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Posts Tagged ‘Zion’

a banner for the nations: Isaiah 62

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , on January 29, 2024| Leave a Comment »

The lyrical sixty-second chapter of the book called Isaiah is nothing if not Zion-centric.

Yet the nations, as ever, are not absent. Theirs is largely a passive role in this chapter.

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch.

The nations shall see your vindication, and all the kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give.

Isaiah 62.1-2 (NRSV, emphasis added)

The nations figure as spectators of what YHWH has done for Zion. Yet when the reader comes to the second of two sections of this chapter, the text imposes upon her a judgement decision regarding the peoples’ precise role in this redemptive drama.

Go through, go through the gates, prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway, clear it of stones, lift up an ensign (נס) over the peoples.

The LORD has proclaimed to the end of the earth: Say to daughter Zion, ‘See, your salvation comes; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.’

They shall be called, ‘The Holy People, The Redeemed of the LORD’; and you shall be called, ‘Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken.’

Isaiah 62.10-12 (NRSV, emphasis and Hebrew text added)

Is this ensign or banner, italicized above, a sign of Zion’s dominance over the peoples? The preponderance of evidence suggest otherwise.

The word נס (banner, ensign) appears ten times in Isaiah. It is generally a quasi-military signal that summons a force or people from a distant location in order to take up a formidable task. In those cases where the banner is raised in order to capture the attention of one or more distant peoples, the particular circumstances surrounding this move require our attention.

In 5.26, YHWH summons a foreign people with a banner—likely Assyria—even as he whistles for that same nation to come speedily in response to Israel’s rebellion. In 11.10, the ‘root of Jesse’ stands as a נס ‘to the peoples’, who respond by inquiring of him, hardly a threatening or unpleasant occupation for the nations involved. Two verses later, the nations are summoned by a נס in order that they might bring back the ‘dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth’. The burden of the nations’ summoning at 49.22 is very much the same.

When therefore we read of a raised banner in 62.10, the word’s final appearance in Isaiah, we have been prepared to expect that the nations’ will be summoned to some critical task vis-à-vis Zion. It is unlikely that the nations are taking up an errand that is adversarial to Zion, since the text is so emphatically pro-Zion in every line.

It seems likely, though the immediate context does not say so explicitly, that 62.10’s ensign raised ‘over the peoples’ convenes the nations for the same task that is mentioned explicitly at 49.22 and implicitly elsewhere. That is, the peoples have been dignified by the responsibility of returning dispersed Judahites to the restored mother city. They are summoned to serve Zion rather than to besiege her.

Their role is emphatically subordinate to Zion’s celebrated restoration, the recovery of its lost daughters and sons. Yet nowhere is this reunion painted in colors that humiliate those who make it happen in obedience to YHWH’s call, loaning their camels and their carts, bending strong shoulders in service of the people they once loathed, though that hatred seems now quite hard to remember.

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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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YHWH growls and flies: Isaiah 30

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , on January 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Hauling from his inventory a curious spate of metaphors, the prophet manufactures a curious animal collage in order to depict YHWH’s defense of Zion’s ‘hill’ (גבעה). One wonders whether that arguably diminutive substitute for the usual ‘mount’ (הר) is intended to express Zion’s hypothetical helplessness in the absence of such divine protection.

For thus the LORD said to me, As a lion or a young lion growls over its prey, and—when a band of shepherds is called out against it— is not terrified by their shouting or daunted at their noise, so the LORD of hosts will come down to fight upon Mount Zion and upon its hill.

Like birds hovering overhead, so the LORD of hosts will protect Jerusalem; he will protect and deliver it, he will spare and rescue it.’

Isaiah 31.4-5 (NRSV)

YHWH is a lion, unafraid of any who might sally to drive it away. Neither ‘terrified by their shouting or daunted at their noise’, YHWH’s prowling signals the end of a town’s captivity. The prey in his grasp belongs entirely to its predator. Who would brave that growl?

As the metaphor shifts from feline to fowl, so does the imagined time frame experience its own evolution. The lion’s prey is recently captured, its change of hands the thing that alarms all those enraged shepherds who have only just realized their loss. Now, however, YHWH ‘like birds hovering overhead’ becomes the all-seeing protector of a Jerusalem that has fallen entirely into his claim. No sneaky enemy will surprise Jerusalem, nor its overflying Protector. Conquest has become dominion.

