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Week 28  Isaiah 58

One of the standard ways to differentiate between the OT and the NT is something like this:
A) the OT is out-of-date & irrelevant & legalistic & – basically – of no value
B) the NT has some useful & beneficial things to say.
So anyway I was looking at some of the things Isaiah listed in this chapter.
• Don’t oppress your employees
• Treat your employees fairly & equitably
• Don’t tyrannize helpless people
• Quit your interpersonal bashing
• Don’t fake your religious practices
• No legal malpractice
• No two-tiered justice system (same justice for everyone)
• Help poor people
• Help people who are in trouble
• Look out for the welfare of your family
• Don’t lie
• Don’t treat the Lord’s day like just-another-day
• Don’t do just the things you want to do
• Watch your language…watch the way you talk
And there’s a cumulative wrap-up: honor the Lord in everything you do.
I look back over Isaiah’s list. Since they’re all in the OT I wonder if it would be possible to discard all of them. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Q#1: what can I get rid of? Q#2: can I toss any of them?
I can understand that a case can be made for the OT being different from the NT. But with a reading like today’s it’ll be hard to argue that “different” is equivalent to having-no-value.

Note: Isaiah’s list is in 58:3-13. It’s his ideas but my words (and it’s slightly reordered). Quote from 58:13 (NLT)

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 I’m completely out-of-my-league. So – fortunately for me – he adds a couple of hopeful things to show the situation isn’t quite hopeless. 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 (although what I know might only be partial & incremental).
Other times I just draw-a-blank when it comes to understanding. But even so at those times Isaiah’s explanation is a help: you’re not getting that because you’re not built to get it. Knowing that 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 that I read in 2 Kings 19:21-28 a couple of months ago. I figure 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 exploits.
So Isaiah’s comment might have caught them off-guard: 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. So that eventually the good outcomes they planned for themselves turned out to be less-and-less happy.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 37:24-25 26 (NLT). Hezekiah’s story is also in 2 Kings 18:13 – 20:20. The big difference? 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 to follow 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 don’t need doing until they do need doing.
The parable explains about doing things that need doing.
But needed or not 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 things sound like they could have already happened. 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 what 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%.

Week 26  Isaiah 1 

This is a good section on religious practice. It’s a reminder that the obvious & visible religious & ceremonial parts of religion (for instance killing an animal for a burnt offering) will only get me so far. Isaiah makes that pretty clear right up front. The Lord is sick of Israel’s religious practices:
Animal sacrifices? Sick-of-them
Incense? Sick-of-it
Religious festivals? Sick-of-them
Fasting? Sick-of-it
Prayers? Sick-of-them.
It’s a serious situation when the Lord is sick of religion.
Isaiah doesn’t leave it there. He tells the people why the Lord is sick-of-religion: because your hands are covered with the blood of your innocent victims (so…practicing formal religion + victimizing innocent people = sickening religion).
Fortunately Isaiah gives the Lord’s starter solution: wash yourselves and be clean. Let me no longer see your evil deeds. Give up your wicked ways.
Fortunately (again) Isaiah then recommends follow-up steps – several concrete things-to-do:
learn to do good
seek justice
help the oppressed
defend the orphan
fight for the rights of widows.
Unfortunately Isaiah doesn’t spell out any third-level solutions. For example he said to help the oppressed but he didn’t spell-out an action-step to actually help-the-oppressed  (like maybe giving donations to the food bank). That might come later in the book. Or maybe Isaiah figured I could dope out things like that for myself.
Either way religious formalities & ritual actions aren’t stand-alone projects. No doubt they’re okay as far as they go. But where they get me to isn’t far enough.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 1:15 16 17 (NLT)

Week 26  Job 42

As I got to the end of the book I wondered what I’d say if someone asked me: “what do you think are Job’s top three comments?”
There’s quite a bit to choose from. In Job there’s about 1069-verses and Job himself spoke 522 of them (by my count). So 48.8% of the book is the words of Job. But I didn’t have much trouble finding my Top Three.
The first was where Job’s wife told Job to curse-God-and-die. Job told her she was foolish. And he asked a great question: shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?
The second was where Job said: I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. Under the circumstances this is a pretty eye-opening and far-seeing and heroic view to take (and almost sounds like Job had read the NT.)
The third is my favorite. After the Lord’s long speech Job throws up the white-flag. He admits: surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. Despite all his qualities and virtues Job realized that – when confronted by the Lord – despising himself and repenting was the obvious thing to do.

Note: quotes from Job 2:10 19:25-26 42:3-6 (NIV)

Week 26  Job 20 & 21

Reading these two chapters back-to-back I realized how far apart Job and his friend Zophar really were.
Zophar’s view was that even if evil people were successful their success was temporary. The hammer would soon fall.
the joy of the godless person lasts but a moment
he will perish forever
he will not enjoy the profit from his trading
his prosperity will not endure
terrors will come over him
a flood will carry off his house.
Job’s view was quite a bit different. He thought it was obvious that evil people were not only successful but that their success could last a lifetime.
the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power
their homes are safe and free from fear
they spend their years in prosperity and go to the grave in peace
the evil man is spared from the day of calamity
who repays him for what he has done?
watch is kept over his tomb.
Zophar figured that bad living was going to result in bad life outcomes.
Job on the other hand said an evil person living a consistently bad life could still end up having pretty good and successful life outcomes. And that’s why he finally told Zophar: how can you console me with your nonsense? Nothing is left of your answers but falsehood. They were friends I guess…but on opposite sides of the fence.

Note: Zophar quotes from Job 20:5 7 12 & 15 18 21 25 28. Job quotes from Job 21:7 9 13 30 31 32 34 (NIV)