Shabbat Chazon: The Sabbath of Isaiah’s Vision

The Last of the Three Haftarot of Rebuke

From the seventeenth of Tammuz to Tisha B’Av, the three Sabbaths of the Three Weeks have special haftarot that do not follow the Torah portion but the season. They are known in Aramaic as telata depuranuta, “the three of calamity”: two from Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:1–2:3 and Jeremiah 2:4–28 with a closing verse or two, which differ between Ashkenazi and Sephardi custom), and the third from Isaiah 1.¹ After Tisha B’Av come seven haftarot of consolation, beginning with Shabbat Nachamu.

This cycle of ten haftarot, three of rebuke and seven of comfort, is very old. It is reflected in the homiletical midrash Pesikta deRav Kahana, which devotes a sermon to each of these ten readings, and it was already treated as the established order by the medieval authorities.² Isaiah’s vision is the last word of warning before the fast.

Devarim: Moshe Begins His Farewell

The Torah portion of Shabbat Chazon is Deuteronomy 1:1–3:22. Moshe, standing on the plains of Moab at the end of forty years, begins to retell the journey from Sinai. Early in his speech he recalls how he could no longer carry the people’s disputes alone:

How can I myself alone bear your cumbrance, and your burden, and your strife?

In Hebrew, the verse begins with the word eichah (איכה), “how.” In Ashkenazi synagogues this verse is chanted in the melody of the book of Lamentations, which itself opens with Eichah. The Midrash on Lamentations notes that three prophets used this word: Moshe (“How can I myself alone bear…”), Isaiah (“How is the faithful city become an harlot!”, Isaiah 1:21), and Jeremiah (“How doth the city sit solitary”, Lamentations 1:1). On Shabbat Chazon the first two are read, and on Tisha B’Av the third.³

The portion also contains something less often noticed. Within days of the reading, Israel will mourn the night when the people wept at the spies’ report, the first event the Mishnah assigns to the ninth of Av. Deuteronomy 1:19–46 is Moshe’s own retelling of that story: the scouts, the good fruit, the people’s refusal, and the sentence of forty years. The Torah reading prepares the congregation for Tisha B’Av by going back to its root.

Isaiah’s Vision: A Courtroom and a Lament

Isaiah prophesied in Jerusalem in the eighth century BCE, during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. His first chapter is arranged like a lawsuit.⁴ Heaven and earth are called as witnesses (1:2), and Hashem brings His charge against His children:

The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.

The land is desolate, “and the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard” (1:8). Only a small remnant has kept the nation from becoming like Sodom (1:9), a verse Paul later quotes when speaking of Israel’s faithful remnant (Romans 9:29).

Then comes the most startling part of the haftarah. Hashem turns to the Temple worship itself:

To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith Hashem… Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.

These are the very offerings and appointed times that Hashem Himself commanded in the Torah. Isaiah is not abolishing them. The rest of his book looks forward to a day when “from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me” (Isaiah 66:23). The problem is named a few verses later: “your hands are full of blood” (1:15). Worship offered by hands that oppress the weak is not worship Hashem will accept. The cure is equally concrete:

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

Then, at the turning point of the chapter, comes the invitation:

Come now, and let us reason together, saith Hashem: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Verse 21 returns to lament, with the second eichah of the day: “How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.” In many Ashkenazi synagogues most of the haftarah is chanted in the Lamentations melody, with the verses of hope in the usual melody, so that judgment and mercy alternate in the music itself.

The haftarah ends with promise:

And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city. Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.

The word translated “converts” is shaveha (שביה), “those of her who return,”⁵ from the same root as teshuvah, repentance. The Talmud draws from this verse that “Jerusalem will be redeemed only through righteousness” (tzedakah), a word that in rabbinic Hebrew also means charity.⁶ Zion’s redemption is tied to justice, to the return of her people, and to their care for the poor.

The Vision of the Third Temple

A well-known Hasidic teaching gives this Shabbat a further meaning. It is handed down in the name of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (1740–1809), one of the most beloved early Hasidic masters,⁷ and is recorded in Chabad sources: on Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat of “vision,” every Jew is shown from afar a vision of the future, rebuilt Temple.⁸

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak is said to have explained this with a parable. A father had a beautiful garment made for his son, and the son tore it through carelessness. The father had a second made, and the son tore that too. The father had a third made, but this time he kept it hidden, showing it to his son only from time to time, so that the son would learn to behave in a way that would make him worthy to wear it. The two Temples were destroyed; the third is kept in reserve, and on Shabbat Chazon Israel is shown it from a distance, so that the longing for it will become a reason to change.

The teaching is homiletical, not the plain meaning of Isaiah, but it captures something true: Isaiah’s opening vision runs straight into chapter 2, the mountain of Hashem’s house lifted high. The rebuke is spoken for the sake of the restoration.

