A House of Prayer for All People — Isaiah 56–59

Two men the law kept out get a name inside God’s walls. Then a fast He refuses, a fast He chooses, a Sabbath called a delight, and a God who finds no intercessor and comes Himself.

“Behold, I Am a Dry Tree”

The law of Moses shut two kinds of people out of the congregation: the man who was “wounded in the stones,” and the Ammonite or Moabite, “even to their tenth generation” (Deuteronomy 23:1–3). A eunuch could not undo his body, and a foreigner could not choose a different father, so what could either of them do?

Isaiah names them both: “Neither let the son of the stranger … speak, saying, The LORD hath utterly separated me from his people: neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree” (56:3). Why a dry tree? Because in Israel a man’s name lived on in his sons, and the eunuch would have none.

Isaiah 56:4–5

“For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.”

“A place and a name” is yad vashem — literally “a hand and a name,” a monument. Israel’s Holocaust memorial took its name from this verse (as Pope Benedict XVI noted there in 2009), and its work of recovering the names of the murdered is this promise carried out. The man with no sons is told that God will do the remembering.

What were the terms? Keep my sabbaths, choose what pleases me, and take hold of my covenant — the foreigner gets the same three, and not one of them is about blood. Deuteronomy asked who your father was; Isaiah asks whose covenant you hold.

A lineage is not a bloodline. Is an adopted son a son, or not? The Lord told Abraham that “as many as receive this Gospel shall be called after thy name, and shall be accounted thy seed” (Abraham 2:10). So a patriarchal blessing can declare a lineage in Israel to a convert whose family never saw Canaan; he is Abraham’s by adoption, and his children after him ARE.

Then Isaiah reaches the temple: “mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people” (56:7). When Jesus drove the traders out, Mark gives His quotation whole — “My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer” (Mark 11:17). Matthew and Luke stop short. Only Mark keeps “of all nations” — who the house is FOR.

Blind Watchmen, and the Righteous Taken Away

“His watchmen are blind … they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down” (56:10–12). A dog that will not bark is worse than no dog, because the house goes to sleep believing it is guarded.

And while they sleep, “The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart … the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace” (57:1–2). Is every early death a rescue? The verse does not say so. It says the upright are at rest, in what Alma calls “a state of peace” (Alma 40:12).

Two Addresses: the High Place and the Contrite Heart

Isaiah 57:15 — “I dwell in the high and holy place”

A  “with him also that is of a contrite

B  and humble spirit,

B′  to revive the spirit of the humble,

A′  and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.”

Our arrangement. The second address folds back on itself: contrite, humble, humble, contrite.

God has two addresses. One is eternity. The other is a broken heart.

“The high and lofty One” is ram venissa, the pair used of the throne (“high and lifted up,” 6:1) and of the Servant (“exalted and extolled,” 52:13). “Contrite” is dakka, from the verb of “bruised for our iniquities” (53:5). Why can the High One live with the crushed? Because the Servant was lifted up only after He was crushed. He dwells with the contrite because He was made contrite.

Four verses later: “Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near” (57:19). Paul took that line to the Gentiles, telling them that Christ “preached peace to you which were afar off,” so that “ye are no more strangers and foreigners” but are growing into “an holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:17–21). He read 56 and 57 as one argument.

And the one who will not come near? “The wicked are like the troubled sea … There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked” (57:20–21). The same refrain closes chapter 48 (The God Who Carries). A sea cannot rest. That is its misery.

“Wherefore Have We Fasted?”

Chapter 58 opens on a devout people who fast and are offended that God has not noticed, and the practice itself is covered in Fasting; here the thing to see is how He answers them with their own words:

Isaiah 58 — the complaint and the answer

“Wherefore have we fasted … and thou seest not?” (58:3)

“when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him” (58:7)

“wherefore have we afflicted our soul” (58:3)

“draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul” (58:10)

“in the day of your fast ye find pleasure” (58:3)

“nor finding thine own pleasure” (58:13)

The Hebrew repeats each pair: ra’ah; nefesh and ‘anah; matsa’ and chefets.

