information is most valuable when used in service to God and God’s people. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” was the mantra of Israel’s wisdom teachers (Ps. 111:10, Prov. 9:10): knowledge should be grounded in a healthy respect for God’s way. A righteous judge (vv. 3b-5) Ancient Near Eastern rulers, even those from Assyria and Babylon, prided themselves on ruling with justice, even if their notions of what is just did not always match up with biblical ideals. Isaiah declared that the coming ruler, wise in the ways of both God and the world, would govern with divine justice. Like God, he would not base his judgments on people’s outward appearance or on their testimony, but on a deeper level. The passage recalls 1 Samuel 16:7, where Samuel was about to anoint Jesse’s impressive (and oldest) son Eliab as Israel’s next king before Yahweh stopped him, saying “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” All of Jesse’s sons passed before Samuel, but only David, the eighth and youngest son, was chosen as a man “after God’s own heart.” Isaiah, like his contemporary Micah, had a special concern for the poor, who were easily exploited by their wealthy neighbors. A cozy legal system requiring just two witnesses to appear before village elders made it relatively easy for a large estate owner to accuse a poor neighbor on false charges, hire a couple of false witnesses, and take the poor man’s land. The elders who passed judgment were likely also men of means. Earlier, Isaiah had pronounced woe upon those “who join house to house, who add field to field” to build large estates (Isa. 5:8). In contrast, the coming king would judge the poor rightly “and decide with equity for the meek of the earth” (v. 4a).
LESSON FOR DECEMBER 8, 2013
Resources to teach adult and youth classes
are available at nurturingfaith.net The second half of v. 4 sounds surprisingly violent to modern ears, but “he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth” probably refers to the king’s spoken decrees demanding justice for the poor. The reference to his “breath” killing the wicked is in parallel with the preceding line, and its main intention is to indicate that wickedness will be overcome and disappear from the land under the coming king, who would wear righteousness and faithfulness as a doubled belt (v. 5). A promise of peace (vv. 6-10) As the coming ruler’s power and sense of justice would bring an end to greedy humans preying on one another, Isaiah declared, such justice would extend even to the animal kingdom, bringing all creatures great and small into a time of peace and harmony not known since creation, when all animal life was given green plants to eat (Gen. 1:30). Isaiah’s image plays upon the imagination like tuned wind chimes in a gentle breeze. A wolf lives side by side with a lamb. A leopard stretches out beside a resting baby goat. A cow and a lion munch on grass while a child watches over the odd but amazing flock and a baby plays safely with snakes. Would you ever, in your wildest imagination, have come up with an image like that? It seems completely antithetical to the world as we know it, a world of predators and prey, eaters and the eaten. What remains is for us to ask whether Isaiah believed the world will ever truly become a happy paradise where humans and animals roam freely and none are afraid, or whether he was using the animals as metaphors for something else. Some have suggested that the various predators symbolized aggressive countries that would lay down their arms and live in peace with their weaker
neighbors. Others suggest that Isaiah’s main intent was to forecast an image of what a wonderful world it could be if a leader emerged to inspire such a peaceable kingdom. Finding a clear answer to this question is not nearly so important as catching the sublime emotional feel of Isaiah’s imagery, and considering what steps we might take toward creating a world where violence and destruction have given way to a land pervaded by “the knowledge of the LORD” (v. 9). Some believers take this text very seriously, and choose not only to live at peace with other people, but also to tread so lightly upon the earth that they subsist happily on fruits, grains and vegetables, and do not contribute to the death of animals. Most readers are unlikely to go that far, but perhaps Isaiah’s vision can inspire us to yearn for the day when the promised shoot from the stump of Jesse reigns over the earth, and to work toward that peaceable kingdom (v. 10). Isaiah did not live to see such a king arise, nor did any of his spiritual descendants who added to his book over the next 200 years. No ruler has yet to touch the ideals displayed by the “signal to the peoples” that Isaiah envisioned, but believers who read this text through the lens of the New Testament believe that the shoot from Jesse’s stump has emerged – and been cut down – and has risen again. Jesus came as precisely the kind of leader that Isaiah imagined, speaking of a kingdom of God that no one around him could understand and that remains largely a dream. While we long with the writer of Revelation for a new heaven and a new earth, however, we remain responsible for the time in which we live. Like the Righteous Branch, we are called to trust in God’s Spirit for the wisdom, discernment, compassion, and courage needed to seek justice for the oppressed and equity for the poor of all nations. As we do so, every now and then we may just catch a glimpse of the peaceable kingdom, and it will be glorious indeed. BT
| 21