Reading: Isaiah 61-64, Psalm 120
One of my favorite works of fiction is G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. This bizarrely titled work is set right at the turn of the 20th century and concerns an undercover policeman who never knows for sure if he is working for the villains or the heroes. All the heroic characters appear as villains, and it is not until the very end of the book you discover who the real villain is, and even then you are left wondering if he was a villain, or merely a powerless malcontent. Chesterton, as usual, was making several very deep points all at the same time, but one of those points is that it is at times hard from the limited human perspective to separate the good from the bad, the just from the unjust, and that perhaps we should best leave those judgments up to someone with a broader perspective than us.
The celebration song that began in chapter 60 continues here, with a description of two coming days. First, we have the day of the Lord’s Favor, which is full of God’s mercy, during which he establishes a just and righteous kingdom. It will be a place where good news is proclaimed to the poor, that brings liberty to the captives, that binds up the brokenhearted. The day of the Lord’s favor is a time of restoration and healing. The second day, the day of vengeance of our God, though we will see is present throughout, is picked up clearly in chapter 63:1-6. It is, predictably, a day of God’s wrath, in which he carries out judgment. The rest of 63 and 64, and about half of 65, are a recitation of Israel’s history and the consequences that have befallen them, all of which were covenant expectations. It stands as a kind of wrap up, mirroring the covenant lawsuit that began the book in chapters 1-5. The book will then close with a coda, a vision of the new creation and the final undoing of the human problem.
If you are familiar with the life of Jesus written by Luke, you will recognize the opening lines of Isaiah 61 as what Jesus claimed to be fulfilling at the synagogue in Nazareth. He was consciously identifying himself with the Servant, with the Anointed One, and with the coming Day of the Lord. He stops with the day of the Lord’s favor, but that should not make us resistant to looking at the passage in question as a whole. For Isaiah, day of the Lord’s favor is in not separated from the day of vengeance of our God. I believe one of the more problematic readings of the Hebrew Scriptures, and so the New Testament, is separating God’s favor from God’s wrath. Here the Servant of God proclaims liberty to the captives, and one must ask how that could be without action against those who hold them captive? He declares recompense for those robbed and wronged, and how could this happen without action against those who robbed and wronged them? In Isaiah the vengeance of God and the mercy of God are one in the same. The faithful people of God are restored and blessed because God’s wrath has come against those who do evil. It is far too easy a reading to say that the day of the Lord’s favor comes first, and the day of the vengeance of our God comes later. They are irrevocably linked. Mercy and grace never appear without justice and wrath.
That is not to say there is not a final fulfillment of the day of vengeance of our God. The opening lines of chapter 63 tell us exactly that. They tell us of a day when the Servant of God, seeing the evils of the world and that no one else can help, treads the winepress alone in anger and wrath. He is describes as bringing righteousness and salvation, and in the process trampling down the peoples in anger, and pouring out their lifeblood on the earth. Isaiah knows that the Day of the Lord will end with the defeat and destruction of evil, or the mercy and grace for the repentant means nothing.
Isaiah then turns to a prayer for mercy, based on the ancient story of his people. He talks about God’s merciful actions that brought Israel out of Egypt, fed them in the wilderness, and gave them the promised land. He begs for God to turn the hearts of his people towards obedience. He laments the loss of his people’s relationship with God. He finally begs God to rend the heavens and come down. He confesses that the people of Jacob have become like one who is unclean, and all their righteous deeds like a polluted garment. Isaiah begs not only for forgiveness, but for God to come and save them from their condition. Isaiah sees that the people need more than forgiveness. They need transformation.
Isaiah has been paying attention to the story. He gets it. His people have a problem, and it is that they are not who they think they are. They were called by God and (sometimes) obeyed outwardly, but their hearts were never right. Isaiah gets a vision of of how God will make all things new: through a faithful Servant. He sees this character carry out the faithful sacrifice, become the faithful priest, bring salvation as the faithful descendant of David, call the nations to God’s covenant as the faithful descendant of Abraham, and (coming in the last couple of chapters) undo the curse as the faithful descendant of Adam and Eve, ushering in a new heavens and a new earth. Isaiah is right on the edge of the final great theme of the Scriptures.