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Posts Tagged ‘Isaiah 25’

the wonder and the counsel: Isaiah 25

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2023| Leave a Comment »

In one of the book of Isaiah’s most quoted exclamations, the sixth verse of chapter 9 announces the astonishing birth of a consequential child:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9.6 (ESV)

I have italicized the first of four ‘throne names’, as they are often understood to be, of this royally endowed child. The now very traditional ‘Wonderful Counselor’ represents פלא יועץ, a somewhat enigmatic descriptor that might more literally be rendered ‘a wonder of a counselor’ or even ‘a wonder, a counselor’. ‘Wonderful Counselor’ is not a bad translation, but my interest in making this clarification lies in the juxtaposition of the two Hebrew words, פלא (‘wonder) and יועץ (‘counselor’). A too fast reification of their meaning might us to overlook the supple play of the two words in Isaianic context. It might also be noted that, from an interpretative point of view, the choice of small or capital letters generally corresponds to the theological commitments of the translator(s).

Both words are meaningfully deployed in the first half of the book. With a curious tenacity, the two are repeatedly linked.

In the doxological eruption that begins in chapter 25 and is sustained for several chapters, the combination of wonder and counsel that is established by the linkage of the two words occurs with a certain intensity. This is likely done with programmatic intent, since the paired words appear in the section’s very first verse.

O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things (כי עשית פלא עצות), plans formed of old, faithful and sure.

Isaiah 25.1 (ESV)

Then, with apparent reference to YHWH’s ‘strange work’ of Zion’s painful redemption, we find the combination once more.

This also comes from the LORD of hosts; he is wonderful in counsel (הפליא עצה) and excellent in wisdom.

Isaiah 28:29 (ESV)

Finally, the sequence is crowned by a verse where the absence of עצה is compensated by the rapid-fire reiteration of פלא.

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 (להפליא) with this people, shocking and amazing (הפליא ופלא). The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.

Isaiah 29.13-14 (NRSV)

Any assessment of what I have been describing must take into account two features that cohabitate amidst a tension that is critical to the soul of the Isaianic burden. First, עצה (‘[to]) counsel’) as a verb and as a noun establishes that YHWH’s way with his Israel and his nations aligns with a determined and previously existing purpose. In this sense, YHWH’s purposeful counsel flows from his stable center. It is not chaotic and not—at least from a divine and therefore a prophetic point of view—serendipitous. One thinks here of the use of the verb קום, deployed in Isaiah to announce that human machinations against Zion and other aspects of YHWH’s purpose shall not stand. Such rustlings of rebellious hearts are doomed from the start, no matter impressions to the contrary, precisely because they contravene YHWH’s counsel or purpose.

Second, the outworking of the divine counsel/purpose regularly astonishes human beings, who have no automatic access to it. This is where פלא serves to underscore that the settled, unstoppable purpose of YHWH is a source of continual surprise to those who are caught up in its concretization. This is so particularly for Israel/Jacob, but hints of gentile ‘marveling’ or ‘wondering’ are not absent from the texts.

It is inconceivable to me that we should not read chapter nine’s ‘wonderful counselor’ in the light of this subsequent florescence of the word-pair and ancillary expressions that use just one of the two. The child that ‘has been born to us’ in chapter nine is not merely a particularly gifted advisor or empath, as English translations might lead one to conclude. Rather, he is an agent of the divine purpose, destined in the execution of YHWH’s counsel to surprise and astonish. This scion of the court of David’s house—as Isaiah 9 appears almost certainly to identify him—is drawn into both the premeditation and the redemption of YHWH in ways that make eventual framing of Mary’s son in his light an interesting interpretative move, even perhaps for those who do not share the shepherds’ doxological impulse as they assimilate the news of that baby’s birth (Luke 2.20). Even she, the third evangelist tells us, ‘treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart’ (Luke 2.19, ESV). Perhaps we are not wrong to wonder whether this new mother, though read into the divine purpose by way of angelic visitation, considered its unlikely realization in her own womb and now at her breast the most unimaginable of paths for the divine counsel to tread.

