Here is a draft of the Introduction to a book I am planning. I would welcome any comment on it.
An Angry Young Man
Two thousand seven hundred years ago a young man belonging to the upper class of Jerusalem society
is angry about the state of the city. Its situation is desperate: the land has
been almost entirely taken over by the ever-expanding Assyrian empire, and the
ancient nation of Israel is now reduced virtually to the capital city. This is
a nation that believes itself to be God’s chosen people, the descendants of
Abraham to whom God had said “in you all
the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3). These are the
children of the people God rescued from slavery in Egypt to mould them into “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation”
(Ex 19:6). That people is now humiliated and its very existence threatened. But
this young man sees beyond the political situation: he sees that the people are
no longer what they were meant to be, no longer “holy” and no longer in any fit
state to be a blessing to the rest of the world. Their rulers are corrupt, and
the whole society is riddled with bribery, injustice and oppression. The poor
are being ruthlessly exploited by those with wealth and power.
No one can accuse them of not being religious. People flock
to the Temple to pray and offer sacrifices. They scrupulously observe all the
ritual and turn out in great numbers for the festivals. But they have forgotten
that their God is a God of justice and compassion, and that without these
things worship is meaningless. And so in practice they have turned their backs
on God and despised him.
How little has changed!
Religious people are so often ready to blame national decline or misfortune on
the decline in church-going, the neglect of the Sabbath, the retreat of
religion from public life or challenges to traditional sexual morality. They love
to quote the saying “righteousness
exalteth a nation” (Proverbs 14:34). But what they forget is that the real
meaning of “righteousness” is justice.
So the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah is an angry
outburst. The prophet feels God calling on heaven and earth to listen to his
complaint:
“I
reared children and brought them up,
but
they have rebelled against me.
The
ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib;
but
Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.”
The nation has forsaken its God and become estranged from
him. It is like someone wounded, sick from head to toe, bleeding and uncared
for. The land of Judah has been devastated. Its cities have been burned, and
Jerusalem alone, the sanctuary of Zion, God’s beloved “daughter”, is left
standing like a shed in a garden of cucumbers.
If it were not for the survival of Jerusalem and its few
inhabitants the scene would resemble the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, those
legendary cities near the Dead Sea that had been destroyed by a cataclysm in
the distant past, a proverbial example of God’s punishment for wickedness. Indeed,
says Isaiah, this “holy” city is in fact no better than those:
“Hear
the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom!
Listen to the teaching of our
God, you people of Gomorrah!”
God does not appreciate their conspicuous practice of
religion:
“What to me is the multitude of your
sacrifices? says the LORD;
I
have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and
the fat of fed beasts …
Trample my courts no more …”
Offerings, incense, the observing of special days and
seasons – nothing escapes God’s scorn, says Isaiah. They have all become a
burden that God is weary of bearing. Even prayer is futile:
“When
you stretch out your hands
I
will hide my eyes from you;
even
though you make many prayers
I will not listen …”
Why? Because those hands stretched out in prayer are stained
with blood. Before God will listen to their prayers the people must change
their ways:
“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean …”
This of course would be an expected ritual preparation for
worship, such as is customary in most religions. But Isaiah means more than
just the washing of the body:
“remove
the evil of your doings from before my eyes;
cease
to do evil,
learn
to do good;
seek
justice,
rescue
the oppressed,
defend
the orphan,
plead for the widow.”
It is paradoxical that this book that presents us with so
many hopeful visions of Jerusalem should start by identifying it with Sodom and
Gomorrah. It is even stranger that these words should come not from a social
drop-out but from a man of some status who is probably even a priest himself,
tied into the whole system of worship and sacrifice against which he is
ranting. Here is real radicalism.
Jesus was not the first to challenge the Temple and the
whole way of life that revolved around it. It was in the spirit of the ancient prophets
that he constantly put ethical behaviour, compassion for one’s fellow human
beings, at the heart of devotion to God, taking priority over prayers and
sacrifices:
“So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that
your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before
the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come
and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5:23-24)
In the prophet’s eyes the “faithful city” has become “a
whore”. Instead of justice there is
murder. Leaders are corrupt, easily bribed, “companions
of thieves”, and it is the orphans and the widows who suffer. But the
sermon (if we can call it that) ends on a positive note. God will certainly “pour out his wrath”, but only to
cleanse and refine, and then he will restore the life of the city so that it
will once again be “the city of
righteousness, the faithful city”.
