Isaiah (3 of 5): Monotheism

 This week in Come Follow Me we read Isaiah 40-49. One of the main themes of this section is that idols are powerless, while the Lord is all powerful.  This section articulates a shift that occurs in Israelite worship because of the Babylonian captivity.  Up until this time, there seems to be a tacit acknowledgement that the God of Israel is greater than the gods of their neighbors. The first of the Ten Commandments states, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." (Exodus 20:3) It doesn't say, "I am the only God." It presupposes other gods, and commands the Israelites to put their clan God first.   When Elijah challenges the priests of Baal, it is a God vs god smack-down, meant to prove that the God of Israel is the more powerful god. I think there has always been an underlying idea that Jehovah is the only actual divine being, but it is never really overtly stated until Isaiah. 

In the chapters this week, Isaiah not only clearly states that Jehovah is the only divine being, he spends quite a bit of time mocking the worship of idols and comparing the impotence of idols to the omnipotence of God. My favorite example of this is in Isaiah 46:1-4 where Isaiah describes a cart full of idols that are bobbing and bowing as they go down the road.  They are a burden to the beasts who pull the wagon.  In contrast, the Lord bears the children of Israel from the time they are born, and carries them even when their hair turns gray.

So why is this shift in emphasis connected with the Babylonian captivity?  If Jehovah were a regional god, then when the children of Israel were carried into captivity they would have been taken out of the range of God's power to save.  They might as well adopt the worship of the local gods.  This is what Isaiah does not want to happen.  All these chapters are meant to convince the House of Israel that, not only is their God able to follow them into Babylon and ultimately free them from captivity, he is, in fact, the only real God.  All the gods of their neighbors are no more than mere idols, statues formed by men that represent gods that have no power because they do not exist.  

The chapters this week represent origin of the idea that Jews are truly monotheistic. This was very rare in the ancient world.  I believe it is this shift to monotheism that helped the Jews to maintain their cultural identity during their captivity and continue to exist as a cohesive nation after a remnant returned to Jerusalem under Cyrus' rule.

Isaiah (part 2 of 5)

 This week in Come Follow Me, we read Isaiah 13-35.  As I stated in my last post, my focus this year is on seeing the prophecies of Isaiah as the people of Isaiah's time would have seen them.  I want to focus on the chapters that are super familiar to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and try to see them with new eyes.

Out of the readings this week the chapter that has the most familiar passages is Chapter 29.  Lot's of my comments come from the podcast, "Follow Him" again, this week with guest star Dr. Kerry Muhlstein. To start off, let's establish what Ariel is. Ariel means "lion of God" and is one of the nicknames of King David.  The place, Ariel, is therefore, the City of David or Jerusalem.  

In verse 4, Jerusalem is told that it "shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be, as of one that hath a familiar spirit." Members of the Church like to see this as a prophecy of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. I am pretty sure the people of Isaiah's day didn't see it like that. So what would it have meant to them? When Assyria invaded they burned many of the surrounding walled cities, killing their inhabitants. If the people of those cities could "speak out of the dust" what would they say? Would they warn the people not to try to fight against their enemies by creating alliances and relying on the arm of flesh? In the next verse he asserts "the multitude of they strangers shall be like dust, and the multitude of the terrible ones shall be as chaff that passeth away."  In other words, alliances with strangers won't avail you anything, because they will just blow away.

Then in verse 11-12, we come to another passage familiar to members of the Church, "And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed:  And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned." So what would this "sealed book" represent to people of Isaiah's time. In the podcast, Dr. Muhlstein suggested this could have reference to one way that people made contracts in the ancient world.  There would be two copies of the contract made.  One copy would be kept available for both parties to reference, and the other copy would be sealed.  If either of the parties to the contract accused the other of altering the terms of the contract, they would get the sealed copy, bring it out, and in the presence of legal authority, read it. In Isaiah's scenario, when the members of the contract go to consult the sealed copy, neither the legal authority, or the common person involved in the contract are willing or able to read it.  In other words, this is a passage about broken covenants.  The House of Israel has not only altered the terms of their covenant with the Lord, they have become so far removed from it that their common people cannot read it and their learned refuse to.  The system is not fixable, and destruction and captivity are therefore inevitable. If you read the following verses, it supports this interpretation pretty well, if you don't assume that the "marvelous work" mentioned in verse 14 is not necessarily a positive thing.  It is just something astounding enough to make people marvel, like the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon. 

