The specific strokes of chapter 10 point to a single broad point: The Assyrian king has acted arrogantly by asserting himself over Yahweh.  But let’s look at 4 ways that he does this:

The first is blatant: “By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I have understanding…” (v. 13).   Notice the rapid repetition of the first-person pronouns!  And more importantly, notice the king’s claim to wisdom and insight — kingly qualities valued by Israel, but only as gifts given by God for ruling justly among the people.  The Assyrian kings were not known for their just rule, in spite of their explicit claims to the contrary.

A second characteristic of Assyria’s arrogance is evident in the king’s next claim: “I have removed the boundaries of peoples…”  But, as Deuteronomy puts it, it is “Elyon [the Most High]” who “established the boundaries of the peoples.”  Now Isaiah’s claims against the king of Assyria are getting quite serious.  Not only has he ruled unjustly (the very opposite of wisdom that comes from Yahweh), but he has usurped the authority to apportion the nations — an authority that belongs to God alone!  Interestingly, Yahweh had granted a certain amount of authority to Assyria: “Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him to take spoil and seize plunder” (v. 6).  But Assyria took far more than they were given.  Rather than assume the role of punisher granted by Yahweh, “it was in his heart to destroy and to cut off nations not a few.”  By removing the boundaries of the nations, the king of Assyria overstepped his bounds.

The third part of the king’s boast is rendered by the NRSV: “[I] have plundered their treasures.”  But this is an inadequate translation, for “treasures” is really a more generic word for storehouses.  Of course the king looted the treasures of nations — that’s what kings do, and it even appears to be within the bounds granted by Yahweh in v. 6.  A more accurate translation might read: “I have stolen their stores,” with the implication that the king went above and beyond the expectations for warfare.  He destroyed the very means for livelihood, literally the “prepared things” that people of these nations had set aside for food and shelter.  Once again, Assyria overstepped, this time resulting in excessive cruelty and oppression.

A fourth characteristic of the Assyrian king’s arrogance concerns the title he attributes to himself.  Once again, I think the NRSV translation misses the point.  The Hebrew word rendered “like a bull” (all one word in Hebrew) is actually the same word used in Isaiah 1:24 to describe Yahweh as “the Mighty One.”  Now he’s not just doing things that are only properly the behavior of Yahweh, but the king of Assyria has actually adopted for himself the very title of God!  (It may be that both translations are correct.  Assyrian kings occasionally depicted themselves or their troops as bulls trampling on their victims.  So Isaiah is playing on the word to show how ridiculous are these claims of the king.  Clever, and unfortunately, impossible to capture in our translations.)

Just to drive home the absurdity of the king of Assyria claiming priority over Yahweh, Isaiah employs some metaphors: “Shall the ax vaunt itself over the one who wields its, or the saw magnify itself against the one who wields it?” (v. 15).  As if a tool could master its master!

So let the “reading like a prophet” begin.  How do the empires of today overstep their bounds?  And what are those bounds?  As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, the Old Testament Prophets do not automatically associate empire(s) with evil.  Empires, rather, are tools in the hands of God as is any other human institution.  The ethical question facing an empire is: Have we been a good empire?  Have we been merciful (see my older post on Avatar and Empire)?  Have we been just?  Have we overstepped our (God-given) bounds?  And then I think we have to ask ourselves, as the people of God: Are we faced with propaganda today that claims too much or oversteps?  What is it?  How can we name this propaganda and, as Isaiah does, expose it for the utter absurdity that it is?

We spent most of the time surveying several generations of 8th century (BCE) Judahite kings and their dealings with the Assyrians.  Our sources were 2 Kings 15-20; Isaiah 1:1; 7-8; and 36-37.  Broadly speaking, Isaiah 1-39 constitutes the first major section of the book and deals primarily with Judah/Jerusalem in a world dominated by the ruthless Assyrian Empire.  Isaiah ben Amoz (the Isaiah of the first verse) lived during this time, and most of the folks who write the books about Isaiah insist that he only wrote chapters 1-39; the rest was written by a disciple (or disciples) of the First Isaiah.  (For the curious: I agree with the folks who write the books).

Two events in Isa 1-37 are worth noting: First, Yahweh delivers King Ahaz of Judah from a conspiracy to replace him as king.  The kings of Israel (Northern Kingdom) and Aram (Syria) wanted Ahaz to join their anti-Assyrian coalition.  When he refused, they threatened war, and Ahaz appealed to the king of Assyria.  Assyria answered, crushed Israel and Aram, and then began collecting tribute from Jerusalem as payment for their salvific intervention.  See Isaiah 7-8.