Shabbat Customs on Shabbat Chazon

Because it falls during the Nine Days, Shabbat Chazon raises questions about how much of the mourning of the season should touch Shabbat. The general principle is that there is no public mourning on Shabbat. Meat and wine, forbidden in Ashkenazi custom during the Nine Days, are eaten at the Shabbat meals. The Rema records an older Ashkenazi custom not to wear full Shabbat clothes on this Shabbat, but many authorities, including the Vilna Gaon, opposed it, and most communities wear their Shabbat clothes as usual.⁹

In many congregations the rabbi himself is called up for the haftarah, since its message requires a voice of authority and love. When Tisha B’Av falls on Sunday, the fast begins at sundown at the end of Shabbat. In that case the last meal of Shabbat (seudah shelishit) is eaten in full Shabbat dignity, but must be finished before sundown; Havdalah over wine is postponed until after the fast.¹⁰

Yeshua’s Lament: “Blessed Is He That Cometh”

Isaiah’s chapter, read on this Shabbat, finds a close echo in the words of Yeshua in Jerusalem during his last week. In Matthew 23 he speaks to the crowds and to his disciples in the Temple courts, and his words move from rebuke to lament:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of Hashem.

Like Isaiah, Yeshua speaks as one who loves the city. The last line is a quotation from Psalm 118:26, a psalm of the Hallel that is sung on the festivals to this day.¹¹ “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of Hashem” is a psalm of welcome to those who come up to the house of Hashem. Yeshua’s words contain a promise as well as a warning: there will be a day when Jerusalem says the blessing and welcomes him. The house is left desolate until that day, not forever.

Justice, Mercy, and Faithfulness, without Leaving the Other Undone

Just before that lament, Yeshua speaks words that sound very much like Isaiah 1:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the Torah, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

This verse is often quoted as if Yeshua dismissed the details of the commandments. Its final clause says the opposite: “these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” Tithing even of herbs is affirmed. What Yeshua condemns is a scrupulous observance that leaves out justice and mercy. Earlier in the same chapter he tells the crowds to do what the scribes and Pharisees teach from Moshe’s seat (Matthew 23:2–3), and twice in Matthew he quotes Hosea: “I desired mercy, and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6; Matthew 9:13; 12:7). That is the logic of Isaiah 1. The prophet does not abolish new moons and Sabbaths; he refuses them when they are offered by hands full of blood.

Jewish tradition reads Isaiah 1 the same way: ritual and righteousness belong together. Shabbat Chazon is not a day to despise ritual, but to ask whether our ritual is joined to justice. A congregation that keeps Shabbat and observes the Three Weeks is doing what Hashem commanded; Isaiah asks whether it also relieves the oppressed and pleads for the widow.

Teshuvah: Scarlet to Snow

The invitation at the center of the haftarah, “Come now, and let us reason together… though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow,” is one of the great statements of teshuvah in the Tanakh. Isaiah’s hearers still had an altar; Israel in exile has none. Yet the invitation stands. The prophet Hosea told Israel to “take with you words, and turn to Hashem” (Hosea 14:2), and the sages taught that prayer and repentance are accepted in place of offerings.¹²

For followers of Yeshua, the same invitation runs through the Brit Hadashah (the New Testament). Yochanan the Immerser (John the Baptist) and Yeshua both began their preaching with the call to repent (Matthew 3:2; 4:17), and the apostles promised that “times of refreshing shall come from the presence of Hashem” to those who turn (Acts 3:19). The Messiah’s death is understood in the Brit Hadashah as the means by which Hashem cleanses His people (1 John 1:7–9), but the cleansing is always joined to turning: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9). The pattern is Isaiah’s.

Zion Redeemed: Isaiah 1 Leads to Isaiah 2

The haftarah stops at Isaiah 1:27, but the scroll does not. The very next words open a new vision:

And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of Hashem’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it… for out of Zion shall go forth the Torah, and the word of Hashem from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations… and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

The faithful city of 1:26 becomes the center of the world. The Torah Israel forgot goes out from Zion to the nations, and the justice Jerusalem lacked brings peace to the peoples. Micah gives the same prophecy almost word for word (Micah 4:1–3).

This is the hope of Shabbat Chazon. The Brit Hadashah shares it: Yeshua’s followers wait for “the restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets” (Acts 3:21), the return of the Messiah to Jerusalem, the resurrection of the dead, and the nations going up to worship the King, Hashem of hosts (Zechariah 14:16). We do not know when. But Isaiah’s order is clear: the vision of what is wrong, the call to turn, the redeemed city, and the mountain of Hashem’s house lifted up for all the world.

Keeping Shabbat Chazon

• Keep Shabbat fully. It is still Shabbat, with its meals, its rest and its joy, even in the shadow of the fast.
• Read the haftarah slowly, Isaiah 1:1–27, and then go on to read Isaiah 2:1–5. Notice where rebuke turns to invitation and where invitation turns to promise.
• Read Moshe’s account of the spies in Deuteronomy 1:19–46 as preparation for Tisha B’Av.
• Ask Isaiah’s question honestly: where has worship become separated from justice? Choose one concrete act of righteousness, for the poor, the fatherless or the widow, to carry into the week.
• Prepare for the fast. See our calendar for the date of Shabbat Chazon and Tisha B’Av in any given year.

Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.