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global feasting, B: Isaiah 25

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , on October 12, 2022| Leave a Comment »

If verses 1-5 hint that YHWH’s subjugation of ’strong peoples’ and ‘ruthless nations’ might in fact be for their own benefit, the wide embrace at which it hints becomes all but indisputable in verses 6-10.

In the text that follows, I have added emphasis to each reference to all (Hebrew כל), together with the nouns that are implicated by this descriptor.

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, emphasis added)

In spite of this broad redemptive result, the text does not loose its grip on a tenacious particularity. We see this in at least three respects.

First, Mount Zion remains the scene. YHWH will destroy ‘on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples…’ (7). The passage’s culminating declaration—if we see the immediately following and rather more sullen address against Moab as in some way separate—declares the YHWH’s hand will rest on this mountain’ (10).

Second, Jacob/Israel remains at the center of causality. The universal banquet that is here described is it seems contingent upon YHWH’s removal of ‘the disgrace of his people … from all the earth’. There is no reason to imagine that ‘his people’ bears a meaning different than its conventional one. Yet when he remove’s Jacob’s disgrace the wide world is the beneficiary. In parallel with surrounding clauses that are more explicit about the nations’ blessed fate, ‘from all the earth’ very likely refers to those people as well as to Jacob itself.

Finally, the refrain that is anticipated ‘on that day’ must describe Jacob/Israel’s experience retrospectively rather than the latter jubilant inclusion of ‘all peoples’:

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)

As often and in so many ways across the long book called Isaiah, here Jacob’s restoration represents in some way the restoration of all the nations. Or perhaps, of all save one. Moab’s dire subjection follows in 10b-12. NRSV’s editorial separation of that darkness from the earlier light of this oracle is performed without support from the Masoretic Text. It may be that Isaiah’s Vision is viscerally resistant to utopias that avert their glance from a kind of final, dire, depressing resistance that can in the end be put down only by reluctant force.

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global feasting, A: Isaiah 25

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , on October 11, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The polyvalent perspective of the book called Isaiah with respect to the nations raises its head again in the broad horizon celebrated by the hymn that is the book’s twenty-fifth chapter.

The first five verses appear to present a kind of conversion narrative in connection with ‘strong peoples’ and ‘cities of ruthless nations’ who seem to have been moved to their turning by YHWH’s care for the poor.

O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you, I will praise your name; for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.

For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin; the palace of aliens is a city no more, it will never be rebuilt.

Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you.

For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place, you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds; the song of the ruthless was stilled.

Isaiah 25:1-5 (NRSV, emphasis added)

The text does not leave in doubt the reality of the subjugation of ‘strong peoples’ and ‘ruthless nations’.

Indeed, they find themselves on ‘the mountain of the Lord’ (verse 6, just following) precisely because their city and palace have been leveled. Verse 5’s verbs conclude the first section of this oracle with divine activities that leave no doubt about the matter. YHWH subdued the short-lived heat of the peoples (תכניע) and stilled the song of the ruthless (יענה, rendered by NRSV somewhat lyrically by the passive ‘was stilled’ for the Masoretic Text’s 3ms active deployment of a verb often rendered more prosaically as to humiliate).

Clearly, these peoples are considered to be nations that YHWH has subjugated as the outworking of his ancient purpose (25.1).

Yet is not at all apparent that this outcome is one that the peoples themselves lament. Indeed, verse 3 could be read as the vocabulary of mere conquest, forced upon unwilling victims. But in context, particularly the context provided by the oracle from verse 6 forward, there seems to be yet again an element of willing participation in the deportment of the conquered.

Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you.

Isaiah 25:3 NRSV)

Verses 6-10 will fill in the picture, if indeed those verses are to be read as a unity with verses 1-5, as appears to me to be the case. Its scattering of ‘all’ across the range of its protagonists insinuates a banquet where all—past historical enemies included—lift their cups together and tuck into the feast with the careless abandon of friends.

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YHWH’s hand: Isaiah 25

Posted in textures, tagged , , , on August 11, 2022| Leave a Comment »

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.

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