Second, 20-30 years after Ahaz, Hezekiah took the throne of Jerusalem.  He refused to pay the tribute demanded by Assyria, so King Sennacherib of Assyria marched through Judah killing and burning everything in his path.  He made his way all the way to the gates of Jerusalem and surrounded the city to besiege it.  Hezekiah appealed to Isaiah and to Yahweh, and God intervened in a miraculous way to preserve Jerusalem.  See Isaiah 36-37.

These two events serve as the major external crises that motivated much of Isaiah’s prophetic work.  His sermons exhort the people of God in Jerusalem towards a particular foreign policy that reflects their allegiance to Yahweh alone — not to military power, diplomatic strategy (like paying tribute), or most emphatically not to the Assyrian king or deity.  This conflict between Yahweh and Empire comes to a head in the speech of the Rab-Shakeh to the now-surrounded inhabitants of the Holy City: “Is it without Yahweh that I have come up against this land to destroy it?  Yahweh said to me, Go up against this land and destroy it” (Isaiah 36:10).  Speaking on behalf of King Sennacherib himself, this Assyrian ambassador (in Judah’s own language, no less) declares that Yahweh has ordered Assyria to march on Jerusalem.  The question for Jerusalem and Hezekiah is not merely “In whom shall I trust?” but more confusingly “Whose God is this?  And how do we know?”  Hezekiah’s subsequent appeal and Yahweh’s remarkable response are answer enough.

The subject of Yahweh’s squaring off against the Empire is a major part of the book of Isaiah, and I believe teaches us a great deal about the relationship between the people of God and the dominant power of any historical era.  And the questions are magnified for those of us today who find ourselves claiming citizenship of both the Kingdom of God and our era’s dominant historical power.  Is it possible to sing “In Christ alone my hope is found” on Sunday morning and later recite “I pledge allegiance to the flag”?  These questions — and Isaiah’s answers — will be the subject of the next couple weeks.  This week we’ll read Isaiah 10:5-15 and discuss the folly of imperial propaganda.

Stay tuned.  I hope to post a preview tomorrow.

The title of the class is “The Gospel of Isaiah,” although it’s kind of a bait-and-switch.  I want to use passages from Isaiah to talk broadly about the Old Testament, its value as Scripture, the nature of prophecy, and especially ways we can approach the text in order to grasp its richness and depth.  An alternate title might be: “How to Read Scripture Like a Prophet.”  Let me try and explain.

The Lord, the Lord,
a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
yet by no means clearing the guilty,
but visiting the iniquity of the parents
upon the children
and the children’s children,
to the third and the fourth generation.
(Exodus 34:6-7)

The prophets of the Bible were masters of their tradition.  They knew their world, their people, their history inside and out.  One might say it’s part of what made them so capable of rendering God’s words in such palpable, raw, and often beautiful ways.  Most importantly, they were discerning individuals; they read their own context with eyes illuminated by a keen insight into the will of God for their specific time and place (many call this inspiration).  Take the passage from Exodus 34 quoted above.  It’s a formula, developed sometime during Israel’s walk with God (no need to speculate when), and used again and again in different contexts in order to say something about the God with whom they walk (for example, Numbers 14:18; Deuteronomy 5:9-10; Jeremiah 32:28).  In each of these different contexts, the formula is given certain emphases or slight revisions that change its meaning.

Look at how Nahum uses part of the formula:

A jealous and avenging God is the Lord,
the Lord is avenging and wrathful;
the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries
and rages against his enemies.
The Lord is slow to anger but great in power,
and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty.
(Nahum 1:2-3)

The last two lines resemble the second half of the Exodus formula, but the first two lines have changed drastically!  Nahum is a short prophetic book condemning the behavior of Nineveh, the capital city of the great Assyrian empire, and it begins by citing a very traditional part of Israel’s faith: “The Lord is slow to anger…”  But, says Nahum, “great in power.”

The book of Jonah uses this formula in a similar way.  His citation is even closer to the Exodus text (Jonah 4:2), but Jonah employs it in a completely different context — he’s not at all happy that these are God’s ways.  Jonah knew that, if he called Nineveh to repentance, they would repent and God would spare them.  So, he says: “That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”  Jonah was responsible for God’s sparing of Israel’s greatest enemy!

