The Lord’s Lawsuit — Isaiah 1
Isaiah opens his book in a courtroom. The witnesses are called, the charges read, and then the Judge offers the guilty a way out before the sentence.
Hear, O Heavens — A Covenant Case Is Opened
Why does Isaiah’s first word go to the sky and the ground? Because Israel knew those witnesses. Moses had called “heaven and earth to record this day against you” (Deuteronomy 30:19) and given Israel a song, as a witness against them, that begins “Give ear, O ye heavens… and hear, O earth” (32:1). The witnesses who heard Israel swear are now summoned to hear Israel charged.
“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.”
Scholars call the form a covenant lawsuit, from the Hebrew rîb, a case at law (see the Yale Bible Study guide). Terry B. Ball of BYU calls Isaiah 1–5 “the Great Arraignment” and reads the prophet as a “spiritual physician” giving diagnosis, prescription, and prognosis (RSC). David Dorsey’s layout of the chapter (given at the Biblical Chiasm Exchange) shows where the weight falls, and the KJV bears it out at the edges: “forsaken the Lord” in verse 4, “forsake the Lord” in verse 28.
Isaiah 1 — the chapter as a chiasm (after Dorsey)
A (2–4) they have forsaken the Lord
B (5–9) Zion “as a besieged city”
C (10–15) hands full of blood
D (16–20) “Wash you, make you clean”
C′ (21–23) now murderers
B′ (24–27) Zion “redeemed with judgment”
A′ (28–31) “they that forsake the Lord”
At the centre is neither charge nor sentence, but the prescription.
The Ox Knows Its Owner — The Diagnosis
How smart is an ox? Smart enough to know who feeds it. An ass at least knows the crib. “But Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider” (1:3). Two lines of beasts that know, two of a people who do not. Why a “seed of evildoers”? Because the rebellion is being passed down to the children. The repeated “children” of verses 2 and 4 frame the passage, but they do not make a full chiasm; verses 2–6 are parallel lines, each tightening the charge.
In the clinic, “the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint” — thought and desire. “From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it” — the whole body. And the saddest line: the sores “have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment” (1:5–6). This patient has NOT tried to treat the wound.
Verse 7 speaks of ruin as done: “your cities are burned with fire.” Described, or foreseen? Prophets speak of the future as finished, and Abinadi names the habit — “speaking of things to come as though they had already come” (Mosiah 16:6). Either way, only “a very small remnant” kept Judah from becoming Sodom (1:9), and Paul applies it to the believing remnant (Romans 9:29).
The next verse turns on that word. “We should have been as Sodom,” says verse 9; “Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom,” says verse 10. Spared Sodom’s fate, they had taken on its character.
Rulers of Sodom at the Altar
He had commanded the sacrifices. So why “I delight not in the blood of bullocks” and “your appointed feasts my soul hateth” (1:11–14)? Did God turn against His own ordinances? No. “Who hath required this at your hand?” He required the sacrifice. He did not require this — the offering of a man who had just robbed the widow. “When ye spread forth your hands… I will not hear: your hands are full of blood” (1:15). The hands lifted in prayer were the hands that did the harm.
And their offerings were “vain oblations” because Israel no longer knew what sacrifice meant. Adam offered the firstlings of his flock for “many days,” and when an angel asked why, he said, “I know not, save the Lord commanded me.” Obedience first, then the teaching: “This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father” (Moses 5:6–7). Adam obeyed without knowing and was taught; Judah went through the motions and would not be taught, so the altar that should have pointed to the Lamb pointed nowhere.
A prayer without “real intent” “profiteth him nothing” (Moroni 7:6–9), and those who turn away the needy “are as dross” (Alma 34:28–29) — Isaiah’s word in verse 22.
The Prescription — Wash You, Make You Clean
Verses 16 and 17 give nine commands — wash, make clean, put away evil, cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow — and every one comes BEFORE the promise. Why begin with washing? The law was full of ritual washings, but this one is moral, and a Latter-day Saint hears baptism in it: “arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins” (Acts 22:16). Isaiah prescribed the washing, and the gospel supplied the water.
