I have told you a hundred times Isaiah, don’t beat about the bush – just get to the point. Be eco-friendly and save the quill, the ink and the parchment.
I have spent a considerable amount of time building my own translation in this blog. My conclusion is that the people of Jerusalem would have been quaking in their boots – eh! Sorry! – their sandals. These words are as frightening as that moment in the whole of Matthew 23. That chapter is not just the narrative of an angry man. It was an angry man sanctioning the mind and feelings of Almighty God.
- How foolish can you be? Your thinking is perverse! He is the Potter. You turn things upside down. You hold it back to front as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! He is certainly greater than you. Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, “You did not make me”? Can the pot say to the potter, “You have no understanding! You are stupid! You know nothing! (Lannon’s paraphrase cum translation)
I think I would hide in a cubicle in the “gents’ toilets” (if they had any in the Temple. That’s a good point because I don’t think they did.) so Isaiah would not have had the chance to look into my eyes as he spoke this stuff.
This is what can only be understood as a heavy-duty confrontation to society at large in Jerusalem in Isaiah’s day. Isaiah is fighting desperately for the minds of the people to get a firm hold on the mystery of the future that he had been orally painting in verbal Technicolor. He wanted to impart the vision he had of God and His plans for the future of Israel, striving to embed this heavenly, spiritually perceived word picture in their minds and hearts. He was wrestling – no – vocally brawling, punching and striving for a mental picture that will seem so vivid before the eyes of his audience, they will themselves absorb it and keep it ever in their hearts. The man is declaring that what he is carrying is directly received from Yahweh. He is clearly telling the people that the thoughts of God and the words of God need to be willfully received and aligned with, in order to see them for what they truly are. That choice to turn and agree with God will facilitate the illumination of the God of Israel bringing his vision and trajectory of Israel’s future prospects to them.
1 Thessalonians 2:13 wasn’t to be written for at least another 700 years, but the principle that Paul states in that verse has ever been true. If the people that heard Isaiah spoke, received what he said and accepted it as the “very Word of God” to their hearts, that very belief and acceptance would activate something in their hearts that would bring a personal and powerful change of heart and mind that substantiated their salvation in God.
The dust biting humiliation of Ariel – aka Jerusalem, the magnificent unexpected liberation, the abrupt and unexpected advancement from the cusp of the chasm of death to this lofty summit of what the people were speaking of as if it was their valour and courage that they had experienced – all this was a matter of factual awe and wonder totally responded to by delusional, suppositional false deductions. This matter of having watched from the walls of Jerusalem while the thousands upon thousands of the Assyrian military hosts were cleared (and burnt?) while Sennacharib’s survivors broke camp and left with their heads hanging down, was turned into a mystifying claim of victory. They were shouting, “We won the war!” But it happened overnight while the entire nation, hiding in Jerusalem were sleeping. If they were not sleeping, they were more likely to have been quaking in their beds with fear. Deliverance from Assyria was just what the nation wanted and needed. However, while partying that they were free and celebrating that Jerusalem was still standing and their homes were still intact, Isaiah is looking for the aroma of repentance and humility towards Yahweh. The only aroma Isaiah caught was the stench of pride, arrogance and a willful misinterpretation of the whys and wherefores of the Assyrian catastrophic losses.
The heavenly explanation being delivered from Isaiah’s mouth, was planted into their ears, but the mental grasp of Isaiah’s rationale behind his words was absent – even non-existent; and all the narrative and worldview that underpinned Isaiah’s prophetic statements were subjectively wrecked within the obtuseness of the masses. The prophet, therefore, who had received the Word, could not help exclaiming, “Stop, and stare; blind yourselves, and become even more sightless!” (Isaiah 29:9)) Linger for just a moment. Tarry a while. Chew the cud on these eternally important statements. Be comatose with awe and frozen with wonderment and amazement. God has done this miraculous act without you being aware He was doing it. And no matter how incredible it is, how on earth can you celebrate as if you have won a battle. The battle was the Lord’s. So, party, if you must, and sing to the Lord. Give deep emotional thanks to the heavenly deliverer. Had He not acted overnight, none of you folks would have been alive today. But whatever you do, and whatever you are supposing within yourself, don’t turn further away from Yahweh. Delight in Him and his words. Do not neglect the broader instructions of the Almighty. Delight in his words and love them. Love them and obey them.
It would seem that they could not understand the word of God as presented by Isaiah. They were ecstatic to see the Assyrian forces leave. However, after the amazing events, it would seem that nobody could relate their Divine rescue to anything Isaiah had said. They were confused, and their eyes were, so to speak, closed and stuck as if they all had spiritual conjunctivitis. This self-induced condition and state of mind would become to them a God-appointed punishment. The imperatives of Isaiah were judicial words of command. However the people were content to talk about God who had saved them, but they still did not want the God who was instructing them to live differently.
This gradation of self-hardening into a concrete-like set judicial punishment of inflexibility is constantly highlighted by Isaiah. They were drunk and stupid. But they were not inebriated merely because they gave themselves up to alcoholic excess, but because Yahweh had given them up to spiritual confusion and self-destruction. All the punishments of God are inflicted through the medium of His no less world-terminating than world-building Spirit. Evil in no way is initiated by God, but He clearly does make the evil, called and brought into existence by the creature, the means of punishing evil. The people of Judah at that time were in an immobilised, inert condition of unqualified otherworldly insensibility. This judgment had fallen upon the nation in all its limbs and organs, even upon the eyes and heads of the nation, i.e., including the vast majority the prophets. They whose responsibility and obligation was to see to the prosperity of the nation, were visionless leaders of the eyeless. Their spiritual eyes were stuck fast shut by hardened spiritual matter that prevented them from seeing the things that Isaiah spoke. Over their pates, a thick web was drawn, like those folks that light to cover their heads with a thick duvet in order to help them sleep
Some of the masses, and we must stop and say that the masses of Judah in Isaiah’s day were much reduced than the population of, say, David and Solomon’s day, might have held a loose hold of outward knowledge. The inward understanding of the revelation, however, was sealed to them. The majority are stated to have stared at the word of the prophet, like people who cannot read staring at written matter with a vacant expression of imbecility.
“Isaiah reading from a scroll (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri – 1591-1666)
Swimming Up the Niagara 