Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom, give ear to the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrha.

“Hear the word of the Lord. Here the remedy against the punishment is set forth; and first he calls them to hear; second he removes the useless remedy, at the words, What are they to me? Third the wholesome counsel is applied, at the words, Wash yourselves, be clean. Now he calls to hearing, first the greater ones, saying: Hear the word of the Lord, you princes; second the lesser ones, at the words, people of Gomorrah, Matth. 10: amen I say to you, et cetera. But why does he invite the greater ones to hear, the lesser ones to perceive? Because the things that are heard by the greater ones, the lesser ones easily perceive. Again, since he leaves them a seed, why does he compare them to those? And it must be said that, as regards the incorrigible, he compares them for two reasons. On account of the likeness of sin: below, 2: and they have clung to foreign children; and on account of publication: below, 3: they have proclaimed their sin as Sodom, and have not hidden it. And although there were five, he compares them chiefly to these, because they are the chief among the others. And for this reason too he compares the princes to Sodom, because that city was the metropolis, as is clear from Genes. 14. Now it belongs to princes to hear the word from the Lord and to impose the law on the people; and therefore he invites them to the hearing of the word, and the people to the perceiving of the law. What are they to me? Here he shows the uselessness of the remedy that they were applying: and first as regards the offerings of sacrifices; second as regards the celebrations of feasts, at the words, The new moon and the sabbath; third as regards prayers to God, at the words, and when you stretch out your hands. Concerning the first he does two things. First he reproves the offering of animate things; second of inanimate things, at the words, incense is an abomination. Now in the sacrifices of animals there was something that went wholly to the worship of God; as the holocaust, as it were wholly burnt, from olon, which is whole, and cauma, which is burning. Lev. 1; the fat, which was wholly burned, Levitic. 3, and the blood, which was wholly poured out, Levitic. 17, but there were certain things that went partly to the worship of God, partly to the use of the minister: as the victim for sin; except when it was for the sin of the priest or of the multitude, Levitic. 4. But there were certain things of which something went to the worship of God, and something to the use of the minister, and something went to the offerer himself, as in the peace-offerings, which were offered for thanksgiving, or for well-being, Levitic. 4. And according to these three it is divided into three parts. First he reproves the sacrifices divided into three, namely the peace-offerings. And first he sets down the reproof, saying, What are they to me, that is, to what end do you offer to me the multitude of your victims, as though not mine? And they are called victims, either because the bound animal was led to the priest, or because it was offered for a victory had or to be had. Then he sets down the reason for the reproof, saying, I am full: either on account of distaste, because they are not good: Genes. 4: but unto Cain and his gifts he had not respect: or on account of dominion: Psalm. 49: mine are all the beasts of the forests, the cattle on the mountains and the oxen. Second, he reproves those things that were offered wholly to God. And first he sets down the reproof of those three; and he sets down only three animals, because from these were made only the sacrifices that were from the herds: certain sacrifices were also made from birds, turtledoves and young pigeons: but this was on account of the deficiency of poverty, as is clear in Levitic. 1 and 4 and in several other places. And again their use was not universal in all cases, because a peace-offering was not offered from these. Then he sets down the reason for the reproof, at the words, when you come, as if to say: you offend me more by walking in my courts and polluting them, than a holocaust can please: hence I do not accept this communion. Psalm. 39: holocaust and offering for sin thou didst not require. Jerem. 7: I spoke not to your fathers, and I commanded them not, in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning the word of holocausts and victims; but this I commanded them, to hear my voice; and I will be to you a God, and you shall be to me a people. Third he reproves those things that were owed to God and to the priest, saying: offer no more. Jerem. 11: shall the holy flesh take away from thee thy evils, in which thou hast boasted? And Mich. 6: what worthy thing shall I offer to the Lord? (...). Shall I offer him holocausts and calves of a year old? Can he be appeased with thousands of rams, or with thousands of fat he-goats? Incense. Here he reproves the offerings of inanimate things, for all of which he sets down incense, because this was more worthy among the others, as the incense-compound, concerning which Exod. 30, and more common, as regards frankincense, which was placed and added to any such offering, and was wholly burnt to God. Below, 66: he who remembers frankincense, as one who blesses an idol. But an objection is raised concerning this from what the Gloss says, that God never loved their sacrifices, though he commanded them to be made. Genes. 8: and the Lord smelled the odor of sweetness; and he said to him: I will no more curse the earth for man's sake. And it must be said: that in any sacrifice there is something to be considered on the part of the offerer, and something on the part of the thing offered. On the part of the thing offered, our sacrifices please God of themselves, but not the sacrifices of the ancients; and this is because that is called pleasing or loved of itself which has in itself that by which it is loved, as the honorable good; but what is loved only through the relation of that thing to another is not called loved of itself, just as being cut or being burned is said to be loved, according as it is referred to the end of health. But our sacrifices contain in themselves the grace of sanctification, according to which they are acceptable to God; but those sacraments or sacrifices of the ancients were only signs of these; and therefore they were not loved of themselves. But on the part of the offerer, both ours and theirs can be acceptable on account of the devotion of the offerer. A fourfold time, therefore, can be distinguished. The first, before the written law and idolatry; and then the ancient sacrifices made by the holy fathers were pleasing both on account of the devotion of the offerer and on account of the signification of the thing offered. The second time is under the written law; and then, idolatry having intervened, something was added on account of which they simply displeased, because it was not fitting that God should be pleased by the same thing by which the Devil was worshipped: and on the other hand one utility was added on the part of the offerer, that it might be a remedy against idolatry for a people prone to this. Hence also nothing was commanded concerning sacrifices before the fashioning of the idol. And thus the authority of Jeremiah adduced is to be understood. The third time was under the prophets, in which, on account of the sins of the people, they no longer pleased on the part of the offerer, but only insofar as they were a sign. Hence according to this they did not appease God, but rather offended. The fourth time is under grace, when now their use has been wholly abolished, because, the truth having come, the figure ceased.”

