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Posts Tagged ‘Isaiah 41’

nowhere to be found: Isaiah 41

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , on January 18, 2024| Leave a Comment »

The Isaianic vision places its appetite for rhetorical questions in the service of wonderment over YHWH’s redemptive surprises, his new things.

Two prominent examples leap to mind.

First, bereaved and barren Zion finds herself caught up in the sudden appearance of daughters and sons somehow conceived in her time of desolation.

Surely your waste and your desolate places and your devastated land— surely now you will be too crowded for your inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away.

The children born in the time of your bereavement will yet say in your hearing: ‘The place is too crowded for me; make room for me to settle.’

Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who has borne me these? I was bereaved and barren, exiled and put away— so who has reared these? I was left all alone— where then have these come from?‘

Isaiah 49.19-21 (NRSV, emphasis added)

Contemplating the flow towards Zion of long-lost sons and daughters, YHWH asks on behalf of Mother Zion.

Who are these that fly like a cloud, and like doves to their windows?

Isaiah 60.8 (NRSV, emphasis added)

I mention these two passages in order to illuminate the rhetoric of sudden appearance. In the passage under review, this motif finds its counterpart in the expression of sudden disappearance.

Yes, all who are incensed against you shall be ashamed and disgraced; those who strive against you shall be as nothing and shall perish.

You shall seek those who contend with you, but you shall not find them; those who war against you shall be as nothing at all.

(Isaiah 41:11-12 NRSV, emphasis added)

The rhetorical question does not figure in this second motif, nor does the flood-tide of previously unimagined children streaming to their astonished mother. The mode here is not interrogative but plainly descriptive. The subjects in question are not Zion’s children but the people’s enemies.

However, the reversal of sudden appearance in the interest of sudden disappearance hinges on important formal symmetries.

Both traffic in the language of the sudden and the astonishing. Both register their truth from the perspective of the affected observer, who is in fact the same subject if one grants the likelihood that YHWH’s servant in Isaiah 41 and Mother Zion in the previously cited passages are coterminous.

Where have they gone? Where have they come from? Who are they?

Such is the interrogative accent of the redeemed. So rings the perpetual surprise of those whom YHWH has restored.

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water and wood: Isaiah 41

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , , on October 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The oracle of redemption at Isaiah 41.17-20 deploys creation language in describing the provision of water and wood to the text’s ‘poor and needy’:

When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.

I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.

I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive; I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together, so that all may see and know, all may consider and understand, that the hand of the LORD has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it.

Isaiah 41:17-20 (NRSV)

Scholars debate whether the creation language of Isaianic passages like this one generates the creation discourse of Genesis 1-2 or whether, conversely, influence flows in the opposition direction.

Regardless of that discussion, the oracle before us has YHWH speaking emphatically in the first person as he declares his intent to provide the ‘poor and needy’ with water to slake their thirst as well as cultivated trees in the ‘wilderness’ that Babylonian exiles would need to cross in order to return home.

The notion of surplus and abundance is everywhere. In the first instance, YHWH’s provision of potable water for those poor and needy appears to irrigate the entire wilderness beyond the requirements of its human passersby. In the second, the repetition of species of trees that will populate ‘the wilderness’ suggests a remarkable plethora of fruit and shade. NRSV renders them as cedar, acadia, myrtle, olive, cypress, plane, and pine. This would be a diversified planting in any context. In that of the Fertile Crescent, the vision is all the more impressive.

The impressive response that the prophet anticipates on the part of human observers is understandable:

…so that all may see and know, all may consider and understand, that the hand of the LORD has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it.

Isaiah 41:20 (NRSV)

The freshly secured and ostensibly wondering knowledge that humanity will have acquired will come by way of their contemplation of YHWH’s provisioning of his returning refugees. Significantly, they will understand this unforeseen return in the terms communicated by two Hebrew verbs that pair nicely and often in creation contexts: עסה, here deployed as ‘has done this’ and ברא, appearing here as ‘has created it’.

So does the oracle draw together the erstwhile disparate threads of redemption, provision, and creation.

YHWH, one might way, is up to his old habits: creating with a word.

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an invitation’s irony: Isaiah 41

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , on August 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The first words of Isaiah’s forty-first chapter convene the nations in the interest of justice.

Rarely in the book called Isaiah is it more difficult to ascertain precisely the tone of the invitation and the nuance of the Hebrew word משׁפט, usually rendered ‘justice’ but sometimes ‘judgement’. I underscore the pertinent phrase:

Listen to me in silence, O coastlands; let the peoples renew their strength; let them approach, then let them speak; let us together draw near for judgment.

Isaiah 41.1 (NRSV)

Two features of this summons link it to similar passages involving Israel/Jacob/Judah rather than, as here, ‘coastlands’ and ‘nations’. The first, weaker than its successor, is the faint similarity between ‘let us together draw near for judgement’ and the more famous expression that precedes YHWH’s sentencing of Judah and Jerusalem in the book’s introductory chapter:

Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

Isaiah 1:18 (NRSV)

Although the contexts of the two passages are strikingly similar and the language somewhat so, it must be admitted that the key verbs are not the same. It is possible the similarity is merely superficial. However, in the light of the Isaianic tradition’s irrepressible desire to play and to tease with intertextual allusion, it is likely not. Probably, the convocation of Judah for a deliberative moment of sentencing is here echoed by the summons of the nations for a somewhat different objective that nevertheless pivots on the matter of justice.

Listen to me in silence, O coastlands; let the peoples renew their strength; let them approach, then let them speak; let us together draw near for judgment.

Isaiah 41.1 (NRSV)

This possibility is arguably corroborated by a second ironic feature of this passage, this one also a matter of intertextual allusiveness but now with a textual partner that lies close at hand.

Once again, the matter involves an Isaiah text that can only be considered as famous:

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.

 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.

 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:28-31 (NRSV)

We must remind ourselves that these words occurs immediately prior to Isaiah 41. A certain culminating conclusiveness and of course modern versification mark them off from our text, but that is all.

In 40.28-31, those sons and daughters of Jacob/Israel who complain that their way has been lost to the eyes of an inattentive YHWH are reassured that if they wait on YHWH, they shall renew their strength. The Hebrew expression that generates the italicized English just above is יחליפו כח. This is precisely the expression that is used of the ‘coastlands’ and by contextual implication also ‘the peoples’ in 41.1 In 40.31, the expression is taken to be imperfective with a future reference; that is, it describes. In 41.1, the same words are rightly understood as jussive, a detail I shall attempt to illuminate by once again quoting, italicizing, and inserting the corresponding Hebrew text.

Listen to me in silence, O coastlands; let the peoples renew their strength (יחליפו כח); let them approach, then let them speak; let us together draw near for judgment.

Isaiah 41:1 (NRSV)

Such subtle ironies must certainly represent more than wordplay carried out for a purely aesthetic purpose. I am increasingly persuaded that the Isaianic voice is drawing the nations into the plight and the prospects of Israel/Jacob itself. YHWH’s purposes in redeeming his Israel increasingly seem include the nations without ever blurring the distinctions between the two nor across the ranges of the latter.

It seems every more likely that in summoning the nations for judgement, his intentions are—as with Israel—not lethal but rather restorative.

When you receive an invitation like this one with all its Isaianic tonalities, you are never sure exactly what for.

But, peace. The news is good.

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