Commentary on Isaiah 1 part 65/65

For it is written, 'Declare your iniquities first, that you may be justified.' And the divinely-inspired Psalmist also said:

'I said, I will confess against myself my transgression to the Lord, and you forgave the impiety of my heart.' 'Because truth was consumed in their ways, and they could not come by a straight path.'

'And the truth has been taken away, and they turned aside their mind from perceiving; and the Lord saw, and it did not please him, that there was no judgement.'

'And he saw, and there was no man, and he considered, and there was none to help.'

'And he defended them with his arm, and with the mercy on which he stayed himself; and he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and set a helmet of salvation upon his head.'

'And he clothed himself with a garment of vengeance, and a mantle, as one about to render recompense—reproach to his adversaries.'

'And those from the west shall fear the name of the Lord, and those from the east the glorious name.'

And he asserts strongly, saying that 'Truth was consumed in their ways'—that is, it was all but expended, and utterly gone.

For there was no truth at all in their works—that is, the law of the truth.

'These things,' he says, 'the Lord saw, and it did not please him.'

For there was not among them judgement—that is, righteous judgement, and law.

'He beheld,' he says, 'and there was no man; he considered, and there was none to help.' For since he is compassionate, being God, he sometimes remits, even to a whole city, the charges against it, on account of one—a single righteous man found within it;

and indeed he said through the voice of Jeremiah:

'Run to and fro in the streets of Jerusalem, and seek in her broad places, and see if you can find a man—if there is one doing faithfulness and loving mercy—and I will be merciful to her, says the Lord.' He also promised to remit even from Sodom the punishment by fire, had they possessed five righteous men among themselves—that is, one righteous man in each city.

'He considered, then,' he says, 'and there was no man; there was none to help.'

A righteous man, having lulled the divine wrath and sufficing, though alone, to be able to appease God, altogether comes to the aid of those on whose behalf he offers his supplications.

But since there was no such man, 'he defended himself against them with his arm,' he says—that is, with his power; and 'he stayed himself also with mercy';

for he did not destroy Israel root and all, but, being loving toward mankind, he saved a remnant, and kept the promise inviolate to their holy fathers.

Then the prophet says that He clothed Himself with a breastplate, and put around Himself a helmet and a garment of vengeance, as one about to render a recompense, a reproach, to His adversaries.

For he all but said that the God of all had become a kind of war-leader against them, possessing a full panoply of arms and being well versed in the arts of warfare.

For the All-mighty One drew up in battle array against them, He to whom it has been justly said:

'Thou art terrible, and who shall withstand Thee from before Thy wrath?' And when the punishments had been brought upon the Jews, 'They from the west and from the east shall fear the glorious Name.'

For it shall come, it shall come, he says, the wrath, against those who have been disobedient, like some most violent river sweeping all things away, and having an irresistible downrush of its streams.

'And the Deliverer shall come for Zion's sake, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob; and this is My covenant with them, saith the Lord.'

'My Spirit is upon thee, and the words which I have put into My mouth shall not fail out of the mouth of thy seed.'

For the Lord said, from now and unto the age.