Isaiah 57

Isaiah 57:3-12

The prophet in this chapter makes his observations. 1. Upon the deaths of good men, their comfortable end, and represent they that did not make a due improvement of such providences, ver. 1, 2. 2. Upon the great idolatries and spiritual whereabouts of the people, and the differing judgments they were thereby bringing upon themselves, ver. 3—12. 3. Upon the gracious returns of God to his people, ver. 13—19. 4. Upon the character and misery of the wicked, ver. 20, 21.

1. THE righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and + merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. 2. He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.

v. 1, 2. If the watchmen were blind and careless, no wonder the people were stupid and negligent, and disregarded the notices of Divine Providence.

1. The righteous perisheth, and the merciful man is taken away. Death delivered them from their burdens, and God in mercy took them away from a wicked world. Note, Piety is no protection from death; nay, in times of persecution the righteous are most exposed. The first man that died, died a martyr.

2. It was a mark of great hardness of heart, and contention to the calls of God, that no man said it to heart, nor considered it. The removal of the righteous is a grievous loss to the church, and to the nation; a mark of God’s displeasure, and a warning of approaching judgments; and they who hear not the rod, and repent, will quickly feel its smart, and perish under the stroke.

3. The blasphemy of the righteous in their removal is great; to them to die is gain. They are taken away from the evil to come, as Noah into the ark before the deluge rises: they see not the evil that is coming on a wicked world, but take their happy flight to the mansions prepared for them in glory. He shall enter into peace, or go in peace; no fears dismay his dying hour;

having seen the salvation of God, he departs with joy to the full profession of it, to enter that blest abode where sin, sorrow, or sufferings, shall never more disturb his repose. They shall rest in their beds: no bed so welcome to the weary, as that bed of dust, where the fauna sweaty sleep in Jesus, and what a joyful resurrection; each one walking in his uprightness; either such was their product upon earth, or such is now the state of their departed souls, delivered from the burden of the flesh, and joined to the spirits of just men made pariaid; or, before him, admitted to the beatific vision and fruition of the blissed God.

Benedict App.

3. But draw near higher, ye sons of the forceness, the feed of the adulterers, and the whore. 4. Against whom do ye sport yourselves? against whom make ye a wide mouth, and draw out the tongue? are ye not children of transgression, a feed of callous? 5. Enlistening yourselves with idols under every green tree, saying the children in the valleys under the cliffs of the rocks? 6. Among the smooth stones of the firemen is thy portion; they, they are thy lot: even to them half thou poured a drink-offering, thou hast offered a meat-offering. 7. Should I receive comfort in thee? 7. Upon a lofty and high mountain half thou set thy bed: even thither wenteth thou up to offer sacrifice. 8. Behind the doors also and the path half thou set up thy remembrance: for thou hast discovered thyself to another than me, and art gone up: thou hast enlarged thy bed, and + made thee a covenant with them; thou lovedest their bed where thou laweeth it. 9. And thou I wenteth to the king with ointment, and dudit increses thy perfumes, and dudit send thy meekings far off, and dudit dechale thyself even unto hell. 10. Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way; yet faidst thou not, There is no hope: thou hast found the life of thine hand; therefore thou waft not grieved. 11. And of whom half thou been afraid or feared, that thou hast lied, and hast not remembered me, nor laid it to thy heart? have not I held my peace even of old, and thou fearest me not? 12. I will declare thy righteousness, and thy works, for they shall not profit thee.

Jer. 6: 35.

We have here a strong character drawn of the wicked abovementioned, who were well-pleased to be rid of the righteous who troubled them: and this may belong either to the Jews under their latter monarchs, especially Ahaz, in whose reign Isaiah lived; or to the apostles church of Rome, where all the idolatries of the heathen are revived, and, with the name of Christian, paganism is in a measure re-established.

1. They are summoned to God’s bar. Draw near higher, to hear your fearful doom; and the title given them marks their character; ye son of the forceness, ye lord of the adulterer and the whore, or who commit whereabouts; children of transgression, a seed of falsehood; the whore of Babylon, the form of that idolatrous church, committing whoreedom with her, given up to iniquity, embracing false doctrines, and propagating them! Note, The practice of sin is spiritually sincere and adultery; it is a virtual contrast with the devil, and an open breach of our baptismal engagements.

2. The crimes alleged against them are produced, and they are many and aggravated!

[1.] Contempt of God and his warnings, in the person of his ministers. They ridiculed the preachers, treated them with derision and sown, and themed them such insult and ill manners, as themselves would have counted a flagrant injury, if done to the means of their servants whom they had sent with a message. Note, (1.) They who deliver faithfully God’s message to a wicked world, may often expect to meet insult and reproach. (2.) When religion is in the case, they who on other occasions pique themselves on their behaviour as gentlemen, here count ill manners laudable, and esteem the ministers of God as excluded from the common right of civility. (3.) They who thus infinitely treat God’s servants, need well consider against whom they sport themselves: their matter is not thus to be mocked with impunity.

