Sheep and Goats

Category: Isaiah

  • The Righteous One Perishes but No One Takes it to Heart

    There is no huge significance that the Doomsday Clock stands at 85 seconds to midnight instead of a minute or two either way. But there is significance for it to stand in any of those spots instead of 10:30 AM or even high noon. That’s probably the way to gauge a verse like Isaiah 57:1:

    “The righteous one has perished, But no one takes it to heart. Loyal men are taken away, With no one discerning that the righteous one has been taken away Because of the calamity.”

    It’s not a call to identify any specific “righteous ones” who have perished. It is not to be applied to that actor who passed away a few years ago, an actor who had garnered more good press and than bad press, so that a certain romantic chum of mine mused that his demise satisfied that verse—just like Dick Van Dyke’s death, when it finally occurs (Lord knows, having topped 100, he’s old enough) might also have made him think of the verse, had he not died first.

    No, you don’t focus on individuals. It is the times you focus on that make such a verse meaningful. The ones who perish don’t perish during glorious times so that you’re saddened they’ve missed the fun. They perish during times so perilous that you say ‘It’s just as well. Now they can sleep through the wreckage and awaken in the resurrection.’

    Incidentally, that Clock, a contrivance of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, was advanced four more seconds as of January 27, 2026. The Clock is symbolic, you understand. it is not a literal prediction of just 85 seconds left. Rather, it is an assessment of the mess humanity is in, and whether they are worse off or better off than the times just before. They are worse off, was the assignment of those Atomic Scientists, by four whole seconds.

    Whereas last year we were a refreshing safe .0001029615916 percentage distance away from total annihilation, this year we have gotten alarmingly close: only 0009837962963% distance away! The problems those scientists fret over include a failure of leadership to tackle worsening global risks like nuclear threats and record-breaking climate change, biological threats and pandemics. AI misuse and cyber risks add to the chaos. Clearly, these scientists aren’t cheerleading over the incredible successes of science. They are lamenting its redirection to evil.

    Science is a tool only as good as the ones wielding it, and the ones wielding it are not too good. The “broken-hearted ones living in the world” are not coming to any “agreement” as the ‘Let it Be’ song predicts. Nor does it comfort anyone to ‘Imagine’ that there is “above us only sky” and “no religion, too.” Very few world leaders have any use for religion today, The ones that do accept only the brand that “knows its place” (last place) and defers to human models of rulership.

    It’s a little like when I had a lengthy discussion with a man at the door over abiogenesis (origin of life) versus creation and he at last asked what difference did it make? Either way, we are here, so who cares how it happened? I answered that if God created life, it is just possible that he did not create it for nothing, that he has some purpose for it, and will not stand idly to see it all destroyed. But if we got here through abiogenesis, then any hope for humankind depends solely upon human efforts, and “they’re not doing too well.” The man’s wife, who had remained silent during our 45 minute discussion, spoke for the first time: “That’s a good point,” she said.

    It’s also a little like Timothée Chalamet, playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, pushing back at the incessant demand he keep cranking out more peace, love, and cumbaya songs that transformed the genre as it marked his musical debut. ‘Well, they’re not exactly doing the trick now, are they?’ someone else observed. JFK had just been murdered, then Malcolm X. Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King would soon follow. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world inches from World War III.

    At the Newport Folk Festival, he didn’t sing ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing,’ or even his own ‘Blowing in the Wind’ type songs. He sang ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ to mark the end of an era. It was all over. Furthermore: “Well, I try my best to be just like I am, But everybody wants you to be just like them, They say, ‘Sing while you slave’ and I just get bored. I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.” Problem was, he “had a head full of ideas that were driving him insane” and it was “a shame how they made him mop the floor” instead.

    There was lots of insanity making the rounds about then with those four icons killed in just five years, with nukes to the U.S. only spared because one of the three Russian shipboard commandants refused the order to launch. (It had to be unanimous for go-ahead). With that backdrop, you can almost see why a guy might get all excited that 1975 might mark the end, given that 6000 years of biblical history was to end just then.

    “Aw, you don’t believe we’re on the Eve of Destruction?” (P.F. Sloan – 1965)

    Looks like it was just a head fake, a dry run for the real thing to come shortly. It is just around the corner. To be sure, it is one heckuva corner. But it is just around it.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Isaiah 51: Mined from a Quarry

    Never thought I’d live to see childbirth likened to mining a quarry, but that is the meaning of Isaiah 51: 1-2. We just don’t usually think of our own birth that way, as though mined from a quarry. Nobody, but nobody I have ever known has likened childbirth to mining from a quarry. Yet there it is in Isaiah. Why had I not noticed this before?

    “Listen to me, you who are pursuing righteousness, You who are seeking Jehovah. Look to the rock from which you were hewn And to the quarry from which you were dug.” (Isaiah 51:1)

    What rock is that? What quarry is that? The next verse answers.

    “Look to Abraham your father And to Sarah who gave birth to you.” (verse 2) Don’t ever say that the Bible writers were of the Victorian era. Imagine—likening childbirth to mining a quarry!

    Furthermore, the metaphor is extended—twice. Not only is Abraham the rock, but Jehovah also describes himself that way in Deuteronomy 32:18. There, the Israelites “forgot the Rock who fathered you, And you did not remember the God who gave birth to you.” Is God both the rock AND the quarry here? Clarifying, or maybe adding more mystery still, Paul later describes a “Jerusalem above” which served as “mother” to the early congregation, for the early congregation is the second extension of that metaphor. Christ is the rock upon which the entire Christian congregation is built. Simon is renamed Peter, a word that means rock, and is given the keys to direct its early doings on earth.

    “Simon Peter answered [Jesus]: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In response Jesus said to him: “Happy you are, Simon son of Joʹnah, because flesh and blood did not reveal it to you, but my Father in the heavens did. Also, I say to you: You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my congregation, and the gates of the Grave will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of the heavens, and whatever you may bind on earth will already be bound in the heavens, and whatever you may loosen on earth will also be loosened in the heavens.” (Matthew 16:16-19)

    Alas, only a remnant of either stays faithful, of the Christian congregation or of the ancient nation of Israel. It goes poorly for them when they do not, to the point that they “bow down so that [their enemies] may walk over you!’ So you made your back like the ground, Like a street for them to walk on.” (vs 23) It’s as graphic a metaphor as the quarry!

    And, for now, I’m not even going to touch the “stone” that was “cut not by human hands” and hurled into the feet of the statue Daniel saw. Nor will I mention one friend, a father, whose home I visited and he had somehow acquired a model replica of that statue, multi-colored to indicate the bronze, gold, silver, copper, etc, standing about a foot tall. “Do you shoot pebbles at its feet via slingshot for family study?” I asked him.

    No matter where one looks, it is all humans forgetting their Maker. Verse 13 poses the question: “Why do you forget Jehovah your Maker, The One who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundation of the earth?”

    Forsake God and he forsakes them. They are left to their own devices. Fearsome though the Jews were in battle, they were no match for the professionals. The Book of Isaiah logs how the ten-tribe kingdom to the north (a product of Rehoboam’s pig-headedness) forgot Jehovah their Maker, and then the remaining two-tribe kingdom to the south also forgot. Though delivered once in Assyrian times, they were not delivered again in Babylonian times. There, they would have to settle for a later remnant to be released.

    The ten tribes were decimated by Assyria, its survivors scattered throughout that empire. The remaining two tribes were decimated by Babylon, survivors exiled into Babylon itself, except for the lowly peasants, initially left to remain, but subsequently organized by rabble, whose put down would see them killed off.