Two features of this unexpected, animalesque field of imagery surprise. One is the audacity of depicting YHWH in terms of creaturely specimens. The other is the daring imagination of him in the plural.

Zion is not troubled by these details. Down below the swallows’ vigilant darting, finally, she rests. Protected, delivered, spared, and rescued.

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theodicy and promise: Isaiah 59

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , on December 27, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Isaiah’s fifty-ninth chapter is seldom quoted. Perhaps it is too bleak for recall, let alone for amplification.

The strong note of theodicy comes in the form of an unidentified (prophetic?) voice, asserting that YHWH’s capacity to save has not somehow become diminished. Rather, the people’s stubborn instinct for rebellion lies at the root of the present disgrace.

The oracle alternates between description of injustice as 2nd-person accusation (v. 3, ‘For your hands are defiled with blood…’), 3rd-person description (v. 4, ‘No one brings suit justly, no one goes to law honestly…’), and 1st-person testimony:

Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us; we wait for light, and lo! there is darkness; and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.

Isaiah 59.9 (NRSV)

Such oscillation between grammatical voices is not rare in biblical prophecy. Yet here the sequential march from the second to the third to the first persons and the relentlessness comprehensiveness of injustice seem intended to justify YHWH’s anger and unresponsiveness by means of exhaustive description of Judahite rebellion.

Still, the familiar script of a divine victory that proves redemptive for people makes its appearance.

First, the well-armed deity is seen repaying his enemies in a way that raises hopes of what may be a welcome restoration of justice.

According to their deeds, so will (YHWH) repay; wrath to his adversaries, requital to his enemies; to the coastlands he will render requital.

So those in the west shall fear the name of the LORD, and those in the east, his glory; for he will come like a pent-up stream that the wind of the LORD drives on.

Isaiah 59:18-19 (NRSV, emphasis added)

The nature of this two-fold fear—of YHWH’s name and of his glory—is not to be discovered by way of an atomistic reading. But I have argued elsewhere that such universal recognition of YHWH’s justice in Isaiah is interpenetrated with at least the potential of broad blessing to the nations, whom I presume appear here in the two locative expressions ‘in the west’ and ‘in the east’.

Second, this oracle arrives at its almost predictable destination as it comes to its own conclusion.

And he will come to Zion as Redeemer, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, says the LORD. And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the LORD: my spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouths of your children, or out of the mouths of your children’s children, says the LORD, from now on and forever.

Isaiah 59.20-21 (NRSV)

As is its custom, Isaianic intimation of a cosmic outcome that is glorious rather than stingy includes the possibility of final resistance. We see this darker side of things here in the positive assertion that ‘those in Jacob who turn from transgression’ will be the beneficiaries of YHWH’s covenant, presence, and words. The offer, apparently, is not taken up by everyone. And the fate of those nations to which allusion is made—so I have argued—in verses 18 and 19 escapes mention in this concluding declaration.

By the time we arrive at this mostly bleak panorama, the vision of Isaiah is nearing its concluding declarations. They will be full of light with mere tinges of darkness, as chapter 59 emphatically is not. Yet it is important to observe that even here in chapter 59, among the book’s darker landscapes, hope manages to abound even though restricted to a few final verses.

This hope is not giddy. It remembers all too well those who choose neglect of YHWH’s justice and who carry this resistance through to outright and presumably final opposition.

Meanwhile, a lavish promise of inter-generational longevity quiets the hearts of ‘those in Jacob who turn from transgression.’

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Ariel, lion of God: Isaiah 29

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , on December 13, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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 …

Ah, Ariel, Ariel…

Lion of God, doomed beast in a cage.

Your redemption draws nigh.

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building truth with vowels: Isaiah 3

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , on November 2, 2022| Leave a Comment »

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.

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YHWH as lion, bird-flock and fire-master: Isaiah 31

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , on October 14, 2022| Leave a Comment »

In chapter 31 of the book called Isaiah, a sequence of oracles addresses the predicted downfall of Egypt and Assyria. The passage depicts Israel renouncing and indeed disposing of its ‘idols of silver and idols of gold’, which your hands have sinfully made for you.’ Further, besieged Jerusalem/Zion is the locale upon which the entire passage places its focus.

