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Archive for August, 2022

Aterrador: Éxodo 14

Posted in texturas, tagged , , , on August 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Con algo parecido a la potencia explicativa del relato del Génesis sobre los orígenes humanos, la historia de los esclavos hebreos que huyen de su ‘casa de servidumbre’ en el libro del Éxodo golpea al oyente con una inmediatez impresionante. Reconocemos nuestro propio terror en el de ellos, acorralados por el mar delante, asediados por el pisoteo de las botas egipcias, llevados casi a la locura por el relincho de los caballos egipcios detrás de ellos.

Entonces los egipcios los persiguieron con todos los caballos y carros de Faraón, su caballería y su ejército, y los alcanzaron acampados junto al mar, junto a Pi-hahirot, frente a Baal-zefón. Y al acercarse Faraón, los hijos de Israel alzaron los ojos, y he aquí los egipcios marchaban tras ellos; entonces los hijos de Israel tuvieron mucho miedo y clamaron al Señor.

Éxodo 14:9-10 (LBLA)

Es muy familiar, este atrapamiento, estas esperanzas frustradas de libertad, estos remordimientos de adrenalina.

Así también, el ácido que sube sin fricción a sus lenguas secas:

Y dijeron a Moisés: ¿Acaso no había sepulcros en Egipto para que nos sacaras a morir en el desierto? ¿Por qué nos has tratado de esta manera, sacándonos de Egipto?

Éxodo 14:11 (LBLA)

Estos miedos son nuestros, este giro a nuestro liberador lleva nuestra impronta, este espejo muestra nuestros rostros con una distorsión casi nula. En los momentos en los que se presenta como lucidez despavorida, sabemos exactamente lo que se puede y no se puede hacer por nosotros, con nosotros, en nosotros. Nos preguntamos en qué estábamos pensando cuando nos sumimos en sueños de cosas mejores que lo que ahora parece ser como la buena vida de servir a nuestros malditos y azotadores egipcios. En aquel entonces, nadie estaba tan loco como para hablar de libertad.

Qué tiempos aquellos.

¿No es esto lo que te hablamos en Egipto, diciendo: «Déjanos, para que sirvamos a los egipcios»? Porque mejor nos hubiera sido servir a los egipcios que morir en el desierto.

Éxodo 14:12 (LBLA)

Ante todo, el pueblo de YHVH es un esclavo liberado. La ética bíblica fluye de la experiencia de la esclavitud y la liberación, YHVH se consagra como el Único del Sinaí, su recordada liberación se convierte en fuerza y canción. El paradigma forjado a partir del pánico de los esclavos y de la liberación que YHVH efectuaría para ellos es una construcción profunda y moldeadora, fuerte y flexible como el acero más fino.

Todo comienza aquí, al borde de un mar inexorable, perseguidos por egipcios que les dan muerte, amargados por la inflexibilidad de un sistema cerrado y asfixiante en el que no pueden ocurrir cosas buenas porque la esclavitud segura es lo mejor que puede haber.

Entonces YHVH divide las aguas.

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¿No había suficientes tumbas…?: Éxodo 13–15

Posted in texturas, tagged , , , , , , on August 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »

¿Acaso no había sepulcros en Egipto…

Así, los esclavos hebreos, acosados y aterrorizados, interrogan a su posible liberador mientras la fuerza del imperio se cierra sobre ellos como un muro de Berlín ambulante.

…para que nos sacaras a morir en el desierto?

Éxodo 14:11 (LBL)

Los recuerdos de la esclavitud suelen ser pintorescos.

La retrospectiva de la angustia de la libertad erige vallas pulcras donde no existían, carne roja donde había salvado de avena, tranquilidad donde de hecho se conocía más que nada el látigo del opresor.

El libro del Éxodo sondea no sólo la historia de un pueblo, sino el paisaje de la experiencia humana, pidiendo a su lector que no desvíe la mirada de la inconstancia del corazón que prefiere la seguridad de la ‘casa de servidumbre’ a los lugares abiertos donde hay que depender de un Dios invisible empeñado en lograr la libertad de las hijas y los hijos.

