Reading: Isaiah 31-35, Psalm 116

If Isaiah’s prophecies of doom followed by restoration are starting to sound familiar and predictable, it is because they are. Recall that Isaiah rooted everything he said in the covenant law of in the books of Moses. He is allowed to see a broader image by God’s revelation, but he is fundamentally saying the same thing over and over because it is nothing new. Isaiah lived for a very long time, and while world events moved around him to some degree, his people never wholly turned themselves to obedience to the covenant to which they were bound. The first 39 chapters of Isaiah are often viewed as a kind of “book 1” that covers events near at hand to Isaiah’s life, while the last 26 are a “book 2” that deals with things far off. I don’t entirely buy this, as much of what Isaiah says in the first 39 chapters also seems very far off, and some of what we will see in 40-66 seems to apply immediately. Also, the covenant lawsuit of chapters 1-5 control the theme of the whole book. I would start “book 1” at chapter 6. Okay, enough textual evaluation. In any event, there is a definite change in the middle of tomorrow’s reading, so we are going to wrap up the first 39 chapter’s great theme today.

Tomorrow we will be reading the part of the story we already know from 2 Kings 18-20. The Assyrian invasion has crushed Samaria, and they are now threatening Judah. They had defeated Egypt and are conquering the fortified cities of Judah, which will lead up to the siege of Jerusalem in the time of Hezekiah. Isaiah today declares one last great judgment on the nations, using Edom as an example. He makes a last call for repentance from the people, calling on them to recognize their situation before it is too late. From the start of the book, Isaiah has been delivering messages like this, but now his tone changes to one of immediacy, almost desperation. For the most part, Isaiah has been prophesying against the northern kingdom and the foreign nations, with judgment for Jerusalem predicted but distant. Now it is immediate.

The images of God that appear in Isaiah get increasingly warlike in these and the preceding chapters. God will carry a sword and smite the nations, and it will do no good to pretend he will not turn to faithless Jerusalem next. Still, Isaiah never stops with judgment. Once God has smashed the nations and poured out retribution for disobedience on his people, he will do a work of restoration. This is the great theme of Isaiah, and I would argue one of the great themes of Scripture as a whole: God makes all things new. Here we have a restoration of not just the people but the land and the animals. Streams in the desert. Nature, in the form of briers and thorns, overtakes the land of Israel’s enemies. God will personally rescue Jerusalem and make a city of canals into which no invading ships can come. Then he will build a highway, so all his people can come to the restored Jerusalem. But they are not the people one might expect.

This highway is given some pretty serious attention. It will be for the poor, lost, and broken, and even for the foolish. But they will be the righteous ones. The idea of righteous poor, or righteous fools, flew in the face of the culture of the day. Isaiah has spent some time telling those who sit in comfort to turn to repentance, now he praises the righteousness of those on the God of Israel’s highway while describing them as weak, anxious, blind, lame, mute, and deaf. They are also described as clean, which if you remember from Leviticus, is a really big deal for those people of Israel who care to keep the covenant law. It is also a status that is never achieved without sacrifice. To be clean in the books of Moses was to have been purified by God, not by somehow living in a way in which you didn’t get dirty. Isaiah’s description of these broken, faithful people as clean is no throwaway line. The highway is not for those who are righteous in appearance or by what they do. It is for those who are righteous by repentance, sacrifice, and purification.

Isaiah’s closing prophecies in “book 1” describe an act of God that is terribly violent against the nations, against his own people, but that somehow acts as a sacrifice to purify a multitude of broken people who would never be called righteous in the day and age. The book opened in chapter 6 with Isaiah himself being purified by a coal from an altar. An altar has a sacrifice on it. There is a missing character in this book. Someone or something was on that altar. Someone or something was the sacrifice that made God’s broken, foolish people from all around the world able to walk on the way of righteousness. I said at the beginning that in some ways the book of Isaiah is a search for that character. The “book 2” of Isaiah will reveal him, though in a shadowy and unclear way.