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Chapter 3
Isaiah:
Not an Agent of Angst
but a
Proclaimer of Truth
The Nature
of the Case
Isaiah,
speaking in the inspiration of the Lord, does not hesitate to present the
future as past, or present, to invade a prophetic past (future seen as surely to
be done, and so past already) with graphic words as if now being spoken, to
proclaim a present structure as a principle in terms of which an assured future
will come, or to present coming devastation as a scene base for future eclipse
of such results of folly, by the Originator of man, in redemption bringing a
glorious result for an inglorious inheritance.
He does not
pine, as if in spiritual spasm,
witlessly; but rather can expose just such a pining in terms of an immediate
correlation with absolute truth, in which the case in short order, in put in
place, the outcome is announced. It is rather like a small boy in a class,
addressing the teacher: Oh I wish we
could go out into the sunshine for this class, sir! The teacher does not
share the angst for action into some hoped for resolution, but announces what
is to be, and why. It might either be, Yes
we can go, for there is no hindrance; or No, we cannot because it is not fitting to reward bad conduct with indulgence, or
again, it could be this: Our current work
is too demanding for me to allow this currently. Perhaps another time…
and so on.
Truth, with
Isaiah, comes in definitive, declarative terms, from the Lord who equally
definitively made heaven and earth, shall remove the same in due time (Isaiah
51:6), and announces to man both his sins and His salvation. Stages can be
implicitly compared, and the final devastations can be seen as outcomes of the
present, witnessed in their totality amidst the present trends, rather like a
doctor dramatically envisaging for a persistent smoker, what it is to be like. Here you are, he may say, in your due end, facing a heart which is
palpitating … and so on.
In Isaiah
64:1ff., we see the exposition in graphic terms:
“Oh, that You would rend the heavens!
That You would come down!
That the mountains might shake at Your presence…
That the nations may tremble at Your presence … “
Would God at that time act
? Far from it. He would not act merely to adorn a situation of loss which He
Himself had instituted, so that indulgence might foster laxity, licence,
injustice and folly (as in Isaiah 59’s exposition of the final case when He
DOES act!). Before such a style of intervention as that, much had first to
occur. There had to be the incarnation (Isaiah 7, 9, 11, 52-53), in which
salvation (which GOD ONLY is – Isaiah 43:10-11) would come in the Messiah, the
eternal on earth in human format. There WOULD BE His rejection by
THEN, when the whole world
was caught in what initially had been (to some extent, as Isaiah envisages trends and finales freely, exposing
both what is in process of happening and where it will in fact end) and then would be Israel’s ruinous situation (Isaiah 1:7, 32:14, 64:10, 59), the sin
of the nation being in much paralleled by the fall of the world, there would
come likewise universal results. God having acted on one, would act on all.
Devastation would surely become universal as in Isaiah 24, so that then the
Lord would come not merely to one, but to all (Isaiah 59:21, 42:12, 2), Though
His advent is to be TO Jerusalem (cf. Zechariah 14:5ff.), His access is for
all.
Death is thus by the word
of the prophet, not merely overthrown
physically (as in Isaiah 26:19, 53:12, Psalm 16), but regally. He is coming to
rule (as in Isaiah 11, Psalm 72, Psalm 2), and His slaughterers, if unrepentant,
whether of physical violence against Him, or of spiritual violence against the
truth, which is He, will indeed mourn (Isaiah 2, 24, 66, Revelation 1:7,
Matthew 24:31).
A man may mourn for his
mother’s passing; but here he is to mourn for the passing of his own life into
an indebtness from which there is no remedy, since the DECLARED REMEDY for sin
had been dismissed, fatally and finally (Isaiah 8:20, 14:9ff., 66:24).
THE NUTURE
OF THE CASE
No angst could then atone,
since atonement in principle in the only place available, had been summarily
dispatched. How can ANYTHING atone when what atonement is, is removed! What can
quench thirst when liquids do not exist! On the other hand, Isaiah is quick and
intensive in pointing out that nothing is REQUIRED NOW for the quenching of
thirst, but the taking of the water so FREELY available (Isaiah 55). What
ludicrous and solemn farce it is (55:2) to go seeking for spiritual redress or
comfort or position or help, when it is available in the Messiah who has been
APPOINTED for this (55:3-4)!