Es, de hecho, un dilema razonable. La esclavitud tiene ventajas que no hay que despreciar. La confianza en cómo son las cosas, la ignominia igualitaria del sufrimiento, la libertad de concentrarse en lo banal en lugar de tener que restregarse constantemente en el imperativo de elegir la vida o la muerte.

La esclavitud hace gala de sus lujos, comodidades que, de hecho, son profundamente atractivas cuando la ausencia de luz en el horizonte ha desgastado el alma hasta la pequeñez.

La libertad en manos de un Dios exigente es lo que un día se llamaría ‘el camino menos transitado’. Es tan temible como hacer ladrillos a cambio de una sopa aguada.

No es prudente sentimentalizar esto que la Biblia hebrea llama ‘salvación’ o ‘liberación’. No es ni autonomía ni descanso. El propio nombre de Israel insinúa que se trata de una lucha con Dios que, con demasiada frecuencia, huye antes del amanecer, dejando sin nombre al luchador agotado y con cojera.

Uno debe preguntarse, o al menos debería preguntarse, por qué la narración bíblica insiste en que se prefiera decididamente. Un Dios oculto, se especula, tiene una riqueza oculta en la liberación que se descubre principalmente en los páramos sin caminos y -a veces- en las casas que otros han construido, en los viñedos que otros han plantado, en los ricos jardines que han dejado labrados quienes los han abandonado a los recién llegados.

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purpose and experience: Isaiah 49

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , on August 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »

It is impossible to engage the enigmatic figure of the Servant of YHWH (עבד יהוה) without the immediate realization that paradox lurks in every syllable. There is no escaping this quality of the Servant figure, and the challenge to a ‘Who is this exactly?’ investigation must be acknowledged from the start. Answers to that particular question may not come easily, they may not come in the singular, and they may not come at all unless the question is reconfigured.

A layer of paradox occurs in the first six verses of Isaiah 49 that is true to the iconic experience of biblical prophets. On the one hand, there is profound divine engagement in their calling to the prophetic vocation. So also here, in the divine purpose that commissions the Servant into his improbable task.

On the other hand, there is a palpable sense of weariness, inadequacy, and even failure in the prophet’s experience. So here in the case of the Servant of YHWH.

Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away! The LORD called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.

He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away.

And he said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’

But I said, ‘I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God.’  

And now the LORD says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the LORD, and my God has become my strength—he says, ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’

Isaiah 49:1-6 (NRSV)

The Servant’s prenatal calling and naming introduces the passage. This prior description then gives way to the imagery of YHWH’s preparation of the servant, still rendered in the Servant’s voice. Then a promissory note that might seem like just another brick on the road from glory to glory.

And he said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’

Isaiah 49:3 (NRSV)

Yet this optimistic anticipation is not borne out, at least in the near term. The progress of the narrative seems trapped in an eddy of perceived insufficiency on the part of the Servant. The emphatically disjunctive ואני אמרתי (‘But I said…’) breaks the hopeful momentum established in the chapter’s first three verses.

The Servant’s complaint is met with divine reassurance that still greater achievements will issue from the Servant’s efforts. Yet this oscillation between divine reassurance on the one hand, self-doubt and exhaustion on the other, will beleaguer the Servant passages or songs for the duration. It is likely that we ought to read the famous passage at the end of chapter 40, with its deployment of יגע (‘to be[come] weary’) and its interaction of exhaustion and divine supply, as cut from the same cloth. This should not surprise us, as it is Jacob/Israel who complains there as it is Jacob/Israel that is identified as the Servant of YHWH in most or arguably all of the so-called Servant Songs.

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God’?

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.

Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:27-31 (NRSV)

Divine purpose and human experience thus live in uneasy tension and persistent dialogue throughout the Servant passages. In the sea of paradox that is Isaiah’s Servant discourse, this restless antithesis constitutes one undeniable drop.

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renamed Babylon’s disgrace: Isaiah 47

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , on August 21, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The forty-seventh chapter of the book called Isaiah surprises. It reads as a latter-day oracle against Babylon, something the work might have been expected to have got out of its system by the time the famous oracles against the nations are wrapping up in chapter 23.

