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Isaiah 1:10-18
Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom!
Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.

When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand?
Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation–
I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers, I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;
cease to do evil, learn to do good;
seek justice, rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD:
though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Sodom and Gomorrah . . . the twin peaks (or should I say depths) of ungodliness.  To call a city or a nation “Sodom and Gomorrah” is to level an insult even more demeaning and nasty as it would be to label a person a “Benedict Arnold” or “Islamic fundamentalist” or “terrorist” today.  And to think that Isaiah, the mouthpiece of God, is saying that the holy city Jerusalem and the nation of Judah (God’s chosen people) have become no better than those legendary cities that God destroyed because of their wickedness.  Why?  What could the chosen have done to merit such a comparison with the paragons of evil?

In his commentary on these verses, which can be found in full  here, Ralph W. Klein from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago has this to say among other things:

The prophets frequently contain polemical passages that criticize sacrificial worship (Hosea  4:6; Amos 5:21-24; Micah 6:6-8).  Most scholars understand these passages today, not as a categorical rejection of worship, but a rejection of that kind of worship that substitutes ritual for obedience and transformation.

[Isaiah] recites a characteristic list of moral behavior:  seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.  Orphans and widows are code words for the poorest and most dependent people in society.  Widows often bear tremendous financial burdens also in our society, but orphans have ceased to be a major concern.  Who in your community is a counterpart to widows and orphans?  The homeless?  Racial and ethnic minorities?  Other?

The Lord rejects the outstretched hands of prayer because they are covered in blood.

Their hands are covered in blood, Klein says, echoing Isaiah’s words.  And so they were.  A land without justice, a land where the poorest of people and the least powerful are trampled on and taken advantage of, is necessarily a land covered in blood.  And if your hands are covered in the blood of the oppressed, the poor, and the powerless, all the prayers you might lift up to God are just so many vain repetitions.  Isaiah tells us that God doesn’t care one iota for our prayers if we do not seek justice for all.  God could not care less for our worship if we do not minister and care for those in need.  So, don’t even bother to open your mouths to speak or sing or pray or to lift your hands to light the candles in the sanctuary if you are not prepared to do what God has asked.  These religious activities will do you no good whatsoever.

Of course, the prophets (contrary to how they are often seen) never offer words of judgment or punishment without also juxtaposing them with words of hope.  There is always a way out, if the people of God are willing to listen and take action.

In his commentary on this passage, Howard Wallace sums up what he feels is the meaning of the last few verses:

In vv. 18-20 the prophet offers to argue the case out on the Lord’s behalf. The verses continue the scene with a display of graciousness by the Lord and hope for the people. But that graciousness can be again two-sided. The Lord offers a settlement. He is willing to regard the scarlet and crimson sins (picking up the image of the blood from v. 15) as white wool and snow. The condition is Israel’s willingness to be obedient. There can be no salvation without responsibility. Verses 18 etc. with their statements (NRSV) ‘though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow’ etc., can be read in a number of ways. They can be words of possibility, or of command (they shall be), or they can be read in Hebrew as questions, ‘can they be like snow?’ The openness of the people’s response to the invitation is anticipated in the statement. Only if they do respond, then shall they eat the good of the land, a reference back to the vineyard and cucumber fields (v. 8), both of which are unable to be enjoyed in a state of siege. If the people refuse they will be destroyed by violence.

This may sound harsh, but the offer of a future is always there and always made by the Lord. The Lord’s gracious offer of life, even in the face of his people’s disloyalty, is the surprise element. But no view of this offer should ever be taken that lessens the requirement of reorientation on Israel’s part. There is no cheap grace, either for God’s people, or for God.

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