Isaiah 1:29

For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired,.... Though there is a change of persons in the words, the same are intended; and design such, who being convinced of the idolatries of the

For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen. They shall be ashamed (Romans 6:21) of the oaks.

They shall be ashamed; not with an ingenuous and penitential shame for the sin, but with an involuntary and penal shame for the disappointment of their hopes which they had in their idols. Which ye have desired; which, after the manner of the heathen, you have consecrated to idolatrous uses, that under them you might worship your idols, as they did, : see also 3:6. The gardens; in which, as well as in the groves, they committed idolatry; of which we read 66:17. That ye have chosen, to wit, for the place of your worship, which is opposed to the place which God had chosen and appointed for his worship.

Isaiah 1:29 For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen.Ver. 29. For they shall be ashamed of the oaks.] Pudefient et Peribunt; they shall be ashamed of their false ways of worship, but not with a godly shame, such as was Ephraim’ s, that made him say, "What have I to do any more with idols." Of this holy shame Chrysostom saith that it is the beginning of salvation, as that which drives a man into himself makes him fall low in his own eyes, shame and shent himself in the presence of God, seek for covering by Christ, that the shame of his nakedness may not appear. But the shame here mentioned is of another nature, unseasonable, unprofitable, not conducing at all to true repentance, such as was that of Cain, and of those Jews in Jeremiah 2:26, and of reprobates at the resurrection. Which ye have desired.] Or, Have delighted in, as adulterers do sin their sweet sin, as they call it. And the gardens.] Where you have wickedly worshipped Priapus or Baalpeor. That ye have chosen.] Where ye have had your sacra electitia, which now, you see, cannot help you. τουτοαρχητηςσωτηπιας, τοολωςαισχυνεθαι. Alludit verecunde ad scortationem, quae est in idolorum cultu. - Oeclamp.

(29) They shall be ashamed of the oaks . . .—Better, terebinths. The words point to the groves that were so closely connected with the idolatry of Canaan, especially with the worship of the asherah, and which the people had chosen in preference to the sanctuary of Jehovah (Isaiah 17:8; Isaiah 57:5; Isaiah 66:17; Deuteronomy 16:21; 2 Kings 16:4; Jeremiah 3:6). Greek worship presents the parallels of the groves of Daphne at Antioch, and those of Dodona and of the Eumenides at Colônos. The “gardens” were the precinct planted round the central tree or grove.

Verse 29. For they shall be ashamed of the oaks - "For ye shall be ashamed of the ilexes"] Sacred groves were a very ancient and favourite appendage of idolatry. They were furnished with the temple of the god to whom they were dedicated, with altars, images, and every thing necessary for performing the various rites of worship offered there; and were the scenes of many impure ceremonies, and of much abominable superstition. They made a principal part of the religion of the old inhabitants of Canaan; and the Israelites were commanded to destroy their groves, among other monuments of their false worship. The Israelites themselves became afterwards very much addicted to this species of idolatry. "When I had brought them into the land, Which I swore that I would give unto them; Then they saw every high hill and every thick tree; And there they slew their victims; And there they presented the provocation of their offerings; And there they placed their sweet savour; And there they poured out their libations." Ezekiel 20:28. "On the tops of the mountains they sacrifice; And on the hills they burn incense; Under the oak and the poplar; And the ilex, because her shade is pleasant." Hosea 4:13. Of what particular kinds the trees here mentioned are, cannot be determined with certainty. In regard to אלה ellah, in this place of Isaiah, as well as in Hosea, Celsius (Hierobot.) understands it of the terebinth, because the most ancient interpreters render it so; in the first place the Septuagint. He quotes eight places; but in three of these eight places the copies vary, some having δρυς, the oak, instead of τερεβινθος, the terebinth or turpentine tree. And he should have told us, that these same seventy render it in sixteen other places by δρυς, the oak; so that their authority is really against him; and the Septuagint, "stant pro quercu," contrary to what he says at first setting out. Add to this that Symmachus, Theodotion, and Aquila, generally render it by δρυς, the oak; the latter only once rendering it by τερεβινθος the terebinth. His other arguments seem to me not very conclusive; he says, that all the qualities of אלה ellah agree to the terebinth, that it grows in mountainous countries, that it is a strong tree, long-lived, large and high, and deciduous. All these qualities agree just as well to the oak, against which he contends; and he actually attributes them to the oak in the very next section. But I think neither the oak nor the terebinth will do in this place of Isaiah, from the last circumstance which he mentions, their being deciduous, where the prophet's design seems to me to require an evergreen, otherwise the casting of its leaves would be nothing out of the common established course of nature, and no proper image of extreme distress and total desolation, parallel to that of a garden without water, that is, wholly burnt up and destroyed.

29–31. The judgment will also bring about a purification of religion, by revealing the folly of trusting in other deities than Jehovah.

For they shall be ashamed - That is, when they see the punishment that their idolatry has brought upon them, they shall be ashamed of the folly and degradation of their worship.

29. They… ye — These pronouns are thought by some interpreters to belong to the same parties. A Hebrew image, in some instances, allows this.