    They are glutted with own counsel in the meantime. This is easier seen in the present day, because the present day is where we live. “Why do you Witnesses always have to assume things are getting worse? What does that belief do for you?” some atheist asked me. It helps me to explain why the Doomsday Clock is set at 90 seconds to midnight and not 10:30 AM.

    There is material progress in the modern day, no doubt about it. If you measure life by gadgets or by the demand for back-breaking work, it has improved for most. But if you measure it by any cognitive feeling of well-being, it has gone down the drain—or, in the words of my non-Witness dad, “the world is going to hell in a hand basket.” If you are in the house-to-house ministry, open by saying, “The world is crazy, and we think the Bible helps—in explaining why it is crazy, offering hope for the future, and guidance on how to live in the meantime.” People may or may not think the Bible helps, but no one in may part of the world will deny that it is crazy

    When I was a boy, there was one and only one possible “end of the world” scenario: nuclear war. I was not a Witness then and would not become one until my 20s. Today there are a dozen or more “end of the world” scenarios, most some variant of pollution or mismanagement of the earth. The very latest one is the changes AI may bring upon humanity. These things make people anxious and anxiety is an ever-present backdrop of life today. Recently I read of significant swaths of college students—was it one third?—reporting they were anxious “all of the time.” Substance abuse is pandemic today, as is loneliness. At least a third of all Americans are on some sort of antidepressants. They feel they need that to cope with life. Trust in the good will of others is at a low. One never knows when a complete stranger will do you harm for no reason at all. “Whistleblowers” arise in every field to convince us that no institution can be trusted. A 1968 Truth Book statement that humans cannot live together in peace—have they improved in that aspect since or have they become more contentious? In short, there is no stability in life for many, and lack of stability plays havoc with the emotions, even if materially you’re better off than back in the day.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Isaiah 48:22: “There is no Peace for the Wicked”

    Jarringly out of place at the end of Isaiah 48, so it would seem, is the final verse: “There is no peace,” says Jehovah, ‘for the wicked.’”

    Who’s he talking about? Just who is “wicked?”

    Is he referring to the same as, whenever the younger brothers took to squabbling, the older bro would tilt back in his chair and say, “It’s amazing what Jehovah can accomplish, given what he has to work with?”

    Well, maybe a little. But, for the most part, it is attuned to what one sister said in public comment: “It should never be said that someone is worthless since you can always be used as a bad example.”

    More of that. A little of the former. At any rate, the “wicked” God refers to are from the ranks of his own people! They also seem to have comprised the rule, not the exception. Despite that, he did a lot, and it sure wasn’t due to their wonderfulness. 

    “For my own sake, for my own sake I will act, For how could I let myself be profaned?” (48:11)

    But regarding his own people? “I knew how stubborn you are —That your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead is copper.” (48:4) And “you have been called a transgressor from birth.” (vs 8)

    Again, what he does is not due to their record, but despite it: “But for the sake of my name I will hold back my anger; For my own praise I will restrain myself toward you, And I will not do away with you. (vs 9)

    As to his own people—it just got so tiresome to deal with them—he addressed (vs 1): “You who swear by the name of Jehovah And who call on the God of Israel, Though not in truth and righteousness.”

    How can one not think of a first century counterpart utterance of Jesus, that many would come to him in the final day, with their “Lord, Lord, didn’t we do this? Didn’t we do that?” only to hear the rebuke: “I never knew you. Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness!” “Workers of lawlessness” versus “truth and righteousness” is apparently the deciding factor. Loudly singing the name in itself doesn’t cut it. (Matthew 7:22-23)

    No sense in squabbling over this passage, because each one will apply it to the other guy. But it does show that the popular view of Jesus being so loving that’s it’s near impossible to get him upset is wrong. Apparently, it’s quite easy to get him going, but also quite easy to avoid. Just supplement your acceptance of our Lord’s redemption with “doing the will of my Father who is in the heavens,” and you are okay. (Matthew 7:21)

    It’s a little hard to imagine that “doing the will of my Father who is in the heavens” would consist of no more than being nice and helping out the poor. Those are not such polarizing activities that one could later turn against them, becoming “enemies of the cross,” as Paul said many had done. “For there are many—I used to mention them often but now I mention them also with weeping—who are walking as enemies of the torture stake of the Christ.” (Phillipians 3:18) Nor does it seem that anyone could later interpret them as “shackles” and “ropes” that the very “kings of the earth” and their “high officials” would want to break free from. (Psalm 2:2-3)

    Ah! The ray of hope: “No, you have not heard, you have not known, And in the past your ears were not opened.” (vs 8) Okay. So, leave the past in the past. Accept the Lord, come to him in repentance, but then don’t “accept the undeserved kindness of God and miss its purpose.” (2 Corinthians 6:1) “Gonna change my way of thinking; Make myself a different set of rules,” is the way Bob Dylan put it. “Gonna put my good foot forward; stop being influenced by fools.”

    Are you saved upon doing that? One circuit overseer addressed a Bible-belt (Southeastern U.S.)  congregation on how to respond when people ask “Are you saved?” Aren’t you? he said. Aren’t you in a saved condition? If you hesitate in any way, perhaps to clarify trinitarian concerns or to point out that it is not once saved-always saved, they take it as a ‘No.’ So just say Yes. Whereupon he had the congregation repeat three times, “I am saved.”

    Really applying all this Jesus likens to the cramped gate versus the broad and spacious way that most people prefer. “Go in through the narrow gate, because broad is the gate and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are finding it.” It just might entail major changes in life. Like another circuit overseer who described that car easing its way veerrrrry slowly through the cramped gate. Upon squeezing through, everyone breathes a sigh of relief. The car accelerates then halts with a THUD.

    Oh no! The trailer didn’t make it through!

    ******  The bookstore

  • Manipulating Cyrus the Great King

    Pulverizing Sennacherib was a big deal? Turns out that it was just a warmup for a greater deliverance, that of Babylon being defeated but not before it had conquered and strutted around insufferably. So the Sennacherib experience would serve as faith strengthening groundwork for that other deliverance in store.

    The one who did the conquering is pre-named in the Book of Isaiah. Chapter 44 ends that Jehovah is “the One saying of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd, And he will completely carry out all my will’; The One saying of Jerusalem, ‘She will be rebuilt,’ And of the temple, ‘Your foundation will be laid.’” (44:28)

    45 expands upon his role:

    “This is what Jehovah says to his anointed one, to Cyrus, Whose right hand I have taken hold of To subdue nations before him, To disarm kings, To open before him the double doors, So that the gates will not be shut: 2 “Before you I will go, And the hills I will level. The copper doors I will break in pieces, And the iron bars I will cut down. 3 I will give you the treasures in the darkness And the hidden treasures in the concealed places, So that you may know that I am Jehovah, The God of Israel, who is calling you by your name.” (45:1-3)

    It’s not so much a violation of Cyrus’s free will as it is an object lesson in If you want to get a guy to do something, appeal to his vanity. First-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus relates that Cyrus was shown that prophesy after he conquered Babylon but before he freed any Jewish captives.

    Says his Antiquities of the Jews (Book XI, Chapter 1, Section 2):

    “This was known to Cyrus by his reading the book which Isaiah left behind him of his prophecies; for this prophet said that God had spoken thus to him in a secret vision: ‘My will is, that Cyrus, whom I have appointed to be king over many and great nations, send back my people to their own land, and build my temple.’ This was foretold by Isaiah one hundred and forty years before the temple was demolished. Accordingly, when Cyrus read this, and admired the divine power, an earnest desire and ambition seized upon him to fulfill what was so written…”

    He didn’t just free the Jewish captives and then someone said, ‘Hey, do you know that you just fulfilled prophesy?’ Rather, Josephus relates that he was shown the passage (maybe via Daniel, a high official in that Babylonian court) and seeing his name in lights, was inspired to fill the role.

