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. 
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