First Isaiah is in the news, thanks to Pope Leo quoting Isaiah 1:15 followed by dozens of white evangelical Americans lining up to denounce the words of the Lord in that verse as “woke” and “Marxist” propaganda.
This gives us the opportunity to revisit this remarkable passage and to explore a tiny bit of what it means to realize it’s one of the oldest passages in all of the Bible.
Isaiah 1 is presented by the prophet as a “thus saith the Lord” speech — an extended quotation from the actual mouth of God. And what God has to say here sounds angrily anti-religious:
Hear the word of the Lord,
you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the instruction of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!
“The multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?” says the Lord.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
this trampling of my courts?
Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.
Your hands are full of blood!Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
The theme here is similar to the themes in the book of Amos* — which is also among the oldest passages in our Bibles, another book composed and compiled centuries before most of the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures that we Christians call the “Old Testament.”
This gets confusing for us as modern readers. Our canonical collections, translated into English, arrange the contents “chronologically” according to the setting of the various books of the Bible — from Genesis to Revelation. But many of those “earlier” stories were written long, long after this “later” passage from Isaiah.
This is, among other things, a fascinating literary puzzle. For example, here in Isaiah chapter 1, “the Lord” references Sodom and Gomorrah, but Isaiah was written down centuries before the book of Genesis was written with its story of those wicked cities. So that’s a piece of evidence that the much later composition of Genesis included at least some stories that were well-known long before it was written. Isaiah/”the Lord” confidently assumes that contemporary readers of Isaiah 1 will be familiar with this allusion to Sodom and Gomorrah, even though there does not yet exist any such thing as the book of Genesis.
But where our instinctive chronological confusion really kicks in here is in verse 12 above, when God asks an exasperated rhetorical question. God here is weary and fed-up with sacrifices and worship and holy days and says “Who has asked this of you?” In his colloquial translation, Eugene Peterson renders this as “Whoever gave you the idea of acting like this?”
It’s very good news for us mortal humans that this is a rhetorical question. When the boss is fuming mad and calls you into the office to chew you out, shouting something like “Whoever gave you the idea of acting like this?” you’ve got to hope that’s a rhetorical question and that the boss is not expecting us to attempt to defend ourselves in the moment by answering it. Attempting to respond to such an angry rhetorical question from the boss is never a good idea.
That’s especially true when the angry boss asking the question is, you know, Almighty God.
And it’s even more especially true when the answer we’re thinking of would surely seem impertinent. Because the answer to God’s rhetorical question here — “Who asked you to do this?” — would seem to be, well, “But sir, You did.”
And God didn’t just ask us to do all this, God commanded it. Those commandments are all laid out, very clearly, back in those “earlier” Books of Moses. Everything God seems to find so infuriating here in Isaiah 1 — worship, sacrifice, religious holidays — is stuff that God previously commanded people to do back in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Except again — and this is where things get a little mind-bendingly complicated — our instinct to reference “back” to those “earlier” books is wrong. At the time that Isaiah is bringing us this angry word from the Lord, those books haven’t been written yet.
Nothing I’m discussing here about the composition of these books of the Bible is controversial or fringe. This is the solid consensus of biblical scholars all across any “conservative/liberal” spectrum we might impose as a frame upon their scholarship. There’s evidence for this that “conservatives” and “liberals” both accept and understand. The initial chapters of Isaiah and the similarly themed book of Amos were composed centuries before the first books in our biblical table of contents.
The most “conservative” scholars would describe this as a situation in which all of those “earlier” books with their laws and commandments already existed as an oral tradition that merely awaited transcription into written form. And, again, there’s some evidence for something like that claim, given that reference to “Sodom and Gomorrah,” right?
But the written composition of those much-later “earlier” books does not appear to be anything like such a straightforward transcription of an unchanged pre-existing “oral manuscript.” Those books appear to be the work of many hands — many writers, many editors and redactors. Again, this is not controversial. This is what almost every biblical scholar will tell you based on their in-depth exploration of the oldest texts and variant texts and ancient languages, etc. But it’s also apparent even to laypeople who lack all of that specialized scholarly knowledge and who are simply reading these texts in any English translation. Whatever oral traditions and laws and commandments pre-existed the writing of the “earlier” books of the law, there was a whole lot of editing and arranging and re-arranging involved in creating the written form of them, which didn’t happen until centuries after this rant from Isaiah and the similar rants in Amos were written.
That means, among many other things, that the people doing all of that writing and editing and redacting and arranging were also most likely people who were aware of the fierce critique of the worship, sacrifice, holidays, etc., made by those prophets. They constructed the commandments given in those later, “earlier” books with that critique in mind.
So the tricky thing for us, reading all of this now, presented in its current form in which the much-later books precede the much-earlier ones in our tables of contents, is not to get lulled into reading this backwards. The current form of our Bibles tricks us into reading Isaiah 1 and Amos 5 as critiques of the religious observance prescribed in the Books of Moses, but actually what we have is the Books of Moses configuring their religious commandments, in part, as a response to and a defense against those critiques in Isaiah and Amos.
What I’m describing here as a “literary puzzle,” then, is a puzzle with a missing piece. Some religious tradition involving commandments about worship and sacrifice and holidays existed in the 700s BCE and the prophets Isaiah and Amos denounced this religious practice as something God “detests” and “despises.” Centuries later, the books of the law are written, presenting commandments from God requiring worship and sacrifice and holidays. We can guess or try to guess at how this new description and prescription of worship, sacrifice, holidays, etc., differs from the earlier forms denounced by Isaiah and Amos, but we’re left with only that — guessing — because we don’t have any written record of that earlier religious tradition other than the prophetic condemnations of it.
Like I said, this can all be a bit mind-bending and confusing. It may be that I have confused you here or that I am confused myself in ways I’m too confused to notice.
Fortunately, engaging with that confusing, puzzling aspect of all of this is optional. It’s helpful to remember that the compositional chronology of the Bible is vastly different than the chronology apparent from the setting of its stories, and that will and should complicate our reading of these ancient texts. But the main point of Isaiah 1 and of Amos 5 is not at all complicated. Nor is in in any way incompatible with the main theme recurring throughout the not-earlier “earlier” Books of Moses.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.… Let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
Worship that follows all of the rules and commandments is worthless if the people worshipping are not caring for widows and orphans, aliens and the poor. If there is no justice for the oppressed, then all such worship is detestable and despicable.
That is the straightforward and uncomplicated message from the oldest scriptures, and none of the scriptures written since have retracted that.
* See, for example, Amos 5:21-24, which is again presented as God speaking:
I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
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