Isaiah Chapters 52-53; It's Time To Get Packing!

 

 

Isaiah sets forth the conditions by which the Jews will return to holy land. He also delineates a shadowy figure, separately defined as the Messiah, the Suffering Servant or merely an allegory describing the Israelite people as a heroic symbol who survives through God’s unique power.

 Rabbi: The people are being prepared for the return to Israel.

Bob: We never measure up, so why are we redeemed?

Rabbi: Our deliverance from exile is not dependent on our actions. This was God’s promise to Israel.

Bob: In response to 52:4-5 “My people went down/ to Egypt to sojourn there;/ But Assyria has robbed them,/ Giving nothing in return./ What therefore do I gain here?”  “What do I gain here?” God has made this all happen! The sins that seem to bother God are worse than failing to observe the laws of kashrut.

Ellen: In response to 52: 1 “For the uncircumcised and the unclean/Shall never enter you again.” What makes people unclean?

Rabbi: Menses, nighttime emissions, the uncircumcised…

Ellen: Is there a ritual way to become clean?

Joel: Yes, the mikvah. Men and women both use it in ancient times.

Ceil: To rejoin the congregation you must become clean.

Bobby: I’m reading from a 1917 JPS translation and it’s a different read. Instead of “unclean” it says “impure”.

Bob: Is the departure from Babylon sanctioned by Cyrus? Does he say they can leave?

Ceil: The exiled were not in abject slavery in Babylon.

Rabbi: Yes, this is not like Egypt where we couldn’t wait to leave. Isaiah is a bit of a P.R. man. He is trying to entice the people to leave. He appeals to them by claiming that only the “righteous” can leave, maybe using this as a way to rally them to leave Babylon.

Ellen: People are making a choice!

Joel: In response to 52:13 “Indeed, My servant shall prosper,” For Christians this is a seminal text. They see the Suffering Servant as a reference to Jesus who is born 500 years after Second Isaiah.

Ellen: It seems to be describing some kind of immortal. It seems superhuman or some kind of daemonic presence.

Joel: Scholars say Isaiah is just describing an anointed Jewish king or the suffering people of Israel. The ancient Hebrews saw God as a God of awe. When Moses saw God’s face he glowed and radiated. In the

Isaiah passage perhaps, we are seeing an attribute of God himself. It may not be pretty, nice or neat. His righteousness can be terrible.

Rabbi: Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that we are interpreting from a modern perspective.  Interpretation of the prophetic language, at times, can be seen in various ways. Is Isaiah referencing a nation or an individual?

Ceil: I think the concept of a messiah must have been brewing. The people were searching and had a need for a Messiah as cruelty increased by our captors, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans.

Joel: There have been many Jews who have claimed to be the Messiah. Bar- Kochba is the most famous one from ancient times.

Ellen: This all predates Freud, but it sounds a lot like Freud. The individual struggles with the forces inside h/herself. It is the reason why we can’t get there. There is an evil impulse. The whole description feels a bit drug- like, like an internal battle.

Joel: The prophets are the super-ego. They yell and scream. They represent a new kind of leadership. They don’t lead through political means, but by moral example.


 

 

How is it that we are one hundred and nineteen pages into the book of Isaiah and we have not discussed the structure of the prose? Reading Isaiah is like trying to hold sand in your hand with your fingers outstretched. Yes, Isaiah is written in poetic meter to which I am not accustomed, but I believe the Isaiah writers had the intention of decentering the reader for a very specific purpose. Straightforward prose structures events within a time frame that encapsulates a beginning, middle and an end. The Isaiah writers were not content with this form and chose another that was better suited to simultaneously elucidating history, time and God concepts. Conventional words can be used to attempt a description of God and his deeds, but I think these writers are trying to achieve something more than this. The techniques they utilize work to disorient the reader and strip away h/her expectations of an ordered and predictable universe. They achieve this in several ways. The reader is transported back and forth through centuries of Jewish history via Isaiah’s prophetic visions. God also references our forebears, (Jacob and Abraham) moves into the “present” (the Babylonian Captivity) then forward into a redemptive future of some unspecified time. The narrator’s voice continuously shifts between Isaiah, God and the Children of Israel which blurs the boundaries between them as seperate entities. When the Messiah or its equivalent is evoked, we have no reference point for decoding its meaning or identity.  The nation is referred to by many names such as, Children of Israel, Jacob, Jerusalem, Zion, the Bride, and Woman.