[2.] Idolatry. They were met upon their idols, and, as is the nature of vile affections, the more they are indulged, the more they are inflamed, and hurry men on to greater excelses. Under every green tree they had their images; and so befainted were they, that even their own children were not too dear to offer to them; for when a man is given up to his heart’s lust, he becomes unnatural even to his own flesh and blood, and, to gratify his raging appetites, cares not what sufferings his children and family undergo, v. 8. Innumerable were their idols: if they found in the streams of the valley a smooth stone, they set it up for worship, and valued it as their portion and inheritance, pouring out their drink-offerings and meat-offerings before it, as the papilla do the images of their faints, and offer up the sacrifice of their mats,

consisting of bread and wine, in honour of their idols. Shall I receive comfort in these? says God; No; they are his utter abhorment, v. 6. On the hills they have set up their bed, their idolatrous altars, and thither went up to offer sacrifice to their idols: alluding, it may be, to the city of Rome, the feat of idolatry, situate on seven hills; or to their high altars, where they celebrate their masses, v. 7. yea, every houle has its tutelat shire, as the heathen Lares and Penates. Behind the dace of life and the poils hast thou set up thy remembrances; their images, crucifluies, and superfluous pictures; for thou hast dishonest thyself to another than to me, or from me; apollate from God’s true worship, and predileated to idolatry: and art gone up, openly and publicly without blushing, to choke unhallowed altars. Thou hast enlarged thy bed, their idol temples; and made a covenant with them; joined in league with others like themselves, See Rev. xiii. 15—17. Thou fawceth their bed where thou fawceth it; took delight in the places and altars for idolatrous worship, as Ahara, 2 Kings xvi. 10. or, where thou fawceth a statue, didst fall down and worship it.

[3.] Their zeal to make proselytes to their idolatry. Thou wrothly up to the king with ointment, &c. Some refer this to the truth the Jews reposed in the foreign assistance they counted; but it may be applied to Rome the mother of harlots, who, decking herself with all the pomp and splendor of outward devotion and gaudy worship, invites the kings of the earth to commit fornication with her; and didst increase thy perfumes, to make herself appear amiable; pretending to antiquity, infallibility, the power of miracles, and authority to bestow plenary indulgences for sin: and didst send thy messengers after off; nunsize and legates to the courts of her kings, to establish her authority, and missionaries and emittaries to promote her interests, and spread her false religion: and didst debufe thyself even to hell; making pretences to the deepest humility, in order to ensnare the unwary; or, didst bring low even to hell; making her converts sevenfold more the children of hell than before, and destroying the souls of those she pretended to save.

[4.] Their oblivious perseverance in those ways of wickedness. Thou art usuried in the greatness of thy ways, or, the multiplicity of thy ways; the many stratagems and the vast pains taken to compels the subjection of kingdoms, and all churches to the church of Rome, which were enough to have wearied out inventions and patience, before they could be brought to take effect. Yet fendit thou not, There is no hope; no disappointments deterred the Roman use from persevering in her ambitious designs, till at last they prevailed. Thou hast found the life of thy hand, the dominion over men’s consciences, and over all other churches which they fought, with all the wealth that accrued from thence: therefore thou wast not grieved, or sick; not livery for the pains bestowed, or sick of the undertaking, from whence they hoped at last all their pains would be recommended. And this may be applied to sinners in general. (1.) The happiness they seek in creature-comforts wearies them in the pursuit, and ever disappears their expectations. (2.) Though experience should teach him, by repeated disappointment, the vanity of the creature, so infatuated is the sinner, that he still entertains hopes, that by and by he shall find the joy he pursues. (3.) Sometimes he flatters himself he hath attained his point, and faith to his soul, Take thine eate; but most fatally is he then deluded, when most securely he cries, Peace, peace.

[5.] Long impunity had bred confidence of its continuance, notwithstanding the repeated provocations given. Of whom hast thou have afraid or fawceth intimating either, that the bad call off all fear of God, or that it was through fear of losing her influence over her votaries; that thou hast lived, that it at no tread and falsehood to carry her point: and hast not remembered me; paid no regard to God, nor shewed any apprehension of his judgments. Have I not held my peace even of old, and thou fawceth me not? or, therefore thou fawceth not; emboldened to sin by the patience God had shown in bearing her provocations. Note, (1.) Fear of men often leads to the sin of lying. (2.) They can have no fear of God, who dare tell a deliberate lie. (3.) Because vengeance is not speedily executed on an evil worker, presumptuous sinners harden themselves in their iniquities.

