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Posts Tagged ‘Isaiah 29’

the mainstream dilemma: Isaiah 29

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , on January 13, 2024| Leave a Comment »

The book of Isaiah is a frustrating text for those weaned on narrow theological orthodoxies. In spite of its place at the core of the biblical canon and over against conclusions that might be drawn from the New Testament’s frequent citation of the book, it challenges theological prescription at every turn. This is evident in its nearly simultaneous assignment of Israel’s declension both to human and to divine causality. The Isaianic tradition is uninterested in parsing out the dilemma to the satisfaction of abstract curiosities.

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.

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.’

Isaiah 29.9-12 (NRSV)

The opening verbal assault assumes a self-inflicted incapacity. The prophet urges his hearers on to drunken blindness in a dialect that assumes a high degree of moral responsibility, indeed of culpability.

The following verses flow without impediment into the language divine causality. This occurs first in the report that it is YHWH himself who has poured upon Israel a sleepy spirit, closed the eyes of prophets and the heads of seers. It continues in the second instance with the picture of helpless, stupid, benighted candidates for redemption by means of the prophetic vision. They are incapable of responding. They are not so much willing and rebellious subjects as they are helpless ignoramuses.

By my lights, one makes sense of this dilemma only by means of the more widespread biblical conviction that idolatry is chosen and then exercises its intensifying influence upon those who have chose aberrant religion. Choice becomes the starting point of a process that eventually makes the chooser incapable of genuine choice.

We become what we worship, goes a modern adaptation of the topic. Indeed.

Who, then, is finally responsibly for the Israel’s pathetic plight in chapter 29. YHWH? Or Israel?

Yes, says the prophet.

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Ariel, lion of God: Isaiah 29

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , on December 13, 2023| Leave a Comment »

The book called Isaiah is nothing if not disjointed. Yet it is the particular genius of this long scroll that its disjointed nature does not reduce to incoherence. Somehow, at times as though a strong, thrashing swim against the current, Isaiah preserves coherence.

Ariel, or ‘Lion of God’, comes out of nowhere at the outset of Isaiah 29. We are not prepared for this lion’s sudden appearance. Many things about Ariel are unclear, but two will not be dismissed. First, Ariel is a city, ‘the city where David encamped’. Second, Ariel—which we may suspect at the outset is a poignant moniker for Jerusalem—is the object of both the ire and the salvation of YHWH.

Like Israel (ישראל = ‘he struggles with God’ or even ‘God struggles’), Ariel’s is a contested identity.

In the first pericope of chapter 29, as the Hebrew text’s ancient divisions would have it, Ariel meets YHWH’s enmity. In verse two…

Yet I (presumably YHWH) will distress Ariel, and there shall be mourning and lamentation, and (she) shall be to me like an Ariel.

Isaiah 29.2 (NRSV, slightly modified)

Here, God’s lion is stubborn, corralled, perhaps caged. She is a tragicomic figure, no match for YHWH’s might and yet indomitable in her own right.

In time, outside the bounds of this first pericope, Ariel will be rescued by YHWH from the nations that would besiege, ransack, and exterminate her. But Ariel does not yet know this, knows only the self-destructive energy of her leonine verve.

‘Ah, Ariel’, we might groan with the passage’s first words. You fight so long and so hard. You fight against your Maker, who shall in time become your Redeemer.

You are a complex and conflicted city, a lion’s strength and a heart too independent, too rebellious for its own good.

Just over the horizon lies the promise that YHWH will defend Ariel from those imperious nations bent on her dismemberment.

But not yet.

And so, recognizing ourselves in Ariel, in a moment of lucidity, we cry with the text’s opening words …

Ah, Ariel, Ariel…

Lion of God, doomed beast in a cage.

Your redemption draws nigh.

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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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Ariel’s useless religion: Isaiah 29

Posted in textures, tagged , , , on August 13, 2022| Leave a Comment »

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.

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the prodigals: Isaiah 29

Posted in textures, tagged , , , on August 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Perhaps the rabbis were correct to affirm that some of the ‘deeper writings’ are not suitable for untrained eyes. Or perhaps the cynical proverb that affirms that ‘school is wasted on the young’ is, after all, on to something.

Or perhaps only mothers and fathers should read such a thing as this:

Therefore thus says the LORD, who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob: ‘Jacob shall no more be ashamed, no more shall his face grow pale. For when he sees his children, the work of my hands, in his midst, they will sanctify my name; they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob and will stand in awe of the God of Israel. And those who go astray in spirit will come to understanding, and those who murmur will accept instruction.’ (Isaiah 29:22–24 ESV)

Jacob’s prodigals had not only run amok on their own terms. They had been dragged to distant lands by the powers of their day to suffer the quick extermination of our news cycle or the slow extermination of assimilation to the alien’s ways. (more…)

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