Few readers catch that “plead for the widow” uses the Hebrew verb rîb — the lawsuit word. Six verses later “the cause of the widow” never reaches the princes (1:23), and “cause” is rîb again. The Lord brings His case against Judah because Judah would not hear the widow’s case.
So verse 18 is courtroom language too. “Reason together” is yakach, which the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon defines as “decide, adjudge, prove” (BDB), and Micah’s lawsuit uses both words in one breath: “the Lord hath a controversy [rîb] with his people, and he will plead [yakach] with Israel” (Micah 6:2). The Judge could pronounce sentence. Instead He says, come, let us settle this.
Isaiah 1:18–20 — synonymous, then antithetic
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:
But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword.
The first pair says one thing twice. The second splits: eat, or be eaten — and the hearer chooses.
President Russell M. Nelson named the verse’s audience: “To the repentant soul, Isaiah said, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow’” (April 2007).
To the repentant soul. When shall their sins be white as snow? When they have washed, when they have PUT AWAY the evil of their doings and are willing and obedient — then (see “Come, Let Us Reason Together”). The Lord gave verse 19 to the Saints again: “the willing and obedient shall eat the good of the land of Zion in these last days” (D&C 64:34).
How Is the Faithful City Become an Harlot?
The prognosis opens as a lament: the city “was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.” The repeated words show the shape.
Isaiah 1:21–26 — an inclusio
A (21) the faithful city… righteousness lodged in it
B (22) Thy silver is become dross
C (23) they judge not the fatherless
X (24) Therefore saith the Lord
B′ (25) purely purge away thy dross
C′ (26) I will restore thy judges as at the first
A′ (26) The city of righteousness, the faithful city
The frame and centre are plain; the inner pairs run in the same order, so it is an inclusio, not a perfect mirror.
The purge takes away the dross and the tin and leaves the silver the city started with. Then it heals a city whose disease began at the top: “I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning” (1:26). Isaiah meant Jerusalem; likened to us, it is the Restoration, where a bishop is again “a judge in Israel… by the assistance of his counselors” (D&C 107:72). Judges and counsellors, as at the first.
“Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness” (1:27) — what the city lost in verse 21. The rest go up like tow touched by a spark (1:31).
The Summons Sounds Again
Footnote a to Isaiah 1:2 in the Latter-day Saint edition sends you to Deuteronomy 32:1, D&C 1:1–2, and D&C 76:1. Section 1 is the Lord’s “preface unto the book of my commandments” (1:6), and it opens as Isaiah’s preface opens — “Hearken, O ye people” — with a charge against “the rebellious” and a “voice of warning.”
“Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth, and rejoice ye inhabitants thereof, for the Lord is God, and beside him there is no Savior.”
Section 76 borrows Isaiah’s summons. But what are the witnesses called to hear this time? Not an indictment. A vision of the kingdoms of glory, and the news that there is a Savior. The witnesses of Isaiah 1 are called back in 1832 to hear how the case ends for those who took the offer of verse 18, and they are told to REJOICE.
Key References — Isaiah 1
- Micah 6:1–8 — a second lawsuit, ending in “do justly, and… love mercy”
- D&C 50:10–12 — “let us reason together,” again
- D&C 58:42 — repented sins remembered no more
Standing in the Courtroom Yourself
The Savior said Isaiah’s words “have been and shall be” (3 Nephi 23:1–3), so the questions are personal. Do I know my Owner, or only where the crib is? Do I bring my offerings with the same hands that pass by the widow? Is there a wound I have left unbound?
The chapter lets no one stay comfortable, and no one despair. For the Lord who brings the case is the One who paid the debt, and He would rather settle with us than sentence us. Wash, cease, learn, seek, plead. Then scarlet becomes snow.
← How to Read Isaiah — Hebrew Poetry and Nephi’s Keys · The Words of Isaiah — Study Guide · The Mountain of the Lord’s House — Isaiah 2–4 →