Isaiah 3:13-17 - The Lord take His place in court

3:13-15

We now have courtroom setup. The most important fact is that it is the Lord who judges. This is a fundamental aspect of the Christian worldview, and any worldview that neglects it is seriously deficient. The Lord is the judge, ultimately we all have to give an account to Him. What God thinks is far more important than anything else.

Here it says that He will judge “peoples” (ESV), the next verse then makes it clear that it is His people. As 1 Peter says, judgement begins with the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). However, it does not end there. In Isaiah other nations will be judged, and other prophets have judgements about other nations, and in the end all peoples will have to give an account to God. The rulers, religious and civic, had “devoured the vineyard”, ie they had spoilt God’s vineyard. God gives us charge of things (including people) in order for us to care for them, to enable them to bear fruit and become what God intends them to be. If we rule for our own ends then we are failing God, as well as hurting or spoiling what God has entrusted to us. To make matters worse the rulers had acquired what little wealth that the poor had. This phenomenon is repeated again and again. We see that in times of crisis the rich somehow manage to remain rich, and it is the poor who suffer the most.

3:16,17

There can be a tendency to see everything as the fault of men, or men as the chief sinners. This is something we still see today with the MeToo movement. Now men do have an enormous amount of guilt and responsibility, and many things to be ashamed of, both then and now, but women are also sinners. We are truly equal in this regard! Here we see the women being rebuked as well. The “leading” women of Zion were haughty, and demonstrated this in feminine ways. Godly women are meant to be like Sarah (1 Peter 3:1-7). As it is, the Lord would do away with their superficial beauty.