It would be wrong to suppose that Isaiah came to Israel simply to announce the approaching disaster. Painfully sensitive to the rottenness of his society, Isaiah foresaw its consequent collapse. But he also knew and offered an alternative to tragedy: his people’s survival depended on their acceptance again of the ancient moral demands. By returning they might be saved. To obtain their return was his program. Or, differently and more properly stated, because he spoke for God and of God, his goal was to redirect his people into the ways acceptable to the God whom by their conduct they had alienated, and so to save them from catastrophe.
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It would be wrong to suppose that Isaiah came to Israel simply to announce the approaching disaster. Painfully sensitive to the rottenness of his society, Isaiah foresaw its consequent collapse. But he also knew and offered an alternative to tragedy: his people’s survival depended on their acceptance again of the ancient moral demands. By returning they might be saved. To obtain their return was his program. Or, differently and more properly stated, because he spoke for God and of God, his goal was to redirect his people into the ways acceptable to the God whom by their conduct they had alienated, and so to save them from catastrophe.