The Isaiah Project: Chapter 40, or, God in the Wilderness
Welcome back. Here begins Part II of Isaiah's vision. From hereon out I suspect my essays will become somewhat more reflective and devotional (rather than exegetical) because the prophecy itself becomes much more poetic and (with some exceptions) less historical. And it's just so, so freaking beautiful. This is where Isaiah's most famous material mostly resides. Hopefully a new translation will open up these old words anew. Enjoy!
The Vision Isaiah Saw: Chapter 401. Console, console my people, says your god.
2. Speak into the heart of Jerusalem and call out to her. Proclaim that her servitude is finished; that her corruption is absolved; that she has received, from God’s hand, two times all her sins.
3. A voice calling out . . . in the desert . . . clear God’s path. In the wastelands, lay down a straight route for our god.
4. Every gorge will be lifted up. Every mountain, every hillside, laid low. What’s twisted will be straightened out, and the rough rocks will be smoothed into plains.
5. Then God’s majesty will be unveiled, and all flesh will see it as one: God’s mouth has proclaimed this thing.
6. A voice! Saying, 'cry out.' But I said, 'what to cry? All flesh is grass, and all its grace is like a blossom in a field.
7. Grass withers. Blossoms wilt: God’s spirit blows over them. Yes indeed, the people are grass.
8. Grass withers. Blossoms wilt. But the proclamation of our god will stand fast for eternity.
9. Get up and go onto the lofty mountain, you, Zion’s bringer of good news. Raise up your voice in might, you, Jerusalem’s bringer of good news. Raise it up, don’t be afraid: say to the cities in Judah, look: see your god.
10. See my Master, God: he will come with a firm grip — his arm will reign for him. See his wages with him; his payback before his eyes.
11. Like a herdsman herds his flocks, he will gather up lambs with his arm and hold them against his chest. He’ll tend to them while they carry their young.
12. Who ever quantified the water cupped in his palm? Or measured the heavens in handspans? Tallied up the dust of Earth with a measuring basket, or weighed mountains on a scale? The hills in a balance?
13. Who ever measured the spirit of God? Was any man his mentor — did anyone teach him?
14. Who gave him mentorship and made him understand, and taught him on the routes of justice? And taught him knowledge, and made him know the pathways of understanding?
15. Look: the world’s peoples are like a drip from a bucket; you’d think they were dust dropped off the scales. See how he picks up the islands like some little speck.
16. All Lebanon is nowhere near enough fuel for the fire; all its living things are nowhere near enough for a burnt-offering.
17. All the peoples of the world are like nothing next to him. To him, they seem like less than zero, like the void.
18. To whom will you analogise this god? What analogy will you use to resemble him?
19. To the artisan’s image, smelted and carved? Overlaid with gold filigree by the smith, with silver chains?
20. Too poor for an offering, he picks out a tree that won’t rot. He goes looking for a wise artisan, to set up an image that won’t be toppled.
21. Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? Weren’t you told about it from the beginning? Don't you understand the Earth’s foundation?
22. Him: the one sitting astride the circumference of the Earth, while the ones living on it are like gnats. Him: stretching out the heavens like a curtain, and spreading them forth like a tent for living in.
23. The one who turns dignitaries into nothing: he makes the judges of the world like empty space.
24. No sooner are they interred, no sooner planted, no sooner do their stumps take root, than he’ll blow on them, and they’ll shrivel, and a cyclone will carry them off like straw.
25. 'Well then, to whom will you analogise me? Whose equal will I be?' Says the Sacred One.
26. Lift your eyes up on high and see who created all this — who ushers forth legions in their numbers and calls on them all by their names, in his abundant power, awesome in strength, and not a single one of his men comes up short.
27. Jacob, why are you saying, Israel, why are you proclaiming, ‘my path is hidden from God’? and ‘my judgement gets a pass from my god’?
28. Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? This god is forever, he is God still, who creates the ends of the Earth — he won’t falter; he won’t fail. No calculation can exhaust his insight.
29. It’s he who gives might to others when they falter, and masses up their power when they have no strength.
30. Even strapping young men will falter, and favourite sons will come crashing, crashing down.
31. But those with high hopes in God will grow strong again; they will rise up on the wing like eagles; they will sprint without faltering; they will walk and never falter.
More than a hundred years after Isaiah, another prophet named Ezekiel preached as Jerusalem fell to Babylon. Just before the fall, Ezekiel said this to his people on behalf of their God (20:33-35):
'As I live, with a firm hand and an outstretched arm, with molten rage poured out, I will be king over you. . . . I will bring you into the wilderness . . ., and there I will plead with you face to face.'
This has always struck me as an astonshing last-minute turn of events. God will execute righteous judgment upon the sinful Israelites, he will put them through suffering and anguish, he will drive them from their families and their homes, all so he can . . . plead with them?
The Hebrew for 'plead' here is נִשְׁפַּטְתִּי (nishpat'ti), which is from the root that almost always denotes God's judgment. But in this case, the verb is in what's called its niphal form, which is a passive or reflexive form: when the speaker is having the action done to him, or doing it to himself, that's niphal.
Therefore a provocative, but not altogether unjustified, translation of God's word in Ezekiel would be: I will take you out into the wilderness, and there 'I will be judged.' God is putting himself on trial here. He draws his people out into the place of greatest desolation because there, of all places, he can make his case to them (cf. Malachi 3:10, Isaiah 7:10-16).
Why on earth would that be so?
Because only in the wilderness will the Israelites be in the frame of mind to encounter God as he is. For thirty-nine chapters of Isaiah now, we have read about what a miserable, broken, and truly ungodly mess had been made of things in Jerusalem by the 8th century BC. Throughout, I have argued that the most horrifying consequence of this is Israel's loss of spiritual vision -- their increasing inability to see the world as God sees it.
Isaiah spoke in painfully clear terms about the calamity which would ensue as a result of this defection from God on Israel's part. Exile in Babylon would be miserable, and would seem to extinguish every hope on which Jerusalem was founded. And yet now, as the prophet looks ahead to the desolation that will come, the first word he speaks is: 'comfort.' 'Consolation' (verse 1). The ensuing chapters contain poetry unmatched in the Hebrew Bible for its majesty and beauty, heartbreaking in its vision of God's mercy. Why?
Because the wilderness is where God chooses to make his royal procession (verse 3). Israel cannot make his path straight until they realise how hopelessly it has been twisted (verse 4). Until we feel the consequences of our own sin, until we realize that the warping of our moral vision is so entire that we no longer even know how to pray, until we have lost all hope in human flesh, we will not realize what it means that our hope is in God.
Isaiah saw the bleakness of what lay ahead, and in that moment he heard a voice. 'Cry out!' said the voice. His response was: what on earth is there to say? (verse 6). In this moment of total anguish, it seemed as if words had been exhausted and there was nothing left. To the contrary, said God: now I am ready to begin.
'All flesh is grass, and all its grace is like a blossom in a field. Grass withers. Blossoms wilt . . . but the proclamation of our god will stand fast for eternity.' That is the whole point. That was always the point: of all the suffering and trials, of the exile and the abandonment and the loss. Now, at last, having been painfully disabused of every vain illusion, the children of God are ready to see their king. Exalted beyond measure, terrible in justice, yet abounding with consolation in the desert. Behold: he comes. Make straight his path.
Rejoice evermore,
Spencer