A Call for Justice

Isaiah 58-59

            The prophets often lambaste Israel for the injustice of their society. Isaiah is no different; Israel is to share food, provide shelter, clothe the naked (58:7). That list reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25.

            The core tension is that religion that is merely ceremonial has missed its point. “Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves?” (58:5) I’m reminded of Luther’s 95 Theses, in which Thesis 1 says, “When our Lord Jesus calls us to repent, He calls us to a life of repentance.” Religion is supposed to change lives, make us more like Christ.

            In their book, Stuck, sociologists Todd Ferguson and Josh Packard tell stories of clergy who have left their ministries because of their disillusionment that the church is not more involved in social ministry. One leaves the ministry to open a coffeehouse; one leaves and gets involved in anti-sex trafficking work; one becomes a probation officer. As I read, I concluded that each of them misunderstood the church at some level. They wanted the church to be involved in that work, but as I see it the church prepares Christians to do that kind of work. The message and programming of a congregation supports the work of transformation that the gospel works in individual lives. A church may or may not have a food pantry on its site, but even if it doesn’t, it reminds its members to make helping at a food pantry a priority.

            So, the church is not a social service agency, but it proclaims a Gospel that empowers individuals to make a social difference.

Promises of Restoration

Isaiah 54-57

            I’m not sure there’s a throughline for these chapters, so here are some random thoughts.

            In chapter 54, I appreciate how the imagery of marriage and childbearing are used for the restoration of Israel’s hopes. It might not make as much sense in our day and age, but in ancient Israel a woman’s prospects really depended on a man. If she was young, her identity was wrapped up in her father; when she was of the right age, her identity was wrapped up in her husband. This is why the law of Moses has such an emphasis on taking care of widows, lest they be left destitute in the absence of a man. So, here renewed fertility is a metaphor for the restored fortunes of Israel.

            Chapter 55 is well-known. It begins with the Lord’s grace, expressed as free food and water. In some ways, idolatry is in the background: why chase after other gods to provide what the Lord already gives free of charge? Then there is the famous statement about the word of God accomplishing what the Lord desires, calling to mind a theme throughout these chapters of the enduring power of the Word. Finally, there’s a beautiful promise of restoration, one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible, “You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace. The mountains and the hills will burst into song before you, and the trees of the field will clap their hands!”

            I don’t have much to say about chapter 56, but there is one interesting little play on words and images. In verses 4-5, literally the Lord promises a name that will never be cut off to the eunuchs (who, at the risk of being scandalous, are those who have been ‘cut off). A fun little pun that is lost in modern translation…

            Again, not much to say about chapter 58, either, but I do love verse 16, that the Lord will not be angry forever. Punishment is God’s foreign work; it’s something He does not because He delights in it but because human rebellion pushes Him to it. His proper work is to be gracious and merciful. So, His anger will not be His last word.

The Most Important Chapter

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

            Remember how Psalm 110 was quoted some 30 times in the New Testament? Well, Isaiah 53 is quoted or alluded to some 40 times!

            For the Christian reader, it is obviously the prophecy about the suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. A disfigured, marred appearance; despised and rejected by his contemporaries, especially the religious leaders of Israel; punished by God, stricken, smitten, pierced for our transgressions—the whole think simply screams of the crucifixion.

            Someone asked me, “We Christians clearly see Jesus there; how did the Israelites understand it?” I don’t really know what the Israelites thought about this chapter. It doesn’t seem to have figured in their reflection much at all in the years before and around Jesus. In fact, it seems to have been part of Jesus’ theological genius to have used this passage as the lens through which He understood what it means to be the Messiah.

Idols, the Creator, and His Servant

Isaiah 48-52

            The critique of idolatry continues unabated: the Lord announced Israel’s judgment and restoration in advance so that Israel cannot say their idols did it. More, He announces new things, things that their idols could never have imagined. He is, after all, the first and the last, the one who laid the earth’s foundations. This critique of idolatry is closely tied to the repeated declaration that the Lord is the creator, that He is absolutely unique.

