Canter Bridge

YHWH’s redemption overwhelms human failure. Such is the nature of grace, not so much to take mercy’s captives by violence as to call them into something far better than they are. The history of theology has words for grace like this, ‘irresistible’ being one of them that is not universally endorsed but nonetheless makes the point of grace’s strong persuasion.

The beautiful vignette at the hinge-point of the long book of Isaiah sketches the unlikely drawing of a highway through the foreboding desert. It is a path that will carry YHWH’s band of redeemed captives from Babylon back to their homes. Around it, the parched ground blossoms as threat cedes its grip and a future moves in.

A tiny turn of phrase touches upon human vulnerability of the kind that is impossible to admire, now finding itself taken into the embrace of YHWH’s mercy.

A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. (Isaiah 35:8 NRSV)

Fools go astray by nature. They are clueless when passive, and rebellious when active. There is no good in a fool’s way, only dead ends and slow-motion train wrecks both large and small.

Yet in this snapshot of redemption the text allows that upon this highway to YHWH’s welcoming future not even fools shall go astray.

Grace persuasive, grace protective, grace that leads the clueless all the way home.

The prophet Isaiah did not invent the language of seeking God, but he speaks it as his native tongue.

The whole business so quickly degrades into meaningless platitudes that we must hurry along to some further inspection. Oddly, an oracle against Egypt may be the best place to begin.

Egypt shall be drained of spirit, And I will confound its plans; So they will consult the idols and the shades And the ghosts and the familiar spirits. (Isaiah 19:3 JPS)

English translations typically settle on the verb to consult or to inquire of when rendering the Hebrew word דרש. These are adequate translations because they capture the reality that the subject is in need of knowledge that he or she expects to come by revelation from some external religious source. Consult and inquire of do just fine up to that point.

Yet in Isaiah’s discourse, there is an assertive moving after, a thrusting towards, even a desperate neediness that is missing in such English translation. Oddly, the verb to seek, which in English-language religious circles so perversely devolves into the esoteric and the contemplative, seems better here. It connotes that something hidden is much desired and that it will take some energy on behalf of the ones who need it if they are in fact to lay hands on it.

If that’s the case that calls for a certain English translation, then what can we say of Isaiah’s deployment of the expression?

Before we come to the kind of seeking and searching that the prophet commends, we should look at the ironic ways in which seeking revelation is in fact an exercise in futility. The Isaian discourse sees seeking after spiritual sources other than Yahweh to reflect a confusion, even a moral stupidity, that is the opposite of true wisdom. In Isaiah 19.3, which is representative of this diagnosis, consulting with or seeking the idols and the shades, and the ghosts and the familiar spirits happens because the Egyptians have become drained in spirit and because Yahweh has confound(ed) their plans. The wise, the stable, the reliable don’t do this kind of thing. Confused people, like doomed Egyptians for example, seek religious revelation from unreliable sources.

This is not a one-off satire. The book of Isaiah sustains its critique of this particular kind of lostness. Alas, it is not just benighted Egyptians who fall prey to such asinine folly (see, importantly, Isaiah 1.3). Israel/Judah finds the prophet’s light shone on their behavior as well:

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? (Isaiah 8:19 ESV; the first two examples render דרש, the third makes the verb explicit in English though it is only implied in Hebrew.)

The people did not turn to him who struck them, nor inquire of the Lord of hosts. (Isaiah 9:13 ESV)

Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and 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 ESV)

Seeking in the wrong place is a contemnible failure to engage reality. Failure to seek YHWH probably comes to the same thing; that is, in Isaiah it likely denotes not a failure to seek at all, but rather a seeking after other sources rather than the single true and reliable one.

If this rather long discussion of failure to seek well serves as an adequate introduction to Isaiah’s use of the dialect of searching and seeking, let’s move on to what it means for this prophet to seek well. Unsurprisingly, the answer is both nuanced and variegated. We are after all, reading the book of Isaiah, where things are only occasionally complicated but nearly always complex.

First, we discover that seeking justice is laid before us as an arguable synonym for seeking YHWH.

When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. (Isaiah 1:15–17 ESV)

(T)hen a throne will be established in steadfast love, and on it will sit in faithfulness in the tent of David one who judges and seeks justice and is swift to do righteousness. (Isaiah 16:5 ESV)

Indeed, there appears explicit recognition that one can fake seeking YHWH, going through the religious motions without giving a damn about YHWH’s passion for justice. We ought not overlook that Isaiah 58.2 plays sarcastically upon two venerable religious activities—seeking YHWH and delighting in his ways—that are great when they come in the context of lives aligned with YHWH’s broader purposes but an abomination when they stand on their own as superficial piety that has run tragically amok.

Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. (Isaiah 58:2 ESV)

Astonishingly, Isaiah does not relegate properly seeking to the esoteric margins of piety, but rather holds it at the core of life’s defining convictions. It can be argued that Isaiah would contend that seeking justice (משפט) is nearly the same as seeking YHWH. One’s search may begin in the barrio or at the court where the privileged line up against the defenseless poor or in the temple at morning prayers, but all of these for Isaiah are cut from the same cloth. The reduction of any of it to simple religious performance makes YHWH disgusted, weary, and sick.

