Week 24 Isaiah
If Judah had been showing some reverence for the Lord I guess that Isaiah wouldn’t have been necessary. But he was. Like most of the prophets Isaiah showed up as a cautionary type of guy; an admonitor, a warn-er. Pictorially a prophet is usually sketched up as an old-guy with a sign board saying The End of the World Is Near, and based on this cartoon evidence it’s easiest to think of them as one-dimensional prophets of doom.
The thing that’s easy to forget is that that’s not all they were.
I noticed this right away in chapter one. Isaiah starts with fourteen verses of Judah’s failings. Then right away there is a change: come now, and let us reason together…though your sins are a scarlet, they will be as white as snow.
I started to chart the two components on a Gloom-and-Doom vs. Hope-and-Promise table.
There’s both purge and refuge in chapter four.
The Lord: shall be your fear, and He shall be your dread. And then in the next sentence: He shall be your sanctuary.
What about the people who walk in darkness? They: shall see a great light.
The dystopian desertification of chapter 34 is followed by 35’s wasteland-in-bloom.
I’m not saying there’s as much upside as downside content. But up to chapter 39 I’ve tracked 35 G&D verses & passages vs. 35 H&P. My numbers aren’t take-em-to-the-bank accurate or comprehensive.
But Isaiah pretty clearly shows both despair and hope.
Note: quotes from Isaiah 1:18, 4:4-6, 8:13-14, 9:2 (NASB version)