Canter Bridge

The book called Isaiah weaves motifs of leaning and of trusting throughout the disparate textures of its many pages, though seldom more eloquently than in the first verses of chapter 31.

Leaning is of course a metaphorical representation of reliance upon a defender or savior, so it pairs naturally with the non-metaphorical concept of trusting. Two of the most commonly deployed Hebrew verbs for this are שׁען for leaning and בטח for trusting.

They occur here in uneasy juxtaposition with two actions that are understood to represent their opposite: looking (to the Holy one of Israel, שׁעה) and seeking or consulting (YHWH, דרשׁ). This touch of parallelism is made more elegant by the assonance of שׁען (sha-AN, to lean) and שׁעה (sha-AH, to look, usually intently).

Alas for those who go down to Egypt for help and who rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the LORD!

Isaiah 31:1 (NRSV)

The point is not a mere nicety about where loyalties ought to lie. It is pragmatic, for the Egyptians are considered unreliable protectors for Judah as it faces threats from other quarters. Two verses later, we encounter Egypt’s alleged deficiency for those who would depend on that nation.

The Egyptians are human, and not God; their horses are flesh, and not spirit. When the LORD stretches out his hand, the helper will stumble, and the one helped will fall, and they will all perish together.

Isaiah 31:3 (NRSV)

Leaning upon unreliable strength simply expands the tragedy, Judah is urged to comprehend.

If Judah’s rebellion manifests in the form of wrong activity, it also includes sins of omission. By choosing Egypt as her defender, Judah fails to look intently at God and to seek or consult YHWH. Reliance is portrayed as a zero-sum game. Choose your object, but you cannot choose both.

The stupidity that is embedded in Judah’s conduct—for Isaiah, in rebellion against YHWH there is always stupidity—is that Egypt in spite of her strength and numbers is simply not that impressive. The Egyptians are ‘human and not God’, Egypt is ‘flesh and not spirit’.

Behind every syllable of these declarations lies the Isaianic insistence that YHWH-granted powers of perception are the only reliable methodology for penetrating and living within reality. All else is fantasy of the disfiguring and murderous kind.

It appears that chapter 29 emerges from the white heat of Jerusalem’s crisis under Assyrian pressure.

It is a swirling, chaotic, difficult piece of prophetic literature and therefore a challenge to any interpreter. Among its most confusing verses figure these:

The vision of all this has become for you like the words of a sealed document. If it is given to those who can read, with the command, ‘Read this,’ they say, ‘We cannot, for it is sealed.’ And if it is given to those who cannot read, saying, ‘Read this,’ they say, ‘We cannot read.’ 

The Lord said: Because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote; so I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.  

Ha! You who hide a plan too deep for the LORD, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, ‘Who sees us? Who knows us?’

You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay? Shall the thing made say of its maker, ‘He did not make me’; or the thing formed say of the one who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?

Isaiah 29:11-16 (NRSV)

If the chapter is one coherent unit, then ‘the vision of all this’ which introduces this passage likely refers back to the preceding woe pronounced over ‘Ariel’ or Lion of God. There, YHWH appears to encamp against Jerusalem, the likely referent of ‘Ariel’. Is it possible that the prophet uses ‘Lion of God’ sarcastically, alluding to the self-elevating nickname with which Jerusalemites in better times might have flattered themselves? In the verses just prior to our passage, YHWH’s activity vis-à-vis Ariel is described as follows.

Stupefy yourselves and be in a stupor, blind yourselves and be blind! Be drunk, but not from wine; stagger, but not from strong drink!

For the LORD has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep; he has closed your eyes, you prophets, and covered your heads, you seers.

Isaiah 29:9-10 NRSV

It appears that, amid what Jerusalem’s anxiety-ridden citizens experience as impending doom, the prophet is doing battle with what might be considered a religion of remoteness. Apparently rejected as a source of intelligence regarding what YHWH is actually up to, the prophet critiques religion that is learned by rote and reliant upon esoterica.

Both approaches and perhaps their blending into anxious religious activism seems to distance Isaiah’s population from the message he purports to bring to their moment from YHWH himself.

One of YHWH’s quoted lines traffics in the language of the Davidic child-king called ‘Wonderful Counselor’ (פלא יועץ) at Isaiah 9.8.

(S)o I will again do amazing things (להפליא) with this people, shocking and amazing (הפלא ופלא). The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.”

Isaiah 29:14 (NRSV)

We can identify several features of this text that are clear.

