An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 142:Woe, Woe, and Thrice Woe. And Woe Again, For Luck. Plus: Re-Wilding. (Isaiah 31-35)

Isaiah 31-35
Woe, Woe, and Thrice Woe. And Woe Again, For Luck. Plus: Re-Wilding.

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 31

“Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the LORD!”

A fairly short chapter that basically tells the Israelites that God will save them from the Assyrians, and He is more powerful and useful than, for example, the Egyptians and all their horses and chariots can hope to be. Not for the first time in the OT I can’t help bit think it would be better to have all the forces of Egypt and God on your side, but I guess that would tend to diminish the power of God a bit if that was the offer.

Isaiah 32

“The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly.”

More “time of changes” stuff from Isaiah. The “churlish” will be put down, and understanding will come to all (presumably knowledge of God). After a bit of punishment of the wicked (with a particular emphasis on “women at ease” – Isaiah seems to be one of those OT characters with a bit of beef about women in general), and some turning around of the natural order, with fields becoming overgrown and the wilderness becomes “ a fruitful field”, a new king arises who will rule justly, with “liberal thought”.

Isaiah 33

“The earth mourneth and languisheth: Lebanon is ashamed and hewn down: Sharon is like a wilderness; and Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits.”

Isaiah is beginning to get a bit repetitive now, with his constant cries of woe, a bit like Senna the Soothsayer in Up Pompeii. There’s more apocalyptic stuff with, in this case, parts of Isreal/Zion being overthrown and sinners being punished. But once the dust has settled a king arises to take charge, possibly God himself from what Isaiah says later on. Isaiah’s opprobrium is directed at people who despoil and deal treacherously with those who have done them no harm – the converse to this seems to imply that it’s okay to cheat a cheater or to spoil one who spoils, but I’m not sure that’s truly the intent. Given Isaiah’s later description of those who will survive the “devouring fire” is of “He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil” I can’t really see that he would mean that it’s okay not to do these things if someone has wronged you.

Nothing entirely new here, although as before the imagery is quite striking. There’s an oddly incongruous sojourn into nautical analogy towards the end. Having said that the new Zion will be proof against enemy galleys, Isaiah continues with this and speaks in terms of strengthening masts and spreading sail.

Isaiah 34

“For the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.”

We continue with the woe. Once again, God is out destroying nations because they’ve made Him angry. I thought the rainbow after the Flood was supposed to be a pact about doing this kind of thing, but I think we’ve established that God can do pretty much what He likes.

Once again Isaiah revels in his apocalyptic language, of rivers of pitch, of lands of brimstone and burning pitch that burn for a generation, of piles of stinking carcasses, and of various birds and beasts that come to inhabit the land (presumably once the burning has stopped) when brambles and nettles grow instead. Are we to read the various cormorants, owls, unicorns, bitterns and vultures as being some kind of metaphor for other nations or types of people, or are they just some creatures that Isaiah thought of? To be honest, once all the burning dies down it doesn’t sound such a bad place. At the end of this chapter we are left with a nation replaced by wilderness, and I assume at some point people are going to come back to it.

Isaiah 35

“And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away”

Oh yes, there we go. Rejoice, says Isaiah. God will bring life back to the wilderness, make springs flow, and the lame will walk and the blind will see. And here I wonder if these lines are taken as some kind of confirmation of various miracles attributed to Jesus. Almost certainly, I’m sure.

“Confirm the feeble knees” and come to the restored Zion. And how do we get there? Well, there’s a catch. “And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it”. Which is very convenient because us, you and I, we’re okay, we’re on the highway to holiness. But not those people over there, they’re unclean, they’re going nowhere, so we can feel superior to them.

Well, okay, I’m being a bit snarky. Actually it’s quite nice getting a bit of hope and pleasant imagery after all the brimstone and death of the last few chapters (although I note that, as with the Doré illustrations, the writers tend to linger on the bad stuff longer than the good – this chapter is a mere 10 verses long compared to the 30 or so of the past few). It would be good, though, if there wasn’t such a clear-cut divide implied between people being right or wrong. So far, no hope of redemption if you aren’t one of the select few.