The first chapter of the book called Isaiah is best seen as an anthology of words of the prophet, collected here to lend the reader some glimpse of the tone and plot of the long, diverse book that follows. The book as such begins with the ‘second’ heading at chapter two, verse one.
The results of such a reading are hopeful but hardly exhilarating. The famous turn towards hope and redemption at chapter forty is barely glimpsed in nucleo in the stunning—when understood correctly—promise of this selective introduction:
Zion shall be redeemed by justice,
and those in her who repent, by righteousness.
Playing upon the famous prophetic concepts of mishpat and tsedeqah (roughly ‘justice and righteousness’), the prophet and his editor conspire to make the claim that Zion’s eventual restoration will not be a vindication but rather a purifying judgment. It is not a happy day on the calendar upon which one expectantly crosses out each remaining date. It is rather a deeply painful smelting of bad metal by an Artisan who will not let things be.
Meanwhile, Zion has become Gomorrah. The emotional violence of such a claim is difficult to overstate. All that it means to be ‘chosen’ by YHWH is brought virtually to nothing if not to a pathetic sum that is less than nothing. The city of God’s great affection is given the name of the most notorious object of his destructive anger. It is the rhetorical equal of spitting in the face of a queen.
The reader is left to contemplate how any project, how a holy project, could turn out so badly. One is left to ponder whether anything and anyone is safe. Apart from a smelter’s fire.
Canter Bridge 
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