What monstrous folly when
it is He who has been SACRIFICED for this; and what artless lament it is to be
grieved, when HE has already been grieved in paying the price, spiritually,
judicially and personally, for the shortfall
and the distortions of sin (Isaiah 53), even to the utmost disfigurement
(Isaiah 52:12-15, 4)!
WHO has believed ? (53:1).
THIS is the question. It is not anxiety with its debilitation, depression with
its devitalizing outcomes, nor is it angst
with its often implicit exaltation. (See
how generous in spirit I am, thrusting in deliberate and perhaps passionate power into the heavens to find something by
my human maestro self-marhsalling, or penetrating power! or See how noble am I in failure!...) No,
that is to the point at all. It is trusting your own Maker and Source instead
of you own made equipment and self! (as in Romans 10, Isaiah 2:17-22) and HENCE
receiving something more than a new program or update, a download or device.
What then ? It is a new heart, a rejuvenated mind, a life in link with the love
and power of God, not in premises of pollution self-control, but in the service
of the Saviour (cf. Jeremiah 31:31ff., Hebrews 8, Isaiah 32:1-4, 33:17ff.,
11:10, 55:2, 61:1-3).
In terms of
such issues from profundity, such stable phases, the sin, the desolation, the
mercy, the Messiah, the dispersion, the restoration, the judgment, the Jew, the
Gentile, the national and international
impact of ruin, the universal coming scope, the former seen as now, then
as coming, then as past, as
developing, as developed, as latent, as
patent, the other seen as deserved, if
negative, or as provided entirely by grace if evangelical (Isaiah 28:16,
32:1-4,16-17, 53, 55), do we move. We proceed from envisagement of the Messiah
in His sufferings, to a hastening in power as it comes in the future.
In all, you can
see many scenes. Like the ways of a friend, you grow accustomed to them: as you
do to a face. It is always the same, its mobilities of expression, the very
texture of its unity. These, in Isaiah, they are anchored in the environment of
terms each time, in the flow of the discourse, the necessities of grammar and
the message they impart.
Thus in Isaiah
1 and 64 alike, you see scenes such as to place
The Hope, not
as merely hoped for but assuredly coming, the very meaning of the history and
message of grace: He, the Messiah and His righteous rule, loving disposition,
merciful humility and refreshing regality, comes as new in incarnate presence
on this earth, but eternal in His nature and being, bearing the gap, paying the
bridge cost, making the way in Himself (Isaiah 7, 4 with 32, 9,11, 40, 42,
49-50, 52-55, 65).
Accordingly, in
Isaiah 24, we find that they “have transgressed” so that “therefore
the curse devoured the earth” (all past), “and those who dwell in it are
desolate” (a consummation
to the contemporary trend). This shows the formal and final end of the trend,
also the future that is to be, and it sees it in terms of a just maturing of
the wine of folly. Indeed “the
new wine fails”. But the
Lord will act in that then future period, so that “the moon will be disgraced, and the sun ashamed, for the LORD of hosts will reign on Mount
Zion and in Jerusalem, before His elders
gloriously” (cf.
Isaiah 66:20, 2, Micah 4, Matthew 29:28,
Zechariah 14:5, I Thessalonians 3:13).
Thus a future
scene is seen in terms of eventuations already begun, but to be completed. In
terms of the void situation of Isaiah 24:4-12, so that “the gate is stricken”, we are graphically similarly
transported towards the end; but it is IN TERMS of the beginning, seen as an
outcome, when all is done.
Then fittingly
we move to the future (24:14-16),
Ø
“They
shall lift up their voice, they shall sin:
For the majesty of the LORD,
They shall cry from the sea.
From the ends of the earth we have heard songs:
’Glory to the Righteous!’
But I said, ’I am ruined!
Woe is Me!
The treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously.
Indeed, the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously.’
”
Here in Isaiah
24, we see Isaiah 50’s presentation of the humbled Saviour (in form but not in
power, humiliated), that is One brought in contempt and mockery to abasement
though not in His Spirit, move to further and poignant grief. Now it becomes
one of feeling the sharp pangs of treachery from His own people, though assured
(as in 50:6-9) of the glorious and triumphant outcome in the end. All these
passages cohere like the fingers on a hand, and their mutual presence is an
operative necessity for understanding, as the fingers for full functionality of
that magnificent invention, the human hand. Look what it does! Look what is
done through the prophetic writings of Isaiah when its cumulative intimacies
are realised and applied.