Imagine looking through a window with a translucent pane of glass and a half inch hole in it. A dramatic event is occurring on the other side of the glass, but details are impossible to ascertain. If you look through the hole there is a clearer vision of the outside world, but your vision is limited through a tiny perspective. Paradoxically the disjuncture of language employed in the Book of Isaiah actually functions to give the book its special meaning. Like people groping before a frosted glass, we are frustrated, confused, searching for meaning and equilibrium. As we read from the text we ask ourselves, “Who will come along and explain to us what we cannot understand? Who will assist us in expanding our limited perspective?

Isaiah Chapter 51; I Shall bring you back!

 

Coins from Babylon, 500 BCE

A "dragon" from the Ishtar Gate.

                                    

                                                                                                      

                   

                                                                                

Looted treasure from the National Museum of Iraq.

The coming Babylonian Exodus is palpable in this chapter. God has blessed the steadfast with spiritual redemption. They are the faithful who have held the line against assimilation, idolatry, unprincipled and licentious living; they are the ones who have taken his law into their hearts. They are to be the returnees who will repopulate Jerusalem and be a light unto the nations. This small group of the righteous is the group that Isaiah is addressing. Free-will has separated the wheat from the chaff. Those who remain in Babylon will throw their lot in with their host nation. For good or ill, this group of Jews who stay will be a minority living amongst a dominant culture. Many scholars pinpoint this pivotal event of those who remain in Babylon as the starting point of the Jewish diaspora experience. Those who go back are returning revitalized, with a new intimacy and understanding of God.

Rabbi:  Chapter 51. This chapter marks a dynamic transition. The faithful are being addressed and it feels very personal as if this is directed towards individuals rather than the collective group.

Bill: It’s like a “rallying cry.”

Bob: Where is the remnant today? Should we be returning to Israel?

Rabbi: This is a historic reality. Some will go back to Jerusalem but many will stay in Babylon and thrive. We are the inheritors of both groups. The Jews who go write the Jerusalem Talmud; those who stay write the Babylonian Talmud. Our experience has been coined the “tension of the diaspora.”

Gary: I think this is a short view of this situation. Everything changes. Perhaps in the future we will need to return to Israel but for now we are thriving here.

Joel: We don’t require God to be in Israel. We don’t need to be in Israel to have God. God transcends history and borders. The returning Israelites have internalized the lesson of justice and morality. This is one of the things that separated us from the polytheists of ancient times.

Bill: I read that there is a debate going on as to whether all the Nazi research should be discounted due to the way it was collected regardless of its accuracy.

Bob: This kind of retrogression denies progress.

Joel: Many ancient cultures had progressive ideas about science. The problem was their theology which undermined advances and outcomes.

Bob: Like Gailaleo.

Gary: Is it possible that this chapter was written by those who returned as a way to prove that they did better than those who remained? Separation of Jew from Jew is a big theme.

Rabbi: You make a significant point!

Gary: I think we need more tolerance for one another.

Ellen: Chapter 51:6   “My victory shall stand forever,/ My salvation through the ages.” 

 If God is in charge why does he need to be constantly bolstered? “The victory of our God!” Is he in charge or not?

Bob: I think you are being too literal. It’s a spiritual victory.

Joel: This is a reiteration that he is the true God. Other groups of people believed that if you lost your country then your god was lost too. Their gods were connected to their land but this is not true for the exiled Israelites. God is everywhere.

Rabbi: ( Answering Ellen’s query.) This is a victory. God has used external forces (the Assyrians and the Babylonians) to punish the Israelites, but they have been too harsh. God uses empires as tools, but all people have free will. There is a battle between these forces.