First, the prophet has been rejected as a spokesperson for YHWH and for pertinent reality.

Second, YHWH has not finally rejected Zion in its current depravity. But his future engagement will take the form of unexpected and novel moves that cannot be captured or comprehended by Zion’s ordinary and official stewards of truth.

Third, if the link back to the child ruler of chapter 9 is more than casually lexical—in my opinion it must go far deeper than that—then ‘Ariel’s’ rescue will depend upon attentiveness to that development.

What the book of Isaiah presents here—chaotically, somewhat impenetrably—is not a moment for old wineskins, as another prophet might have put things. Somehow, Ariel’s young lions must begin again.

The culminating oracle of blessing pronounced over Egypt now widens to include what might have seemed to a Judahite hearer or reader of Isaiah the three most important nations in the world. The oracle is in this sense a global vision.

On that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage.’

Isaiah 19:24-25 (NRSV)

This simple declaration culminates the carefully constructed crescendo of the five sequenced oracles not only because of it stunning reconstruction of Israel’s place in the world. It also claims first-among-equals status as the chain’s supreme statement because for the first time YHWH speaks in his own voice, without a prophet’s mediation.

Clearly, this oracle—manifestly one of five—towers over and completes the work of its peers.

Interpretive difficulties cling to to details. First, what is the antecedent of ברכה, a blessing? The referenced blessing might be Israel herself. Or it might be the composite trio of the three named peoples.

Second, how should we understand the antecedent to the relative particle אשׁר and indeed to the pronominal suffix of ברכו? The latter feature is omitted in the rendering of NRSV that I’ve quoted above, probably wisely.

Reconstructions of sense and syntax abound and the matter is indeed complex. With ברכו, we may indeed have a slightly corrupt text.

With regard to the first question, it must be noted that the Hebrew relative particle אשׁר is undeclinable. Morphology therefore gives us no clues as to its antecedent. The full interpretive burden falls upon syntax.

NRSV’s representation of אשׁר with ‘whom’ indicates that it understands ‘whom the Lord has blessed’ to refer back to Israel, Egypt, and Assyria. Although this trio of nations is not the nearest possible antecedent to אשׁר, they are picked up again in the spoken blessing that the clause introduces. This is a very viable understanding and quite possibly reflects the intentionality woven into the Hebrew text.

A second and equally viable understanding of the matter sees the antecedent of אשׁר not in personal terms that can be represented in English by ‘whom’ but rather as an impersonal antecedent best glossed by ‘which’. In this case, the antecedent is the land. This reading has the benefit of linking אשׁר to its nearest antecedent in the flow of the sentence. As well, it evokes a land that now receives the blessing of its human denizens’ reconciliation. It is not difficult to hear Abrahamic resonances in this reading, to say nothing of potential harmonies with the ironic biblical motif of the land resting after its iniquitous possessors have finally been expelled.

With regard to the remaining details, the 3rd person singular pronominal suffix of ברכו in the Massoretic text, a reconstruction of the text may be in order. I favor an explanation that considers the possibility that the final waw of ברכו is extraneous and results from confusion with one or more of the initial letters of the following יהוה. The Septuagint seems to have arrived at a similar understanding, if indeed its Vorlage corresponds to our MT.

Laying these matters to rest for the moment, YHWH’s concluding declaration is a radical return to Abrahamic convictions, where YHWH’s purpose through Israel is blessing for the nations rather than the mere elevation of Israel’s prospects.

Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage.

YHWH’s direct discourse sustains the claim that Israel is now ‘third in the land’ by placing her in exactly that position after Egypt and Assyria. Yet her dignity in that place resonates as loudly as ever.

Now, however, Israel is seen as one component of a vastly broader commitment on YHWH’s part. His determination, according to the Isaianic affirmation so gorgeously unfurled in this sequence of blessing oracles, it to bless, to fashion, and to preserve. The objects of those divine activities are plural rather than singular. Arguably these objects represent all the peoples of the earth, humanity itself. Indisputably, YHWH’s intentions bend towards the three most important nations in Israel’s world.

The careful reader hears in the background the second affirmation of the Seraphims’ song in the book’s generative vision (chapter 6):

The fulness of the earth is his glory!

One detects as well reverberations of the Vision of Visions in chapter 2, where the reader is invited to imagine a world in which swords have been beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks. Nations, reconciled there in Zion as they become students of YHWH’s instruction, indeed become a blessing in the land rather than the soil’s most stubborn curse.