Here then we
find the national rejection of the Messiah as in 49:7 and the carping
attribution to Him of sin, whereas it is their very own which He bears, or
offers to bear (53:3-5), taking what is provided from the abyss of their
follies, just as HE is provided for those
who take HIM (as shown categorically in 53:6, which refers to the ‘us’ who are
‘healed’). He does not pay
for what is not His; nor does He exclude what comes, nor fail to know His own!
His love is ample to all, His knowledge is over all, and He is sufficient for
all. None directs Him, but in love, He acts over all (I Timothy 2, Colossians
1, Ezekiel 33:11, Isaiah 49:6). None refusing Him is forced; not coming is
contrived. God knows His own, and all are most earnestly invited (Isaiah 55),
responsibility being ASSURED through the principles of God’s love, to man who
prefers darkness.
God SAYS.
Indeed HE ACTS,
first speaking and then doing, in salvation as in creation.
TIME IN
THE CASE
Here in Isaiah
24:24:14-16, indeed we see the figure of Psalm 41, 69, 109, betrayed by the
treacherous (cf. Joyful Jottings 22, 25).
But HOW do we
see Him ? It is in the past, as so often,
where it is seen as done already before the God who made time and merely
ensures that it contains what He is seeking, not His master but His servant.
The songs are already heard (Isaiah 24:16), and their content is this: “Glory to the Righteous!” We hear them in this prophet relay, not
of electronics but of the Spirit of the living God, thousands of years before
their time (cf. Isaiah 51:1ff., Jeremiah 16:19). Likewise the following verses
in Isaiah 24, namely 17ff., present the coming time of judgment, judgment of
the judges, so that again the graphic predominates. We see someone fleeing from
a bear, then coming to the pit. “The foundations of the earth are shaken,” at this point, and in verse 23 we see
an ultimate eschatological moment, in the prevailing power of the Lord on the
earth (as in Isaiah 66).
Thus, again, the past introduces a graphic present,
and again, a future is later explicitly
announced, since after all, it is a culmination which is seen in the first
place, then provided with graphic insertion; so that it may then be seen in
simple historical place as future (Isaiah 24:21).
Again, in Isaiah 64, we are transported to a coming
scene of actual desolation, replete with the stage settings, while the
aspirations, the angst, are exposed for analysis, as we peer into that epoch,
the past surging into the present (64:7), and the present coming to its
envisaged culmination (64:10ff.), until in 65 we have the divine response, apt
for that future and envisaged time*1, in terms of the substitution of
GENTILES for ISRAEL as the place for His demonstration of His power and the
presentation of His Gospel. Verses 13-15 give this very directly indeed. It is
that to which Israel is then seen as coming, in desolation, godlessness …
Through its own rejection, it is here perceived as bypassed with the Gospel,
when it comes with its full force unveiled, its Saviour presented. Far from the
contemporary scene, the record of coming events surges ahead some 700 years
from the prophet, and we see it as happening before us (cf. I Peter 1:11-12).
In all this, we proceed from a future seen as
adopted present, to action within it, and finally to a future specifically so
described, further ahead still (65:17), as when a military lecturer would draw
out the stages of a campaign, ‘Then you
go to this site. It is that that we placed our munitions. You may feel
surprised by the terrain, ‘What on earth is this!’, for it is unique. However,
when the time comes, attack. It will soon be a scene of triumph and there you
will stand with your fellows.’
Perhaps much of the need
is simply to realise that God is speaking about matters in mastery, without
room for wandering minds or listless appetites (cf. Mark 4:33-34, with
Thus here, we proceed from
a culmination in late Isaiah 64, to a protestation, an institution (of the
Gospel) and an exposure of vast future scenes expressly (65:17ff.), in this
multi-stage prophetic rocketry, moving us up, up and over.
