Canter Bridge

The final chapter of the book called Isaiah returns to basic matters.

The Generative Vision of chapter six—when the prophet Isaiah finds himself taken up into a vision of YHWH’s royal throne room—is the only prior moment in the book’s trajectory when YHWH’s throne is glimpsed. Until this:

Thus says the LORD: Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is my resting place?

All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look, to the humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at my word.

Isaiah 66:1-2 (NRSV)

In that Generative Vision, as now in this glimpse of YHWH Enthroned, the prophet does not describe YHWH. Rather, in good, deflective, prophetic style, he describes all that is around YHWH so that we might deduce YHWH’s grandeur by comparison. Notwithstanding Isaiah’s claim that ‘I saw the LORD’, he does not enter into description of the deity himself. Rather, he occupies himself with flying seraphim, a creaturely voice so loud that the temple trembles on its foundation, the hem of YHWH’s robe which filled the temple’s entirety, and the like. Even the awesome descriptor that in time becomes for the prophet YHWH’s proper name—רם ונשׂא (high and lifted up)—is offered ambiguously. It is not clear whether it describes YHWH or ‘merely’ his throne.

It is fitting, then, that a book so tenaciously and allusively intertextual in its primary instinct, should return to YHWH’s throne room now, as at the beginning.

Just as YHWH’s presence was comprehensive and imperial vis-à-vis creation back in Isaiah 6, so here heaven and earth are merely his throne and footstool. In a different accent, this spatial metaphor of fulness places YHWH most emphatically ‘high and lifted up’.

Yet in context YHWH does not attend to those who would manipulate cultic matters at a different altitude in order to curry his favor (see verses 3-4). Rather, from his very high posture, YHWH looks ‘to the humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at my word.’ YHWH stewards strange affections, odd habits of attentiveness, we are asked to believe and not for the first time. The same affirmation about YHWH’s bizarre predilection for those who lie low—those whom life has crushed—troubled the Septuagint translator with his preference for a more stately deity back in 57:15. There, the Hebrew text offers the visions of chapters six and sixty-six in its own accent and its own moment, though with unmistakable echoes and anticipations of the two glimpses of YHWH’s throne room currently under inspection.

For thus says the high and lofty one (רם ונשׁא) who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy (קדושׁ): I dwell in the high and holy place (מרום וקדושׂ), and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit (דכא ושׁפל־רוח), to revive the spirit of the humble (רוח שׁפלים), and to revive the heart of the contrite (לב נדכאים).

Isaiah 57:15 (NRSV)

In the Isaianic vision, it seems almost superfluous to say, YHWH is very, very high. Yet he is also very low, whether in the coin of judgement and eventual redemption (chapter 6) or resident at his second home (chapter 57) or via his untiring attentiveness to those who find themselves way down there (chapter 66).

It seems transparent to the tradition’s curators that this divine habit is unexpected, otherwise there would be no need for them to insist that it is so. Yet it seems equally clear to the prophetic imagination that being in both places at the same time represents for YHWH neither a contradiction nor a challenge.

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By the time the book called Isaiah crescendoes to the culminating dizziness of its final chapter, the prophetic voice has trafficked on the image of Daughter Zion with no reluctance to speak of her beauty and dazzlingly unlikely ornamentation.

Not for this prophet the reticence to shape words that admire the feminine body and a woman’s beauty. These were different days, a different aesthetic. The rules were not our rules.

Now, as the end of the massive work draws near, the author turns yet again to feminine metaphor. This time, the point is YHWH’s unstoppable determination to redeem Jerusalem, indeed to convert her or to restore her to her rightful place at the cosmos’ center. The very envy of nations.

To the biblical eye, redemption is always unexpected. Quite often, its component moments are sudden. So here:

Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? Shall a nation be brought forth in one moment? For as soon as Zion was in labor she brought forth her children.

“Shall I bring to the point of birth and not cause to bring forth?” says the LORD; “shall I, who cause to bring forth, shut the womb?” says your God.

(Isaiah 66:8–9 ESV)

Now Zion—so often the surprised or bemused or astonished female personification of YHWH’s unlikely chosen—is pregnant. Indeed, she is in labor.

Yet it is an unusual labor, one that lasts but a moment. Contractions have only begun when suddenly her children—not one, but many—race through throbbing womb to join us here in the light. In this light.

This doesn’t happen under normal conditions. No one has ever heard of such a thing. Yet in this moment, it is YHWH’s purpose and so it shall be.

Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? Shall a nation be brought forth in one moment? For as soon as Zion was in labor she brought forth her children.

The mere description of accelerated and preternaturally productive labor is then framed in YHWH’s own interpretation of events.

“Shall I bring to the point of birth and not cause to bring forth?” says the LORD; “shall I, who cause to bring forth, shut the womb?” says your God.

Perhaps the metaphor hints at YHWH as Divine Father of Israel, a people’s Divine Progenitor. Or perhaps YHWH stands in here as Midwife. The imagery is patient of polyvalence, its reference perhaps singular, perhaps multiple, always suggestively open to reflection beyond initial impressions.

In any case, YHWH is determined to redeem Mother Zion, to multiply her children, to populate her future with daughters and sons. His live-giving, community-engendering purpose shall not be stopped in its tracks any more than a woman well entered into labor shall be told ‘No go!’.

Redemption, here, is inevitable.

Yet one wonders whether the metaphor of a woman’s heaving labor invites its reader to consider another inevitability about the process: its pain.

Zion has throughout sixty-five of sixty-six chapters of the book never been far from trouble. Indeed, she has been bloodied by trouble. Made bereft by trouble. Cast out and rejected, by trouble.

Perhaps YHWH’s unstoppable thirst for redemption, the very inevitability of it all, must be seen as leading his daughters and sons to the glory of it through pain that loudly cries redemption’s impossibility.

Yet for this prophet, the giddy, redeemed cacophony of the people’s final glory only appears to be impossibly, a damned mirage, the haunting practiced upon the hopeless by a thousand zombied dreams.

In fact, suggests the Isaianic voice, it was always going to be this way. This joyful, abundant, glorious way. Inevitable.

“Shall I bring to the point of birth and not cause to bring forth?” says the LORD

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