In my (sorta) defense, I worked a
lot of 12 hour days since March. And I lost the thumb drive where I keep my
writing files. But I also managed to find time to put up several posts in my
personal blog, so those excuses don’t really fly. But if you recall where we
left off last time (or want to go back and read my previous post), you might
see why motivation could be pretty low.
Isaiah, also, is a bit of a
challenge to blog about. After all, it contains a lot of stuff that Christians
like to claim is prophetic. Some of it happened. Some of it happened, but in
different ways than Isaiah predicted, and some of it has never come true. Plus,
there’s good reason to think that the Book of Isaiah wasn’t even finished until
after some of the events it “predicts” had actually happened. I can try to
research all the claims, but the fact is that I’m neither a Biblical scholar
nor a historian, and I kind of have a life outside this book. This blog is
really only intended to be the impressions of an ordinary guy reading the Bible.
So I think I’m going to have to proceed with the policy of just commenting on
whatever I feel needs commenting on simply from a straight reading, and leave
it at that.
Anyway, when last we left off, we
were in Chapter 6 of Isaiah, wherein God commanded his prophet to deliberately
deceive the Israelites into sinning more so that they wouldn’t repent and
therefore God could justify punishing them horrifically at a later date (people
find this stuff inspirational?). From there, we go on to a story from the time
of King Ahaz of Judah. In this, the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel has
teamed up with Syria to start attacking Judah, and Ahaz started losing his shit
over it. So God sends Isaiah to reassure Ahaz that God’s totally not gonna let
that happen. He even promises to give him a magical sign to prove that he’s
speaking the truth, which brings us to one of those passages that is, oddly,
held up as a prophecy about Jesus.
“Isa 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold,
the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. 15 He shall eat curds and honey when he
knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. 16 For before the boy knows
how to refuse evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will
be deserted.”
This is very obviously supposed to
be a sign that happens in the time of Ahaz (more than seven hundred years
before Jesus’ time) specifically in relation to his troubles with Syria and
Israel. I have no idea how anyone concludes it means anything else. I mean, the
Immanuel character in this “prophecy” isn’t even supposed to do anything; it’s just predicting that
Syria and Israel will cease to be threats to Judah sometime between the kid’s
birth and him being old enough to eat solid food. Though maybe this was a case
where the lands of Syria and Israel were never actually deserted, and since
that makes it look like this was a failed prophecy the NT authors shoehorned it
into the Jesus story in an attempt to rescue it. But that’s just speculation on
my part. But what’s odd is how Chapter 8 starts out:
“Isa 8:1 Then Yahweh said to me, ‘Take a large tablet and write on
it in common characters, “Belonging to Maher-shalal-hash-baz.” 2 And I will get reliable witnesses,
Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah, to attest for me.’ 3 And I went to the prophetess, and she
conceived and bore a son. Then Yahweh said to me, ‘Call his name
Maher-shalal-hash-baz; 4 for before
the boy knows how to cry “My father,” or “My mother,” the wealth of Damascus
and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria.’”
What’s odd about this? Well, it’s
strikingly similar to the Immanuel sign; a kid will be born and given a certain
name, and before he grows out of infancy the alliance of Israel and Syria will have
been defeated. It’s just that the name is different, and this time the kid is
Isaiah’s own son from banging a nameless prophetess rather than the fatherless
son of a nameless virgin girl (dude, Isaiah, women have names. Because they’re
people.). Is this maybe just a different telling of the same story? Because
it’s pretty damn redundant otherwise. And what is the point of the tablet in
the second story anyway? Just to illustrate that Isaiah had picked out the
kid’s name before he was conceived? Big deal. We’d picked out my daughter’s
name before she was conceived, too. None of this is explained, or even
mentioned again.
Anyhow, seeing as it’s been a long
time since I read the Kings2 and Chronicles 2 versions of Ahaz’s reign (and I
skipped over writing about it in my blog entries on those books since it was
just another blip in the long parade of politicking and wars), I went back to
see if there was anything corresponding to all this. When I did, I discovered
that (surprise!) the two stories conflict: 2 Kings says Ahaz paid the king of
Assyria to come help him, which he did by invading Syria and capturing
Damascus, whereas 2 Chronicles says that Assyria took the money and still
didn’t help. How does Isaiah address the situation? By claiming that Yahweh
sent the Assyrians to wipe out Judah, and then would strike down Assyria for
having the unmitigated gall to think they had acted of their own accord instead
of as his tool.
Why would a people who weren’t in
Yahweh’s special favor and communication think to credit him for their own
decisions? No reason. Just that the claim that this is the case supports the
theological point the author is trying to make (that nobody should rely on
anyone other than his god for anything).
The next little bit is kind of tough
to get through coherently. It mostly consists of supposedly prophetic passages
about stuff that will occur in the future (relative to Isaiah’s time, though
since much of it never happened it’s often interpreted to still be in the
future relative to our time as well). Much of it is blood-drenched revenge
fantasies against the kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon, interspersed with other
fantasies of future glory for the Israelite people (after appropriate periods
of getting the shit whipped out of them by other people, who are really only
acting as god’s instruments to chastise them for their lack of slavish devotion
to him and his rules).
Among the predictions of a glorious
future is included the arrival of a new ruler for the Jewish people, who will
be a descendant of Jesse (King David’s dad, presumably). And this fellow, it is
said, will have an interesting method of ruling:
“Isa 11:3 And his delight shall be in the fear of Yahweh. He shall
not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, 4 but with righteousness he shall judge
the por, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike
the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall
kill the wicked.”
So, ummmm… any guesses what the fuck
that is supposed to mean? It’s interesting that at such an early date the Bible
is already disparaging such ideas as evidence in favor of judging via
“righteousness.” Like, what does that even mean? Fuck information, if you’re
righteous you’ll just know what’s the
right thing to do? How does someone know they’re actually righteous, without
any information? If we’re talking about a human ruler (and bear in mind that
this passage gives no hints that anything else is implied), this would be a
clear recipe for disaster. But of course, I’m sure Christians are convinced
that the ruler talked about in this passage is Jesus. And since Jesus is God,
and righteousness is doing whatever God wants, then naturally anything he does
is righteous by definition. So I guess this passage amounts to “And he’ll do
whatever the fuck he wants, and kill anybody who disagrees, and trust me that
this is a good thing.”
But what the hell could it possibly
mean to “strike the earth with the rod of his mouth?” I’m at a complete loss there,
and every image the phrase might conjure up is pretty disturbing to dwell on.
Oh, incidentally, other features
included in the reign of this fellow are: predator and prey animals living
together in peace, children playing in perfect safety with poisonous snakes,
and the descendants of Judah and Israel teaming up to kill the everloving shit
out of the Philistines, Edomites, Moabites, etc., and plundering the nations of
the east. So… peace among animals, side-by-side with genocidal war among humans
(with, of course, the author’s people doing the genociding)? Like it matters
for shit that you’re no longer afraid of snakes, when God’s chosen people are
just going to come murder you anyway? Seems like more jingoistic fantasizing,
to be honest: things will be miraculously beautiful for us, while we run
rampant over all our old enemies.
This seems as good a point as any to
call it a day on this one. Hopefully I’ll be able to put the next post up in
less than the six months it took me to get around to this one. If you’re still
reading, thank you for your patience. And, until the next time, be well!