The Isaiah Project: Chapter 66, or, The End
My dear friends,
Here we are at the end. I’m going to start with the essay this time, because I want Isaiah to have the last word. To the best of my ability, this whole thing has never been about me. It was always about him.
And I know, I know, there is currently a scholarly consensus that there was actually not one “him” but two, or several, or many. If you disagree with this you are likely to be laughed out of erudite circles. But there are those who do disagree, those whose learning and faith is not to be sniffed at—the scholar J. Alec Motyer, for example, and the pastor John McArthur. And even I have lived long enough to see one day’s ironclad scholarly certitude become the next day’s quaint misapprehension.
My own position remains what it has always been: it would be no great challenge to my faith if the “multiple Isaiahs” theory proved true. But I have spent years deep in this text, and for what it’s worth, I have always found it to reflect a singular vision, a unique authorial diction, and a unified compositional plan. Whether all of it was written by Isaiah, or some of it was merely inspired by him, it is in some essential way one thing.
And so I have presented Isaiah to you here as one man, one voice, one prophet and one prophecy. So far as we know, that is universally how Jews and Christians have understood him for the vast majority of their long history since the 8th century B.C. It is clearly how Jesus thought of him. There is obviously enormous profit in reading him this way—it connects us with the unbroken chain of tradition and wisdom that has brought us to this point. It makes us and our spiritual ancestors mutually intelligible to one another.
Isaiah was made a prophet at a moment of crisis, division, and decadence. His fellow Jews had long since split into two kingdoms, tearing apart the family of God in civil war. The southern kingdom of Judah, where Isaiah lived and preached in Jerusalem, was afflicted with weak and faithless leadership, with apostate kings and arrogant oligarchs. They “turned the needy away from arbitration and stripped justice away from the poor” (Chapter 10). The utopian vision of a divinely ordered kingdom on earth lay in ruins.
Over the course of this project, as I have published these essays here, Isaiah has seen us through bitter partisan schisms, through a pandemic and the extravagant mismanagement thereof, through national and personal heartbreak and betrayal and dissapointment. With a few rare exceptions, I have avoided making these essays too “news-y,” too linked to this or that passing event in the world. But it has always struck me that we are the same stiff-necked people we always were, forgetful of charity and addicted to grievance. I find a weird comfort in hearing from Isaiah how ancient Israel made a mess of things. It is one of the governing themes of this prophecy: if God’s chosen people cannot get it right, none of us can. We must look elsewhere for our salvation than to ourselves.
But if we are the same people, surely God is the same God. Not the God we want, but the God we need. I have tried to stress that neither God nor his prophet has patience or care for our comfortable assumptions: Isaiah’s God is both more vengeful and more fierce in his love than we would like. And yet another governing theme is this: the passionate intensity with which God hates evil is the same white-hot desire with which he loves, pursues, and, if we ask, forgives us. The same Hebrew root, קנה (qānāh), expresses all of God’s jealous zeal: the rage with which he punishes, and the wild abandon with which he claims us for himself in love.
Both of those are here for us in this last chapter. I have said already that if God is to swallow up death and evil from this earth, as we must pray he will, then we cannot do away with his wrath. It is wrapped up also with his fantastic creative energy, this one great clearing away forever of all that is broken and this forming of a new heaven, a new earth. Consider these lines, in which wrath and love are woven inextricably together:
12. So says God: ‘Look. See me reaching out to her with peace like a river, with the majesty of nations like an overflowing stream. You’ll suckle. You’ll be carried on her hip and bounced on her knees.
13. Like a man whose mother consoles him: that’s the way I’ll console you, and in Jerusalem you will be consoled.
14. You’ll see, and your heart will fill with gladness, and your bones will flower forth like grass. God’s hand will be made known to his servants, as will his indignation to his enemies.
I wonder what it will look like for us when all our broken relationships are restored like broken bones being set; when the ways we have betrayed one another are wiped away and the scores we keep amongst ourselves are settled forever. Probably there will be pain in it, as well as a joy that eclipses the pain. In any event, the light of such thoughts is blinding to me. I think I should stop talking and let Isaiah describe it.
