This is what the LORD says: "Maintain justice and do what is right, for My salvation is coming soon, and My righteousness will be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath without profaning it and keeps his hand from doing any evil." Let no foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say, "The LORD will utterly exclude me from His people." And let the eunuch not say, "I am but a dry tree." For this is what the LORD says: "To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, who choose what pleases Me and hold fast to My covenant— I will give them, in My house and within My walls, a memorial and a name better than that of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off. And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD to minister to Him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be His servants—all who keep the Sabbath without profaning it and who hold fast to My covenant— I will bring them to My holy mountain and make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on My altar, for My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations." Thus declares the Lord GOD, who gathers the dispersed of Israel: "I will gather to them still others besides those already gathered."
No man with crushed or severed genitals may enter the assembly of the LORD. No one of illegitimate birth may enter the assembly of the LORD, nor may any of his descendants, even to the tenth generation. No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, even to the tenth generation. For they did not meet you with food and water on your way out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram-naharaim to curse you. Yet the LORD your God would not listen to Balaam, and the LORD your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the LORD your God loves you. You are not to seek peace or prosperity from them as long as you live. Do not despise an Edomite, for he is your brother. Do not despise an Egyptian, because you lived as a foreigner in his land. The third generation of children born to them may enter the assembly of the LORD.
Significance
The hinge is a single verb. Deuteronomy 23:1 bars from the assembly the man whose organ is "severed" — כרת (karat, "cut off"). Isaiah 56:5 promises the eunuch (סָרִיס, saris) "an everlasting name that will not be cut off" — לֹא יִכָּרֵת, the same verb, negated. The word that excluded him is the word Isaiah cancels over him.
Found via
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type
Allusion
Connection Method(s)
Contrast + Longitudinal Theme — Contrast, because Isaiah 56:3-7 reverses Deuteronomy 23:1-8's exclusions category by category; Longitudinal Theme, because that reversal is itself a stage in the Gentile-inclusion thread running on to Mark 11:17 and Acts 8:27-39.
A second reversal runs on בוא (bo, "enter"). Four times Deuteronomy says such a man may not "enter the assembly of the LORD" (בוא; 23:1,2,3), with a single concession at 23:8. Isaiah 56:7 has God do the verb Himself in the causative: "I will bring them to My holy mountain" (בוא, hiphil). Deuteronomy forbids the entering; Isaiah has God do the bringing.
The categories then match one for one. Deuteronomy 23:1, the emasculated, becomes Isaiah 56:3-5, the eunuch who must not say "I am but a dry tree." Deuteronomy 23:3-6, the Ammonite and Moabite barred to the tenth generation, becomes Isaiah 56:3,6-7, the foreigner (בֶּן־הַנֵּכָר) "who has joined himself to the LORD." What Isaiah requires in place of lineage is covenant: keeping the Sabbath without profaning it and holding fast to God's covenant (56:4,6). The qualification moves from body and bloodline to allegiance.
Jesus takes His stand on this text in the temple and quotes the clause that matters: "Is it not written: 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations'?" (Mark 11:17) — and Mark alone preserves the last three words, the very words Isaiah 56:7 added to the older restriction. Luke then narrates the reversal in a single scene: an Ethiopian eunuch, a foreigner and a man Deuteronomy 23:1 excluded twice over, reading this same scroll of Isaiah on a desert road, and baptized before the chapter is finished (Acts 8:27-39).
The eunuch's fear is worth hearing exactly as he states it: "I am but a dry tree" — a man with no future, whose name ends with him. God's answer is not a child. It is "a memorial and a name better than that of sons and daughters... an everlasting name that will not be cut off." Isaiah has already shown who purchases that: the Servant of whom it is asked, "who can recount His descendants?" (53:8), and who is then promised, "He will see His offspring" (זֶרַע, 53:10). The one who died childless is given seed, and out of that seed the childless are given a name. The dry tree is not consoled; it is grafted.