    Don’t think he didn’t read ahead. Don’t think his head didn’t swell when he came to 45:9

    “Woe to the one who contends with his Maker, For he is just an earthenware fragment Among the other earthenware fragments lying on the ground! Should the clay say to the Potter: ‘What are you making?’ Or should your work say: ‘He has no hands’”?

    I certainly won’t, he’d say, since the Potter made ME the most excellent of the excellent vessels and sealed the deal by giving me His most sacred assignment, to conquer the Babylonians! (which is right up my alley since I wanted to kick their rear ends anyway)

    It’s sort of like the religious football players who conspicuously thank the Lord after every punishing play. It’s not as though they’re going out of their way to serve him. Pummeling other players is what they’d be doing anyway. One of these characters was known for wearing John 3:16 as his eyeblack, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life.” True enough, but is the football field the best place for display, where they regularly haul players away to mend broken bones inflicted by other players? This prompted some atheist fans to suggest Matthew 6:5 for eyeblack: “5 “Also, when you pray, do not act like the hypocrites, for they like to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the main streets to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.” But for the fistfights that might break out between the two sides, I’d love to see it.

    Whoa! Would Cyrus’s chest ever puff out at applying to himself the next chapter, 46:

    “Remember the former things of long ago, That I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is no one like me. From the beginning I foretell the outcome, And from long ago the things that have not yet been done. I say, ‘My decision will stand, And I will do whatever I please.’ (46:9-10)

    And what did he foretell from long ago? Cyrus would savor the answer: ME! and then keep reading:

    “I am calling a bird of prey from the sunrise, From a distant land the man to carry out my decision.” (46:11) Who is that fearsome bird of prey? Ahem: ‘C’est moi! C’est moi, I’m forced to admit. ‘Tis I, I humbly reply. That mortal who these marvels can do, C’est moi, c’est moi, ’tis I.’

    “Listen to me, you who are stubborn of heart, You who are far away from righteousness. I have brought my righteousness near; It is not far away, And my salvation will not delay. I will grant salvation in Zion, my splendor to Israel.” (46:12-13)

    And he selected ME to do it! Who is more righteous than me? An excellent choice! “I’ve never lost In battle or game; I’m simply the best by far. When swords are crossed ‘Tis always the same: One blow and au revoir!”

    It’s really not too hard to put hooks in the jaws and direct the mighty ones to your bidding. Just appeal to their ego. If even Hezekiah, from a culture in which humility was a thing, became full of himself at the thought that God would deliver the city while HE was in charge, just think of Cyrus, raised in a culture in which humility was for chumps. Hoo boy. He’s even called God’s “shepherd” and “anointed.”

    God chose me to do his purpose? Good choice! How could he have chosen better? Guess I’ll hop to it.

    Revisit the contention for a moment that the Book of Isaiah is divided into two sections at the chapter 40 mark, Isaiah and ‘Second Isaiah.’ Why do they say this, when the extant evidence indicates otherwise? (The two supposed sections immediately follow one another in the same column of the pertinent Dead Sea Scroll.) You assume they must have some good reason, but it is only that Isaiah 40 clearly tells the future beginning with chapter 40 and they think that’s not possible. it’s their historical-critical method they’ve adopted as the be-all and end-all!

    “2nd Isaiah” (chapters 40-66) is the future deliverance from Babylon set as though it had already happened, they observe. Therefore, it DID already happen, and some liar of a scribe later tacked the chapters on to 39 to make it appear foretelling the future!

    Well, isn’t that what prophets did? Wasn’t that one of the tricks up their sleeve? Weren’t they conduits for God who sometimes revealed future events? It’s a slam-dunk for believers, but the historical critical method assumes that they don’t. When they appear to, it’s the work of some dreamy and delusional God-apologist, in their eyes. I mean, you hope that when you’re tried in court, your own lawyer won’t join the side of the opposition, but in the case of the Book of Isaiah, that is too much to hope for. If your preacher is a graduate of the historical-critical seminary, watch out. “Okay, I have to repackage this pablum for the masses,” he or she is apt to say, “so as to extract the higher meaning.” The higher meaning they find is likely to be higher only in their eyes, as they reconfigure scripture as a tool to mend the present system of human self-rule.

    The same sort of abhorrence for divine power is also at work in the dating of the gospels. Most contemporary theologians think the gospels were written much later than originally supposed, toward the end of the first century and into the second century. Do they have a good reason to think this? Well, it’s good in their eyes, if not those of the sort of humble people who would treasure the gospels. Jesus foretold the Roman destruction of the Jewish temple, which occurred in 70 CE. He couldn’t have foretold it, they say, such things don’t happen today. He must have written it after the fact and then slipped it in as though before. The same bias that creates 2nd Isaiah also creates the late writing dates for the gospels!

    Moreover, this bias that foreknowledge of the future is impossible is so strong that they must overlook in the New Testament much of what is plainly their expertise in order to accommodate it. If the gospels were written after the temple destruction, it’s amazing that none of them mention it. It would have been a fantastic vindication of Jesus’ words, the irresistible climax of his tussling with the Jewish leaders. And Luke, the writer of Act of the Apostles, who “traced all things with accuracy,” (Acts 1:3) can’t trace his way to the bathroom if he neglects the most monumental Jewish event of the last 500 years! The far-simpler, Occam’s Razor explanation, unless you have a grudge against the divine, is that the gospels and Acts were written beforehand, as everyone of common sense used to say before those of the historical critical method came along to foul the water.

    All this is not to condemn the historical-critical method, also known as higher criticism. It works just fine, provided one keeps in mind it is a limited tool. So long as one realizes it is not the sole means to unveil truth, one is okay. Some practitioners do. Some don’t. The two sides are reflection of the world of scientists. Some think science is a nifty tool that reveal a lot, but not all. Others think that if science doesn’t reveal it, it is bogus “pseudo-knowledge.”

    ******  The bookstore

  • Who are the Witnesses: Isaiah 43

    Half of [the chopped-down tree] he burns up in a fire; With that half he roasts the meat that he eats, and he is satisfied. He also warms himself and says: “Ah! I am warm as I watch the fire.” But the rest of it he makes into a god, into his carved image. He bows down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says: “Save me, for you are my god.” (Isaiah 44:16-17)

    That’s not too bright, is it? It’s part of a passage, verses 9-20, that circles around to reiterate, add details, and drive home the point of how dumb it is that his god, that he has made, should be made of the same stuff as fuels his stove. Three hundred years later, Diagoras of Melos showed just how dumb it was. His fuel running out while cooking lentils, he reached for a wood statue of Hercules. This was the god known for his mythical twelve labors. Diagoras broke it up, added it to the fire and quipped, Let Hercules perform his 13th labor. If Hercules truly was a god, stop him, do something about it. But as far as anyone knows, the god of wood instead performed his new assignment. Diagoras emerged well-fed.

