Canter Bridge

Isaiah is not so much the herald of unlikely beginnings as he is the prophet of unpromising re-starts.

His signature is not the tale of origins, but rather the anticipation of dead things springing quietly to life. In chapter 11 of the book that bears Isaiah’s name, the prophet assumes the destruction of the Davidic monarchy. Having done so, this compelling oracle goes back to Jesse, the father of David, the shepherdly antecedent to kings and kingdoms. It is as though a fresh start requires a radical retreat to the moment before the long trajectory of Israelite disappointment in its kings had set off upon its tortuous arc.

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. (Isaiah 11:1–5 ESV)

This unnamed scion of the house of Jesse emerges from a dead tree, cut down to stump and left to rot amid the leveled forest of kingdoms that did not pan out. (more…)

Read Full Post »

The plethora of names in Isaiah 7.1-9 requires a complete reading if we are to make sense of it.

In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah the king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not yet mount an attack against it. When the house of David was told, ‘Syria is in league with Ephraim,’ the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.

And the Lord said to Isaiah, ‘Go out to meet Ahaz, you and Shear-jashub your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Washer’s Field. And say to him, “Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, at the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and the son of Remaliah. Because Syria, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has devised evil against you, saying, ‘Let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves, and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it,’ thus says the Lord God: ‘It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. And within sixty-five years Ephraim will be shattered from being a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.’”’ (Isaiah 7:1–9 ESV)

The manifest terror of Ahaz and his vulnerable Judahites is captured in the image of hearts shaking ‘as the trees of a forest shake before the wind’. The careful reader might sense in the prophet’s allusion to a wind (רוח) the barest of hints that another ‘wind’ (רוח in Isaiah and elsewhere refers often to YHWH’s ‘spirit’) also blows across Judah amid what can only be experienced as an existential crisis. It is the latter breeze that is capable of effecting the prophet’s bidding to calm down and refuse to panic, even as this divine rustling stands as well behind YHWH’s bold declaration that the machination of Judah’s enemies ‘shall not stand and shall not be’ (v. 7). (more…)

Read Full Post »

It would be wrong to say that the structures and patterns of cult and liturgy lack value in the legacy of a biblical prophet like Isaiah. In fact, some of the prophet’s most stirring expressions of YHWH’s redemption of Israel promise the shocking inclusion into worship of people like foreigners and the badly mutilated, who were conventionally excluded.

Yet in the book’s final paragraph YHWH seems entirely unimpressed by, say, a temple constructed for his repose. He could make for himself a thousand of these if the whimsy struck him. (more…)

Read Full Post »

The brilliant tale of Judah’s national resurrection in the Book of Isaiah’s sixtieth chapter is populated with glimpses of the nations’ contribution to Jerusalem’s beautification.

It seems that distant nations streaming to glorified Zion carry with then not only Jerusalem’s long-lost children as these come finally home. As remote peoples ‘come to (Zion’s) light and kings to the brightness of (Zion’s) shining’, they also bring with them the richest product of their culture and economy. They import into the now glorified city the ‘abundance of the sea’ (המון ים) and the ‘wealth of the nations’ (חיל גוים), even the representative ‘glory of Lebanon’ (כבוד הלבנון). (more…)

Read Full Post »