An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 136: Things Isaiah Doesn’t Like: Cucumbers, Moles, Women in Fancy Clothes, Music (Isaiah 1-5)

Isaiah 1-5
Things Isaiah Doesn’t Like: Cucumbers, Moles, Women in Fancy Clothes, Music.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Isaiah 1

“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.”

It is with trepidation mixed with interest that I approach Isaiah. I’m aware, vaguely, that this book is one of the prime sources that is supposed to prophesy the arrival of Jesus, and I dislike prophecy as much as I dislike allegory. More, in fact. Allegory is a clumsy attempt at putting a message across, but prophecy is generally so vague that it can be made to mean whatever you want it to.

However, I’m interested to see what’s actually in this book and how it can have been interpreted; also I recall that a “prophet” in biblical terms is more someone that speaks for God, rather than someone who predicts the future. But sixty or so chapters … Man, after Psalms I’m still needing short books.

Anyway, the chapter itself treads some familiar ground. Isaiah the prophet lives in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. So we’re in that part of Kings and Chronicles where things are generally terrible.

Isaiah is preaching that the sin of the people has turned God away from them, and that God is not interested in their burnt offerings (“vain oblations”) that they give if they are not also going to back it up with righteous actions, to “learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow”. So here we have empty platitudes of self-righteous pious folk, who believe that all they need to do is burn an ox or two and they are okay with God.

Isaiah does, indeed, foretell the future, that God will “purge away thy dross” and the sinful. It’s all very street preacher kind of stuff; I like the use of language in this chapter but it is one of those sentiments that can get misused according to the prejudices of the speaker. Sinfulness and iniquity could easily be turned on gay marriage, or women bishops, or whatever else the speaker personally disagrees with. I think Isaiah, though, is speaking out against hypocrisy in religion, rather than specific acts. That might come, we’ve got a lot of book to go yet.

Final thoughts: I love the simile that Zion has been reduced to “a lodge in a garden of cucumbers”, and I intend to use it some time, if I ever encounter an appropriate situation.

Isaiah 2

“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.”

Isaiah looks forwards to a day when God is exalted again, and vanity and pride is laid low. Idols will be cast down (to the “bats and moles”) and the sinners will hide themselves in rocks. But also this is a time of peace, when weapons are beaten into farming tools and “nation shall not raise sword against nation”, so it’s not a real fire and brimstone kind of vengeance on behalf of God.

Isaiah is hard, however, on the various signs of riches and success that Solomon has been praising in the past few books – gold, silver, Lebanese cedar. Tarsis (or Tarshish as it is rendered here) was evidently a very important port; this is not the first time I’ve seen it used as a model for large numbers of ships. So, again a chapter that can be read as hopeful but also as retributive depending on prejudice.

Isaiah 3

“For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water,”

Isaiah prophesies a time when the people of Judah will be laid low, and when “babes shall rule over them”, presumably a reference to the Babylonian captivity, where the Israelites I guess as slaves are held to be beneath the children of their masters in terms of importance. This is, of course, all their own fault for making God angry with them, in true Old Testament style.

There’s also some unfortunate misogyny in this chapter; not only in Verse 12 that says of the overturned state of affairs that “children are their oppressors and women rule over them”, which I can see being picked out by arch-conservative types as biblical approval of denying leadership roles to women. No, also Isaiah complains of the “daughters of Zion” and their wanton ways, mincing as they walk with tinkling jewellery about their ankles. Isaiah shows a great deal of knowledge about women’s fashion as he describes all the various types of garment and adornment that will be torn and otherwise destroyed by God, who will also give the women scabs on their heads and lay bare their “secret parts”. From his proposed time of peace in the opening chapters, Isaiah’s gone a bit frothing and vengeful here.

Isaiah 4

“And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.”

Is it me, or is this some kind of veiled reference to polygamy; if the women are being called by the name of the man, are they seeking to be his wives? Or are we in the realms of allegory again? Seven cities following a prophet or something like that?

Anyway, a short chapter that describes the “dross” of Zion being burned away, leaving only the righteous (of course), and a return to the stuff of Exodus, with God creating clouds and smoke but day and fire by night, like the fiery pillar, and a tabernacles for shelter. So there’s a feel here of looking back to an earlier, simpler version of Yahweh worship, to the time of Moses when the place of worship was a tent rather than a mighty temple.

Isaiah 5

“Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill”

The start of this chapter sounds like it’s fallen out of the Song of Solomon, but no, it’s a parable. A man plants a vineyard, but it produces wild grapes rather than grapes (smaller and less sweet, I would imagine). So in a fit of pique he tears down the fences and burns his vines. This, of course, represents Israel and God’s treatment of it, because the people have become sinful little wild grapes and not plump juicy righteous grapes. There then follows some blood and thunder rhetoric about how the sinful will be punished and the righteous will triumph in the end – all quite stirringly written which is fun to read, but also quite dangerous in my mind. Everyone would like to think that they are on the side of the right, and it’s easy to use this kind of writing to justify persecution of those who don’t think the same.

And just to show how tricky points of view can be, Isaiah complains of “And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider the operation of his hands”, but compare with earlier writing of David and Solomon in Psalms and Ecclesiastes that praise music and singing and dancing (admittedly in a religious context). Isaiah is writing at a later time, when opinion seems to have shifted against the luxurious life enjoyed by the earlier kings. I guess under the rubbish later kings these things have become seen to be representative of the tyrants, heretics and ineffectual men that the later kings are said to be.