Ellen: God is trying to get rid of the non-believers.

Bob: This is symbolic language.

Rabbi: I don’t think it is symbolic. I think God is saying “I have brought you back.”

Ellen: I still think that God is depending on the people to agree that he is victorious and powerful.

Rabbi: We choose to follow God’s plan. At times, he lets go of control.

Ceil: God chastises but he doesn’t abandon us. It’s amazing that we will return home in peace.

Cynthia: That is the triumph and the victory.

Ceil: There is no battle.

Rabbi: This is a turning point. We leave without bloodshed.

 

Throughout our history, the Israelites have consistently been engaged in war. Israel’s experience of war has strengthened as well as diminished it, yet now the Israelites are assured by God that they will be able to leave Babylon peacefully. I see this as one of the most salient moments in the book of Isaiah. God’s unmitigated power has been shown to be beyond all natural limits and laws of nature. He has used his power again and again to aid the Israelites in gaining their land, in fighting off foes and to punish them when they have transgressed. Why does God allow the Israelites to return peacefully now ? Where has all the violence gone?

 The following three images are seared in my brain:

1. Back in 2011, my son and I were channel surfing on the television. While eating popcorn, we happened to see the horrific spectacle of Mummar Qaddafi being sodomized and beaten by a mob.

2. I saw a photo of children in a National Geographic magazine. It is a close- up of 4-5 youths standing in a semi- circle laughing. One of the children is holding the dismembered tail of a lizard. The lizard, in turn, is clenching down on his own bloodied tail as he is dangled from a height.

3. As a child, in the hopes of gaining the approval of some older boys, I threw a rock and struck a bullfrog causing it to die. With crystal clarity I remember the luminous pale yellow underbelly as it went “belly up.” Its elongated tongue unrolled from its mouth as it lay buoyant on the water’s surface. Despite the round of high fives I received from the boys, I went home feeling disgusted and sickened.

 The term “the banality of evil” was coined by Hannah Arendt in her brilliant book, Eichman in Jerusalem. She states that complicity and distance (lack of empathy and relatedness) allows the unthinkable to be perpetrated. Each of us has perpetuated a cruelty to varying degrees and knows on a visceral level how crushing it feels to the soul. Violence creates a void, but true repentance fills this space with compassion for sentient beings and us. Through this process comes healing and relatedness. Each person constructs a version of my bullfrog that sits upon their shoulders, which functions as a reminder of who we are meant to become.

Chapter 2:4    “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares

                          And their spears into pruning hooks:

                       Nation shall not take up

                       Sword against nation;

                      They shall never again know war.”

                 L’Shana Tova!  Wishing all a healthy, productive and joyous New Year.

Isaiah Chapters 49-50; Blessings through Adversity

 Stone relief of the Jewish scholar Rav Ashi who reestablished the Sura Talmudic Academy in Babylon and was the first editor of the Babylonian Talmud.

In 975 BCE, King Solomon built the First Temple. It was looted and stripped on two separate occasions, but was completely destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. When the Judeans were marched into Babylon they did not enter an empire totally devoid of Jews. Eleven years prior to exile, Nebuchadnezzar II had strategically taken 10,000 of Judah’s religious, intellectual and economic  elite in an effort to weaken it. The Judean exiles entered a Babylon that housed the Sanhedrin ( The Jewish High Court), the prophets  Ezekiel, Daniel, Ezra and other prominent Judeans who held fast to their will as well as their faith. The prophet Ezekiel established Talmudic academies, the most prominent one built in Sura which survived until 1,001 CE. These centers were a place where Jewish scholarship thrived giving rise to the Babylonian Talmud. The Babylonians may have had the greater military prowess, but they underestimated the Judeans attachment to their cultural identity. How is it that we as a people have survived?

Isaiah quote on the Ralph Bunche Memorial Park across from the United Nations. Inscribed 1975

We resume on chapter 49. Isaiah relates how he has been the willing tool of God. Restoration is at hand.  

