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 …
Readers of these reflections will be familiar with the employment of the serpent to represent personalized evil, not least because such a creature populates the earliest pages of the Hebrew Bible. In a section of the book of Isaiah that seems to stand on the shoulders of discrete ‘oracles against the nations’ in order to glimpse resistance to YHWH’s purpose at more cosmic level, the Isaiah scroll does the same.
Chapter 27 begins with an exceedingly brief oracle, which I quote here both in Hebrew and in English.
On that day the LORD with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea.
Isaiah 27:1 (BHS and NRSV)
The oracle begins with the familiar and non-specific glance toward an unspecified future: ביום ההוא // ֹon that day. But instead of the usual particulars about a specific national adversary, we find YHWH armed as a warrior attacking a snake.
One detects a curious three-part symmetry. YHWH’s sword is ‘his cruel and great and strong sword’. His doomed adversary is Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent … the dragon that is in the sea.’ It may be significant that it is not YHWH himself but rather YHWH’s sword that stands parallel to this enemy. Biblical monotheism is usually written in the cursive of incomparability, and incomparability itself can be declared bluntly or subtly.
I assume that twice-named Leviathan and התנִין (NRSV’s the dragon) are one and the same. YHWH here makes war with a principal adversary, not two.
It is the description of the creature that concerns me most: fleeing … twisting … in the sea.
Not a purveyor of arbitrary parallelism but rather a poetic work of subtle interplay, the book called Isaiah is likely saying something important about the nature of cosmic opposition to YHWH’s purpose, something that presses into the serpent metaphor in order to build upon its possibilities.
First, the serpent is ברח / fleeing. When our eyes, figuratively speaking, fall upon Leviathan, YHWH’s might has already landed in force. Second, the serpent is עקלתון / twisting. One might consider that the descriptor aims chiefly to build upon the fear-engendering movement of a snake. I think, however, that the adjective serves to connote that Leviathan the serpent is difficult to subdue. While such a reading may seem to stand in opposition to the three-part invincibility of YHWH’s sword, it could just as well serve as a touch of Isaianic realism about the nature of opposition to YHWH’s counsel, its tenacity and destructiveness more than evident throughout the oracles against the nations and this more ‘apocalyptic’ section that follows upon them.
Finally, we come to התנין / the dragon. This third of three adjectival clauses turns concretely positional or locative. Israelite cosmology famously assigns to the sea the resonance that is proper to a chaotic, threatening, virtually untamable entity. Here it becomes the dragon’s—and, as I have argued, Leviathan’s—home. If this serpent does not customarily live in the sea—an interpretation I think likely reflects the figure’s intention—he flees to it.
Regardless, YHWH’s sword will be the end of it. The verb in question is no longer the semantically open פקד, commonly in contexts like this one, to visit or to punish (so NRSV). Rather, it is הרג / to kill, an unambiguously lethal brand of punishment. Leviathan, we are told in this briefest of oracles, this fleeing, twisting serpent, shall ‘on that day’ be no more.
Then, if editorial sequencing is to be honored, we read of a vineyard like no other. Its attentive viticulturist has no anger. He almost has to cry out for an enemy to dare to present itself, such is the blooming peace of the place.
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.
El cuarto de los oráculos cuidadosamente secuenciados relativos a la bendición de Egipto es el más breve. Sin embargo, en términos de la amplitud de visión que estas visiones despliegan ante los ojos de los lectores, es el más amplio hasta la fecha. Esta observación gira en torno a la inclusión en este versículo del otro imperio amenazador que ahora incluye en el abrazo de la bendición intencionada de YHVH: Asiria, el odiado y temido.
De hecho, la brevedad enmascara una conmoción notable, cuya iluminación requerirá de algún comentario histórico.
Aquel día habrá una calzada desde Egipto hasta Asiria; los asirios entrarán en Egipto y los egipcios en Asiria, y los egipcios adorarán junto con los asirios.
Isaías 19:23 (LBLA)
Egipto y Asiria sirven en el imaginario israelita como polos opuestos de la amenaza imperial. Cuando uno proyecta su sombra amenazadora sobre el Levante, el otro se convierte en un aliado codiciado en un intento de gestionar la Realpolitik del momento. Como viajan los seres humanos, aunque no como vuelan los pájaros, Egipto y Asiria se sitúan espacialmente en esos mismos dos polos. La movilidad imita a la política, o al revés.
