A grim vignette, set off by the ancient reading tradition embedded in the Masoretic text, shows that Israel’s failure was not a poor work ethic.
The Lord sent a word against Jacob, and it fell on Israel and all the people knew it— Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria— but in pride and arrogance of heart they said: ‘The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.’
So the LORD raised adversaries against them, and stirred up their enemies, the Arameans on the east and the Philistines on the west, and they devoured Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger has not turned away; his hand is stretched out still.
The people did not turn to him who struck them, or seek the LORD of hosts.
Isaiah 9:8-18 (NRSV, emphasis added)
There is perhaps less indisputable encounter between YHWH and Jacob/Israel than meets the eye. The Masoretes vocalize דבר as דָּבָר, ‘a word’, but the Septuagint attests to a reading of דֶּבֶר, ‘a plague’ or ‘pestilence’. The latter reading accords more naturally with the context of persistent calamity and makes more sense in an oracle that decries the people’s unwillingness to discern the nature of what is going on around them.
In any case, the prophet describes the people as soldiering on with faces set stonily to rebuilding ruins instead of contemplation of causes.
The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.
Isaiah 9.10 (NRSV)
Wartime devastation—for the uprooting of trees virtually obligates us to understand the scene in this way—does not subdue this lion-hearted people’s grim determination to carry on. Rather, it animates them to frenzied reconstruction of what has fallen down around them. The prophet does not admire this energy. He decries it as evasion of the message that fallen bricks and uprooted sycamores carry with them.
It is both tempting and understandable—it may even be correct—to conclude the passage with the familiar refrain about YHWH’s still uplifted hand in verse 12, as modern translations tend to do. However, the ancient reading tradition takes a different path by including verse 13 as this vignette’s final statement.
The people did not turn to him who struck them, or seek the LORD of hosts.
Isaiah 9.13 (NRSV)
Read as a conclusion, this summary in the accent of prophetic dialect levels an exceedingly strong accusation. The people’s frenzied wartime heroism conceals a stubbornness of immense proportions.
For the prophet, besieged Israel/Jacob was incapable of imagining that YHWH was behind the marauding armies that caused them such loss. Or that there was a message implicit in the destruction those armies wrought. Or both.
They did not turn. Nor did they seek.
So, the spokesman of a harsh prophetic realism declares, YHWH’s punishing hand remains raised to strike again.
The book’s programmatic and prefatory first chapter insinuates that scenes like this one will appear, though its vocabulary and inventory of metaphors are distinct.
Why do you seek further beatings? Why do you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds; they have not been drained, or bound up, or softened with oil.
Isaiah 1.5-6 (NRSV)
Who knew that Assyria’s sword was clutched in YHWH’s hand in this searing moment?
Isaian rhetoric frequently pushes the limits of established theologies. Though it has no particular argument with divine supremacy over history, it will not truck with notions of divine impassibility.
Twice, the book called Isaiah deploys the word לאה—to exhaust or wear out—with YHWH as its wearied subject or object. Only Jeremiah joins the book of Isaiah in this unsettling move, the same number of times (6.11, 15.6).
Isaiah describes this risky divine pathos during the prophet’s confrontation of Judah’s panicked king Ahaz during the Assyrian crisis.
Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test. Then Isaiah said: ‘Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also (כי תלאו גם את־אלהי)?’
Isaiah 7.10-13 (NRSV, emphasis and Hebrew text added)
YHWH’s patience with his recalcitrant people has been sorely taxed, this in a passage that is redolent with hints of divorce. He has been worn down, pushed to exhaustion. The straw that has broken the proverbial camel’s back is Ahaz’ faux-pious refusal to ask YHWH for a sign when the prophet has implored him to do just that.
Other ‘mortals’ have found themselves obliged to put up with Ahaz’ faithless shenanigans. Now it is YHWH’s turn. We glimpse for a moment the disturbing picture of YHWH, hands on knees, fed up.
It would seem the earliest versions sensed the awkwardness of such a pose and did what they could to tidy things up.
The Septuagint makes YHWH marginally less vulnerable.
By a different route, the Targum also ameliorates YHWH’s dilemma. By means of the low-profile insertion of ‘the words of’, the targumist embraces the infelicitous notion of ‘weary words’ in order to avoid the still less desirable image of Israel’s exhausted God.
