A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 71: The Appointed Place

In Isaiah chapter 64 the prophet had presented A Prayer for Repentance, where he had portrayed the children of Israel as having prayed to Yahweh their God for mercy, and also that He would take vengeance upon His enemies, since for Israel it is evident that there is Mercy in Vengeance, as we had seen in our discussion of Isaiah chapter 63. Then in Isaiah chapter 65, which we had titled Christians and Pagans, we see that the prophet had recorded the answer of Yahweh to that prayer, and while most of it was directed towards the obedient of His people, those who would choose to serve Him, for their good, there were also grave warnings for those who would remain rebellious, that they would be put to the sword. As they were described in that chapter, we could only describe the obedient as Christians, who would wait on Yahweh for their salvation and hearken to His Word, and the rebels as pagans, as they continued in their licentiousness and their sin. So with this is a valid explanation for the wars of the children of Israel as they migrated and settled into their new homes in the Appointed Place, which is described in the closing verses of this final chapter. 

Subsequently, for the obedient there was a promise of a New Heavens and Earth, and the answer to their prayer continues through Isaiah chapter 66, and the very end of this book of prophecy. Where we had left off with verse 4 of this 66th and final chapter of Isaiah, the Word of Yahweh had once again turned to the contrasting fates of Christians and pagans, of those who would obey Him and those who would not, where He had had avowed to consider the humble and contrite, those who respected His Word, but for those who would not, He said:

4 I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 70: New Heavens and Earth

We had titled our commentary on the early portion of Isaiah chapter 65 Christians and Pagans, and perhaps Christians and Heathens may have been more accurate, and even more properly descriptive, but either way the same point is made. There have always been people among the children of Israel who are quick to depart from the faith in exchange for the temporary pleasures of the flesh, or even at the first sign of some trial. While the pagan beliefs may be seen as ancestral, they actually represent the errors and sins of our ancient ancestors. All of the records of Norse paganism, or Greek paganism, or the paganism of Mesopotamia reflect an acceptance of sexual licentiousness, Sodomy, child grooming, adultery and other sins which are not sins for pagans, because even the gods indulged in such acts, and if one’s god does it, well, then it must be permissible for everyone. 

As soon as the children of Israel in the Exodus account had thought that Moses had been gone too long at Sinai, they quickly broke off on their own path and compelled Aaron to make for them a golden calf. Most Christians probably do not realize that the golden calf was a symbol of Baal, and that the Israelites in Egypt must have been familiar with Baal, because they were in Goshen, in the area of the Nile Delta, during the same period when Canaanite kings had ruled over much of Lower Egypt. Apparently, after the conquest and expulsion of the Hyksos, the Egyptians themselves had also added Baal to their own collection of idols. Much later, when the kingdom of Israel was divided, the golden calves of Jeroboam I had also represented the worship of Baal.

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A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 69: Christians and Pagans

In our most recent commentary on Isaiah, discussing chapter 64, we saw A Prayer for Repentance which began with a plea for judgment, which had petitioned Yahweh God, in part, to “make thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence!” Then the children of Israel were portrayed as having confessed many of their sins, and as having surrendered themselves to the will of their God hoping to receive of His mercy. In that, there was also a subtle prophecy, as they confessed that Solomon’s temple had been destroyed, even if the temple would not be destroyed for at least another hundred years after the time when Isaiah could have written these words. Finally, they expressed complete exasperation with their circumstances in the world, where both the chapter and the prayer had concluded and they asked “12 Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O LORD? wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore?”

This prayer in Isaiah chapter 64 echoes attitudes in an earlier prayer which is found in Isaiah chapter 26. There the children of Israel were portrayed as having been oppressed by their enemies, but also as having been multiplied in spite of that oppression. Yet they showed a similar degree of exasperation where they are depicted as having said:

16 LORD, in trouble have they visited thee, they poured out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them. 17 Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O LORD. 18 We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen.

