Isaiah Chapter One I am Isaiah. My father is Amoz. This is about the visions I saw during the reigns of the following kings of Judah: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. * * * * * * * * * Listen, all you in the heavens! Listen up, all you on Earth! Yahweh your God has spoken what follows. “I raised children and brought them up. Yet they have rebelled against me! An ox knows its master and a donkey knows who feeds it, but my people Israel are in the dark. They are a sinful nation—loaded with guilt—a brood of evildoers. They are children dedicated to corruption!” They have turned their backs on Yahweh and thumbed their noses against The Holy One of Israel. Why do you keep asking for punishment? Why persist in rebellion? Your head is sore, your heart swollen. From head to toe you are injured—a mass of wounds, welts, and running sores that have not been sterilized, medicated or bandaged. Look around! The countryside is a desolate wasteland and the cities are burned over. Foreigners strip your fields before your very eyes—all laid waste by strangers! The “Beautiful for Spacious Skies and Amber Waves of Grain” is more like a shack in a vineyard or an old hut in a field of melons—like a city under siege. Unless Yahweh the Almighty had left a few survivors we would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah or like Pompeii and Mount St. Helens after the eruptions! “Sure, you still bring your religious sacrifices—but what do I care about that? I’ve had it with your offerings! It brings me no pleasure. When you come to worship, who asked you to come, milling around in my courts? Stop it! Your incense makes me sick! Your religious holidays and feast days—I hate them! They are burdensome—I am weary of them all. “You raise your hands in prayer, but I will close my eyes. No matter how many petitions you make I am not listening. Know why? Because your hands are stained with blood! Clean up! Get out of my sight with your wicked ways! Stop doing what is wrong! Work for justice for the oppressed. Stand up for the weak and helpless! “Let’s be reasonable. Even though your sins are black they can be white as snow. Though red as crimson they can be bright as cotton! If—and only if—you are willing to obey me—then you will prosper. If you resist and rebel you will fall in battle.” The Lord has spoken! See what’s going on… The faithful nation has prostituted itself! Once full of justice with righteous inhabitants—now a bunch of murderers! The silver is tarnished, the wine diluted. The rulers are rebels hanging out with swindlers, taking bribes with their hands out for gifts. They have no interest in the downtrodden. Because of this the Lord, Yahweh Almighty, the Mighty One of God’s people says, “I will take it into my own hands—hands turning against you people. I myself will purge the poisons and clean up the mess. I will bring back the honest judges as in past days—and wise counselors so that when I am done you’ll be called the City of Righteousness” and “The Faithful City.” God’s house will be rebuilt with justice. Those who are penitent will be restored in righteousness, while rebels and sinners will be crushed. Those who abandon Yahweh will perish. You will be ashamed of the dark shrines where you sported. The shadowy haunts you have chosen will disgrace you. You’ll end up like oaks with shriveling leaves—like a garden never watered. The Big People will be like mere wisps and their actions like a spark that sets off an unquenchable funeral pyre.