Isaiah 56

Isaiah 56 — Commentary and Meaning

The short answer

Isaiah 56 opens with a simple instruction: keep justice and do what is right, because God's salvation is close at hand. Then it turns to a question the returning exiles were arguing about in real time. After decades in Babylon, the community rebuilding Jerusalem had to decide who belonged. What about foreigners who had attached themselves to Israel's God? What about eunuchs, who under older law were excluded from the assembly and who could never continue a family line?

The chapter's answer is startlingly generous. To the eunuch who keeps God's Sabbaths and holds fast to the covenant, God promises "a name better than of sons and of daughters" — a permanent place in God's own house. To the foreigner who fears being cut off, God promises joy in "my house of prayer." The chapter lands on one of the most quoted lines in the Old Testament: God's house "will be called a house of prayer for all peoples." Belonging, in other words, is not decided by ancestry or physical wholeness but by loyalty to God.

And the one specific marker of that loyalty is Sabbath-keeping. That detail matters. Sabbath is not a badge of ethnicity or status; it is a practice anyone can take up — the deliberate choice to stop working, stop striving, and be present to God. The membership test turns out to be an open door.

Many scholars also believe these opening verses were added late in the formation of the book, placed deliberately at the head of Isaiah 56–66. If so, the editors wanted every reader of Isaiah's final chapters to walk in through this doorway: before the visions of a restored Jerusalem, first hear that the restored community includes the people you least expected.

What scholars say

In the first excerpt, Walter Brueggemann describes the post-exile argument over who counts as 'us' — and what astonishes him about the answer: the one specific requirement for worship is keeping Sabbath. In the second, Mark McEntire surveys the scholarly view that Isaiah 56:1–8 was added late in the book's formation, together with chapters 65–66, to form a frame around all of Isaiah 56–66.

“In Isaiah 56, when the people return to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon, they had a big argument about who were the real Jews. Who is “us” and who is “other”? What about eunuchs and foreigners, for example? Should they be included? Isaiah 56 is an argument that they should be, that they should worship with “us.” And what astonishes me about that text is that the only specific requirement to qualify for worship is that you have to keep Sabbath. There’s a generic requirement to practice covenant, but the only specific one is that you have to get out of the rat race enough to be present to the mystery of an alternate existence. That gives me chills.”

Walter Brueggemann; Clover Reuter Beal; Timothy Beal (ed.), An On-going Imagination Westminster John Knox Press. All rights reserved. More from (ed.) in Rebind →

“Those who recognize Isaiah 56–66 as an addition to the book during the Persian period most often understand 56–66 itself as a composite work. Some have argued for the unity and single authorship of 56–66, even claiming that it was produced and used as a separate entity before being attached to the book of Isaiah; yet the general idea that 56–66 consists of incremental additions to the book of Isaiah is more commonly accepted. 3 Perhaps the most widely accepted part of the incremental view is that Isaiah 56–66 began with the composition of 60–62 as the core. Many interpreters also agree with the basic idea that the addition of 56:1–8 and 65–66 came late in the process, to form a frame around all of 56–66.”

Mark McEntire · Professor of Biblical Studies, Belmont University, A Chorus of Prophetic Voices Westminster John Knox Press. All rights reserved. More from McEntire in Rebind →

What it means for you

Most of us carry a quiet list of who's in and who's out — at church, at work, in our families. Isaiah 56 asks us to notice that list and hold it loosely, because God's list turned out to be wider than the returning exiles wanted it to be. The chapter also offers a practice, not just a principle: Sabbath. Stepping out of the constant grind for one day is how the outsiders in this chapter demonstrated they belonged to God. It can work the same way for us — a weekly reminder that our worth isn't earned by productivity, and that God's house has room for people we didn't expect, including ourselves.

Isaiah 56 in context

Isaiah 56 begins the final section of the book, chapters 56–66, often called Third Isaiah. Chapters 40–55 had comforted the exiles in Babylon with promises of return; now the community is back in the land, facing the messier questions of rebuilding. The welcome to eunuchs and foreigners in 56:1–8 stands as the section's opening statement, and many scholars think it was added late precisely to frame everything that follows. The chapter then pivots sharply in verses 9–12 to condemn Israel's negligent leaders — blind watchmen and greedy shepherds — setting up the tension between vision and failure that runs through the rest of the book.