The Isaiah Project: Chapter 42, or, God Ever-New
Greetings and salutations. It's my pleasure to present a favourite chapter of mine, an early manifestation of God's suffering servant. See below for Chapter 42 and a short reflection.
The Vision Isaiah Saw: Chapter 421. Look: see my servant. I am bolstering him, the one I choose — my soul is satisfied with him. I will bestow my spirit upon him, and he’ll make justice go forth among the nations.
2. He will not scream, won’t lift up his voice or make it heard in the street.
3. He won’t shatter splintered reeds, or extinguish smoldering wicks. He’ll usher justice forth according to the truth.
4. He won’t be extinguished or splintered, until he sets down justice upon the earth. The islands are waiting in high hope for his teaching.
5. So says God, the god who creates the heavens — stretches them taut, unfurls the Earth and the things that come forth from it, giving the people upon it their breath, giving spirit to everyone walking on it.
6. ‘I am God. I called you in righteousness; I clasp hold of your hand, hold it tight, and I strengthen it.
I offer you as the people’s covenant, the light of the nations.
7. To open blind eyes and let prisoners out of their cells; out of the jailhouse where they sit in the pitch dark.
8. I am God. That is my name, and my glory — I will give it to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.
9. The beginnings . . . look: they’ve come and gone. These things I tell about are new things. In the time that’s left before they bloom into full flower, I’m letting you hear them.
10. Sing for God — sing a new song; sing his praise from the outermost boundaries of Earth — you, going down to the ocean, and you, filling it full; you islands, and you inhabiting them.
11. Let the desert wasteland lift its voice high; the outposts too, settlements where Kedar lives. Let those who live in Sela sing in triumph; from the mountain tops let them bellow forth.
12. Let them attribute majesty to God, and tell about his praise on the islands.
13. God will emerge like a war hero; like a man in battle he will stoke his fierce passion; he will holler and shout, yes, against his enemies, he will win a heroic victory.
14. I have kept quiet for ages, stayed silent and held myself back — I will scream, like a woman giving birth; I will gasp and pant all at once.
15. I will annihilate mountains and hillsides, and dry up their grass. I will turn rivers into islands and dry up the ponds.
16. And I will lead the blind to walk down a path they never knew before; down tracks they never knew, I will guide their path. I will turn the pitch black in front of them into light, and the twisted things into the straight and narrow — these are the things I will do, and I will not abandon them.
17. Those who rely on carved idols will get turned around and put to shame. Shame! For anyone who says to metal sculptures, ‘you are our gods.’
18. Deaf men — hear! Blind men — look hard, until you see.
19. Who is blind if not my servant? Who’s as deaf as the messenger I send? Who’s as blind as him, perfected, blind as the servant of God?
20. You see plenty, but you don’t observe. Your open ears hear nothing.
21. God has rejoiced, because of his righteousness. He will make his teaching magnificent and vast.
22. But this is a plundered and a looted nation — trapped in pits, all of them, and hidden in jailhouses. They are plunder, with no one to recover them. They are loot, with no one to say, ‘give them back.’
23. Who among you will lend your ears to this? Who will listen close to hear what comes next?
24. Who offered up Jacob as plunder and Israel as loot? Wasn’t it God? He’s the one we sinned against; we had no interest in walking down his paths, and never listened to the things he taught.
25. So he poured forth the molten heat of his rage on him, his might in battle, and it encompassed him in flames. But he didn’t realise: they tore burning through him, and he never took it to heart.
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It is probably impossible to know exactly how the words of this chapter would have struck their first audience. Christians ever since the resurrection have believed that these prophecies describe Jesus of Nazareth in his life, ministry, death, and ascension. As such for Christians -- for many of my readers -- these words must inevitably describe someone we know, someone with whom we spend our lives seeking intimacy. Indeed, Isaiah's prophecy, and other Messianic prophecies like it, are part of how we do that seeking: in the words of the ancient faithful we find our Christ described, depicted, made known.
So for a Christian, reading Isaiah can feel like encountering someone familiar. "The people's covenant, the light of the nations." "He will not scream, won't lift up his voice or make it heard in the street." He will "open blind eyes and let prisoners out of their cells; out of the jailhouse where they sit in the pitch dark." We can point to familiar stories or theological aspects of Jesus' life which fulfilled these prophecies. We read Isaiah through the lens of that life and the hidden meaning it revealed in the prophet's words. In this chapter, then, we feel we are meeting an old acquaintance.
And yet for Isaiah himself, one of the most salient points about the Messiah in this chapter seems to be that all information about him is quite entirely new. "Look: see my servant . . . the one I choose," announces God in the first line. And a little later in verse 9: "The beginnings . . . look: they've come and gone. These things I tell about are new things." "Sing for God — sing a new song." And in fact, at the moment of their revelation these prophecies must have been remarkably unlike much if not all of what had come before. After mourning the abject failure of political Israel, the prophet is suddenly confronted with a bursting dawn on a new horizon, shocking and not yet fully understood.
I think in particular of the transition from verse 24 to 25: God, we are told, has sent Israel into exile because "we had no interest in walking down his paths, and never listened to the things he taught." And then, in the next line: "So he poured forth the molten heat of his rage on him" (emphasis added). On him? On whom? A scapegoat? Why? In the moment of their utterance those words could well have seemed bizarre. But here they are, faithfully preserved until such time as they could reveal more of their meaning and, Christians believe, consummate themselves in the sacrifice of Christ for the forgiveness of sin.
What I am getting at is this: the words of Isaiah do not only describe the character of the Messiah: they preserve a vision of that Messiah at the first moment of its having been glimpsed, a sudden eruption of light upon a people needy and uncertain, sitting in the darkness of the shadow of death. That, I think, is by design. The newness and the perplexity of these words is not a mere historical accident of their transmission: it is an essential part of their message.
Because in point of fact, satisfied though we may be with our own understanding, the truth is that we are in much the same position as Isaiah's first audience. We may not realize it--we may think we now grasp these words perfectly--but actually Scripture itself tells us that we know what we know only "through a glass darkly." Though Christ has revealed himself to us, and though we approach him now as we might approach a friend, still there is as much vastness of as-yet-unknown love awaiting us as there was awaiting the ancient Jews. The infinitude of who God is shall never be exhausted, and the revelation of our final days will be as new and as astounding as resurrection morning. Through Isaiah we not only meet our saviour, but meet him as if for the first time, again and again -- find him unfolding like the first flower of spring and every bit as fresh.
G.K. Chesterton suggested in Orthodoxy that God "has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." Perhaps it is so: perhaps if we think of him as yesterday's news we have once again gone wrong. Sing to the Lord a new song and never, never let it grow old.
Rejoice evermore,Spencer