    Jehovah’s prophet bullies them around, too. He doesn’t go so far as to chop them up for the fire, but he does tell them to put up or shut up:

    “Tell us what will happen in the future, So that we may know that you are gods. Yes, do something, good or bad, So that we may be amazed when we see it.” (Isaiah 41:23)

    He hauls them all into court two chapters later. Jehovah is there too and he makes them offer testimony that they are not just deadbeat gods in metal or wood form. That’s not entirely fair, since they can’t speak and Jehovah knows that. So, since they are mute, let them produce witnesses who will testify for them:

    “Let them bring forth their witnesses to prove them right, and let them hear and say, ‘It is true.” (43:9)

    Tell about past events? Future events? Got anything anywhere up their sleeves to prove god status? There they are in court, so there will be no undignified badmouthing as when Elijah called out Baal for maybe being in the crapper when he didn’t show to prove himself. (1 Kings 18:27) No. This setting, convened by Jehovah himself, is more formal. And, whereas the idol gods all hem and haw and pick their noses, Jehovah’s not sweating is as to having witnesses to testify:

    “Let all the nations assemble in one place, And let the peoples be gathered together. Who among them can tell this? Or can they cause us to hear the first things? Let them present their witnesses to prove themselves right, Or let them hear and say, ‘It is the truth!’” “You are my witnesses,” declares Jehovah, “Yes, my servant whom I have chosen, So that you may know and have faith in me And understand that I am the same One. Before me no God was formed, And after me there has been none.  I—I am Jehovah, and besides me there is no savior.” “I am the One who declared and saved and made known When there was no foreign god among you. So you are my witnesses,” declares Jehovah, “and I am God. Also, I am always the same One; And no one can snatch anything out of my hand. When I act, who can prevent it?” (43:8-13)

    Just try tossing him into the fire. He’s not in statue form to begin with, so you can’t grab hold of him. He also has plenty of witnesses to testify that you don’t want to mess with him. Jehovah has deeds to his credit, spectacular deeds. One of them is quite recent, within the memory of the court attendees. It’s not every day that you wipe out the enemy’s 185K Plan.

    Sennacherib’s annals, preserved in various museums, boast of how he demolished town after town, showing no mercy, but Hezekiah in Jerusalem he let off with a stern warning and a fine.

    “As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts and to the countless small villages in their vicinity and conquered (them). . . . I drove out (of them) 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered (them) booty. Himself [Hezekiah] I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. . . . Hezekiah himself . . . did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver . . . all kinds of valuable treasures, his (own) daughters, concubines, male and female musicians. In order to deliver the tribute and to do obeisance as a slave he sent his (personal) messenger.”

    The blustering is conspicuous, not for what it says, but for what it does not say. He didn’t take the city. One scholar, knowing how these blowhards operated, opined that when Sennacherib’s scribes say 200,150 captives, we can dismiss the 200,000 as scribal embellishment to keep the boss happy, and settle on the 150 as closer to the truth. He may have bunted his way on base but the inning ended without the grand slam home run he had planned upon.

    My own people like passage for its courtroom theme. Maybe it’s because they get hauled in there from time to time. At any rate, they’ve adopted that 43:10-12 as their own: Jehovah’s witnesses have become Jehovah’s Witnesses. Critics are not so sure they like the idea. That passage just pertains to events back then, they fume, not to some modern-day preaching group. But that can also be said (and is by most Jews) about verses Isaiah applied to Jesus too, of which there are plenty. Beyond all question, Jesus’ disciples were to be active in preaching, in spreading a witness. Why not lift the Isaiah 43 passage as one’s own. Even the resurrected Jesus calls himself at Revelation 1:5 “the Faithful Witness.” Whose witness was he?

    This might explain the Witnesses linkage of circle with the earth with “globe” (Isaiah 40:22) and “dynamic power” with E=mc2. (40:26) They are testifying to what God has done. Let the opposing counsel challenge them on that point if they must. While “globe” is not unique to Jehovah’s Witnesses, that application of Einstein’s formula to account for all creation pretty much is. It’s what you would expect a tenacious witness to do.

    (tomsheepandgoats*com)

    Half of [the chopped-down tree] he burns up in a fire; With that half he roasts the meat that he eats, and he is satisfied. He also warms himself and says: “Ah! I am warm as I watch the fire.” But the rest of it he makes into a god, into his carved image. He bows down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says: “Save me, for you are my god.” (Isaiah 44:16-17)

    That’s not too bright, is it? It’s part of a passage, verses 9-20, that circles around to reiterate, add details, and drive home the point of how dumb it is that his god, that he has made, should be made of the same stuff as fuels his stove. Three hundred years later, Diagoras of Melos showed just how dumb it was. His fuel running out while cooking lentils, he reached for a wood statue of Hercules. This was the god known for his mythical twelve labors. Diagoras broke it up, added it to the fire and quipped, Let Hercules perform his 13th labor. If Hercules truly was a god, stop him, do something about it. But as far as anyone knows, the god of wood instead performed his new assignment. Diagoras emerged well-fed.

    Jehovah’s prophet bullies them around, too. He doesn’t go so far as to chop them up for the fire, but he does tell them to put up or shut up:

    “Tell us what will happen in the future, So that we may know that you are gods. Yes, do something, good or bad, So that we may be amazed when we see it.” (Isaiah 41:23)

    He hauls them all into court two chapters later. Jehovah is there too and he makes them offer testimony that they are not just deadbeat gods in metal or wood form. That’s not entirely fair, since they can’t speak and Jehovah knows that. So, since they are mute, let them produce witnesses who will testify for them:

    “Let them bring forth their witnesses to prove them right, and let them hear and say, ‘It is true.” (43:9)

    Tell about past events? Future events? Got anything anywhere up their sleeves to prove god status? There they are in court, so there will be no undignified badmouthing as when Elijah called out Baal for maybe being in the crapper when he didn’t show to prove himself. (1 Kings 18:27) No. This setting, convened by Jehovah himself, is more formal. And, whereas the idol gods all hem and haw and pick their noses, Jehovah’s not sweating is as to having witnesses to testify:

    “Let all the nations assemble in one place, And let the peoples be gathered together. Who among them can tell this? Or can they cause us to hear the first things? Let them present their witnesses to prove themselves right, Or let them hear and say, ‘It is the truth!’” “You are my witnesses,” declares Jehovah, “Yes, my servant whom I have chosen, So that you may know and have faith in me And understand that I am the same One. Before me no God was formed, And after me there has been none.  I—I am Jehovah, and besides me there is no savior.” “I am the One who declared and saved and made known When there was no foreign god among you. So you are my witnesses,” declares Jehovah, “and I am God. Also, I am always the same One; And no one can snatch anything out of my hand. When I act, who can prevent it?” (43:8-13)

    Just try tossing him into the fire. He’s not in statue form to begin with, so you can’t grab hold of him. He also has plenty of witnesses to testify that you don’t want to mess with him. Jehovah has deeds to his credit, spectacular deeds. One of them is quite recent, within the memory of the court attendees. It’s not every day that you wipe out the enemy’s 185K Plan.

    Sennacherib’s annals, preserved in various museums, boast of how he demolished town after town, showing no mercy, but Hezekiah in Jerusalem he let off with a stern warning and a fine.

    “As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts and to the countless small villages in their vicinity and conquered (them). . . . I drove out (of them) 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered (them) booty. Himself [Hezekiah] I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. . . . Hezekiah himself . . . did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver . . . all kinds of valuable treasures, his (own) daughters, concubines, male and female musicians. In order to deliver the tribute and to do obeisance as a slave he sent his (personal) messenger.”

    The blustering is conspicuous, not for what it says, but for what it does not say. He didn’t take the city. One scholar, knowing how these blowhards operated, opined that when Sennacherib’s scribes say 200,150 captives, we can dismiss the 200,000 as scribal embellishment to keep the boss happy, and settle on the 150 as closer to the truth. He may have bunted his way on base but the inning ended without the grand slam home run he had planned upon.

    My own people like passage for its courtroom theme. Maybe it’s because they get hauled in there from time to time. At any rate, they’ve adopted that 43:10-12 as their own: Jehovah’s witnesses have become Jehovah’s Witnesses. Critics are not so sure they like the idea. That passage just pertains to events back then, they fume, not to some modern-day preaching group. But that can also be said (and is by most Jews) about verses Isaiah applied to Jesus too, of which there are plenty. Beyond all question, Jesus’ disciples were to be active in preaching, in spreading a witness. Why not lift the Isaiah 43 passage as one’s own. Even the resurrected Jesus calls himself at Revelation 1:5 “the Faithful Witness.” Whose witness was he?