De hecho, hay que decir más al respecto. Este diminuto oráculo se sitúa por encima de su peso a través de una suposición no declarada: Una carretera de Egipto a Asiria y el paso prometido de los emisarios de un imperio al otro conducirán necesariamente a esos viajeros a través de Israel. Judá no será en absoluto un espectador de las circunstancias imaginadas.
Visto así, el oráculo contiene suposiciones conmovedoras sobre una geografía política y natural pacificada. Sólo un mundo en paz podría ver los tipos de tránsito en ambas direcciones que se vislumbran.
Hasta aquí, los elementos que contempla el versículo 23 anticipan un asombroso intercambio político, comercial y cultural. El vaivén de estos imperios, hasta ahora enfrentados, evoca un mundo nuevo, jamás vislumbrado por los ojos humanos, que imita la promesa contraexperiencial de la Visión de las Visiones (capítulo 2), según la cual las naciones fluirán como un río colinaarriba hacia Sión, en esa visión el acantilado más alto del mundo.
Sin embargo, hay más, y se enuncia en las sílabas de la clásica paradoja isaística.
…y los egipcios adorarán con los asirios.
La cláusula que acabamos de citar representa una expresión hebrea ambigua, que una vez más se coloca en una especie de posición enfática como declaración sumaria del oráculo.
ועבדו מצרים את־אשׁור
En el discurso normal de la política imperial, esta declaración se interpretaría naturalmente como una descripción del sometimiento de Egipto a Asiria. Es decir, el verbo עבד denotaría el servicio de los egipcios a Asiria como subordinados de este último imperio. La partícula את serviría como marcador que introduce el objeto directo del verbo. La expresión completa se representaría en español como “…y los egipcios servirán a Asiria”.
Sin embargo, en el contexto se ponen ante los ojos del lector dos transformaciones de esta lectura “obvia”. En primer lugar, עבד parece referirse al servicio religioso más que a la sumisión política, en consonancia con el altar y el pilar cultual, así como con el sacrificio y el holocausto que los egipcios ofrecen a YHVH en el oráculo inmediatamente anterior a éste.
En segundo lugar, את parece estar colocada irónicamente para representar no el familiar marcador de objeto directo, sino la preposición que significa “con”. Las dos palabras son homógrafas y probablemente también homófonas. El marcador de objeto directo aparece con mucha más frecuencia que la preposición, aunque ambos son componentes habituales del discurso hebreo bíblico.
Aquí el significado debe ser, como sugieren la mayoría de las traducciones modernas, que…
…y los egipcios adorarán (a YHVH) junto con los asirios. …
Las cuarenta sílabas de este cuarto y casi miniaturizado oráculo de bendición han puesto de cabeza al mundo conocido. Al igual que la Visión de las Visiones del segundo capítulo, describen un mundo imposible, casi inconcebible tanto para la mente del Antiguo Oriente Próximo como para la nuestra.
Las naciones han experimentado una completa transformación religiosa; la palabra “conversión” se queda muy corta para lo que aquí se describe. Además, sus relaciones mutuas han pasado de la enemistad y la competencia a una interacción cooperativa del tipo existencialmente más profundo.
Aunque el vocabulario y las imágenes difícilmente podrían ser más diferentes que los de la Visión de las Visiones, las naciones han fluido hacia Sión y ahora a través de ella, con la instrucción de YHVH y la adoración a él como características del compromiso de esos pueblos con el Dios de Jacob. Las espadas se han convertido en rejas de arado, las lanzas en podaderas.
Todo esto es imposible. A no ser que el profeta inste a sus lectores a conjeturar que no lo es.
Para cuando los ‘oráculos contra las naciones’ de Isaías han serpenteado hasta llegar a la denuncia de Tiro en el capítulo veintitrés del libro, el lector ha aprendido a anticipar un giro repentino de la aflicción al mal en las líneas finales de cada capítulo.