As to the Gospel, that of
course was not installed as the principle of procedure until after Christ’s
death; but here it is aptly and appropriately seen as NOW! It is a culmination,
then, of devastation (as in Isaiah 2) followed by a culmination of presentation
of the Messiah, even to the point where (as in Acts 28:26-28 cf. Acts
It is all conjoined. Thus although
the Gospel had to await the payment of the Redeemer before AS SUCH being
instituted, allowing new liberties and international procedures, it was in germ
present, just as in David, the law merely facilitating the impact and impress
of sin, the more readily to enable appreciation of the grace. As to the grace
(cf. Psalm 32), it was always the way as
expounded in Romans 4. It is just that it had to be PAID for, and its direct
methods of provision PAID FOR! The principles of God did not change; they were
shown in preliminary and then in consummate form (Hebrews 8-10); and in Isaiah you see the consummate
prescribed for the day of the New Covenant with total expository force, before
the day so much as came.
That is the message, both
in the Old Testament and in the New, then. Again, when as in both Testaments,
much of
Let us however return to
our text. In Isaiah 65, having made clear that disbelief is disjunction, and
that faith is conjunction, when it is in HIM, and not another, that it finds
its place, object and resort, the Lord then presents things yet further ahead.
Indeed, the Lord then moves to the new heavens and
the new earth, in this chapter, so to a yet further future, before turning in
Isaiah 66 to the remonstration about sacrifice (announced as effectually to be
that of the Messiah, in 50-53), so that animal sacrifice is now seen (as in the
time of Christ’s death) as no longer efficacious. Indeed, Gentiles are seen
coming into the role of Levites, or if you will, to interpret, as the Old
Covenant (to be past as in Jeremiah 31:31 and
At that, there are
preliminaries to the finale. In Isaiah 66, as in the GRAPHIC PRESENT, as so
often for future events in this book, we see or rather are given to hear “the sound of noise from the city! A voice from the temple!
The voice of the Lord, who fully repays His enemies.”
Ø
Having been
shown this future in terms of excitingly contemporary feeling,
Ø
we move on to
the more distant future which follows it,
Ø
just as in
Isaiah 64, seeing the negative development before the Gospel came,
Ø
we pass on to
THIS glory in Isaiah 65.
The book is as unified as
my own body, differing, diverse, but in one plan, one procedure, one theme, one
purpose, cohesive in contention, in invention, in collation, in promotion. Each
throb of its heart, prepares by parallel, without mere uniformity, but of
principle, and often of procedure, for the next step, moving like a swallow,
flying low by one’s feet, yet with art
and artifice of flight so deliciously nimble and daring, that one is lost in admiration for the work
of the Lord by His Spirit, through the prophet (cf. I Peter 1:11, II Peter 1:21).
In Isaiah 66:10,
accordingly, as if present, the nations to come are invited to rejoice with the
Jews who are in their time and term, to come back, not merely in body but in
spirit, and not merely to the provisions of the past, but to the Gospel then to
come: as if the restoration were already present! Now Jerusalem has peace and
comfort, now is the Lord as in Deuteronomy 32:43, present, having rebuked the
destroyers, in peace with His own people (as in Isaiah 2, 11). Now is the
Gospel in full flow (as implied in 66:18ff.), the Old Covenant replaced in this
characterisable period, by the New.
So does the prophet move
in graphic thrill, in past completion, in present remonstrance, in artful
exposure of coming events in current clothes, whether for good or for evil,
whether in desolation, consummation or judgment (66:24), time a mere blackboard
pointer, the context the control, the thrust the index, the message the
metronome. Like any message it has to be read with understanding, in terms of
purpose, program, principles, procedures, interpretation from context of
symbols, and of course, like any biblical book, in terms of its antecedents and correlatives from the Lord (Isaiah
34:16). It all coheres as one book, as some magnificently accoutred lady in
Autumn, makes of her hair, accessories, shawl, heather outfit and varied hints
and glints, a summary of the season, without losing in the least, but rather
accentuating her individuality.
ACTION NOT
ANGST: BY GOD NOT MAN
MAN MUST SIMPLY RETURN
TO HIS PLACE
BY THE SIDE OF THE
SAVIOUR, NOW, AS APT
But now what of the angst*2 ? It is a mere index in Isaiah 64, a correlative
to shame, to sin and desolation, to rebuke and to witness, to attestation of
truth, which in this case comes with devastating force, in Isaiah 65, where the
very GROUND of the answer to the searing searching of the heavens for ANSWER,
is removed (as indeed, in Moses’ writings in PROSPECT, in Leviticus
26:18-19).