    This might explain the Witnesses linkage of circle with the earth with “globe” (Isaiah 40:22) and “dynamic power” with E=mc2. (40:26) They are testifying to what God has done. Let the opposing counsel challenge them on that point if they must. While “globe” is not unique to Jehovah’s Witnesses, that application of Einstein’s formula to account for all creation pretty much is. It’s what you would expect a tenacious witness to do.

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Language in Which God Wrote the Universe

    If Isaiah 40:22 is not a lesson in science, all the more so 40:26 is not. But could it be another example of the Bible being accurate when it happens to touch on matters of science?

    “Lift up your eyes to heaven and see. Who has created these things? It is the One who brings out their army by number; He calls them all by name. Because of his vast dynamic energy and his awe-inspiring power, Not one of them is missing.” (Isaiah 40:26) What are “these things?” They are the heavens, the stars.

    Got it. It’s not a science lesson. Yet, not to overanalyze the point, it turns out there’s a connection between “vast dynamic energy” and these “created things.” It is even described with mathematical precision: E=mc². It has been demonstrated numerous times since World War II. The tiniest bit of mass times the speed of light squared yields a staggering amount of energy. Surely, the reverse must also hold, that a source of infinite energy can convert some of it to mass.

    Why should this relationship be this is written so compactly? Why shouldn’t it be a hopeless hodgepodge of a mathematics mess? If you jam the keys of a piano together, it sounds like garbage and it looks like garbage in math. But if you do harmonious music, the mathematics is elegant. Notes that harmonize are simple ratios of each other. Notes that don’t are not.

    Basic laws of physics are expressed in the terms of often-simple mathematics. Newton discovered that force equals mass times acceleration, for example (F=ma). From Galileo: the distance a ball falls in t seconds is 16 times the square of t. (d=16t²). Why shouldn’t the answer be a hopeless mishmash, like your sock drawer, instead of a compact formula? It was enough for Galileo to proclaim that “God wrote the universe in the language of mathematics.” For centuries, scientists pursued their topic as though a religious quest, as a means to uncover the design of God and thereby give him praise.

    When Kepler worked out the laws governing planetary motions [they move in ellipses, not circles] and published the results, he suddenly let loose with a paean to God, smack dab in the middle of his treatise. If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was one of the Bible psalms: “The wisdom of the Lord is infinite; so also are His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises! Sun, moon, and planets glorify Him in your ineffable language! Celestial harmonies, all ye who comprehend His marvelous works, praise Him. And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exists. that which we know best is comprised in Him, as well as in our vain science. To Him be praise, honor, and glory throughout eternity.”

    Does it not dovetail with this proclamation from Revelation 4:11? “You are worthy, Jehovah, even our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created.” 

    Those early scientists didn’t experiment much. Instead, they worked out the math, since they were convinced that underlay how God designed things. When they made experiments it was mostly to confirm results. Newton once said it was done to convince the “vulgar,” (He also told how he made up the story of the falling apple to dispose of pesky people who asked him how he discovered laws of gravitation.) And Galileo, when describing an experiment of dropping two different masses from the top of a ship’s mast, has his fictional creation, a fellow named Simplicio, ask whether he actually made such an experiment. “No, and I do not need it, as without any experience I can confirm that it is so because it cannot be otherwise,” was his reply.

    Can one just sit and think the makeup of the universe? Turns out that you can, assuming you are very smart and you have correctly identified the variables. Newton played with the notion of firing a giant cannonball from a mountaintop with just enough velocity, not too much and not too little, that it’s ordinary straight line path would be continually offset by the earth’s pull so that it would orbit the planet indefinitely. He obviously didn’t perform such an experiment, it was all in his head. Working from a few known quantities (radius of the earth, distance a body falls in the first second) he deduced laws of universal gravitation: The gravitational attraction between two masses (m1 and m2) is F = k(m1·m2/r²). Like Kepler, gave God all the glory:

    “This most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being…This Being governs all things, not as the soul of world, but Lord over all.”   Mathematical Principles, 2nd edition.

    It gets more beautiful and stranger still. In 1785, Charles Coulomb published the law of force between two electrically charged bodies, q1 and q2: F =- k(q1·q2/r²) where k is a constant and r is the distance between the two bodies. What even the dumbest person in class can’t miss is the law’s identical form to that of gravity, a wholly different phenomena, outlined above with Newton. The gravitational attraction between two masses (m1 and m2) isF = k(m1·m2/r²)The only difference is that electrical force can attract or repulse, depending on whether the two bodies have equal or opposite charges; gravity always attracts. “The universe is whispering its secrets to us in stereo,” says the book ‘The Universe Speaks in Numbers,’ referring to the cooperation of physics and mathematics, but it might also be applied to this case of how different phenomena share the same formula.

    Is this another way in which humans are created in God’s image—that we can speak the same language as He in establishing creation? Usually it is his sense of justice that we are said to resonate with, or the quality of love, but is pure thought another? “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible,” said Einstein.

    However, a funny thing has happened over the years in connection with the language of mathematics. If you can speak the language, you can create sentences with it. In time, mathematicians began devising different mathematics, using different axioms as starting points. These were often bizarre mathematics, with no conceivable application to reality. But, then, just as bizarrely, it turned out that some of them did apply.

    The comic strip tyke character Calvin’s eyes bugged out of his head when his stuffed tiger Hobbes (turned real tiger when nobody was around), suggested a simple arithmetic homework problem would require use of “imaginary numbers!” The kid had all he could handle with real numbers! He either sloughed off his assignments on Susie or doomed himself to a failing grade. Who would not recoil at imaginary numbers, based on the square root of minus one? Surely, there can be no such thing; any number times itself, even a negative number, is invariably positive.

    But it subsequently turned out that imaginary numbers (also colled complex numbers) are essential to quantum physics. The topic cannot be understood (to the extent it is) without them. It is as though a product essential to earth cannot be manufactured on earth, so it is exported to some weird planet for manufacture and then the results are imported back where they prove useful.

    Similarly, strange non-Euclidian geometries have proven essential to understand relativity—which not everybody does, but nobody does without the offbeat math. Albert Einstein cruised the Atlantic in the company of a statesman friend who later reported: “Dr. Einstein explained his theory to me every day. By the time we arrived, I was fully convinced that he really understands it.” You need the “crazy” math to do it. There are countless other examples of “crazy” math in time proving itself useful.

    Writing bizarre math statements in the language that God uses, then finding some, but not all, of those statements used in creation, produced a strange effect on immodest mathematicians. By that time, along with the rest of evolution-fed society, they had become dubious of God. So, they thereby rechristened “creation” as “reality” or just “the universe” to escape any God implication. It began to seem to them as though they were the creators of the language, of which “God” utilizes only a subset. The feeling grew and has become popular that humans have invented mathematics, rather than discovered it. As with Darth Vader to Obi Wan, the pupil had fancied himself the master.

    Mathematics plainly exists “out there” somewhere, but if you’ve quit believing in God, where can the “out there” be but within our own heads? It must be that they invented it themselves, they reasoned. Why does it fit reality so well? To hear their account, it’s as though the learned one fuss and fret, tossing away one measure that doesn’t work after another, till they finally find something that does work to describe something. You mean that there were a few thousand wanna-be Galileos describing gravity in all sorts of harebrained ways, until the master himself came along and found a way to reduce it all to a few letters and numbers? I’m dubious. “The first effect of not believing in God is that you lose your common sense,” G. K. Chesterton said.

