Isaiah 1:28

Verse 21 opens with a cry of grief: “How is the faithful city become an harlot!” This “How” is the voice of lament, mourning a fall too great to take in, and it carries both sorrow and indignation. The chapter has already described Judah as a body covered with wounds (Isaiah 1:2–6), compared its rulers to the rulers of Sodom (Isaiah 1:10), turned away its sacrifices and feasts (Isaiah 1:11–14), and called it to wash, cease from evil and seek justice (Isaiah 1:15–17). Now the prophet turns to Jerusalem itself, the capital and the centre of the nation’s worship, the place where faithfulness to the covenant should have been seen most clearly.

The verb behind “harlot”, zânâh, means to commit adultery or fornication, and figuratively to go after other gods, because Israel was regarded as the wife of the LORD. The prophets use this picture again and again. Jeremiah remembers Israel’s early devotion (Jeremiah 2:2–3) and then describes Judah’s harlotry (Jeremiah 3:6–10). Ezekiel tells the whole story of Jerusalem as an unfaithful wife (Ezekiel 16) and, in his picture of the two sisters, sets adultery and blood side by side (Ezekiel 23:36–37), just as Isaiah sets the harlot beside the murderers here. Hosea gives the other side, the LORD’s promise to betroth his people to himself in righteousness and faithfulness (Hosea 2:19–20). Jerusalem’s harlotry took in the worship of other gods, alliances with pagan nations in place of trust in the LORD, and the abandoning of his law of justice, which is where the rest of the verse goes.

The city’s past is told in two words that run all through Isaiah. Judgment, mishpat, is justice done: fair verdicts and right government under God’s law. Righteousness, tsedeq, is rightness in conduct, in judgment, in speech, even in honest weights. The verb “lodged”, lûwn, means to stop for the night, and by implication to stay for good, so righteousness had made its home in Jerusalem. Then the verse ends abruptly: “but now murderers.” The word râtsach means to kill a human being, especially to murder. Where justice once lived, the shedding of innocent blood now lives. Isaiah comes back to this lost justice often (Isaiah 5:7, Isaiah 10:1–2), and Amos calls for judgment to run down as waters (Amos 5:24).

Verse 24 begins with “Therefore”. The charges are laid, and now the Judge speaks, and he gives his full name. He is “the Lord”, ʼâdôwn (Adonai), the sovereign master and owner of his people. He is “the LORD of hosts”, Yᵉhôvâh Sabaoth, commander of the armies of heaven and of all creation, with the power to carry out what he says. He is “the mighty One of Israel”, Abir Yisrael, the strong one who bound himself to Israel and delivered and sustained them. The piling up of titles gives the sentence its weight. What follows is a decree of God, and the God who issues it is the very God who saved them.

“Ah” is hôwy, an interjection, “ah”, “alas” or “woe”, that marks grief and strong feeling over suffering to come. God’s sorrow and his anger are both in it. “I will ease me of mine adversaries” uses nâcham, a verb that means to sigh or breathe strongly, and so to be sorry, to pity or console, or, as here, to comfort oneself by taking vengeance. The adversaries, tsar, and the enemies, ʼôyêb, the word for one who is hostile, are inside Judah. They are the rebels, oppressors and idolaters of Jerusalem, whose ways are hostile to God’s character and his covenant. “Avenge me”, nâqam, means to take vengeance, to repay a wrong done. Vengeance belongs to the LORD (Deuteronomy 32:35), God is angry with the wicked every day (Psalm 7:11), Nahum calls him jealous and avenging (Nahum 1:2), and Jeremiah hears him ask whether he will let a rebellious nation go unpunished (Jeremiah 5:29). This is the vengeance of the holy Judge of all the earth, who is slow to anger and who in the end deals with sin as it deserves.

Verse 25 shows what the vengeance of verse 24 will do. “I will turn my hand upon thee”: yâd is the hand, the common Hebrew picture of power and action, and “turn” is shûwb. The same hand that strikes the city is the hand of the refiner. “And purely purge away thy dross”: tsâraph means to fuse metal, to refine it, and “purely” stands for bôr, lye or a cleanser, so the sense is “purge as with lye”. “And take away all thy tin”: “take away” is çûwr, to turn aside or remove, and tin, bᵉdîyl, is the alloy, the base metal mixed into silver that spoils its purity.

In verse 22 the silver had become dross. In verse 25 the dross is smelted out of it. Judgment here is a furnace, and the furnace exists for the sake of the silver. God’s aim is a purified people, restored to righteousness and fit for his use and for fellowship with him. Proverbs says, “Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer” (Proverbs 25:4). Malachi pictures the Lord sitting as a refiner and purifier of silver, purifying the sons of Levi so that they offer to him in righteousness (Malachi 3:2–3), and Isaiah later speaks of the LORD washing away the filth of Zion by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning (Isaiah 4:3–4).

Verse 26 tells what the refined city will be. “I will restore” is shûwb once more, the same verb as “turn” in verse 25, and it stands behind “converts” in verse 27 as well. God turns his hand against the city, he turns back her judges, and her people turn back to him. The judges, shōpṭîm, are those who decide cases and govern, and the counsellors, yō‘aṣayik, give wise guidance in government. “As at the first” and “as at the beginning” look back to the nation’s early days, perhaps the time of Moses, when God gave his laws and appointed judges, or the first days of the judges, before corruption took hold. The law had commanded judges in every gate who would judge with just judgment (Deuteronomy 16:18). The order matters too: God first gives the city righteous leaders, and then the city itself is called righteous.

“Afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city.” In Hebrew the names are ‘îr haṣṣeḏeq and qiryâ ne’emānâ. Here is tsedeq again, rightness and justice in every part of life, and “faithful” comes from ʼâman. In its simplest form that root means to support or nourish, as a nurse or foster-parent does, and in the form that means firm and established it gives the word for faithful: a city that is reliable and true to its covenant. The verse gives back what verse 21 mourned. The harlot will be “the faithful city” again, and the righteousness that once lodged there will come home. A new name in Scripture marks a new character, and Isaiah later promises Zion a new name given by the mouth of the LORD (Isaiah 62:2–4) and a coming glory (Isaiah 60). The change goes as deep as the heart, for God promises to write his law there (Jeremiah 31:33).

Verse 27 sums up the promise: “Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.” To redeem, pâdâh, means to sever, to ransom, to release. Judgment, mishpâṭ, is the same rich word that once filled the city in verse 21: a verdict and a sentence, God’s law, and justice itself, the setting right of what is wrong. The redemption comes by way of judgment. God frees Zion by separating the dross from the silver, the way a surgeon heals by cutting out what is killing the patient. His justice and his mercy work together, and the furnace that destroys the dross is the means by which the city is ransomed.

“Her converts” comes from shûwb, to turn back or return, so the phrase speaks of those in Zion who turn back to the LORD in repentance, the faithful remnant who answer his call. For them the end of the process is righteousness: a right standing with God and a life that matches his ways. The king Isaiah later promises will uphold his throne with judgment and with justice for ever (Isaiah 9:7). And the pattern remains for God’s people now, for “judgment must begin at the house of God” (1 Peter 4:17).

Verses 28 to 31 show the other road. Those who turn back are redeemed, and those who will not turn are broken. “The destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together.” Destruction, sheber, is a breaking, an injury or a disaster. Transgressors, pâshaʻ, are those who break away from rightful authority and rebel. Sinners, chaṭṭâʼ, are offenders, people accounted guilty. “Together”, yachad, means jointly or alike, so whatever their sins, they share one end. “They that forsake the LORD shall be consumed”: to forsake, ʻâzab, is to loosen, let go, abandon, and its object here is the LORD himself, Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant God. To be consumed, kâlâh, is to come to an end, to be finished, to perish. Jeremiah says that those who forsake the LORD have forsaken the fountain of living waters (Jeremiah 17:13), and the psalm warns that the wicked and the nations that forget God shall be turned into hell (Psalm 9:17).

The New Testament shows where this passage leads. Jerusalem’s judges failed, and the Father has given the Son authority to execute judgment (John 5:27). Isaiah names the child to be born “Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6): he is the Counsellor that verse 26 promised, the Prince who stands opposite the rebellious princes of verse 23, and the mighty God beside whom the “strong” of verse 31 are tow. Melchizedek, “King of righteousness”, foreshadows him (Hebrews 7:2), and the Lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed (Revelation 5:5). The princes loved gifts and chased rewards, while he came to minister and give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45) and gave himself as an offering and a sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2). The poor had the gospel preached to them (Matthew 11:5), and those who were fatherless before God he makes sons, giving them power to become the sons of God (John 1:12) and the adoption of sons (Galatians 4:4–7). At his first coming he came to save the world (John 3:17), and his kingdom is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost (Romans 14:17).

Zion is “redeemed with judgment”, and at the cross that judgment fell on Christ. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). “Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22), and we are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18–19). God made him to be sin for us, “that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21), so that God is both just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus (Romans 3:21–26). We who were enemies, alienated by wicked works, are reconciled (Colossians 1:21–22). He redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us (Galatians 3:13), and so “whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (Romans 10:11), and “there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). God so loved the world that whoever believes in his Son shall have everlasting life (John 3:16).

The refining goes on in those he has redeemed. Under the new covenant God writes his law in his people’s hearts (Hebrews 8:6–13), the Spirit changes us into the image of the Lord “from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18), and the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us who walk after the Spirit (Romans 8:4). Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, to present it to himself without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:25–27). Where Israel became a degenerate vine, he is the true vine (John 15:1), and “he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit” (John 15:5). The waterless garden of verse 30 meets its answer in his call, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37), and in the water he gives, which becomes a well springing up into everlasting life (John 4:14). He came that we might have life more abundantly (John 10:10). Every work will be tried by fire on the one foundation, which is Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 3:11–15), and he will be revealed from heaven in flaming fire on those who refuse the gospel (2 Thessalonians 1:7–8).

The faithful city has its final form in the new heavens and new earth, “wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13), where the river of the water of life flows and the tree of life grows (Revelation 22:1–2). The righteousness that once lodged in Jerusalem will dwell there for ever.

This passage shows us a God who grieves before he judges. His first word over the city is “How”, and his “Ah” in verse 24 carries sorrow as well as anger. He sees the widow whose case never reached the court and the bribes the princes took, and he takes up her cause himself where the rulers failed her. His judgment has a purpose, because the furnace of verse 25 is there for the sake of the silver, and the city he purges is the city he renames. He redeems by way of righteousness, so that those who turn back to him are made righteous, while those who leave him wither like the gardens they chose.

For us who belong to Christ, the heat of the refiner is the discipline of a Father, given “for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10). The warning of the last verse stands as well, because strength that rests on its own work is tow before a spark. And the faithful city of verse 26 is the city God promised to build, which he has begun to build in the people he has redeemed by the blood of his Son.