Canter Bridge

The book called Isaiah quietly lays layer atop rhetorical layer as it ambles forward in the general direction of glorified Zion.

By the time one arrives at the stirring reversal of fortunes that takes the steering wheel firmly in hand at chapter 40, we have encountered the expression רעהו with a prefixed preposition multiple times. It has described the action of a derelict or judged person to his fellow or to his companion. In the Isaianic way, this otherwise neutral expression has accrued with each new layer a discernibly negative connotation.

And the people will oppress one another, every one his fellow and every one his neighbor (ואיש ברעהו); the youth will be insolent to the elder, and the despised to the honorable. (Isaiah 3:5 ESV)

They will be dismayed: pangs and agony will seize them; they will be in anguish like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at one another (יחילון איש אל־רעהו); their faces will be aflame. (Isaiah 13:8 ESV)

And I will stir up Egyptians against Egyptians, and they will fight, each against another and each against his neighbor (ואיש ברעהו), city against city, kingdom against kingdom; (Isaiah 19:2 ESV)

Again, the term itself is neutral and unremarkable. Yet the accrued sense becomes one of panicked or malevolent reciprocity.

It is likely not an accident that a passage in the 41st chapter of the book reverses the nature of this very reciprocity. The text celebrates YHWH’s purposeful calling of the Persian monarch Cyrus, who would liberate the Jewish captives and make it possible for them to return home to a future in Judah. In the light of this stunning turn, which YHWH has purposed from the beginnings of time itself, the ‘islands’ and the ‘ends of the earth’ take in the events with trembling astonishment. For the moment, it is not critical to establish whether the personifying text is speaking of non-Jewish nations or of Jewish captives in those nations (I favor the former.).

The point rather is the way they interact.

Be silent before me, you islands! Let the nations renew their strength! Let them come forward and speak; let us meet together at the place of judgment. Who has stirred up one from the east, calling him in righteousness to his service? He hands nations over to him and subdues kings before him. He turns them to dust with his sword, to windblown chaff with his bow. He pursues them and moves on unscathed, by a path his feet have not traveled before. Who has done this and carried it through, calling forth the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord—with the first of them and with the last—I am he.

The islands have seen it and fear; the ends of the earth tremble.

They approach and come forward; each helps the other (איש את־רעהו יעזרו) and says to his brother, ‘Be strong!’ (Isaiah 41:1–6 NIV)

Suddenly, the reciprocal interaction of the subjects is positive, encouraging, and even redemptive.

A note of anti-idolatry polemic in the verse immediately following means that the tone here could be ironic and not as positive as I’m suggesting. But strong conceptual elements of chapter 41 combined with the conceptually similar mutual encouragement of nations in the programmatic vision of chapter 2 (… and many peoples shall come, and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths’, Isaiah 2:3 ESV) persuade me that the point here is a quite positive one.

When my neighbor turns to look at me, there is no longer murder in his eyes, but encouragement.

Redemption in the book of Isaiah comes in reversals infinitely grand and infinitesimally subtle. The reversal I call out here belongs to the latter category.

Yet it is no less potent for its small, layered scope and scale. In its syllables, one hears whispered rumor of ancient enemies becoming friends in the light of YHWH’s manifestation of blessing too long guarded in secret places.