Isaiah 1:19

If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(19) If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.—The promise of temporal blessings as the reward of a true repentance, instead of the spiritual peace and joy of Psalm 51:8-12, fills us at first with a sense of disappointment. It has to be remembered, however, that the prophet spoke to those who were unjust and selfish, and who were as yet far from the broken and contrite heart of the true penitent. He was content to wake up in them the dormant sense of righteousness, and to lead them to recognise the moral government of God. In the long run they would not be losers by a change of conduct. The choice of eating or “being eaten” (the “devoured” of Isaiah 1:20), enjoying a blameless prosperity, or falling by the sword, was placed before those to whom the higher aspirations of the soul were little known. Such is, at all times, one at least of the methods of God’s education of mankind.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

1:16-20 Not only feel sorrow for the sin committed, but break off the practice. We must be doing, not stand idle. We must be doing the good the Lord our God requires. It is plain that the sacrifices of the law could not atone, even for outward national crimes. But, blessed be God, there is a Fountain opened, in which sinners of every age and rank may be cleansed. Though our sins have been as scarlet and crimson, a deep dye, a double dye, first in the wool of original corruption, and afterwards in the many threads of actual transgression; though we have often dipped into sin, by many backslidings; yet pardoning mercy will take out the stain, Ps 51:7. They should have all the happiness and comfort they could desire. Life and death, good and evil, are set before us. O Lord, incline all of us to live to thy glory.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

If ye be willing - If you submit your wills, and become voluntary in your obedience to my law.

And obedient - Hebrew If you will hear; that is, my commands.

Ye shall eat ... - That is, the land shall yield its increase; and you shall be saved from pestilence, war, famine, etc. The productions of the soil shall no more be devoured by strangers, Isaiah 1:7; compare the notes at Isaiah 65:21-23. This was in accordance with the promises which God made to their fathers, and the motives to obedience placed before them, which were drawn from the fact, that they should possess a land of distinguished fertility, and that obedience should be attended with eminent national prosperity. Such an appeal was adapted to the infancy of society, and to the circumstances of the people. It should be added, however, that with this they connected the idea, that God would be their God and Protector; and, of course, the idea that all the blessings resulting from that fact would be theirs; Exodus 3:8 : 'And I am come down to deliver them out of the band of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey;' compare Exodus 3:17; Exodus 13:5; Deuteronomy 28:1-9. In accordance with this, the language of promise in the New Testament is, that of inheriting the earth, that is, the land, Note, Matthew 5:5. The expression here means, that if they obeyed God they should be under his patronage, and be prospered. It refers, also, to Isaiah 1:7, where it is said, that strangers devoured the land. The promise here is, that if they were obedient, this calamity should be removed.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

19, 20. Temporal blessings in "the land of their possession" were prominent in the Old Testament promises, as suited to the childhood of the Church (Ex 3:17). New Testament spiritual promises derive their imagery from the former (Mt 5:5).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

If ye be willing and obedient; if you are heartily willing and fully resolved to obey all my commands.

Ye shall eat the good of the land; together with the pardon of your sins, you shall receive many temporal and worldly blessings.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

If ye be willing and obedient,.... The Targum adds, "to my Word": the Word made flesh, and dwelling among them; who would have gathered the inhabitants of Jerusalem to his ministry, to attend his word and ordinances, but their rulers would not:

ye shall eat the good of the land; the land of Canaan; as the Jews held the possession of that land, before the times of Christ, by their obedience to the laws of God, which were given them as a body politic, and which, so long as they observed, they were continued in the quiet and full enjoyment of all the blessings of it; so, when Christ came, had they received, embraced, and acknowledged him as the Messiah, and been obedient to his will, though only externally, they would have remained in their own land, and enjoyed all the good things in it undisturbed by enemies.

Geneva Study Bible

If ye {c} are willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:

(c) He shows that whatever adversity man endures, it ought to be attributed to his own incredulity and disobedience.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 19. - If ye be willing and obedient. Rosenmüller explains this as equivalent to "if ye be willing to obey" (cf. Ezekiel 3:7); but perhaps it is better to give each verb its separate force: "If you consent in your wills, and are also obedient in your actions" (so Kay). Ye shall eat the good of the land; i.e. there shall be no invasion; strangers shall not devour your crops (see ver. 7); you shall consume them yourselves. "The good of the land" is a common expression for its produce (Genesis 45:18, 20; Ezra 9:12; Nehemiah 9:36; Jeremiah 2:7). Isaiah 1:19

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

But after the restoration of Israel in integrum by this act of grace, the rest would unquestionably depend upon the conduct of Israel itself. According to Israel's own decision would Jehovah determine Israel's future. "If ye then shall willingly hear, ye shall eat the good of the land; if ye shall obstinately rebel, ye shall be eaten by the sword: for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it." After their justification, both blessing and cursing lay once more before the justified, as they had both been long before proclaimed by the law (compare Isaiah 1:19 with Deuteronomy 28:3., Leviticus 26:3., and Isaiah 1:20 with the threat of vengeance with the sword in Leviticus 26:25). The promise of eating, i.e., of the full enjoyment of domestic blessings, and therefore of settled, peaceful rest at home, is placed in contrast with the curse of being eaten with the sword. Chereb (the sword) is the accusative of the instrument, as in Psalm 17:13-14; but this adverbial construction without either genitive, adjective, or suffix, as in Exodus 30:20, is very rarely met with (Ges. 138, Anm. 3); and in the passage before us it is a bold construction which the prophet allows himself, instead of saying, חרב תּאכלכם, for the sake of the paronomasia (Bttcher, Collectanea, p. 161). In the conditional clauses the two futures are followed by two preterites (compare Leviticus 26:21, which is more in conformity with our western mode of expression), inasmuch as obeying and rebelling are both of them consequences of an act of will: if ye shall be willing, and in consequence of this obey; if ye shall refuse, and rebel against Jehovah. They are therefore, strictly speaking, perfecta consecutiva. According to the ancient mode of writing, the passage Isaiah 1:18-20 formed a separate parashah by themselves, viz., a sethumah, or parashah indicated by spaces left within the line. The piskah after Isaiah 1:20 corresponds to a long pause in the mind of the speaker. - Will Israel tread the saving path of forgiveness thus opened before it, and go on to renewed obedience, and will it be possible for it to be brought back by this path? Individuals possibly may, but not the whole. The divine appeal therefore changes now into a mournful complaint. So peaceful a solution as this of the discord between Jehovah and His children was not to be hoped for. Jerusalem was far too depraved.