Finally, when we find our way among the Isaianic texts that depict proper seeking, we find that this searching can be mediated. We discover also that divine grace seems to catch up with and then finally to outrun the human activity of seeking YHWH.

With regard to mediation, the ‘book of YHWH’ appears in a way that suggests that seeking is at the very least multi-faceted. Apparently, one can read or listen one’s way to YHWH’s revelation.

Seek and read from the book of the Lord: Not one of these shall be missing; none shall be without her mate. For the mouth of the Lord has commanded, and his Spirit has gathered them. (Isaiah 34:16 ESV)

And then, perhaps unsurprisingly as one becomes intimate with the dynamics of mercy’s acceleration that tease the reader who dares to track with this book’s long march forward, we find that Israel/Judah and perhaps even responsive gentile nations not only seek but become sought by YHWH.

In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious. (Isaiah 11:10 ESV)

Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near. (Isaiah 55:6 ESV)

And they shall be called The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord; and you shall be called Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken. (Isaiah 62:12 ESV)

I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, “Here I am, here I am,” to a nation that was not called by my name. (Isaiah 65:1 ESV)

Sharon shall become a pasture for flocks, and the Valley of Achor a place for herds to lie down, for my people who have sought me. (Isaiah 65:10 ESV)

It seems then that seeking YHWH, for this prophet, means caring about and thrusting after his purposes in a way that excludes alternative revelation and embraces YHWH’s care for the community’s well being, especially for those who become cast off in the exercise of influence and power. It is an activity that associates easily with community crisis, though probably not exclusively. In the effort, one discovers paradoxically that to seek YHWH is also to discover that YHWH ‘seeks back’ in a way that relativizes Judah’s and our efforts to discover and live in his purpose.

‘Who ya’ gonna’ call?’ is a question that might have sounded familiar to those who walked within hearing range of this prophet. Isaiah might even have allowed himself to be numbered among the Ghostbusters when it came to debunking the range of futile options on offer when Israel/Judah found herself in need of rescue and revelation.

The question remains pertinent these centuries hence.

Who ya’ gonna call?

The big swing in the book of Isaiah, the big hinge upon which it turns, is the movement between judgement and mercy.

More particularly, the book delivers to the reader this big swing—if I may continue to call it that—as a function of YHWH’s very personal striking and then his having mercy upon Israel/Judah. The language becomes proximate, then intimate, then parental.

A glimpse comes in chapter 60’s effusive anticipation of Zion’s beautification at the hands of foreigners and via the luxury of their finest economic and cultural product.

Foreigners shall build up your walls, and their kings shall minister to you; for in my wrath I struck you, but in my favor I have had mercy on you. (Isaiah 60:10 ESV)

The striking in question is the time-delimited exile of Judah to Babylon. In contrast, the mercy-driven restoration is open-ended. Thus, there is an asymmetrical relationship between the one and the other. Wrath and striking are temporary. Favor and mercy are meant to endure.

Isaiah’s almost fugal approach to topics like this one—where a theme is stated and then restated in variations here, there, and then again—develops the theme of asymmetry still further by deploying the language of the brief moment.

‘For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,’ says the Lord, your Redeemer. (Isaiah 54:7–8 ESV)

We are told that YHWH’s harsh treatment of Judah is quite unlike his return to them in mercy in at least two ways.

• First, the former is short and the latter is long.
• Second, Isaiah seems to present judgement as necessary but rather unlike YHWH. Restorative mercy, in contrast, flows fiercely from his very heart.

At the risk of losing our way, this glance at asymmetry may or may not help us to understand a striking and obscure word regarding judgement in Jerusalem/Zion that occurs earlier in the book:

For the Lord will rise up as on Mount Perazim; as in the Valley of Gibeon he will be roused; to do his deed—strange is his deed! and to work his work—alien is his work! (Isaiah 28:21 ESV)

Whether or not this is the case, the book provides further insight into divine pathos in the tenderly maternal soliloquy it allows itself in chapter 49.

But Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.’

Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me. (Isaiah 49:14–16 ESV)

Isaiah is fully convinced that the path to Judah’s redemption must pass through the furnace of judgmental fire. Yet the prophet cannot allow that this affliction lies anywhere near to the center of YHWH’s purposes for his people. At the risk of diminishing the experience of those who never came home from Babylon, the exile figures here as a necessary, regrettable, and brief moment. It is but the anteroom to Jerusalem resplendent.

Judah’s well-earned suffering surfaces here in the text as a brief moment of desertion, a momentary flare of righteous anger before a merciful God has his longed-for opportunity to love again with that love that defines love itself.

The reader might ask how important the prophet and his traditioners must have considered this reality to be, that they should risk utilizing this deeply human imagery to characterize the God who remains unseen.

Just so.