Following that Yahweh God is portrayed as having made a promise of judgment upon His enemies which continues into chapter 27. So the prayer found there is indeed parallel to this one, and we have pointed out several such instances in Isaiah, in this context and others.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 68: A Prayer for Repentance

Even with a three-and-a-half page, twenty-five hundred word introduction, this will be one of our shorter presentations in Isaiah, as this chapter represents a prayer of Isaiah made on behalf of the children of Israel, and in which Isaiah portrays the children of Israel themselves as praying to Yahweh their God for mercy, which does not become completely apparent until verse 5. Chapter 55 contains the response of the Word of Yahweh to this prayer, so we stopped short of entering that chapter. Our commentary on Isaiah is drawing to a close, so we are not trying to rush to the end. 

There is a pattern in the history of the children of Israel which emerges in the historical narrative of Scripture soon after the Exodus from Egypt. When the children of Israel follow after their God, they are blessed and they prosper as a nation. If there is war, those who turn to obedience are victorious, and may even overcome death, as Paul had written in Hebrews chapter 11 where he had spoken of men whom Yahweh had raised to deliver the children of Israel from such turmoil, and we read in part:

32 And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: 33 Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34 Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 35 Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection.

While it seems not to have worked out well for Samson, he had been blinded, it was inevitable that he was about to die, and upon his final prayers, Yahweh had given it to him to be avenged in his death, so in his end he had also experienced the mercy in vengeance. However each of those ancient deliverers of Israel had rather unequivocally understood that their deliverance had come from Yahweh their God, and it was not of themselves.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 67: The Mercy in Vengeance

In our last presentation we had discussed only the first six verses of Isaiah chapter 63, which begin with a dialogue and describe Yahweh God Himself as executing His vengeance upon Edom. For that reason, we titled the presentation Settling the Controversy of Zion, because that is precisely what it prophesies, where we also discussed the very similar parallel prophecy found earlier in Isaiah, in chapter 34, where Yahweh had declared:

5 For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment.

And then the reasons for this are given a little further on in that chapter:

8 For it is the day of the LORD'S vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion.

This is the vengeance which Christ had stopped short of declaring as the purpose of first His ministry, when He spoke in the synagogue in Galilee, in Luke chapter 4, and cited Isaiah chapter 61 where we read that His purpose is:

2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;

It could not have been time for vengeance at the time of the first advent of Christ, as the children of Israel were not yet reconciled to Yahweh through Christ, they had not yet heard the Gospel, and therefore they did not even know to perfect their obedience so that there could be vengeance, as we see in the epistles of the apostles and in the progression of these chapters here in Isaiah.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 66: Settling the Controversy of Zion

In our last two segments of this commentary on Isaiah, discussing chapters 61 and 62, we hope to have explained The Acceptable Year of Yahweh, from the context in which the clause is found here in Isaiah, as well as from the teachings in the Gospel of Christ, who had come to proclaim that year, as He Himself had announced in the synagogue in Nazareth. Then we had seen that Israel would be Called by a New Name, and we sought to demonstrate from the Gospels as well as the prophecies in Isaiah, how that name must be the name of the Messiah of Israel, which is the Name of Christ. As the apostle Peter is recorded as having said, in Acts chapter 4: “12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” One other perspective which we have is this: Yahweh promised, in Hosea, to betroth Israel to Himself forever, and that same reconciliation is promised in various other ways throughout Isaiah.

In Isaiah chapter 4 there is a prophecy which explains that even in ancient times, wives took the names of their husbands, where we read:

1 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.

Since Christ is the Bridegroom, as John the Baptist had declared, and as He had also later described Himself, and He being Yahweh God incarnate had promised to betroth Israel to Himself, which is found in Hosea chapter 2, then the bride should indeed be expected to take the name of the Husband, which in this case is Christian.

However, by His Own admission Christ had come only for the so-called “lost sheep of the house of Israel”, and throughout this book of the prophet Isaiah we have repeatedly seen that all of the promises of God concerning redemption and salvation were made exclusively to those same children of Israel who had become “lost sheep” in the period following the deportations of the Israelites by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. In the end, in the final chapters of the Revelation, the City of God which descends from Heaven has on its gates the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, so those who should wear this new name must be one and the same with those twelve tribes. As Paul of Tarsus had professed in Acts chapter 26, his labors were on behalf of the promises which God had made to the fathers, which he had described as the hope of the twelve tribes of Israel, and when James had written his epistle, for that same reason he addressed it to the twelve tribes which had been scattered abroad. Since both of those writings were originally written in Greek, we may expect at least significant elements of those twelve tribes to have been a part of the wider Greek world.