The 'Pool' the Prophets Fished In

Deuteronomy 28:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deu%2028&version=NIV

            I’d invite you to re-read this chapter.  “Why?” you ask.  Re-read it because this language forms the pool from which the prophets will draw imagery about God’s judgment.  Isaiah, in particular, will fish in this pool.

            So, here is specifically covenantal language.  It is addressed to Israel, as a nation, as she is about to enter the next stage of her national existence.  If she keeps her end of the covenant, the Lord will bless her; if she doesn’t, the Lord will punish her—as a nation—with exile.  (Again, not to beat a dead horse, but these blessings and curses are stipulations of the Sinaitic covenant; they apply to Israel as the seedbed of God's promises; the application to our day or to any other nation calls for real care.) 700 years after Deuteronomy, Isaiah sees the disobedience piling up, and he sees in the Assyrians the working out of those national curses.  Isaiah also sees the days coming when Judah will face similar consequences because of her idolatry.  Many of his oracles of judgment (and many of his vision of restoration) have Deuteronomy 28 somewhere in the background.

            Now, here’s the thing.  Isaiah (and other prophets) often take blessings and curses specific to Israel and draw them into a larger eschatological framework.  That is, they see in the national fate of Israel an intimation, a foreshadowing, of the fate of God’s whole world.

            Christian reflection grabs that larger framework and runs it through Jesus, through Whom all of God’s plans and purpose of the world, are fulfilled.  Then, Christian reflection uses that same language and imagery to describe the ultimate fate of God’s whole world.  So Christian visions of judgment (and ultimate restoration) use these same images for the judgment and restoration of the world. 

            So re-read this chapter, because this is imagery that, while specific to the nation of OT Israel in this case, will find wider application in the reflection of what God ultimately has in mind for His creation, through Jesus.