Excerpt - Apocalyptic Commentary of the Book of Isaiah by Avraham Gileadi, Ph.D.

1:3 The ox knows its owner, the ass its master’s stall, but Israel does not know; my people are insensible.

Israel . . . my people. We learn from Isaiah’s multi-layered literary structures that Isaiah speaks on two distinct levels simultaneously, and that the “Israel” he addresses, therefore, is primarily two: (1) those who were Jehovah’s covenant people anciently; and (2) those who are Jehovah’s covenant people in the end-time. Accordingly, Isaiah’s linear structures enable us to read his prophecy as relating to Israel’s past, while his synchronous structures enable us to read it as relating to the end-time. In that end-time context, names such as “Israel” designate those who have covenanted with Israel’s God.

The ox . . . the ass. Whereas the ox is a ritually clean animal—because it divides the hoof and chews the cud (Leviticus 11:3)—the ass is not. Such dual imagery of beasts at times appears in Isaiah’s writings to represent (1) Israel’s natural or ethnic lineages; and (2) the nations of the Gentiles, or those lineages of Israel that assimilated into the Gentiles after its exile from the Promised Land. In an allegorical but not a contextual sense, therefore, this implies that Jehovah acknowledges a covenant relationship with both Israel’s ethnic lineages and those lineages that assimilated into the Gentiles.

The ox knows . . . Israel does not know. The verb “to know” (yad‘a) is a theological term that expresses an intact covenant relationship—as when Adam “knew” his wife Eve and she conceived and bore a son (Genesis 4:1). Israel’s “not knowing,” on the other hand, implies that Jehovah’s people have broken the covenant with their God or voided their relationship with him (cf. Matthew 7:23). Although righteous individuals among them may come to know Jehovah personally—as he manifests himself to those who love him—in this case most appear unwilling to do what it takes (cf. Matthew 25:12).

 My people are insensible. As the negative reflexive verb “insensible” (lo’ hitbonan) (also “undiscerning” or “uncomprehending”) parallels “not knowing” Jehovah—his people’s owner and master—and “not knowing” the stall or institution he provides to feed his people, it connotes a disintegration of their covenant relationship with him and ignorance of spiritual truths. Says Paul, “The things of God no man knows but the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11). Unless one obtains the Spirit of God that comes with keeping the law of his covenant, it is impossible to know God or to comprehend his truth.

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