In its prefatory chapter one, the book has already hinted at the likelihood that things would come to this. There, in fierce denunciation of formally unquestioned worship that is nonetheless offered up by bloody hands, the text has YHWH declaring his own nausea less hypothetically than in chapter 7.
Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them (נלאיתי נשא).
Isaiah 1.14 (NRSV, emphasis and Hebrew text added)
Here, too, the Septuagint and the Targum soften the blow to any presumption that the deity does not feel, indeed does not stagger, under the weight of such hubris.
…as well as your new moons and your feasts, my soul hates. You have made me full (ἐγενήθητέ μοι εἰς πλησμονήν); I will no longer forgive your sins.
Isaiah 1.14 (NETS, emphasis and Greek text added)
The translator’s idiom is unfamiliar. Even if it hints at YHWH being pushed to extremity, it fails to communicate YHWH’s weariness as poignantly as does the Hebrew text.
The targumist allows a greater distance to open between the Hebrew text and his own rendering:
Your new moons and your appointed times, My Memra rejects them. They have become an abomination before Me; I have forgiven much.
What are we to make of the Isaiah scroll’s boldness in describing the effects of human rebellion upon YHWH?
At a bare minimum, the vision will not articulate misalignment between human behavior and the divine counsel in merely theoretical terms. Instead, it dares to suggest that human misconduct disturbs, wearies, and even sickens Israel’s divine Overlord and would-be Redeemer. The prophet somehow manages this understanding of an affected YHWH without diluting his confidence that YHWH’s purpose or counsel will prevail.
Only a superficial reader could paint the redemptive drama of which the book called Isaiah is a witness in abstract or theoretical terms and call it interpretation of the text that lies before us. Not while YHWH leans perspiring, hands on knees, panting for his breath.
One of the ironies of prophetic denunciation is that those who are on the receiving end likely did not see their actions and attitudes in the way the prophets’ searing metaphorical rhetoric chooses to frame them.
The LORD rises to argue his case; he stands to judge the peoples.
The LORD enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord GOD of hosts.
Isaiah 3.13-15 (NRSV)
A textual issue slightly bedevils the passage. Where the Masoretic text has YHWH rise to judge the peoples, the Greek (LXX) and Syriac (Peshitta) versions align the text with its Judah-facing context and envisage YHWH judging his people. Although this contextual reading self-evidently honors the quoted passage’s wider context, we should probably prefer ‘the peoples’ with the Masoretic presentation as the ‘harder reading’ (lectio difficilior).
By this view, the prophet berates the nations before focusing on Israel/Judah in particular, perhaps in the mix implying that Israel has descended to the level of those unwashed hordes.
It is easy to imagine that ‘the elders and princes of (YHWH’s) people’ did not understand their attention or inattention to the plight of the poor as abject, willful cruelty. They—as we—might rather have preferred an explanation based in sound economic theory or meritocratic appeal to individual responsibility or a steely ethical realism. Inevitably, someone has to lose.
It sounds so reasonable.
The prophet’s perspective is different.
The double rhetorical question of verse 15 would have been forceful enough if it had begun with the more ordinary ‘Why?’. Instead, the text seems to turn the screws on Judah’s powerful by introducing the question with the more indignant ‘What do you mean by…’ (מלכם). The phrase seems to insinuate what is elsewhere declared: the violence (by design or by neglect) of the powerful against the vulnerable is an affront against how things ought to be that offends and will be taken personally.
Independently of this detail, the two verbs that anchor the rhetorical question in the concrete behavior of the powers are exceedingly inculpating.
What do you mean by crushing (תדכאו) my people, by grinding the face of the poor (ופני עניים תטחנו)? says the Lord GOD of hosts. (Isaiah 3:15 NRSV)
Isaiah 3.15 NRSV, emphasis and Hebrew text added)
The violent physicality of the expression converts more passive economic and social moves (or failure to move) into kinetic destruction of the bodies of the poor. The rhetorical framing of the situation invites the hearer and the reader to ask which view of reality—the theoretical and passive appeal to impersonal economic and social inevitabilities or the willful assault of the rich upon the poor—better describes reality.