For thus the LORD said to me, As a lion or a young lion growls over its prey, and—when a band of shepherds is called out against it— is not terrified by their shouting or daunted at their noise, so the LORD of hosts will come down to fight upon Mount Zion and upon its hill.

Like birds hovering overhead, so the LORD of hosts will protect Jerusalem; he will protect and deliver it, he will spare and rescue it.

Turn back to him whom you have deeply betrayed, O people of Israel. For on that day all of you shall throw away your idols of silver and idols of gold, which your hands have sinfully made for you.

“Then the Assyrian shall fall by a sword, not of mortals; and a sword, not of humans, shall devour him; he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall be put to forced labor.

His rock shall pass away in terror, and his officers desert the standard in panic,” says the LORD, whose fire is in Zion, and whose furnace is in Jerusalem.

Isaiah 31:4-9 (NRSV, emphasis added)

The passage’s three primary metaphors surge forth in rollicking fashion. I have italicized fragments of each in the preceding text.

First, YHWH’s determination to prevail in his ‘fight upon Mount Zion and upon its hill’ is portrayed as a fearless lion, recently fed and fearless in the face of a band of shepherds that attempts to drive it off. Here, YHWH stands as a singular lion facing down a plural ‘band of shepherds’.

Second, the Lord’s protection of Jerusalem is lined to ‘birds hovering overhead’. Here, the plural nature of the flock lies on YHWH’s side of the metaphor while the city stands in the singular. Although YHWH-as-bird metaphors are not unknown in the Hebrew Bible, one struggles to imagine another biblical text that dares to portray him as a flock of birds.

Then finally, at the oracle’s conclusion, we are told that YHWH has a ‘fire’ in Zion and a ‘furnace’ in Jerusalem. Now YHWH is referenced via a presumably human image, a man tending a flaming furnace that stands in or conceivably is Jerusalem. The context suggests that the fire’s heat is destructive of panicked Assyrians who show themselves unequal to the task of conquering a city so fearsomely defended.

Rarely do metaphors flow with such energy and diversity in Isaiah’s portrayal of YHWH. Each makes its point with brevity, then cedes to the next. Together, they touch multiple chords in their portrayal of the divine source of Zion’s security.

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global feasting, B: Isaiah 25

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , on October 12, 2022| Leave a Comment »

If verses 1-5 hint that YHWH’s subjugation of ’strong peoples’ and ‘ruthless nations’ might in fact be for their own benefit, the wide embrace at which it hints becomes all but indisputable in verses 6-10.

In the text that follows, I have added emphasis to each reference to all (Hebrew כל), together with the nouns that are implicated by this descriptor.

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.

Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.

It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

 For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain.

Isaiah 25:6-10 (NRSV, emphasis added)

In spite of this broad redemptive result, the text does not loose its grip on a tenacious particularity. We see this in at least three respects.

First, Mount Zion remains the scene. YHWH will destroy ‘on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples…’ (7). The passage’s culminating declaration—if we see the immediately following and rather more sullen address against Moab as in some way separate—declares the YHWH’s hand will rest on this mountain’ (10).

Second, Jacob/Israel remains at the center of causality. The universal banquet that is here described is it seems contingent upon YHWH’s removal of ‘the disgrace of his people … from all the earth’. There is no reason to imagine that ‘his people’ bears a meaning different than its conventional one. Yet when he remove’s Jacob’s disgrace the wide world is the beneficiary. In parallel with surrounding clauses that are more explicit about the nations’ blessed fate, ‘from all the earth’ very likely refers to those people as well as to Jacob itself.

Finally, the refrain that is anticipated ‘on that day’ must describe Jacob/Israel’s experience retrospectively rather than the latter jubilant inclusion of ‘all peoples’:

It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

Isaiah 25:9 (NRSV)

As often and in so many ways across the long book called Isaiah, here Jacob’s restoration represents in some way the restoration of all the nations. Or perhaps, of all save one. Moab’s dire subjection follows in 10b-12. NRSV’s editorial separation of that darkness from the earlier light of this oracle is performed without support from the Masoretic Text. It may be that Isaiah’s Vision is viscerally resistant to utopias that avert their glance from a kind of final, dire, depressing resistance that can in the end be put down only by reluctant force.