“Here, I. God calls to them (but calls in vain) to hear his word, Isa 1:10. 1. The title he gives them is very strange; You rulers of Sodom, and people of Gomorrah. This intimates what a righteous thing it would have been with God to make them like Sodom and Gomorrah in respect of ruin (Isa 1:9), because that had made themselves like Sodom and Gomorrah in respect of sin. The men of Sodom were wicked, and sinners before the Lord exceedingly (Gen 13:13), and so were the men of Judah. When the rulers were bad, no wonder the people were so. Vice overpowered virtue, for it had the rulers, the men of figure, on its side; and it out-polled it, for it had the people, the men of number, on its side. The streams being thus strong, no less a power than that of the Lord of hosts could secure a remnant, Isa 1:9. The rulers are boldly attacked here by the prophet as rulers of Sodom; for he knew not how to give flattering titles. The tradition of the Jews is that for this he was impeached long after, and put to death, as having cursed the gods and spoken evil of the ruler of his people. 2. His demand upon them is very reasonable: "Hear the word of the Lord, and give ear to the law of our God; attend to that which God has to say to you, and let his word be a law to you." The following declaration of dislike to their sacrifices would be a kind of new law to them, though really it was but an explication of the old law; but special regard is to be had to it, as is required to the like, Psa 50:7, Psa 50:8. "Hear this, and tremble; hear it, and take warning." II. He justly refuses to hear their prayers and accept their services, their sacrifices and burnt-offerings, the fat and blood of them (Isa 1:11), their attendance in his courts (Isa 1:12), their oblations, their incense, and their solemn assemblies (Isa 1:13), their new moons and their appointed feasts (Isa 1:14), their devoutest addresses (Isa 1:15); they are all rejected, because their hands were full of blood. Now observe, 1. There are many who are strangers, nay, enemies, to the power of religion, and yet seem very zealous for the show and shadow and form of it. This sinful nation, this seed of evil-doers, these rulers of Sodom and people of Gomorrah, brought, not to the altars of false gods (they are not here charged with that), but to the altar of the God of Israel, sacrifices, a multitude of them, as many as the law required and rather more - not only peace-offerings, which they themselves had their share of, but burnt-offerings, which were wholly consumed to the honour of God; nor did they bring the torn, and lame, and sick, but fed beasts, and the fat of them, the best of the kind. They did not send others to offer their sacrifices for them, but came themselves to appear before God. They observed the instituted places (not in high places or groves, but in God's own courts), and the instituted time, the new moons, and sabbaths, and appointed feasts, none of which they omitted. Nay, it should seem, they called extraordinary assemblies, and held solemn meetings for religious worship, besides those that God had appointed. Yet this was not all: they applied to God, not only with their ceremonial observances, but with the exercises of devotion. They prayed, prayed often, made many prayers, thinking they should be heard for their much speaking; nay, they were fervent and importunate in prayer, they spread forth their hands as men in earnest. Now we should have thought these, and, no doubt, they thought themselves, a pious religious people; and yet they were far from being so, for (1.) Their hearts were empty of true devotion. They came to appear before God (Isa 1:12), to be seen before him (so the margin reads it); they rested in the outside of the duties; they looked no further than to be seen of men, and went no further than that which men see. (2.) Their hands were full of blood. They were guilty of murder, rapine, and oppression, under colour of law and justice. The people shed blood, and the rulers did not punish them for it; the rulers shed blood, and the people were aiding and abetting, as the elders of Jezreel were to Jezebel in shedding Naboth's blood. Malice is heart-murder in the account of God; he that hates his brother in his heart has, in effect, his hands full of blood. 2. When sinners are under the judgments of God they will more easily be brought to fly to their devotions than to forsake their sins and reform their lives. Their country was now desolate, and their cities were burnt (Isa 1:7), which awakened them to bring their sacrifices and offerings to God more constantly than they had done, as if they would bribe God Almighty to remove the punishment and give them leave to go on in the sin. When he slew them, then they sought him, Psa 78:34. Lord, in trouble have they visited thee, Isa 26:16. Many that will readily part with their sacrifices will not be persuaded to part with their sins. 3. The most pompous and costly devotions of wicked people, without a thorough reformation of the heart and life, are so far from being acceptable to God that really they are an abomination to him. It is here shown in a great