Category: Isaiah

Then there was Joe, who in this early days of being a Witness, would decline vacations, saying he as awaiting the Big Vacation.

This is plainly what Isaiah 25 is: the big vacation. After that formidable banquet of all the choicest dishes, the real treats roll out

“On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth. (25:7-8)

Death, the great swallower, that swallows us all, is itself swallowed and becomes no more. Despite all the clerical representations that it is somehow a friend, since (if you’re good) it means promotion to the heavenly choir—and especially if a baby dies and the preacher says it is God picking flowers for his most beautiful garden that is only lacking one: yours! then, you can believe that death is always presented as a friend. 

But even for regular people, it is as overenthusiastic Don would say: “Now, weren’t we always told that there are more bad people than good people? That the world is the way it is because bad people ruin it , but, not to worry: they will all get their comeuppance in hell? Weren’t we always told that?” And, when I would at last admit yes because it was the only way to stop him, he’d go on: “When was the last time you ever saw a preacher pack someone off to hell?!” Death, in clerical terms, is always a friend.

But, in the Bible, it is an enemy—the very last enemy, which is swallowed up forever. “Next, the end, when he hands over the Kingdom to his God and Father, when he has brought to nothing all government and all authority and power. For he must rule as king until God has put all enemies under his feet. And the last enemy, death, is to be brought to nothing,” says 1 Corinthians 15:24-26. It is, at long last, “swallowed up forever.” (verse 54)

It’s not just death, though, but it includes all that leads to it, in verse seven called a ‘shroud that enfolds all peoples.” It represents mourning, separation, or the pall of death covering humanity. But, it is also the sin inherited from Adam is itself, a shroud that muddles our paths through life. All must come to grips with a vague sense of unease that invariably accompanies this sin. Everyone identifies at some level with a Kafkaesque trial in which guilt is assumed—there would not be a trial, otherwise, but the charges are never laid out, and the fact that one may think themselves innocent is irrelevant. 

This shroud that enfolds all peoples is destroyed. It is through jesus, who dies to offset the condemnation to sin brought about through Adam’s rebellion against God. Put faith in that arrangement, do nothing to sabotage it, and you’re golden. It is —again, from 1 Corinthians 15–“The first man Adam became a living person.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” (verse 45)

John echoes it in Revelation 7:17 and 21:4 (God wiping away tears in the new heaven and earth).

This death to be swallowed up is not limited to death from war, sickness, or violence (though those are included as causes of death); it encompasses death in its totality—the cessation of physical life due to the curse of sin, from Genesis 3.

Isaiah 26 continues along the same line, but with an addition: “But your dead will live, Lord; their bodies will rise—let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy—your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.”* (verse 19)

Of course. It’s all very nice for death to be swallowed up, but that does nothing for those who have already died. So, to complete the picture, there has to be a provision for those people, too, and here it is found in the resurrection. The verse is widely regarded as one of the clearest Old Testament references to bodily resurrection.

When the boss realizes he has signed off on your vacation, he begins to regret letting his people go. He tries to walk back the action. Maybe he can make you do work through emails or teleconferencing. However, your answer to him can be the same as that from Isaiah, who observes that “the blast of the tyrants is like a rainstorm against a wall.” (25:4)

******  The bookstore

Always there are public officials, it doesn’t matter where you go, who, during their tenure, amass far more wealth than you would think possible given their salaries. Who can say how they do it? Let me count the ways, but they do it. 

