The Prophets on the Forsaken Torah

Imagine that you have just bought an old house by a river, and in a drawer you find the town’s flood records, a hundred years of them. Page after page tells the same story. The water came over the bank, and the houses on the low streets went under. At the bottom of every page, written in a different hand each time, stands the same cause: the levee had been left unrepaired.

No one would need to preach to you after that. You would go out and look at the levee.

The Hebrew Scriptures keep a record of that kind. The Greek word anomia ἀνομία an-om-ee'-ah does not appear in them, because the prophets wrote in Hebrew, but the thing itself is there in plain phrases. They rejected the Torah, they forsook it, they forgot it, and they broke it. Again and again, the record writes down what came after.

In this chapter we simply turn the pages.

Fire

Isaiah 5:24 Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, their root shall be like rottenness, and their blossom shall go up like dust; because they have rejected the Torah of the LORD of hosts (tzevaot צָבָא tsaw-baw'), and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel (qedosh yisrael).

The word for rejected is maas מָאַס maw-as', to reject, despise, or refuse. What comes with the rejection is fire devouring stubble, a root gone rotten, and a blossom blown away like dust.

Curse

Isaiah 24:5-6 And the earth is defiled under its inhabitants; because they transgressed the Torah, violated the statute (choq חֹק khoke), broke the everlasting covenant (berit בְּרִית ber-eeth'). Therefore a curse devours the earth, and those who dwell in it are held guilty; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are left.

Here the whole earth is in view. In Chapter 5 we saw that the curse Paul quoted falls on the one who does not abide by what is written. Isaiah describes that same curse on the scale of the world.

Isaiah also names what they broke: “the everlasting covenant (berit).” The prophet does not speak of it as an arrangement with an end date. The breaking of it is the charge, and the curse is the result.

The Baals

Jeremiah 9:12-13 And the LORD said: Because they have forsaken My Torah which I set before them, and have not heard My voice, nor walked in it, but have walked after the stubbornness of their heart, and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them,

(The YLV keeps the Hebrew verse numbers here; in most English Bibles these are verses 13 and 14.)

The passage records an exchange. “They have forsaken My Torah,” and what took its place was not nothing. It was “the stubbornness of their heart,” and the Baals. When they set the Torah aside, something else filled the room. The last line adds that the Baals were the ones “which their fathers taught them.” The wrong way had been handed down, and being taught it by their fathers did not make it right.

Not Turned Back

Amos 2:4 Thus says the LORD, "For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not turn it back; because they rejected the Torah of the LORD, and did not keep his statutes (chuqqim חֹק khoke); and their lies led them astray, after which their fathers walked.

What the LORD will not turn back is the punishment, and the reason is given: “because they rejected the Torah of the LORD, and did not keep his statutes (chuqqim).” The same pattern appears as in Jeremiah: “their lies led them astray, after which their fathers walked.” A lie believed for generations is still a lie.

Forgotten

Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest to me; and you have forgotten the Torah of your God — I also will forget your children.

This verse deserves a slow reading, because it answers a claim we heard two chapters ago: that a believer does not even need to know the Old Testament. The people are destroyed “for lack of knowledge,” and the knowledge they lacked is named: “you have forgotten the Torah of your God.” God answers forgetting with forgetting: “I also will forget your children.”

A Strange Thing

Hosea 8:12 I write for him the multitude of my Torah; as a strange thing they are regarded.

God wrote the multitude of His Torah for His people, and they treated it as something foreign.

Great Wrath

Zechariah 7:12 And they made their heart adamant, lest they hear the Torah and the words which the LORD of hosts (tzevaot) had sent by his spirit (ruach רוּחַ roo'-akh) by the hand of the former prophets; and great wrath came from the LORD of hosts (tzevaot).

They did more than fail to hear. They made their hearts adamant, hard as flint, so that they would not hear. And what they refused was not only the Torah of Moses but also “the words which the LORD of hosts (tzevaot) had sent by his spirit (ruach) by the hand of the former prophets.” The end of the verse records the result: “great wrath came from the LORD of hosts (tzevaot).”

Even the Prayer

Proverbs 28:9 He who turns away his ear from hearing Torah, even his prayer is an abomination.

This verse reaches into religious life itself. A person can turn his ear away from the Torah and still pray, and pray a great deal. Yet the proverb says that his prayer becomes toebah תּוֹעֵבָה to-ay-baw', an abomination, a disgusting thing. The people at the door in Chapter 26 prophesied and cast out demons in His name; they too did religious things, and what was missing was the Torah. Proverbs had said it centuries before them. The trouble is not that such a person stops praying, but that he prays with his ear turned away.

No Dawn

Isaiah 8:20 To the Torah and to the testimony (edut עֵדוּת ay-dooth')! If they do not speak according to this word, it is one for which there is no dawn.

We first met this test in Chapter 10. Isaiah gives Israel this test for every voice that claims to speak for God. If what is said does not agree with this word, it has no dawn. The word is shachar שַׁחַר shakh'-ar, the first light of morning. A teaching that does not agree with the Torah is a night that never ends.

Time to Act

Psalm 119:126 It is time to act for the LORD; they have broken your Torah.

The psalmist looks at a world in which the Torah has been broken, and he does not shrug. He says that it is time for the LORD to act. The word for broken is parar פָּרַר paw-rar', to break, to frustrate, or to make void. When people make the Torah void, God does not treat it as a small thing.

The Bottom of Every Page

Read now only the words that came after, one after another: fire, a curse, the Baals, “I will not turn it back,” “I also will forget,” a strange thing, great wrath, a prayer that is an abomination, no dawn, and a time for the LORD to act.

Those are the words Scripture attaches to forsaking the Torah. As in the flood records in the drawer, the hand changes from page to page: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Zechariah, Proverbs, and the psalmist. The cause written at the bottom never changes, and not one page speaks well of forsaking the Torah.

The New Testament calls it anomia, and the prophets had long since recorded where it leads.

That makes the claim with which the last chapter began all the stranger. If Scripture never once speaks well of forsaking the Torah, how did keeping it come to be called legalism, and even “another gospel”? The answer lies in Galatians, where Paul defines his own words.