Isaiah66chapter 66

The opening question is aimed at temple pride: heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; where is the house that you build for me, and where is the place of my rest? A throne with a footstool was the standard way a great king was pictured, and every court in the region had one. Isaiah's point is one of scale. And then the answer about who God does look at: the poor and contrite in spirit, and the one who trembles at my word.

The list of corrupted sacrifices is deliberately shocking, pairing each legitimate offering with an abomination. Killing an ox is like murdering a man; sacrificing a lamb is like breaking a dog's neck; offering a grain offering is like offering swine's blood; burning incense is like blessing an idol. The dog was an unclean scavenger in that world, and swine's blood was the worst thing that could go on an altar. The charge is not that they stopped sacrificing. It is that they kept it up while choosing their own ways.

The birth image in the middle is medical and impossible. Before she was in labor she gave birth; before her pain came she delivered a boy. Shall a nation be born at once? Every hearer knew that labor is the price of a child; this one arrives without it.

Then the mother nursing: you will be carried on her side and dandled on her knees — the hip-carry of a toddler and the bouncing on the knees that anyone with children has done — and God says, as one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you.

The final mission goes out to the map's edges. Survivors are sent to Tarshish, Pul, Lud, Tubal, and Javan — the far west, Africa, Asia Minor, and the Greek lands — to the coastlands that have not heard my fame or seen my glory, and they declare his glory among the nations. Then the scattered brothers are brought back on horses, chariots, litters, mules, and camels, as an offering, and God says he will take some of them for priests and Levites.

The last verse looks at a valley the hearers could see from the city. Corpses of the rebels, with a worm that does not die and a fire not quenched — the picture is the burning refuse ground in the ravine outside Jerusalem, where the bodies of the disgraced were thrown. Jesus later used the name of that valley for the final judgment.