In a book as saturated with the concept of justice as this book called Isaiah, it is challenging to reconcile that commitment with a harsh passage like this:

On that day the LORD with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea.

Isaiah 27:1 (NRSV)

It is essential at the first to recognize that this oracle occurs just before two more extended declarations of Jacob/Israel’s restoration, the first of which is a resounding reversal of an earlier parable of the vineyard that was painted in much darker hues. Arguably, the verse before us clears a space for those two agriculturally-imaged visions that await their moment.

Additionally, two considerations may at least place us in a position to engage verse 1 of this twenty-seventh chapter with a measure of methodological sympathy.

The first is the Isaianic conviction that enmity with YHWH’s purpose is both real and enduring. In a world less intoxicated by comfortable relativism than our own, this hardly requires expression. But in our day, it can be a truth we glimpse only dimly and from a distance. Nonetheless, the persistence of iniquitous rebellion is a conviction of deep rooting in the text before us. Little sympathy is expended on YHWH’s most insistent foes, even when there are muscular mercies available to those who find it in themselves to ‘return’ to YHWH and to his governance.

Second, judgement in Isaiah and even the wider biblical purview is not in my view primarily punitive. It is rather a necessary precursor to shalom, wherever this breaks out or is installed or becomes the object of divine or human cultivation. Judgement is itself a space-clearing exercise, taken in hand when those who resist YHWH’s determination to create communities of shalom become so recalcitrant that the project requires their removal.

This, in the context of Isaiah’s vision, is true of Leviathan, the fleeing and twisting serpent.

Leviathan stands in for all those nations, all those people, who will not have Jacob’s restoration except over their dead bodies, as the dismal expression runs.

Then does YHWH unsheath his ‘cruel and great and strong sword’. Then does YHWH of Armies—YHWH Seba’ot—gird on the full armor of that title.

Tragically, Leviathan will have it no other way. And there is a vineyard that needs tending.

The fourth of the carefully sequenced oracles regarding the blessing of Egypt is the shortest. Yet in terms of the breadth of vision that these visions unfold before the readers eyes, it is the widest to date. This observation hinges on this verse’s inclusion of the other threatening empire that it now brings into the embrace of YHWH’s purposeful blessing: Assyria, the loathed and the feared.

Indeed, the brevity masks remarkable poignance, the illumination of which will require some historical comment.

On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.

Isaiah 19:23 (NRSV)

Egypt and Assyria serve in the Israelite imagination as the opposing poles of imperial menace. When one casts its menacing shadow over the Levant, the other becomes a sought-after ally in an attempt to manage the moment’s Realpolitik. As human beings travel, though not as birds fly, Egypt and Assyria stand spatially at those same two poles. Mobility imitates politics, or the reverse.

Indeed, more must be said to that point. This diminutive oracle punches above its weight via an unstated assumption: A highway from Egypt to Assyria and the promised passage of one empire’s emissaries to the other will necessary lead such travelers through Israel. Judah will by no means be a bystander to the imagined circumstances.

Seen in this light, the oracle contains stirring assumptions about a pacified political and natural geography. Only a world at peace could see the kinds of transit in both directions that is in view.

So far, the language of verse 23 envisages political, commercial, and cultural exchange. The to-ing-and-fro-ing of these hitherto adversarial empires conjures a new world, one never glimpsed by human eyes, one that imitates the counter-experiential promise in the Vision of Visions (chapter 2) that nations shall flow like a river up hill to Zion, in that vision the world’s highest promontory.

Yet there is more, and it is stated in the syllables of classic Isaianic paradox.

…and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.

The clause just quoted represents an ambiguous Hebrew expression, one that is once again placed in a kind of emphatic position as the oracle’s summary declaration.

ועבדו מצרים את־אשׁור

In the normal discourse of imperial politics, this declaration would most naturally be read as a description of Egypt’s subjugation to Assyria. That is to say, the verb עבד would denote the Egyptians’ service of Assyria as the latter empire’s underlings. The particle את would serve as the direct object marker of the verb. The entire expression would then be represented in English as ‘…and the Egyptians will serve Assyria’.

Yet in context two transformations of this ‘obvious’ reading are almost certainly placed before the reader’s eyes. First עבד seems to intend religious service rather than political subservience, this in keeping with the cultic altar and pillar as well as the sacrifice and burnt offering that Egyptians find themselves rendering to YHWH in the oracle just prior to this one.

Second, את appears to be placed quite ironically to represent not the familiar direct object marker but rather the preposition that means ‘with’. The two words are homographs and were presumably also homophones. The direct object marker occurs far more frequently than the preposition, though both are standard components of biblical Hebrew discourse.

