Intervening these paragraphs is the span of about ten days. So at least in this case, it's not quite pouring posts here.
To be honest, I'm recycling a few thoughts that I've had in the past, anyway, so there is not much in the way of original thought. It was prompted by my recent sprint through the major and minor prophets (I'm nearing the end of the Bible in a Year program!).
It is somewhat ironic that the Israelites seek freedom in their worship practices, and that this freedom leads them to cast off the law and to ignore the prophets. They eschew the judgment of the law to choose that which is no law and carries no judgment.
The irony in this is that while the idols promise no judgment—the Israelites may live as they please if they fulfill whatever cult rituals seem appropriate—they cannot save, either. God chides them for this:
They have no knowledge
who carry about their wooden idols,
and keep on praying to a god
that cannot save (Is 45.20).
It is God alone who is the Savior (43.11), and these idols cannot save. The connection that is made here is that God's ability to save is intrinsically related to his ability to judge. He is both Savior and Judge, and we cannot have one without the other.
This is common sense, of course. If God is to save us, from whom does he save us? Who is more powerful than he? Whom should we fear but him (cf Ps 27.1)?
This is, in fact, a big theme of the gospel passages in Isaiah. God promises to save Israel. In the context of the prophecies, it is salvation from the wrath of their enemies and redemption from the lands to which they were consigned, but all of these are God's judgment on Israel.
The message, then, is clear: idols promise no judgment, but they cannot save either. The ability to save is intimately related to the ability to judge. We cannot have a God who does not judge, but somehow saves. It is simply nonsense; but of course this is what the gospel has told us all along.
