Isaiah opens his book the way a prosecutor opens a case. 2"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the LORD has spoken." Heaven and earth are summoned as witnesses to a trial, the same two witnesses Moses called when he first laid out the terms of Israel's covenant. Judah stands as the defendant, and God speaks first, and what he says is grief. 2"Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me." Even an ox and a donkey recognize the hand that feeds them, but Israel does not know, and his people do not understand.
The charge grows specific. Judah's worship has become a performance run alongside a life that never changed. 11"What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD." The sacrificial system was never the problem, since God himself commanded it through Moses. The problem was sacrifice offered by people whose 15"hands are full of blood," ritual correctness paired with ongoing injustice toward the fatherless and the widow. Sacrifice was always meant to express a heart already turned toward God. Offered instead as a substitute for that heart, it became something God calls an abomination.
Then comes the verse that gives the chapter its title: 18"Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD." The Hebrew verb behind "reason" is legal language, the vocabulary of a courtroom deciding a case. So this is God calling Judah into court, and what he offers there is astonishing. Scarlet and crimson were the color of blood, the very stain named back in verse 15. The offer answers the accusation point for point. The guilt that made Judah's prayers repugnant to God becomes, in one sentence, entirely removable. White as snow, the color of something that has never been stained.
Grace offered can be refused. 19"If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land," and if you refuse, the sword. The trial closes with a choice still standing, and Isaiah will spend the rest of the book watching Judah make that choice again and again.
The last movement turns from the individual sinner to the whole city. 21"How the faithful city has become a whore!" Jerusalem herself is on trial, and God promises to do to the city what he has just offered to do for the sinner, smelt away the dross and restore the judges, so that afterward she will be called the city of righteousness. 27"Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent, by righteousness." The chapter that began with a courtroom summons ends with a city remade.
Long before a cross stood outside Jerusalem's walls, God was already offering to trade scarlet for snow on the willingness to turn. The rest of Scripture shows how that offer was finally made good, by one who bore the scarlet himself so it would never have to be worn again.
Take the invitation as a summons to court and as an offer of pardon at the same time. Come, say what is true about your hands, and let him make it white.
Prayer
Father, our worship has too often run alongside lives you would not recognize as changed, hands raised in prayer while still full of what wounds you. Thank you that you did not wait for us to argue our own case before offering pardon. Wash us clean, teach us to seek justice as readily as we seek forgiveness, and make good your promise. Whatever scarlet we carry, make it white as snow. In Jesus' name, amen.