Thus, in this sequence,
the scene moves to the Gospel time; the Gospel moves to the scene. Departing,
they depart; just as the Gentiles, coming, are received. Hence their roles are
to this extent, reversed; and for an interim before the coming consummation
(cf. Isaiah 59:21), in which Jews in
repentance will likewise figure, this proceeds in the most explicit fashion
(65:13-15), but not for ever. To this in its parts, this chapter on Israel’s
desolation, Christ’s coming, rejection, Gentile favour, the bond of the
covenant, the sufferings of Israel, the grand newness to come for all, yet one
based on a foundation immovable (Isaiah 28:16, 4:6, 32:1-4), we move as one who
examines a museum of imagined past events in their series; but here it is
predicted future events, each in its time, in its time slot, and in its developmental cluster.
As to the reversal of
roles for a season, Israel and Gentiles (65:13-15), what is to be said ?
It is not racial; it is
spiritual. Without the Messiah, the Jew is a car without an engine. Then he is
merely like the Gentile who NEVER HAD an engine, the similarity being the
CURRENT LACK OF ONE! (Isaiah 65:13-15 cf. Ephesians 2:1-7). WITH the Messiah,
the Jew then receives the SAME NEW ENGINE as the Gentile! However, it is the
One for whom, via prophets of Israel, the Lord has prepared, the gift to the
race, made through one appointed race (Romans 9), and concentrated in ONE
PERSON (Isaiah 50-55), even God who made us, now Himself in the format of
flesh, the eternal incarnate, never to be replaced or altered, adjusted or
syncretised: not for ever and ever (Isaiah 9:7, 48:16, Zephaniah 2:8, Psalm 45,
Ephesians 1:10, Revelation 5, 21-22).
This same series of
principles, emphasis on grace (Isaiah 55), insistence on full realization of
and repentance for sin (Isaiah 59), this intensity of purity (Isaiah 1), the
meaning and interpretation of symbols made clear in their fulfillment and the
statements of grace from Abraham onwards, and yes, before, they all are here, like a family at dinner. The
household has not changed, even though some now attend university!
What then do we find ?
Anxiety and angst (Isaiah 64), desperation and exploration, persistence
and insistence, relentless contrivings, strivings, virtual ‘arrivings’, these
facets of flesh do not count for anything in the end, unless as rebound structures leading to due repentance and true trust in the Lord (Isaiah 65, 12),
to that beautiful and clean thing,
FAITH, which adopts, accepts, believing receives (Isaiah 53:1, 6),
and receiving is regenerated (Isaiah
53:10), restored, ransomed (Isaiah 53:6,11), given the gift of eternal life
(Isaiah 32:17, 55, 51:11, 54:9-10).
How the passion of it
moves through this intensely and intensively unitary book of Isaiah, his
thrusts and counter-thrusts, his presentations and appeals, like a father in a
series of letters to his son, with the same features, foci, temporal
presentations, chronological ingredients, massive themes, devices and procedures.
They come in parallels all but unlimited, in tasks mutually interpretative for
good (as for example in 4:6, 32:1-4, 11:10, 61:1-3), or for due evils
(1:4-6,31, 32:12-14, 59:1-14). The one
is to be fulfilled (as in 52-53, 66:5ff.),
in the Messiah both in His sufferings and in His rule (Isaiah 11,
2), its beauty in His coming (40:10) and
its strength in His return (Isaiah 26:19, 11:1-10); and the other, first in the
total desolation of Israel, next of the world (Isaiah 1, 24, 32, 64), and then
in the judgment of the world (Isaiah 59:21, 2, 66), with the restoration of His
own people, a simple aspect of the
whole.
It is thus the same chosen
city which is a site both for His death and His regality, but it is the world
which is site for His sovereignty, the Gospel the place for any peace, and
there is no other place for this (Isaiah 66:22-24, 2:17, 28:16, 29:13ff., 24:19-23, 60:14, 44:6-8,24ff.,61:11,
65:13-15, 66:18, Psalm 96).
