Isaiah had an ugly answer: God turned away from His people because they turned away from Him. He lead the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt hundreds of years before and gave them land in Canaan (modern-day Israel) for two interconnected reasons:
1. To create a godly kingdom that spread the love of God to the rest of the world.
2. To punish the previous inhabitants of Canaan for their crimes against their neighbors and God.But God’s people did not live up to their end of the bargain. By Isaiah’s time, they had split into two warring kingdoms that were just as evil as their neighbors. Now, as a punishment, the same things they had done to the Canaanites were being done to them by the Assyrians.
It could not have been an easy message to deliver. The Assyrians were known for the savage way they treated their enemies. The people of Israel had been massacred and their survivors resettled hundreds of miles across the desert. It would have been easy for the people of Judah to conclude that God was harsh and uncaring. They would have had many of the same questions that modern audiences have about a God who consigns people to Hell.
Isaiah had to make a key distinction. Just because God judges people doesn’t mean that He enjoys doing it. Judgment is not an end in and of itself. There is a greater purpose behind it. God wanted to bless the Jewish people, not punish them. Isaiah made that point over and over again.
The Book of Isaiah is still hopeful despite the tragedy surrounding it. Isaiah never lost his faith. He believed in the goodness of God, and always balanced the good with the bad in his writing. In the same breathe that he warned about the coming judgment of God, he also pointed past it to the day when his people would be restored to fellowship with their Creator:
In that day the branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors of Israel. Those who are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called holy, all who are recorded among the living in Jerusalem. The Lord will wash away the filth of the women of Zion; he will cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of fire.For Isaiah, any understanding of God started with what He had done in the past. After all, God had shown his goodness to the Jewish people many times before. When Isaiah talks about a cloud of smoke that will cover Israel like a canopy, he is referencing a story from their exodus from Egypt:
Then the Lord will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory will be a canopy. It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and the rain.
- Isaiah 4:2-6
By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way any by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.The exodus was a migration of hundreds of thousands across an inhospitable desert. People of all ages made the journey. It wasn’t just military-aged men. It was the very old and the very young, along with pregnant and nursing mothers. The Jews should not have been able to make it to the Promised Land, much less have the strength to conquer when they did. The only reason they survived is because God literally guided them along the way.
- Exodus 13:21-22
This is where the Old Testament loses modern readers. A pillar of smoke and fire sounds more like science fiction than history.
But we believe far more insane things about the world than that. The latest research on string theory and the multiverse is wilder than anything you will read in the Bible. There are many scientists who believe that we are living in a computer-generated simulation, which begs the obvious questions of who is running the simulation and whether they left us any guidance for how they want us to live in the world they created.
Humans pretend that we understand the universe because we have invented a few gadgets when we really don’t have much of a grasp on the true nature of reality. Maybe that will change if scientists discover the elusive Theory of Everything. Or maybe that answer will just create a hundred more questions.
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.Here is one thing we do know. The survival of the Jewish people was not guaranteed when Isaiah was preaching. It was a miracle they survived the Assyrian invasion, much less that they are still around thousands of years later. But Isaiah never doubted they would, even when all the evidence pointed to their impending doom.
- 1 Corinthians 13:12
Isaiah didn't just believe in God. He believed that He was good. That is the biggest problem most people have with faith.
It can be hard to reconcile God's judgment with His mercy. There is so much evil and suffering in the world. It is hard enough to get through life in one piece without having to worry about being judged at the end by a God who created our cruel and seemingly arbitrary existence in the first place.
That conflict is the underlying premise of the TV show The Good Place. In season 3, the characters realize that no human being has made it to “the good place” (aka heaven) in over 500 years because the interconnected nature of modern life makes it impossible for the good we do to outweigh the bad. None of the characters are Christians. If they were, they wouldn’t be shocked to learn that we are all sinners living in a fallen world:
There is a lot of truth to the point that Michael (played by Ten Danson) makes. It is impossible for any of us to earn our own salvation. That is why God made another way.
There are hints sprinkled throughout the Book of Isaiah, which was written 700 years before the birth of Jesus, about what was to come. God, not Man, would earn salvation for all:
The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm achieved salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him.God came down to the world that He created and assumed human form so that He could live the sinless life that none of us could. He then sacrificed His life so that He could pay the punishment for our sins.
- Isaiah 59:18-19
That is the beauty of the gospel. We don’t have to be like the people on The Good Place, endlessly striving for a perfect life forever outside of our grasp. We don’t have to rack up a bunch of points to be saved. We just have to trust someone else to do it for us.
It's far easier for us to accept this message than for the people in Isaiah's time. They didn't know what was coming. All they had were hints. They just had to trust that God was ultimately working for their good even when they couldn't understand how. We, on the other hand, are living on the other side of the most important event in human history. Jesus already came. He already died, and already rose again. To paraphrase Jay-Z, he's already home.
God has reached out His hand to save us. We just have to take it. Mercy triumphed over judgment at the cross. That is the hope that we have to hold onto no matter what happens to us in this life.
Sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people; praise his holy name. For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes in the morning.
- Psalm 30:4-5
At six verses, this is one of the shortest chapters in the bible. You quoted almost the whole thing in your excerpt, leaving out only the first verse. That first verse was (excuse the bad formatting):
ReplyDeleteIn that day(A) seven women
will take hold of one man(B)
and say, “We will eat our own food(C)
and provide our own clothes;
only let us be called by your name.
Take away our disgrace!”
I wonder what this is saying about the relations between men and women in those days. The idea that seven women should approach me as described does sound a little like an adolescent fantasy. The focus on the women's impurity is, I guess, a reflection of some fanatical patriarchal values. I wonder if the framing of menstruation as sinful was based on the view that no reproductive sex cell should be wasted--like, spilling seed on the ground was a waste of god's creative life -giving power--wasting a month in a woman's reproductive life was akin to a man jerking off--another thing that seemed more sinful in centuries past than it does today.
Fun stuff from The Good Place. I'm reading The Great Divorce right now and the themes of the two readings dovetailed nicely!