Even if we are obliged to decide, the prophet in this instant does not stand with us. He has already made up his mind. He claims that YHWH has, too.
Much of the judgmental language that falls upon the reader in the book of Isaiah sounds deterministic, fatalistic, and final.
Yet, like all language, it is spoken from and into a context. In this long book—and not least in the preparatory montage that is its first chapter—that context casts light on the possibility of turning. The potential for a non-cataclysmic outcome seems part of the deep structure of the book. If so, then it perhaps lightens the gloom when savage denunciation seems to allow no room for turning, for return, for repentance, for life.
In the book’s first chapter, such grim finality is not absent. Yet the second paragraph of the ancient reading tradition begins and ends with a summons to take hope-engendering action:
Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.
When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation— I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch 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 doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”
Isaiah 1.10-17 (NRSV)
I have italicized the prominent imperatives at both ends of the section. The first could be heard as standard convening language of the kind that introduces final judgement. The last series of imperatives (v. 17) is manifestly invitational. Any coherent reading, then, must condition the finality of the opening summons in a way that allows for the possibility of turning. Among nearer-in benefits, such an interpretation accords perfectly with the wider book’s tenacious practice of turning judgement towards redemptive aims.
In between the bookends of this conceptual inclusio, YHWH dissects the abomination of formally orthodox worship that is not founded upon the practice of justice. Fine liturgy, as the passage would have it, offered up by bloody hands. It is a most quotable jeremiad. Except that it is much more than bare denunciation.
The assault upon the efficacy of such worship is enfolded into invitation. To read the paragraph otherwise is to misgauge intent and so to deform the section’s passionate summons.
The reading I propose here tends also to shut the door on a pessimistic reading of verse 18, the well-known imperative which awaits the reader just over the horizon from this second paragraph of chapter 1, where hope—not sunny optimism, but realistic hope—stubbornly claims space for a future.
One ought not turn one’s hand to the interpretation of a great text and then declare favorite and least favorite portions of it. The worthwhile interpreter is either in or out.
Yet one may perhaps whisper his distaste quietly when a particular passage comes back around. Today, this interpreter releases a quiet sigh.
‘Who is this that comes from Edom, from Bozrah in garments stained crimson? Who is this so splendidly robed, marching in his great might?’
‘It is I, announcing vindication, mighty to save (רב להושיע).’
‘Why are your robes red, and your garments like theirs who tread the wine press?’
‘I have trodden the wine press alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their juice spattered on my garments, and stained all my robes.
For the day of vengeance was in my heart, andthe year for my redeeming work (ושנת גאולי) had come.
I looked, but there was no helper; I stared, but there was no one to sustain me; so my own arm brought me victory, and my wrath sustained me.
I trampled down peoples in my anger, I crushed them in my wrath, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.’
Isaiah 63.1-6 (NRSV, emphasis and Hebrew text added)
This exceedingly bloody text is also oddly dialogical. YHWH parries a questioner’s queries, the first two asking him to clarify his identity and the third to explain his blood-stained clothing.
If modern and post-modern sensibilities recoil at such a depiction of a warrior god, we can at least allow him the grace of hearing out his motivation.
As consistently with matters of divine violence in the book of Isaiah—and generally in the rest of the Hebrew Bible—his fury is not unleashed upon humans for the mere satisfaction of bloodthirst. Rather, such warfare is necessary within its own rhetorical scheme for the purpose of achieving some human-facing good.
I have italicized two clauses above in order to bring out this point. In responding to his interlocutor’s two ‘Who?’ questions, YHWH describes his might as unleashed in order to save. The object of his rescue is left unspoken, but Jacob/Israel must certainly stand in as the core beneficiary (v. 1).
Then, in explaining his red garments, YHWH unleashes this justification:
For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year for my redeeming work (ושנת גאולי) had come.
Isaiah 63.4 (NRSV, emphasis and Hebrew text added)
The Hebrew quoted above might just as well be rendered ‘and the year of my redeemed’, a more concrete translation that brings into clearer view the human beneficiaries of YHWH’s assault upon the nations without materially changing the picture. ‘Redeeming work’ and ‘redeemed (ones)’ are both plausible.