3. God threatens to bring them to an awful reckoning, to detect their hypocrisy, and visit them for their sins. I will declare thy righteousness; for this the Jews boasted of, and went about to establish; as the church of Rome also vaunts her purity, teaching the meritoriousness of men’s duties, and even pretends to work of supererogation: but these pretenses shall quickly be contured and confounded, either by the preaching of the pure gospel, as at the reformation, and hereafter, when the Rumius has really shall be destroyed; or at God’s bar of judgment; for then it will appear how vain is their plea; they shall not profit thee, cannot justify them before God, nor in any measure secure them from his wrath, which shall be revealed from heaven against all such false pretenders to merit and human righteousness. Note, (1.) No delusion is more fatal than the conceit of our own righteousness. (2.) The doctrine of the merit of works is the grand pillar of popery: would God the leaves were not still deeply spread in many a professing Protestant’s heart?

4. 9. When thou crieft, let thy companies deliver thee: but the wind shall carry them all away; vanity shall take them: but he that putteth his truth in me, shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain: 14. And shall say, ‘Call ye up, call ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumbling-block out of the way of my people. 15. For thou saith the high and lofty One: that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, ‘I dwell in the high and holy place; with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit,’ to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. 16. For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls’ vehicle I have made.

Isaiah 57:13-16

We have here,

1. The vanity of idols in the day of calamity. When thou crieft, let thy companies deliver thee; but utterly unable will they be found to help. The sinner’s confidences will then fall him; the wind, or lightest breath of air, shall carry them away, the works of the self-righteous will all prove at the bar of God altogether lighter than vanity itself.

2. The insufficiency of idols and creature-confidences serves to magnify me all-sufficiency of God, which will never disappoint those who make him their rests alone. He that putteth his truth in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain; which refers either to the reformation of the Jews to their own land from Babylon, or, spiritually, contains a promise of blushing to all the faithful, who shall inherit the heavenly Ca-nan, and come to the eternal mount: God is glory. Note, Abiding faith in God is the sureth way to secure a blessed portion in time and eternity.

3. Proclamation is made to prepare the way for the return of the captive Jews, v. 14. Or this may be considered as the call of God by his mothers to his people, to come out of Babylon mystical; or, more generally, to depart from all the ways of sin. He shall say, God ye up, call ye up, prepare the way, that it may be plain and fitant, for faith is God’s way; a high-way, a way of holiness; the wayfaring men, though fouls, shall not err thereon; and to this way it is the holiness of the spiritual guide to conduct men’s souls. Take up the stumbling-block out of the way of my people: he who calls them forth, will bring them safely home. Whatever difficulties stand in their way, from fightings without, or corruptions within, they shall be removed and overcome.

4. The humble and contrite shall find the power and love of God engaged for them. For thou saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, in the contemplation of whole transcendent perfections, greatness, and glory, our thoughts are lost in wonder and adoration, which name is Holy, essentially so in himself, the source of holiness to all his creatures, and whose works and ways are so ordered, as most eminently to display thus adorable perfection; I dwell in the high and holy place; heaven is his throne, where he is pleased to make the brightest manifestations of his presence, and whither we are taught to look up to him: yet, not confined to the fates, he fills heaven and earth, and condolences to take up his favoured abode with him and that is of a contrite and humble spirit; cheating and comforting the soul of the sinner abased with the views of guilt, and healing with his precious grace the heart broken under a bride of sin; supporting his afflicted ones oppressed and persecuted of men; and as their tribulations abound, making their confidences abound also: to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones, that they may not sink under their burdens, or faint in despair, but by faith and patience bear up under their trials, and cheerfully and steadily hold on their heavenly way. The celebrated Vitrings particularly applies this to the sufferings of the Wadenies and Bohemians, to cruelly persecuted by the pope and his adherents; and others, in the latter days, when the antichristian powers shall prevail. Note, (1.) A humble and contrite spirit is among the best gifts of God. (2.) There is an endeared communion to be enjoyed with God, which only they can tell, in whose hearts he is pleased to manifest himself, as he doth not unto the world. (3.) Where God dwells no evil can approach, no real good be absent.

5. Though God in merciful correction visits his people, he will quickly remove the red, when in humiliation the soul bows down before it. For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth, as the broken heart is ready to fear; but his anger is only for a moment, like a tender father, whose bowels yearn even when he clastifies his child, so doth the Lord halts to end his controversy with his people, ready to pardon them inflating at their cry, and to support them under, or save them out of, all their troubles; for the place should feel before me, or he overwhelmed, and the souls which I have made; which God gives as a reason for his compassions: he knows our weakness, and will not lay upon us more than we can bear. Note, (1.) Our souls are God’s, not merely by creation, but much more by redemption and regeneration. (2.) In heavy

heavy trials our hearts are ready to despair, but God is faithful, and will never leave nor forsake us.

