The Isaiah Project: Chapter 55, or, Rainfall

Hi all,

Can't help but think that this this chapter is so beautiful, and so famous, that it needs little comment from me. But I have provided some below as always, hopefully to aid rather than hinder your luxuriating in the chapter itself.

1. Oh, come, oh, everyone thirsty: come to these waters. You with no money, come buy and eat. Come! Buy wine and milk without money or price.

2. Why are you shelling out money for things that aren’t bread? Why toil to get nothing that satisfies? Listen, oh, listen to me and eat good things; let your souls relish fat cuts of meat.

3. Strain your ears this way and come to me. Listen and your souls will live; I will cut you a deal, a covenant for all time, the secure mercies of David.

4. Look: I have offered him to the peoples as a witness, to be their leader: the commander of the peoples.

5. Look: you never knew the nation that you’ll call upon; they never knew you either, but they’ll come running to you thanks to God, your god — to Israel’s Sacred One, because he has adorned you.

6. Hunt after God when he can be found; call on him when he’s near.

7. Let evil men abandon the path they’re on, and ungodly men abandon the thoughts they think. Let them come back to God who will open his heart in compassion; to our god who abounds with forgiveness.

8. Because my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your paths are not my paths, declares God:

9. As exalted as Heaven is, high above Earth, that’s how high above your paths my paths are, and my thoughts above your thoughts.

10. Because just as rainfall or snow comes cascading from heaven, and doesn’t go back — not until it has soaked through the earth and made it bear fruit, made it blossom forth, given the seed-sower seed and the hungry man bread to eat:

11. In the same way my proclamation emerges from out of my mouth: it doesn’t come back to me fruitless; it does what I please and achieves the fruition I sent it for.

12. Yes: you will emerge in joy and be carried forth in peace to the mountains and hillsides — which burst into song before you, while trees in the field clap their hands.

13. In place of brambles, cypress trees spring up. In place of thorns, myrtles spring up. This is what God has for a name, his symbol forever — never to be cut down.

Ancient Stoic theories of language divided all human speech into three parts: the words themselves as spoken or written, the image or idea conveyed by those words, and the thing itself that is being indicated. For example: if I say the word 'love' to you, you hear a sound (the one made by the letters l-o-v-e). This sound elicits from you an idea about an actual real-life experience which you and I have both had in our own private capacities. That real-life experience is love, the common reality which is not the word, but which thanks to the word we can convey and share.

God is a real being whose existence is so infinite and profound that it is beyond all human speech acts -- beyond all material symbols or words that we might use to convey him. "No one has ever seen God," nor has "eye seen or ear heard" what he has in store for those who love him (John 1:18, 1 Corinthians 2:9). And that is the point of Isaiah's verse 9 in this chapter: "as exalted as Heaven is, high above Earth, that's how high above your paths my paths are, and my thoughts above your thoughts." There is simply no device or depiction of ours that can bridge the gap between God Almighty and us, who walk on the earth.

It's a verse that people cite a lot. But they often neglect to note the very next verses, in which the prophet rushes to assure us: "just as rainfall or snow comes cascading from heaven and doesn't go back.... In the same way my proclamation emerges from my mouth." And it doesn't return "until it has soaked through the earth and made it bear fruit, made it blossom forth, given the seed-sower seed and the hungry man bread to eat." We are told both, that the gap between heaven and earth is unbridgeable, and that in fact it has been bridged: there is a Word which can convey divinity, can implant in human hearts he true idea of who God is.

This word, this speech, this rainfall, is the beaten and broken man, the shunned and neglected servant described in all these many chapters. Now we learn that despite all his anguish he will "emerge in joy" and "be carried forth in peace" as the mountains "burst into song" before him. By a miracle -- truly, a miracle -- the ineffable divine is made audible and knowable in these words, in this man, in truth like rainfall that comes pouring from heaven and soaks all creation like a fallow field.

Aristotle, in his own work on language (De Interpretatione 16a-14) wrote that words symbolize and communicate impressions upon the soul, the mark left on us by our experience of reality. These words -- Isaiah's words, in which are depicted and conveyed the very Word of God -- are themselves the rainfall that saturates all creation and brings forth grain to feed the hungry soul. "Without money or price," Scripture will implant within you the knowledge of him who is life itself and never dies. Every comfort, every hope, every longing ache that these words inspire in you is another fruit born from this torrent of love, this downpour of God's own self onto the fertile ground of your human heart.

None of this is abstract or magical -- it is not even far removed from your own very basic experience right now. It is right here in the words themselves, and the impressions they make upon your soul like raindrops on the earth. This, all this, will be your food now and always.

Rejoice evermore,
Spencer