A lo largo del capítulo, las glorias producidas por los incesantes viajes comerciales de Tiro han sido profanadas. El propio mar se ha vuelto contra Tiro y Sidón, su ciudad hermana. La propia Tiro será ‘olvidada durante setenta años, la vida de un rey’ (v. 15). Sus energías ambiciosas han sido comparadas con las de una prostituta callejera. Al menos en la retórica del profeta, Tiro ha sido abatida como tantos otros vecinos de Israel.
Sin embargo, uno espera cosas mejores al llegar al esperado lenguaje bisagra del versículo 17: והיה מקץ שׁבעים שׁנה / ‘Al final de los setenta años…’ Aquí, después de todo, es donde los horizontes casi siempre se hacen más claros.
Pero si esperamos un oráculo de bendición al final de este capítulo, nos quedamos rascándonos la cabeza sobre sus detalles.
Y sucederá al cabo de los setenta años que el Señor visitará a Tiro. Entonces ella regresará a su paga de ramera, y se prostituirá con todos los reinos sobre la faz de la tierra. Y sus ganancias y su paga de ramera serán consagradas al Señor; no serán almacenadas ni acumuladas, sino que su ganancia llegará a ser suficiente alimento y vestidura selecta para aquellos que habiten en la presencia del Señor.
Isaías 23:17-18 (LBLA)
Extrañamente, no encontramos una espléndida Tiro redimida vestida de lino blanco, bendecida por YHVH y bendiciendo la tierra. Al menos no exactamente.
En cambio, su actividad sigue siendo presentada como la de una mujer que ‘se prostituye con todos los reinos del mundo sobre la faz de la tierra’. Tiro no se ha quedado quieta. Sus incesantes andanzas no se han vuelto obsoletas durante esos setenta años olvidados.
Sólo el propósito ha cambiado, y esto dramáticamente. El oráculo del juicio contra Tiro la había descrito así:
¿Quién ha planeado esto contra Tiro, la que concedía coronas, cuyos mercaderes eran príncipes, cuyos comerciantes eran los nobles de la tierra?
Isaías 23:8 (LBLA)
Parece que no ha perdido nada de su destreza comercial. En el oráculo de la restauración -si es que eso es lo que es- su incesante compraventa sigue calificándose de prostitución. Sin embargo, sus beneficiarios han sido suplantados por otros nuevos y más nobles.
Y sus ganancias y su paga de ramera serán consagradas al SEÑOR; no serán almacenadas ni acumuladas, sino que su ganancia llegará a ser suficiente alimento y vestidura selecta para aquellos que habiten en la presencia del SEÑOR.
Isaías 23:18 (LBLA)
Si el patrón bien establecido en los oráculos de Isaías contra las naciones es nuestra estrella polar interpretativa, entonces es posible que el patrón se haya mantenido incluso aquí. Es probable que la descripción de Tiro después de sus setenta años sea una descripción de bendición e incluso de servicio a YHVH. Tal vez, entonces, la ‘prostitución’ de Tiro sea ahora una descripción irónica, más que mordaz, de su activismo comercial. Su forma no ha cambiado, pero su propósito se ha transformado.
Los ‘beneficios’ de la ‘prostitución’ de Tiro ya no se acumulan para su propia gloria, sino que ahora alimentan y visten a los hijos del Señor.
Si tal lectura capta la carga profundamente irónica del capítulo, entonces podríamos mirar hacia atrás, a las naciones que convierten las espadas en rejas de arado y las lanzas en podaderas. También podríamos mirar hacia adelante, hacia el desfile del producto cultural de las naciones en Sión, el embellecido y el embellecedor. Podríamos descubrir en esas metáforas tan dispares un modelo para la extraña transformación de este capítulo de la ‘prostitución’ comercial de una ciudad pagana en pan, vino y lana para las hijas y los hijos del amplio y acogedor abrazo de Sión.
Hemos considerado el giro repentino que se produce en el capítulo diecinueve de Isaías, en el que se pasa de un sombrío oráculo de juicio contra Egipto a una declaración sobre su sanación y, de hecho, su improbable integración en la fe yahvista. Algunos categorizarían la ambigua viñeta de los versículos 16-17 con el oráculo de juicio final precedente contra esa nación. Yo he argumentado, basándome en la abrumadora nota de bendición de los cinco oráculos y en la cláusula introductoria ביום ההוא (‘En aquel día…’), que esos dos versículos se entienden mejor como el primero de los cinco oráculos de bendición que como un lúgubre preludio de los mismos.