            In chapter 49, we meet the Lord’s servant again. His vocation has been set since before he was born; his words cut like a sword’ his purpose is to bring Jacob back to the Lord. Christian reflection sees the servant as more and more obviously Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, who had a vocation from the Lord from eternity, who taught as one with authority. Especially in the statement, “It is too small a thing for my servant to restore Israel; I will make you a light for the Gentiles, too,” we see what God was up to in Jesus—not just salvation for a select few, but for all humanity. The last three verses of chapter 52 continue the portrait of the servant, but we’ll look at that on Monday, when we rad chapter 53, too.

The Ideology of Babylon

Isaiah 46-47

            Bel and Nebo were two of the gods of the Babylonian pantheon, and Isaiah contrasts them sharply with the Lord. Idols must be carted around; they are heavy and a burden. The Lord, on the other hand, has no tangible image, no idol. Rather than a burden, he is the One who carries His people on wings like an eagle (Isaiah 40:31). Further, idols are incapable of speech, but the Lord makes known the end at the beginning (46:10). The earth pours forth His speech (Psalm 19); His Word endures forever (40:8).

            It’s not just the idols of the nations who are the problem, though. Babylon herself is full of pride. She identifies herself with a queen, but she will be shamed like a peasant (47:5, 7, 1-3). She even quotes the Lord’s one declaration about herself, “I am, and there is none beside me” (47:8, 10). This is not just Babylon; pride marks every world power. In a few months we will come to the Gospel of Luke, and we’ll read the very familiar story of Christmas. There we will see that the Roman Empire also appropriated titles that belong to the God of Israel.

            Whether it is the burden of silent, false gods or the overweening arrogance of worldly strength, these chapters reminds us the Lord is the true God, to whom alone we owe allegiance.

The Unique Lord

Isaiah 44-45

            There are three things in particular that I will talk about today: 1) the uniqueness of Yahweh, the Lord of Israel; 2) the absolute crushing of the whole ideology of idolatry; and 3) the naming of Cyrus.

            First, repeatedly in this whole section of Isaiah (and at least three times in these two chapters), we read about the absolute uniqueness of Israel’s God, often introduced by the phrase, “This is what the Lord says.” This God declares there is no god apart from Him. In some places in the Old Testament, the phrase might be translated, “You shall have no other god in my presence,” emphasizing that Yahweh will not share His glory by having another in His presence. Here, it’s a bolder assertion. Those other gods simply are not gods at all. He asserts that He is ancient (44:7) and more than that that He is the originator, the Creator (44:6; 45:11; 45:18).

            This assertion of Yahweh’s uniqueness flows right out into a brutal assessment of the stupidity of idolatry (44:9-20). A human artisan fashions a statue, whether of metal or of wood. There’s the first critique: what kind of a god has its origins in the creativity of a human? (Compare 45:9-10: who is the potter and who is the clay?) Then it gets even more surreal: from the same hunk of wood from which he fashioned his god, the same man starts a fire to keep him warm. The god is made of the same material! What do you need the god for if you have to provide both the material for the god and for your own fire?

            The last thing I want to comment on is the appearance of the name Cyrus (44:28, 45:1, 13). I have an approach to prophecy that demands that the message must have made sense to the original audience. Missouri Synod Lutherans insist on the unity of the book of Isaiah, that is, that a single person wrote it, and we name that man Isaiah of the 8^th century BC. So, the prophecy about Cyrus (who didn’t live until 200 years later) must have meant something to the first audience. The word translated Cyrus is koresh. Koresh is, in every place, even in Ezra, translated as Cyrus. So, I guess my question is did koresh ever mean anything other than Cyrus so that the prophecy had meaning to its first audience.

            I don’t have any issue with the idea that the Lord made a prophecy about the future through his prophet, and maybe that’s the simple answer.

The Servant of the Lord

Isaiah 42-43

            Yesterday, in chapter 41, Israel was identified as the Lord’s servant. Today, in the first so-called “Servant Song,” that identification is explored more deeply. Israel’s vocation is to be the Spirit-empowered instrument of God’s justice, his right ordering for the world. They are to manifest the Lord’s gentleness and be a light for the nations. They will do this by bearing the One who will crush the head of the ancient serpent.