Yet here is that venerable Schadenfreude smack in the middle of the book’s most lyrical ‘comfort’ pages, its contempt for Babylon dripping with poetic justice. It is not easy, matters would appear to suggest, to get over Babylon. She does not creep silently into our traumatized past.

An embittered oracle like this does fit comfortably in its current location in one detail: its predilection for the notion of naming and renaming. Often in this section of the book, renaming denotes a redemptive move that radically changes a character’s lot. Such new names are happy ones. They grace the redeemed and are a matter of celebration both in the soul of the renamed and in others who find its syllables delicious on their lips.

The maneuver traffics in two main discursive pieces. First, though less frequently, an actual new name (שׁם חדשׁ) is bestowed.

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch. The nations shall see your vindication, and all the kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give.

Isaiah 62:1-2 (NRSV)

More frequently, the calling or naming of a collective and personified figure either reminds its members of a true, deeper identity that circumstances might have belied; or it inaugurates for those individuals and the community they comprise a new and elevated status. Typically קרא, to call, is the verb in question.

Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders; you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise.

Isaiah 60:18 (NRSV)

In both cases, the outcome is to be welcomed for the naming or renaming heralds new and better days.

In chapter 47, where disgraced Babylon comes under inspection, things are very different. This conversion of a redemptive trope in support of rejoicing over a fallen enemy, occurs already in the chapter’s first verse.

Come down and sit in the dust, virgin daughter Babylon! Sit on the ground without a throne, daughter Chaldea! For you shall no more be called tender and delicate.

Isaiah 47:1 (NRSV)

Then again, after a clarifying note the YHWH, Israel’s Redeemer, is the author of Babylon’s fall and that this is a feature of Israel’s rescue, verse five goes at things once more.

Sit in silence, and go into darkness, daughter Chaldea! For you shall no more be called the mistress of kingdoms.

Isaiah 47:5 (NRSV)

Verse 5, just quoted, is quickly complemented in the terms of Babylon’s own prior reflection on her status:

You said, “I shall be mistress forever,” so that you did not lay these things to heart or remember their end.

Isaiah 47:7 (NRSV)

Babylon’s tragic renaming is in fact a removal of prior appellatives rather than the application of a new one, although the context verbosely supplies descriptors of Babylon’s envisaged new status. That is, three names—Tender, Delicate, Mistress of Kingdoms—are removed and replaced with a studied namelessness.

The effect is powerful, for the context makes clear that the names that have now been stripped from Virgin Daughter Babylon were both crucial to her own self-identity and proffered by her commercial and political clients. This is no private ceremony of judgement but rather a catastrophic judgement executed in full view of Babylon’s erstwhile empire.

Babylon’s envisaged downfall is celebrated here because she stands in for all that opposes YHWH’s purpose to redeem Jacob/Israel. Among a range of candidates, Babylon has become something greater than herself. She is a loathsome symbol of all that stands in the way.

No wonder, then, that Babylon becomes in subsequent reflection a cipher for the worst of humanity’s worst, not least in the literature of a renamed Israel that sees itself in continuity with its historical and spiritual predecessor.

He called out with a mighty voice, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul and hateful bird, a haunt of every foul and hateful beast. 

(T)hey will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say, “Alas, alas, the great city, Babylon, the mighty city! For in one hour your judgment has come.”

Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “With such violence Babylon the great city will be thrown down, and will be found no more.”

Revelation 18:2, 10, 21 (NRSV)

There is in the biblical literature of justice, theodicy, and eschatological trajectory something of a zero-sum game. YHWH is at his most ferocious not out of ephemeral pique or caprice, but rather when facing down unyielding resistance to his determination to redeem. The Bible’s literature is in the main not gratuitously vengeful. But yes, when it comes to this, there is some dancing on an a tyrant’s grave.

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Cyrus, thou art scandal: Isaiah 45

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , on August 20, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The forty-fifth chapter of Isaiah summons up one of the Hebrew Bible’s several ‘sovereignty discourses’. In these a superior—YHWH in most cases—puts in his purported place a lesser who has lodged a complaint. Modern sensitivities are quick to cry ‘Bully!’, and at points this seems a viable charge.

In any case, the discourse describes a moral architecture in which the participants’ relative rank is not in question. The lesser in this arrangement is to practice a certain compliance before the greater. It’s just the ways things are.