The point here is that “reading like a prophet” looks something like a recycling of traditional material in new contexts.  But (and here’s the scary/exciting part), that recycling is often critical or even tradition-altering.  The author of Jonah knew that Israel was prone to think of their “gracious and merciful” God when it came to their own relationship with him.  But others?  The vast and horrible Assyrian Empire?  Prophets are no doubt outside-the-box thinkers, but they get all their material from inside the box.

I borrowed a lot of this argument from one of my favorite OT theologians, Phyllis Trible.  Trible calls this context-sensitive recycling of material “the hermeneutical clue within the text.”  She wants us to see that new contexts serve as the motive for comprehending the religious tradition in new ways.  As she puts it, “context altered text.”  Isaiah does this too.  He expresses God’s frustration with practices like sacrifice and fasting in order to re-cast the tradition in more meaningful ways for his time and place.  After all, what use are sacrifices when people go hungry?  And he and the prophet Joel both employ what looks like a traditional metaphor (swords/plowshares; Isaiah 2:4; Joel 3:10), but in opposite ways for different purposes.

So, to read like a prophet we must immerse ourselves in the box (in our case, Isaiah) and discover exciting ways in which it takes on new life in our own time and place.  As Trible puts it, biblical metaphors are on a “journey” through Scripture, and one of our interpretive goals is to discover how that metaphor is shaped by its varied uses along the journey.  The prophetic word declares something new in relation to something old.  So our task of “reading like a prophet” is twofold: First, we want to discover the new thing that Isaiah declared and how it relates to the old; and second (this is the part too often overlooked), we have to relate the old (Isaiah) to a new declaration of our own!  We haven’t finished reading until we’ve done both of these things.

In our Sunday School class, we’re going to look at different ways that such declarations are made.  What sorts of new declarations does Isaiah make?  Do we see development and “newness” even within the book of Isaiah itself?  How do different interpretive communities today take up Isaiah’s work, claim it as their own, and recycle it in order to make new proclamations for the people of God?

Next week:  Historical overview.  Texts: Isaiah 1:1; 7:1-9; 36-39; 2 Kgs 15-20

A friend pointed me to this NY Times Op-Ed by David Brooks (thanks Eric).  Brooks is a bit more down on the movie than I am in my post, and I see his point.  He’s concerned for what he calls the “White Messiah Complex,” a typified portrayal of helpless natives in need of a white, rational, technocratic, civilized, (and I might add male) hero.  A similar critique, which he implies but does not state explicitly, is the idealization of a rural life that demonizes technology and all things urban and paved.  I’m on board with all this criticism (and I admit feeling some unease during the movie), but I think in the meantime Brooks missed what draws moviegoers (of course, I generalize here based on my own experience) to this sort of plot: Who’s the one in this story who really gets saved?  If you ask me, the real “messiah”-type is the Omaticaya clan.  Sully gets reborn when he becomes a member of the clan and embraces a faith and way of life that provide a richness that was formerly absent.  He gets a new body with working limbs, literally ending his old life to embrace the new.  If the audience appeal here is a romanticized “escapism,” as Brooks puts it, then I’m willing to chalk it up to that God-shaped hole inside of us (excuse the cliche) — in this case a life deeply connected to God and others.

So I don’t think Brooks gets the whole picture.  But he does conclude by making a great point about the “White Messiah fable,” and here’s where the Empire part comes in:

“It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.”

Yes!  If I’m idealistic about the movie’s theological overtones, here I want to be realistic about its historical accuracy.  Much of history (and current events) can be described as the story of indigenous peoples subject to the whims of imperial self-admiration.  But you’ll notice that, once again, I don’t exactly agree with Brooks: It’s not the movie that “creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism”; on the contrary, the movie reflects the reality of it!  And as citizens of this world’s current empire, I’m not so sure it’s detrimental to tell fables of benevolent imperialism.  As I see it, the sad truth is that imperialism in this world is inevitable.  The prophets know this — it’s the reason that Babylon can first be the instrument of Yahweh’s judgment and the next be the subject of it (only to be replaced by another empire).  The question for those who find themselves in the midst of the empire is not: “How do we stop being empire?”  That’s foolishness.  The question is: “What kind of empire are we going to be?”  I think the prophets’ answers are often quite simple: merciful, just, righteous, and so on.