            A few hints, though, that Israel is not truly the Lord’s servant. First, in 42:6, the language seems to be addressed to an individual, because this servant has a vocation toward Israel, too, namely “to be a covenant for the people.” Later in the chapter, Israel is addressed—as she is several times in this section—as those who are deaf and blind (consider Isaiah’s charge at his commissioning in chapter 6). Who is this individual? Maybe the prophet; maybe the Davidic king (Hezekiah, during whose reign Isaiah ministered, is as godly a king as Israel had since the days of David.) Of course, Christian reflection sees the ultimate fulfillment in Jesus, about whom 42:2-3 are explicitly quoted in Matthew 11.

            Two other elements are woven through these prophecies: a promise of restoration. Check out 43:1-2, in which a way is cleared in the wilderness. In one sense, this promise was fulfilled in 538 BC, when Israel began to return from Babylon. In a broader sense, it is fulfilled in the work of Christ. It is applied to us in our Baptism. (Not every reference to water is automatically about Baptism, but those who are aware of how they were brought into Christ will often hear echoes of it, as, for instance, when the promise that we will pass through the waters is heard.) In a final sense, we are still waiting for the final restoration.

            The second theme woven throughout is judgment on idolatry. More on that tomorrow 

An Important Chapter

Isaiah 40-41

            Isaiah 40 sounds themes that will resonate throughout this section of the book. First, we have the emphasis on the Lord’s forgiveness. For all of His wrath over Israel’s sin, the Lord now speaks tenderly to her. His anger does not last forever (57:19). Wrath, judgment, punishment: these are what we call God’s alien work, work that does not express His truest nature. Like any good parent, the Lord punishes because He must, because His rebellious children push Him to it. His proper work, the work He gladly and willingly performs, is to bless and make prosper.

            Second, Isaiah 40 extols the God who is the Creator of heaven and earth. He makes the nations, who look so powerful from our perspective, appear as mere drops in a bucket. He sits enthroned above the earth; he brings princes and rulers to nothing. No matter how much those nations oppress Israel (often as God’s chosen instruments, see chapter 41), He raises them up and brings them down. What endures is the Word of the Lord.

            Isaiah 40 is quoted several times in the New Testament. Verses 3-5 are used in reference to John the Baptizer in all four Gospels. (It’s verse 3 that is explicitly quoted.) I haven’t done the research, and maybe the evangelists are just quoting the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament that dates from about 200 years before Jesus), but there’s a slight twist in their use. In the Hebrew, the phrase “in the wilderness” describes where to prepare; in the New Testament, it’s used to describe where the voice is. In the original its about returning from exile through the wilderness, so a new path in the wilderness is needed. In regards to John, no physical exodus is necessary; what matters more for John is his call to repentance.

            Isaiah 40:6-8 are also alluded to and quoted in the New Testament. Peter quotes it explicitly (1 Peter 1:24-25), and Jesus alludes to it in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:18) when He says that neither a jot nor a tittle of God’s Word shall fail.

            Finally, we should note that Isaiah 40 contains a verse that is for many people a favorite, that the Lord neither tires nor grows weary but that He give strength to the weary so that they shall soar on wings like eagles.

An Historical Interlude

Isaiah 36-39

            Most of these chapters are word-for-word the same as portions of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. Isaiah 38:9-20, Hezekiah’s psalm, is the only portion that isn’t repeated somewhere else.

            In the context of Isaiah, this historical interlude seems to serve two purposes. First, it wraps up the Assyrian threat that has dominated the first 39 chapters. The north kingdom disappeared in 722 BC under the Assyrian threat, and 21 years later Assyria seemed poised to do the same to Judah. But the Lord had other ideas and by way (probably) of a plague he wiped out the Assyrian army. Interestingly, Sennacherib’s court records hint at this stunning turn of events, indicating that Sennacherib “had Hezekiah shut up like a bird in a cage,” but remaining silent on the sudden retreat. The Greek historian Herodotus also writes of the loss, saying the army was struck by a plague.