The chapter ends with an assurance that even after these things happen, in some blessed future day  everyone will learn of the contents of the "sealed book" (i.e. the Abrahamic covenant) even the blind and deaf (vs 18), because the descendants of Jacob will once again "fear the God of Israel" (vs. 23). The writer is anticipating (in very optimistic terms) the return of the Jews to Jerusalem and the re-establishment of the temple there. History shows that this happened in a manner, under the leadership of Cyrus the Great.

Conclusion: The interesting thing about this ancient interpretation of these chapters, is that they still apply pretty well to future events, like a pattern repeating itself.  Just as Israel had, at the time of Isaiah, strayed from the original covenant, Christians at the time of Joseph Smith had strayed from the teachings of the original church at the meridian of time.  The House of Israel needed to consult and recommit the pure form of their covenants, just as God lead Joseph Smith to restore a pure version of his gospel.  So even if these passages didn't remind members of the Church of Joseph Smith's experience with Charles Anthon, they could still be foreshadowing to the restoration of the Church in latter days.  

What to do with Isaiah

This week in the Come Follow Me curriculum we start on the book of Isaiah and we will continue in Isaiah for a total of 5 weeks.  In the Book of Mormon, Jesus tells the people of Bountiful that they are commanded to search the words of Isaiah (3 Nephi 23:1).  Whole chapters of Isaiah are quoted in several different places in the Book of Mormon. I must admit, however, that up to this point of my life I have not been a fan.  As I considered studying Isaiah again, I tried to analyze why I don't like it.  I think it is because it has always seemed rather schizophrenic to me.  At one point he is talking about the political situation in his day, and then in the next verse, he is prophesying about Jesus, or the end of the world. People have said, "Oh, that's just the "manner of prophesying among the Jews" (2 Nephi 25:1) and if you have the spirit of prophesy it will make sense to you."  This is not encouraging, but discouraging. 

So this time through, I decided to pretend that it is not schizophrenic.  I have decided to look at Isaiah the way that people in his time would have seen it. I will assume that what he said was intended for his contemporaries and concerned their specific situation.  I realize this is a very narrow interpretation, and not the only valid one, but I am hoping this will help me understand Isaiah better, and dislike it less.

The challenge is that as I was reading along, I came to passages that have been used as a reference to later events so many times it is hard for me to try to see them in their original context.   So for the next few weeks I am going to try to wrench those kinds of passages from the cultural biases with which I have always seen them and try to see how they applied to Isaiah's time. One of the podcasts, Follow Him with special guest Dr. Jason Combs was helpful this week in that he takes a similar approach.  

To start I want to go over a super basic overview of what was happening in Isaiah's time.  He was a court priest or advisor for four different kings of Judah. During his life the Assyrians threatened the land and Israel (northern tribes) and Syria wanted to form an alliance with Judah to fight against Assyria.  Isaiah recommended to Hezekiah that Judah not join the alliance. Israel and Syria attempted to invade Jerusalem to force the alliance, but Jerusalem withstood the invasion. Ephraim and Syria ended up making alliances with other surrounding nations, but when the Assyrian King, Sennacherib, invaded, the alliance fell and the northern kingdoms were taking into captivity and eventually lost their cultural identity. Even though Jerusalem survived these two invasions, Isaiah prophecies that they will eventually be conquered by Babylon and be carried into captivity.  He also prophesies that after a time a remnant of the faithful will return to Jerusalem, set up a temple, and live in peace.

