Verse 9
"Be not wroth very sore, O Jehovah, neither remember iniquity forever: behold, look, we beseech thee, we are all thy people."
Isaiah's great prayer here is a model in many respects; but like all language, there is a line in it that might have been misunderstood, especially by the wicked majority of Israel. That line is the last clause of Isaiah 64:9.
"We are ALL thy people ..." (Isaiah 64:9). While true enough if understood as an assertion that all of us are created by God, it is a serious error for it to be construed that "all of the nation of the Jews" were God's people. That, however, was exactly the way the Jews took it. This was the fundamental error of the whole nation, for they believed that the total population, regardless of their ungodliness, were heirs of the promises to Abraham; but this was never the case at all. The great New Testament principle that, "They are not all Israel who are of Israel," (Romans 9:6), seems never to have been comprehended by the Jews. Only those of like faith and character of Abraham were ever, in any sense whatever, the chosen people.
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