Woe to you who strive with your Maker, earthen vessels with the potter! Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, “What are you making”? or “Your work has no handles”?

Woe to anyone who says to a father, “What are you begetting?” or to a woman, “With what are you in labor?”

Thus says the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker: Will you question me about my children, or command me concerning the work of my hands?

Isaiah 45:9-11 (NRSV)

Such rhetoric is transparent enough in the abstract. Yet there is usually a concrete context that lends poignance and occasionally brings a justifying note to its sharp edges.

That is certainly the case here, where the Persian king Cyrus appears both before and after the ‘woes’ and the rhetorical questions that populate this sovereignty discourse. Indeed, it appears that YHWH’s choice to anoint and then deploy a pagan king for the benefit of his ‘servant’ Jacob lies at the very genesis of the quoted passage.

One must admit at the outset that the circumstances portrayed here defy expectation.

In the first verse, YHWH calls Cyrus his anointed one. The Hebrew word משיח (his servant = משיחו) will in due course become the main generator of the English ‘messiah’, which is in fact merely a transcription of the Hebrew noun. What is more, YHWH claims to have grasped Cyrus by the hand. Together the two expressions lay a foundation for the virtually unlimited conquest of the known world which is promised to the Persian king in the ensuing verses.

One might find it agreeable to imagine Israel as subject and object of this description. Israel, YHWH’s anointed, strengthened by YHWH’s own grasp. But Cyrus, the pagan king and Persian successor to Babylon’s empire? The plot has taken a new and disturbing turn.

The only limitation to the intimacy and collaboration that lock YHWH and Cyrus together as imperial co-conspirators is the twice-stated concessive clause ‘though you do not know me’ (verses 4-5), which is spoken of Cyrus. Paradoxically, Cyrus is anointed as YHWH’s own subduer of nations, yet he is not conceded the merit of knowing YHWH that remains somehow Jacob’s prerogative. Indeed, the entire anomaly that is Cyrus takes shape for Jacob’s benefit. Neither Cyrus nor his Persian nation supplants Jacob/Israel. Yet Cyrus is granted both a tactical intimacy with YHWH and strengthening by YHWH, all for the sake of Jacob/Israel.

For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me.

Isaiah 45:4 (NRSV)

If this description of circumstances commends itself, then we return to the question of what generates the sovereignty discourse of this chapter, with its potentially humiliating subjugation of Israel to YHWH in the figures of earthen vessels to potter, clay to divine molder, child to parents.

It appears that Israel’s implicit objection to YHWH redeeming his people in this Cyrus-centric way is the motivation for this dense and complex metaphor. No other dynamic in the context commends itself, it would be uncharacteristically abstract for the comment to come to us as a mere moral instruction, and—once glimpsed with clarity—Israel’s complaint about YHWH’s redemptive methodology fits perfectly with the chapter’s argument.

Even the culminating declaration of the chapter’s first unit (verses 1-7) stands out in sharper profile if YHWH’s deployment of Cyrus is seen to be the centerpoint around which the discourse revolves:

I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do all these things.

Isaiah 45:7 (NRSV)

YHWH, it seems, presents himself here as the Lord of Exile as well as of Return, the Master of Cyrus as much as Jacob’s God. The text does not allow YHWH to shirk responsibility for darkness and woe, which in context must involve at least the calamity of exile in a way that excludes neither Babylon’s nor Persia’s role. Indeed, YHWH names himself darkness’ architect and maker.

‘You’re going to redeem Jacob’s children this way?’, one imagines a faithful old Judean man complaining in his most earnest prayers, lips trembling with indignation. ‘Will you sully your hands in clasp with this pagan king?’

‘There is no one like me’, comes YHWH’s reply, failing to conceal a shiver of divine delight.

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Acompañamiento constante: Éxodo 13

Posted in texturas, tagged , , , on August 19, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Al huir de sus capataces egipcios bajo la media verdad de adorar a YHVH en el Sinaí, los esclavos hebreos mostraron una capacidad de miopía extraordinaria. ‘¿No había tumbas en Egipto?”, se burlaron de Moisés. ‘¿Por eso nos has traído aquí a morir?’