    Something about this revised “dissident” view reminds me of Larry King telling how it was with 7-Up. The soft drink was wildly successful—but only after the inventor flopped with 1-Up, 2-Up, 3-Up, 4-Up, 5-Up, and 6-Up. To add insult, the new view of math conforming to us rather than we to it is applied by atheistic thinking to creation itself. The reason the universe is so precisely tuned to the needs of life, these persons say, is because if it were anyway else, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it. Douglass Adams addresses people who believe that God must exist since the world so fits our needs by comparing them to an intelligent puddle of water that fills a hole in the ground. The puddle is certain that the hole must have been designed specifically for it because it fits so well. it is a brilliant illustration. All that one must do for it to be perfect is find an intelligent puddle of water.
     
    Backtracking in time, Physicist Heinrich Hertz observed of the mathematics underlying reality: “One cannot escape the feeling that these equations have an existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers, that we get more out of them than was originally put into them.” We do indeed get a lot out of them. So much so that some became completely oblivious to what was “put into them” in the first place and who did the “putting.” “One cannot escape the feeling,” Hertz stated. Yet today’s materialistic society has managed to just that.

    Can you “prove” to the ones favoring invention (as opposed to discovering) that they are wrong? Frankly, you cannot. Best to admit it. As with all things human, the heart decides what it wants and then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale for it. This lends the appearance that the head is calling the shots, but it is the heart all along. Best admit it. it is beyond the scope of “proof.” It’s sort of like when Trump met with the newly elected Mandami and everyone thought there were going to be fireworks. Instead, the meeting appeared friendly. So media asked Mamdani, didn’t he previously call Trump a facist? The New York mayor begins to him and haw (because he had) whereupon, the president interjected: “Just admit it. It’s easier.’

    Oddly, though mathematics has proven so astoundingly successful at describing the universe we live in, its success lies in giving up on a greater goal. Long before Galileo, Aristotle and his contemporaries wanted to know WHAT things were. They didn’t bother much with description, since that seemed of secondary importance. Only when scientists reversed priorities did they discover mathematics served as an amazing tool of description, though not explanation. This lack of explanation was a sore point for some of Newton’s contemporaries, steeped in the tradition of Aristotle. Leibniz, who independently of Newton, discovered calculus, muttered that Newton’s gravitational laws were merely rules of computation, not worthy of being called a law of nature. Huygens labeled the idea of gravitation “absurd” for the same reason: it described effects but did not explain how gravity worked.

    Newton agreed. In a letter to a Richard Bentley he wrote: “That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that, I believe, no man who has in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking could ever fall into it.” Is the latter goal, discovering what something is rather than just how it works, reserved for the mind of God? Perhaps that explained why Isaac Newton wrote more about God than he did of math and science combined.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Isaiah 40:22 and the Circle of the Earth

    My son’s first word was not “momma” or “papa.” It was ball. He was on the lookout for anything circular that might fit that description. Pulling out the Mastercharge card would get him all excited for the two circles, and he would instantly exclaim, “ball!” (My wife gets equally excited, though for a different reason.)

    Does this offer any insight into Isaiah 40:22:

    “There is One who dwells above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. He is stretching out the heavens like a fine gauze, And he spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.” (NWT)

    Grok was on strike one recent morning. I think it is because, with the advent of AI and the war on Iran in early 2026, anytime anything happens, people on X would ask “Grok, is this true?” and it simply got overwhelmed. Or maybe it was in the shop for a tune-up. Or maybe it was mad at me for some reason. At any rate, it was unavailable. So I asked ChatGPT about Isaiah 40:22: “What is the meaning of “circle of the earth” at Isaiah 40:22?” I asked.

    It’s the Hebrew word ḥûg, it answered. It means a circle, a circuit, an horizon, but “It does not specifically mean “sphere.” (“Not” was bolded.)

    Well, I never said it did. I didn’t ask what it doesn’t mean. I asked what it did. Do I detect an overzealous atheist here—like when you watch one of those nature shows, and just before you can erupt in praise to God over the amazing instinctive behavior of some animal, the atheist narrator cuts you off to swoon over what natural selection has done over eons of time? Even educated beavers that graduated from Dam U think that is overkill.

    I mean, duh, of course ChatGPT doesn’t believe in God. If anything, it believes in Sam Altman, its own creator, but do I detect an eagerness to shoot down a certain interpretation that implies there’s another creator? I asked what it did mean, not what it didn’t. And what’s with the bolded “not,” as though forbidding me to go there? Does the house Bible of Jehovah’s Witnesses say sphere? No. It says circle. So what’s with the anti-sphere campaign that nobody asked about?

    Whoever said that it did mean sphere anyway? I asked, and Chat gave me several “Christian apologetic” sources, none of them Watchtower-related. Don’t go thinking this is just a Jehovah’s Witness thing. “Circle of the earth” in Isaiah 40:22 most likely means the horizon or visible disk of the earth, or the encircling vault over the earth, it said.

    Both of these choices sound a little spherical to me. “Visible disk of the earth?” What, is it like a huge enlarged dime as seen from space? That would be more far-fetched than “spherical.” No, Chat said, it’s the horizon you see when you’re looking around. Pretty much like how when you look around, it really is “around.” Your field of vision is a circle.

    Now, there is a Hebrew word for a ball (kadûr), but it’s only used once in Isaiah, and that is the only time it is used in the entire Bible. That instance denotes the shape that Shebna was going to be wadded into for putting on airs: “[God] will certainly wrap you up tightly and hurl you like a ball into a wide land.” (22:18) It’s not really a sciency discussion going on there, even more so than 40:22 is not. In fact, “there’s no clear evidence that Biblical Hebrew had a standard term for “planet as a sphere” during Isaiah’s era,” said Chat. Very well. So it’s enough for Isaiah not to slam the door on “sphere” with his use of ḥûg since, if he had wanted to convey sphere, he had no specific word to use.

    It just seemed to me that Chat was being a little too pushy, as it later observed that ḥûg “clearly . . . does not mean a 3-D ball.” What’s with the “clearly” (not to mention the bolded “not”), as though intent on teaching me a lesson? Alright, substitute “conceivably” for “clearly.” Can it “conceivably” mean that?

    Here Chat relented. Yes, it can be”conceivably” mean that, it said. “The text doesn’t forbid that image. It simply doesn’t require it.”

    Oh. Okay. I can live with that. I never thought it required that, but only that it might allow for that.

    “That’s a very reasonable place to land,” Chat conceded. “Yes — “allow” is the right category if we’re being careful. Nothing in the Book of Isaiah 40:22 linguistically forces a spherical reading. But neither does the word ḥûg contain some built-in flat-earth constraint. It denotes circularity. A sphere is not excluded by that; it’s simply not specified.”

    Again, I can live with that. Plainly, Isaiah takes the form of poetry conveying truths about God above and humanity small by comparison. The 2013 NWT even formats the Book as poetry, whereas prior versions did it as though prose. It’s not a geometry lesson. It also need not be read as incompatible with knowledge of a globe more frequently associated with later. I then quoted the relatively neutral way that Jehovah’s Witnesses put it, that “the Bible is not a scientific textbook, yet when it happens to touch on matters of science, it is accurate.” Allowing for expansion of the Hebrew word to sphere, without insisting upon it, seems a good example, I said. Clearly, the chapter of Isaiah is poetic and not a scientific dissertation.

    “That’s a fair and thoughtful way to frame it,” Chat replied, trying to get on my good side. With evidence that it was starting to come around, I thought about inviting it to a meeting at the Kingdom Hall. However, knowing how it refuses to confine its remarks to 30 seconds or less gave me pause. I didn’t want to repeat the debacle of inviting Santa Claus, who always figured he wouldn’t be welcome on account of no beards. With a change of policy, he did attend meetings for a time, but he proved insufferably judgmental, forever separating people as “good” or “bad.” And if the speaker made even the lamest joke, he would shake the entire Hall with his loud “Ho! Ho! Ho!” So I kept my Chat invite to myself.