Just as Isaiah is
intensively cumulative, culminative and cohesive, so is the Gospel intensely
and intensively defined in it, declared
in advance as if even then present (in line with declared desolations and
presentations, as if present already, even the Christ, though His coming is defined
by Daniel as to time, and as distant
from Isaiah 7). The Lord is on record that there is NOTHING but the MESSIAH and
the GOSPEL of His grace (as in 52-53, 55, 27:5, 61:10, 32:17), and history says
AMEN! The Bible is ONE BOOK, as Isaiah
is one component.
v
In
these books is
one Gospel,
one God,
over all time,
expressing Himself at any time,
for times of peace or war,
deliverance or doom,
direction or purging.
v
But
it is always to one emphatic end,
to grace in glory
or else to disgrace in contempt:
and as to this,
deserved for the intractable,
ineluctable in shame,
indefeasible in dereliction,
their courage their destruction,
being misaligned,
in angst their hope,
or in thrust their travail.
v
Yet
for such, it is not in the Lord
v
That
they have put their trust.
It is He who IS the truth,
and HAS spoken,
so that in terms of His own words
ALONE,
all the world sees just what He says,
about history, Messiah, temporary
judgment, opportunity,
while these all come in precisely as
the terms set,
like concrete left a while …
Nothing varies. It is
always the same. Its wonder, its sheer immutability is like that of multitudes
of high mountains, similar but composed in character, vast in face, magnificent
in interface, soaring to the skies, penetrating the storm, resisting the wind, smiling on the blue
brooks in Spring, massive in contentment, content in their massivity.
Where however His word is
opposed, as history makes haste to show and never more than now, there is only
shame. Shame is the result of sham. Sham becomes shambles because it is not
true, and hence it way do not work.
The world works but its
workings do not work, because the work of the Lord is despised by it (Romans 2
with 3:23-28, Ephesians 2:1-12). The glory of God however is simply requisitioning
faith in HIM, in HIS WORD, in HIS WAYS, in HIS WITNESS and in HIS DEATH,
sacrificial and sufficient, defiant of shame, irresistible in cover, because of
His incorruptible life breaching as in a birth, the very grasp of destruction,
leaving Him as always, Master of all regions and dispositions, the Word of God
now incarnate: providing the invariable, vicarious and victorious entry to
life.
NOTES
You may wish to consult other files on Isaiah in general, or on
specific chapters, or overviews of collections of chapters. For this, see
especially
*1
TIME, Gentlemen, TIME!
Similarly, in 58:2ff., we have the more settled feeling of a
present which while polluted, is substantially intact. It is rather like that,
say in the days of Ahaz, when
These things
Isaiah suffered, in his reign.
What then ?
Some of the spoilage and ruin of the temple was for money raising to help get Assyria
interested in protecting them, some for alienated heart-satisfaction, using
idols from Syria, which itself had not prevailed, in further engineering of
ruin for Jerusalem (II Kings 16).
Isaiah
prophesied (1:1) in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah and what a
gamut of gyration he had to live through, as kings good or bad, addled or
flawed, or indeed magnificently zealous on occasion, ruled in the land. Almost
anything was in the kaleidoscopic proportions of his experience!
Nevertheless,
he takes time-plateaux as the Spirit moves him, platforms for expression,
scenes as from a play, a drama, for exposition. In Isaiah 66:6, accordingly,
a “voice from the temple” is in a settled architectural
environment, seen as present, but the actual scene is also one approaching the
end as the Lord returns. His vision has moved to that phase, just as in Isaiah
42:6, we learn of the Messiah not to come for generations, that “I,
the LORD, have called You in righteousness,” and in 49:3, “He said to Me, You are My servant, an
Israel in whom I will be glorified.” This future event, seen in its setting and presented in graphic
present, is in rather stark contrast to the performance of Israel the nation
(‘prince of God’ the title) as seen in 41:28-20, an introduction to the Messiah
in 42:1, by means of utter CONTRAST! The one, the nation, is a failure, ineffectual, the other, the
Messiah in 42:1, is a ravishing delight!
It is black and
white.
The same occurs
in 51:21-22 in contrast to 52:13-53:12. In
42 and 49, alike, the Servant is
a Light to the Gentiles, and pronounced in utter contrast to the nation Israel,
which failed in the personal example of its commission, and hence in power.
Thus in Isaiah
49:3, we see intimations as if present in time, as the LORD speaks to His
Servant in current commission. So does time
serve: and as in a play where we are
bodily transported to this or that phase of the story, and then live it, so here. Sometimes the
graphic present is intense and all but momentary, sometimes it endures for a
vision: Isaiah 24:16, 52 being two examples, one of each. In the latter, “Jerusalem, the holy city” is told to “put on your beautiful garments”, to dress up at her very best, like a
child bathed, and preparing for a party. She is ready to do so, being intact
and prepared, called and appropriatedly summoned to ‘dress up’. In this chapter
49, again, the present is seen in vv. 7ff., where it is as if we are watching
on TV the victorious work of an army, here a man victorious and glorious in the
anointed and anointing embassage from the Lord.