I was going to end my reflections here, but suddenly realized how truly apropos was Brooks’ choice to use the word “messiah” to describe the empire’s self-aggrandizing self-perception.  Again I turn to the prophets.  After decades of unfaithfulness to Yahweh, Israel was victimized by the Babylonian Empire.  Land and Temple were ravaged, the royal Davidic line humiliated, and many of the people carried off to Babylon to serve the latest and greatest imperial overlord (Babylon, by the way, lacked mercy in its imperial dealings — see Jer. 6:23; 50:42 — that’s why God ultimately destroyed them).  The prophet speaks to Israel in this situation of exile: Yahweh the Redeemer will act swiftly as in the days of Moses to rescue them from their captors and recreate a people in the land of rest and peace.  And how will he do it?

“Thus says Yahweh to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and strip kings of their robes…. I will go before you and level the mountains, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron…. For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me.  I am Yahweh, and there is no other; besides me there is no god.  I arm you, though you do not know me.” (Isaiah 45:1-5)

Cyrus was a newcomer on the international scene, a rising star.  Of legendary character, he united the Medes and Persians and descended upon failing Babylon with ferocity.  When the dust settled, Cyrus was king of one of the largest empires ever assembled, and that included the people and lands of ancient Israel.  The Persian Empire would later allow Israelite exiles to return to their land and rebuild the city of Jerusalem (see the books of Ezra and Nehemiah).

So what could Cyrus possibly have to do with Avatar?  Here’s the rub:  Cyrus, a foreign king and imperial overlord, is referred to as Yahweh’s “anointed.”  In Hebrew the word is משׁיח (mashiach = messiah).  Apparently God had no problem using an empire as the instrument of redemption, literally a messiah for his people.  The reality is that empire’s exist, and further that imperial discourse (whether through news, Internet, movies, or other media) exercises an enormous influence on empire and colony (or “post-colony”?) alike.  Avatar did not create this reality, it simply reflects it.  My point is that Brooks’ characterization of our “White Messiah Complex” is itself a complex rooted in a fear of post-colonial political incorrectness that paralyzes the ability of an otherwise benevolent narrative to shape an empire in its convictions about mercy, war, culture, the environment, faith, community, and so on.

I end with a qualification: Please do not think that my defense of imperial benevolence is in any way a denial of the thoroughly anti-imperial rhetoric of prophetic discourse.  If anything, I think Avatar’s narrative does a great job of holding this tension together — the Na’vi (prophets) are precisely those whose way of life critiques the dominant view of society.  I suppose a truly balanced critique of Avatar would point out how it fails because of its over-the-top extremes: an uncompromisingly negative view of the (American) marines, an overly optimistic portrayal of the “white messiah,” and an utopian picture of uncontaminated life on Pandora.  But that’s precisely what prophets do!  When all hope for Israel (or Pandora?) is lost, behold! The messiah of Yahweh (or Eywa?) appears as an imperial overlord (or depressed marine?).  When wealth and idolatry lull Israel into a neglect for Yahweh, society, and creation, behold! The judgment of Yahweh appears as an imperial overlord.  And when the imperial overlord rejects a rule of mercy and justice, forsakes its obligations to the poor, orphan, and widow, and neglects stewardship of God’s creation, behold! A prophet of Yahweh emerges.

America is an empire, and empire’s have a messiah complex.  The Emperor of ancient Rome declared himself the savior of the world, and the United States of America (regardless of partisan color) announces daily its intention to save other nations with its political and economic genius, its technological innovation.  In spite of its complex, America is not a messiah of Yahweh.  But lets not be so quick to dismiss tales of benevolent imperialism as meaningless propaganda.  If we have to be an empire, the least we can do is be a good one, and shaping our discourse with stories like Avatar may be a useful place to start.

*Update:  Wow!  This anthropologist’s work is remarkably relevant for this discussion.

Yesterday I went with Abby to see Avatar (It was her idea to go to a movie, but I picked Avatar).  I had pretty low expectations, which I’ve found is the best way to watch a movie, since it rarely leaves me disappointed.  I thought it would be impossible not to get hung up on cheesy animation, an over-the-top epic storyline, and under-developed characters who are incapable of stringing together more than four words at once.  Turns out, I’m a sucker for all those things.  Seriously though, the movie was great.  The characters had (some) depth, the effects were unbelievable, and the story was imaginative and even poignant.  Sure, there were moments when recycled cliches from Hollywood’s overly simple pop-culture reared their ugly head — an over-zealous characterization of war-mongering marines or the unabashed parallels between Pandora’s trees (Pandora is the name of the fictional planet where the movie takes place) and our own rain forests.  (I don’t mean to decry the importance of these issues, only the way that Hollywood blockbusters tend to neglect their complexity).  But what intrigued me the most were the sociological and religious dynamics of the film.