Bob: In contrast to the text, in life the pious don’t necessarily get rewarded. It’s a nice objective but it doesn’t really relate to “real” life.

Ceil: Is this (the Jews return to Judea) ordained by God?

Bob: Well, Jewish law makes a claim that justice is based on righteous behavior.

Joel:  But the Rabbis weren’t stupid. People realized that the good aren’t necessarily rewarded in this life. That's why the idea of the afterlife grew in prominence.

Bob: In Judaism, the rewards are in this world.

Ellen: Did man create God or did God create man? People need a unifying social force. A collective can make real and lasting change. If God is that unifying force, that’s fine with me.

Julie: Personal faith and nationhood are different. Our God does not have a permanent address. He can travel from the Temple Mount.                                                                                                                                                

Ellen: Temple or no temple we need morality. Morality shows human progress. Isaiah is pushing hope. If people believe in God, then God can provide hope whether he is real or not.

Joel: This was a time of historical crisis. These people were facing extinction. Ten of the Twelve tribes had already been obliterated. War and adversity seem to accelerate ethical and technological progress.

Ellen: God appears different. Does this make anyone question God?

Ceil: No, because this is about our own perceptions. This does not indicate that God has changed.

Bob: This is a God of energy. There is no physical form to him

Joel: There are two ideas of God in here. One is a King like a Middle –Eastern sovereign and one is a transcendental being of energy. They may sound like they conflict, but they are both there. .

Ceil: Our perceptions fulfill our own personal needs.

Ellen: Should we try to understand the nature of God, or just go along with it? Do we need to understand God?

Ceil: In times of crisis we may need a figure we can relate to for comfort. We can’t fit God into a “cubby-hole.” There isn’t any harm in personalizing God – it doesn’t change God.

Joel: Paul Gauguin said that if the Egyptians believed that Pharaoh was a god, then he was. Once they believed he wasn’t, the whole culture fell apart. Stalin tried to do the same thing.

Ceil: Our perceptions are limited and similar to the primitive mind. Like children

we need concrete examples to develop and learn.

Bob: We are trying to explain the concept of God which is inexplicable. Einstein has a famous related quote .

 Julie’s note: This may be the quote that Bob was referencing: “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”

Joel: This is a metaphor. Science cannot grasp God either. Science is a logic running in one direction because it is a Western construct. The East has their own. There is less emphasis on duality like the ideas of Yin and Yang. This difference doesn’t make ancient people primitive. You have to be able to hold two different ideas at the same time. It’s a question of shading.

Bob: Science is different because one can repeat an experiment and get the same result. Proof of God is impossible. Many claim to know, but how can they?

Paul: We will each test this idea in time (referring to death).

Bob: You may think you know, but we can’t.

Joel: Maybe once you know you just don’t care anymore. (all laugh)

Paul: There is an interesting book that I gave the Rabbi called, Does the Soul Survive? The research is based on near death experiences.

Bob: Maybe this proves that this is just a natural process when the brain is dying and images fire up in it. .

Ceil: That’s science, not belief.

Bob: As I get older and closer to death I’d like to believe, but I have doubts.

Ellen: There are so many things that are beyond our understanding. Science continues to find smaller and smaller processes and things that are naked to the eye. Science can never understand it all. I’m going back to the idea of the collective consciousness. This is measurable.

Paul: We’ll meet again (after dying) and then discuss it further. (all laugh)

Joel: Let’s return to Isaiah.

 Chapter 49:8 God promises to protect the exiles on their way back to Zion.

Julie: Transgression, punishment and restoration are reoccurring themes.

Tim: It reminds me of the flood from Genesis.

Joel: Cyrus of Persia was somewhat of a tolerant leader. He issued charters that allowed for religious tolerance. He was as tolerant as a dictator could be.

Ellen: Do the other people still have gods?

Joel: Yes! Everyone has multiple gods, but us!

Chapter 49:14 God has not forgotten his people. He is fulfilling his promise. He wants acknowledgment that he is the only being who could deliver them from exile to redemption.

Bob: Deliverance from exile is our reward.

