An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 140: The Fall and Rise of (Slightly Tarty) Cities (Isaiah 21-25)

Isaiah 21-25
The Fall and Rise of (Slightly Tarty) Cities

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 21

“And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights:”

Isaiah has a vision that causes him pain like the pain of childbirth, apparently. From out of the desert comes a chariot bearing news that Babylon has fallen, but I don’t know to whom. This chapter says to “watch in the watchtower”, from which I guess the Jehovah’s Witnesses get the name of their little newsletter. Also Isaiah, or the people to whom he speaks, are told to “go set a watchman”; another line from Isaiah now taken up in popular culture thanks to Harper Lee.

I’m a little confused about this chapter, but the sense I get is that, although persons unknown are watching for news from the desert, there’s the idea that any of the readers of this chapter should be watching for the arrival of God. Probably because the language gets a little vague, which always makes me assume that we’ve wandered off into deliberate metaphor.

The chapter ends with the “burden upon Arabia”, another land to suffer troubles. Within a year the “children of Kedar”, whoever they are, will flee from swords and arrows and be diminished. Also referenced are the “travelling companies of Dedanim” – evidently nomadic people, early Arabs?

Isaiah 22

“And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.”

This chapter is headed as the “burden of the valley of vision”, which could be a translated proper name for a location. A host of armies comes against Jerusalem, but the people have neglected the defences. Houses are pulled down and the stone used to plug gaps in the wall (“houses have ye broken down to fortify the wall”), the outer dykes have been neglected (“Ye made also a ditch between the two walls for the water of the old pool: but ye have not looked unto the maker thereof, neither had respect unto him that fashioned it long ago”). Isaiah is told to go to the city treasurer, Shebna, and berates him for allowing this to come to pass. Shebna will be replaced by Eliakim, an altogether more responsible holder of the position. The descriptions of Eliakim get a bit messianic in themselves (“And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open”), and I can see this section being used as some kind of reference to Jesus. Under those circumstances you have to wince at all the talk of fastening with nails.

Isaiah 23

“The burden of Tyre. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish; for it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in: from the land of Chittim it is revealed to them”

As the quote says, this is the fate of Tyre, or Tarshsish, a port city that gets used a lot as a possessor of a proverbially large number of ships. There’s some nice reference to sea trade here that paints a picture of the city port, but Tarshish will be laid low for seventy years before rising again. There’s no specific reason for this, unlike the famines and droughts of some of the other “burdens”. A failure in trade, and the rise of Chaldea as a rival power seem to be the reason, not violent seas or foreign invasion as you might expect.

After seventy years, Tyre will “sing as an harlot”, making “sweet melodies” and committing “fornication with all the kingdoms of the world”. However, oddly, the “merchandise and hire” will be holy to God, despite the harlotry reference. It’s quite an apt one in a way, as it paints the mercantile city as brash, colourful and vibrant, open to all. The implication in the last verse, however, is that the merchandise is charity to the poor, not for accumulation of profit; trade in the service of philanthropy.

Isaiah 24

“Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.”

Isaiah paints a picture of a post-apocalyptic world, empty of all but a remnant of people and broken by upheaval. Cities are left in desolation, there is no joy in the world. It’s interesting that Isaiah considers the losses of music and wine to both be bad things, given the propensity for some religious extremists to try to ban these things throughout history. In this empty land, the remnant will call out to God, who is busy collecting various proud rulers together. We end the chapter with a dramatic vision of the sun and moon hiding from God as He rules at Mount Zion. If this book was set to music, here would be where it goes quiet for a bit, just a few notes waiting for some kind of dramatic resurgence.

Isaiah 25

“He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it.”

Isaiah seems to have a good grasp of dramatic pacing, because after the tense pause of the last chapter, God returns dramatically from a burst of praise in the opening verse, protecting the innocent and crushing the proud. This chapter is mostly pitched as a happy occasion, with the kind of victory of good over evil and redemption described in the quoted verse above, and I liked the simile of God spreading out his arms like a swimmer – an unusual one, but effective in its description.

I have to wonder, though, since Isaiah seems to have pretty fully covered a fall and rise narrative, where the other forty or so chapters will take us.