First, the less-explicit ecclesiological ones: When Sully was preparing for his re-birth as a member of the Omaticaya clan, I leaned over to Abby and said, “He’s gonna be baptized!”  You might laugh (and you’re right to do so), but think about it: After learning the ways of a community rooted (quite literally) in their faith, Sully was about to become one of them.  Doing so meant forsaking his own people, to the extent that he received a new body, a new family, an entirely new race.  St. Paul might have written the script: “In Christ there is no Jew or Gentile…”  At the risk of propping up a Christian sub-culture that is often devoid of social awareness, what does it mean to be welcomed into the Body?  To have a new family?  To be part of an alternative society (the Church) that often has different rules and vastly different convictions?  I’m not talking about your usual “counter-cultural worldview,” but a place with different social and political conventions — ones that align themselves with the will of the Creator of the universe.

Speaking of the Creator… Pandora’s god is named Eywa.  Her existence is deeply engrained in life on Pandora, and the scientist in the story even claims that the connection is “biological,” “quantifiable.”  Some may be turned off by this pantheistic (or, perhaps more accurately, panentheistic) deity, but I’m reminded of theologian Sallie McFague, who employs the metaphor of “God’s body” to speak of creation.  Since this is, after all, an Old Testament blog, what about the God who appeared in a burning bush or the pillar of fire or the cloud of glory?  The God whose very movements shake the foundations of the earth and topple the mountains?  The God whose Spirit animates our very existence (this might come closest to the sort of god that Eywa is)?  I’m not asking you to accept Avatar’s characterization of Eywa without reserve, only to discover a rich parallel there for what it might mean to speak of Creator and created, with all its implications for how one created being ought to live in relation to other created beings.  I do not simply want to affirm that all of creation is valued by its Creator — this is no doubt true — but more importantly, every created thing in some respect expresses something about the Creator.

Genesis 1 speaks of the “image of God” that characterizes the people whom God creates: “So God created the man in his image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”  Traditionally, theology has taken this passage in a restrictive fashion: the image of God is uniquely human.  But I don’t see it that way.  Without entering the enormous debate over precisely what is the image of God (perhaps the problem with this debate is that the Bible never intended to be quite so precise about it), look at how the major characteristics of human beings in Gen 1-2 are the things they do like God — rule over and care for creation, (pro)create, live.  But some of these things aren’t uniquely human!  The image of God is expressed in all of creation — especially in living things and even more especially in human beings.

So, back to Eywa.  Is it really so far-fetched to think that a God so invested in creation as Yahweh is might unite Godself inexplicably and remarkably (or even biologically and quantifiably, I suppose) to each and every created thing?  And that through God’s unity with all of creation we might find ourselves inexplicably and remarkably united to each and every created thing?  I understand the theological challenges presented by pan(en)theism, but surely we can all agree that whether God “is” or “is not” a part of creation, God has in some respect united Godself to creation.  The Incarnation says as much.

Oh, by the way, did you notice what happens when you unscramble Eywa?  “Ya(h)we(h)!”  And the people of Pandora?  They’re called the na’vi, which is the Hebrew word for prophet.  Whatever else one might say about prophets, they certainly have some kind of special connection to God (like the people of Pandora).  These metaphors are deliberate, and worth more thought than I can give them here.  I think someday I’ll watch this movie again…

Update: After writing this post, I did some googling.  I found this blog by Rabbi Arthur Waskow of The Shalom Center (a progressive Jewish organization that I know very little about) fascinating.  He connects Avatar to a Jewish festival: “We are just now approaching the ecological-mystical festival of Tu B’Shvat. It intertwines celebration of the midwinter rebirth of trees and the rebirth of the Great Tree of Life Itself, God, Whose roots are in heaven and whose fruit is our world.“  He invites others to watch Avatar and then participate in the Jewish festival of Tu B’Shvat.  I just may take him up on his invitation.  Anyone else interested?