Part III

Isaiah’s Voice and the Aftermath of the Event

A study of Chapter 8

 

This is the third talk in my Series: “Event and Text in Early First Isaiah.” The two previous talks, “Setting the Stage” and “The Event Narrative,” brings us to Chapter 8: “Isaiah’s Voice and the Aftermath of the Event.”

            One of the curious things about the beginning of the Isaiah scroll, is that the actual voice of the prophet is not heard until Chapter 8, sometime after the event at the Gihon Spring. With that observation, however, I raise the question of whose voice appears in chapter 6, “The Throne Room Vision.  Scholarly debate about its role in the mission of Isaiah is extensive, and while its authorship is generally granted to Isaiah, I would say not of fast. The answer to that question of whose voice is best deferred until looking at Chapter 8 where the voice of Isaiah is heard loud and clear.  Chapter 8 consists of three units,1-11, 12-16 and 16-23, tied to 3 separate moments in the life of the young prophet.  It is clear from the internal evidence that each of these occurred after the event at the spring, which dates shortly after the ascension of Ahaz, 736.  But on the other hand before Tiglath Pileser’s campaign in 733 which overran Damascus, ending the reign of Rezin and shortly afterward, the northern kingdom ending the reign of Pekah, fulfilling the prophesy at the spring. The voice in these three units is intensely personal, defensive and filled with emotion, which come through so clearly from reading the text in the original Hebrew.

            As time passed, days, weeks, the public became involved and as the public is prone to do, they lost their patience.  If they were to be rid of Pekah and Rizen, why were they still in power and why were their machinations still troubling them.  Isaiah answers them with a new word of God: “Speed the spoils, hasten the prey.”  מהר שלל חש בז. The point is not to be taken as an ill omen, but as an encouragement.  “It is on its way, the sooner the better.” It is possible that the words are derived from a slogan of an invading army, but in apprising them the prophet makes them an omen of the good news.  Good because the coming loss and pain is God’s means of moving Israel into a new future. 

            Isaiah is directed to write these words on a tablet, a large posture, in large common letters, the kind that the people can read. Isaiah claims God has arranged for two trustworthy individuals to notarize the text: no less than Uriah the Priest and Zechariah a member of the council, likely a member of the royal household.  To own these words in a dramatic and personal way, Isaiah conceives a child with the prophetess and names the child מהר שלל חש בז , “Speed the Spoil, hasten the prey.” In this way the words are indelibly written in his own life as a child from whom his life would be inseparable. This followed his earlier naming of his first child, אשר ישוב. These two boys and what they represent are explicitly tied to the eighth century Isaiah, as he waits out the period of suspense that followed his delivery of the message to Ahaz. As he put it in rebuttal to a doubting public: “Behold I and the children whom the Lord gave me as signs and wonders” would wait in patient hope. This is further evidence that these words belong to the eighth century Isaiah!

            Of the latter child, it is said that before this child distinguishes between mother and father these things that have been prophesied will come about. The wealth of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria would be carried off.  Rezin and Pekah would be no more. Thus, a timetable is set for the fulfilment of the prophesy: months.

            The prophetic unit is followed by a poem of remarkable craftmanship, verse 6-10. Its language is richly metaphorical using the contrasting waters of the Gihon Spring that flow into the pool called Shiloah in the lower city, and the waters of the Euphrates River that carves and floods the Syrian plain. The first stanza introduces the alternative waters, the one representing the gentle governance of Davidic throne and the other the rapacious rule of the Assyrians.  Having rejected the one, the northern kingdom, along with all the other distant lands will be subject to Assyria.  Two succeeding stanzas carry out this picture.  Nouns and modifiers give way to verbs. The rhythm changes from flowing to staccato and new metaphors emerge bringing the action home to Jerusalem.  The flood comes up to its neck and to the tips of its wings. Each of these latter stanzas ends with a refrain: Emmanuel.  Emmanuel is a prayer, but, of course, is also the name of child whose birth was promised in chapter 7. With the earlier mention of the waters of Shiloah, we are again connected to the prophetic event in chapter 7. It would appear that this poem is also the voice of Isaiah and if it is, we have evidence that that the young Isaiah is an accomplished poet as well as a seasoned prophet.

