Tag: Isaiah

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Isaiah 48: Jacob or Israel?

Genesis 32:28 RSV — Then he said, “Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

Matthew 5:11-12 RSV — “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.

This chapter addresses the difference between Jacob and Israel. Although referring to the same man and his descendents, Jacob wasn’t renamed Israel until he wrestled with an angel of God in, perhaps, the most vulnerable moment of his life. Jacob was alone, having sent all his posessessions with his entire family to give them to his brother Esau for forgiveness. After having his birthright stolen by Jacob, Esau grew strong enough to kill his brother. As Jacob waited to learn whether his gifts would spare him his life, an angel appeared to wrestle him through the night.

After surviving the match and suffering a dislocated thigh, Jacob is given the name Israel. It is unclear what “Israel” means exactly, one source provides this guess: “He Has Become A Receptacle In Which God Can Be Received And Retained.”

This rings more true to me than the frequently used, “He Who Strives/Struggles/Wrestles With God.”

Israel became a new man in his striving.

We become new in our faith when we struggle with the Word.

But God reminds us that the old self, the Jacob, is a pattern that still exists as the fallback position when we cease to strive in our faith.

This chapter chides the descendents of Israel as they have fallen into the patterns of Jacob.

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Isaiah 47: Babylon’s Hubris

Isaiah 47:10 RSV — You felt secure in your wickedness, you said, “No one sees me”; your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray, and you said in your heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me.”

Your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray.

This is an example of the descriptive nature of the Old Testament. God doesn’t bring Babylon low out of vengeance, but rather Babylon’s arrogance and refusal to see its limited role in history.

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Isaiah 46: These Things You Carry

Isaiah 46:1 RSV — Bel bows down, Nebo stoops, their idols are on beasts and cattle; these things you carry are loaded as burdens on weary beasts.

I have to laugh at myself. I’ve been stressing all morning about loading up for a camping weekend. Scripture is magic. The Word shows up in humbling ways.

This weekend I will focus on not carrying false idols into the woods.

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Isaiah 44-45: I am the LORD’s

Isaiah 44:5 RSV — This one will say, ‘I am the LORD’s,’ another will call himself by the name of Jacob, and another will write on his hand, ‘The LORD’s,’ and surname himself by the name of Israel.”

Isaiah 45:1 RSV — Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him and ungird the loins of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed:

To be clear: I do not think I’m anointed, comparable to a king like Cyrus, nor particularly led by the hand of God.

I aspire to serve God to the best of my ability and these passages are bolstering.

The Oxford Study Bible says that owners put their name on the hands of slaves.

When I got my first tattoo, the story of Jacob’s dream and the ladder stretching down from Heaven felt right. I forget why exactly we chose to use my right arm, but I think it was Kristen’s call from an artistic stand point. Her intuitions are strong.

The supplanter Jacob is renamed Israel after he wrestles with God (or God’s angel, I haven’t gone deep enough on that to say). Although I want to study more, I’m tempted to have Kristen depict that wrestling match on my left arm. Jacob and Israel represent two extremes of the human spirit, the conivining and the righteous. This is the struggle that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn framed so beautifully.

I feel this divide daily in temptations for good and ill. To look down and see that I have marked myself, voluntarily, with something akin to “I am the LORD’s” gives me a little more strength to see and choose the righteous path.

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Isaiah 42: Servant Song

Isaiah 42:13-14 KJV — The LORD shall go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war: he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail against his enemies. I have long time holden my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself: now will I cry like a travailing woman; I will destroy and devour at once.

Different translations have the LORD referring to Himself as a soldier, champion, warrior, or man of war. Then, in the next verse, He holds his peace before crying out like a woman in labor.

The entire chapter contains repetitions and apparent contradictions.

Some sources refer to this poem as the first of Isaiah’s Song of the Servant, calling God’s people to quietly bring justice to the world.

Maybe this chapter is guiding us to recognize that our role here is small. God determines the rhythms of the universe and we’re blind to the true machinations.

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Isaiah 41: Cyrus

Isaiah 41:10 KJV — Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

In this chapter, Isaiah foretells the rise of king Cyrus and God’s continued guidance of Jacob’s people.

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Isaiah 40: Comfort

Isaiah 40:17 KJV — All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.

I take comfort when I come across these reminders that God’s authority is everything and man’s authority is nothing.

There is dispute over whether Isaiah wrote this and later chapters. John Oswalt and Henry Halley believe Isaiah is the sole author. Many others seem to think there are three or more authors. I’m inclined to side with Halley.

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Isaiah 36-39: Hezekiah

Isaiah 39:8 KJV — Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, Good is the word of the LORD which thou hast spoken. He said moreover, For there shall be peace and truth in my days.

These chapters cover the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, as the Assyrian army lays siege to Jerusalem. God kills 185,000 Assyrian troops, ending the siege.

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Isaiah 35: Beautiful Restoration

Isaiah 35:5 KJV — Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

Isaiah 35:7 DBY — And the mirage shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of wild dogs, where they lay down, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.

Translations vary, but it seems reasonable to use the word “mirage” here to describe the world before it is restored to the Eden state.

It is a fitting description of the fallen world. It winks at secular pop culture allusions to The Matrix and simulation theory. This existence seems artificial because it is. It is a fever dream. It is not reality.

In the end, our blind eyes will see and we will inhabit a healed Earth.

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Isaiah 34: No Nation Will Escape

Isaiah 1:2 RSV — Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the LORD has spoken: “Sons have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.

Isaiah 34:16 KJV — Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them.

I love how there is a challenge to come back, read this prophecy, and know that it is thoroughly accurate in its depiction of destruction.

No nation will escape this wrath. All nations have rebelled and will suffer.