Here the meaning must be, as most modern translations suggest, that…

…the Egyptians will worship (YHWH) alongside Assyria.

The forty syllables of this fourth and almost miniature oracle of blessing have stood the known world on its head. Much like the fourth chapter’s Vision of Visions, they portray an impossible world, one that is almost inconceivable to the Ancient Near Eastern mind, as to ours.

The nations have experienced a complete religious transformation; the word ‘conversion’ falls far short of what is here described. Additionally, their relationships with each other have moved from enmity and competition to cooperative interaction of the most existentially profound kind.

Although the vocabulary and imagery could hardly be more different that those of the Vision of Visions, the nations have indeed streamed to and now through Zion with YHWH’s instruction and the worship of him as features of those peoples’ engagement with Jacob’s God. Swords have indeed been beaten into plowshares, spears become pruning hooks.

It is all quite impossible. Unless, the prophet urges his readers to conjecture, it is not.

When the reader arrives at the third of five oracles, all of which develop the image of an Egypt that has somehow found its way to service of the God of Jacob, the evocative ambiguity of the first two visions has faded almost to the vanishing point.

On that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the center of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the LORD at its border. It will be a sign and a witness to the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt; when they cry to the LORD because of oppressors, he will send them a savior, and will defend and deliver them. The LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians; and the Egyptians will know the LORD on that day, and will worship with sacrifice and burnt offering, and they will make vows to the LORD and perform them. The LORD will strike Egypt, striking and healing; they will return to the LORD, and he will listen to their supplications and heal them.

Isaiah 19:19–22 (NRSV)

One might read the first two of the four verses as standard, quasi-imperial boasting on Israel’s part. The liturgy in such a reading is carried out by Judahite occupiers cum conquerors of Egypt. If we had no context, it might even be ventured that such an interpretation fits more naturally than any other. The unspecified ‘they’ and ‘them’ of the latter clauses would need to be read as Hebrew ancestors in a reprise of the Exodus events. The latter is the only detail in such a reading that might stretch credulity if indeed we are dealing with occupiers.

On that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the center of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the LORD at its border. It will be a sign and a witness to the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt; when they cry to the LORD because of oppressors, he will send them a savior, and will defend and deliver them.

Isaiah 19:19–20 (NRSV)

But the final verses of this vignette rule out such a reading. Here the language of mutual knowledge between YHWH and the Egyptians clearly identifies the worshipers as both authentic rather than forced and as Egyptian rather than Judahite. So does the transparent evocation of Egyptians worshiping YHWH ‘with sacrifice and burnt offering’ and their taking and performance of vows to YHWH.

We are now far clear of what I have argued is the studied ambiguity of the first two oracles of Egyptian’s turning. We have even moved beyond the vestigial allusiveness of this oracle’s first two verses into a spectacular scene of Egyptian worship of YHWH that can scarcely be imagined from the perspective of Jewish nationalism.

Yet it is the final verse that anchors this extraordinary oracle in the established rhythm of striking and healing that is a signature feature of the Isaianic burden.

The LORD will strike Egypt, striking and healing; they will return to the LORD, and he will listen to their supplications and heal them.

Isaiah 19:22 (NRSV)

By any measure that makes the biblical canon its point of departure, this is a breathtaking declaration. It alludes, in my view, to a pattern inherent in the relationship of YHWH vis-à-vis Israel that is apparent from as early as the book’s introductory chapter. There, no thought of Egypt or any other alien nation is in view. In the text of that first chapter and in its context, YHWH’s enmity is directed against Jerusalem and Judah and only against them. An extended quote is necessary.

How the faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her— but now murderers!

Your silver has become dross, your wine is mixed with water.

Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them.  

Therefore says the Sovereign, the LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: Ah, I will pour out my wrath on my enemies, and avenge myself on my foes!

I will turn my hand against you; I will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy.

And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.

Isaiah 1:21-26 (NRSV)

This remarkable feature of an introductory chapter that establishes multiple themes that will be developed throughout the sixty-five ensuing chapters presents the same kind of redemptive ‘striking’ that we glimpse in Isaiah chapter 19. YHWH executes his wrath and vengeance on his own people, understood to be Judah and Jerusalem. Yet when he turns his hand against them, the result is not lethal but rather remedial. They are not exterminated. Instead, they are purified. The city is restored to the righteousness and faithfulness that were her purported beginning.

