The Isaiah Project: Chapter 46, or, On the Shoulders of God

Welcome back, and greetings from another week of quarantine. I've been gratified to hear that the Isaiah Project has been helpful for people during this troubled time -- I hope this latest chapter will also provide comfort and food for reflection. Peace be with you.

1. Bel falls to his knees. Nebo stoops down low. Those idols of theirs are for animals and beasts — a heavy load on the carts they carried, a burden they bear in their exhaustion.

2. They stoop down low; they collapse to their knees, all together — they can’t carry this burden all the way; they’re gone, taken captive themselves.

3. Listen to me! House of Jacob, and everyone still left from the house of Israel: you, carried from the womb, lifted from the bosom,

4. And on into your old age: I am he. And on into your grey years, it is I who carry you on my shoulder, me, I who made you will lift you up; I will carry this burden all the way.

5. To whom will you compare me? What likeness, what analogue will you come up with, to make us comparable?

6. They dump gold out of their bags and weigh up their silver on scales; they commission a goldsmith, and he makes it into a god. Then they prostrate in front of it; oh yes, they grovel.

7. It gets carried on their shoulders; they hoist it up and then they set it in its spot; they erect it and it stands. It never leaves its place. Oh sure, they cry out to it, but it never answers — it never saves them from the danger all around them.

8. Remember this, and man up. You rebels: bring it to mind again.

9. Remember these eternal beginnings: that I am the only god, and no one else is — god, and no one comes close —

10. Who tells it all, from the beginning to the days to come, and from time long gone things that have never been done. Who says, my schemes will stand fast, and I will do whatever I like.

11. Who calls a bird of prey from the sunrise East — the man of my plans from far away. Yes, I proclaim it; yes, I will make it so; yes, I have shaped it; yes, and I’ll do it, too.

12. Listen to me, with your bullish hearts, you, far away from righteousness:

13. I’m drawing my righteousness near — it won’t be far, and my salvation will not delay; I will offer my salvation on Zion to Israel, my adornment.

It was the right of kings and gods in the ancient Near East to be carried on the shoulders of their subjects. This was no less true in Jerusalem than it was in Babylon: the great son of David, Solomon, is depicted in the Bible as lifted on high in a litter amidst no less than 60 of the finest Israelite warriors (Song of Songs 3:7). The Babylonian gods, of whom there were many, were carried by their worshippers in the form of massive stone statues to loom over sites of battle, worship, and city life. If they were properly honored, their presence was thought to confer glory and the certainty of triumph.

In this chapter, Isaiah foresees a day when the beasts and men who carry the gods of Babylon will collapse in exhaustion and dismay. Bel -- a divine title meaning simply 'lord' -- and Nebo -- patron of writing and celestial overseer of fate -- are seen falling to their knees as the animals who carry them in wagons break under the strain of their heavy stone burden. By this time the sons of Israel, deep into their foreign exile, will have long since learned that their own virtue is inadequate to sustain a holy priesthood. Not so the Babylonians, whose fleeting military success will blind them until this moment to one devastating and urgent fact: they are not strong enough to carry gods on their shoulders.

Of all the many forms of pride, few are more insidious than the conviction that you can do anything for God of which he stands in need. It is an illusion that can come in the form of self-reproach and so look very much like piety: people who feel responsible for carrying out God's will often chastise themselves for being sluggish and inadequate in doing so. If only they had prayed harder, given more, shown greater devotion, they would have won that war. Or their work would have been more successful. Or their brother wouldn't have died.

Desire to know God is a good thing, of course, and efforts to serve him are commendable. But the fantasy that in doing so there is some possibility we might not fail horribly and often, or the terrible fear that those failures will somehow catch God unawares and thwart his plans for us, are marks of an ancient and destructive blasphemy. Isaiah expresses in this chapter his conviction that the mark of every false God is its need of human effort to remain upright: "it gets carried on their shoulders; they hoist it up and then they set it in its spot; they erect it and it stands. It never leaves its place" (verse 7). They do it: it is the worshippers of idols, not the idols themselves, who gild the magnificent totems which will then be treated as omnipotent. Without human endeavor, they will crumble to the ground.

Faithful Jews were encouraged to honor their king with just as much pomp and circumstance as their gentile enemies. But the God of Israel asserts here that in one way he is incomparably different from rival gods: when his children become too tired to carry him, he lifts them up in turn onto his own shoulders. In fact in the last analysis the living God, unlike those pale imitations of him etched in stone, is always the one doing the carrying, even when his servants are encouraged to raise his name on high: 'Listen to me!' he cries in verses 3 and 4. 'From the womb...it is I who carry you on my shoulder, me, I who made you will lift you up; I will carry this burden all the way.'

This is a truth King David himself had already learned long ago, when he presumed that he would be the one to construct a temple for God. For generations God had been traveling on foot with the children of Israel as they wandered and fought in the desert: 'I have been with you wherever you have gone,' he said to David through the prophet Nathan, and now 'the Lord tells you that he will make you a house' (2 Samuel 7).

It's not that you don't have a reseponsibility to serve and honor God. It's that even in doing so you are sustained by him, not the other way around: your prayer and your alms and your praise are already inspired by him who made you, not the other way around. Do not imagine therefore that when you falter, when you are lazy and forgetful and downright perverse, that your failures are somehow letting God down or wrong-footing what would otherwise have been his design. Your failures were factored into the design to begin with; they are among the many things God knew about you when he decided to raise you out of the womb and up onto his shoulders. If the God you serve can be defeated by such an insignificant thing as your own weakness (extreme though it is, it is still insignificant), then you are imagining a deity quite other than the one who rules heaven and earth. He, and not some false construction stitched together out of your own meagre strength and piety, is the one who will carry your every burden to the furthest extremes even of death and of love. It is he who has lifted you, long before you ever thought to ask.