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?
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.
In chapter nine the prophet denounces the pride of Jacob/Israel. In doing so, he affirms two common components of prophetic discourse and inverts another.
The people did not turn to him who struck them, or seek the LORD of hosts.
So the LORD cut off from Israel head and tail, palm branch and reed in one day—elders and dignitaries are the head, and prophets who teach lies are the tail; for those who led this people led them astray, and those who were led by them were left in confusion.
That is why the Lord did not have pity on their young people, or compassion on their orphans and widows; for everyone was godless and an evildoer, and every mouth spoke folly. For all this his anger has not turned away, his hand is stretched out still.
Isaiah 9:13-17 (NRSV, emphasis added)
We look first at the commonalities that are here affirmed. First, the oracle deploys the frequent pattern in which YHWH strikes and heals or perhaps strikes in order to heal. Here this frequent trope is interrupted but is not aborted. The wider context of the Isaianic Vision will assure us that Jacob/Israel—or a portion of the nation—did posture itself for the healing portion of YHWH’s engagement with his people. Within this oracle, however, we have only a warning that this has not yet occurred.
Second, the aforementioned failure on YHWH’s part to relent is consolidated by what can only be described as a refrain in the early chapters of the book:
For all this his anger has not turned away, his hand is stretched out still.
Isaiah 9:17 (NRSV)
Insofar as these two components of the oracle are concerned, the passage is continuous rather than discontinuous with its surroundings.
However, the content of verse 17 (verse 16 in the Hebrew text) just prior to this refrain slightly modifies and then rather radically inverts a common prophetic concern:
That is why the Lord did not have pity on their young people, or compassion on their orphans and widows; for everyone was godless and an evildoer, and every mouth spoke folly.
Isaiah 9:17 (NRSV)
Isaiah and his prophetic counterparts frequently delineate the most vulnerable victims and therefore the first affected by injustice as the poor, orphans, and widows. Here, the latter two—orphans (יתומים) and widows (אלמנות)—make their customary appearance as those who receive more mercy. ‘The young people’ (בחוריו) stand where one might expect ‘the poor’, yet it must be admitted that they are the object of a different verb (לא ישמח, shall not rejoice over; NRSV follows 1QIsa/a’s לא יחמול, shall not have compassion upon).
The radical inversion, one that occurs with something of a prophetic bite, is that it is not the unjust who will show themselves hard-hearted against the plight of Israel’s young, widows, and orphans. It is YHWH himself, the one exalted in this book precisely for his justice, righteousness, and compassion!
The text provides a justification for its astounding declaration:
…for everyone was godless and an evildoer, and every mouth spoke folly.
Isaiah 9:17 (NRSV)
This is not the only moment in which the Vision of Isaiah presents a ‘strange work’ of YHWH, one to which he appears to have been driven by his people’s exasperating behavior but which does not flow from his nature.
For the LORD will rise up as on Mount Perazim, he will rage as in the valley of Gibeon; to do his deed—strange is his deed! and to work his work—alien is his work!
Now therefore do not scoff, or your bonds will be made stronger; for I have heard a decree of destruction from the Lord GOD of hosts upon the whole land.
Isaiah 28:21-22 (NRSV)
We also read that YHWH is the author of darkness, woe, and calamity (see 31.2, 42.23, 45.7, 50.3, 54.16). Yet the passage under scrutiny is no less jarring for the company of its friends.
YHWH, in the Isaianic vision, goes dark. He becomes unmoved by the plight of the victim, a collaborator in the deeply rooted injustice that is both cause and consequence of Israel’s deaf ears and blind eyes.
The book called Isaiah clears a particular space for influential children.
Whether Isaiah’s story of redemption is considered as proximate to Judah’s fate amid the imperial episodes involving Assyria, Babylon, and Persia or across a trajectory involving New Testament messianic readings of the texts, the little ones exercise a surprising and potent agency.
In Isaiah 9—one must be aware that the Hebrew and English versification differ by a count of one unit—sudden and exuberant reversals are in play.
The section that comprises Isaiah 9:1-7 (English versification) swings on a hinge that might best be understood to usher in glorious light in place of hopeless darkness and peaceful celebration where moments ago the people knew bloody oppression. The tables are turned suddenly and in happy directions across these two ranges of experience.
The author of this revolution is understood to be YHWH, this by way of the second-person address in verses 3 and 4. I quote now the first five of the passage’s seven verses, with 3 and 4 italicized.
But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.
You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder.
For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.”
Isaiah 9:1–5 (NRSV)
Then Isaiah takes one of the tradition’s signature turns. I’ll again italicize, this time the references to the child whom the text now introduces.
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
Isaiah 9:6–7 (NRSV)
This child’s birth is a monarchical moment of deep importance to our author. Scholars move quickly and understandably to map the birth of this royal child across what we know of Ancient Near Eastern kings and houses, a move that produces an interpretation that is very much contained within the text’s historical moment.
The grand titles attributed to the child may tug at the edges of such a reading, but it’s a viable understanding in its context. A child sired within the David household will presumably grow up to liberate the royal house and its subjects from imperial oppression. The resonant Hebrew expression כי ילד ילד־לנו בן נתן־לנו—For a child has been born to us, a son is given to us—locates liberation in the person of an infant or a mere lad. This is YHWH’s way of achieving his greatest redemptive feats by means of the least promising of human agents. The imperial yoke is broken and Judah erupts in grateful celebration.
It’s a stirring picture and not one whose utility for Israelite/Jewish understanding is difficult to appreciate.
It is of course not the end of the story.
Rather, the New Testament’s Gospel of Matthew offers a complementary reading of the text. I choose the highlighted word carefully. It is not necessary to conclude and is in any case impossible to prove that Jewish messianic readers of the Hebrew Bible (in many cases via its Greek translation, the Septuagint) rejected or discarded an initial historically-contained reading of a text like this one. We may never know their precise assumptions in that regard. At the very least, an evangelist like Matthew offers an additional reading and admittedly one that for his community likely eclipsed almost altogether the earlier one.
Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
‘Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—
the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’
From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’
Matthew 4:12–17 (NRSV)
Those same 8th-century tables have been turned. Gloom has again been displaced by glorious light. Imperial oppression of a different sort has been vanquished in a way that occasions peaceful celebration.
A blessed kingdom has regained or secured effective dominion.
Christian faith, then, understands the birth of Jesus in revolutionary, table-turning terms that resound with the life-or-death gravity of the Isaiah oracle’s textures. As well, it embraces YHWH’s purported penchant for using ‘the least of these’—language that will become familiar on a grown-up Child’s lips—to accomplish his finest work.
Canter Bridge 