The third restoration oracle of Isaiah 19 deploys this same divine penchant to Egypt’s fate. There, YHWH’s enmity strikes in order to heal. The process is accompanied by promised divine attentiveness to the cry of Egyptian hearts. The oracle’s brief and summary declaration is simple but hardly one that is easily to be anticipated of the nation whose erstwhile Pharaonic ruler is recalled in Jewish homes and hearts as the iconic oppressor of the people’s mothers and fathers:

… and he will listen to their supplications and heal them.

The Isaianic vision of Egypt’s turning in the two remaining blessing oracles will broaden still further the fate of Israel’s proverbial oppressor on the Nile. It will embrace even Assyria, that other great evil empire, in its redemptive grasp. Yet it would be a shame to rush on too quickly from what the prophet has invited us to imagine while Egypt still holds our gaze.

Chapters 24 to 27 of the book called Isaiah seems to gather up the motifs of the preceding oracles against the nations and splash them in broad brush across a canvas of unrestrained and predictive exhilaration.

A passage in chapter 25 serves up a parade example of a broadly global reconciliation. It is Zion-centric but not ethnocentric. It is cosmic without being universal. An extended quote will introduce us:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

 And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.

 Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.

 It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

 For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain.

Isaiah 25:6–10 (NRSV)

I have italicized the recurring locative expression ‘on this mountain’ in order to underscore the Zion-centrism of this vision. Running counter to the intense localism of the passage is the inclusion of ‘all peoples’, ‘all nations’, ‘all faces’, and ‘all the earth’. Curiously it is the disgrace of his people that the text promises YHWH will eradicate from all the earth. Yet the beneficiaries of this cleansing seem to include all who are invited to this—shall we say eschatological?—feast.

Indeed, the profound inclusiveness of the vision seems likely to integrate those non-Hebraic nations into the moving first-person-plural declarations of the redeemed. Again, I italicize:

It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

Isaiah 25:9 (NRSV)

Arguably, this is already so in the near context. Then if we read this passage as one of several adumbrations of the Vision of Visions in chapter four, with its pilgrim nations streaming eagerly to Zion, then the presence of foreign dialects amid the grateful crowds on Zion’s holy hill in chapter 25 seems all the more likely.

In that same spirit of intertextual attentiveness, the reader ought not to miss the deeply significant summary statement in verse 10:

For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain.

Isaiah 25:10 (NRSV)

It appears that this explanatory declaration picks up and re-purposes two features of preceding texts. First, the יד יהוה (hand of the Lord) has been a recurring element of the savage enmity between YHWH and the nations in the preceding passages. It has been raised against delinquent Jacob (1.25, 5.25 2x; 9.12, 17, and 21; 10.4) as well as Egypt (11.15, 19.16), Assyria and the nations (14.26-27), and a diverse knot of nations (23.11). The repetition of YHWH’s hand raised, extended, and waved against peoples and nations recurs with sufficient regularity to justify its recognition as a prominent motif.

In 10.25 the importance of the יד יהוה is intensified by its location in a powerfully summarizing statement, YHWH’s hand is a feature of the landscape, yet it is not raised. It rests.

This brings us to the second feature of preceding texts that appears here in re-purposed fashion: the verb נוח, to rest. Although it is enticing to consider the three-fold occurrence of this verb in the redemptive abundance of chapter 14 (1, 3, and 7), it seems to me that the critical antecedent to this feature of our chapter occurs near the outset of the quasi-Davidic portrait of chapter 11. The reader will recall that chapter 11 shares with chapter 25 a declarative summary that is at the same time Mount-Zion-centric and a portrait of redeemed nations:

They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Isaiah 11:9-10 (NRSV)

A responsible reading of chapter 25 will not overlook the antecedents I am attempting to identify, although of course my reconstruction of the relationships among them cannot escape a measure of conjecture.

It appears that this text in Isaiah chapter 25 echoes many others in the book when it conjures a future where YHWH’s hand—long raised in enmity against his Israel and his nations—has been lowered and now rests upon the freshly inhabited space of an enlarged Zion. There the nations find their longings fulfilled. There they feast alongside Israel’s scrubbed-up sons and daughters, together not as one ethnos but rather as banqueting guests of a suddenly welcoming Host.

The prophetic voice that resonates throughout the book called Isaiah urges its readers to consider that what they have known is not all that shall be. He invites them to contemplate a moment when YHWH’s hand has finally been lowered. In that day, as the prophet has introduced such novelties over and over again, humanity’s long wait has ended. The nations rejoice.