Category: Isaiah

Rabshekah makes an excellent tool illustrating the governmental game of “man dominating man to his harm.” He is the consummate politician, here blustering, there promising wonderful things, then threatening, saying whatever he must to get his way, unworried that he contradicts himself. (“The Rabshekah,” some translations say, for it is a title, not a name.) Menacing Jerusalem outside the city walls, he blusters that he has full authority from God:

“Now is it without authorization from Jehovah that I have come up against this land to destroy it? Jehovah himself said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’” (36:10)

But then, apparently indicating that he doesn’t, he boasts that Jehovah can’t stop him anyway: “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?” (36:20)

A few grandiose promises follow: “Make peace with me and surrender, and each of you will eat from his own vine and from his own fig tree and will drink the water of his own cistern, until I come and take you to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. (36:16-17) What a liar! Everyone knew how Assyria treated those they overran.

Then there is some trash-talking of Hezekiah the king, challenging him directly: “What is the basis for your confidence? You are saying, ‘I have a strategy and the power to wage war,’ but these are empty words.” (36:4-5)

—then seeking to undermine him: “This is what the king says, ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he is not able to rescue you. And do not let Hezekiah cause you to trust in Jehovah by saying: “Jehovah will surely rescue us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” (36:14-15)

Not to be too crude here, but he literally tells them to eat sh*t—or, close enough: “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)

He gets the politics wrong: “Look! You trust in the support of this crushed reed, Egypt, which if a man should lean on it would enter into his palm and pierce it.” (36:6) Did he? When push came to shove, he appealed to Jehovah through Isaiah; he didn’t whistle to Egypt at all. It may be his papa Ahaz that Rabshekah is thinking of, who disdained Jehovah and couldn’t kiss up to the neighboring king (in this case, Assyria itself) fast enough.

Nonetheless, the higher critics assume he did appeal to Egypt. There’s no real evidence that he did; it probably just reflects the critics’ own view that life revolves around politics and a nation’s survival of the fittest instincts to dominate other nations, in which everyone must pick a side—how can one pick God as a side? “Yeah, well, he never denied it, did he?” they might mutter. He didn’t confirm or deny anything, but told all the people to zip it:

“But they kept silent and did not say a word to him in reply, for the order of the king was, “You must not answer him.” (36:21) Often, that’s the best way to deal with a blowhard. “Don’t feed the troll,” is how it might be put in modern times.

Then those critics will point to Isaiah’ chapters 30 and 31, where he says turning to Egypt would a bad idea, ignoring any possibility that Hezekiah might have taken such warnings to heart. Maybe some of his court pushed that way; it’s possible. But chapter 37 shows where Hezekiah looks for salvation. It is to Jehovah, not to Egypt.

He is practical, though. Don’t think he was not. Early on, he tried to buy his way out:

“I am at fault,” he said. “Withdraw from against me, and I will give whatever you may impose on me.” The king of Assyria imposed on King Hezekiah of Judah a fine of 300 silver talents and 30 gold talents.” (2 Kings 18:14) Not that it did him any good. The Assyrian king gobbled up all that gold and then still pressed for conquest. It’s another reason that one might not trust Rabshekah’s promises.

Sennacherib’s own recorded annals reverses the order. “As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke. . . . I made [him] 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.” (British Museum Prism)

Oh, sure! He conquers city after city, but Hezekiah he lets off with just a heavy fine? Not likely! This inverted order of events “looks like a screen to cover up something which he does not wish to mention,” states Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Bible Dictionary of 1936. (p 829) I wonder what that could be.

Save us from grandstanding politicians with their air of entitlement, the ultimate “King of the Mountain” players, the choice enablers of man dominating man to his harm. They finally hanged that politician that everyone thought should be hanged. “Any last words?” they asked him on the scaffold. “This is unacceptable!” he declared, as the trap door dropped open and the rope snapped taut. It’s probably what Sennacherib and Rabshekah said as the rope snapped taut on them and all their chums.