Sin embargo, con la promesa palpable de los huesos de José, atrapados entre la servidumbre negociada y la libertad audaz, los quejumbrosos ‘hijos de Israel’ merecen un poco de empatía. La esclavitud, una cantidad conocida, puede, al menos, sobrevivir. La libertad es potencialmente letal. 

Uno muere fácilmente en libertad. Un captor está obligado a alimentar a su esclavo aunque sólo sea para sacarle el sudor de otro día. Optar por la libertad requiere un cálculo muy duro. Sus beneficios se ven empañados por el peligro.

Frente a este enigma, el texto sitúa el acompañamiento constante de YHVH:

El Señor iba delante de ellos, de día en una columna de nube para guiarlos por el camino, y de noche en una columna de fuego para alumbrarlos, a fin de que anduvieran de día y de noche. No quitó de delante del pueblo la columna de nube durante el día, ni la columna de fuego durante la noche.

Éxodo 13:21-22 (LBLA)

La cercanía de YHVH rompe la lógica de la desesperación o, al menos, inyecta una variable que, potencialmente, multiplica las opciones y desmecaniza el determinismo de las elecciones menos malas.

Los refugiados ya no viajan a ciegas. El pilar de la nube de YHVH los guía.

Los esclavos que juguetean con las posibilidades de liberación tienen más de una opción cuando la oscuridad cae sobre su compañía. Todavía pueden aprovechar la noche, es cierto, para algún descanso necesario. Pero pueden optar por seguir adelante, si así lo desean.

De repente, ‘hebreos’ no significa ‘personas definidas y determinadas por quienes las utilizan’.

La presencia de YHVH abre la peligrosa posibilidad de decidir. Su proximidad no es ni fugaz ni efímera, nos dice el texto a través del relato de los esclavos quejumbrosos en su camino hacia una nueva identidad.

De día o de noche, nunca se va. Así comienza el libro del Éxodo a definir la ‘libertad’.

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Noches de vigilia: Éxodo 12

Posted in textures, tagged , , , on August 19, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Pocos pasajes bíblicos describen la severidad y la dulzura de YHVH de forma más conmovedora que el relato del Éxodo sobre la huida de Israel de Egipto.

El día de su salida, después de todo, se da después de la noche en que el ángel vengador de YHVH robó la vida de todos los primogénitos de Egipto, desde el palacio hasta el calabozo. En una escalada de severidad cuidadosamente calibrada que no deja a ningún protagonista sin tocar ni conmover, YHVH prepara meticulosamente el momento en el que Israel escapará del exterminio y encontrará tanto el futuro como la libertad en un solo y ruidoso golpe.

Y sucedió que al cabo de los cuatrocientos treinta años, en aquel mismo día, todos los ejércitos del Señor salieron de la tierra de Egipto. Esta es noche de vigilia para el Señor por haberlos sacado de la tierra de Egipto; esta noche es para el Señor, para ser guardada por todos los hijos de Israel por todas sus generaciones.

Éxodo 12:41-42 (LBLA)

Ah, estas noches de vigilia.

Estas épocas de problemas en las que podemos morir o vivir, y nadie sabe el resultado.

¿Se convertirán nuestros sueños en realidad, o simplemente perecerán en un acto de desaparición silencioso e inadvertido? ¿Es este el final, o es un principio?

Por tanto, en noches como ésta no podemos hacer otra cosa que vigilar.

Es reconfortante saber que al menos esta vez, en el imperio de Egipto, YHVH también se quedó despierto toda la noche vigilando. Nada iba a escapar de su control, ninguna malevolencia desbarataría su propósito. Ninguna fuerza horrible tocaría la niña de sus ojos esta noche. Sus israelitas tendrían su nuevo día, sin importar los poderes que lo impidieran.

La gente sigue celebrando la noche de vigilia de YHVH con la suya propia. La llamamos Pascua, con sus hierbas amargas y su trago de vino y sus familias reunidas por la noche y su recuerdo de una noche que no se olvidará. ‘Esta noche’, entona un niño a su familia convocada, que escucha y recuerda, ‘es como ninguna otra’.

