Heaven and Earth Hear Judah's Covenant Case

Heaven and earth are called to hear a family case, not a spectator sport

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: the LORD has spoken. Children have been nourished, and they have rebelled. The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib; Israel does not know, my people do not consider. The country is pictured as a beaten body: from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness, wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores, unpressed and unbound, while strangers devour the land.

The witnesses are creation because the charge is covenant infidelity inside a people God claimed. The speech is accusation of Judah, not a warrant to transfer the charge onto later Jewish people, and not a way for a later reader to stand outside the case. A remnant left like a lodge in a garden, or like Sodom and Gomorrah if the LORD of hosts had not left a very small remnant, is mercy inside judgment, not a sneer at survivors.

Rejected worship is rejected because the hands that lift it are bloody

Bring no more vain oblations. New moons, sabbaths, and appointed feasts have become a burden because hands are full of blood. The summons is wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge the fatherless; plead for the widow.

Come now, and let us reason together: though sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword. Cleansing is not a private feeling that leaves courts and widows untouched. The case still belongs to the speaker's people; it does not authorize blaming victims of invasion, and it does not let a later preacher use Judah's indictment to escape the same accountability.