Today, I am reading and commenting on  Isaiah 1-4.

I am not sure that it ever struck me before, but three of the four kings under whom Isaiah prophesied are considered among the good kings of Judah, among the kings who “did right in the eyes of God.”  Nevertheless, Isaiah prophesied that God found their sacrifices meaningless and their worship assemblies worthless.  It seems to me when I read today’s passage that Isaiah was talking to the people during the reigns of those good kings with what he was saying here.  The message here is that the people of Judah did not do evil because they had evil kings.  They had evil kings because they did evil.

As I read this and think about how it applies today, I am struck by how many people use this passage to attack others rather than doing what it says.  When Isaiah says “Defend the oppressed,” he is not referring to some anonymous group of people.  He didn’t mean stand up for “sex workers”, he meant defend that prostitute whose pimp beats her when she doesn’t bring back enough money.  When he said, “take up the cause of the fatherless”, he meant, be a role model for the boy down the street whose father is not around, for whatever reason.  Of course, and this is the part that is hard for me and strikes me, in all of this he also meant, don’t buy the least expensive brand, if that brand was made by slave labor in some foreign country.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.