variety of expressions that to obey is better than sacrifice; nay, that sacrifice, without obedience, is a jest, an affront and provocation to God. The comparative neglect which God here expresses of ceremonial observance was a tacit intimation of what they would come to at last, when they would all be done away by the death of Christ. What was now made little of would in due time be made nothing of. "Sacrifice and offering, and prayer made in the virtue of them, thou wouldest not; then said I, Lo, I come." Their sacrifices are here represented, (1.) As fruitless and insignificant; To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices? Isa 1:11. They are vain oblations, Isa 1:13. In vain do they worship me, Mat 15:9. Their attention to God's institutions was all lost labour, and served not to answer any good intention; for, [1.] It was not looked upon as any act of duty or obedience to God: Who has required these things at your hands? Isa 1:12. Not that God disowns his institutions, or refuses to stand by his own warrants; but in what they did they had not an eye to him that required it, nor indeed did he require it of those whose hands were full of blood and who continued impenitent. [2.] It did not recommend them to God's favour. He delighted not in the blood of their sacrifices, for he did not look upon himself as honoured by it. [3.] It would not obtain any relief for them. They pray, but God will not hear, because they regard iniquity (Psa 66:18); he will not deliver them, for, though they make many prayers, none of them come from an upright heart. All their religious service turned to no account to them. Nay, (2.) As odious and offensive. God did not only not accept them, but he did detest and abhor them. "They are your sacrifices, they are none of mine; I am full of them, even surfeited with them." He needed them not (Psa 50:10), did not desire them, had had enough of them, and more than enough. Their coming into his courts he calls treading them, or trampling upon them; their very attendance on his ordinances was construed into a contempt of them. Their incense, though ever so fragrant, was an abomination to him, for it was burnt in hypocrisy and with an ill design. Their solemn assemblies he could not away with, could not see them with any patience, nor bear the affront they gave him. The solemn meeting is iniquity; though the thing itself was not, yet, as they managed it, it became so. It is a vexation (so some read it), a provocation, to God, to have ordinances thus prostituted, not only by wicked people, but to wicked purposes: "My soul hates them; they are a trouble to me, a burden, an incumbrance; I am perfectly sick of them, and weary of bearing them." God is never weary of hearing the prayers of the upright, but soon weary of the costly sacrifices of the wicked. He hides his eyes from their prayers, as that which he has an aversion to and is angry at. All this is to show, [1.] That sin is very hateful to God, so hateful that it makes even men's prayers and their religious services hateful to him. [2.] That dissembled piety is double iniquity. Hypocrisy in religion is of all things most abominable to the God of heaven. Jerome applies the passage to the Jews in Christ's time, who pretended a great zeal for the law and the temple, but made themselves and all their services abominable to God by filling their hands with the blood of Christ and his apostles, and so filling up the measure of their iniquities.”

“Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom,.... Not literally, but mystically, meaning the governors of Judea; they and their people having sinned in like manner, and as openly, as the rulers of Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof; see Isa 3:9 and so the Targum paraphrases the words, "receive the word of the Lord, ye governors, whose works are evil like the governors of Sodom.'' These are called to attend to the word of the Lord; either the Scriptures, which should be the rule of faith and practice, from which they had swerved; or to the word which now came to them by the prophet, and is contained in the following verses; or rather to the Gospel preached to them by John the Baptist, Christ, and his apostles, see Isa 2:3 which being rejected by them as it was, it is declared that it would be more tolerable for the land of Sodom, in the day of judgment, than for them, Mat 11:24. give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah; the inhabitants of Judea; for as were both the civil and ecclesiastical rulers, so were the people both in Isaiah's time, and in the times of Christ and his apostles. The Targum is, "hearken to the law of our God, ye people whose works are like to the people of Gomorrah.'' And by "the law of our God" is meant, not so much the law of Moses, which these people had not hearkened to, but had broken it, and cast it away from them, as the doctrine of the grace of God, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our God; which was first sent and preached to this wicked people, for the sake of the small remnant, according to the election of grace left among them; see Isa 2:3.”