******  The bookstore

Begin consideration of Isaiah 37, not with the most exciting verse, but with the dullest—unless you are a text nerd. Hezekiah spreads out Rabshekah’s threatening letters face-up before Jehovah—as though only with them neatly laid out could he read them (or does it just indicate how real God is to the king?) He points out that the invader king means business and that it’s not for nothing that he’s worried:

“It is a fact, O Jehovah, that the kings of Assyria have devastated all the lands, as well as their own land,” he updates God. (Isaiah 37:18–NWT)

This reads a little clunky. As they devastate other lands, they also devastate their own?  And even if they are, why would Hezekiah care? It doesn’t quite square with the verse that follows:

“And they have thrown their gods into the fire, because they were not gods but the work of human hands, wood and stone. That is why they could destroy them.” (37:19)

Friend or foe, they all have gods of “wood and stone.” They all have gods that are the “work of human hands.” But it’s not as though Assyria is going to be destroying its own “house” gods. It will be boasting about those.

Furthermore, other translations sidestep the awkwardness entirely. Such as the NIV: “It is true, Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste all these peoples and their lands.” Yeah. No concern about Assyria’s own land here. Is it likely that Hezekiah’s going to be shedding tears about Rabshekah’s homeland? So why translate the verse as though he were?

It’s because the source Masoretic text (MT) makes the distinction. The Masoretic Hebrew text reads that “the kings of Assyria have devastated [or destroyed] all the lands [or countries] and their land.” There is the conjunction “and” in the MT. It’s two lands the verse speaks of, that of the conquered nations and that of the conquering nation, Assyria.

Some translations preserve this “and” and some don’t.

The NWT preserves it, even adding “own” to the second “land,” God only knows for what reason. Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) preserves it: “Truly, O Jehovah, kings of Asshur have laid waste all the lands and their land.” So does the American Standard Version: “Of a truth, Jehovah, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries, and their land.”  

But others, like the above NIV, sort of mash both “lands” together, as though only the conquered nations suffer, as though it is easy coasting for the conqueror:

“Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands.” (ESV) The “lands” are those of the conquered “nations.”

“Truly, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries and their lands.” (NASB) The “lands” are those of the conquered “countries.”

In their support, the parallel Masoretic Hebrew account at 2 Kings 19:17 simply reads “the nations and their lands”—who cares about Assyria? If they bring any damage upon themselves, it serves them right! It almost seems this would be Hezekiah’s view, too, as he is caught in the Assyrian crosshairs.

But maybe it is not God’s view, who sees the big picture. Nations wage war, in the same “King of the Mountain” manner they have done since Adam, and they harm their own people as they do those of their adversary. Empire-building to conquer the neighbors devastates the home turf, shaking everyone down to finance aggression, scooping up warriors who would rather be living with the wife and kids back home (to say nothing of what the wife and kids would prefer). After all, it is not the governments that God cares about, but the peoples they dominate. “All of this I have seen,” Solomon says, “and I applied my heart to every work that has been done under the sun, during the time that man has dominated man to his harm.” (Ecclesiastes 8:9) Sure enough, the tyrant also “destroy[s] its own land, and kills its own people, says Isaiah 14:20.

Nonetheless, the easy-peasy Bibles smooth it all out, the way 2 Kings 19:17 does, and just think of the conquered lands.

******  The bookstore

If the ones who demanded signs of Jesus, and who couldn’t understand what the children could, and who sneered at Isaiah’s words as “Da, da, da, da, blah, blah, blah, blah,” (Isaiah 28:10–Message version) were of a wicked and adulterous generation, just how wicked and adulterous were they? Adulterous is as adulterous does—plenty of the literal adultery going around, most likely, but sometimes the scriptures themselves assign a broader meaning to the word. It is not us suggesting the broader meaning; it is the scriptures themselves. 

