Isaiah 3 – Yahweh
will take from Jerusalem and Judah all that supports it. “People will oppress
each other – man against man, neighbor against neighbor. Young people will
insult their elders, and vulgar people will sneer at the honorable” (3:5).
“They are doomed! They have brought destruction upon
themselves” (3:9). The leaders of God’s people mislead them and oppress them.
They grind the faces of the poor in the dust. Zion is compared to a beautiful
but frivolous woman who is “haughty, craning her elegant neck, flirting with
her eyes, walking with dainty steps” (3:16). On the day of judgment “the Lord
will strip away everything that makes her beautiful” (3:18). “Instead of
smelling of sweet perfume, she will stink” (3:24).
The men of the city will die by the sword. “The gates of
Zion will weep and mourn. The city will be like a ravaged woman, huddled on the
ground” (3:26).
Isaiah 4 – The
devastation God intends will reduce the male population of the city so that
there will be seven women vying for each man. But mixed with the prophecy of
doom, a promise of restoration also is given. “The Lord will wash the filth
from beautiful Zion and cleanse Jerusalem of its bloodstains . . . Then the
Lord will provide shade for Mount Zion and all who assemble there. He will
provide a canopy of cloud during the day and smoke and flaming fire at night,
covering the glorious land” (4:4-5).
Isaiah 5 - The
prophet compares the city with a vineyard God has taken great efforts to plant.
But the fruit of the vineyard has been sour. God will let the vineyard go
unprotected and unnourished. “He expected a crop of justice, but instead he
found oppression. He expected to find righteousness, but instead he heard cries
of violence” (5:7).
God curses those guilty of these things: over-accumulation
of property, drinking too much, thoughtlessness and inability to “see” the
beauty of the creation, inability to discern good from bad, cheating those who
are good, and turning the moral law on its head. To punish these sins, God will
raise a “distant nation” (5:26) to punish them. Unlike this own, these people
are not faint or weary. They are a disciplined horde.
We see here Isaiah’s insight into
the fact that God’s plan involves all the nations of the world. Assyria (Sennacherib) is here an agent of
God’s wrath. Isaiah insists that Israel should not try to get out of
trouble by allying itself with powerful nations. When “His” kings continually
fail to conduct themselves as He demands, Isaiah begins to turn his hopes to a
future king “who would obey Yahweh” (Reading
the Old Testament, 329) – the Messiah.
From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through
Quakerism
Part 14
I became pretty regular in attending the Meeting. After a
short time, something peculiar started to happen. I noticed that every time I
went and sat down in the silence, my mind would drift to the words of the Eliot
poem that had been religion to me for several years. It wasn’t surprising, I
suppose, seeing how much in the poem had to do with stillness:
At the still
point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the
still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Or
Words move, music moves
Only in time;
but that which is only living
Can only die.
Words, after speech, reach
Into the
silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or
music reach
The stillness,
as a Chinese jar still
Moves
perpetually in its stillness.
In a way, the Meeting
was a kind of embodiment of the poem, a place where the “intersection of the
timeless with time” was palpable. I couldn’t call what I encountered here
God yet, but I could call it “that of God”, as Quakers suggested. I didn’t
understand it—that sense of something transcendent that plagued my mind. I
didn’t feel comfortable with it. But I
could not deny that it was something constant in my make-up or experience.
The words evoking it began to seem like an obsession. Every time I came into
Meeting, I could think of nothing else. It occurred to me at some point that
this sense of preoccupation and agitation was what Friends meant by feeling
moved to speak, but I didn’t feel ready. I didn’t have anything to say about
the words, no erudite observations or points to make about them as people
sometimes did with things they had read.
Finally, after a year or so I just began to feel that I had to say the words to
be rid of them. As I prepared to do it, my heart started to pound. In
seconds it was pounding so hard I thought the palpitations must be visible. I
looked around to see if anyone was staring at me, noticing my blouse move, but
no. It crossed my mind that perhaps it was nerves, that I was anxious because I
was going to stand up and speak in front of others, but that was silly. I knew
everyone in Meeting well, and I wasn’t a shy person about speaking. I was a
lawyer, for heavens sake. At last I spoke. I probably said the lines I have
mentioned here, or others like them—lines that spoke of past and future being together
in time present or spoke of the intersection of the timeless with time or about
time being unredeemable and always present. I don’t know. But once the words
passed my lips, they were gone. It was the only time I spoke in this Meeting. I didn’t connect the call to speak in any
clear way with God or even “that of God,” I just thought of it as a
psychological phenomenon—obsessive thoughts given release. Later I would
realize and acknowledge that God had come to me in those words, that he had
given me an experience of his presence and of “vocal ministry” as Quakers
practice it, but I wasn’t yet ready to
see it.
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