An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 146: Suspiciously Shoe-Horned Prophecies. Plus: The Cup of Trembling (Isaiah 51-65)

Isaiah 51-55
Suspiciously Shoe-Horned Prophecies. Plus: The Cup of Trembling.

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 51

“Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.”

More words of encouragement to the Israelites; the speaker is not clear but I think the intent is that it is God speaking through a prophet. The essential message from God to the Israelites is that they shouldn’t worry, because in the grand scheme of things their oppressors are mere mortals, and even the earth and heavens don’t last forever, but the legacy given to the Israelites via Abraham and Sarah lives on as it is passed down over generations.

There’s a slight sense here of salvation being eternal in the Christian sense, i.e. of an immortal soul, but to me at least the sense of “everlasting” is more that the salvation lasts forever, but not the individual who has been saved. Considering the other context in the chapter, that of the mighty deeds and powers of God, this makes the most sense to me. God is everlasting, His salvation is everlasting but you are just a brief blip within this eternity.

And of course, because this set-up requires an all-powerful God, the explanation has to be that God has given the Israelites the “cup of trembling” to drink from, but now He’s going to pass it to the Assyrians/Babylonians. I rather like the metaphor.

Isaiah 52

“Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.”

This chapter basically continues the call to action. The time is come for the Israelites to go forth from captivity, but the journey back to Jerusalem is given as a fairly calm and leisurely one, “ye shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight”. From Kings/Chronicles/Esther/ we know that basically King Cyrus relents and decides to free the Israelites because he seems, for an Assyrian king, a fairly decent sort of man. But there’s no mention of how and why the Israelites are suddenly free to wander home, not even the idea that God has made the Assyrians change their mind.

Anyway, it’s a rousing summons nonetheless, with just one contradiction that caught my eye. There are several mentions to the cultural practices that separate the Israelites from others around them – cautions not to touch anything unclean on the way home, and the almost apartheid-like conditions given in the quoted verse above, but there is also mention that “all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God”. In this case, however, it doesn’t seem like the Gentiles get to share in God’s blessing as in some previous chapters (and in a more NT fashion), more that everyone will see that the Israelites are protected by a powerful God.

Isaiah 53

“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.”

Here’s an interesting chapter – this un-named figure who will be the “arm of the Lord” bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus. A man scorned, wounded (with “stripes”, i.e. whipped) and bruised, taken from prison like a “lamb to the slaughter” without a word of protest, sharing his grave with the wicked, a man who had “done no violence”. And yet this is done because of the “transgressions” of the people; “and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors”.

Obviously, if you are a believer this seems like pretty good evidence, although note that the figure in this chapter is not referred to as a messiah at any point; possibly the intent could be that this figure is a prophet in the same vein as Isaiah and others. I personally consider that, of course, if you are the follower of a religious visionary who happens to be executed, you could point to this chapter as “proof” that he is the one from the prophecy. I would imagine that at the time this was written prisoners were never treated particularly kindly, and so it wouldn’t be too hard to find a person to apply these events to. There are, I believe, other prophecies that can be said to be fulfilled by Jesus, and again the sense I got from the last time I read the NT is that it can’t be ruled out that either the gospel writers added or embellished events to make them more clearly fit prophecy, or Jesus Himself did some things (the entry to Jerusalem being foremost) deliberately because He was looking to fulfil prophecy (another impression I took away, and I’m interested in revisiting this, is that Jesus is a man who begins to believe his own propaganda about being the Son of God). Or, of course, perhaps everything happened just as it is written because Jesus was the fulfilment of the prophecy in this chapter, who am I to say?

What is unusual about this chapter in its context within the book of Isaiah is that suddenly here is an individual who has to undergo a lot of suffering for the sake of the Israelites, and yet just a chapter before God has promised them that their escape from captivity will be easy and carefree. Apart from, it would seem, this poor scapegoat.

Isaiah 54

“In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer.”

Frustratingly, there’s no more information about the mystery figure in the last chapter, which makes it seem almost like an insertion into the text, as this chapter follows more neatly from Isaiah 52 than 53. It is more promises from God for future peace and prosperity to the Israelites, but I find that there’s that slightly uncomfortable tone of God as an abusive spouse promising never to do it again. This is reinforced, I think, by the early verses being addressed to women, or perhaps metaphorically comparing the Israelites to a woman – “For the LORD hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God”. I forsook you for a bit, but I won’t do it again, says God, ignoring that what God considers “for a small moment” is generations of slavery for the Israelites. There’s even a reference to the flood, and the pledge then not to do it again. Now God pledges not only to not, specifically, flood the entire earth but to “not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee”.

Again this is the thorny issue of having an all-powerful God – that bad things that happen also have to be somehow due to Him which either leads to awkward justifications for His actions, or the argument-ending notion that God is so far above human understanding that to question why is futile. Which in terms of the type of thinking it requires is not that far from assuming that bad luck is purely a matter of uncaring chance and nothing to do with a guiding deity.

Isaiah 55
“Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

Oddly, just as I said at the end of the last chapter, God tells the people here “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts”. Ha! I may be flippant about it, but to be honest this makes a certain amount of sense. My issue is that, despite giving this advice, the Bible will also sometimes then still try to justify God’s actions, particularly as it applies to the fortunes of the nations of the Israelites. But you can see this in anything from Bede to the Brothers Grimm, when good people die young the formula is usually along the lines that “it pleased God to call him/her to Him”, in other words, there is no reason we can understand, it just happened.

That’s somewhat of a tangent to this chapter, which is an assortment of theological points. As well as the above justification for the actions of God, there is more promise of good times for Jerusalem and some strange nuggets. Verses 1 and 2 are about charity and possession; “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not?” and seem to hearken back to some of the sentiments in Ecceliastes, that of doing what is pleasant to you. This is followed by some more vaguely messiah-related comments; “Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people”. “Him” in this case probably being David, but once again the KJV’s cavalier attitude with pronouns gives me doubt. This is followed by the fame of the God of the Israelites being spread to far, unknown, nations; another precursor of the notion of God becoming something more than Yahweh, God of the Israelites.