            The second purpose of these chapters is to set up the impending threat from Babylon. This raises a difficult challenge for the interpreter. Babylon didn’t emerge as a major world power in this era until around 630 BC, a good 50 years after the end of Isaiah’s ministry. Here’s the challenge: almost every commentator reads Isaiah 40-66 as dealing with the Babylonian captivity of Israel, but Babylon isn’t a major threat in Isaiah’s day, and the Babylonian exile of Judah doesn’t happen until a century after Isaiah. There are a few choices: perhaps Isaiah prophesied about the future without any immediate connection to the lives of those he was preaching to. I personally find that implausible; I hold that prophecy had to make sense to its original audience. Perhaps a portion of Isaiah wasn’t written by Isaiah but by someone else years later. But there were plenty of prophets in the century after Isaiah. Why would someone pretend to be Isaiah? It seems to me we should assume Isaiah wrote the whole book. So, here’s my basic understanding: the threat of exile resonated with Isaiah’s audience because they had seen the destruction of the north kingdom and because they were well aware of their own weakness in the face of the brutal Assyrians. So, Isaiah’s upcoming prophecies about a return from exile were assurance to a people who feared that exile was their likely fate. Those prophecies took on a whole new urgency when the Babylonians came a-calling decades later, and in that Babylonian era the incident of the Babylonian envoys stood as a stark reminder that the Lord had warned them about other great powers much earlier.

Catching Up

Isaiah 33-35

            First, my apologies for missing my blog these last several days. I have not been feeling well.

            Truth be told, what we’ve missed is a whole lot of judgment. In chapters 24-26, things took a turn for the cosmic. Chapter 24 expanded the Lord’s judgment to the whole earth. This is a typical prophetic move. On the one hand, from the original perspective, it’s a way of giving voice to the suffering of the moment through hyperbole—literary exaggeration, as when we say that our whole world ended. On the other hand, it looks forward to the day of final judgment, when the Lord sets the entire creation to rights. That that cosmic judgment is paired with final restoration is seen in chapter 25, with its glorious vision of the mountain of the Lord, the destruction of death, and the feasting that marks eternal salvation.

            Chapters 28-24 consist of a series of six woes: 28:1, 20:1, 29:15, 30:1, 31:3, 33:1. As we would expect in Hebrew, a series of six just begs to be completed with a seventh element, and that element is one of the most familiar and comforting passages in Isaiah, chapter 35, that after all the disasters the Lord will remember and redeem His people. The language is the language of return from exile. The wilderness areas that Israel will have to traverse will be transformed from lifeless desert to life-sustaining plain. Those whose strength is used up will be revitalized. And they will return as on a highway—safe and swift. “Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”

            Once again, the language works on multiple levels. First, it works for Israel coming out of her troubles. The reference to eyes opened and ears unstopped is redolent of Jesus, the Messiah, who by His ministry of healing—and most especially in His death and resurrection—brought the truest of healing, healing from sin’s fatal wound. And, as so often, the whole thing sings of our hope for a world reborn, in which sorrow and sighing flee away once and for all.

Oracles against the Nations

Isaiah 13-23

            Isaiah was a prophet to the south kingdom, Judah. Now, we have evidence of a southern prophet traveling to the north kingdom, Israel, and prophesying against them. That is Amos’ story. We also have evidence of an Israelite prophet traveling to Assyria and preaching in their capital, Nineveh. That is Jonah’s story. But in Isaiah, there’s no hint he went somewhere else. He may have been a traveling man, but the list of nations he prophesies against is pretty long: Babylon, Moab, Aram (Damascus), Cush, Egypt Edom, Arabia, Tyre. He would have had to travel extensively.

            All of this raises some questions. Was Isaiah a world traveler? Did he prophesy against the nations from the relative safety of Jerusalem? What did he intend his prophecies to accomplish? I tend to think that Isaiah prophesied from Jerusalem, but that makes the last question all the more urgent. Were his prophecies against the nations meant to be heard in those nations? Were they for the comfort of the Judahites, that the nations would come in for the Lord’s judgment?

            Here’s what I think. I think these oracles were spoken primarily to the people of Judah. In one sense, they were meant to encourage them, surrounded as they were by enemies, that their God was indeed the Lord of heaven and earth and that He alone could actually deliver them from their troubles. In another sense, they set up the judgment against Jerusalem in chapter 22: they lull Judah into a sense of security that the Lord will judge her enemies only to be told that she too was under the Lord’s judgment. I think the expectation that the nations would hear these words is only secondary.