The point I wish to make in pointing out the rescuing and redeeming purpose of YHWH’s violence is that in Isaiah divine violence is normally instrumental rather than nakedly punitive. Readers who are unable to conceive or justifypurposeful violence will not be assuaged by the observation.
Others will find it possible to imagine a circumstance where resistance to YHWH’s intended shalom is so entrenched and unyielding that only removal of his opponents will allow other humans to flourish.
In either case, the trajectory of Isaiah’s vision returns time and again to violence on behalf of Zion’s redeemed, not as a major theme but certainly as an unavoidable one.
Following the splendidly unilateral YHWH-work of chapter 60, an anointed figure bursts exuberantly upon the scene in chapter 61. He is perhaps to be seen as a further adumbration of the servant-of-YHWH figure. He bears YHWH’s own spirit, the oil of anointing still fresh upon his forehead. His attention turns already toward those who need YHWH-work most.
The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn…’
Isaiah 61.1-2a (NRSV)
It is a profoundly moving chapter, not least for those who see in Jesus of Nazareth a concretization of the profile of this rescuing agent of YHWH.
Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
Luke 4.14-21 (NRSV)
In two places, though by different means in each, the prophet describes the anointed figure’s work in terms of substitution. Those who benefit from his YHWH-work will find their condition so materially transformed that they shall receive for each aspect of their disgrace its opposing counterpart. The figure, speaking in the first person, claims that he has come …
…to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
Isaiah 61.3a (NRSV, emphasis added)
Two distinct pinpoints of alliteration accentuate the delight expressed by the Hebrew text: פאר תחת אפר (‘a garland instead of ashes’) playfully inverts two of each noun’s three consonants and שמן ששון piles identical sibilants together.
The picture is one of radical transformation rather than mere amelioration of the plight of ‘those who mourn in Zion’. The substitution of one experience for another is both extreme and complete.
This type of polarity reverberates through the chapter. However in one other moment it approaches the concreteness that I have sketched out for the three oppositional pairs in verse 3.
Because their shame was double, and dishonor was proclaimed as their lot, therefore they shall possess a double portion; everlasting joy shall be theirs.
Isaiah 61.7 (NRSV)
NRSV’s translation obscures a fresh use of תחת (‘instead of’), the preposition that separates each experience from its opposite in verse 3. This prepares the reader to expect further oppositional pairing. It does indeed occur, as I read the verse, though this time more subtly. The word משנה appears in both halves of verse 7, possibly with a play upon its alternative meanings: (a) a double quota and (b) the corresponding counterpart.
‘Their shame was double (משנה)…’ we read, this affirmation of a copious burden of shame fortified by the immediately following claim that ‘dishonor was proclaimed (or ‘sung out’) as their lot’. Then, in the second half of the verse, we learn that ‘they shall possess a double portion (משנה)’, this claim again strengthened by the supportive but differently configured phrase ‘everlasting joy shall be theirs’. (Curiously, NRSV does not translate בארצם, which would normally be glossed by ‘in their land’.)
It seems to me that 7b accentuates first one meaning of משנה to depict the outsized shame or double portion of shame that Zion’s mourners have suffered. Then the second meaning of the same word underscores that their eventual, everlasting joy shall be every bit as extravagant. The latter shall displace and substitute for the former.
So does the prophetic text in one of its most lyrical moments reverse the fate of its protagonists. YHWH’s anointed and spirit-endowed agent shall accomplish, we who know of Zion’s mourning are encouraged to believe, complete and total transformation.
Isaiah’s fifty-ninth chapter is seldom quoted. Perhaps it is too bleak for recall, let alone for amplification.
The strong note of theodicy comes in the form of an unidentified (prophetic?) voice, asserting that YHWH’s capacity to save has not somehow become diminished. Rather, the people’s stubborn instinct for rebellion lies at the root of the present disgrace.
The oracle alternates between description of injustice as 2nd-person accusation (v. 3, ‘For your hands are defiled with blood…’), 3rd-person description (v. 4, ‘No one brings suit justly, no one goes to law honestly…’), and 1st-person testimony:
Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us; we wait for light, and lo! there is darkness; and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.
Isaiah 59.9 (NRSV)
Such oscillation between grammatical voices is not rare in biblical prophecy. Yet here the sequential march from the second to the third to the first persons and the relentlessness comprehensiveness of injustice seem intended to justify YHWH’s anger and unresponsiveness by means of exhaustive description of Judahite rebellion.
