Abstract
The text offers a stunning example of the expansive vision of Second Isaiah, a divine act of salvation among the exiles of Israel that eventually will embrace all people. Salvation, as conceived by the prophet, has multiple dimensions: return from exile, rehabitation of Jerusalem, rebirth of hope, restoration of Israel’s knowledge of God, and the awakening of this knowledge among the surrounding nations.
The poem is rich in metaphor and sprinkled with allusions to the exiles’ remembered past—it is thick with memory and experience. The prophet, called to speak words of hope to a despondent people, is confident that stirring memories of God’s past magnanimity will allow them to trust in the promise of restoration now on offer.
The exile has been a crisis in the religious, moral, political, and social life of Israel. For the exiled people, as for refugee communities today, this dislocation of national and personal life is a severance from the traditional sources of friendship, love, and meaning. Biblical prophecy sees the Babylonian exile as both sign and consequence of a breakdown in the relationship between God and the covenant people. First Isaiah understood Israel’s failure to honor the covenant as abandonment of the covenant people’s unique vocation: to make the Holy One of Israel known to the nations by living in constant and visible recognition that God was in their midst. For Second Isaiah, the return of the exiles signals the recovery of this vocation.
Verses 8–12 are a continuation of the poem customarily designated as the second Servant Song. Setting aside the vexed question of the identity of the servant, the “you” of God’s address in v. 8 is clearly linked to the servant of the preceding verses (49:1–7): “my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (v. 3) is the same entity whom God has “kept” and given “as a covenant to the people” in v. 8. Through this servant, God will re-establish the land of Israel as a homeland, spring the “prisoners” from the cage of oppression, and send them home. As in 40:3–4, the mountains and valleys will be leveled to facilitate their return. Psalmic imagery associated with God’s care and guidance—pastures, springs of water, and protection from sun and wind—recalls the people to their experience of God as Israel’s Shepherd. The journey along the “highway” fashioned by God for the exiles’ return is a re-enactment of the original exodus, a second liberation from slavery, harsh servitude, and alienation. Though the context of these verses is a route leading away from Babylon, v. 12 clearly envisions a gathering of the Jewish diaspora from all directions; the dimensions of this act of salvation are vastand inclusive. Verse 13 caps the promise of return with a summons to heaven and earth to rejoice and celebrate: God’s salvation of exiled Israel has cosmic significance.
In the middle of this joyous proclamation there is an adversative: “But Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me, my
Though God may have “hidden” the divine face from Israel, the people were never forgotten: “Can a mother forget her nursing child?” (v. 15) The passion and tenderness of God’s response overwhelm the accusation of abandonment; God’s avowal of love and faithfulness surpasses even the most elemental expression of human love, a mother’s attachment to the child of her womb. The image of Israel being “inscribed on the palms of [God’s] hands” carries an echo of 44:15, but with a stunning reversal: now God bears their imprint. It is a declaration of divine self-emptying: God has so identified with Israel that God has suffered through their exile. As Abraham Heschel noted, Israel’s tragedy was also God’s affliction, displacement, and “homelessness.” 2 Estranged from the people and without witnesses in an alien land, God too has been in “exile”—but now God is on the move, so the people will be on the move as well.
The last section of the poem (vss. 17–23) describes the repopulation and rebuilding of Jerusalem. The contrasts between barrenness and fecundity parallel the current state of Jerusalem and the teeming city of the not-so-distant, promised future. Jerusalem as a crowded, even “too crowded” (v. 20), city is an unmitigated blessing when compared to the desolation of the uninhabited “lonely” city, a place scavenged by jackals (Lam 1:1, 5:18). A “too crowded” city means “old men and old women will again sit in the streets of Jerusalem … and the streets of the city will be full of boys and girls playing in its streets” (Zech 8:4–5).
With the return to the homeland, the children of Israel will be elevated to an almost-forgotten status: from being reduced to war chattel, a cheap source of labor, they are to be reclaimed as “sons” and “daughters” of kings and queens: the monarchs of the nations are to bring the children of Israel back to Jerusalem. The nations will be motivated to do this by a newfound “knowledge of the Lord” (v. 23), a recognition not only that God has acted for God’s people but also that God’s sovereignty and hegemony reach beyond Israel.
The theological unity of canonical Isaiah is seen in the theme of the knowledge of God and the vocation of God’s people. The book begins with a complaint that the people no longer “know” God (1:2–3); the prophetic vision of a day when the whole earth will be “filled with the knowledge of the Lord” (11:9) is articulated throughout the book (19:21, 37:20, 45:6, 49:26). Salvation is found in “knowing” God and living in a way that is a visible and vocal witness to this knowledge.
“Knowing” God also means acknowledging that God, whose “ways are higher than [our] ways” (55:8–9), will not be co-opted for human desires and purposes. The biblical writers dare to speak of the absence of God without a veneer of pious rationalization. A God who is absent in times of crisis is a problem for human creatures. Isaiah speaks just as frankly of how “exile” must feel on God’s side of things. A God who is so identified with the people that they are “inscribed” on the divine being is vulnerable to being wounded by their indifference or disobedience. A preacher might explore the mysterious tension between God’s absolute holiness and God’s intimacy with human beings. The God who can “lift a hand to the nations” (v. 22) to accomplish a holy purpose, yet whose “hands” are indelibly stamped with the covenant people, is complex and complicated, resisting explanation.
On the human side of things, salvation is not to be construed apart from servanthood. The elevation of Israel’s status in the eyes of the “nations” brings with it a responsibility toward those other peoples; the restoration of the community has implications for international relations. What is the task of the people of God in the world, and how might the church live into the prophet’s vision? How is the faith community to envision its responsibility on a more global scale? Churches sponsoring refugees and providing havens to immigrants, for example, are responding to the prophetic challenge to see beyond their own concerns.
The preacher may also wish to consider how the prophetic word offers hope to today’s exiles: refugees, disenfranchised groups, displaced, and replaced persons. Indeed, the prophet speaks powerfully to any community or person who must rebuild a life after disaster. The challenge is to be able to draw on the resources of the past without lapsing into nostalgia. The prophetic voice is resolutely anti-nostalgic: the summons is to embrace the redemptive future. The effect of this kind of prophetic speech is to pierce the shroud of despair and inertia, calling hearers to become “unstuck” from destructive habits of thought. Letting go of their crushing losses, accumulated grief, disappointed hopes, and bitter memories of failure allows God to begin the work of transformation. Isaiah persistently calls us to “newness” of vision, hope, and resolve to give witness to the continuing work of God in the world.
Footnotes
1.
Walter Brueggemann, Redescribing Reality: What We Do When We Read the Bible (London: SCM, 2009), 103.
2.
Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets: An Introduction, vol. 1 of The Prophets (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969), 112.