Isaiah 1:24

24. But there is a Judge who sees all this, and who will recompense according to what he sees.

The Lord of hosts He commands from heaven to smite and to protect: in the one case as it deserves; in the other, as it needs. The term “The Lord,” here, is from an unusual Hebrew word, האדונ , Ha Adon, used in Exodus 33:17; Exodus 34:23; Isaiah 1:24; Isaiah 3:1; Isaiah 10:16; Isaiah 10:23; Isaiah 19:4. “It designates God as the supreme administrator and judge. They (the people) had “appeared before” him, (Isaiah 1:12,) much as if they were patronizing one whom they were willing to please with a grand pageant, but one who had no real control over them; (compare Psalms 12:5, Adon;) and, after trampling his courts, had gone forth to oppress their fellow men. He will now prove himself to be what he was called, (KAY, Com., in loco,) the Mighty One of Israel, and this name is analogous to “Mighty God of Jacob” in Genesis 49:24, which passage helps us to the meaning of this. In this verse, He shows who is master, and who can bring proud and rebellious Israel through sharp pangs of punishment to repentance, and give exaltation to the crushed few who were his real friends. Isaiah, and those he represents in his own times and in all ages, are his real friends. Is not this principle involved… in the remaining words of this verse?

Ah The connexion requires this word to be used here in a tone of menace, as in Isaiah 1:4, it must needs be in a tone of grief. Or, it may be of grief here also, and so the meaning be, “Alas, that I must ease or comfort myself by using severity on the guilty, unfaithful ones of Israel.” This softens the metaphor in this passage, and others of like import, called anthropopathia, that is, speaking or feeling as men speak and feel. This figure is constantly used in the Bible. It is necessarily so used. The pure essence of God’s being is impossible for men to apprehend. His mode of thinking and feeling is therefore expressed in our own way of thinking and feeling. Lowth says: “This very necessity leads to beauty, as does all metaphoric language. When images are taken from the superior faculties of man, from the purer and more generous affections of human nature, and applied to God, we are apt to acquiesce in the notion we overlook the metaphor and take it as a proper attribute; but when the idea is gross and offensive, as in this passage of Isaiah, where the impatience of anger and the pleasure of revenge are attributed to God, we are immediately shocked at the application; the impropriety strikes us at once: and the mind, casting about for something in the divine nature analogous to the image, lays hold on some great, obscure, vague idea, which it endeavours in vain to comprehend, and is lost in immensity and astonishment.” LOWTH, Isaiah, in loco. But no mischiefs need result from the use of this figure, if it be considered that the inspired writer is predicting only the incomprehensible ethical action of God in the case, not the manner of the action. All the imprecatory psalms, the lxixth and cixth, for example, have their explanation on this basis.