Still, the familiar script of a divine victory that proves redemptive for people makes its appearance.
First, the well-armed deity is seen repaying his enemies in a way that raises hopes of what may be a welcome restoration of justice.
According to their deeds, so will (YHWH) repay; wrath to his adversaries, requital to his enemies; to the coastlands he will render requital.
So those in the west shall fear the name of the LORD, and those in the east, his glory; for he will come like a pent-up stream that the wind of the LORD drives on.
Isaiah 59:18-19 (NRSV, emphasis added)
The nature of this two-fold fear—of YHWH’s name and of his glory—is not to be discovered by way of an atomistic reading. But I have argued elsewhere that such universal recognition of YHWH’s justice in Isaiah is interpenetrated with at least the potential of broad blessing to the nations, whom I presume appear here in the two locative expressions ‘in the west’ and ‘in the east’.
Second, this oracle arrives at its almost predictable destination as it comes to its own conclusion.
And he will come to Zion as Redeemer, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, says the LORD. And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the LORD: my spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouths of your children, or out of the mouths of your children’s children, says the LORD, from now on and forever.
Isaiah 59.20-21 (NRSV)
As is its custom, Isaianic intimation of a cosmic outcome that is glorious rather than stingy includes the possibility of final resistance. We see this darker side of things here in the positive assertion that ‘those in Jacob who turn from transgression’ will be the beneficiaries of YHWH’s covenant, presence, and words. The offer, apparently, is not taken up by everyone. And the fate of those nations to which allusion is made—so I have argued—in verses 18 and 19 escapes mention in this concluding declaration.
By the time we arrive at this mostly bleak panorama, the vision of Isaiah is nearing its concluding declarations. They will be full of light with mere tinges of darkness, as chapter 59 emphatically is not. Yet it is important to observe that even here in chapter 59, among the book’s darker landscapes, hope manages to abound even though restricted to a few final verses.
This hope is not giddy. It remembers all too well those who choose neglect of YHWH’s justice and who carry this resistance through to outright and presumably final opposition.
Meanwhile, a lavish promise of inter-generational longevity quiets the hearts of ‘those in Jacob who turn from transgression.’
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.
Isaiah’s fifty-first chapter weaves together a refreshingly positive description of its audience with an insistent summons to pay attention. Indeed, the chapter begins in just this fashion, stating its direction from the very outset. In the following extracts from chapter 51, I will italicize the verbal summons and emphasize the addressee descriptions in bold.
Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the LORD. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.
Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you…
Isaiah 51.1-2a (NRSV)
Then just a few verses later:
Listen to me, my people, and give heed to me, my nation...
Isaiah 51.4a (NRSV)
The third summons elides the expected vocative descriptors:
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath…
Isaiah 51.6a (NRSV)
Yet the addressee/vocative descriptors soon resume:
Listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people who have my teaching in your hearts; do not fear the reproach of others, and do not be dismayed when they revile you.
Isaiah 51.7 NRSV)
After an interlude where it is ‘the arm of the Lord’ rather than the people that is addressed imperativally, the established pattern is taken up again:
Rouse yourself, rouse yourself!Stand up, O Jerusalem…
Isaiah 51.17a (NRSV)
It is important to observe that the pattern continues well into chapter 52. Its last appearance in the chapter before us initiates a trend towards recognizing the addressees’ trauma and vulnerability, which flows meaningfully toward the famous ‘fourth servant song’, where YHWH’s servant does in fact fall wounded under YHWH’s own blow.
Therefore hear this, you who are wounded, who are drunk, but not with wine…
Isaiah 51.21 (NRSV)
When literature erects structural markers as evident as these, any valid reading must take them into account and bow to their programmatic purpose. The evidence highlighted above invites the reader to contemplate the addressees as the favored people of YHWH, though perhaps more specifically a subsection of that people that has been particularly attentive to instruction and peculiarly concerned with YHWH’s ‘righteousness’ and ‘justice’. Their rescue from calamity is imminent. Though they hope to see it, trepidation in the face of impediments to their redemption may restrain them from bold participation, this against the current of ‘my Torah’ (51.7) which the people have in their hearts. This description is gleaned from the descriptors I highlighted abovein bold.
