Isaiah and the Lord's crushing pleasure

“It was the Lord’s good pleasure

to crush him with pain;

If he gives his life as a sin offering,

he will see his offspring

and prolong his life,

and through him

the Lord’s good pleasure will be done.”
–Isaiah 53:10

“It was the Lord’s good pleasure to crush him…” What a hard thing to read.  And yet, do many of us not feel a kind of crushing weight upon us even in our comfortable houses and relatively safe lives.  The weight of waiting and of not knowing. Perhaps even the weight of all that new-found quiet.  It is strange and sometimes must feel hard to be so “isolated,” and uncertain.

As Christians, we read this passage and immediately hear an allusion to Jesus and His cross, the suffering servant who gives His life as a sing offering for the sake of others.  But, reading it the other morning I wondered: what did Isaiah’s audience make of it? What did it mean to them? This image is from what is often referred to as “Second-Isaiah.” Scholars believe chapters 40-55, were written by a later prophet (perhaps a follower of the first) and were possibly written 150 years after chapters 1-39.  Second-Isaiah is believed to have been written during the Babylonian exile, so the audience for this book was themselves in exile, dragged off into slavery. They must have felt the true sting of these words. Were they struck by their God with this affliction? Certainly they were helpless, despised, crushed, a people of constant sorrow led to the slaughter. Did they believe that this truly was God’s pleasure? Or did they begin to suspect something even worse… that it was a sign, proof that there was no God, no Yahweh who loved and delighted in His chosen people. 

Had their whole history been nothing but a fantasy?  Were they just some minor tribe who had been lucky for a while, found a nice piece of fertile land, settled it and enjoyed a little success under a couple of minor kings, but of no real importance to the world or history? Easily knocked over by other larger and more powerful tribes or nations when the time was ripe…

Truly, how could a loving God take pleasure in crushing anyone? What on earth could these words have meant to 5^th century Israelites living in exile?  And what does it mean to us today, living in our own strange “self-isolated” exile?  I know that when I read these words I am struck by the brutal sound of them, the spiritual weight of such an image.  And I want to quickly find some nicer way to understand it. I want to find some way to tame it, make it sound not so frightful, but gentle and sweet. I want to find a way to fit it on a Hallmark card.

But you can’t. Not if you face it. Face the actual words themselves. Don’t hide behind theological interpretations, but ask yourself this:  What is God saying here? What is the truth God is revealing to us through this fearful image? Even today?

It seems to me, that –in fact-- this bleak vision is one of assurance and encouragement.  It assures us the same way I think it was intended to assure the enslaved in Babylon. It speaks not just of abuse and punishment, but of the real pleasure of God: self-giving.  To the 5^th century Israelites it may have said, their disfiguring abuse under the Babylonians, their seeming destruction, was in fact an unexpected kind of proof, a proof of God’s love. His true pleasure. And, thereby it speaks also of His presence right there with them, even in their hour of exile and destruction.

What a hard teaching this is.  Even for us today, in the shadow of the cross and the echo of the empty tomb, this is still a hard teaching. To find God’s pleasure, God’s love, God’s presence in our time of anxiety and suffering is very hard.  When things get rough, we tend to go into defense mode, and our shields go up—a kind of psychological and emotional self-isolating. No one wants to be mistreated, wants to be seen as a failure, wants to be disfigured by life and loss. Those moments make us feel completely abandoned, as if God has forgotten us. 

And yet this passage seems to say: Don’t be afraid. This is what you were made for.  Give your life to God and witness the pleasure of God’s will being done, in you and through you.

Even if it means becoming God’s suffering servant, we are being called to give our lives to Him, each and every day.  This isn’t just a memo for the time of pandemics and coronas, it is a call we need to listen for every single day.   

In Colossians, Paul writes of “making up” in his own suffering what is “lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (1:24).  Is that the opportunity that Isaiah is speaking of here?  

When the world feels like it is crushing us, when the sacrifices (even if it is just staying home and self-isolating) seem beyond our ability, perhaps that is the time for us not to turn away and hide.  But a time to surrender to the will of God.

A time to pray: 

Help me Lord, surrender to Your will, Your pleasure;
Help me surrender to the fullness of Your presence, Your tender love.

Like Your son, I pray: Not my will, but Yours be done.
My God, I give my life to you.

Struggling with strange passages: Reading with four-fold eyes

“But the Lord made Pharaoh stubborn,

And he refused to let them [Israel] go.”

–Exodus 10:27

When dealing with difficult scripture passages, one of the approaches that has been used since almost the beginning of Christianity is to read it in what is sometimes called the four-fold method.  This method seeks meaning in scripture on more than one level. It looks at a passage and seeks one (or more) of four different meanings in the passage: literal, allegorical, moral & anagogical.  Here is a clear demonstration of this method offered by Dante (in a letter describing how his Divine Comedy should be read).

“A first sense derives from the letters themselves, and a second from the things signified by the letters. We call the first sense "literal" sense, the second the "allegorical", or "moral" or "anagogical". To clarify this method of treatment, consider this verse: When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people: Judea was made his sanctuary, Israel his dominion (Psalm 113). Now if we examine the letters alone, the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt in the time of Moses is signified; in the allegory, our redemption accomplished through Christ; in the moral sense, the conversion of the soul from the grief and misery of sin to the state of grace; in the anagogical sense, the exodus of the holy soul from slavery of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory. they can all be called allegorical.”

With this in mind, I was wondering: how would this method help me in my reading of Exodus? Especially those troubling passages about God and Pharaoh; i.e. how does Pharaoh’s hardened heart look when read through this lens?

“But the Lord made Pharaoh stubborn,

And he refused to let them [Israel] go.”

–Exodus 10:27

How would one apply the four-fold method to reading this passage?  Literal, allegorical, moral, anagogical? 

So –let’s put it to the test:

                Literally, the Pharaoh was obstinate and would not let the Israelites leave –but what is the lesson we are to learn from this literal reading?  Is it that God bestows his mercy and love as He will and thus Pharaoh –in his sinfulness and ignorance—became even more obstinate simply because God’s grace did not or was not opened to him? Possibly because Pharaoh wasn’t open to it, or possibly because God chose not to open Pharaoh’s heart. However, a lesson we might learn from this literal reading is this: we cannot know God’s will or God’s plan and so perhaps we shouldn’t be judging anyone; not even the Pharaoh or his hardened heart.

Allegorically, Pharaoh is sin and sin often becomes even more obstinate when confronted. Thus we might read into this scene a vision of the Israelites lost in sin (Egypt) and under the control of sin (Pharaoh)— and when God sends help and sin is confronted by God’s message the sinful heart hardens; it grows more obstinate and the sinner appears to fall even more powerfully under sin’s control.

Morally, we see perhaps this: when we confront our sin (or confront sinners), sin may become more emboldened and obstinate; temptations and sinful behaviors may become more present and feel more powerfully in control –refusing to let us go.  And we, slaves to sin, may feel more helpless and unable to escape. But, we must not lose hope. This too may be part of God’s plan.

Anagogical: We are completely in God’s hands –at His mercy—and must put our hope in Him –in His mercy –even when our sin refuses to leave us, even when we feel unable to escape its hold—we must put our hope, our faith, our trust in the mercy of God.  That is our only way –that is the only road out of Egypt, and it  passes right through Calvary.

Yes—for me this is a troubling passage. But troubling isn’t bad. Most of the time, I’m learning, troubling means God is asking me to slow down and pay a little more attention.