As in Isaiah
66, we are caused to see the scene graphically, so that we read “How beautiful are the feet…” as in 66, “A
sound of noise from the city! A voice of
the LORD who fully repays His enemies.” Thus her friends are told, in view of this seen happening, to
rejoice. So does the prophet move with
the agility of a lynx, the stride of a leopard, and the eye of a tiger,
deploying and restoring, or showing in ruin, or enhanced beauty, as the case
requires.
In parallel
with these developments, one finds in Isaiah 21:8-10, as in the present tense,
a dramatic dialogue, in which a watchman sees a lion which is shown to
symbolise Babylon, and the interchange shows its devastation, “Babylon is fallen, and all the carved
images of her gods He has broken to the ground.” In delightful intimacy, the prophet exclaims after being
witness to these things, “O
my threshing and the grain of my floor! That which I have heard from the LORD
of hosts, I have declared to you.” In this way, he announces the fall of Babylon, as more prosaically
in Isaiah 13, though even there, in terms of the time-line shuttle, it is
present in presentation: ”The
noise of a multitude in the mountains, like that of many people! A tumultuous
noise of the kingdoms of nations gathering together! The LORD of hosts musters
the army for battle. They come from a far country…”
Already, in Isaiah 1:8,
the “daughter of Zion” is left as a ”booth in a vineyard.” The eye of the prophet is
shown the case, the culmination, the deliverance or the doom, and roves on a
series of tapestries, if you will, arrayed on the wall of vision, to which,
each in its setting, he turns with ease, assurance and deep intimate and
empathetic involvement.
Future
scenes may be provided with apt future settings, as in any play, or dramatic
presentation by players, and so we find, with various occasional if slight
references back to the actual time of the composition, if and where the case
seems apt. Occasionally this too is stark.
In Ch. 6,
Jerusalem is to be left as stump, in
Ch. 1, as “a garden that has no water”; while at other times, we SEE the stump, or else the Messiah
(chronologically, delayed greatly, as in Isaiah 7), or the return, or the
command to return, or the advent of the
Lord to make final retribution, with
delight on the part of Zion’s friends (66), or the end of the entire series in
heaven or hell (51, 66), with the Redeemer focused as imminent and coming (40, 52), or long delayed, or een gloriously reigning (Isaiah 11, 32, 6019,
62:11, 59:21, 66:12-13), according to the setting, the scenario, the point of
take-off and landing. In 61:1ff., quoted
by Christ Himself, you even see a
progression in terse solemnity, from the
evangelical delight to the coming doom, the one as in John 3:16-19, progressing most naturally. It was
so when Christ Himself came, as in John 15:21ff., where the poignancy, the
appeal, the judgment and the very
presence of the Lord all are collated, the tempest and the truth, the mercy and
the folly of man, the immense intimacy of the Lord’s presence and the stern
rebuke.
But there is
great fluency, as in some vast reconstructed theatre, built as in England in
the 19th century, with enormous provision for effects, screens,
change and variety, expression and
ingenious architecture.
Again, it is
rather like a military exposition, and you can hear the pre-D-Day Colonel
saying,
“So you see, there we are, landing at
Normanby, and the barges are sinking in some cases, for the fire you see is strong, but
with these plans in hand, we assemble on
the beach…” and so on. At other times, he
announces, “When the day comes, we
shall assemble …”, or “the prime
preparation of course is the bomb,
although it is not yet ready…” or again, “Settle on your rump, Hitler, for we are coming…” and this could
be said, in the height of adversity, at the outset of invasion, or as it is
busily preparing, always as the context
and the situation in rule before us, is in view.
The alert
Lieutenant watches the scenes, the Colonel and soon becomes used to his modes
of communication, never failing to assess the nature of any given meeting with
some care, from the preliminaries, the indications and the outcomes. It is no
use trying to impose on the Colonel the mode of his discourse; you must
intelligently watch for the meaning of what is presented, assured that it is
there, and that he is assuming you are
not asleep.
*2 See Chapter 4 for a look at angst.