Isaiah1chapter 1

The chapter opens the way a treaty case opened. When one nation accused another of breaking a sworn agreement, the charge was read out with witnesses named at the top — usually the gods of both sides, and in the Bible, heaven and earth. So the first line, calling the heavens and the earth to listen, told a Judean at once that this was a lawsuit, not a sermon.

The sacrifices described are the real machinery of the temple. Bulls, rams, lambs, and goats were brought to the altar; blood was thrown against its base; incense burned; new moons and set feasts filled the calendar. The courts on a feast day were packed, loud, and smoky. Nobody in Judah was skipping church. That is what makes the complaint startling.

The picture of the land is a picture of invasion. Fields eaten by strangers, towns burned, and only the daughter of Zion left — like a watchman's booth in a vineyard. That booth was a real thing: a shelter of poles and brush thrown up on a hillside so a man could guard the ripening grapes, and once the harvest was in it stood alone in an empty field, sagging. In 701 BC the Assyrians took forty-six walled Judean towns and left Jerusalem standing alone exactly like that.

The dye words are technical. Scarlet and crimson came from the kermes insect, crushed and fixed into wool, and the whole point of that dye was that it did not wash out. Saying a scarlet stain will come out white is saying something the laundry could not do.