The Isaiah Project: Chapter 43, or, Something New Dawning
Greetings! As ever, it is my joy to present you with a translation (below) and devotional essay (yet further below). Peace be with you.
The Vision Isaiah Saw: Chapter 431. And now so says God who created you, Jacob, and shaped you, Israel: ‘Don’t be scared. Because I’ve redeemed you. I've called you by your name. You belong to me.
2. When you cross through oceans, I’m with you. You will not be drowned in the torrents; when you walk into fire, you will not be incinerated; in the flames, you will not be burned.
3. Because I am God — your god, Israel’s Sacred One, who saves you. I handed over Egypt to ransom you, and Kush and Seba in exchange for you.
4. Because of how priceless you are in my eyes, how magnificent — how I loved you. I will give human beings in exchange for you, and nations in exchange for your soul.
5. Don’t be scared: I’m with you. I will bring your offspring out from the Eastern sunrise, and gather you from the sunset in the West.
6. I will say to the darkness of the North, ‘give forth,’ and to the South, ‘you shall imprison no more. Let my sons come back from far away, my daughters from the ends of the Earth —
7. Each one called by my name, for the sake of my majesty: I created him, and sculpted him out of clay, oh yes, I was the one who made him.
8. Send forth the people who are blind, though they have eyes, and the deaf who have ears.
9. The nations are all gathered together, and the peoples are assembled — who among them can tell about this? And let us hear these beginnings? Let them produce their witnesses, so they can be justified, let them hear and say, ‘it is true.’
10. It’s you: you, my witnesses, declares God — my servants, whom I’ve chosen, so you can know and secure your trust in me, and truly understand that I’m him. Before me no god was constructed, and there will be no other after me.
11. I, I am God. Nothing except me can save.
12. I told you, I saved you, I made you hear — it was no stranger among you. You are my witnesses, proclaims God — it is I who am god.
13. Even before there were days, I am he. Nothing can protect against my hand: I act, and who can undo it?
14. So says God, your redeemer, Israel’s sacred one: ‘Because of you I sent to Babel, and took down their choicest men, all of them — the Chaldeans too, who holler on their ships.
15. I. Am. God, your Sacred One, Israel’s creator, your king.
16. So says God, who provides you a path through the ocean and a way through the mighty waters,
17. Who brought out the chariots and cavalry, their brawn and their might, all assembled — they lay flat, and they’ll never get up. They’ll be snuffed out, quenched like a candlewick.
18. You shall not call to mind the beginnings — shall not scrutinise those ancient mysteries.
19. Look: see me making something new, now; it bursts into bloom. Don’t you know? Oh, yes, I lay forth a path in the wasteland; and rivers in the desert.
20. The living things that teem in the field will magnify me: the owls and the jackals, because I give them water in the desert, rivers in the desolate wasteland — to let my chosen people drink.
21. This people, which I formed and shaped for myself — they will make a record of my praise.
22. But Jacob, you didn’t call on me — Israel, you grew tired of me.
23. You didn’t bring me sheep for burnt-offerings; you never magnified me in your sacrificial rites. I never burdened you with making offerings; never tired you out with incense.
24. You never came with sugarcane to sweeten me up, to buy my favour, never filled me full of fat from sacrifices — no, instead you burdened me with your sins; exhausted me with your depravity.
25. I’m the one, I scrubbed away your rebellion, for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.
26. Call me to mind; let’s fight for justice together; make your record and your recollection, so you can become righteous.
27. Your father sinned at the beginning, and the intercessors among you rebelled against me.
28. So I’ve polluted the sanctimonious nobles — handed over Jacob for extermination, and Israel for rejection.
The vision of Isaiah is confusing. It will do no good to deny this fact. Some Christian scholars are at great pains to insist that the words of these prophecies cannot possibly be interpreted in good faith as referring to anyone other than Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. But, with respect to those scholars, I think that to make such a claim is not only to willfully ignore the ambiguities in the text, but also to flatten out its depths and deprive it of its richness.
Don't mistake me: I believe that every word Isaiah ever preached pointed directly to the salvific action of one man, Jesus Christ. Once one has accepted the lordship of Jesus, it becomes a key not only to understanding what Isaiah saw but to reading the whole of the Old Testament. This has been a reliable method of exegesis for Christians ever since Christ himself inaugurated it on the road to Emmaus.
But I am much less convinced than some that, if one came to Isaiah without having already decided that Jesus is the Messiah, one would be driven inexorably to that conclusion merely by reading the prophecies contained in these chapters. To the contrary: even Isaiah himself seems to me to be feeling his way here, dimly discerning the astounding contours of a new thing. 'Look,' says God in verse 19 of our present chapter: 'see me making something new, now; it bursts into bloom.'
It would almost have to be so: if God was to make things right after the catastrophe that was the Babylonian exile, then that salvation would have to be greater and more wonderful than anything humanity had previously seen or imagined. The capture of Jerusalem, as far as the ancient Jews were concerned, was the end of the world's last hope: nothing imaginable or familiar could undo it. The human calculus of justice and the mortal vision of life simply did not contain the resources to articulate exactly how God would save the world.
That is why I am undisturbed, even delighted, when I find Isaiah saying things that seem to outstrip all human understanding -- even that of the prophet himself. In one and the same chapter, he declares that God has 'handed over Jacob for extermination, and Israel for rejection' (verse 28), and yet says to Jacob and Israel that 'you are priceless in my eyes...magnificent.... I will give human beings in exchange for you, and nations in exchange for your soul' (verse 3). And just one chapter ago (42:24-5) God was said to have 'offered up Jacob as plunder and Israel as loot' and to have 'poured forth the molten heat of his rage on him' -- on the Messiah, presumably. These seemingly contradictory claims are made without gloss, comment, or pause.
Christians have a way of reconciling these various statements that seems to me at once perfectly simple and totally unexpected. Followers of Jesus believe that God took on human flesh in order to assume, in his own person, the burdens of debt and death that had been incurred by sinful humanity. As a result three distinct entities -- the collective nation of Israel, the particular individuals whom God has saved, and the sinless Messiah who will rescue them all despite their sin -- meld into one in the person of Christ. 'Jacob' and 'Israel' have done terrible things, deserving the 'rejection' of verse 28. But in fact it is the Messiah who will receive that rejection, even though he deserves the 'love' and 'magnificence' (the Hebrew word is the same as the word for 'glory') which, in verse 4, is afforded to Israel. By God's intercession the 'you' of this chapter (humanity in its brokenness) is blended and amalgamated with the 'him' of the previous chapter (Christ in his perfection), like two images superimposed upon one another.
All of this seems totally coherent and indeed beautiful to me. But to claim that it is perfectly worked out already, here in the prophecy which represents its first dawning upon mankind, is to miss much of the point. The conflation and reunion of God with man is indistinct and confusing here because it is only distantly and dimly glimpsed -- is emerging like a landscape in the early hours of the morning. Part of the wonder in this chapter is how accurate it can be without being direct or simple, how exact it is without being explicit. Isaiah, praise God, preserves for us the wonderment of that first moment when the nature of salvation was appearing in the distance -- when the newness of that new thing was as unfathomable as it was profound.