Isaiah 1:3

"The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that deal corruptly! they have forsaken Jehovah, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are estranged and gone backward. Why will ye be still stricken, that ye revolt more and more? the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and fresh stripes: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with oil. Your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Except Jehovah of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto Gomorrah."

One of the interesting things in this passage is the number of different words used to describe the sins of Israel. They are called rebellion (Isaiah 1:2), ignorance, lack of consideration (Isaiah 1:3), sin, iniquity, evil-doing, corruption, forsaking God, estrangement from God, backsliding (Isaiah 1:4), revolt, transgression, disobedience, sickness, (Isaiah 1:5) and unsoundness (Isaiah 1:6). The wounds and bruises of Israel mentioned here should not be viewed as resulting from the hostile attacks of her enemies but as the result of the stripes of punishment laid upon the sinful nation by the hand of her God.

The picture in Isaiah 1:5-6 is not of a sick man but of someone who has been flogged in an inch of his life, yet asking for more. Therefore sores in Isaiah 1:6 are actually weals.[4]

The mention of the ox and the ass (Isaiah 1:3) stresses the truth that even domesticated animals of the type usually cited for their lack of intelligence exhibited desirable qualities that were absent in the behavior of Israel, which seemed to be totally ignorant of the signal blessings they had received from God and his amazing deliverance of them from slavery and oppression.

We entertain a strong objection to receiving the desolation depicted in these verses as an actual historical picture of conditions in Palestine following some invasion, either that of the earlier reign .of Josiah or, of that when Sennacherib shut up Hezekiah "like a bird in a cage". We are aware that many commentators offer this explanation; but to us it seems clear enough that what we have here is a master prophecy outlining the whole history of Israel in advance, not only covering the invasions mentioned here but the final overthrow of Israel by Babylon with the resulting captivity, and the return of "the remnant," significantly mentioned here as all that would be left of the chosen people. Rawlinson believed that the "remnant" here was "the few godly people left in Jerusalem!"[5] However, such interpretations of this prophecy would make it necessary to accept the godless Manasseh as a part of that "righteous remnant." No! The very fact of the "remnant" being introduced in this opening passage unerringly points to the remnant of Israel that would form the nucleus of the "New Israel" of God. that is, the church, or kingdom, of Messiah! Furthermore, is not this chapter introduced as a part of the vision of Isaiah? The very word means a supernatural revelation of events to take place in the future from the time of the vision; and if this chapter is nothing more than Isaiah's observations on the current state of the land of Palestine, it is not entitled to any place whatever in Isaiah's prophecy. No! The commentators are merely deceived by the liberal canard that predictive prophecy is not found in the Bible. As we shall see, this chapter is really a summary of the whole Book of Isaiah.

There is no agreement whatever among scholars as to which of two principal invasions Isaiah referred to in this description of the devastated land. Archer stated that some scholars understand the whole passage as a description of Sennacherib's invasion of 701 B.C.,[6] rather than the usual habit of applying it to the invasion of the Edomites and the Philistines in 734-733 B.C. All of the uncertainty is cleared up by understanding the passage as an extended prophecy of what was in store for Israel in a far more general sense. No other understanding of the place takes care of the question about who constituted that "righteous remnant."

Isaiah 1:8 refers to Jerusalem, "the daughter of Zion," as totally deserted like a "booth in a vineyard," or a "lodge in a garden of cucumbers." Jerusalem was never deserted throughout the life of Isaiah, nor until more than half a century later; therefore, this passage simply cannot be a description of conditions that Isaiah saw. This is a prophecy of the going of Israel into the Babylonian captivity.