Isaiah 33

Isaiah asked a lot of his people. Their country was being devastated by the Assyrian army, the Nazis of their day. And they weren’t even supposed to get help from their bigger and more powerful neighbors, who were gearing up for their own war against Assyria. 

He wasn’t quite saying to turn the other cheek. The Assyrians still had to be punished for their crimes: 

Woe to you who plunder, though you have not been plundered; And you who deal treacherously, though they have not dealt treacherously with you! 

When you cease plundering, you will be plundered; When you make an end of dealing treacherously, they will deal treacherously with you. 

-- Isaiah 33:1-2 

The people of Judah, along with their other victims, would be avenged. But they would not be the ones to do it. That task fell to God:

“Now will I arise,” says the Lord. “Now will I be exalted; now will I be lifted up. You conceive chaff, you give birth to straw; your breath is a fire that consumes you. The people will be burned to ashes; like cut thornbushes they will be set ablaze.” 

-- Isaiah 33:10-12 

Isaiah’s message went hand in hand with his calls for people to put their faith in God to get them through the crisis. They were not supposed to do anything. Their salvation was not in their own hands.

The bigger issue was their own lack of faith. The Jewish people had gone their own way over the previous century, creating an unjust society that oppressed the poor and ignored every commandment that God had given them. That was the real source of their problems. 

It would have been a difficult message to hear. No one wants to believe they are ultimately responsible for their own misfortune. The more natural reaction would have been to focus on what had been done to them and vow revenge. 

There was an obvious boogeyman. The Assyrians were led by a ruthless king named Sennacherib. He ran the imperial bureaucracy for his father Sargon II until his death on the battlefield in 705 BC. The problem for Sennacherib was that he had not campaigned himself, and military service was how Assyrian kings gained legitimacy. So he had a hard time controlling their massive empire when he took over. Babylon, their most important territory, instantly revolted. 

Sennacherib’s response was doubling down even further on violence and cruelty, which is saying something given Assyria’s history. Sargon II had conquered Israel, the northern of the two Jewish kingdoms in the ancient Middle East, in 722 BC, and ethnically cleansed the region. Sennacherib showed even less mercy when he fought his way to the gates of Babylon. His army sacked the city and killed tens of thousands of people. They did the same thing in their march towards Jerusalem in 701 BC. Judah, like Israel before it, looked doomed. 

It all worked out in the end, exactly as Isaiah promised. The Assyrians put Jerusalem under siege, but never conquered it. Their army mysteriously withdrew rather than attack. The city was saved. So was the nation of Judah, as well as the Jewish people. 

But the Assyrian Empire had not been destroyed. They had plenty more armies, and still controlled most of the known world. Sennacherib sat on the throne in their capital city of Nineveh like nothing had happened. One of the reasons why we know the story told in the Book of Isaiah is true are the monuments that he built, which listed Jerusalem among the huge number of cities that he besieged, but not on the list of ones that he captured. The failed campaign was a footnote in the history of the Assyrian Empire. Justice had not really been served. 

The main characters in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove had to deal with the same issue. It tells the story of a late 19th century cattle drive from Texas to Montana led by two aging sheriffs. A woman (Lorena) is abducted from their party by a group of bandits. One of the sheriffs (Gus) rescues her in a dramatic firefight, but the leader of the bandits (Blue Duck) escapes. Gus decides to let him go rather than chasing him through the countryside: 

“Son, this is a sad thing,” said Gus. “Loss of life always is. But the life is lost for good. Don’t you go attempting vengeance. You’ve got more urgent business. If I ever run into Blue Duck I’ll kill him. But if I don’t, somebody else will. He’s big and mean, but sooner or later he’ll meet somebody bigger and meaner. Or a snake will bite him or a horse will fall on him, or he’ll get hung, or one of his renegades will shoot him in the back. Or he’ll just get old and die. Don’t be trying to give back pain for pain. You can’t get even measures in business like this.” 

His decision fits the broader themes of the book. The plot twists and turns and goes in unexpected directions. It doesn’t end when the cattle drive does. Not every crisis is resolved. Bad guys get away. The good guys don’t always “win”. 

The more important question in that situation was what “winning” would even mean. Lorena was in no shape for a manhunt, while Gus was needed by his friends back on the cattle drive. There was no guarantee that he would find Blue Duck, or that he would capture him if he did. The odds were that he would be throwing away the lives of a lot of people for nothing. 

What Gus says perfectly sums up the Christian perspective on revenge. We know that we live in a fallen world that will not be made whole until Jesus returns. There is no such thing as perfect justice on this side of eternity. But the good news is there is another side. God has promised us that every wrong will be addressed. We don’t have to live our lives consumed by vengeance. We can let things slide. After all, that’s what God did for us. 

Life is hard, and it comes in unexpected ways. Blue Duck is captured in Lonesome Dove, years after the cattle drive is over. Gus and his friends had nothing to do with it. There was just only so long that he could get away with his life of banditry before it caught up with him. 

Sennacherib didn’t escape justice, either. He fought numerous wars in the years after his failed siege of Jerusalem, extending the reach of the Assyrian Empire even further and destroying many civilizations in its path. The promise of vengeance that Isaiah had given him was probably the furthest thing from his mind when it finally happened in 681 BC: 

One day, while [Sennacherib] was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisrok, his sons Adrammelek and Sharezer killed him with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king.