These people all regard Shebna as their patron saint. They are his antitypes. Where the homes of God-fearing people will post some favorite scripture, like maybe the Lord’s prayer, their homes post Isaiah 22:15-18, the mission statement of their hero. Not the penalty part—where he is wadded up like a ball to be tossed into the wastebasket. That’s not an outcome they figure will happen. The mission statement part is where they focus:

“Go in to this steward, to Shebna, who is in charge of the house, and say, ‘What is your interest here, and who is there of interest to you here, that you hewed out a burial place here for yourself?’ He is hewing out his burial place in a high place; he is cutting out a resting-place for himself in a crag. ‘Look! Jehovah will hurl you down violently, O man, and seize you forcibly. He will certainly wrap you up tightly and hurl you like a ball into a wide land. There you will die, and there your glorious chariots will be, a disgrace to your master’s house.” (22:15-18)

Shebna is the only individual specifically rebuked in these many chapters of Isaiah. We’ have seen Babylon, Assyria, Philistia, Moab, Damascus, Etheopia, Egypt, Edom, Arabia, Tyre, and Sidon all chewed out in previous chapters, but no individual people. Then there are groups of people: rulers and princes (3:1–15), elders and dignitaries (3:2–3), women of Zion (3:16–4:1), priests and prophets (28:7–13), scribes and wise men who rely on human counsel (29:14–15, 30:1), but no individuals. A few individuals are named, such as Ahaz, but they are not rebuked. So, Shebna must have been pretty bad to be disfavored so. And yet, it doesn’t seem that way when compared to the corruption of our time. The guy wants a fancy burial place? There are worse things than that.

Just how fancy a burial place are we talking about? For what was he ignoring his official duties to prepare? Was he going the way of the Egyptian kings, scheming out a lavish pyramid for himself? No. Much more modest than that. I mean, his offense seems not too much more than reaching for a luxury sedan when an econobox would do just fine. He can’t hold a candle to his modern-day antitypes. If his example of pride and self-aggrandizement got God going, what are we to say of modern figures who outdo him twentyfold? If you hold public office, you’re not supposed to abuse it.

We know for sure that his proposed burial place was no pyramid because it has been found. No one ever said that the tomb would not be built. They just said he would not be around to die in it. He’d be wadded up and tossed like a ball. But, the tomb was built, and it is one of the more elaborate tombs in the area: a rock-cut tomb with finely dressed stonework, chambers, and a monumental inscribed lintel over the entrance bearing the words: “This is [the sepulcher of …]yahu who is over the house. There is no silver or gold here but [his bones] and the bones of his maidservant with him. Cursed be the man who will open this.” It is widely acknowledged as his.

It’s in the town of Silwan, just across the Kidron Valley from ancient Jerusalem. In 1870, French archaeologist Charles Clermont-Ganneau caught wind of it and paid the place a visit. it was occupied!—long ago turned into a private dwelling in the densely packed town! Today, it’s even more densely packed. It’s mostly working-class Palestinian families living in a crowded urban neighborhood of East Jerusalem—concrete houses, narrow streets, kids playing football, satellite dishes, the usual city-suburb mix.

There is no word on whether the current resident experienced the curse warned about. Maybe that terrible experience commenced with the visit of the archeologist himself. He knocked on the fellows door, or rang the doorbell, or something, and talked him into letting him chisel out the inscription, so he could spirit it off to the British Museum, where it rests today.

Roving archaeologists are always pestering me, too. They are incessantly ringing my doorbell—or at least you never know when they may start—to abscond with my “Home Sweet Home” banner just over the support beams, or if not that, then the welcome mat that says “Don’t Bug Me.” Here I’ll be tilting back in my easy chair watching TV, when someone pounds on the door. Another archeologist! I am inclined to tell him to take a hike. He doesn’t have to know everything. But it is an archeologist, after all, from the university, and I don’t want to appear disdainful of education. I say, “Don’t I know you from the archeologists’ party?” He replies: “Who are you to blow against the wind?” I let him in and he and his cohorts strips the house bare. 

It’s not such a rare thing as it might at first seem, for people to build and live over, around, or even inside the tombs. It is known as a “necropolis,” a city build among the dead. It has happened in far more modern times than Shebna’s. Colonial Cemetery, for example, in Savannah, Georgia, might, at first glance, seem one of the many town squares that dot the city, though a much enlarged one, but it is not counted as one. It has not even been a complete cemetery since Civil War times, because the Union soldiers camping out one cold overnight took to burrowing into the tombs for warmth and threw all the remains outside. The city has been the setting for many battles through the years as to be described a necropolis. Our tour guide told us of one church in which the preacher preached long to the Confederate troops, and then the following Sunday, the very same sermon to the Union troops who had killed off the Confederate ones during the intervening week.

