If I was going to be flippant, I might say that 54:1-17 is the equivalent to “and they lived happily ever after,” or perhaps less flippantly, the equivalent of a tough parent saying “yes, I’ve been angry and tough with you and had to punish you but I will be different from now on.” Flippancy aside, this section does have the tone of reassurance, the tone of someone who has been through an ordeal being told that the worse is over, a new happy chapter has begun.
The beginning of the section – 54:1:
Sing out, you barren woman, who has borne no child;
break out in shouts of joy, you who have never been in labor;
for the children of the wife that was abandoned
will outnumber those of the wife with a husband.
– begins with an image and metaphor that hearkens back to the founding of the covenant with Israel. This could have been words spoken to Abraham and Sarah, who did not bear a child until old age. And in fact, Abraham and Sarah are mentioned in 51:2:
Look to Abraham your father
and to Sarah who gave you birth.
When I called him he was but one,
but I blessed him and made him many.
The image of a barren woman is probably one that is used frequently throughout the Hebrew Bible. The image is used somewhat similarly in Isaiah 49:21:
Who has begotten these children for me
when I was bereaved and barren,
exiled, cast aside...
Clearly, the overall message in the first part of 54 is that Israel will grow, proper and reproduce after years of baroness – i.e. captivity and oppression. However, on a symbolic level, this appears to be a new covenant, or a mirroring or renewal of the covenant begun with Abraham, when “a great nation,” to use the words of the Hebrew Bible, developed from a barren old couple because of their faith in Yahveh.
The “tent” metaphor that follows in 54:2 also expands on the theme of expansion and growth. It is an interesting metaphor and not one found previously in 2nd Isaiah.
Passages 54:9-10 relay that like the destruction of the earth by the flood, an event which Yahveh took an oath not to repeat, Yahveh swears a similar oath never to reject Israel again. The swearing of oaths and Yahveh giving his word recur throughout the second part of 54 – more specifically, it is mentioned three times in verses 9 – 17 and the section concludes with the proclamation: “A word of Yahveh.” In other words, the previous section has been an oath and promise by Yahveh.
54:11-17 indicates that the city of Jerusalem or perhaps the nation as a whole will be physically rebuilt. The most intriguing item in the latter part of 54 is the mention of “the Destroyer” (it would be helpful to know how this reads in the original Hebrew). What exactly is “the Destroyer” – the doomsday device from Dr. Strangelove?
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Howard,
ReplyDeleteThe tent metaphor in 54:2 is very important, I think. The word translated "dwelling places" or "dwellings" is actually the same word for the tabernacle in Exodus and Numbers. There is a very strong undertone of temple worship there.
Also, the hebrew word for "destroyer" is a noun form of a verb that means to destroy, corrupt, or spoil. It looks like a causative participle to me, so destroyer is pretty accurate, although I'm not sure I'd capitalize it. This form is used elsewhere (e.g. Ex. 12:23 and especially Jer 22:7) where it seems to connote a military specialist who was adept at destroying things and people. Perhaps the destroyer in this passage is a military man who uses the weapons that the smith created?