Cuando llegamos a la segunda declaración de buena fortuna para Egipto, la disposición más alegre del oráculo suscita relativamente menos dudas. Entiendo que es el segundo de los cinco oráculos paralelos de bendición.
Aquel día cinco ciudades en la tierra de Egipto hablarán la lengua de Canaán y jurarán lealtad al Señor de los ejércitos; una de ellas será llamada Ciudad de Destrucción.
Isaías 19:18 (LBLA)
Curiosamente, existe un elemento de la bendición in crescendo desde el primero de los cinco oráculos -donde sólo se ve a través del prisma de las declaraciones más felices que le siguen- hasta la quinta y culminante visión. En esa versión culminante de los acontecimientos, no sólo Egipto, sino también Asiria, se presentarán antes que Israel como naciones beneficiarias de la bendición de YHVH.
Cuando el versículo 18 se contempla en este contexto más amplio, contribuye por sí mismo a la clarificación gradual de la envidiable situación de Egipto. En sí mismo, este segundo oráculo de bendición podría interpretarse como una retórica imperial convencional de tipo israelita. Esas ‘cinco ciudades en la tierra de Egipto hablarán la lengua de Canaán y jurarán lealtad al Señor de los ejércitos’ podrían entenderse, con toda naturalidad, como asentamientos de israelitas ocupantes dentro de Egipto.
Sólo a medida que continuamos leyendo el tercer oráculo y luego el cuarto y el quinto, esa interpretación pierde su viabilidad. En el tercero, se hará evidente un profundo acercamiento entre Egipto y el propio YHVH. Si leemos los oráculos juntos -como el mecanismo ביום הוא parece sugerir que debemos hacerlo- entonces estas cinco ciudades son ciudades egipcias pobladas por habitantes egipcios que viven en tierra egipcia. Sin embargo, hablan la lengua de Canaán y juran lealtad a la deidad de Israel. Que este juramento se entienda como un rasgo inicial de fe por conversión o como una piedad yahvista continua es casi irrelevante. En cualquiera de los dos casos, vemos a los egipcios adorando a YHVH y participando en la identidad continua que representa el dialecto.
En otros lugares, el libro llamado Isaías traficará con el lenguaje y el concepto de un nuevo nombre y de renombrar. Aquí tenemos todo eso en una clave diferente que no depende de la mención de un nuevo nombre, sino por referencia a dos actividades: el juramento de fidelidad y el idioma. En efecto, como veremos, estos egipcios siguen siendo manifiestamente egipcios.
Sin embargo, al mirar bajo la superficie, una cosa queda clara: todo ha cambiado.
From the moment YHWH’s servant is introduced in 42.1, there is a hint that the servant’s career will be an arduous one. Indeed, the presentation formula at 42.1 says as much with its first breath:
הן עבדי אתמך־בו Here is my servant, whom I uphold…
Isaiah 42:1 (NRSV)
YHWH’s pledge to uphold (תמך) all but requires that we imagine resistance to the servant’s work, the potential weakness of the servant himself, or both.
Not surprisingly, then, the passages that follow abound in promises by YHWH to supply all that the servant will require in order that he should persevere to the conclusion of his assigned agenda.
Chapter forty-four continues this sequence of promises, holding tight to the communal or collective identity of the curiously named ‘servant’ while painting with new color the circumstances of his adventure.
But now hear, O Jacob my servant, Israel whom I have chosen!
Thus says the LORD who made you, who formed you in the womb and will help you: Do not fear, O Jacob my servant, Jeshurun whom I have chosen.
For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing on your offspring.
They shall spring up like a green tamarisk, like willows by flowing streams. This one will say, ‘I am the LORD’S,’ another will be called by the name of Jacob, yet another will write on the hand, ‘The LORD’S,’ and adopt the name of Israel.
Isaiah 44:1-5 (NRSV)
The chapter’s opening oracle, quoted just above, provides essential elements for a comprehensive understanding of the servant figure in the book called Isaiah. Characteristically, it does so incrementally and in a dialect of rich and complex metaphor.
First, we find further assurance in a classic summons to overcome fear—‘Do not fear, O Jacob my servant…!’—that an evident danger ought not to be given more weight than it is due in the context of YHWH’s presence and provision. This continues the tone of reassurance that has accompanied the servant discourse from its beginning.
Additionally, we find overlapping imagery regarding the provision of water in a desert, on the one hand, and descendants/offspring, on the other. These are introduced sequentially, then blended a moment later when the aforementioned descendants/offspring spring up like tamarisk and willows in consequence of YHWH’s irrigation of the desert.
This interplay of images is further enriched by the realization that YHWH’s spirit and the water he provides appear to be two ways of speaking about the same thing.
Finally, the text drops plant imagery as quickly has it had introduced it in order to return to the matter of people. When it does so, we learn that the servant Jacob/Israel’s suddenly appearing children are in fact the offspring of other nations who now—remarkably—adopt the name of Israel.
The overall impact of this oracle’s supplementation of preceding servant discourse is extraordinary. The reference of YHWH’s spirit seems certain to echo that saturating spirit that comes to rest upon the Jesse-king of chapter 11, perhaps linking the collective Jacob/Israel servant with that quite individual, regal figure. And the servant’s YHWH-provisioned return—if this is the movement we are meant to imagine—somehow creates a more complex Jacob/Israel in the very act of its potentially wearying desert crossing.
The children are descended from their parents, yet they are from a different people. YHWH, supporting and sustaining his servant, will see to it. The task is hard, yet the outcome assured. The servant is vulnerable, yet strangely enriched by daughters and sons it did not bear in Babylon nor bring from that soon-to-be-forgotten place. Yet here they are, calling themselves by YHWH-names, more sons and daughters than new-found cousins.
Just as the book called Isaiah plays on the concepts of YHWH’s strength and his provision of strength to Jacob/Israel, so does the book’s discourse regarding the servant of YHWH make artful use of the concepts of gentleness, weakness, and dimness.
The formal presentation of YHWH’s servant in chapter 42 initiates this interplay of concepts across parallel subjects.
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick (ופשתה כהה) he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint (לא יכהה) or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.”
Isaías 42:1-4 (NRSV, emphasis and Hebrew text added)
The servant’s task and eventual achievement is portrayed as a quite formidable establishment of justice across many nations, indeed ‘in the earth’ (NRSV). In ordinary circumstances, such a feat might be expected to depend upon the application of great force.
Not here. Instead, the servant will not quench ‘a dimly burning wick’. The expression deploys the verb כהה. The metaphor is best understood as presenting a weary or disheartened person or population. We are asked to imagine that the subjection of that people to the conditions of justice will not crush the dispirited or vulnerable members of its population.
One might have expected the metaphor, having served its purpose, to recede from view. But this does not happen.
Instead, the very next verse hints at the servants own vulnerability and the effective perseverance that will triumph over it. The very same root is now deployed as a verb. The servant ‘will not grow faint’ (לא יכהה). The oscillation in NRSV between the metaphorical wick’s ‘dimly burning’ nature and the servant’s refusal to ‘grow faint’ is perhaps a necessary concession to the demands of translation. Sadly, it sacrifices the play on words that binds the weak members among the nations who will not be crushed in the course of the servant’s administration or impost of justice to the servant’s own refusal to give in to the exhaustion with which his task is understood to threaten him.
This is not the last time that verbal artistry will serve to bind YHWH’s servant deeply to the identity of YHWH himself or to that of human beings who will be impacted by his vocation. In this case, the servant’s gentle disposition towards the objects of his calling and the vulnerability he shares with them but somehow overcomes conspire to bind the two subjects into a remarkable if subtly suggestive solidarity.
All of this occurs in the context of the world-shaping, world-remaking administration of justice which the servant of YHWH appears to ‘bring out’ from Zion for the benefit of nations that, for their part, await the instruction that will shape their new future.
The book of Isaiah’s thirtieth chapter decries the ironic dependence of Jacob/Israel upon Egypt, its erstwhile and iconic captor.
In the face of contemporary political threats, the people are strangely drawn to Egypt’s supposed shelter from the storm.