In this first chapter, then, the theme of the whole book of
Isaiah is set out as at the beginning of a symphony. It is God’s vision and
passion for Jerusalem, the stark contrast between the ideal and the reality,
and the dream of a Jerusalem that will be what God truly wants it to be.
The Authors
The Book of Isaiah is mostly anonymous. It is a compilation
of writings accumulated over several centuries. The only author whose name we
know lived in Jerusalem about seven hundred years before Christ, but it is hard
to say how much of the book originates with him. The book begins with a title:
“The vision of Isaiah
son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah,
Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah”
In chapter 6 there is an account of a vision in the Temple
that looks likely to be a description of how Isaiah first experienced the call
to be a prophet. It took place “in the year
that King Uzziah died”. This was about 740 BC. Chapters 36-37 give an
account (also found in the Second Book of Kings) of an attack on Jerusalem by
the Assyrian King Sennacherib during the reign of Hezekiah, and the part that Isaiah
played in that situation. This, as we know from the Assyrian records, was 701
BC. This means that Isaiah was preaching for about forty years, so we may
probably assume that he was quite a young man when he began. The story in
chapter 6 of his experiencing his call to be a prophet through a vision in the
Temple may mean that he was a priest.
Isaiah’s lifetime was dominated by the threat from the
Assyrians. This empire, based in what is now northern Iraq, was at its peak at
that time, and was the biggest empire the Near East had yet seen. The original
nation of Israel had, since the death of Solomon in about 922 BC, been divided into
two kingdoms: the northern kingdom that had its capital in Samaria and retained
the name “Israel”, and the southern kingdom called Judah with its capital in
Jerusalem. It was during Isaiah’s lifetime, in 721 BC, that the Assyrians
brought the kingdom of Israel to an end. They not only incorporated it into
their empire, but they destroyed it as a nation, deporting many of its citizens
and bringing in settlers from elsewhere, so that the whole area came to be known
as “Galilee of the nations” (Isaiah 9:1). Judah survived on that occasion, though
it seems that for a time at least the Assyrians were in possession of virtually
the whole country, leaving the city of Jerusalem standing alone “like a shelter in a cucumber field”
(Isaiah 1:8). The Assyrian threat eventually died away and the kingdom of Judah
survived for another century or so, by which time the Assyrian empire had
fallen and it was Babylon that dealt the fatal blow.
It is difficult to tell how much of the Book of Isaiah
originates with Isaiah himself, but certainly from chapter 40 onwards we are in
a completely different period of history. The Assyrians are no longer in the
picture, and even Babylon is being taken over by the Medes (who later became
the Persian empire). Cyrus the Mede is actually mentioned by name (Isaiah
44:28; 45:1). The Babylonians had destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC and had
deported most of its leading citizens to Babylon. Isaiah 40-55 comes from a time
about fifty years after this, when Cyrus had given permission for Jews to
return to Jerusalem, rebuild it, and reinstate their religion and way of life.
This part of the book is largely a celebration of this good news by a prophet who
seems to be based in Babylon.
From chapter 56 onwards the situation has changed again. The
prophet now seems to be based in Judah and concerned with problems arising a
generation or so after the return of the exiles.
Why is the preaching of at least three different prophets
gathered together in one book under the name of Isaiah? The different parts of
the book are in different styles and reflect different historical circumstances.
However, in their different ways they share something of the spirit of the
original Isaiah. Isaiah seems to have had disciples who noted his words and
preserved them for posterity. At one point (Isaiah 8:16) these words are
attributed to him:
“Bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples. I will
wait for the LORD, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will
hope in him.”