Sin embargo, podemos esperar, al menos, que YHVH tenga otras noches de vigilancia, en las que nuestras vidas, nuestras esperanzas y nuestro futuro no sean tragados en la oscuridad por la calamidad mientras esperamos, impotentes, la mañana.

Vigila, YHVH. Necesitamos que vigiles. Por favor, quédate despierto hasta tarde con nosotros, por nosotros, mientras cae esta nueva noche.

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La renuencia de los profetas: Éxodo 2-4

Posted in texturas, tagged , , , , on August 19, 2022| Leave a Comment »

El lugar de Moisés en la historia de Israel es muy anterior a la instauración de la monarquía y a la aparición de los profetas como contrapeso al rey. Sin embargo, el texto presenta a Moisés como el profeta por excelencia. Aquí se establecen patrones que marcarán la trayectoria profética cuando llegue su momento.

Uno de estos patrones es ser contradictorio, al menos si partimos de la percepción moderna de los profetas como verbalistas escandalosos, imponentes y seguros de sí mismos, que hablaban en nombre de Dios con poca autocontención y amaban las prebendas con las que ello venía.

No es el caso de Moisés, ni de los profetas posteriores cuyo legado nos ha conservado lo que los estudiosos denominan ‘narrativa del llamado’.

La renuencia, más que la ambición, impregna el terrible llamado a hablar en nombre de YHVH.

Moisés emplea repetidas tácticas para eludir el llamado divino para servir de portavoz de YHVH ante un faraón testarudo y esclavista. Ninguna de ellas funciona, y mucho menos su pretensión de ser ‘un niño’, muy pequeño, insignificante e ingenuo en cuestiones de vida y muerte. El contraargumento y la negativa con que YHVH se enfrenta a las maniobras evasivas de su profeta prototípico incluyen una palabra breve y paradigmática:

Yo estaré contigo.

Esto, se nos hace creer, es todo lo que el profeta debe saber realmente.

YHVH, el siempre adecuado, promete ser la suficiencia que acompaña a cualquier profeta.

Al afirmar esta promesa, YHVH también define de forma verosímil el oficio del profeta, un hombre que a menudo pone su vida en riesgo al convertirse en adversario de figuras poderosas, determinado por la única cosa que sabe: Que Dios está con él.

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Here we go again… : Isaiah 43

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , on August 19, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The Hebrew Bible’s first verb rumbles with creative energy.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…

Genesis 1:1 (NRSV)

By virtue of its privilege of place and of the fact that what goes down here can never happen again—Israelite monotheism will allow only one all-creating deity—the verb ברא quickly acquires a particular resonance. In fact, the Hebrew Bible displays a deep reticence to deploying ברא with anyone other than YHWH as its subject and with anything other than a creation out of nothing as its effect. Strictly speaking, the subject of ברא in Genesis 1.1 is אלהים, but in context ‘God’ can be no other than YHWH.

Scholars debate whether this kind of creation discourse first takes shape in the earliest chapters of Genesis, in the second part of Isaiah, or elsewhere. For now, it is enough to observe the manner in which the verb ברא is all but reserved for spectacular and unanticipated acts of creation by YHWH himself.

In this light, it is not short of remarkable that ברא flourishes unreservedly in Isaiah 43, where a kind of creation ex nihilo is presaged. Here, YHWH is emphatically its subject. He is a Creator lifted above the capacity of all other deities, if it can even be imagined that these might exist. The object or effect of YHWH’s creative artistry is the rebirth of Israel out of the inert nothingness of Exile.

But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

Isaiah 43:1 (NRSV)

For nearly the length of this chapter, its author weaves ברא into a rich tapestry of which the other components of creative production are יצר (commonly, to shape or mold) and עשׂה (to make). That this is not technically creation ex nihilo but rather ‘creativity with a history’ is betrayed in the verbal threads that bring in גאל (to redeem) and קרא (to call, name, or even re-name). The notion of redemption (גאל) in particular assumes a preexisting deficient state from which one is rescued.

This is redemption cum creation. The vocabulary places Israel’s rescue at YHWH’s hands in the category of creation in a stunning metaphorical dance that is sustained for verse after lyrical verse without a hint of tedium. The first tranche of this composition is delivered up with a resounding conclusion at verse 7.