This is starting to be a long post, so lets just look at two really well known passages, and see how they fit into this historical setting. 

Isaiah 7:14-16 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

This passage is quoted every Christmas as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus, but in context, it is just a way for Isaiah to prophecy how long it is until both Syria and Ephraim will fall. The word "virgin" just means a young woman, perhaps a hypothetical one. The name "Immanuel" means "God is with us"  so by giving this hypothetical son the name of "Immanuel" Isaiah is emphasizing that Jerusalem will be saved because God is with them. What Isaiah is saying is that "if a child were born today, he wouldn't have grown old enough to know good from evil before both Israel and Syria were defeated." This prophecy turned out be be true.  From the time this prophecy was given it was only a couple of years before Israel and Syria were defeated by Assyria.

Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, The everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

This is another passage that is always read at Christmas time.  It is hard not to see a prophecy of the birth of Jesus in this passage. How would the Jews of Isaiah's time see this passage?  Even now Jews see this as a prophecy of the one righteous king to reign during Isaiah's life, King Hezekiah. The name Hezekiah means "The Lord Strengthens".  That is Isaiah's message for the Jews, and for Hezekiah specifically, that they should not rely on alliances, but on the Lord as their strength.  It makes sense that Isaiah would speak very highly of him, calling him the all those great epithets. 

In conclusion, I am not saying that these were not prophecies of Jesus.  I am only saying they were not only prophecies of Jesus.  They related to Isaiah's time and situation, and we can understand them better if we look at them in context. 

Hevel, hevel, all is hevel

 This week the Come Follow Me curriculum covered Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. In the Tanakh, Jewish scholars put the wisdom writings, including Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, at the end of their scripture.  That is presumably because they don't think they are as doctrinially or historically significant as other books. I tend to agree. I struggled a little to know what to talk about in this week's post.  I decided to investigate the main thematic word in the book of Ecclesiastes. 

Ecclesiastes begins "The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king of Jerusalem. Vanity of Vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity." (Ecc 1: 1-2)  I was curious about the word "vanity." In modern English the word has come to mean something like "conceit" particularly about one's appearance. That is not the meaning the translators were using back in King James' time.  in JKV it means "emptiness" or "lack of substance."  The Hebrew word is הבל, pronounced "hevel" or "havel" (depending on the tense) and my Hebrew Bible app gives the definition of "breath or vapor."  I wondered about that because there is another word, רוח ruach, that means breath or wind.  I wondered if there were any instances in the Bible where hevel means vapor, like real atmospheric water vapor. My app allows me to look at all the instances of a word in context, and as I did, and it seems it is always used in just the same way as in Ecclesiastes, to represent moral emptiness. So then, I asked myself, why would the dictionary writer think it means vapor or breath?  

The only hint I got was from Isaiah 57:13 

When thou criest, let thy companies deliver thee; 
but the wind shall carry them all away
vanity shall take them;
but he who putteth his trust in me shall possess the land
and shall inherit my holy mountain.

in this passage the word, wind, is רוח. and then the word, vanity, is הבל. Basically all of Isaiah is poetic, and in Hebrew poetry they use rhyming ideas rather than rhyming words. Scholars would call it parallelism. The ruach here is clearly seen as parallel to the hevel. It is the only place I found where hevel is associated with breath or wind.  

That being said, the idea of hevel as a kind of mist or vapor is an effective image.  Imagine someone who sees a cloud of smoke, and it seems solid, but when he reaches for it just dissipates.  The author of Ecclesiastes sees all of life's joys and trials as just that ephemeral. I must say, now that I am older, I relate with Ecclesiastes more than I did when I was 20.  Things are seeming more impermanent than they used to. The main difference between me and "the Preacher" is that he has no hope or faith in an afterlife. I am beginning to believe that one of the greatest gifts that Jesus gave to the world was a belief that, not only does life continue after this life, but that it is potentially better.