So it is with Silwan. There’s about fifty tombs in the area. It’s choice property. Those dead were placed there centuries ago. Might as well recondition the place for more modern use. They don’t all make for homes, and when they do, they might just be a section of the home, or the modern home might sit atop the ancient structure. Maybe it serves as the garage or basement or pool room. But some old tombs would serve as livestock enclosures, water cisterns, storage spaces, or even sewage dumps. (The latter would have been the ultimate put-down of Shebna, but his foretold abasement was not to that degree).

Clermont-Ganneau had it easy. These days, homeowners are more likely to chase archaeologists away with pitchforks. They’ll zero in on some ancient rock-cut tomb currently embedded in or under modern houses. they may be completely inside private properties, with deeds going back generations. Let them in and you may find yourself ensnared in property claims, eviction risks, or ideological disputes. You never know when politics might be involved, where nobody trusts anybody, and what you buy as “research” is actually some resettlement scam. It’s almost like picking up your phone today for an unknown caller. Horrible things can happen. Who would do such a thing?

They come in with their hi-fullutin’ super educated ways and make your life a living hell. There have been digs so undermining foundations or triggering structural damage as to render homes unsafe or uninhabitable—say, when they conduct excavations just three or four meters under the structure, so that families have no choice but to leave. File damage claims filed in court and it might be honored, but other times you might be told that you should just suck it up for science. They all but claim squatters rights on your house, throwing wild, archaeological parties and chipping away at your infrastructure in the process, college-kid interns peeing in the corners of your basement. It is easier not the let them get a toehold in the first place. They are usually turned away.

Thus, Shebna’s friend Bob has a tomb that remains unexcavated to this day. Following his mentor, only one step better, he too was raiding the public till. This fellow is unmentioned in the Bible record, unmentioned anywhere, in fact. It’s only I that I know of him. But he too, was planning for the high death with his own blinged-out rock-cut condo. He too earned a rebuke, but not before he had finished his tomb. There is an Archie Bunker type who lives in it now. Every time archaeologists come calling, he chases them away with a shotgun.

******  The bookstore

When your enemy pops off, don’t jump for joy. His replacement may be worse. That’s the message for Philistia after Ahaz dies:

In the year that King Ahaz died, this pronouncement was made: “Do not rejoice, Philistia, any of you, Just because the staff of the one striking you has been broken.  For from the root of the serpent will come a poisonous snake, And its offspring will be a flying fiery snake.” (Isaiah 14:28-29)

You can call Philistia the house villain of the Israelites. Enemies come and enemies go, but Philistia is a constant. They are the ones who captured the Ark and so Jehovah struck them with piles (hemorrhoids!) to persuade them to give it back. Only they couldn’t just hand it over. Since they loved to make idols, they had to forge golden images of those piles. You have to admit, that’s a pretty deft touch if the goal is to humiliate those who think deliverance lies in idols.

They are also the ones on whom blinded Samson brought the house down, stationed between two major support pillars. David, at a time of lessened tensions, felt obliged to disguise his sanity among the Philistines, so that their king would later mutter to his advisors: “Here you see a man behaving crazy. Why should you bring him to me?  Am I in need of people driven crazy, so that you have brought this one to behave crazy by me?” An excellent point. Not too different from when two of us were out in the ministry and the weather very abruptly shifted and a woman answered the door and said, “Are you crazy?” “You know, she raises a pretty good point,” I said to my companion.