-- Isaiah 37:38

There aren't many worse ways to go than being murdered by your own children. But death is death even in the most pleasant circumstances. There's only so much time we are given in this world, and we all have to stand before God when we die. How we get there doesn't really matter all that much. 

There's no need for revenge. Life is hard enough as it is.

Isaiah 32

Isaiah knew he would be ignored. It was one of the first things God told him after he became a prophet:

He said, “Go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing but never understanding, be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” 

- Isaiah 6:9-10 

The people he was talking to wouldn’t understand him. Not because they were deaf or blind, but because they were spiritually blind. Our eyes filter an overwhelming amount of sensory information from the world around us and turn it into something our brains can understand. We only “see” a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s the same thing with our brains and the way they filter our experiences. 

The world is too complicated to understand without a filter. That filter can be religious, societal, or cultural, or some combination of all three. Everyone takes things on faith, even if those things aren’t spiritual claims. The average American is taught to believe that science has all the answers, and that supernatural explanations are relics from our unenlightened past. 

Most people have not actually investigated the nature of the universe for themselves. Where would they even start? They have just been taught how to think about it from a young age, and assume that everyone else thinks similarly, and that the ones who don’t are ignorant. 

In his famous (or at least famous in unbearably pretentious circles) commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005, David Foster Wallace tells a story about a religious person and an atheist: 

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God. And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’” 

And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says,” After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple of Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to the camp.” 

Both interpretations could be right. Maybe it was luck that some Eskimos were there to save the atheist’s life. Or maybe God heard his prayer and sent them. There’s no way to “prove” either answer. 

The same thing is true for the events of the Book of Isaiah. Most historians believe some sort of plague struck the Assyrian army when it was besieging Jerusalem and forced them to withdraw, saving the city. Isaiah believed that it was an angel using a plague to save Jerusalem. 

Each interpret events through their particular worldviews. Christians have to remember that people with a more secular worldview will never “see” the same things as us. So the only way to change their mind is to change their worldview. Everything else is a waste of time. 

God allowed people to make up their own mind when Jesus came to Earth the first time. That will not be the case when he returns. The promise that Isaiah makes in Chapter 32 is quite different from what God tells him in Chapter 6: 

See, a king will reign in righteousness and rulers will rule with justice. 

Each one will be like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. 

Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed, and the ears of those who hear will listen. 

-- Isaiah 32:1-3 

Our job, until that happens, is to help people open their eyes. It’s not to get angry about their blindness. 

Christianity is not about a series of rituals and behaviors that will lead to a better life on Earth. That’s part of it, but it’s not the main thing. Nor is it about “traditional values” or a certain way you have to live your life. None of that stuff will save you. It will not make you a righteous person, or holy before a righteous God. Having a couple of kids, a spouse, a good job, and a white picket fence is not a ticket into the kingdom of heaven. Voting for a particular party or giving all your money to charity or devoting your life to good works isn’t one, either. 

The Jewish religious leaders in Jesus’ day devoted their lives learning the Law that God gave to Moses. They knew it inside and out and made their people follow it down to the letter. They were as righteous and holy as any men who ever lived. But that’s a low bar to clear in comparison to the standard of God: 

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbled at just one point is guilty of adultery. [emphasis added] For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” 

If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker. Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. 

- James 2:10-13 

The good news of Christianity isn’t that there’s a long list of rules that you have to follow to be a good person. The rules by themselves will not save you. They aren’t that important in the big picture. They are the end products, not the cause, of Christian life. 

The good news is that the Creator of the universe took on human flesh and walked among us for a short period of time in ancient Israel 2,000 years ago. Then he was killed and rose from the dead. Now we have the chance to follow him and to spread that good news to the rest of the world. 

If you don’t make that good news the foundation of your life, and your identity, then all of the other stuff doesn’t matter. You might as well not do it all. You are better off doing whatever you want and not following any rules than trying to be a Christian without a relationship to Christ. Both paths are equally fruitless. It’s just more obvious with the former than the latter. 

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” 

-- Matthew 7:21-23 

Pat Riley, who has won titles as a player, coach, and general manager in a more than 50-year career in the NBA, coined a famous saying when talking about the challenges of maintaining success -- "Keep the main thing, the main thing". Winning a title creates opportunities for everyone involved and turns star players into celebrities. But all those opportunities ultimately stem from winning basketball games. So people that lose focus on the main thing will ultimately lose everything else, too. 

 

That's why Isaiah always came back to preaching repentance and belief in God. He had many specific pieces of advice to his people, like telling them not to trust in foreign militaries to save them against the Assyrians, but he knew that it would all be ignored if there wasn't change in their hearts. Their spiritual rebellion against God was the ultimate cause of their problems, as well as their only chance of a solution to them. It does not good to point out all the evil things happening right in front of someone if they can't even see them. 

We are dealing with the same issues almost 3,000 years later. The difference is that Isaiah was pointing his people to the coming of the Messiah. We, on the other hand, are lucky enough to be living on the other side of that. 

The main thing in Christianity is Jesus. The religion is built around his message and what he did in his time on Earth. The rest of it won't make sense unless people learn to follow him. That's the only way that people will ever be able to open their eyes.