The Exceeding Greatness of God (Isaiah 66:1-2 a).
‘Thus says Yahweh,
“The heaven is my throne,
And the earth is my footstool,
What manner of house will you build for me?
And what place will be my rest?
For all these things has my hand made,
And so all these things came to be, says Yahweh.”
As he approaches the climax of the book Isaiah makes clear the basis on which all that he has said must be judged and interpreted. All must be interpreted in the light of one great fact, that Yahweh is not limited to an earthly Mount Zion, nor to an earthly dwellingplace. Heaven is His throne, earth is His footstool, He is over all, He spans all, He is the Creator of all. He rules the heavens, the earth is subject to Him. Thus no house can be built that can contain Him, there is no house that can be sufficient for Him to find rest in. For everything has been made by His hand, and that is how they came to be. Thus He is too great to be limited to a tiny house in one part of His creation, even the temple on Mount Zion.
For ideas similar to this compare 1 Kings 8:12-29, where, however, Yahweh condescended to dwell in some limited way in that earthly temple. What was said there He would hear in His heavenly temple. For, as we have stressed earlier, Mount Zion and its temple is seen as being like a bridge between earth and heaven, on the earthward side physically limited, but spiritually reaching up to God, as Isaiah 2:2-4 makes clear.
So Isaiah wants all to recognise that the concept of Zion as Yahweh's Dwellingplace is not to be seen as putting any limits on Him. His dwelling in Zion is as the One Who is above all things. And His people in Zion will enjoy the same.
Ezekiel 40 onwards emphasised the same thing when he pointed out that the true heavenly temple was not in Jerusalem, but could be approached through the altar that had been established there, and, once it was built, through the Mount Zion temple also. But the heavenly temple itself was in a holy portion on a high mountain apart, some distance from Jerusalem and unapproachable by man, because while Yahweh had come back to earth to welcome His people again, and He wanted them to know that He was near, never again was He to be seen as simply in the temple in Jerusalem. He was near and yet far because He was holy. There is great stress in Ezekiel's whole description of the Temple on His holiness.
Those Who Are Welcome At His Feet (Isaiah 66:2 b).
“But to this man will I look,
Even to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit (‘lamed in spirit'),
And who trembles at my word.”
But in His greatness God does have some on whom He will fix His eyes in love, those who are of a poor and contrite spirit, those who recognise their nothingness and the true state of their own spirits as lamed and limping, and who tremble at His word, because they recognise Him for what He is, the high and lofty One Who inhabits the everlasting (Isaiah 57:15). And because they worship Him, they want to serve Him, weak though they are. Isaiah understood this for he too had seen himself like this when he had seen the revelation of God in the earthly temple (chapter 6), and had humbly and tremblingly responded in offering himself for service. Note that the singular is used to stress God's interest in each individual one.
So in all the vastness of the universe these are the ones to whom God pays attention, the humble, the poor, the spiritually limping, the spiritually lame. Compare Isaiah 61:1 and Isaiah 35:6. He looks to those who hear His word and His instruction and fear Him and respond to His word. For the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding (Job 28:28 compare Psalms 111:10).