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?