000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

ment of hedonism and greed for which God condemns the barn builder.
The preacher needs to clarify these different nuances of meaning.
Proper 14 [19]/Year C
Isaiah 1:1, 10–20
Proper 14 [19]/Year C 261
Isaiah opens his book with the announcement that it is his “vision” (haµzon),
and in 6:1 relates his first vision “of the Lord sitting on a throne” and his
call to go and speak to the people of Judah. This vision came to him in the
year of Uzziah’s death (6:1) and in 1:1 Isaiah says that his vision concerned
Judah and Jerusalem from the time of King Uzziah to that of King
Hezekiah, a time span of roughly thirty-five years ending in about 701
BCE. Isaiah (and the later prophets in this long Isaian tradition) worked
in a period of virtually unremitting hostilities between Syria and Israel in
which Judah was on-again, off-again involved. Always in the wake of the
larger and more well-to-do northern kingdom, Judah was tugged one way
and the other as different powers sought to engage it in their side of the
ongoing conflict.
In 1:1, Isaiah also tells us his name, ye∫sa’yâ, “may YHWH save.” Isaiah
1–12 ends with a hymn of thanksgiving to YHWH for salvation.
In Isaiah 1:2–31, YHWH presents a case against Judah, a complaint
against its disloyalty to God. God “reared children and brought them up,
but they have rebelled against me” (1:2). Even the ox and donkey know their
owners, “but Israel does not know, my people do not understand” (1:3).
This is the context for 1:10–20, which begins as did 1:2 with the imperative
“hear,” pay attention. “Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of
Sodom! Listen to the teaching [torah] of our God, you people of Gomorrah!”
In Isaiah’s time Sodom and Gomorrah symbolized injustice to the
poor and needy and social chaos (see 3:9; 13:19). Isaiah says nothing about
homosexual behavior in this connection. This reading is framed by Isaiah
as torah-instruction.
Verses 11–15 constitute a prophetic critique of the Temple cult.
Prophetic passages such as this have been dealt with ideologically in the past
by Protestant interpreters who used them to take a swipe at Roman Catholicism
or Judaism, often at both. We should instead read them as a comment
on ritual and worship as such, ours included. In all the regions where the
people Israel lived in the eighth century, whether Bethel, Dan, Samaria or
Jerusalem, prophets inveighed against the Temple cult. We should not forget
that the cult was a state cult and embroiled in all the entanglements