I am grateful to you, more grateful than I can say, for following with me on this journey. I hope it has been helpful for you. Above all, and in all things, with a joy that passes understanding,
Rejoice evermore.
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The Vision Isaiah Saw: Chapter 661. So says God: the heavens are my throne and the earth is my footrest — where is this house you’re going to build for me? Where’s the place where I’ll come to settle?
2. ‘My hand made all these things, and all these things came to be,’ declares God, ‘but this is what I’m looking close at: at the abased. At him with the broken spirit who trembles at my proclamations.3. He who slaughters an ox like he’s beating down a man, and sacrifices a lamb like he’s decapitating a dog, who offers up a gift like pig’s blood and makes remembrance with incense like he’s blessing an empty idol — it’s them, they’re the ones who choose their own pathways and whose souls take pleasure in their own filth.
4. So I will choose abuse for them and bring their own worst fears to pass — because I called out, and no one answered. I made my proclamation, and no one listened. They did evil in my sight: they made choices that displease me.
5. Listen to God proclaiming, you who tremble at his proclamations. Your brothers, who despise you and banished you for the sake of my name, they say: ‘magnify God.’ But he will be made visible in your joy, and they’ll be humiliated.
6. A voice! Roaring up out of the city, a voice from the temple, the voice of God dealing out payback to his enemies.
7. Before her contractions, she gave birth. Before she went into labour, she delivered a baby boy.
8. Who ever heard of such a thing? Who ever saw anything like it? Will the earth go through labour in a single day? Will a nation be born all in one moment? The instant Zion went into labour, she gave birth to her sons.
9. ‘Will I make her break water without giving birth?’ says God. ‘Will I, who bring about the birth, shut the birth canal?’ says your god.10. Rejoice with Jerusalem and celebrate within her if you love her. Everyone who grieves alongside her, rejoice with her in her joy.
11. And so you will suckle and be sated at her breast of consolation. And so you will suckle and relish the fullness of her majesty.
12. Because so says God: ‘Look. See me reaching out to her with peace like a river, with the majesty of nations like an overflowing stream. You’ll suckle. You’ll be carried on her hip and bounced on her knees.
13. Like a man whose mother consoles him: that’s the way I’ll console you, and in Jerusalem you will be consoled.
14. You’ll see, and your heart will fill with gladness, and your bones will flower forth like grass. God’s hand will be made known to his servants, as will his indignation to his enemies.
15. Yes: see God coming in flames, riding with cavalry like a hurricane to bring back his anger in a blaze of fury and his reprimand like a glinting flame.
16. Yes, in flames God will bring justice upon all flesh, and at the point of his sword. The slain of God will be abundant.
17. ‘Those who sanctify themselves and cleanse themselves in gardens, back in one central spot, eating pig’s meat and filth and mice — they will all be devoured at once, declares God.
18. ‘I know the things they do and the thoughts they think. It’s coming: I’ll assemble all the nations with their different tongues, and they’ll come and see my majesty.
19. ‘I will place a symbol upon them, and send the fugitives among them to the nations: Tarshish, Pul, Lud (where they pull back their bowstrings), Tubal, and Javan. The far-off islands where they haven’t heard what I’m making heard or seen my majesty — and they’ll tell about my majesty among those nations.
20. ‘And they’ll bring all your brothers out of all the nations as a gift to God — on horses and chariots and palanquins and mules and dromedaries — up to the sacred mountain of Jerusalem,’ says God, ‘just as Israel’s sons bring gifts in purified vessels to the house of God.
21. ‘And I will even take priests for the order of the Levites from among them,’ says God.
22. ‘Because just as the new heaven and the new earth that I am making, which arise and stand before me,’ declares God, ‘so your offspring will arise before me and your name will stand.
23. ‘And it happens: from new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to sabbath, all flesh will come to prostrate itself before me,’ says God.
24. ‘Then they’ll go forth and see the corpses of the men that rebelled against me. Because the maggots on them will never die, nor their fire be extinguished, and they’ll be a thing abhorrent to all flesh.