They asked why God did not see them. His answer: you do not see the naked. They afflicted their own soul and wanted credit for it, while they fasted “for strife and debate,” and He asks them instead to satisfy an afflicted soul. Hunger was never the offering. It was the tool.

Isaiah 58:6–7 — the fast God chooses

loose the bands … undo the heavy burdens … break every yoke;

deal thy bread … bring the poor to thy house … cover the naked;

and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

Our arrangement: what is undone, what is given, and why — the poor are your own flesh.

The Church’s handbook cites this very passage for the fast offering, given “to provide a way for them to serve those in need” (Fasting and Fast Offerings). Two skipped meals in a bishop’s hands are the chosen fast on a Sunday.

“He Shall Say, Here I Am”

To the one who keeps that fast: “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning … Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am” (58:8–9). Who usually says “Here I am”? Man, to God. Abraham said it before Moriah (Genesis 22:1). Isaiah said it in the temple: “Here am I; send me” (6:8; Woe Is Me). The Hebrew is hinneni in Genesis and here, with the short form hinni in Isaiah’s call, and it means “behold me” — a servant’s answer to his master.

Here the MASTER says it. What Abraham and Isaiah said to God, God says to the one who fasts — and when? After the fast has turned outward. Say “here I am” to the poor man at your door, and God says “here I am” to you, and makes you “like a watered garden” (58:11) — the opposite of a dry tree.

“Call the Sabbath a Delight”

“If thou … call the sabbath a delight … not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure … Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD” (58:13–14). Why does a chapter on fasting end with the Sabbath? Because it is one argument, and the fast failed for the very reason the Sabbath succeeds: in the fast “ye find pleasure,” and the Sabbath is kept by “not … finding thine own pleasure.” Same Hebrew, same fault, same cure. Set down your own delight for a day, and the LORD becomes your delight.

President Russell M. Nelson said of his own Sabbath: “When I had to make a decision whether or not an activity was appropriate for the Sabbath, I simply asked myself, ‘What sign do I want to give to God?’” (“The Sabbath Is a Delight,” April 2015).

No Man, No Intercessor, and His Own Arm

“Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save … But your iniquities have separated between you and your God” (59:1–2). The fault is not on God’s side, and “separated” is badal, the very word the stranger feared in 56:3. God did not separate the stranger; iniquity separates, and a son born in Israel can have plenty.

Then the pronouns change. “We wait for light, but behold obscurity … we stumble at noonday” (59:9–10). The prophet confesses with his people, and these are the words of the promise in 58:10 — light rising “in obscurity,” darkness “as the noonday” — the same four words in Hebrew, so the people who would not feed the hungry are groping at noon.

Now the turn: “he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him” (59:16). “Intercessor” is mafgia, from paga, the verb of the Servant who “made intercession for the transgressors” (53:12; The Suffering Servant). God looked for an intercessor, found none, and became one.

Then He dresses: “he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head” (59:17). Paul handed that breastplate and helmet to the Saints and called them “the whole armour of God” (Ephesians 6:13–17). Of God. Those He shares; the “garments of vengeance” He keeps, and that thread runs on in Arise, Shine.

The chapter ends in covenant. “The Redeemer shall come to Zion” (59:20), quoted by Paul from the Greek (Romans 11:26). Then: “my words … shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed” (59:21). The eunuch had no seed, but the covenant gives him some in everyone who ever hears the words of God from his mouth and keeps them.

Key References

Three Places He Says “Here I Am”

In the house, the man with no sons gets a name. Have you ever felt like a dry tree in the Church? Those verses were written for you. In the fast, once the bread is handed over and the naked are covered, you call and He answers; on the Sabbath, you set down your own pleasure until He becomes the pleasure.

And when we grope at noon and no man stands in the gap, He does not wait for one. The God who says “Here I am” to the one who fasts came Himself when there was no one else.

← Enlarge Thy Tent — Isaiah 54–55  ·  The Words of Isaiah — Study Guide  ·  Arise, Shine — Zion’s Glory, Isaiah 60–62 →