CAN IDOLATORS BE RIGHTEOUS? (ISAIAH 57:12)

Can idolaters be righteous? (Isaiah 57:12)

Obviously the answer to this question is “No.” However, that is apparently just what God tells Isaiah to say to the straying people of Israel in Isaiah 57, at least according to the following literal translations of verse 12a.

    KJV: “I will declare thy righteousness and thy works.”

    RSV: “I will tell of your righteousness and your doings.”

    NRSV: “I will concede your righteousness and your works.”

    AB: I will declare your righteousness and your deeds.”

There is one textual problem to address before proceeding any further. Apparently those translators of the ancient Syriac version had a lot of trouble calling the people of Isaiah 57 righteous. Thus, they substituted “my righteousness” in place of “your righteousness” so that God would be the one referred to instead. No Hebrew text or other version goes to this extreme, and Oswalt concludes: “It is not God's righteousness that is under discussion here but the righteousness that he expects his servants to display (cf. 56:1).”

Who is his audience here? Verses 3-21 are actually addressed to the majority of Israelites at the time who happened to engage in some very non-righteous activities. Here is how some scholarly commentators characterize these works and activities:

    “The general character of this idolatry is clear: it was the old Canaanite fertility cult with all its several rites and rituals, together with child sacrifice to Molech (5,9)...Verse 10 shows how persistent all this idolatry was, in spite of its meager rewards.” (Payne)

    McKenzie feels it applies to various superstitious rites including necromancy.

    “God calls them 'sons of a sorceress” (v. 3) because of their involvement in soothsaying and black magic (cf. 3:2)...Isaiah's strongest words in verses 3-13 are leveled against the sin of idolatry. Israel had rebelled against God and sneered at Him (v. 4) while having a love affair with other gods...Neither God's judgment nor His saving power had been seen in years, and so Israel easily forgot Him. (Wolf)

In addition to all these described sins of those being denounced in the bulk of the chapter, we see in the first three verses of Isaiah 57 that they are specifically being contrasted with the truly righteous (same Hebrew root as in v. 12) Jews, who are rapidly disappearing. Oswalt explains that sad fact as follows: “Evil has become so rampant in society and its end is so near that God in his mercy is removing the righteous from it. Thus the disappearance of the righteous from the society should be a signal to everyone that the critical stage has arrived and that the moment for drastic corrective action is at hand.”

But adding to these sins, they can also be accused of hypocrisy and syncretism:

    Whybray says that “these people evidently claim to worship Yahweh as well as other gods; otherwise there would be no point in the prophet's attack..we must presume that the idolaters combined their idolatrous practices with assiduous performance of the outward forms of the worship of Yahweh, and so claimed to possess righteousness, and consequently the right to call on him for help.”

    “The use of righteousness here [57:12]...suggests again that it is not a denial of Yahweh that is being talked about. Rather it is a paganization of that faith that is subtle enough so that the worshipers are able to delude themselves into thinking that their rituals and incantations, their sexual acrobatics and their child sacrifices, are all pleasing to the Lord.”
All of the above adds up to the fact that calling these people “righteous” in Isaiah 57:12 makes absolutely no sense if taken at face value. But, of course, it was not meant by the author to be taken literally at all, as we can see by the translations below. Some of them manage to convey this intended idea by replacing the verb “declare” with a more descriptive term:

    JB: “But now I will expose this integrity of yours.”

    NIV: “I will expose your righteousness and your works.”

And to make it even more clear, the Jerusalem Bible adds a footnote to this verse reading “ironical.” Blankinsopp does the same thing in commenting on his literal Anchor Bible translation quoted above by stating that it is “probably sarcastic.”

The Living Bible accomplishes the same thing by making it clear that their righteousness is really so-called righteousness:

    “And then there is your 'righteousness' and your 'good works.'”

Finally, to make the original intent of the verse abundantly clear, there are those translations which include at least two tip-offs:

    TEV: You think that what you do is right, but I will expose your conduct.”

    NEB: “Now I will denounce your conduct that you think so righteous.”

    The Message: “I'll go over in detail by detail all your 'righteous' attempts at religion and expose the absurdity of it all.”

Through my experiences living in four completely different parts of the country, I have found that unless one is within commuting distance of major urban centers such as New York City or Los Angeles, one may run into people who have a great deal of trouble with indirect means of communication such as parody, irony, or sarcasm. This class of person tends to take written language very seriously at face value and fails to understand how in the world something could mean the exact opposite of what it says. Then there are others I have known who understand that fact perfectly well but feel it is a rather cruel way of communicating and beneath Christians to indulge in. And if one were to suggest that even the prophets and God himself utilize sarcasm, for example, they would be horrified.

But in fact, there is even a well known genre in the Bible called the “taunt song” in which even more extensive examples of sarcastic irony are found.

Longman discusses the particular sort of irony found in the Bible, called “stable irony” by Booth. He says there are four characteristics of this category. They are listed below along with their relevance to Isaiah 57:12:

    1. It is intended by the author. An assertion of something with the purpose of having it rejected.

The author's rejection in clearly indicated by the last half of the verse: “But they [their righteousness and works] will not help you.”

    2. The author (and narrator) do not openly admit it is ironic.

One must read the rest of the chapter in order to confirm that the speaker's words cannot be simply taken at face value.

    3. “There is a limit as to how deeply they displace the surface meaning of the text.”

In other words, Isaiah does not totally deny that his audience possesses righteousness. But in reality, it is self-righteousness, not true righteousness.

    4. They are limited in scope and do not affect all the text.

Thus, out of the 21 verses in Isaiah 57, only the first half of verse 12 is ironical.

In terms of parallel passages found elsewhere in the OT and NT, Kidner states, “The whole passage is a fit companion to Ho. 1-3 and Lk. 13:34f.” And then there is Isaiah 64:6, which says: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.” Or we might consider Paul's statement in Romans 10:3 – “For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.”

I would like to close with a quote of Oswalt's as a current application of Isaiah's words:

    “Thus today, out-and-out denial of biblical faith is rarely a problem. The problem is the prostitution of it. We mingle it with its sworn enemies to such a degree that it is nothing more than a shell of itself, and then we wonder why it has no power to move us and no stability to hold us. We call it righteousness, but it is really abomination (cf. 66:3).”

These prophetic words were written 25 years ago and have even more applicability today than when they were first penned.