Chap. 1st. Chap. 2nd. Chap. 3rd. Chap. 4th. Chap. 5th. Chap. 6th. Chap. 7th. Chap. 8th. Chap. 9th. Chap. 10th.

17. For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and those him: ‘I hid me, and was wroth, and ‘be went on frowardly in the way of his heart. 18. I have seen his ways, ‘and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him, ‘and to his moorners. 19. I create the fruit of the lips; peace, peace ’to him that is far off, and to him that is near, faith the LORD, and I will heal him. 20. But ’the wicked are like the troubled sea, ‘when it cannot reft, whoe waters cast up mire and dirt. 21. ‘There is no peace, faith my God, to the wicked.

v. 1)—21. We have here, reproofs, promises, and warnings, according to the several states of the people to whom the prophecy is addressed; and they are levelled either against the Jews of that day, or those fed decensions among Christians, for which God for a while in anger suffers the man of sin to prevail against them.

1. Their covetousness was among their crying sins, Spiritual as well as corporal idolatry defiled them: they prized gold more than God, and gain than godliness; and therefore God was wroth, sold them into the hands of the Chaldeans, and seemed for a while utterly to turn away from them. And this is remarkably the predominant sin of the ministers in proverbant churches, who, while they are only seeking their own advantage and preferment, are losing the souls of their people, seduced by the ministers of papery; and for this God hath a controversy against them. Note, (1.) Covetousness, though covered with many a specious guile, is the sin God abhors, and in ministers of the gospel is most peculiarly guilty. (2.) God’s wrath, however little feared, will be proved terrible where it falls.

2. Their hearts were obstinate, and, instead of being reformed by their afflictions, they went on favourably; settling against the Lord, instead of falling low at his forehead; and perishing in the way of their covetousness, instead of returning from it. Note, The wicked heart of man is often made more furious by refusion; and the severest afflictions are unaffected to convert him, unless the grace of God accompanies them.

3. God’s mercy triumphs over their perversion. We might well have expected to have heard him lay, I have seen thy ways, and will defray thee: but lo! the very reveres; I have seen his ways, and will heal him. We cannot heal or help ourselves; our nature is utterly corrupt; unless sovereign grace interpose, we are undone for ever. This God sees and knows, therefore he pardons freely, and, by the powerful influences of his Spirit, converts our souls, heals their inveterate diseases, and draws us powerfully that we may follow him. I will lead him also in the paths of righteousness for my name’s sake, and hold up his goings in the way; and restore comforts to him and to his manners brought to a deep and humbling sense of their guilt, and, tho’ once hardened, now by divine grace melted down with sorrow and shame: God will therefore bind up their blinding wounds, speak comfortably to his people, and wipe every tear from their eyes. Note, (1.) It is a blessed symptom for good, when the soul begins to mourn over sin. (2.) It is of God alone that our stubborn souls are ever brought to see and lament the evil of our ways. (3.) They who sow in tears, are sure to stop in joy.

4. The comfort God will restore arises especially from a sense of the peace and reconciliation made between him and the sinner. I create the fruit of the lips; God gives both the cause for thanksgiving, and opens the heart and lips to speak his praise. Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, faith the Lord; peace with God, peace of conscience, peace from all enemies, peace present and eternal; and to this the apostle seems to refer, Eph. ii. 17, and applies it to the preaching of the apostles, when not only the Jews, but the distant Gentile lands, heard the gospel of peace, found pardon through the blood of the cross, and were joined in one body, holding the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: and I will heal him; recovering them from all their sins and backslidings, restoring them to a state of purity, and healing all their divisions. Note, (1.) None can speak peace to the troubled soul, till God create that fruit of the lips, and make the word of gospel grace in the mouth of his foresans effectual. (2.) All who are restored to peace with God, from that moment begin to experience the sanctifying influences of his grace.

5. The unpenitently wicked will finally perish. They are like the troubled sea, when it cannot reft; agitated by the winds of raging assuring, towed to and fro with the struggles of wise afflictions and jarring corruptions, and restless under the terrifying apprehensions of the wrath which is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men: whose waters cast up mire and dirt; foaming out their own shatins, polluting and defiling in their conversation, and all their comforts

Vol. II.

rendered bitter and loathsome by the curse of God which mingles with them. There is no peace, faith my God, to the wicked; no peace with God, no true peace of conscience, no peace in death, no peace in eternity; but the wrath of God abideeth on them.