It may be that this circle of disciples continued in
existence for a long time, forming a community of people who treasured and
repeated the words of the prophet. As time went on, their relevance would be
seen in new situations, and people would preach and write in the name of
Isaiah, saying what they believed Isaiah would say in their time. And so, over
a period of centuries, there was added to the original core a series of layers
that became the Book of Isaiah as we now have it.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem!
The one thing that seems to link the different parts of the
book together is the city of Jerusalem. The original Isaiah challenged it,
spoke very scathingly about as we have already seen, but was consumed with love
for the city and a conviction that it had a special place in God’s purpose.
This vision of Jerusalem, which started with the legendary days of David and
Solomon but perhaps really got off the ground with Isaiah, has persisted down
through the centuries. As the Jewish people were dispersed among the other
nations. Jerusalem became the place to which they made pilgrimage and towards
which they prayed. Jesus came there for the culmination of his ministry. The
Gospels tell of his “triumphal entry” on the back of a donkey, and Luke (19:41)
tells how he paused when the city came into view and wept over it because of
the opportunity it was missing. Luke also (13:34) quotes Jesus, very much in
the spirit of Isaiah, saying:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones
those that are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children
together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
It was in Jerusalem that Jesus was condemned to death, and
from Jerusalem that the Christian gospel was spread out to the rest of the
world. Six centuries later, Jerusalem acquired sacred associations with the
prophet Mohammed and his followers, and so it is to this day a holy city for
Jews, Christians and Muslims.
For Christians there is also the symbolic Jerusalem, derived
mostly from the New Testament book of Revelation. Under its alternative names
of Jerusalem, Salem and Zion it is a symbol of the Church:
“Glorious
things of thee are spoken,
Zion, city of our God.”
It is a symbol of
heaven:
“Jerusalem
the golden,
With
milk and honey blessed,
Beneath
thy contemplation
Sink
heart and voice oppressed.
I
know not, ah, I know not
What
joys await us there,
What
radiance of glory,
What bliss beyond compare.”
It is also a symbol of the ideal world. The Book of
Revelation (21:2) talks of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven so that
God’s dwelling will be with humanity. On the last night of the Proms in London
thousands of patriotic voices lustily sing the words of the visionary poet William
Blake about building “Jerusalem in
England’s green and pleasant land”.
Meanwhile the actual city of Jerusalem continues to exist on
this earth. The Jews were driven out of it when they rebelled against the Roman
Empire in the second century AD. In the Middle Ages Europe sent out a
succession of Crusades to drive the Muslims out of it and claim it for
Christianity. Today it is a tragically divided city where Jews, Muslims and
different kinds of Christians argue and fight over their territories, and the
capital of a state whose policies and whose very existence excite passionate
and often violent disagreement. Jerusalem today is no happier than it was in
Isaiah’s time. It is still a microcosm of the divisions, the suffering and the
mess of humanity. And yet it is still the stuff of dreams and utopian visions.
The vision of the Book of Isaiah still has its relevance for
Jerusalem. The people of three faiths still regard it as a very special city,
but Isaiah reminds us that God’s central concern is for justice, and only through
justice will Jerusalem ever prosper. At the same time Jerusalem can serve as a
symbol of every human society, and perhaps especially of cities. The world’s
population today is becoming increasingly urban. There are cities whose
population is on a scale that was unheard of even fifty years ago. A city is a
world concentrated in a small area. Most big cities today are extremely diverse
and cosmopolitan. People are drawn to cities because they are exciting, full of
culture, variety and the opportunity to advance one’s career and make money. Every
city has its pride and its distinctive profile. Many have an icon that is immediately
recognisable all over the world: Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of
Liberty, the Cristo Redentor, the Harbour Bridge …. and so on. But at the same time the worst of
human misery is seen in cities: shanty towns with open sewers, people
scavenging on rubbish dumps, “cardboard cities”, sweat shops, lonely people paying
an extortionate rent to live in desolate bedsitters, and some committing the
final act of despair by jumping off a bridge. A city stands for everything that
is miserable, joyful, ugly, beautiful, desperate, hopeful, hellish and heavenly
in the human world. So Isaiah, as an important part of the Scripture of Jews and
Christians and of the world’s literary heritage, is not just about Jerusalem: it
is about a divine passion for the city.