Canter Bridge

History, genealogy, and confession can all be faked.

On its way to a profoundly moving promise of ‘new things’ that will be both redemptive and easy to welcome, the 48th chapter of the book of Isaiah digs deep into Israel/Judah’s pretension. We see here the logic of ‘refining’ this people ‘in the furnace of affliction’, for from Isaiah’s perspective only a humble nation can receive YHWH’s future. And Israel will not be humble until she has been humbled.

Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and who came from the waters of Judah, who swear by the name of the Lord and confess the God of Israel, but not in truth or right. For they call themselves after the holy city, and stay themselves on the God of Israel; the Lord of hosts is his name. (Isaiah 48:1–2 ESV)

The passage begins as though bent on heroic declaration. Jacob’s historical identity leads the nation to bask in the name ‘Israel’. And we are probably to imagine the very genealogical datum of procreation when we learn that Jacob has come ‘from the waters of Judah’. All this legacy is then complemented by the present-day activities of ‘swear(ing) by the name of YHWH and confess(ing) the God of Israel.’ (more…)

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Few of the book of Isaiah’s statements about the ‘servant of the Lord’ are as densely packed as the image-rich section that begins at Isaiah 49.1.

Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow; in his quiver he hid me away. And he said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’ But I said, ‘I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my right is with the Lord, and my recompense with my God.’

And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him; and that Israel might be gathered to him—for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength—he says: ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’ (Isaiah 49:1–6 ESV)

First, we have the expression of profound intimacy between the servant and YHWH. This is made explicit throughout the passage, but the reader should not miss its implicit expression in the passage’s first words. The opening summons (‘Listen to me … give attention’) is sometimes offered in the book of Isaiah by the prophet with the immediately following declaration that ‘YHWH has spoken’. At other times YHWH himself uses this convening expression himself. (more…)

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Isaiah is not so much the herald of unlikely beginnings as he is the prophet of unpromising re-starts.

His signature is not the tale of origins, but rather the anticipation of dead things springing quietly to life. In chapter 11 of the book that bears Isaiah’s name, the prophet assumes the destruction of the Davidic monarchy. Having done so, this compelling oracle goes back to Jesse, the father of David, the shepherdly antecedent to kings and kingdoms. It is as though a fresh start requires a radical retreat to the moment before the long trajectory of Israelite disappointment in its kings had set off upon its tortuous arc.

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. (Isaiah 11:1–5 ESV)

This unnamed scion of the house of Jesse emerges from a dead tree, cut down to stump and left to rot amid the leveled forest of kingdoms that did not pan out. (more…)

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The plethora of names in Isaiah 7.1-9 requires a complete reading if we are to make sense of it.

In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah the king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not yet mount an attack against it. When the house of David was told, ‘Syria is in league with Ephraim,’ the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.

And the Lord said to Isaiah, ‘Go out to meet Ahaz, you and Shear-jashub your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Washer’s Field. And say to him, “Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, at the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and the son of Remaliah. Because Syria, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has devised evil against you, saying, ‘Let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves, and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it,’ thus says the Lord God: ‘It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. And within sixty-five years Ephraim will be shattered from being a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.’”’ (Isaiah 7:1–9 ESV)

The manifest terror of Ahaz and his vulnerable Judahites is captured in the image of hearts shaking ‘as the trees of a forest shake before the wind’. The careful reader might sense in the prophet’s allusion to a wind (רוח) the barest of hints that another ‘wind’ (רוח in Isaiah and elsewhere refers often to YHWH’s ‘spirit’) also blows across Judah amid what can only be experienced as an existential crisis. It is the latter breeze that is capable of effecting the prophet’s bidding to calm down and refuse to panic, even as this divine rustling stands as well behind YHWH’s bold declaration that the machination of Judah’s enemies ‘shall not stand and shall not be’ (v. 7). (more…)

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It would be wrong to say that the structures and patterns of cult and liturgy lack value in the legacy of a biblical prophet like Isaiah. In fact, some of the prophet’s most stirring expressions of YHWH’s redemption of Israel promise the shocking inclusion into worship of people like foreigners and the badly mutilated, who were conventionally excluded.

Yet in the book’s final paragraph YHWH seems entirely unimpressed by, say, a temple constructed for his repose. He could make for himself a thousand of these if the whimsy struck him. (more…)

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The brilliant tale of Judah’s national resurrection in the Book of Isaiah’s sixtieth chapter is populated with glimpses of the nations’ contribution to Jerusalem’s beautification.

It seems that distant nations streaming to glorified Zion carry with then not only Jerusalem’s long-lost children as these come finally home. As remote peoples ‘come to (Zion’s) light and kings to the brightness of (Zion’s) shining’, they also bring with them the richest product of their culture and economy. They import into the now glorified city the ‘abundance of the sea’ (המון ים) and the ‘wealth of the nations’ (חיל גוים), even the representative ‘glory of Lebanon’ (כבוד הלבנון). (more…)

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The dark days before Israel’s destruction by Assyria’s might left few untouched. Even the children.

Then the Lord said to me, ‘Take a large tablet and write on it in common characters, “Belonging to Maher-shalal-hash-baz.” And I will get reliable witnesses, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah, to attest for me.

And I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. Then the Lord said to me, ‘Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz; for before the boy knows how to cry “My father” or “My mother,” the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria. (Isaiah 8:1–4 ESV)

When the prophet affixes this grim moniker to his baby boy, he signals the imminent destruction of Israel’s threatening neighbors. The name means ‘Hasten the booty, speed the spoil!’. (more…)

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A mysterious voice resounds in the fortieth chapter of the book of Isaiah, the very point at which comfort overwhelms judgement as the book’s dominant tone. This voice is mysterious precisely because it is anonymous. Ordinarily, a text does not introduce a new protagonist without identifying him. (more…)

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The prophet Isaiah describes YHWH’s anticipated conduct in bringing his exiled children back home in a way that manages to combine tenderness and infinity.

He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.  Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? (Isaiah 40:11–14 ESV)

Isaiah’s poetry ornaments the deeply rooted biblical conviction that YHWH is uncontainable. He answers to no man, his arm is not too short for any purpose that befits his regnal character.

The emphasized words argue that YHWH is also and finally inconceivable to mere human minds. This hardly means that he is unknowable or that he evades relationship. To the contrary, he discloses himself and delights in being known. Yet the prophet, for all his originality, is close to heel with the biblical witness in affirming that YHWH cannot be exhaustively known. YHWH is free to act as he will, and his judgments in this respect are beyond measure.

The contrast between YHWH and rough-hewn idols carved out by a hard-breathing man’s hatchet in Isaiah’s anti-idolatry polemic throws this feature of Isaiah’s persona into still starker relief.

There is freedom, the prophet might well insist, in worshiping a God of this kind. He is alive to his own purpose, free to create a future that aligns with his good intentions, unrestrained by the mud that sucks at our heels.

YHWH is beyond measure and beyond measuring. Little captives, daring to begin to hope, might well find an anchor in this infinity, this Lover both uncaptured and uncapturable.

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