So, it’s just constant trouble between the Israelites and the Philistines. They’re the ones who sent huge Goliath to taunt Israel. I knew they were the perennial villains even before I took up Bible study with the Witnesses. They came in from the West, from Crete across the Mediterranean Sea, before the Israelites began settling in Canaan from the other direction. Jehovah had his people leaving Egypt steer clear of them initially: He “did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although it was near. For God said: ‘The people may change their minds when they are confronted by war and will return to Egypt.’ So God made the people go around by the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea.” (Exodus 13:17-18)

Now, back to: “For from the root of the serpent will come a poisonous snake, And its offspring will be a flying fiery snake.” (14:28-29) If they thought Ahaz was bad, he would be a creampuff next to his successor, Hezekiah. The first, divided in his loyalties between Assyria and Jehovah, would be an ineffectual force against them. The latter, standing in the face of Assyria and steadfast toward Jehovah, would not be. Then there would be the Assyrians themselves who would devastate Philistia. Maybe that works better with the “poisonous” and “flying fiery snake” comparison.

******  The bookstore

Now they never reopened that worthless town,  
They just placed a marble stand on the ground.  
These few words you’ll find written down:  
“At the bottom of this ruin lies a big, bad clown—Big Bel.”
 
(sung to the tune of Big John—by Jimmy Dean, 1961)

They never reopened that ancient town of Babylon—it’s close enough to the words of Isaiah 13:20:

“She will never be inhabited, Nor will she be a place to reside in throughout all generations. No Arab will pitch his tent there, And no shepherds will rest their flocks there.”

Partying away that one 539 BCE night, they were cought with their pants down. Babylon surrendered promptly to the Medes, who used the place as a regional capital city for a time. Alexander the Great later planned to make it his own capital. Instead, he died there in 323 BCE. It dwindled away thereafter. The last mentions of habitation, as a small village, are around the 10th–11th centuries CE. 

So, Babylon mirrors pretty well that collapsed mine of the Jimmy Dean song. What other verses can we adapt?

Through the wine and the clamor of that gilded hall,  
Strode a giant of a man well known to all.
Revelers were laughing and hearts beat fast,  
And everybody thought the feast would last—  
’cept Bel.

It’s not exactly the same as with Big John that the “miners knew well.” He strode through the “man-made hell” of that collapsed mine on a mission to save them all—which he did. No. Belshazzar all but peed his pants at the handwriting on the wall telling him, before all the celebrants, that he’d been weighed in the balances and found wanting—and right when he’d been toasting his own gods, no less:

“Then the king turned pale and his thoughts terrified him, and his hips shook and his knees began to knock together.” (Daniel 5:6)

Big bad Bel was in no mood to save anyone. Instead, he becomes the embodiment of hubris crushed and left at the bottom of the Babylonian mine.

The town was not forgotton. It just was never rebuilt. They “placed a marble stand on top of it,” to mark the fate of the ax that chopped down the Assyrian ax of 5:20. It’s a UNESCO site today. You can go there for music, dance, theater, and art exhibitions staged amid the ruins—a faint and more uppity echo of the raucous night. There are cultural centers and museums. But only staff and visiting artists live there. In 2025, an area slogan was "We Are All Babylonians," as though Babylon weeping for its children of long ago. The yankee equivalent would be “The Night They Drove ‘ol Dixie Down.” (The Band, 1969)

Nabuzaradan’s my name, and I served on the Babylon train,  
Till Cyrus’ army came and tore up the walls again.  
In the winter of five-thirty-nine,  
With the river run dry and the city resigned,  
By May the tenth, the kingdom was done—  
You can’t raise an empire up again once it’s gone.

The night they drove old Babylon down,  
And all the news was shocking,  
The night they drove old Babylon down,  
And all the knees were knocking—  
They went, Wah, wah-wah-wah, wah-wah. Wah-wah, wah-wah, wah wah wah wah wah.”

Now I guide on the ruins here, tell the tales year after year,  
Folks come from far with their cameras and cheers.  
They dance where the Ishtar Gate stands rebuilt,  
Sing songs in the dust where the blood was once spilt.  
We light up the night with a festival fire,  
But it’s only a shadow of the old empire’s pyre.

(Chorus again): The night they drove old Babylon down.

******  The bookstore