Canter Bridge

The book called Isaiah accustoms its reader to blistering oracles against peoples that suddenly turn towards redemption when it seems all hope is lost. But that rough formal parallel is nearly all that Isaiah 57’s opening oracle offers us for orientation.

This is no oracle against some comfortably remote foreign nation. Rather, 57.1-14 (reading with the tradition embedded in the Masoretic Text; RSV initiates a new section at verse 15) appears to address Judah immersed in aberrant rites via accusations that have seldom been hurled at her in these pages.

Probably, we should also read 56.10-12 with the section before us, once again receiving a helpful clue from the Masoretic Text’s reading tradition. That at least provides a suspect for the crimes in question: ‘his sentinels’ (v. 10), perhaps with NRSV ‘Israel’s sentinels’; and ‘shepherds’ (v. 11), though in verse 11 one may be dealing with a corrupt text. In any case, the absence of explicit naming of the perpetrator(s) leaves one assuming that Israel/Judah, its majority, or its leaders stand accused. And not only accused, but reduced to animal status as ‘wild animals’ (v. 9) and ‘dogs’ (vv. 10-11).

It makes for dreary reading, particularly as this text follows immediately upon a stirring welcome of pious gentiles into the holiest places. Yet two details require us to reckon with a faithful minority even among abject Israel/Judah.

First, 57.1 introduces a righteous person, in his singularity so outnumbered by malefactors that his death is a relief. The recourse of translations like the NRSV to the plural for the sake of gender neutrality masks his or her lonely breed of righteousness, so reminiscent of the blessed person of Psalm 1. He is, indeed, one amidst the many.

Then at the oracle’s conclusion—again, following the reading tradition embedded in the Masorete’s labors—we read again of a blessing expressed in the singular, though surely in addition a representative or corporate singular, notwithstanding any attempt to stipulate that the righteous are few.

But whoever takes refuge in me shall possess the land and inherit my holy mountain. It shall be said, ‘Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people’s way.’

Isaiah 57.13b-14 (NRSV)

Curiously, even this outlier of a jeremiad frames minority blessing in the language of pilgrimage to Zion, or at least in the vocabulary of the outcome of such journeying. And it builds upon the familiar motif of doomed religious activism vis-à-vis the enduring blessing of Yahwistic quietism amid crisis. It is the one who ‘takes refuge in’ YHWH who will inherit his holy mountain. The well-known Isaianic verbal reiteration (סלו־סלו / ‘Build up, build up…’) further ties this strange oracle into its familiar context.

So does judgement cast upon a people whose redemption by this point we have been trained to anticipate prepare us for a dismal set piece of the final of the book’s three sections.

So does YHWH’s mountain endure as the quintessential representation of the destiny of the redeemed, however scarce and storm-tossed they be or however massive their exuberant surge to glory.