Such as here: “Adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world is making himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4) Even though the ones James writes to are primarily men, they are “adulteresses” if they have “friendship with the world.” They are supposed to be faithful to God and his arrangements for ruling humankind, though the kingdom of the Lord’s Prayer. They are instead “adulteresses,” snuggling up to human governments for ruling humankind. The “world is passing away and all of its desires,” says John 2:17. That’s why they shouldn’t be friends with it. 

To be sure, God loved “the world” so much that he sent his only-begotten son into it, that some might be redeemed. (John 3:16) These are foreshadowed by the “remnant” who would be responsive to Isaiah, whereas the main body of “priests and prophets” and those following them would not. But in the end, only a relative few responded: “The true light [Jesus] that gives light to every sort of man was about to come into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into existence through him, but the world did not know him.” (John 1:9-10) The world is still slated to pass away.

“He came to his own home, but his own people did not accept him. However, to all who did receive him, he gave authority to become God’s children, because they were exercising faith in his name.” (John 1:11-12) Whereas, the world in general is still slated to pass away. That’s why you shouldn’t be friends with it.

However, theologians trained in the historical-critical method are, almost by definition, friends of the world. The only religious model their tools equip them to measure are the EFFECTS of religious faith upon a person. The TENETS of that faith are outside their purview. They have no way of knowing whether the world is slated for destruction or not. They can only (supposedly) measure the effects of believing that it is. Therefore, with the meat of God’s word forever outside their grasp, they diligently chew upon the grizzle. It’s an approach that all but guarantees one will miss the forest for the trees. Their default model becomes how to fix the world, to make it a better place. This effectively makes them its friend, the exact opposite of what scripture requires. 

When the wrecking ball is swinging, you really ought not be inside making renovations. When the Titanic is sinking (we’ve all heard it), you really ought not be rearranging the deck chairs.

Other words are also expanded in scripture for metaphorical use. They need not always be taken as literal. Such as the “vomit” from religious leaders (priests and prophets—Isaiah 28:8) that covers the tables so that “there is no place without it.” Puking all over the table is pretty gross but, as we have seen, that could happen when people of decadence reclined at the table to gorge themselves with food and drink. We have seen past religious leaders become decadent so, yes, a literal application is certainly possible. But something tells me a spiritual application fits the bill better. I mean, I can’t recall the last time I saw a religious leader puking all over the table. But I have seen them serving up what amounts to puke.

For example, Peter likens Christians of the first century  “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for special possession, that you should declare abroad the excellencies” of the One who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (2 Peter 2:9) They were [next verse] “once not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not been shown mercy, but now you have received mercy.” Not all remained, however. Some returned to where they came. Peter applies the v-word to them: ‘What the true proverb says has happened to them: ‘The dog has returned to its own vomit, and the sow that was bathed to rolling in the mire.’” (2 Peter 2:22) They’d made a lot of moral changes, given up on a lot of false dogmas to enter a relationship with God and Christ. They returned to them. It was like a dog returning to its own vomit. If you’ve ever seen a dog to that, even your beloved pet Samson—not the Samson who pushes the pillars apart, but the one who pees on them—it grosses you out. 

Then there was the quality of being lukewarm that Jesus likened to vomit. “Because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth,” Jesus rebuked the Laodiceans. (Revelation 3:16) He suggested what our common sense would suggest. Much of the problem that resulted in a constant hedging of bets, stemmed from being “friends of the word” with excessive concern over comfort in the here and now. He continued: “Because you say, ‘I am rich and have acquired riches and do not need anything at all,’ but you do not know that you are miserable and pitiful and poor and blind and naked,” he advised them to get their act together spiritually.

