Isaiah 43:22

But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob,.... The Jews, though they were the posterity of Jacob, a praying person, yet did not tread in his steps, but were more like the Heathens that called not on

But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob; but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel. But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob.

But; or, for, as this conjunction is oft used. So this may be added as a reason why God called the Gentiles to be his people, because the Jews forsook him. Thou hast not called upon me; thou hast grossly neglected or very slightly performed the duties of my worship. Thou hast been weary of me; thou hast not esteemed my service to be a privilege, as in truth it is, but as a burden and bondage. Compare .

Isaiah 43:22 But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob; but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel.Ver. 22. But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob.] During the captivity they prayed not to any purpose, as Daniel also acknowledgeth: "All this evil is come upon us, yet made we not our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities and understand thy truth." Nevertheless, of his free grace, God brought them back again. But thou hast been weary of me, O Israel.] Accounting my service a burden, and not a benefit. See on Malachi 1:13.

(22) But thou hast not called upon me.—The startling abruptness of the complaint has led many critics to question the genuineness of these verses (22-24). Their insertion, however, by a later writer would be at least as hard to understand as their having come from the hand of the same writer as the glowing picture that precedes them. May we not find the solution of the problem in the fact that Isaiah’s experience taught him that there would be in the future, as in the past, a dark as well as a bright side to the picture? that the mercies shown to the exiles would not be according to their merits, but to God’s great goodness? The worship of the restored exiles would be as that of the people had been in his own time, meagre and unthankful. Visions of failure alternate with the glowing hope that the ideal will be realised, and this alternation constitutes the great problem of the book, as it does of all like apocalyptic intimations. But thou hast been weary.—Better, so that thou shouldest be weary. Others render it, Much less hast thou toiled for me. Sacrifices elsewhere than in the Temple were forbidden by the Law, and the prophet does not so much blame the people for not offering these as for not compensating for their absence by the true worship of which they were the symbols.

Verse 22. But thou hast not called upon me] The connexion is: But thou, Israel, whom I have chosen, whom I have formed for myself to be my witness against the false gods of the nations; even thou hast revolted from me, hast neglected my worship, and hast been perpetually running after strange gods. The emphasis of this and the following parts of the sentence, on which the sense depends, is laid on the words ME, on MY ACCOUNT, c. The Jews were diligent in performing the external services of religion in offering prayers, incense, sacrifices, oblations; but their prayers were not offered with faith; and their oblations were made more frequently to their idols than to the God of their fathers. The Hebrew idiom excludes with a general negative, in a comparative sense, one of two objects opposed to one another: thus, "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice," Hosea 6:6. "For I spoke not to your fathers, nor commanded them, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices; but this thing I commanded them, saying, Obey my voice," Jeremiah 7:22-23. And the meaning of this place of Isaiah seems to be much the same with that of Amos; who however has explained at large both parts of the comparison, and specified the false service opposed to the true: - "Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings, In the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? Nay, but you have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch, And Chiun, your images; The star of your god, which you made to yourselves." Amos 5:25-26. But thou hast been weary of me, O Israel - "Neither on my account hast thou laboured, O Israel."] For כי יגעת ki yagata, the Septuagint and Vulgate read ויגעת veyagata. - Houbigant. The negative is repeated or referred to by the conjunction ו vau; as in many other places. See Clarke on Isaiah 23:4.

22–28. Jehovah effects this deliverance for His own sake, not in return for any service He has received at the hands of Israel. The argument of the section is difficult to follow, especially in the part which speaks of sacrifice. Two questions present themselves: (a) does Jehovah upbraid His people with their neglect of ritual, or does He assert His own indifference to it? and (b), is the reference to the whole course of Israel’s history or merely to the period of the Exile? The answer to (b) seems determined by the consideration that if understood of the history as a whole the statement is inconsistent with fact. Although the prophet undoubtedly takes a dark view of Israel’s past religious condition (Isaiah 43:27), we cannot suppose that he charges it with disregard of the externals of religion. Whatever faults Israel had been guilty of, it had not been slack in the performance of ritual (see ch. Isaiah 1:10 ff.). Now if we limit the reference to the Exile, the idea of an implied reproach (a) must be abandoned, because the suspension of the sacrificial system was in the circumstances inevitable. In other words, the main thought here is expressed in the second half of Isa 43:23 more clearly than in the first halves of Isa 43:23-24. At the same time this hardly amounts to a repudiation of sacrifice in principle on the part of Jehovah. The truth appears to be that the prophet directs attention to the simple fact that during the Exile sacrifice had not been offered; whether Israel was to blame for this or not is immaterial to his argument. He has in his view the prevailing ideas of the time as to the normal attitude of a people to its God; and he shews how inadequate these are to explain Jehovah’s relation to Israel. The natural and proper thing was for a nation to invoke the name of its God, and to honour Him with costly and laborious rites. Israel has done none of these things, it has only burdened Jehovah with its sins; yet Jehovah proves Himself to be its God by forgiving its iniquities and undertaking its cause against its enemies.

But thou hast not called upon me - The design of this and the following verses, is to show them that they were indebted to the divine mercy alone for their deliverance from bondage.

22-24. Sweet cane — A “reed of fragrance,” from which perfuming extracts and ointments are made; used also in costly offerings. It is said “sweet cane” is not to be found in Syria.