            There’s a contemporary application of this, when we ask, “What is the responsibility of the church to the world around it?” Paul makes an interesting pair of statement on this topic. In 1 Corinthians 5:12, he ponders, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?... God will judge those outside.” In the next chapter (6:2) he says that the Lord’s people will judge the world. So, on the one hand, it is not the church’s task to be the moral voice of the world, but, on the other hand, the church will stand by Christ’s side when He executes final judgment. The church’s preaching is directed largely to those who are inside the church, warning them of the dangers the world presents and consoling them that the Lord is really the Lord and nothing that goes on is beyond His ability to impact. The church’s preaching is directed to the world insofar as the world overhears.

Once More on Prophetic Vision

Isaiah 11-12

            Isaiah 11 demonstrates the fluidity of the prophetic vision, moving back and forth through time. Start with a shoot from the stump of Jesse. If we assume that this whole section of Isaiah belongs in the reign of Ahaz, then the promised one is none other than Hezekiah, one of the best, most faithful kings Judah ever had. Still, the description seems a tad exaggerated for a faithful but sinful human being, and certainly Hezekiah did not usher in an age in which the nature of the creation itself was changed, with wolves and lambs living together. Something more must be in mind. So, the promised shoot is seen by Christians as our Lord Jesus, who did do all things well and who in His miracles announced the restoration of creation. But, of course, wolves still eat lambs in our day. (I lived in Montana around the time they re-introduced grey wolves into the Yellowstone ecosystem. That was a controversial time!) So, more must be in mind, namely, the return of Christ and the final restoration of the creation.

            I feel like I’ve made this point several times, and we’ve only just started with the prophets, but I think it’s important. Prophecies had to make sense in the era in which they were made; there must be some historical connection. For the Christian, we follow Paul who says that all of God’s promises find their “Yes” in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20); therefore, we look for the fullness of prophecy in the work of the Messiah Jesus. Because we focus prophecies in Christ, the last step is to ask how Christ is present in our lives or to look to the culmination of His work at His second coming.

            Anything else will just lead us into strange unsupportable places. For example, as I was reading 11:14-15, I was thinking how easy it would be for someone with sloppy ideas about interpretation to take them as justification for the current war between Israel and Palestine. Remember Gaza was historically a Philistine city! But—and let me be absolutely clear on this—there is no biblical justification for modern Israel and her foreign policy! (You are free to support Israel on a host of other grounds, just don’t try to justify her current way on a biblical basis.)

The Impending Crisis

Isaiah 9-10

            Chapters nine and ten go back and forth between threat and promise. The first promise is of restoration, light following darkness. Zebulun and Naphtali are northern tribes; Galilee is a region in the north, so these chapters have the north kingdom mainly in mind. The south kingdom is referenced too. When the Assyrians invaded in 722 BC, they destroyed the north kingdom and hauled off its people, but the north kingdom never experienced a return from exile. They simply disappeared from history. 20 years later, the Assyrians made war against Judah, too, devastating the land but, by the Lord’s deliverance, not conquering Jerusalem (see Isaiah 36-37, 2 Kings 18-19).

            Since the north kingdom never returned, the promise to Zebulun and Naphtali obviously had to wait longer for fulfillment. As the centuries wound on, the people of Israel did eventually re-inhabit the region of Galilee. By Jesus’ day, Galilee has a large Jewish population, and Jesus does most of His miracles in Galilee, so the first part of chapter nine reaches its fulfillment in Jesus’ work.

            In a much grander, subtler way, the whole prophecy looks forward to the day of ultimate restoration, when Christ returns. After all, the promised peace certainly does not exist on earth yet. So, we are still waiting for the fullness of the prophecy’s fulfillment.

            One other interesting feature of the reading is the judgment on Assyria (10:5-19). The Lord claims that Assyria is His chosen instrument to punish His people, the rod of His anger. But He also says that Assyria has its own sinful plans, which are to destroy and to consume. This is typical of the Lord, from all the way back to the judges at least. He uses the wicked to accomplish His purposes, but He also promises that their wickedness will be the last word. His justice will ultimately prevail. (Of course, the key word is ultimately; consider the previous paragraph.) Even when we see evil prevailing in our day, we ought not lose hope. The Lord is accomplishing His purposes—somehow and on a timeline we may or may not ever understand.

