I'm
not dead! Really! Just been through a lot of changes this summer,
including starting a new job. Plus, I've been kind of focused on
other projects, since truth-be-told Isaiah is boring as fuck!
Motivation to trudge through it and try to turn some into blogging
material has been a tad hard to work up. As it turns out, the story
about Hezekiah I discussed in the previous entry (itself a redundant
and inconsistent retelling of a story we heard twice in Chronicles
and Kings) was the last thing resembling a historical narrative that
is contained in this Book. From here on out, it’s mostly devotional
poetry and sermonizing on a few repetitive themes. These are:
- God is more awesome than sex.
- If you’re an asshole, it still pisses God off even if you give sacrifices to make up for it.
- Other religions (and their followers) are stupid and/or evil.
- Someday, every nation on earth will totally kiss Israel’s collective backside.
- God is going to fuck up (or has already fucked up) everyone who doesn’t do as he says.
Some
of that is written from Isaiah’s perspective, and other bits are
Isaiah claiming to be repeating God’s own words, but it’s
basically the same stuff over and over. Kind of like Psalms, much of
it would probably sound nicely poetic if one actually believed it
were about anything real, but otherwise it just seems indulgent and
repetitive. There are a few things, though, that stand out here and
there. So as with past posts about sections that have no narrative
structure, I’ll just highlight some bits that caught my eye. So, to
kick that off:
“Isa
43:3 For I am
Yahweh your god, the holy one of Israel, your savior. I give Egypt as
your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. 4
Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I
give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.”
Ummm…
what? God is giving other people and nations as ransom for the
Israelites? Giving them to whom? Who could he be buying them back
from? Is this a reference to the Babylonian captivity, suggesting
that God is giving Egypt, Cush, and Seba to Babylon in exchange for
the Israelites? Can you picture God sitting down to negotiate this
sort of horse-trading with a mortal king (“Alright, I’ll give you
two Egyptians and a Cushite for one Levite, but that’s my final
offer!” “What?! Cushites are worthless! My kids will starve for
the price of a Cushite! I’ll need two Egyptians and two Sebites, no
less!”)? Or is this passage about ransoming the Israelites from
God’s own wrath for their transgressions, suggesting that he’s
willing to punish others for the sins of the Israelites? At any rate,
it couldn’t be much clearer that the god in question is the tribal
god of and for the Israelites, and fuck everyone else.
Moving
on, the next thing of interest is a bit railing against idolatry.
“Isa
44:16 Half of
[the tree], [the carpenter] burns in the fire. Over the half he eats
meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says
‘Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” 17
And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to
it and worships it. He prays to it and says ‘Deliver me, for you
are my god!’ 18
They know not,
nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot
see, and their hearts,
so that they
cannot understand. 19
No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say ‘Half
of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I
roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an
abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?’”
So
the message here is clear: how can anyone possibly think that the same
chunk of material they casually burn to make food could also be a god?
Isn’t that stupid?
Well,
yeah, it kind of is. If people who worshipped idols thought they
actually were gods, that would definitely be stupid. But that’s not
how I understand idols to work. As I understand it, nobody ever
believes that the little statue actually is
a god. They believe that the physical representation creates a
connection to the actual
god, who is a separate
being with its own independent existence elsewhere, and that this
connection is necessary in order for the worship/prayers to reach
said god. In other words, they don’t so much worship the idol as
what it represents. I’m not certain whether Isaiah understood the
distinction, and was intentionally straw-manning the process to make
it look dumber than it was, or if he really didn’t get it.
Not that it isn't kind of silly this way, either. Of
course, I’m also not certain why he thinks “They worship a chunk
of carved wood,” is inherently any dumber than “I worship a
story.” They’re both something that a person made, either way.
Later,
there’s a bit talking about the Persian King Cyrus who, if you
recall, is the dude who released the Israelites from their captivity
in Babylon and allowed them to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their
temple.
“Isa
45:1 Thus says
Yahweh to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to
subdue the nations before him and to loose the belts of kings, to
open doors before him that gates may not be closed: 2
‘I will go
before you and level the exalted places, I will break in pieces the
doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron. 3
I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hoards in secret
places, that you may know that it is I, Yahweh, the God of Israel,
who call you by your name. 4
For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by
your name, I name you, though you do not know me.”
There’s
more. Like much of Isaiah, it really goes on and on, but I think this
captures the gist. Basically, it’s a passage nakedly claiming
credit for the military successes of Cyrus for Yahweh, in spite of
the fact that Cyrus did not worship the Israelite god. Nonsensically,
this passage claims that these victories were given to Cyrus so that
he would know that he was in Yahweh’s favor, in spite of the fact
that Cyrus was a devotee of Marduk and would naturally have given his
own god credit for them since he “did not know” Yahweh. It’s a
ridiculously self-serving assertion for Isaiah to make, being clearly
aimed at co-opting the gratitude the Israelites would have felt
toward Cyrus and redirecting it toward the god for whom Isaiah just
happened to be the spokesman. The fact that there’s no evidence
anywhere that Cyrus ever gave up worshipping Marduk in favor of
Yahweh suggests this whole idea of Yahweh directly having such a
conversation with him is completely made up.
Since
I'm still a good twenty-plus chapters away from being done with
Isaiah, and this is already running long, I think I'll call this done
for the day. Come hell or high water, the next post will be the last
on the Book of Isaiah. Y'all be well!