Joel: The language here bothers me because it says that people from other countries are going to be our servants when we return to Jerusalem. It sounds like sour grapes. I know these might have been our captors, but it doesn’t sound so spiritually evolved.

Ceil: Maybe this is a kind of wish fulfillment.

 Ellen: God keeps reiterating his power, least they forget.

Joel: The Hebrew Bible distains kings. We are not good at political organization. The Jewish kings are very flawed and are always bungling the job.

Julie: God always has the last word, not the sovereign of Israel or any country.

Ellen: We are not governing by force. It seems that we are being pushed to think.

Bob: Crisis can bring people together.

Joel: Or, it can pull them apart.

Bob: We are trying to find a dynamic equilibrium between the needs of the individual versus the needs of the group.

Chapter 49:26: “I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh, they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine.”

Joel: This may not be a metaphor. There are historical examples of people eating the dead in times of famine.

Ceil: The narrative voice keeps shifting between Isaiah, God and Israel.

Julie: In prior chapters the exiled are referred to as Israel or Jacob. Now they are called” the bride” or” woman.” Are we rededicated to God?

Joel: The two or several Isaiahs are collaging it all together.

Ellen: There is a strong messianic voice.

Joel: I think Isaiah is speaking about Israel, not the Messiah. The term “son of man” refers to anyone. It doesn’t mean messiah. It’s like saying,”Hey man!” now.

 
There were many different conquered peoples speaking many different tongues who lived beside the Jews in Babylon during the 6^th Century BCE. How did we distinguish ourselves from the various other groups and their customs? We could have given up hope during this 47 year period in exile and assimilated but, we didn’t. We gathered together and formed courts and schools to remember God and codify his words, went back to keeping the Sabbath, continued the rite of circumcision and the laws of ritual purity. During this period there was an effusion of great thinking (for example, the Prophets, Buddha, Confucius and the Pythagorean philosophers) which suggests that human society was undergoing a global transformation. Where we more Jewish in Babylon than we were in Jerusalem? Did the exilic event save us from becoming a footnote in history? Could the punishment of exile have actually been a blessing?

 

Isaiah Chapters 47-48; Botched, broken but still beautiful.

     



Detail of a 6th Century Frieze depicting Jews being taken into exile by Babylonian warriors.




 

It was great to see our group back from their respective summer endeavors; bright-eyed, caffeine fueled and ready for Isaiah. Here we go, this is going to be an amazing year! We begin with Chapter 47, not 46 as I led you to believe in my first posting. My humble apology!

What could the Israelites have experienced in Babylon as they were taken captive and stripped of everything they had known? They were force-marched into a foreign city whose scale and grandeur had no equal; they must have seen the Ishtar Gate, the Hanging Gardens and sumptuously decorated temples.

  

Amidst all this wealth they languished and labored. Isaiah offers hope of the coming deliverance by laying out the House of Jacob's (the Jews) return to Israel and the reasons for Babylon's impending destruction. God is displeased by the exceedingly heavy yoke the Babylonians have placed upon the Israelites.

Ellen and Ceil: In response to Chapter 47:6 "I was angry at my people, I defiled My heritage." God    seems to be expressing human-like regret for punishing the Israelites. The choice of the word "heritage" is very interesting.

Rabbi: "Inheritance" would be a more appropriate translation from the Hebrew than the word"heritage."

Chapter 47:12 God chides the Babylonians because they have put their faith in "enchantments", and "scanners of the heaven, the star-gazers." They are full of hubris and drunk with their own power. These are some of the reasons God provides for their coming demise. Chapter 47:15 "There is none to save you."

Ellen: In response to Chapter 48:3 "Long ago, I foretold things that happened, from my mouth they issued , and I announced them;" These prophetic visions are curious! Why are images forbidden if the prophets had visions of God? Why the injunction?

Joel: Three dimensional image making is taboo because it can be seen as idol making. There is more tolerance for some two dimensional image making. Isaiah did not "see" God's face. He is experiencing  him in another way.

