Canter Bridge

When the Old Testament prophets go satirical on us, it is no laughing matter.  That is, any mirth that their ironic verbal assaults elicit—and some of it is quite funny also to modern eyes—is meant to wake up their hearers to the fact that created reality has been transgressed. And will soon, or sometimes eventually, be set right.

In the passage that follows, it is the Babylonian oppressors’ gods who are heartily mocked.

Bel bows down; Nebo stoops; their idols are on beasts and livestock; these things you carry are borne as burdens on weary beasts. They stoop; they bow down together; they cannot save the burden, but themselves go into captivity.

Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save. (Isaiah 46:1–4 ESV)

The sophisticated verbal play is almost too rich to be explained in translation. But let’s try.

These two short prophetic paragraphs (so the Hebrew ‘Massoretic Text’ considers them) play on themes that Isaiah sustains, turns inside out, and explores, much as Bach explores the capacity of given sound in a Baroque fugue.

Here are a few of those themes as they appear in the lines I’ve quoted.

First, the historical moment would seem to prove the powers of the Babylon gods, even to dismiss any discussion in the face of their self-evident power. The Babylonian nation, after all, reigns supreme. It imagines itself a kind of unipolar superpower, as we might say today. Its princes are kings, Babylon boasts, its great king the very definition of the invincible will to power. The Isaianic language of elevation comes into play here, where ‘high’ means glory and authority and ‘low’ means defeat and incapacity.

In this light, Isaiah’s claim that ‘Bel bows down’ and that ‘Nebo stoops’ turns circumstances on their head. The prophet’s counter-evidential thought is either knowing and provocative—perhaps the prophet discerns more than we …—or simply delusional.

Second, the twin Isaianic ideas of weight and weariness are here deployed artfully and, in my view, powerfully. Let me attempt to unpack this in as orderly a way I can without draining the imagery of its flowing potency.

Satirically, Isaiah suggests that the physical representation of the Babylonian gods are simply too heavy to be carried around without the people exhausting themselves in the process. That is, these gods do not help their people. Rather, their human worshippers are reduced to hauling around their idols with energy they themselves do not have in excess. This kind of religion, the prophet claims, is exhausting, a claim that Taylor Swift might make of a maddening on-again, off-again relationship.

The verbal components that make this satire possible are the most commonly used word for bearing (נשא), the related word for burden (משא), an exquisitely deployed word for loading and carrying (עמס), and—finally—the potent (in Isaiah’s hands) word for being weary (עיף).

Now let’s look again at the passage, this time with commentary interspersed in italics:

Bel bows down; Nebo stoops; their idols are on beasts and livestock; these things you carry are borne as burdens on weary beasts. (Here the great gods of Babylon are reduced to heavy material objects that the people wear out their valuable pack animals by forcing them to carry.)

They stoop; they bow down together; (Who does? The gods? The beasts of burden? Most likely it is the latter, struggling, straining, complaining under the burden.) they cannot save the burden (more on this in a moment), but themselves go into captivity.

Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.

Ah, and now we see that in Isaiah’s ears it is YHWH who bears, who carries his own people! He does not subject them to the weariness of hauling around inert gods, but bearing them on wings like eagles so that even the weary themselves will find new strength.

So does Isaian satire shine a light on what’s really going on at a time when Babylon and her gods reign triumphant and Judah skulks about as one of that nation’s many expiring victims.

Let’s look at just one more word-play in this stunning passage.

Those idol-laden beasts of burden, if this reading is correct, cannot ‘save the burden’. The word translated here as ‘save’ is profoundly familiar in the Isaianic context of exile and return, of subjugation and subsequent redemption. It is the Hebrew verb מלט. Here, it would seem, worn-out, stumbling beasts cannot save the burden of the idols under whose dead weight they are driven onward. But just a few verses later, we read of YHWH’s claim that ‘I will carry and save.’

This four-verse extract from the book of Isaiah is a gem of prophetic satire, which can be admired on literary grounds for its pervasively intelligent nuance. Yet it has been preserved, read, and treasured because it speaks of still deeper things: Dead, deluded religion wears a nation out. YHWH, by contrast, bears his own.

The Christian reader may find that the words of a subsequent prophet spring to mind:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28–30 ESV)

It would take nothing from these latter words, nor from their speaker, if one were to speculate that Isaianic satire—treasured, reflected upon, perhaps even memorized—lay at the core of Jesus’ summons to a certain merciful lightness.