Finally, we must not forget my own fictional character Vic Vomodog—originally Vomidog, but I modified it after someone found it disgusting. Vic and I used to pull together in the work! We were best buds. However, after he went south on us, he got to the point of walking into hospital emergency rooms, pulling up his sleeve, and saying “Fill ‘er up!” just to show Jehovah’s Witnesses what he thought of them! I wrote him up a lot in my first book, ‘Tom Irregardless and Me,’ where he presents as sort of a perpetually scheming, yet perennially thwarted Wily E. Coyote,

******  The bookstore

“When they have their music on, you can’t touch em.” Mattie would say that about Pentecostals she’d meet in her ministry.

What are other scenarios where “you can’t touch em?” How about, ‘When they’re roaring drunk?’ Isaiah had no success with that bunch. They were a sorry lot, and it was not the common people spoken of. It is the religious leaders:

“And these also go astray because of wine; Their alcoholic beverages make them stagger.  Priest and prophet go astray because of alcohol; The wine confuses them, And they stagger from their alcohol; Their vision makes them go astray, And they stumble in judgment.” (28:7)

It’s pretty bad drunk, too, to the point where “their tables are full of filthy vomit —There is no place without it.” (vs 8) That’s hard to picture today when, if you must puke due to drunkenness, it’s not all over the table. Rarely does one lose the instinct to wretch on the ground. But, recall the eating style back then, when people “reclined at the table.” Low to the ground feasting they were, food and drink to the limit, till it just exploded and covered everything!

Isaiah’s warning to the elites of the 10-tribes “drunkards of Ephahim” of 28:1, including if not especially their priests and prophets, a group in danger of losing their “crown,” and who did lose it to the invading Assyrians? That group imagined themselves having made a “covenant with Death” (vs 18) as though to protect them from the unpleasant experience, just as music would protect the Pentecostals. His message to them was straightforward, in line with what he usually prophesied: 

“Look! Jehovah has someone strong and mighty. Like a thundering hailstorm, a destructive windstorm, Like a thunderstorm of powerful floodwaters, He will forcefully hurl it down to the earth. The showy crowns of the drunkards of Eʹphra·im Will be trampled underfoot. And the fading flower of its glorious beauty, Which is on the head of the fertile valley, Will become like the early fig before summer.  When someone sees it, he swallows it as soon as it is in his hand.” (2-4)

And with regard to a remnant who would be responsive: “In that day Jehovah of armies will become a glorious crown and a beautiful garland to those left of his people. And he will become a spirit of justice to the one who sits in judgment and a source of mightiness to those who repel the attack at the gate.”

What would be the response of those drunken priests and house prophets to that? They mocked him! ‘What! Do you think you’re talking to babies?’ they sneered. Their response was:

“To whom will one impart knowledge, And to whom will one explain the message?  To those who have just been weaned from milk, those just taken away from the breasts?  For it is “command after command, command after command, Line by line, line by line, A little here, a little there.” (9-10) Be obedient? Trust in God? Far too simplistic for sophisticated adults as themselves.

One picks it up better in the original Hebrew, where vs 10 is: “ṣaw lāṣāw ṣaw lāṣāw, qaw lāqāw qaw lāqāw, zěʿîr šām zěʿîr šām.” It’s like repetitive baby talk, nonsense syllables, mocking Isaiah’s style. Less childish, a bit more nuanced is what the learned ones would prefer. More sophistication, if you please.

Some translations (NIV, NLT, ESV. NET, CSB) put those mocking words in quotes, so that no one mistakes them for Isaiah’s own words. Doing this helps make the passage coherent. Others do not (KJV, RSV, RSV). NABRE and NWT formats and, via footnotes, explains it as quoted ridicule. The Message Version, going where no translation goes, (because it is not a translation, but a paraphrase), nails the ridicule with: “Da, da, da, da, blah, blah, blah, blah…”

Jehovah is not putting up with this at all. You want to make yourself dense? It’s not on him. Therefore, “da, da, da, da, blah, blah, blah, blah” is what it will have to be for them. Anyone else knows what he’s talking about. He’s not changing it.

As verse 13 says: “So to them the word of Jehovah will be: “Command after command, command after command, Line by line, line by line, A little here, a little there,”  So that when they walk, They will stumble and fall backward And be broken and ensnared and caught.” They won’t have a clue.