Alas, says the prophet, such a rejection of protection that lies closer to home, such a preference for worthless sanctuary in an empire’s embrace, is only the crashing of a different and more dangerous storm upon a nation that staggers about without a clue.
Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel: Because you reject this word, and put your trust in oppression and deceit, and rely on them; therefore this iniquity shall become for you like a break in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse, whose crash comes suddenly, in an instant; its breaking is like that of a potter’s vessel that is smashed so ruthlessly that among its fragments not a sherd is found for taking fire from the hearth, or dipping water out of the cistern.
Isaiah 30:12-14 (NRSV)
Two metaphors jumble restlessly in the oracle’s denunciation. First a wall, then a vessel.
What they share is the everyday utility they afford: protection, first, and then provision. Perhaps their quotidian usefulness—imaged rather than articulated—is meant to play off Egypt’s purported uselessness.
Yet we see their usefulness sacrificed: Wall and vessel, two staples of everyday life, now lie shattered beyond recognition.
It is ‘this iniquity’ (העון הזה) that is described in the two metaphors. Yet it is not entirely clear whether we are meant to understand that Jacob/Israel’s offense will be smashed or—alternatively—that the people itself will come crashing down on account of their iniquity. The text seems unconcerned to clarify the point.
What is clear is the tumbling stream of descriptors. Here, the passage again with emphasis added:
…this iniquity shall become for you like a break in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse, whose crash comes suddenly, in an instant; its breaking is like that of a potter’s vessel that is smashed so ruthlessly that among its fragments not a sherd is found for taking fire from the hearth, or dipping water out of the cistern.”
Isaiah 30:13-14 (NRSV, emphasis added)
Regardless of how we identify the primary referent of the two metaphors, it is difficult to conclude that we are meant to understand anything other than Israel/Jacob in pieces, tragically rendered by its own folly as useless as Egypt herself.
A complementary oracle that begins at verse 15—or perhaps we should understand it as the continuation of the passage under consideration—will speak of better prospects. But not until the reader has absorbed the shocking image of Israel shattered beyond recognition by the stubborn stupidity of its realpolitik.
In chapter three of the book called Isaiah, YHWH threatens to dismantle Jerusalem and Judah. But first he claims he will empty them. Indeed, the oracle’s first verses evacuate the city of all that makes a city.
As these verses drive their point home, they do so in a context where fulness is an honored and even axiomatic value:
For now the Sovereign, the LORD of hosts, is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah support and staff— all support of bread, and all support of water—warrior and soldier, judge and prophet, diviner and elder, captain of fifty and dignitary, counselor and skillful magician and expert enchanter.
Isaiah 3:1–3 (NRSV)
The passage presses hard for the full value of the alliteration it finds possible to organize around the root משען. The insertion of vocalized renditions of the four instances where this root is deployed in rapid-fire sequence may establish the point:
For now the Sovereign, the LORD of hosts, is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah support (מַשְׁעֶן, mash’en) and staff (מַשְׁעֵנָה, mashenah)— all support of bread (מַשְׁעַן־לֶחֶם, mash’an lechem), and all support of water (מַשְׁעַן־מָיִם, mash’an mayim)—…
Isaiah 3:1 (NRSV, Hebrew text and transliteration added)
The performative pronouncement uses three variations on a lexical theme. The third of them is repeated, thus packing a single verse with four nearly but not quite identical references to ‘support’ and ‘staff’.
The cumulative picture is a collapse of the structures and provision that undergird civilized life in Jerusalem and Judah. The prophet is remembered here as the purveyor of verbal fireworks. His effect must have come close to violence.
The passage will pivot from this intense metaphorization towards the naming of categories of Zion’s eminences in verses 2 and 3. But before the reader gets there, he or she has already felt the city falling into a sinkhole that has opened up beneath her streets, swallowing up those eminent and capable pillars upon which she has rested.
If the Massoretic reading tradition reflects genuinely ancient interpretation, then we encounter in this verse rhetorical artistry of a compact and pungent kind that brings to bear strenuous denunciation upon a city which the prophet believes has outrun its own capacity for presumption.
Isaiah has constructed reality out of vowels. People must have remembered the moment they first heard it.
Canter Bridge 