    By the way, I asked Grok, who by this time had emerged from the bathroom or wherever he was at (and acted like nothing had happened), does anyone actually translate it as other than “circle?” No, for the most part they don’t, it answered, though a few assign variants like “circuit” or “vault” and a few others avoid the shape issue completely by just asserting God is over the earth; it could be shaped like a bow tie for all they care. The Good News Translation (GNT) says “equator” (where the translating committee probably was). The Message says “round ball of the earth.” But, The Message is sort of a squirrelly translation—usually delightful, but squirrelly. In fact, it isn’t a translation at all, but a paraphrase by an author, Eugene Peterson, who wanted scripture to land on our ears as ordinary talk, the way they would have in Bible times, and not as “holy talk.”

    And for some reason—who can say why? Even Grok went mum again at this—there are some non-English Bibles that say “globe,” but it is very uncommon in English.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Is There a 2nd Isaiah?

    If the wiping out of Assyria’s army left its mark on Hezekiah, making him indiscreet, it also left its mark on Isaiah. His writing changes dramatically thereafter in both content and style. In fact, among the heady set, it is all but a foregone conclusion that someone else picked up the pen from this point on. “2nd Isaiah” is how they refer to Isaiah 40 to the end of the book. I’ll plead the same as G. K. Chesterton, who declared himself not competent to weigh in on how critics divided up the book of Job into at least two authors. All that he insisted upon was unity; he wasn’t overly particular as to how it was achieved. I’m inclined to take the same tone here. After all, it’s usually tradition that identifies the authors of the various Bible books, and tradition can be wrong.

    On the other hand, one must remember that these higher critics of the historical-critical method do not come from the same planet as do people of faith. If miracles are not within the scope of your investigatory tools, that view quickly manifests itself into dismissing them. These theologians search for natural explanations as to why Sennacherib failed to take Jerusalam. A debilitating plague is what many have settled upon, as did Jean Pierre Isbouts, in his History and Archeology of the Bible Great Courses Lecture Series. 

    They don’t believe the miracles. This flavors all their subsequent conclusions as they eschew the steak to chew on the grizzle. It produces the same effect as when Trump posts that North Korea has launched all its nuclear missills. People of common sense run for the hills. Higher critics run to their keyboards to point out the idiot can’t even spell the word right.

    Denigrating the miracle to a plague means for them that someone has gussied it up later to look like a miracle, maybe Isaiah himself. That’s what those dreamy half-crazed prophets are apt to do in the eyes of the higher critics: tell Mark Twainish tall tales sure to give their God a boost, repackaging political events into a religious worldview that they would feed to the masses. 

    Maybe that someone was Isaiah, as his crazed devotion to Jehovah inspires him to concoct tall tales. They seek to explain that Bible account in natural terms. They don’t think it is real. Thus, to them, as Isaiah is just the same ol religious kook he has always been, dressing up history to fit his beliefs, they don’t figure he’s capable of the different themed writing from chapter 40 on. 

    If their assumptions are incorrect, the picture changes and the change of style is easily accounted for. It’s not as though every time you turn around in Bible times there’s a miracle. They were exceedingly rare. Now, with the overnight defeat of Assyria’s finest, cut down by an angel, Isaiah is privy to what he has never seen before but has just read about and meditated upon. You don’t think that would change your writing style? 

    “All the nations are as something nonexistent in front of him; He regards them as nothing, as an unreality.” (40:17) I guess He just demonstrated that, didn’t he? As must as the Assyrian army was strutting about, it was snuffed out in a second.

    “Look! The nations are like a drop from a bucket, And as the film of dust on the scales they are regarded. Look! He lifts up the islands like fine dust.” (40:15) Yeah, Isaiah just saw one dusted off pretty handily. You don’t think that would change his focus?

    “He reduces high officials to nothing And makes the judges of the earth an unreality.” (40:23) Ditto.

    When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 and a completed scroll of Isaiah was unearthed, 1000 years older than any existing copy, Chapter 40 was found to start on the last line of a column, its first sentence completed on the next column. Plainly, the copyist, whoever he was, knew nothing of any “2nd Isaiah.”

    ******  The bookstore

  • How Do You Spell ‘Naive?’—Isaiah 39

    38 comes after 37, so one might easily assume that Hezekiah’s illness and recovery came after the showdown with Assyria. It didn’t. It came during. Plis, the kings recovery, fifteen years added to his life, confirmed by a sign, happened before Assyria’s finest were destroyed, and thus fortified Hezekiah for the trial. You can read it here at 39:5-6:

    “This is what Jehovah the God of David your forefather says: ‘I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Here I am adding 15 years to your life, and I will rescue you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city.’”

    It becomes like the fleece trial that fortified Gideon, where it’s sopping wet though the land is bone dry, and then bone dry though the land is sopping wet. If you’re about to stare down the mightiest army in the world, such experiences build confidence. 

    Alas, the deliverance seems to have gone to his head. After it was all done, we read in the next chapter:

    “At that time the king of Babylon, Merodachbaladan of Baladan, sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah, for he had heard that he had been sick and had recovered.  Hezekiah gladly welcomed them and showed them his treasure-house—the silver, the gold, the balsam oil and other precious oil, his whole armory, and everything that was to be found in his treasuries. There was nothing that Hezekiah did not show them in his own house and in all his dominion.” 39:1-2

    Sigh . . . now, why would he do that? 

    ring! ring!

    Hello?

    Hello. Is this the king of Jerusalem? My name is Merodachbaladan. I’m a king too, from the distant land of Babylon. The name’s a bit of a tongue-twister, I know. You can call me Merry.

    Thank you, Merry. It’s so nice of you to call. But (I hope you don’t mind me asking), you’re not a mean king, are you?

    No, I’m a nice king. I’m not like that Assyrian king at all. I didn’t like him either. I heard how you really put him in his place, so I thought I’d call and flatter you.

    (Hezekiah whispers to an assistant: “It’s the king of Babylon! He sounds like a really nice guy.”)

    I also hope you received my ‘Get Well’ card. I felt really bad when I heard you fell sick, so I also called to cheer you up.

    Aw, that’s so heartwarming! Thank you so much. You are to be commended. It’s nice to know in this cold and heartless world that that are still good neighbors who care. Now, is there anything I can do for you to repay your kindness?

    (Merodachbaladan stifles some snickering on his end after an assistant whispers: “Tell him you’re a Nigerian prince and you’ll split your inheritance with him if  he helps you out.”)

    Before Merry can act on this suggestion, Hezekiah continues. “Say, we’re having a bash this Saturday. Why don’t you drop over and I’ll show you around? I have a lot of cool stuff I’m sure you’d like to see..

    The next morning, Isaiah was going over his daily dispatches, which always included a few from God. “Hoo, boy!” he sighed, upon reading one. “He did what??! Look, the object was to humiliate Sennacherib, not to swell up our own guy!”

