Canter Bridge

One of the most finely crafted and resonant chapters of the biblical corpus achieves its quiet doxology via a horticultural simile, which catches this reader’s eye on the morning after hauling yet another load of subtropical greenery to our Colombian patio.

For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. (Isaiah 61:11 ESV)

The author has in the preceding verses gone a bit crazy in the search for metaphors that capture the extravaganza of YHWH’s turning towards his people after the ‘brief moment’ of their affliction. Now, they are walls called ‘salvation’, rebellious citizens will have become ‘the righteous’, the oil of gladness will have displaced mourning, Zion’s children will have become famous throughout the world.

To the point of that latter detail, everything good that happens to restored Zion will occur in full view of the peoples, who it seems cannot bring themselves to look away. There is a kind of testimony here, an implicit invitation perhaps, though the stakes around how that invitation is received are perilously high.

Then these twin similes here under scrutiny.

For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.

There is a certain inevitability in the way that good earth, at least, brings forth (תוציא) its sprouts (צמחה). The slow-moving, mysterious process is—as it were—pre-programmed. It is going to happen. This kind of soil and these kinds of plants were made for each other, were made for the enigmatic trundling forward into growth mode that is their way under the sun and a modicum of rain.

The subtle parallelism intensifies in the second line, moving from natural organic re-creation to a venue where the diligent preparations of a gardener are in evidence. The verb (תצמיח) picks up the noun ‘its sprouts’ (צמחה) from the first line, deploys its matching verb, and so nudges the whole picture gently forward. The garden sprouts up what has previously been sown. One glimpses now a hidden gardener’s intelligent purpose. This growth, this florescence, is no accident of the automatic processes of autonomous nature. Its inevitability is purposed and prepared by hands that are not so visible in the moment itself of sprouting and flowering.

Yet the move beyond the metaphor in the direction of the prophetic realia assures that all honor due is paid, for the righteousness of Zion’s formerly wretched connivers and the praise that can only have YHWH as its object sprout and flower before all the peoples.

The book of Isaiah has much to say about YHWH’s purpose. Seldom is it sketched more indirectly and more exquisitely than here, with all the intractable momentum of roots and stem warming toward sun with resplendent flower barely in the offing, only a matter of time.