            In the aftermath of this first defense, the waiting continued.  Public doubt continued to grow as Rezin and Pekah remained in power until the second campaign of Tiglath Pileser, yet months off.   Schemes to replace Ahaz would have continued to be in play, giving rise to rumors about conspiracies. These would have been mirrored by claims of conspiracies that Ahaz was in league with the Assyrians, or he was making a deal with Rezin and Pekah.  The public would have been awash with conspiracy theories.

            Isaiah’s second defense opens, verse 11, in response to a divine oracle:

 אמר יהוה אלי כי כח   “Thus say the Lord  to me.”

This new oracle is intended to stiffen Isaiah’s conviction in the prophecy which he so recently been called to deliver. It is delivered not just with words, but also ,בחזקת היד  (ba cheqat hayad) with a  forceful hand.  He is not to call conspiracy what that people call conspiracy; to fear what they fear.  His fear is to be in the Lord, not in the petty fears of the people. The fear of God is said to be sanctifying,   תקידשו the process of making one holy.    He will be your fear and terror and it will be for your sanctification, למקדש , verse 14, The occurrence of the word holy, קדש, links the voice of Isaiah with the vision in Chapter 6 which resounds with the “Holy, Holy, Holy, קדש קדש קדש. This may not answer the question of whether the voice of Chapter 6 is the voice of Isaiah or not, but it does link them in a way that makes clear that Isaiah has internalized the vision.

            The final lines of this second defense raise further difficulties. Verse 14 appears to begin a series of consequences for those who fear the Lord.  It will be for sanctification, but also it will be for a stone over which one will stumble, a rock which causes one to fall; for both houses of Israel, and for a snare and trap for those who dwell in Jerusalem.  The puzzle is solved when one credits the idea held by Isaiah, that being broken, stumbling or falling, being trapped or snared is, yes, bad news, but it becomes good news because it is inherent to the process of transformation.

            As the statis quo continued to drag on it gave rise to yet a third defense, 16-23.  The public is increasingly weary and desperate for answers.  The prophets don’t know when things will change. The time has come, they argue, to take things in their own hands.  The prophets have been given their chance, it is time to seek elsewhere, the necromancers, who use bones to consult the dead or the soothsayer who chirp mysterious answer.  To this Isaiah responds with a harsh command: “Bind the testimony, seal the torah.” Is this directed to the public or to his fellows in the prophetic school?  Testimony in this case stands for the witness that the prophet made at the spring in the presence of Ahaz.   Torah means not law as it comes to mean in later post exilic Judaism, but light.  The original meaning of the word, אור, the root of  torah, is light, hence in this case it indicates illumination or a noumenal sense that results from the testimony.  Binding and sealing are what one does with a scroll. This indicates the testimony is or should be written as text and preserved.  He asks rhetorical “Does not a people ask their God? Does the living ask the dead for torah or testimony?  Not asking God, is certain to lead to darkness and weariness. If the people weary, tired of waiting, the Assyrian are not. They have, in fact, overrun the land of Naphtali, and Zebulon. This dates this third defense as late in 734, after the Assyria campaign of that year.  Naphtali and Zebulon have been lost by the Northern Kingdom and incorporated into the new Assyrian province of Dor.  This loss, however, is viewed as light, but the heavy loss was bound to follow soon.   In fact, the campaign that comes in the following year would move down interior route of the Levant, capturing Damascus and ending of reign of king Rezin. It would continue south reducing Samaria to a puppet kingdom.  Pekah would be executed and replaced by a puppet king. And still, the Assyrian assault would continue southward to Moad and Edom.  The campaign of 734 had taken control of the costal route and the campaign of 733, the interior route.  This left Jerusalem, whose good fortune was to be in the high land, the Shephlah. off the trade routes, isolated between the two prongs of the Assyrian advance.

            Our next talk will be on Chapter 10 in which I will argue that it found its place in the proto=Isaiah unit, 3-12, as the overarching theological reflection looking back on the events that followed in the wake of the prophesy at the Gihon Spring.  At its heart is the conviction that Assyria is the agent of God’s wrath, which is working a transformation of their life.  Here we will find ourselves faced with this difficult concept, so out of favor in contemporary thought, curiously so, however, since it seems that nature and humanity in our times are engulfed in much violence.