The party continues. Isaiah remains kind of blah, but there are some interesting moments. All the books we have left in the Old Testament are "prophetic" ones like this, and I was thinking they'd be really cool -- mostly because Elijah is so freaking cool and I expected all the prophets would be like him -- but so far Isaiah just contains cryptic speeches and recycled storylines, so I've been a little disappointed.
Chapters 38 and 39 wrap up the story of Hezekiah, from Kings. In case you don't remember the details, basically Hezekiah gets really sick and it looks like he's going to die, but he prays to God and Isaiah informs him that the deity has added fifteen years to his life and ensures him that Judah will remain intact during his reign. Then the Babylonian king comes to visit him, after which Isaiah declares that "the time is coming... when everything in your palace, and all that your forefathers have amassed till the present day, will be carried away to Babylon; not a thing will be left" (Isaiah 39:6). On that note, the second "book" of Isaiah begins.
The so-called Deutero-Isaiah takes place during the exile, after the Assyrian Empire had fallen and was replaced by the Babylonians. The unnamed prophet of this section makes his speeches to the exiled Judean elite, prophesying the return of the Jews to the promised land. What I found most interesting in this section were the four "servant songs," which are poems written about a servant of God who will "establish justice among the nations" (Isaiah 42:1). Jews typically interpret this "servant" as a metaphor for the Jewish people as a whole, and Christians believe that the "songs" refer to Jesus.
The first song, which occupies chapter 42, provides a description of the servant, who is to be "a light for peoples, a lamp for nations" (Isaiah 42:6). The second song is narrated by the servant himself, who explains that "the Lord called me before I was born, he named me from my mother's womb" (Isaiah 49:1). I would venture that this material probably informed the Evangelicals when they were writing the gospels! Sounds like Jesus, huh? The parallels continue in the third song, when the servant describes how his trust in God will help him overcome worldly suffering: "I offered my back to the lash, and let my beard be plucked from my chin, I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. But the Lord God is my helper; therefore no insult can wound me" (Isaiah 50:6-7).
Chapter 53 is perhaps the most "prophetic" and evangelical of the four songs, depicting the servant "[growing] up before the Lord like a young plant whose roots are in parched ground" (Isaiah 53:3), despised while he lived but "pierced for [the peoples'] transgressions" (Isaiah 53:5). Eventually he is led "like a sheep...to the slaughter" and "assigned a grave with the wicked...though he had done no violence" (Isaiah 53:7-9).
How eerily familiar! Does the phrase "lamb of God" ring a bell?
On the topic of messiahs, I found one more point of note in today's reading. In chapter 45, the Persian king Cyrus is anointed by God to bring the Jews back to Israel. This actually makes Cyrus a messiah too! Nowadays -- because of the influence of Christianity -- people tend to assume that "messiah" can refer to only one person, and that this person must be some sort of spiritual redeemer or "Son of God." The word "messiah" actually just means "anointed," and can refer to many different people who fulfill many different roles. All high priests, for instance, were messiahs. And so was Cyrus! Welcome to the club, pal! You can be president of the Persian branch of operations.
I could say more, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. More about messiahs in a few weeks, when we start the New Testament and things really get crazy. But for now, we've still got a lot of prophets to slog through. Tomorrow we finish Isaiah and start on Jeremiah, who was -- to my knowledge -- a bullfrog. Bullfrogs and messiahs. What a wacky cast of characters!
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