The italicised portions, for their part, seem in the aggregate to summon the people to consider the ancient and enduring purpose of YHWH to bless them. They are urged to interpret their recent calamity not as the elimination of that divine purpose but rather as an especially painful but temporary interruption that will soon be superseded by the resumption of the promise.
If this reading adequately comprehends the text’s structure, then one might see chapter 51 (continuing into chapter 52) as a prophetic broadside against what we moderns call ‘recency bias’. From the soul of the Isaianic vision emerges the claim that YHWH’s purpose has always been to bless, that he has not turned permanently against his people, and that faith in the ancient teaching must now assume the posture of courage.
On the basis of this understanding, the even more vibrant summons that await the reader in chapter 52 find their grounded meaning.
Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion! Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; for the uncircumcised and the unclean shall enter you no more.
Shake yourself from the dust, rise up, O captive Jerusalem; loose the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter Zion!
The reading tradition reflected in our Masoretic Text separates 49.7 off from 49.1-6. Additionally, 49.7 begins with a ‘speaker marker’ (‘Thus says YHWH…’) that has evidently been regarded as a gentle separator of what follows from what has gone before.
Nevertheless, the content of 49.7 all but clamors to be read in relationship with verses 1-6.
The chapter’s first section presents the servant of YHWH protesting his own fatigue and incapacity for large tasks.
And (YHWH) 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.’
Isaiah 49.3-4 (NRSV)
Curiously, YHWH’s response is to inform his servant of the even larger mission that lies before him.
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 49.5-6
The displacement of the ‘tribes of Jacob’ as the be-all and end-all of the servant’s commission in favor of a greater mission to illuminate ‘the nations’ is so radical a departure from expectation that the translator of Septuagint Isaiah will not abide it. The Greek translation of Hebrew Isaiah was executed for the sake of Greek-speaking Jewish communities in Egypt at about 150 years B.C.E. The individual charged with the monumental task of rendering the Hebrew Isaiah scroll in Greek evidently can not bring himself to disparage the mission of YHWH’s servant to dispersed Jews. Instead of the Hebrew text’s vision of the servant’s restoration of Israel as a ‘small thing’, the Septuagint translator offers us:
And he said to me, ‘It is a great thing for you to be called my servant so that you may set up the tribes of Iakob and turn back the dispersion of Israel.’
Isaiah 49.6 (NETS, emphasis added to reflect emphasis in Greek text)
Returning to the Hebrew text, verse 7—the indication of a new paragraph notwithstanding—appears to address the conundrum that is established when a global commission is laid upon such weary shoulders. After all, it is not merely the case that the servant has protested his own exhaustion, admittedly alongside his confidence that YHWH’s provision is sufficient (v. 4). It is also the case that the servant in his profound identification with Jacob’s exiled tribes cannot claim much credibility among the nations whom his exertions are meant to enlighten.
Notwithstanding, the prophet has YHWH adumbrate yet another Isaianic reversal of fortunes that will implicate the servant’s exhaustion and his lack of credibility among gentiles.
Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, ‘Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.’
Isaiah 49.7 (NRSV)
One senses here the innate tension between restoration of a lost and longed-for stasis, on the one hand, and the incursion of an entirely new arrangement, on the other. The prophet intuits a reversal so profound that the servant cum Israel will soon stand at the very head of the now submissive nations.
Yet the tensions are felt in multiple directions rather than just one. If it seemed for a moment that restoration of Jacob/Israel was too small a matter, it now appears that Jacob is to be quite grand as kings and princes stand to honor her and bow to submit to her.
What is more, the relationship between the illumination of the nations and their submission to Jacob/Israel is a complex matter, one that I think plays a part in a wider argument that the gentile nations’ reconfigured and submissive relationship to Israel is intended for their well-being and is therefore to be welcomed by them.
In the light of such a complex and radical promise, it is no wonder that Isaiah’s recurring plea is that little Jacob should forget the former things and open heart and mind to a new thing. The prophet’s imagined future, it would seem, could not exist without the remembered past. Yet neither can it remain defined by what Israel has known thus far. Or experienced. Or been.
Canter Bridge 