Month: July 2024

Week 28  Isaiah 55

The Lord says something here that’s a concern for a bible-reader:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
The Lord is functioning on a different level from me when it comes to how he thinks & what he thinks. And what he does & how he does it
The way Isaiah frames it makes it seem like a dead-end street. So – fortunately for me – he adds a couple of hopeful things to show the situation isn’t completely static. For instance:
Listen, and I will tell you where to get food that is good for your soul
Come to me with your ears wide open
Seek the Lord while you can find him
So even though I’m clearly operating at a big deficit it’s not a totally & impossibly big one. That’s a relief.
Anyway today this seemed like useful bible-reader information.
I read the bible so I can know and understand.
Sometimes it works out that I’m rewarded with knowing & understanding (although it’s usually fractional).
Other times I seem to get to no destination at all. And at those times Isaiah’s explanation is a help: you’re not getting it because – face the facts – you’re not built to get it. Knowing isn’t part of your constitution’s capacity. You don’t get it because you can’t get it.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV) & 55:2 3 6 (NLT)

Week 28  Isaiah 36-39

I compared the forecast Isaiah gave to king Hezekiah here in Isaiah 37:22-29 with the same prediction I read in 2 Kings 19:21-28 a couple of months ago. There’s at least 95% overlap.
It’s a pretty sober comment to a powerful empire-building state that had conquered half the world.
From Assyria’s point-of-view they were the Big Dog in the pack – Big Dog of the Whole World. And when they got around to asking How Did I Get to Be Big Dog? Well…they congratulated themselves. Isaiah quotes the Assyrians giving themselves credit:
I have conquered
I have cut down
I have reached & explored
I have dug wells
I have stopped up rivers.
It’s understandable. The Assyrians were big. Strong. Ruthless. Intimidating. Cunning. For-all-the-world it looked like they were the architects of their own global exploitation.
So Isaiah’s comment might have caught them flat-footed: have you not heard? It was the Lord who decided this long ago.
How the mechanism for this process works is hard to say. Sounds like some kind of interactive-deciding. Maybe not exactly symbiotic. But there seems to be overlapping decision-making in play. The Assyrians clearly made decisions they wanted to make. But (almost freakishly) their decisions corresponded exactly with the Lord’s decisions. And looking down the road the good outcomes they planned on looked less-and-less happy for them.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 37:24-25 26 (NLT). Hezekiah’s story is also in 2 Kings 18:13 – 20:20. The one big difference is that Hezekiah’s ‘psalm’ in Isaiah 38:10-20 is missing from the 2 Kings story.

Week 27  Isaiah 34-35

I’d like to ask a thousand people to read Isaiah 34 & Isaiah 35 back-to-back (it’s not a big assignment – 27-verses in total). The follow-up question would be: Which Chapter Do You Like?
I’m not saying that 100% of readers would choose Isaiah 35. But a lot would. One bible I read gives 35 the title: Hope for Restoration (another version calls it: Joy of the Redeemed). Hope & Joy? Restoration & Redemption? These sound alright. They definitely sound a lot better than the grisly menu in 34. One bible calls it: Judgment Against the Nations (the other – not so negatively: Message for the Nations).
Some readers might choose 34. But I’d predict that ~98% would go for the happier content of 35. I’d be in the 98% (the assignment was which chapter I liked…not which was more important).
My favorite passage in 35 is this one:
And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness; it will be for those who walk on that Way. The unclean will not journey on it; wicked fools will not go about on it.
No lion will be there, nor any ravenous beast; they will not be found there.
But only the redeemed will walk there.
It reminded me a lot of Proverbs. Solomon talks quite a bit about getting on The Way. He doesn’t have anything positive to say about getting off it and onto another track. And Isaiah agrees: the best way to go is The Way.

Note: quote from Isaiah 35:8-9 (NIV)

Week 27  Isaiah 28

Isaiah says that the Lord will do what he calls his unusual task and his extraordinary work (another version says a strange, unusual thing).
The Lord engages in (at least) two kinds of work-activities. First there’s the Usual and Non-Strange Work of the Lord (Isaiah doesn’t actually say that but he implies it). Then there’s another kind of work. When it comes to actually passing-judgment on people the Lord transitions to the Strange & Unusual Work he has to do.
The strange-&-unusual work of the Lord is – unfortunately – to destroy his own people. I think it’s safe to say that the Non-Strange work of the Lord doesn’t include destroying people. But his Strange work does.
Anyway Isaiah moves on in the next paragraph to add an agricultural illustration. It’s about an experienced farmer who knows his job. Knows what work there is to do and when’s the right time to do it. He also knows what work not to do and when not to do it.
If the parable of the farmer relates to the Lord’s action – which I think it does – the connection is that the Lord – like the farmer – does circumstance-specific work that needs doing when it’s time to do it. And he does different things that need doing when they need doing.
The parable explains about doing things that need doing.
But even so the Strange & Unusual Work of the Lord is still pretty sobering.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 28:1 (NASB & NLT) 21 (NLT) & 28:23-29

Week 27  Isaiah 24-27

Isaiah puts together this grouping of four chapters where some of the material sounds like he’s talking about the end-of-the-world:
The Lord is going to lay waste the earth and devastate it; the earth will be completely laid waste and totally plundered
The earth is broken up, the earth is split asunder, the earth reels like a drunkard…so heavy it falls — never to rise again. In that day the Lord will punish the powers in the heavens above and the kings on the earth below. The moon will be dismayed, the sun ashamed
On this mountain the Lord Almighty…will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth
The Lord is coming out of his dwelling to punish the people of the earth for their sins. In that day, the Lord will punish…Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent.
Some of the material is about Moab & Egypt & Assyria. But some of it sounds like Revelation. Some of it sounds like near-term forecasts and some like long-term.
A person listening to Isaiah speaking 2500 years ago would likely think that these chapters were all about near-term outcomes.
Me reading it today? Some of it sounds near-term (meaning they happened already). But some sound like they’re yet to come.
One more-or-less continuous-sounding prophecy but with two terminal points. And the border between them is pretty fuzzy.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 24:1-3 18-23 25:6-10 26:20-27:1 (NLT)

Week 27  Isaiah 5

Isaiah says that destruction is certain for you who buy up land so others have no place to live… What would this look in 2024?
Let’s say I’m a rich guy and I buy up properties & houses and then improve them so I can sell them to lower-income people at affordable prices so they get started and get ahead and eventually succeed. Nothing much wrong with buying to help others who can’t.
The other option – the kind that Isaiah is talking about – is more like this. Let’s say I’m a rich guy and I buy up a lot of properties. Poor people can’t afford a house so they have to rent space from me. And I keep my rents high enough that my renters are stuck. They never get ahead. But I do.
It’s a slightly different situation but I heard about a billionaire who’s buying up a lion’s-share of the farmland south of the border. I wonder why.
It’s possible he’s going to grow affordable crops so that poorer people don’t get ripped-off and have to go hungry during a food-crisis. Nothing much wrong with that.
But if he’s buying land so he can a) control agricultural production and b) set high food prices and c) make a big profit so that d) poor people can barely afford food? Well then he’ll be in the driver’s seat. But according to Isaiah only temporarily.

Note: quote from Isaiah 5:8 (NLT). Reading report end-of-June: 679 of 1189 chapters = 57%.