I will say to the north, “Give them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth—everyone who is called by my name (כל הנקרא בשׁמי), whom I created for my glory (ולכבודי בראתיו), whom I formed (יצרתיו) and made (אף עשִֹיתיו).

Isaiah 43:6-7 (NRSV)

The whole enterprise is reinforced in the chapter’s nineteenth verse by the divine declaration of a new thing, albeit now having built allusions to a New Exodus upon the foundation of a New Creation:

I am about to do a new thing (הנה עשׂה חדשׁח); now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

Isaiah 43:19 (NRSV)

After this, no careful student of the book called Isaiah can conceive of redemption across the trajectory of the entire biblical canon without viewing it against the backdrop of YHWH’s spectacular and unanticipated creative artistry. Yet his sovereign creative mastery somehow honors the unpromising clay which he now chooses to shape, remold, and name after himself.

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an invitation’s irony: Isaiah 41

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , on August 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The first words of Isaiah’s forty-first chapter convene the nations in the interest of justice.

Rarely in the book called Isaiah is it more difficult to ascertain precisely the tone of the invitation and the nuance of the Hebrew word משׁפט, usually rendered ‘justice’ but sometimes ‘judgement’. I underscore the pertinent phrase:

Listen to me in silence, O coastlands; let the peoples renew their strength; let them approach, then let them speak; let us together draw near for judgment.

Isaiah 41.1 (NRSV)

Two features of this summons link it to similar passages involving Israel/Jacob/Judah rather than, as here, ‘coastlands’ and ‘nations’. The first, weaker than its successor, is the faint similarity between ‘let us together draw near for judgement’ and the more famous expression that precedes YHWH’s sentencing of Judah and Jerusalem in the book’s introductory chapter:

Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

Isaiah 1:18 (NRSV)

Although the contexts of the two passages are strikingly similar and the language somewhat so, it must be admitted that the key verbs are not the same. It is possible the similarity is merely superficial. However, in the light of the Isaianic tradition’s irrepressible desire to play and to tease with intertextual allusion, it is likely not. Probably, the convocation of Judah for a deliberative moment of sentencing is here echoed by the summons of the nations for a somewhat different objective that nevertheless pivots on the matter of justice.

Listen to me in silence, O coastlands; let the peoples renew their strength; let them approach, then let them speak; let us together draw near for judgment.

Isaiah 41.1 (NRSV)

This possibility is arguably corroborated by a second ironic feature of this passage, this one also a matter of intertextual allusiveness but now with a textual partner that lies close at hand.

Once again, the matter involves an Isaiah text that can only be considered as famous:

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.

 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.

 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:28-31 (NRSV)

We must remind ourselves that these words occurs immediately prior to Isaiah 41. A certain culminating conclusiveness and of course modern versification mark them off from our text, but that is all.

In 40.28-31, those sons and daughters of Jacob/Israel who complain that their way has been lost to the eyes of an inattentive YHWH are reassured that if they wait on YHWH, they shall renew their strength. The Hebrew expression that generates the italicized English just above is יחליפו כח. This is precisely the expression that is used of the ‘coastlands’ and by contextual implication also ‘the peoples’ in 41.1 In 40.31, the expression is taken to be imperfective with a future reference; that is, it describes. In 41.1, the same words are rightly understood as jussive, a detail I shall attempt to illuminate by once again quoting, italicizing, and inserting the corresponding Hebrew text.

Listen to me in silence, O coastlands; let the peoples renew their strength (יחליפו כח); let them approach, then let them speak; let us together draw near for judgment.

Isaiah 41:1 (NRSV)

Such subtle ironies must certainly represent more than wordplay carried out for a purely aesthetic purpose. I am increasingly persuaded that the Isaianic voice is drawing the nations into the plight and the prospects of Israel/Jacob itself. YHWH’s purposes in redeeming his Israel increasingly seem include the nations without ever blurring the distinctions between the two nor across the ranges of the latter.

It seems every more likely that in summoning the nations for judgement, his intentions are—as with Israel—not lethal but rather restorative.

When you receive an invitation like this one with all its Isaianic tonalities, you are never sure exactly what for.

But, peace. The news is good.

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