Canter Bridge

When the fifty-four chapter of the book called Isaiah addresses the exiled Jewish community as ‘Barren One’, it initiates one of the most stunning deployments of ironic negatives that Scripture and literature have known.

‘Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married,’ says the Lord. ‘Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities. (Isaiah 54:1–3 ESV)

After a vocative address (‘O barren one’) that defines the little community of un-belongers in terms of the experience of a woman that they have not known, the next two negative clauses drive further rhetorical nails into this coffin of deprivation. You who did not bear…. you who have not been in labor. (more…)

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One of the many paradoxes that the book called Isaiah places before us lies almost hidden in the binary choice that the prophet declares in the book’s eight chapter.

And when they say to you, ‘Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,’ should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. (Isaiah 8:19–20 ESV)

It might seem, even to a reader who is committed to the view of things that the biblical text advances, that the choice here is that of living, breathing, even activist religion over against a reliable deposit. That is, between a religiosity that is brewing with live mischief although patently opposed to YHWH’s way over against an orthodox faith that is solid, if a little inert.

It might seem to others, perhaps less inclined to look with favor on ‘what the Bible teaches’, that the most advantageous choice is not exactly an easy one to discern.

Yet the prophet’s language here, upon slow reading and closer inspection, shows that the field of play is not quite so ambiguous. The choice, when things are seen as they are, is not a difficult one to decide.

Here is paradox, indeed, but not much ambiguity.

In fact, the prophet fills the left column of his legal pad with all things deathly, the right with all things alive.

The chirping and muttering of the necromancers, the presumed rumination of the mediums, are for all their apparent vocal dexterity nothing more than death dressed up in the ‘got-your-attention-didn’t-I’ robes of death itself. Isaiah considers the consultation of them a sit-down visit with darkness and decay. People who engage in such doomed conversation ‘have no dawn’.

On the other side of the page, the ‘life’ column fills up with ‘God’, with ‘the living’ themselves, and then—this is where we might stray off course when tracking the prophet’s logic—with ‘the law and the testimony’ and with ‘this word’.

Let’s suppose for the moment that ‘the law and the testimony’ and ‘this word’ roughly abbreviate the accumulated declarations of the prophet in YHWH’s name. More than this is likely insinuated, but we can do without that complication for now.

The prophet aligns these written-down words not with stultifying tradition or a ‘dead letter’, but rather with a God who is very much alive and—the detail is critical—aligned with and active among ‘the living’ who surround the prophet and who are in this terrifying moment scared a little witless.

In the prophet’s view, YHWH has spoken—through him and others—an accumulated deposit of reality that can be declared in street or temple but in awful moments of imminent doom like this one can be written down, consulted, whispered aloud, and treasured.

Far from being inert, we are to understand this ‘law (better, ‘instruction’) and testimony’ as life-containing and life-giving. If other sources of supposed counsel require the dead and lead only to death, this ‘instruction and testimony’ hints at new growth, at fresh eruptions of life, at possibilities still unknown. Though quiet and even silent in this moment, this little reservoir of truth holds the promise of shouting, of dance, of song when the night has faltered and the dawn has come.

If this is how things really are, then why should a people consult the dead on behalf of the living?

Just so.

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If there is a passage in the entirety of Isaiah’s massive volume that more precisely captures the book’s trajectory than does its fourth chapter, it is hard to imagine what that passage would be.

In that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel. And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem, when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning. Then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day, and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory there will be a canopy. There will be a booth for shade by day from the heat, and for a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain. (Isaiah 4:2–6 ESV)

The brief oracle reckons with Zion’s filth and Jerusalem’s bloodstains without allowing this scrutiny to eclipse the beauty and glory that shall be hers.

The key to understanding how this paradox can stand occurs at the core of this brief prophetic declaration. Rarely does a future perfect deliver itself of more consequence:

… when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning.

This is where the drama of collapse and rebirth becomes white hot. YHWH’s great expectations for his people are a future upon which he will insist with the most redemptive zeal. Yet Zion will not achieve her final destiny without the burning cleansing that is YHWH’s judgement. There’s no other way to get there from here.

The Hebrew משפט requires in each instance that the English translator choose ‘justice’ or ‘judgement’. The nuance is important each time the decision has to be made, and to some extend this linguistic necessity veils a most crucial fact: Zion will become full of justice only when she has survived the fulness of judgement.

For the student of this massive scroll, it can almost be said that chapter four says everything that must be said. The rest is commentary.

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The early verses of Isaiah’s fiftieth chapter are pregnant with enigma and resistant to simple theodicy.

Thus says the Lord: ‘Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce, with which I sent her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away. Why, when I came, was there no man; why, when I called, was there no one to answer? Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, by my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert; their fish stink for lack of water and die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness and make sackcloth their covering.’ (Isaiah 50:1–3 ESV)

On the one hand, the passage contains elements of that familiar prophetic explanation of national calamity. ‘It was for your iniquities that you were sold, and for your transgressions that your mother was sent away.’ (more…)

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