The Virgin’s Baby

Isaiah 7-8

            Isaiah 7 is the classic example of how prophecy works. In it’s original context, it’s not messianic at all, but in Christian reflection it is completely messianic.

            Here’s the context: King Ahaz, about who 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles have almost nothing good to say, is under military pressure. Aram, to his northeast, and Samaria, his neighbor immediately north, are trying to convince Ahaz to form an alliance with them against Assyria. Meanwhile, Ahaz is trying to secure an alliance with Assyria. The kings of Aram and Samaria are preparing a way again Ahaz to force his hand. In chapter 7, we find Ahaz checking the fortifications of Jerusalem.

            The sign of the virgin has nothing to do with a miraculous birth. It is a time marker: in the time it takes a virgin to conceive and give birth to a son—that is about 9 months—this apparent threat will pass. Indeed, by the time such a child knows right and wrong (maybe age 7, certainly by the time the child was a teen) the threatening countries will be completely crushed. So, the prophecy makes complete sense in its original context and its first meaning is for that context.

            I don’t know of any Jewish tradition in the 700 years between Ahaz and the birth of Jesus that pondered these verses and thought, “The messiah will be born of a virgin,” and even if they had, they would have taken it exactly the same way.

            But in light of the angels’ messages to Joseph (Matthew 1:18-25) and to Mary (Luke 1:26-38), the prophecy takes on a wholly unexpected meaning. The messiah is literally born of a virgin, one who according to both Matthew and Luke had never known a man. There is a fullness to Isaiah’s words that prophet himself probably never even imagined.

Isaiah’s Commissioning

Isaiah 6

            It seems strange that Isaiah’s commissioning to his prophetic work is placed after he has been prophesying for 5 chapters. I suspect it’s for literary effect. One of my professors wrote his doctoral dissertation on the fact that Isaiah 2-12 is a well-defined subsection of the whole book, written specifically to place the prophecy about Immanuel (7:14) in the middle. I don’t remember the whole argument, but suffice it to say that there is plenty of evidence that Isaiah didn’t do anything by accident.

            Regardless of its position in the book, Isaiah 6 is a powerfully important chapter. First, we have Isaiah seeing a vision of God in his heavenly throne room. There are hints the heavenly reality is reflected in the arrangement of the earthly temple in Jerusalem, especially the presence of seraphim, angelic beings, similar to the cherubim which were carved onto the ark of the covenant. (Don’t ask what difference there is between a cherub and a seraph; the Bible is really scant on details. Some extra-biblical material adds more, but that is outside the Bible.) So, God is his throne room, in His glory.

            Second, Isaiah’s reaction to being in the present of that glory: he is terrified. Human sin cannot exist in the presence of God’s consuming holiness. It’s why the Lord so regularly cloaks His glory in a cloud to hide it’s consuming power. Isaiah does the only thing he can do: he repents, and he received absolution from the angel.

            Finally, he receives his commission. When we read this passage, we usually stop there: “then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’” We only rarely read the second half of the chapter publicly, but it is the part that Jesus quotes about Himself, namely, that Isaiah is to preach to a people the limitations of their faith: they are ever seeing, but never perceiving, ever hearing but never understanding. It is a message of judgment, which Isaiah gets immediately. “How long?” he wonders. How long will he have to pronounce this judgment. And the answer is stern: until the hammer falls and “though only a tenth remain, yet the land will be laid waste again.” The glimmer of hope is that a stump might resprout. Isaiah has some of the most beautiful passages of the gospel you can imagine, but the book is not just sweetness and light; as we’ve already seen, God’s judgment, His la 

The Song of the Vineyard

Isaiah 5

            The Song of the Vineyard (5:1-7) is a straightforward allegory: Israel is the Lord’s vineyard and, despite all the Lord’s care, she has not yielded the harvest of faithfulness He looked for. The second half of the chapter spells out the injustices Israel perpetuates. The rich accumulate more and more wealth at the expense of the poor. People engage in all kinds of drunken revelry. There is a general confusion of what is good and what is bad.

