did this through their idol worship. It is a shame for human beings, who have the gift of reason, to worship as God something they made with their own hands or imagined for themselves, to bow down to a piece of wood. It is far worse for God’s own people, who have the gift of divine revelation, to turn away from the God they know and choose worthless lies instead of their mercies. They also lowered themselves by bowing to their pagan neighbors and depending on them, even though they had an all-sufficient God who had made a covenant with them. They shamed themselves deeply and sank very low when they abandoned the fountain of life for broken cisterns and the rock of ages for broken reeds. Sinners always degrade themselves. The service of sin is a shameful slavery, and those who lower themselves to hell will rightly have their share there.

The sin is even worse because they had already been worn out by the disappointment of their evil ways, yet they still would not admit how foolish those ways were (Isaiah 57:10). “You are wearied in the greatness of your way.” They had taken on a huge task, trying to find real satisfaction and happiness in what is empty and false. Those who set up idols instead of God as the focus of worship, and princes instead of God as the source of hope and trust, take the long way around and never reach their goal. Some read this as, “You are wearied in the many paths of your way.” Those who leave the only right path wander endlessly through a thousand side roads and lose themselves in all the schemes they have invented.

They wear themselves out with repeated efforts, but they never get what they want. They are like the men of Sodom, who wearied themselves trying to find the door (Genesis 19:11) and still could not find it. Sin’s pleasures soon become sickening, but they never satisfy. A person may quickly tire in chasing them, yet never rest in enjoying them. Israel had learned this by experience. The idols they had worshiped so often never helped them, and the kings they had courted only troubled them and gave no aid. Even so, they were so blinded that they still could not say, “There is no hope.” They would not admit that it was useless to keep expecting satisfaction from creaturely trusts and idol worship, after failing so many times.

The first step toward a true hope in God, and a firm resolve to serve him, is to give up hope of finding happiness in created things. Those are without excuse who have clearly seen how empty the creature is, and yet still refuse to say, “There is no hope of being happy apart from the Creator.”

Even though they knew their way was sinful, they could not bring themselves to be sorry for it. They had found some present pleasure and worldly gain in it, and that made repentance hard. “You have found the life of your hand,” or the support and ease it seems to give you, means you boast that things are going well for you, so you feel no grief. This is like Ephraim’s pride when he said, “I have become rich; I have found wealth” (Hosea 12:8). Prosperity in sin is a great barrier to turning from sin. People who live comfortably in their sinful plans are tempted to think God favors them, so they imagine they have nothing to repent of.

Some understand the words as irony, or even as a question: “You have found the life of your hand, have you? You have found true happiness, have you?” Then the point is clear. You are so far from grieving over your sin that you bless yourself in your wrongdoing. But look again at your gains and losses, and ask what profit you really have from the things that should shame you and that God will judge (Romans 6:21).

They also treated God very badly by their sin. It seems they claimed they turned away because God was too awful and high for them, and they wanted gods they could handle more easily. But God says, “Who have you been afraid of, that you lied, dealt falsely and treacherously with me, and broke faith in your promises and prayers? What did I ever do to scare you away? What reason have I given you to think badly of me, so that you went looking for a kinder master?” In plain terms, they were making excuses for abandoning God.

Still, the deeper truth is that they had no real reverence for God at all. So the question can be read this way: “Who have you feared? No one, because you have not feared me, the one you should fear, and you have lied to me.” People who pretend before God show that they are not in awe of him. They had also forgotten him, forgetting both what he had said and what he had done, both his promises and his warnings, and all the ways he had kept them. They had not taken these things to heart. Those who do not take God’s word and God’s works to heart show that they do not fear him. Many people are ruined by this kind of carelessness. They do not fear, remember, or reflect as they should.

Worse still, God’s patience made them bolder in sin. He had kept silent for a long time, and while he was quiet, they kept on sinning. Because he did not punish at once, they acted as if he would never punish at all (Ecclesiastes 8:11). Since God held his peace, the sinner thought God was just like himself and felt no fear.

But God would still call them to account, even though he had borne with them for a long time. He says, “I will declare,” like the words, “I will rebuke you” (Psalm 50:21). “I will declare your righteousness,” the righteousness you boast about, and show the world, and even you, that it is a sham. When it is examined, it will turn out to be unrighteousness, with no honesty in any of your claims. “I will declare your works,” what they really were and what gain you say you got from them, and it will be seen that, in the end, they bring you no profit at all. Sinful works are works of darkness. There is no true reason or rightness in them, and there is no lasting gain in them either. However they may look for a time, they will be shown for what they are one day. Sin does not profit. It ruins and destroys.