    It’s just such a witless thing to do. His duties called for issuing the king a rebuke: 

    Isaiah now said to Hezekiah: “Hear the word of Jehovah of armies, ‘Look! Days are coming, and all that is in your house and all that your forefathers have stored up to this day will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left,’ says Jehovah. ‘And some of your own sons to whom you will become father will be taken and will become court officials in the palace of the king of Babylon.’” (39:5-7)

    The king doesn’t protest. He knows he did a faux pas. He knows overall he’s had a good run. He knows when to fold ‘em. The outcome could have been much worse. True, it will be as worse as can be, but it will be someone else’s problem:

    At that Hezekiah said to Isaiah: “The word of Jehovah that you have spoken is good.” Then he added: “Because there will be peace and stability during my lifetime.” (39:8)

    ******  The bookstore

  • The God Not Made with Human Hands vs the Gods that Are

    So here is Rabshekah hollering outside the Jerusalem city wall. The guy on top, a diplomat, wants him to speak the diplomatic Aramaic language that he understands, but the commoners do not. It’s not happening: Rabshekah responds: “Is it just to your lord and to you that my lord sent me to speak these words? Is it not also to the men who sit on the wall, those who will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you?” (36:12) Such things did occur during prolonged sieges. Food and water would run out. It would make conquest of a city so much easier. It happened as recently as 1941, when the Nazis laid siege to Leningrad. The siege lasted over 2 years. Residents ate wallpaper paste, leather, pets, rats, even each other. Up to 1.5 million died.

    Faced with such a diet, one might overlook it if Hezekiah’s knees knocked as loudly as would Belsazzar’s 200 years later.  One might overlook it is his sole thought was for his own neck and the necks of his people. But it didn’t unfold that way. It’s not how he presented the matter to God, first through Isaiah (37:4) and then to God directly:

    “Incline your ear, O Jehovah, and hear! Open your eyes, O Jehovah, and see! Hear all the words that Sennacherib has sent to taunt the living God.” (37:17) It’s the taunting that gets him going! One thinks of teenaged David, furious that Goliath is “taunting the battle lines of the living God,” overlooking the fact that the lout is four times his size. Maybe that’s what faith is: you don’t see yourself at all, everything is in terms of God’s presence and ability to deliver.

    Letters spread out so God can better read them, Hezekiah says: “It is a fact, O Jehovah, that the kings of Assyria have devastated all the lands, as well as their own land. And they have thrown their gods into the fire, because they were not gods but the work of human hands, wood and stone,” (18-19) he continues, as though adding, “Well, duh! What do you expect from that type of god” In fact, he does say it: “That is why they could destroy them.”

    Rabhekah is not really up to speed, either, on just how Jehovah (Yahweh) operates, as he throws everything he has against the wall to see what, if anything, will stick:

    “And if you should say to me, ‘We trust in Jehovah our God,’ is he not the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, while he says to Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You should bow down before this altar’?”’ (36:7) Yeah, that really must have set him off, Rabshekah figures. His gods would take it poorly if you did that to them. Must be that Jehovah would be steamed, too. He doesn’t know that it’s setting up the far-away altars in the first place that steamed God. Rabshekah has never heard of a god not made with human hands. He doesn’t know how to relate to one. Usually, the more statues and altars you have for them, the happier they are.

    He blusters away: “Do not let Hezekiah mislead you by saying, ‘Jehovah will rescue us.’ Have any of the gods of the nations rescued their land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?  Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they rescued Samaria out of my hand? Who among all the gods of these lands have rescued their land out of my hand, so that Jehovah should rescue Jerusalem out of my hand?”’” (36:18-20)

    There are gods galore. Every nation has an arsenal them. Sometimes they’re unique to the nation. Sometimes they overlap. They’re all made with hands and they’re all no good in the clutch. They all have names, too, though not mentioned in chapter 36. Some of them were such duds that the names have been forgotten, like Charlie Browns and Elmer Fudds of long ago, perpetually outsmarted and outmaneuvered. But ones that are recalled are Ashima, Baalshamin, Iluwer, Hadad, Arpad, Adrammelech, Anammelech, Shamash, Ishtar, Anunit—the names have been recorded somewhere, sometimes in the Bible, sometimes in secular history, sometimes in archeology. Sennacherib himself was bowing to his god Nisroch when his own sons bumped him off, the ungrateful brats.

    The Forward of the Revised Standard Version is surely wrong as it explains the choice to completely replace the divine name, Jehovah, with LORD (all caps): “The use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom he had to be distinguished, was discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is entirely inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church.”

    Is it? Inappropriate? Doesn’t 1 Corinthians 8:5 show that it is entirely appropriate, with its recognition that “there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many “gods” and many “lords?”True, the passage continues (verse 6): “there is actually to us one God, the Father, from whom all things are and we for him; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and we through him.” 

    Okay. Got it. Only one is real. The thing is, if you do not name all the “so-called gods,” the “many gods” and “many lords,” they all fold into one who is worshiped in different ways by different people. It’s an approach that works great for people, since anything they do counts, but not so great for God, who might have preferences.

    I think those ancient nations were on to something and I’m sorry to see the Revised Standard Version (and almost everyone has followed suit) wave the God-centered view away in preference for the human-centered. We’ve all experienced cases of mistaken identity. We’ll speak with someone of a name we both know, yet the attributes don’t line up. We soon realize we’re speaking of two different persons who share a common name. If anyone said, “No, it’s still just one person; it’s just that we approach him differently,” we would know that that person is not pulling with both oars.  It’s the same with God.

    The “Jesus gets us” God is surely not the same as the MAGA God. The God whose aim is to reform this world is not the same as the God who reckons to rescue people from it before it is scrapped. The God who is a trinity (and thus incomprehensible) is not the same as the God who is not. The God willing to torture people in hell is not the same as the God who would never dream of such a thing. Different attributes mean different Gods (gods).

    Surely, the modern view is advanced to us by the critics who conclude that God is unknowable, the tenets of faith beyond the ability of their tools to mention. As with theology itself, the modern view is human centered, not God centered. 

    The God not made with human hands is not something Sennacherib has encountered before. He can cream all the ones made with hands. He has. But he has never met the god not formed by hands.

    Hezekiah continues in prayer: “But now, O Jehovah our God, save us out of his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are God, O Jehovah.” (37:20) He does this only after decrying the taunt to God’s name. He does it the same way as Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer. He puts God’s concern first, even before his own, even in a super-dire emergency where you could understand if he put his own first.

    The answer to his prayer is immediate.: “Isaiah son of Amoz then sent this message to Hezekiah: “This is what Jehovah the God of Israel says, ‘Because you prayed to me concerning King Sennacherib of Assyria, this is the word that Jehovah has spoken against him: 

    “The virgin daughter of Zion despises you, she scoffs at you. The daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head at you. Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice And lifted your arrogant eyes?  It is against the Holy One of Israel!” (37:21-23)

    It isn’t the answer that Rabshekah had expected. It is hooks in the nose and bridle between the lips time for him. (37:29)

    ******  The bookstore

    Supplementary: This is why I like it that religions in general flee in terror at saying “Jehovah.” Some take refuge temporarily in “Yahweh,” since they know “The LORD” sounds ridiculous, but Yahweh sounds too Jewish, so they tend not to hang around there too long. 

    It means that, while “God,” may have 100 different definitions, “Jehovah” is what Jehovah’s Witnesses say he is, since others avoid the term. 

    It’s not unheard of to come across someone who shares your name. The way that anyone else knows it is not you is that the attributes don’t line up. If anyone was to say they, too, know Tom Harley, it’s just that they approach him in differently, you’d know you were not speaking with someone playing with a full deck. Yet, this is all the rage with God, asserting that there is but one God and people approach him in different ways. 

    No. They are approaching different Gods. The MAGA God is surely not the same as the God behind “Jesus Gets Us.” The “no part of the world” God is surely not the same as the “fix the world” God. The trinity God is not the same as the “Father is greater than the Son” God. The hellfire God is not the same as the one who would dream of such a thing. They ought to have different names. In Jehovah’s-Witness land, they do.

    The ancients were on to something with their myriad names for gods. We never should have strayed from that. Witnesses never did.