The Isaiah Project: Chapter 54, or, Where Prophecy Begins

Greetings once again -- today I'm glad to have an opportunity to answer a question that's been asked about this project since it began. Chapter below as usual, then the answer (and the question) in the essay which follows.

1. Sing triumph hymns, you who were barren and childless; break forth into singing — you never knew labor, for the children of the desolate are more than the children of the married wife,' says God.

2. Make more room for your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwelling places. Don’t hold back; lengthen your ropes and fortify your stakes.

3. For you’ll spread out on the right hand and the left; your offspring will take possession of the nations and occupy the desert.

4. Don’t be afraid: you won’t be ashamed. Don’t be astounded: you won’t be reviled. You’ll forget the shame of your childhood and the revilement of your widowhood. You won’t remember them ever again.

5. Yes, your husband is the one who made you: God of Legions is his name, and your redeemer is Israel’s Sacred One — god of the whole earth, he’ll be called.

6. Yes, like an abandoned wife, grieving in spirit, God called you. And can a wife be abandoned in youth?’ says God.

7. For a little instant, I left you. But I will gather you in the vast compassion of my heart.

8. In an moment’s rage I hid my face from you for an instant, but with mercy forever I will show you compassion,’ says your redeemer, God.

9. Like the waters of Noah, this is to me: I have sworn myself to never let the waters of Noah pass again over the earth, and so I have sworn not let my rage come upon you or chastise you.

10. For the mountains may be gone and the hills be taken away, but my mercy will never go from you, and my covenant of peace will never be taken away,' says God in the vastness of his compassion upon you.

11. Oh you laid low, storm-tossed, and not consoled: see how I set your stones in fair colors and build your foundations with sapphires.

12. I will set your turrets in rubies and your gates in gems, and all you boundaries with precious stones.

13. And all your children will learn of God, and the peace of your children will be immense.

14. In righteousness you will be made firm, be far from oppression — for you won’t be afraid — and from devastation, for it won’t come near you.

15. See: see them gather; they gather together, but not by me — whoever gathers against you will fall because of you.

16. See me creating the smithy that blows coal-fire and produces a tool for the task: and I create the ravager to bring devastation.

17. No weapon formed against you will succeed; every tongue that rises up against you to judge you, you will refute. This is the inheritance of God’s servants, and their reward from me,’ announces God.

I'd like to answer a question here that has been asked of me repeatedly since I began this project. I have waited until now to answer it because though it is about a small issue, it speaks to matters which turn out to have great significance. I needed a chapter that could illustrate that significance; I think this is that chapter.

The question is: what's up with the quotation marks in this translation? If you haven't noticed yet, you can go back and notice now that when God speaks, I often only include a closed quotation mark to end the quotation (with no opening mark to show where the quote begins) or an opening quotation mark to start a quote (but no indication of where it ends). You may ask, as many have: why?

My answer is as follows. Isaiah, like all the prophets, speaks on God's behalf. His words are God's words: though he is a human being with particular life experiences and a specific perspective, he also experiences periods of divine inspiration in which that outlook and that perspective produce insight which is identical with God's wisdom. If you like, imagine Isaiah's human life as a short line traveling through time. Sometimes, that line in its human trajectory crosses over into the very mind of God. Or, more precisely perhaps, God draws the life and thought of Isaiah up into himself, and speaks.

In those moments the very human griefs and yearnings of this very human man -- his disappointment in his people, his horror at the exile he sees coming -- produce thoughts and statements which are identical to the eternal and unchanging truth of God, as expressed in this moment and this context.

And so it's difficult -- impossible in most cases, I'd argue -- to tell where Isaiah's words end and God's begin. There were no quotation marks in the original text, and so there's no clear break between theh prophet and his God in a verse like verse 6: 'Yes, like an abandoned wife, grieving in spirit, God called you. And can a wife be abandoned in youth?" says God.' All throughout this chapter, Isaiah is consoling his beloved city of Jerusalem, which will endure a period of exile but then suddenly find itself abounding in riches and fecundity: 'Oh you laid low, storm-tossed, and not consoled: see how I set your stones in fair colors and build your foundations with sapphires.'

One can imagine that when these words were first spoken to a huddled audience of embattled Jewish refugees, it felt hard to believe that the almighty was speaking among them. But there are moments in this text when the voice of God seems to break through with mercy like sunlight pouring through parting clouds -- in the heart of this grimy, ragged world, Isaiah assures us that none other than God is in our midst.

It was always so and always will be so, until the clouds part for good: God doesn't come thundering down on us from on high but emerges almost imperceptibly like a golden thread woven into the ragged tapestry of our fallen world. If you're praying, and paying the right kind of attention, you may find that those closed quotation marks are to be found also in own your inner monologue, and when you look back you can't quite tell where your own thoughts ended and the other voice of inspiration or answer began.

In a perplexing and much-discussed chapter of his On the Soul (Book III, Chapter 5), Aristotle says that there is a part of the human mind (nous) which is active (poiētikos) and "is what it is by virtue of making all things." The fully active mind is like light, says Aristotle, and though we share in it, it is ultimately distinct from us -- perpetually living, doing, acting for all eternity. When we use our active mind fully we access the part of ourselves which is immortal, or else we enter for an infinite moment into eternity.

These are mysteries best ruminated on and glimpsed from an angle, but I wonder whether Aristotle had some inkling of the prophet's art, and the gift given by God to all his children: that though we suffer and die, yet from moment to moment we emerge from our reveries and realize, with shock, that God has been speaking for we know not how long.

Rejoice evermore,
Spencer