Sometimes a prophet just rears up on his rhetorical hind legs and roars. I suppose that in the prophetic locker room, this is called ‘being in the zone’. For this I have absolutely no evidence.

In any case, the Book of Isaiah‘s seven rhetorical questions in its fifty-eight chapter seem to qualify as placing the prophet smack in the zone.

TIME OUT: WHAT IS A RHETORICAL QUESTION:

A rhetorical question is asked just for effect or to lay emphasis on some point discussed when no real answer is expected. A rhetorical question may have an obvious answer but the questioner asks rhetorical questions to lay emphasis to the point. In literature, a rhetorical question is self-evident and used for style as an impressive persuasive device. Broadly speaking, a rhetorical question is asked when the questioner himself knows the answer already or an answer is not actually demanded. So, an answer is not expected from the audience. Such a question is used to emphasize a point or draw the audience’s attention. See here for more.

Placed in the mouth of YHWH himself, this assertive line of questioning all but undresses the pretensions of liturgy in the absence of ethics. This recurring feature of the Bible’s prophetic witness is best not read as a dismissal of liturgy per se. Rather, it views religious activity as vain and even counter-productive when not enmeshed in a life of self-denying service to the human beings who surround.

Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord?

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? (Isaiah 58:1–7 ESV)

This passage requires some plodding if we are to capture it well. So let us plod …

First, the turn towards renewed critique of YHWH’s people that initiates in chapter 56, after florid promises of restoration and renewal from chapter 40 onwards, has led to the common designation of chapters 56-66 as ‘Third Isaiah’ or ‘Trito-Isaiah’.

Some new circumstance seems to justify this old-new tone of denunciation. It is frequent that students of Isaiah identify this new situation as the disappointment and frustration that emerged among the community of the Return. That is, Jewish exiles in Babylon were encouraged by the prophets of the exile to rise up and return to Jerusalem/Zion when YHWH provided them the stupendously unforeseen opportunity to do so. When they did so, buoyed by extravagant prophetic promises of new life and vigor in their own land, they found YHWH equal to his promise as they made their way home.

Then the gravitational force of communal dissension and human frailty sets in, luring the restored community to old habits, fracturing its unity, and provoking YHWH and his prophets to a too familiar sternness of tone.

These paragraphs describe a consensus approach that undergirds much writing on Isaiah by students who seek the historical underpinnings of its stirring rhetoric. There are of course alternatives to making sense of the texts we have in hand.

Second, Isaiah is arguably the Old Testament master at diagnosing and dissecting religious hypocrisy. Having dared to suggest that such behavior in the name of YHWH actually provokes, wearies, and sickens YHWH, he returns in this chapter to his shrewd deconstruction of it.

I use such superlatives with regard to Isaiah’s diagnostic skills largely because of the way the prophet turns ‘positive’ language to satirical ends.

Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. (Isaiah 58:1–2 ESV)

Two things cry out for mention here. The first is the text’s co-opting of the language of announcement that served so beautifully to presage Judah’s redemption. The commands to cry out, not to hold back, to lift up your voice like a trumpet, to declare to my people are lifted, as it were, from the gorgeous imagery of the herald(s) of redemption that flourishes from chapter 40 onward.

Here, the import of this prophetic clamor shifts from encouragement to rebuke. If it is impossible to say with certainty which of these tones is the original one and which is a redeployment of it, the order of the text as we have it places rebuke first, encouragement second, and then confronts us with this further return to the language of a national dressing-down from chapter 56 on. Everywhere, there is Isaianic artistry, placed in the service of a people’s journey towards what has been called ‘Zion’s final destiny’.

And then we must take account of the prophet’s low-key satire in the chapter’s second verse.

Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. (Isaiah 58:2 ESV)

Among others, two features stand out. I have attempted to signal where they lie by italicizing the language that enfleshes them. The text has YHWH re-deploying two rich and beautiful verbs that are redolent of the intimate communion that bonds Israel’s God to his people and vice versa in the best of times.

The first of these involves the language of seeking YHWH (דרש את־יהוה). To seek him, in the biblical literature and even within the boundaries of Isaiah itself, is to place YHWH as one’s principal point of reference and to dedicate one’s energy to pursuing that very personal reference point. It is to find in YHWH one’s purpose, one’s orientation, to long actively for YHWH’s worshipful and life-giving presence. Here, the prophet has the people seeking YHWH every day without really seeking at all. It is a pungent reversal of the language’s normal meaning and shines a light on the empty pantomime of religious Karaoke.

The second is the language of delight and delighting in. It is a word that focuses spiritual passion and practice upon the affection of the heart. In Isaiah, YHWH wants his people to delight in him and his ways. He expresses his abhorrence when they delight in alternative object of their religious affection, things which he calls ‘abomination’.

Here, YHWH’s errant people appear to delight in his ways and also to delight to draw near to him. Yet it’s all a charade.

In truth, they want nothing of the sort because it would cost them status, wealth, and self-determination.

(to be continued …)