First comes the great indictment (vs. 2-4). A true prophet's words are
of universal application, even when they are most specially addressed to
a particular audience. Just because this indictment was so true of
Judah, is it true of all men, for it is not concerned with details
peculiar to a long-past period and state of society, but with the broad
generalities common to us all. As another great teacher in Old Testament
times said, 'I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy
burnt-offerings, to have been continually before me.' Isaiah has nothing
to say about ritual or ceremonial omissions, which to him were but
surface matters after all, but he sets in blazing light the foundation
facts of Judah's (and every man's) distorted relation to God. And how
lovingly, as well as sternly, God speaks through him! That divine lament
which heralds the searching indictment is not unworthy to be the very
words of the Almighty Lover of all men, sorrowing over His prodigal and
fugitive sons. Nor is its deep truth less than its tenderness. For is
not man's sin blackest when seen against the bright background of God's
fatherly love? True, the fatherhood that Isaiah knew referred to God's
relation to the nation rather than to the individual, but the great
truth which is perfectly revealed by the Perfect Son was in part shown
to the prophet. The east was bright with the unrisen sun, and the tinted
clouds that hovered above the place of its rising seemed as if yearning
to open and let him through. Man's neglect of God's benefits puts him
below the animals that 'know' the hand that feeds and governs them. Some
men think it a token of superior 'culture' and advanced views to throw
off allegiance to God. It is a token that they have less intelligence
than their dog.

There is something very beautiful and pathetic in the fact that Judah is
not directly addressed, but that verses 2-4 are a divine soliloquy. They
might rather be called a father's lament than an indictment. The