            It goes on, and in some ways it’s uncomfortably modern. One of the issues in our day is the ever-increasing gap between the rich and everyone else. We seem to be a people who self-medicate—whether it’s alcohol or pot or other drugs—anything to feel something in a soul-deadening world. Certainly there’s a confusion of right and wrong: we live in an age in which if something is natural it must be good. “Be yourself,” is our mantra. Never mind that Christ died to redeem us from our natural state and to make us something new.

            Now we have to remember that Israel is not just any nation. She is a combination of what we would call church and state, and she is absolutely unique among the nations for that reason. If the judgment over Israel sounds like it might be a modern condemnation of the US, it is much more a word of warning for the church, complicit and compromised in the world.

            Anyway, God’s judgment in the 7^th century BC is coming on Israel: famine, invasion, exile.

            The Song of the Vineyard takes on a new life in the hands of Jesus. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the same stories of Holy Week. After His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus takes up residence in the temple. There He teaches and, in turn, His opponents come and challenge Him. In the middle of all of this, Jesus tells the so-called Parable of the Vineyard, in which He co-opts Isaiah’s prophecy and applies it against the religious leaders of His day. Everyone knew exactly what Jesus was saying, and the chief priests began to look for a way to arrest Him. In this way, Jesus applies the words of the prophet to Himself and announces that the true judgment, of which Israel’s exile was just a foretaste, is at hand. More on that when we actually get to the Gospels…

A Failure of Leadership

Isaiah 3-4

            In the era when the church was persecuted by the Roman empire, one of the Roman strategies was to target the leaders of the church—bishops and pastors. Their reasoning went, “Cut off the head, and the body will die.” The church proved more resilient than that and, despite a number of defections, the church endured. Still, it remains an effective strategy. Nations like the US and Israel regularly target the leaders of terrorist organizations in order to destabilize those organizations. Leadership is important.

            In Isaiah 3, the Lord threatens the leadership of Israel: from the hero and the warrior on down. And in that leadership vacuum, He threatens to turn their social order upside down. When He says that He will make mere youths their officials, that’s not a promise but a curse. “I will place the least qualified over you.” In his book, The Death of Expertise, Thomas Nichols says that expertise in a field involves a number of things, and experience is one of them. When I was a young pastor, I wouldn’t have much appreciated that sentiment: I thought education was enough to make me an expert. A quarter century later, I realize that experience leavens knowledge; experience gives birth (hopefully) to wisdom.

            Anyway, part of the Lord’s judgment on idolatrous Israel is on her leaders who have either led her into idolatry or not done enough to summon her out of it. Indeed, Israel’s leadership has encouraged her in values that are the opposite of what the Lord desires, especially evidenced in injustice against the poor.

            Finally, as so often in the prophets, sermons filled with terrible condemnation erupt into proclamation of God’s restorative grace. So here. In chapter 4, we read about a Branch that will bring healing to Israel. The Branch and a new shoot from it will be explained more in chapter 11, where it is clearing looking forward not just to a new day for Israel but for the coming age of the Messiah.

Introducing Isaiah

Isaiah 1-2

            We’ve come through two of the three major sections of the Old Testament: we have read the History and the Wisdom literature and today we begin the Prophets. The prophets will occupy us for a good five months!

            A reasonable question to start with is, “What exactly is a prophet?” That’s a harder question than one might think. I’d start by comparing an Old Testament prophet to a New Testament pastor, at least insofar as a pastor is a preacher. The fundamental task of the prophet was to answer the question, “What is the Lord up to?” For this reason, it is better to think of the prophets as forthtellers, men who interpret the world and the Lord’s actions in it. To be sure, there is a foretelling aspect to their work; they are interested in what the Lord will do, too.

            This means that to interpret the prophets correctly we need to start by asking, “What did these sermons mean to those who first heard them?” Only after we have struggled with that issue will we be in the right place to see their fuller meaning, a meaning that very often takes us to the Lord’s work in the Jesus and sometimes looks into our own lives, as well. Our progression, then, is 1) the prophet’s own day and context, 2) the messianic fullness of the message (see 2 Corinthians 1:20), and 3) the appropriate application to our day. Many times, we’ll find that the application to our day isn’t as specific as we would like.