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global feasting, A: Isaiah 25

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , on October 11, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The polyvalent perspective of the book called Isaiah with respect to the nations raises its head again in the broad horizon celebrated by the hymn that is the book’s twenty-fifth chapter.

The first five verses appear to present a kind of conversion narrative in connection with ‘strong peoples’ and ‘cities of ruthless nations’ who seem to have been moved to their turning by YHWH’s care for the poor.

O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you, I will praise your name; for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.

For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin; the palace of aliens is a city no more, it will never be rebuilt.

Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you.

For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place, you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds; the song of the ruthless was stilled.

Isaiah 25:1-5 (NRSV, emphasis added)

The text does not leave in doubt the reality of the subjugation of ‘strong peoples’ and ‘ruthless nations’.

Indeed, they find themselves on ‘the mountain of the Lord’ (verse 6, just following) precisely because their city and palace have been leveled. Verse 5’s verbs conclude the first section of this oracle with divine activities that leave no doubt about the matter. YHWH subdued the short-lived heat of the peoples (תכניע) and stilled the song of the ruthless (יענה, rendered by NRSV somewhat lyrically by the passive ‘was stilled’ for the Masoretic Text’s 3ms active deployment of a verb often rendered more prosaically as to humiliate).

Clearly, these peoples are considered to be nations that YHWH has subjugated as the outworking of his ancient purpose (25.1).

Yet is not at all apparent that this outcome is one that the peoples themselves lament. Indeed, verse 3 could be read as the vocabulary of mere conquest, forced upon unwilling victims. But in context, particularly the context provided by the oracle from verse 6 forward, there seems to be yet again an element of willing participation in the deportment of the conquered.

Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you.

Isaiah 25:3 NRSV)

Verses 6-10 will fill in the picture, if indeed those verses are to be read as a unity with verses 1-5, as appears to me to be the case. Its scattering of ‘all’ across the range of its protagonists insinuates a banquet where all—past historical enemies included—lift their cups together and tuck into the feast with the careless abandon of friends.

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the nations’ eager humility: Isaiah 2

Posted in textures, tagged , , , , , , , on October 1, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Isaiah’s Vision of Visions (2.1-5) is shared by the book of Micah in its fourth chapter. It is much disputed whether one borrowed from the other or whether both drew their visionary waters from a common well. In the book called Isaiah, this short glimpse of a prophetically imagined future becomes the deeply driven pillar of the entire adventure. It is Isaiah’s very Vision of Visions.

Both editions, that of Micah and that of Isaiah, speak identically of the nations’ animated conversation as they flow on their riverine course all the way up to recently elevated Zion. A feature of the exchange appears to bear out the wider impression that in Isaiah salvation is from the Jews and for the nations.

I refer to the combination of the verb ירה (to teach) with the preposition מן (conventionally, from) mediating the verb’s relationship with its direct object דרכיו (his ways). Nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, outside of Micah’s and Isaiah’s shared vision, does this construction appear.

In my view, the preposition is best understood as partitive מן, an established manner of communicating ‘part of’, ‘some of’, or ‘a portion of’. If we apply what we know of the expression to its appearance in Isaiah’s Vision of Visions (and of course Micah’s version of the same), verse two comes to read as follows:

Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us some of his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

Isaiah 2:3 (NRSV, adapted for partitive מן)

There is nothing in the ebullient eagerness of the nations that suggests a limited appetite for YHWH’s instruction. Rather, the limit seems to apply to their expectation.

In the turned-on-its-head world that the prophet glimpses, aliens stream to lowly Zion now elevated above the vastness of the world’s topography, hungering and thirsting after righteousness as a later prophet might have described them. Yet even they cannot imagine that the God of Jacob might slake their entire thirst, might lay out the full banquet for such unwashed late arrivals.

So, in a reading of the text that appears to me entirely defensible, they hedge their bets.

…that he may teach us some of his ways…

‘Perhaps we’ll be allowed some tasty crumbs’, one almost imagines them to hope.

Little do they know.

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