The Sins of the Leaders | Isaiah 3:1-15
Punishment & Crime
Welcome to Gateways, where you experience the Nevi’im—the Prophets—through the teachings of Don Yitzchak Abarbanel, distilled into easy-to-follow lessons.
In today’s lesson we’ll study one of the opening rebukes of Isaiah. Isaiah is often known as the prophet of consolation. As we’ll see in this lesson, there’s plenty of rebuke as well. We’ll cover the first of Abarbanel’s questions on this prophecy.
My additions here are in italics. I’ve used bold to highlight key ideas and make the content easier to follow. As usual, this is a slightly abridged version.
I’ve included a brief overview, the verses, Abarbanel’s questions and his answers. I’ll conclude with a short takeaway of my own.
Jeff
Overview
The third prophecy begins with ‘For behold, the Master, the Lord of Hosts, removes from Jerusalem and from Judah support and staff’ (Isaiah 3:1), and continues until ‘I will now sing to my beloved’ (Isaiah 5:1).
It contains five sections:
Isaiah 3:1–15 — ‘For behold, the Master, the Lord of Hosts…’
Isaiah 3:13 — ‘The Lord stands to contend.’ This overlaps with section 1 but forms a distinct unit according to his division.
Isaiah 3:16–4:1 — ‘And the Lord said: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty…’
Isaiah 3:18–23 — ‘On that day the Lord will remove the beauty of their anklets.’
Isaiah 4:2 — ‘On that day the sprout of the Lord will be for splendor and for glory,’ and so on.
In today’s lesson, we’re just going to cover the first section.
The overall intent of this prophecy is to foretell the punishments of the people of Judah and Jerusalem for the two transgressions of which they were guilty: the first, the wickedness of the leaders; and the second, the haughtiness and foolishness of the complacent women which will be covered in next weeks lesson, God willing.
Afterward, it foretells the goodness and protection that they would experience in the days of Hezekiah, as will be explained in the interpretation of the verses.
Photo by Mikołaj Kołodziejczyk
Verses
(1) For behold, the Master, the Lord of Hosts, is removing from Jerusalem and from Judah support and staff — every support of bread and every support of water.
(2) The mighty man and the warrior, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder,
(3) the captain of fifty and the dignitary, and the counselor, and the wise craftsman, and the skillful enchanter.
(4) And I will make youths their princes, and capricious ones shall rule over them.
(5) And the people will oppress one another — each man his fellow; the youth will be arrogant toward the elder, and the base toward the honorable.
(6) For a man will seize his brother in his father’s house and say: “You have a cloak — be our leader, and let this ruin be under your hand.”
(7) He will cry out on that day, saying: “I will not be a healer; in my house there is no bread and no cloak. Do not make me a leader of the people.”
(8) For Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen, because their tongue and their deeds are against the Lord, to rebel against the eyes of His glory.
(9) Their very appearance testifies against them, and their sin, like Sodom, they declare — they do not conceal it. Woe to their souls, for they have brought evil upon themselves.
(10) Say to the righteous that it is good, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.
(11) Woe to the wicked — it is bad; for the reward of his hands shall be done to him.
(12) My people — their oppressors are children, and women rule over them. My people — your leaders mislead you, and they swallow up the course of your paths.
(13) The Lord stands to contend, and He rises to judge the peoples.
Question
The first question is: Why, in the punishment of Judah and Jerusalem, did the Holy One, blessed be He, decree that He would remove from them every support of bread and every support of water — the mighty man, the warrior, and so on — and that He would place youths as their princes, etc.?
And he did not mention why God would do this to that land — what is the cause of this great anger? For the prophet does not mention here the sin of Judah and Jerusalem for which they became liable to all this punishment. He mentioned the punishment but did not mention the sin.
All the more difficult, then, that he says, ‘For behold, the Master…,’ and the word ki (‘for’) gives a reason and is a clause that depends upon and is connected to the previous statement.
Answers
ָAbarbanel starts by explaining what their sin was….he did not rebuke them regarding matters of idolatry, but rather for the corruption of leadership and the wickedness of the rulers — because they were placing their trust in their princes, and the lesser people were relying upon the greater ones. And therefore he said, ‘For behold, the Master, the Lord of Hosts, removes from Jerusalem and from Judah support and staff’ — meaning: because you do not place your trust in the Master of the land but in its leaders, therefore the Master, the Lord of Hosts, who is truly and essentially the Master, and not the princes in whom you trust, He will remove from Jerusalem support and staff from those very princes, as he will list.
…But what seems correct to me is that in prophecies, the cause often appears before the description of the result — as if one were to recount first the wickedness of the people and their sins, and afterward their punishment…
…In this manner the prophet Isaiah acted here: he began by recounting their calamity and punishment in saying, ‘For behold, the Master, the Lord of Hosts, removes from Jerusalem…,’ and afterward he explained its cause in saying, ‘The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders of His people and its princes,’ and he explained their crimes by saying, ‘And you have burned the vineyard; the plunder of the poor is in your houses.’ This is the cause for what he foretold — that every kind of leader would be removed from them.
And with this, the first question is resolved.
Takeaway
One of the consistent themes in these prophecies of rebuke is the culpability of the leaders. This observation has a lot of implications. One of them that speaks to me is to not hold the masses accountable for their errors. Most people are so busy with the daily work of just living that they can’t be held responsible. The leaders, people of scholarship, the doers, those are the ones most responsible for setting the tone and standard for the community.
And also, each of us has our own sphere of influence. Hopefully we’ll use this rebuke as a reminder to not abnegate our responsibilities but instead lead those around us—to the best of our ability—to live life and serve God better.