God is present to establish righteous rule. Right standards and a right ordering of society will follow from wise rulers who will establish justice i.e. the source of the change is in the character of the ruling classes. When righteousness and justice mark their lives, the whole of society feels the purifying influence. There is a renewal of the promise that, in a new age, when the divine Spirit is poured out on men, there will be renewal of the land. The warnings given to Isaiah’s contemporaries serve as a continual reminder that life is to be found where justice is established and the source of that justice is in the working of the Spirit of God. This section is one of the noblest expressions of the prophet’s unchanging conviction that the nature and the circumstance of society depend on the character of the people. A section of liturgy makes clear that Jerusalem has a purpose in God’s plan. Yet, purification is a necessary preliminary to the establishment of a new and purified city. Chapter 34 forms a poem of vivid imagery, expressing the dire aspects of the day of Yahweh, directed at Edom, Assyria, Babylon, or maybe even Israel itself. The author exhausts his imagination to picture the stricken earth, shrouded in smoke from its smoldering ruins, haunted by wild beasts, empty of all human life, the stench of the slain clinging to the very soil “dunged with rotten death.”
God is present to establish righteous rule. Right standards and a right ordering of society will follow from wise rulers who will establish justice i.e. the source of the change is in the character of the ruling classes. When righteousness and justice mark their lives, the whole of society feels the purifying influence. There is a renewal of the promise that, in a new age, when the divine Spirit is poured out on men, there will be renewal of the land. The warnings given to Isaiah’s contemporaries serve as a continual reminder that life is to be found where justice is established and the source of that justice is in the working of the Spirit of God. This section is one of the noblest expressions of the prophet’s unchanging conviction that the nature and the circumstance of society depend on the character of the people. A section of liturgy makes clear that Jerusalem has a purpose in God’s plan. Yet, purification is a necessary preliminary to the establishment of a new and purified city. Chapter 34 forms a poem of vivid imagery, expressing the dire aspects of the day of Yahweh, directed at Edom, Assyria, Babylon, or maybe even Israel itself. The author exhausts his imagination to picture the stricken earth, shrouded in smoke from its smoldering ruins, haunted by wild beasts, empty of all human life, the stench of the slain clinging to the very soil “dunged with rotten death.”
ReplyDelete