“The prophet's address has here reached a resting-place. The fact that it is divided at this point into two separate sections, is indicated in the text by the space left between Isa 1:9 and Isa 1:10. This mode of marking larger or smaller sections, either by leaving spaces of by breaking off the line, is older than the vowel points and accents, and rests upon a tradition of the highest antiquity (Hupfeld, Gram. p. 86ff.). The space is called pizka; the section indicated by such a space, a closed parashah (sethumah); and the section indicated by breaking off the line, an open parashah (petuchah). The prophet stops as soon as he has affirmed, that nothing but the mercy of God has warded off from Israel the utter destruction which it so well deserved. He catches in spirit the remonstrances of his hearers. They would probably declare that the accusations which the prophet had brought against them were utterly groundless, and appeal to their scrupulous observance of the law of God. In reply to this self-vindication which he reads in the hearts of the accused, the prophet launches forth the accusations of God. In Isa 1:10, Isa 1:11, he commences thus: "Hear the word of Jehovah, ye Sodom judges; give ear to the law of our God, O Gomorrah nation! What is the multitude of your slain-offerings to me? saith Jehovah. I am satiated with whole offerings of rams, and the fat of stalled calves; and blood of bullocks and sheep and he-goats I do not like." The second start in the prophet's address commences, like the first, with "hear" and "give ear." The summons to hear is addressed in this instances (as in the case of Isaiah's contemporary Micah, Mic 3:1-12) to the kezinim (from kâzâh, decidere, from which comes the Arabic el-Kadi, the judge, with the substantive termination in: see Jeshurun, p. 212 ss.), i.e., to the men of decisive authority, the rulers in the broadest sense, and to the people subject to them. It was through the mercy of God that Jerusalem was in existence still, for Jerusalem was "spiritually Sodom," as the Revelation (Rev 11:8) distinctly affirms of Jerusalem, with evident allusion to this passage of Isaiah. Pride, lust of the flesh, and unmerciful conduct, were the leading sins of Sodom, according to Eze 16:49; and of these, the rulers of Jerusalem, and the crowd that was subject to them and worthy of them, were equally guilty now. But they fancied that they could not possibly stand in such evil repute with God, inasmuch as they rendered outward satisfaction to the law. The prophet therefore called upon them to hear the law of the God of Israel, which he would announce to them: for the prophet was the appointed interpreter of the law, and prophecy the spirit of the law, and the prophetic institution the constant living presence of the true essence of the law bearing its own witness in Israel. "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith Jehovah." The prophet intentionally uses the word יאמר, not אמר: this was the incessant appeal of God in relation to the spiritless, formal worship offered by the hypocritical, ceremonial righteousness of Israel (the future denoting continuous actions, which is ever at the same time both present and future). The multitude of zebâchim, i.e., animal sacrifices, had no worth at all to Him. As the whole worship is summed up here in one single act, zebâchim appears to denote the shelamim, peace-offerings (or better still, communion offerings), with which a meal was associated, after the style of a sacrificial festival, and Jehovah gave the worshipper a share in the sacrifice offered. It is better, however, to take zebâchim as the general name for all the bleeding sacrifices, which are then subdivided into 'oloth and Cheleb, as consisting partly of whole offerings, or offerings the whole of which was placed upon the altar, though in separate pieces, and entirely consumed, and partly of those sacrifices in which only the fat was consumed upon the altar, namely the sin-offerings, trespass-offerings, and pre-eminently the shelâmim offerings. Of the sacrificial animals mentioned, the bullocks (pârim) and fed beasts (meri'im, fattened calves) are species of oxen (bakar); and the lambs (Cebashim) and he-goats (atturim, young he-goats, as distinguished from se'ir, the old long-haired he-goat, the animal used as a sin-offering), together with the ram (ayil, the customary whole offering of the high priest, of the tribe prince, and of the nation generally on all the high feast days), were species of the flock. The blood of these sacrificial animals - such, for example, as the young oxen, sheep, and he-goats - was thrown all round the altar in the case of the whole offering, the peace-offering, and the trespass-offering; in that of the sin-offering it was smeared upon the horns of the altar, poured out at the foot of the altar, and in some instances sprinkled upon the walls of the altar, or against the vessels of the inner sanctuary. Of such offerings as these Jehovah was weary, and He wanted no more (the two perfects denote that which long has been and still is: Ges. 126, 3); in fact, He never had desired anything of the kind.”