            Now, Isaiah in particular is a great place to start reading the prophets. We know quite a lot about Isaiah’s times, so we can often have a sense of what his words meant to his first hearers. Isaiah was commissioned in the year that king Uzziah died—740 BC (Isaiah 6:1) and he was in ministry until the reign of Hezekiah, who was on the throne from about 715 to 687 BC. Isaiah’s ministry extended at least 40 years, perhaps up to 50 years. (Jewish tradition says that Isaiah was sawn in two by King Manasseh, Hezekiah’s son.) This was a period of several threats to Judah, recorded both in the Bible and in other ancient sources.

            Further, Isaiah is explicitly quoted in the New Testament more than any other book except Psalms. As we read through Isaiah 1-11, a churchgoer will find a number of the passages familiar. Isaiah 7, 9, and 11 are all read near Christmas as prophecies of the coming Messiah. Other familiar passages include chapters 40, quoted by the Baptizer, Isaiah 35, alluding to the Messiah’s ministry, and Isaiah 61, quoted by Jesus Himself about Himself. More than any other prophet, Isaiah’s words point to Jesus.

            Finally, some of Isaiah’s words are simply beautiful and comforting in their own right. Personal favorites are Isaiah 35, 40, and 55. These passages talk about the Lord’s care and His promise to restore all things to their perfect, Edenic state.

            To today’s reading, Isaiah 1 sounds several themes that will occupy the prophet. First and foremost, he condemns idolatry, likening it to adultery and beastliness. Second, there is a condemnation of faithless religion and social injustice, which Isaiah portrays as evidence of an idolatrous heart. Finally, there is a call for repentance and an invitation to restoration.

            Isaiah 2 also sounds a common Isaianic theme: the Lord’s coming restoration. Here it is a vision of the establishment of the mountain of the Lord, with the nations coming to Him and an age of peace being established. Before that day, idolatry must be rooted out.

            So, for Israel, her current troubles are explained as the judgment of the Lord on her faithlessness. Christians can see how the confrontation between the Lord and faithless humanity led to Jesus’ crucifixion, an event which fulfilled the Lord’s purposes in paying the debt of sin and opening the way to His everlasting kingdom. That kingdom exists now in the church, called to holiness of living, and will be fully revealed when Christ returns in glory.

Introducing the Song of Songs

Song of Songs 1-8

            The key to understanding the Song of Songs is right in its title: The Song of Songs of Solomon. The book is literally a song of songs, a collection of love songs, written by Solomon. (Interpreters argue about all of that, but that’s what I think.) Commentator Tremper Longman counts 23 discrete poems in the book.

            And they are unabashedly love songs. They extol passion; they talk without shame about sexual attraction. Author Rodney Clapp puts it this way:

The Song of Songs even more unabashedly exults in sexual beauty and desire. It is a straightforward celebration of a woman and man reveling in one another’s attractiveness, rhapsodically cataloging the other’s most favored physical features. Lips, skin, hair, eyes, breasts, legs—all are delighted in and enthusiastically celebrated… At times, of course, the later Christian tradition would attempt to ‘spiritualize’ the Song of Songs, but the text is so resolutely physical that the earthly body can never be entirely routed form it (Clapp, Tortured Wonders, p. 199).

As Clapp notes, many Christian interpreters have been embarrassed by the overtly sexual notes in the book and have tried to make it an allegory about Christ and his love for the church, but I just don’t think it works that way. To be sure, St. Paul says that human marriage is a picture of the love of Christ for His bride, the church (Ephesians 5:32), but to make the Song exclusively about that misses the point. It’s a book of wisdom, and as such it talks about human experience, and part of human experience is physical love.

            This exultation in physical love, in the Greek’s eros, stands in sharp contrast to the book of Proverbs, where eros is connected with adultery. To be sure, passion is dangerous, especially outside the bonds of marriage. But the Song of Songs reminds us that, within the Lord’s chosen design, it is a beautiful thing.