Julie: Can images and names ever encapsulate a transcendental God?

Joel: Jews accessed Neo-Platonism. That means that God and his essence emanates down to us. There are many names for God. They just show different attributes.

In Exodus 33:20 God tells Moses that he cannot see the divine face, but he will show him his glory.

Rabbi: The names Adoni, Hashem... are nicknames of nicknames. This is an example of how we place fences around the Torah in order to protect us from transgressions.

Chapter 48:3 God appears to be frustrated with the stubbornness of the Israelites."Your neck is like iron sinew and your forehead bronze."

Ellen: I feel that ritual alone is not enough any longer; we must now use our hearts too. This is something new.

Joel: This is the new improved Israel... a light unto the nations.

Ellen: Does this make Israel a martyr?

Chapter 48:8: "Though I know that you are treacherous, that you were called a rebel from birth, For the sake of My name I control My wrath."

If God knows that human nature is treacherous does this imply that we were deliberately crafted in this way to enact treachery? Or can it mean that character flaws are unexpected blips in the creation process? Does free will allow for all possibilities? What is the function of our flaws and do our impulses drive us to greater things?

Bob: We are being tested and refined.

Rabbi: In response to Chapter 48:10, "See I refine you, but not as silver; I test you in the furnace of affliction." We don't melt like silver but perhaps we are being retooled.

The Israelites must have asked, just as we ask in times of suffering, "Why?" An acquaintance of mine who had experienced the loss of her mother, sister and uncle within a very short period of time said, "Most of us don't look up to God, until he puts us on our back." Humility, empathy and the opportunity to build resilience are certainly possible outcomes of suffering. Like Job 2:10, through suffering and faith more is restored back to us than what has been taken. On a personal note, shortly after my son was diagnosed with a bone disease he came home from elementary school and told me that he approached and "really saw" a boy in his school that was confined to a wheel chair. He had seen him before, but this time he explained, his "heart felt warm." My son's experience prompted him to speak to the boy for the first time.

I would prefer to skip the adversity and go straight to the wisdom but lets face it, there aren't any short cuts. Suffering certainly has a way of commanding ones full attention. Mel Brook's 2,000 Year Old Man is asked, "What is the difference between tragedy and comedy?" He answers, " Tragedy is when I cut my finger, I'll cry a lot, go into Mount Sinai for a day and a half. Comedy is if you fall in an open manhole cover and die. What do I care?" This is funny because it points to a tendency in human nature but what is available to a people in the absence of freedom, a homeland and a house of worship? It would seem that a softened heart and a new perspective would do much to help re-envision a more ethical future. The scientific theory of the Big Bang seems applicable to this concept. Suffering is like an intense gravitational pressure that squashes all focus and pushes all matter together into a singularity, thus creating a dense center. From that singularity all possibilities come into being. As the pressure is released and focus expands outwards, it encloses all under a shared roof where potential to develop a broader understanding becomes possible. This potential, if it is realized will enable us to see past our own "cut fingers."

Chapter 48:17: The time of deliverance is near. God is expecting Israel to follow his directions.

Chapter 48:22: "There is no safety-said the lord-for the wicked."

Ellen: Who is wicked? Are the Babylonians- are we?

Rabbi: This could be a politically motivated interpretation of "wickedness." There are 3 different types of sin: the sin of not following the law, acts of wickedness and failure to do the right thing.

Ceil: Would this definition of wicked apply to an individual who is non-observant but is "good?"

We end on Chapter 48:22. Before we part I'd like to share a Yiddish folktale about the Yetzer ha-ra(the instinctive impulse) and the Yetzer ha-tov (the ethical force).

The pious men of a small village are fed up with the wild behavior of theYetzer ha-ra. They catch it and lock it up in a barn. They soon realize that no homes are being built, eggs go unhatched, no music is being played. In short all of the creative endeavours of the village have ceased. After much debate, the men put out the eyes of the yetzer ha -ra and set it loose knowing that from this time forward it will only be able to see what reason shows it.

  Keep your mojo in check untill we meet again next week.