Isaiah 29 is addressed to “Ariel,” but who is she? She is Jerusalem, “the city where David camped.” The Hebrew word means “altar hearth”—that is, the stone surface of the altar where fire consumed the sacrifice. This nickname for the holy city was likely coined by Isaiah to preach a fiery message: God will set Jerusalem ablaze with the flames of judgment (v 1-8). The image has enduring relevance because God always requires a payment for sin. We must either accept God’s substitutionary offering with genuine repentance and faith or become the sacrifice ourselves. The only escape from God is in God. His love provides what His wrath requires. But these people neither trembled at His wrath nor rejoiced in His love. Tragically, they were spiritually blind and didn’t know it. Their blindness was both a judgment from God and a result of their own choices. In their unbelief, they had become like an educated person who is too lazy to read—or like an illiterate person with no interest in learning. No matter what God said to them through Isaiah, they responded with sleepy faces and dull minds (v 9-12). While they did and said all the right things, there was no Spirit-imparted awareness transforming their hearts. In reality, they were using the worship of God as a mechanism for avoiding God or controlling Him. As John Oswalt puts it, “Jerusalem’s religion has become only a performance with themselves as the audience. There is no real connection between the worshipers and the One being worshiped. They go through the motions with no expectation of any real encounter with the living God. Their religion has lost all sense of wonder.” So God says He will encounter them with “wonder upon wonder,” but these wonders will surprisingly come in the form of judgment (v 13-14). The people of Isaiah’s day believed that even if God existed, He could be ignored. They thought they could hide their sins from the LORD. It was as if the clay could rise up and say to the potter, “I have no need of you! You do not exist!” But our unbelief doesn’t neutralize God. He sees everything, knows everything, and does exactly as He pleases. Paul quotes this passage to answer questions about why God chooses to save some and not others. The real question is: why should God choose to save anyone at all? (v 15-16). To plot against God, as these people did, is absurd. But God will turn things around. In the Messianic age, our own day, He will fulfill ancient promises to Abraham, and “the meek shall obtain fresh joy in the LORD” (v 17-24). For further meditation: