Canter Bridge

Isaiah’s recurring concern with trust shows itself in the metaphor of leaning. Like the stitching on an old pair of Doc Martens, this language weaves its visible path through the multiple layers of this complex book. The image captures the need of an inferior to depend for sustenance and protection upon the powers of a superior. Isaiah is persistent in his warnings that no geopolitical presence has the credentialed trustworthiness that imperiled Judah seeks. Only YHWH is worthy of this nation’s leaning, her trust, her inclination.

From an earlier promise of eventual enlightenment (‘On that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on the one who struck them, but will lean on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.’), the book proceeds simply to warn:

Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel:
Because you reject this word,
and put your trust in oppression and deceit,
and lean upon them;
therefore this iniquity shall become for you
like a break in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse,
whose crash comes suddenly, in an instant;
its breaking is like that of a potter’s vessel
that is smashed so ruthlessly
that among its fragments not a sherd is found
for taking fire from the hearth,
or dipping water out of the cistern.

For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel:
In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength

And again in the thirty-first chapter:

Alas for those who go down to Egypt for help
and who lean upon horses,
who trust in chariots because they are many
and in horsemen because they are very strong,
but do not look to the Holy One of Israel
or consult the LORD!

In every case, Judah appears summoned by the prophet not to contemplative quietism but rather to an active reliance upon YHWH over against temporal alternatives to his empowering presence. The rhetoric is peppered by aphorisms like ‘for Egypt is mere man and not God’.

Things are not as they seem. Power is not what it boasts. Protection comes from quarters that are less obvious to the frantic anxiety of darting eyes.

The exhortation that pervades this material is more severe than it might at first appear. Words like these make the point:

For the palace will be forsaken,
the populous city deserted;
the hill and the watchtower
will become dens forever,
the joy of wild asses,
a pasture for flocks;
until a spirit from on high is poured out on us,
and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field,
and the fruitful field is deemed a forest.
Then justice will dwell in the wilderness,
and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.
The effect of righteousness will be peace,
and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.

Inevitably for the Isaianic legacy, the desired repose is subject to the penultimate fury of purification, of smelting, of the furnace. Peace, righteousness, quietness, trust: these are qualities that have become alien to Zion. She will recover them only by undergoing the trauma of YHWH’s severest mercy. The prize is available only to those who will embrace the deconstructing pain of YHWH-fire.

There is no other way to get there from here.