Why am I reminded of Jesus’ words that the wise and intellectual do not get the sense of it, but the children do? (Matthew 11:25) What is it with this continual demand for more sophistication and nuance? Isn’t it because unless you do that, you are left to explain why you are not heeding the straightforward words? If you don’t want to do what’s required, you will prefer a more “enlightened” interpretation. You will go for a higher meaning. Barring that, you’ll demand an added “sign” to prove that that the more straightforward words are indeed true. However, Jesus said: “A wicked and adulterous generation keeps seeking a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” And after that, “he went away, leaving them behind.” (Matthew 16:4) So did Jehovah, speaking through Isaiah; he went away, leaving them behind. The problem wasn’t the lack of signs or of simplicity. The problem was that they were a “wicked and adulterous generation.”

******  The bookstore

“For when there are judgments from you for the earth, The inhabitants of the land learn about righteousness.” (Isaiah 26:9)

This is a very helpful verse to get our heads around John 5:28-29, which doesn’t make a lot of sense otherwise:

Says Jesus: “The hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, and those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment.”

Those who did good things arriving at a “resurrection of life” is a slam-dunk. It takes no imagination at all. Not so with “those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment.” What’s that all about? You’re going to raise them up from the dead just to pronounce them guilty? Who would do such a crazy thing?

Not Jehovah, it would appear. 26:9 says what he will do. There will be “judgments from [him] for the earth, [and] the inhabitants of the land learn about righteousness.” (Isaiah 26:9) They will. Maybe not all of them. The very next verse of Isaiah (26:10) convinces us that we are on the right track: 

“Even if the wicked is shown favor, He will not learn righteousness.  Even in the land of uprightness he will act wickedly.” 

Yeah, what if they “practiced vile things” not through ignorance but because they are wicked through and through? If they really are wicked, a second chance won’t help. But it’s not really a second chance. Most of them never had a first chance. They lived at a time when knowledge of God was so distorted as to not even count as a first chance. Their second chance is really their first. And if they blow through it as though it is nothing—something much easier to do in this compromised world, so that it’s good not to get into the habit of judging—but if they do it when “there are judgments from [Jehovah] for the earth” and they should be “learn[ing] about righteousness,” then they find themselves enmeshed in the last verse of the chapter:

“For look! Jehovah is coming from his place To call the inhabitants of the land to account for their error, And the land will expose her bloodshed And will no longer cover over her slain.” (26:21)

It’s only God’s standards that work. Everything else results in the mess of the world presently seen. When the doomed experiment of human self-rule at last comes to its deserved conclusion, and there might be little interval of hiding out in the interior rooms, just like 26:20 says, then at last is realized the 24-27 “Isaianic apocalypse.”

“Go, my people, enter your inner rooms, And shut your doors behind you. Hide yourself for a brief moment Until the wrath has passed by.” (26:20) It’s sort of like that Lord’s Prayer verse: “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” If you want to be delivered from evil, don’t make a beeline to where it hangs out.

******  The bookstore

William R Millar, the author of ‘Isaiah 24-27 and the Origin of Apocalyptic’ (1979) argues, not for the first time, but he puts major flesh on the bones, that those four chapters are those of the prophet, or whoever wrote as though the prophet, attempting to rustle up a little “proto-apocalyptic” stew in the kitchen. Chefs of later centuries, such as Daniel and John, would enhance the recipe more fully. His book, in effect, applies the theory of evolution, always a fact, to them, to biblical development. In this case, it is how prophetic writings evolved to eventually include apocalyptic writings. Isaiah 24-27 is a missing link; well, not so much “missing,” because there it is, but a connecting link. It is the land animal that became a porpoise on its way to becoming a man. 

