1Thus said the LORD:
Keep justice and do righteousness,
for My rescue is soon to come
and My triumph to be revealed.
2Happy the man who does this
and the son of man who holds fast to it,
keeping the sabbath, not profaning it
and keeping his hand from doing all evil.
3And let not the foreigner say,
who joins the LORD, saying,
“The LORD has kept me apart from His people,”
nor let the eunuch say, “Why, I am a withered tree.”
4For thus said the LORD:
Of the eunuchs who keep My sabbath,
and choose what I desire
and hold fast to My covenant,
5I will give them in My house and within My walls
a marker and a name better than sons and daughters,
an everlasting name will I give them that shall not be cut off.
6And the foreigners who join the LORD
to serve Him and to love the LORD’s name,
to become servants to Him,
all who keep the sabbath, not profaning it
and hold fast to My covenant,
7I will bring them to My holy mountain
and give them joy in My house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
shall be welcome on My altar.
For My house a house of prayer
shall be called for all the peoples.
8Thus said the Master the LORD,
Who gathers Israel’s dispersed:
Still more will I gather for him besides those gathered.
9All beasts of the field, come to devour,
all beasts of the forest.
10His watchmen are all of them blind,
they do not know.
who know not how to bark.
lovers of slumber.
11But the dogs are fierce in appetite,
they are never sated,
who know not understanding.
They all turn to their own ways,
to their own gain, each and all.
12“Come, let me take wine,
and let us swill strong drink.
And it will be like this tomorrow,
even still more than this.”
CHAPTER 56 NOTES
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1. Keep justice and do righteousness. This moral exhortation, coupled with the urging to observe the sabbath in the next verse, strikes a new note in the Isaiah collection, one that some commentators have characterized as “sermonic.” It is the strong consensus of biblical scholarship, with only a few dissenters, that Isaiah 56–66 is a later composition than Isaiah 40–55, and almost certainly the work of more than one prophet. The frequent allusions to the imminent Persian conquest of Babylonia in chapters 40–55 enable us to date it, or at least much of it, to the time just before the conquest in 539 B.C.E. The situation presupposed in chapters 56–66 is of the exiles already returned to their homeland—there are no further prophecies of the people triumphantly crossing the desert to Zion, and the issues engaged are the behavior of the people in their land and the nature of the community they constitute. The probable period for these prophecies is the early decades of the fifth century B.C.E., before the arrival from Babylonia of Ezra and Nehemiah in the middle of the century. Those responsible for these texts appear to have been familiar with Second Isaiah, but the often asserted claim that they were his disciples seems a little off the mark because they were separated from him by at least two generations.
3. And let not the foreigner say. This is another new note. There were foreigners living in the province of Judah, whether people who had settled there after the Babylonian conquest in 586 B.C.E. or those who may have been drawn to accompany the returning exiles from Mesopotamia. Some of these were attracted to the faith of the Judahites, and the prophet argues that such people should be freely admitted to the ranks of Israel. (At this point in time, there was nothing like a formal conversion ceremony.)
nor let the eunuch say, “Why, I am a withered tree.” This declaration extends the prophet’s program of inclusion. Eunuchs and men otherwise sexually maimed were prohibited from participation in the Temple cult. One therefore may infer that the “joining” the LORD envisaged here is not limited to the cultic (though sacrifices are mentioned in verse 7) but involves entering a community of observance—in particular, observance of the sabbath. The eunuch can produce no biological offspring, but in adhering to the covenant, he becomes part of a community vouchsafed the covenantal promise of a destiny to be as multitudinous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the shore. This notion is spelled out in verse 5, “I will give them in My house and within my walls / a marker and a name better than sons and daughters.” Offspring means permanence; here permanence is being part of the covenanted people.
7. For My house a house of prayer / shall be called for all the peoples. Solomon’s dedication of the First Temple also emphasized prayer, but the designation here of the new Temple as a house of prayer is noteworthy. The phrase “for all the peoples” reflects a universalist perspective, but what it means in the context of foreigners joining the LORD is that God’s house becomes the house of prayer for all people when they embrace His laws.
8. Still more will I gather for him. Either this whole verse is a fragment, predicting another wave of returned exiles and hence unconnected with what has preceded, or the clause refers to the foreigners and eunuchs who are added to the community of Israel.
9. All beasts of the field, come to devour. These words mark the beginning of a new prophecy, one of castigation. It is usually assumed that the devouring beasts are a metaphorical representation of Israel’s enemies.
10. His watchmen are all of them blind. The watchmen are the leaders of the people or, more specifically, its (false) prophets. The motif of the blind leadership is picked up from Second Isaiah.
mute dogs. “Dogs” in biblical language is always a term of opprobrium—truly insulting for leaders or prophets. The muteness refers to their failure to rebuke the people as they should have done. There is scant evidence that watchdogs were used in ancient Israel; most of the biblical references to dogs conceive them as feral scavengers, not domesticated animals.
Dazed. The verb hozim appears only here. In later Hebrew, based on an unlikely understanding of the meaning here, it suggests something like “to hallucinate” or “to entertain idle visions.” Blenkinsopp proposes a possible pun on ḥozim, “to see visions.”
11. they are the shepherds. Throughout the Bible and elsewhere in ancient Near Eastern literature, “shepherd” is a stock metaphor for “ruler.”
12. Come, let me take wine, / and let us swill strong drink. The evocation of drunken leaders may allude to chapter 28. The word for “come” is an Aramaicizing usage that reflects the relatively late period of this text. In poetic parallelism, the more common term, yayin, “wine,” always occurs in the first verset and sheikhar, “strong drink,” in the second. But since sheikhar—in all likelihood, grappa—has a higher alcohol content, this order also follows the principle of intensification of parallel terms from the first verset to the second.