He also includes a detailed study of the books’ poetic form. This point was made, too, at the Witnesses mid-week meeting—that the chapters are poetic. Whereas previous editions of the New World Translation presented them as prose, the 2013 revision took to presenting them in verse fashion. You never quite know what “gem” the second portion of that meeting will present for discussion. It is seldom the most monumental topic, but that is likely because it exists to get the ball rolling. The first “gem” is fixed and specific. The second “gem” is wide open to the congregation. What gems did they notice and want to talk about. 

A gem I could have offered, but didn’t because it really wouldn’t have been a gem, is that if much of the book is poetic, not all of it is, or if it is, it becomes downright clunky in parts. Take, for example, 24:16, in the King James Bible:

“The treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously; yea, the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously.”

Four treacherouses! it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? Try to say it fast ten times. Twenty-six English translations displayed at Biblegateway*com all include the four, so it’s clearly well-based and not going anywhere. Still, you’d think that someone would try to clean them up a little.

Yikes! Although the 2013 New World Translation often does simplify, in this case they’ve thrown in a firth treacherous! “Woe to me! The treacherous have acted treacherously; With treachery the treacherous have acted treacherously.” Yeah. Woe to me, too. You get the impression that it’s more precise to the original Hebrew—I mean, “very treacherous” is probably the treacherous acting treacherously with treacherousness—but a little easing up on the precision might be just the thing, here. Ah, well, there is nothing for it except to exclaim at whatever presents that it is exactly the right food needed at exactly the right time. Five may be more accurate but, it’s sort of like Pharaoh told his magic-practicing priests after they duplicated a few of the early plagues: “So! Moses is not so clever after all, is he! But we don’t know MORE frogs.” Get rid of these things. (Hop to it!)

This is why, though I usually just stick with the NWT as my house Bible, there is value in monitoring them all. Here, AI makes a pretty good research assistant, too. When one Bible differs from another, and you don’t quite know why, simply run the question past AI. Ask it neutrally. Don’t try to prejudice it. Don’t say, for example, if you don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses: “Why is the New World Translation lying as usual in translating this verse?” No. Just ask it to account for the differences. You’ll find it makes a pretty good pocket theologian and you’ll learn a lot of the choices and challenges facing translators. Of course, AI does not believe in God, but that is often true of theologians as well. Theology is not the study of God, as the casual observer supposes. It is a study of man. Specifically, it is a study of man’s interaction with the concept of the divine. As such, it doesn’t even assume there is a divine. It is the concept that counts for them. It is not so much straining the gnat to swallow the camel as it is dining on the gnats and ignoring the camel.

Some translations have tried to cut down on the treacheries, and do not appear to have suffered for it. CEB says: “I waste away; I waste away; I’m doomed! Betrayers betray; treacherously betrayers betray.” Just one ‘treacherous’—-though it appears to be at the expense of ‘betrays,’ which balloons to four.

Some have made the mess worse—or at least, they’ve just traded devils. Such as “My secret to myself, my secret to myself, woe is me: the prevaricators have prevaricated, and with the prevarication of transgressors they have prevaricated.” (DRA)

Others, such as ERV, I kind of like: “But I say, “Enough! I have had enough. What I see is terrible. Traitors are turning against people and hurting them.”

Then, there is the Message version—not a translation, but a paraphrase—which must sit on ones bookshelf like a battleship, saying: “But I said, “That’s all well and good for somebody, but all I can see is doom, doom, and more doom.” All of them at one another’s throats, yes, all of them at one another’s throats. Terror and pits and booby traps are everywhere, whoever you are. If you run from the terror, you’ll fall into the pit. If you climb out of the pit, you’ll get caught in the trap. Chaos pours out of the skies. The foundations of earth are crumbling. Earth is smashed to pieces, earth is ripped to shreds, earth is wobbling out of control, Earth staggers like a drunk, sways like a shack in a high wind. Its piled-up sins are too much for it. It collapses and won’t get up again.”

Did I tell you that times were rough back then?

******  The bookstore